Sunday, May 17, 2015

Welcome to the Future ... GOP Need Not Apply

The frustration in general with conservatives is their desire, loosely-stated, is to maintain the status quo.  Businesses, populations, etc will grow organically as appropriate and within existing laws but any radical change is probably not acceptable.

Some conservatives may take exception but we see great division in the ranks and it's not clear if those who do not want to move forward are out-numbered by, say, your Eisenhower-type Republicans.  If you look at the GOP as a continuum from Eisenhower to Jeb Bush, it's clear the party is, technically-speaking, all over the place.  So it's not reliable to say what the GOP wants as there's not much reason to believe the GOP knows what it wants.


There's a worse situation with the Democrats as Clinton would be more honest if she ran as a Republican.  While you know Republicans will start wars and whatnot, with her it's unpredictable and, in my view, that's vastly more dangerous.  People are talking like she's Queen of the Ballroom and she has a lock on the Presidency but that's not true so long as two strategic questions are unresolved.

Why did Bill Clinton deregulate the banks to permit interstate banking and thus the growth of the 'banks too big to fail?'

Please do precise, dear.  This one is important.  No, I don't care what you think about gay rights as they will come anyway.  The GOP is required to squawk and they will but it will happen nevertheless.  So will reefer as it's bad business not to legalize it.

Why did Bill Clinton sign for NAFTA and thus opened the path for American automakers to start moving their construction sites overseas?

Again, please do be precise.  If you don't have one hell of a good answer, your next plan should not be to start proselytizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The above items are not significant to the general thesis of what brings the future but they're important to identify who will bring it.  Clinton will not as she's as GOP as you get and so was her husband.  The difference is that he was a Republican who lived within the budget for military spending, an exceptional rarity.


Elizabeth Warren is highly-vocal in pushing Clinton to the wall on what the Democratic Party platform really means and Bernie Sanders is doing it as well.  These matters are tactical as who wins this contest doesn't matter much because the end result will come out the same.  We saw that with Obama.  They talk real sweet on the campaign trail but as soon as you get to the White House, let me see those weapons, boys.


Both parties have forgotten about Crazy Eddie or maybe they never knew.  The Moties have a civilization they try to keep as stable as possible because they know periodically they will have an incredibly vicious war that will end up with them slaughtering each other back to the Stone Age.  This had happened multiple times in their history and they learned to build indestructible repositories so the survivors could one day open them and rebuild the civilization again.  That was how it had always been.  (WIKI:  "The Mote in God's Eye" - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)

Crazy Eddie doesn't believe in things like that and the other Moties think he's insane.  Every so often someone 'goes Crazy Eddie' and that means generally losing contact with reality.  However, Crazy Eddie considers things non-insane people would never see and some of these things make sense.  These work their way back into the mainstream and society as a whole benefits.


There needs to be more encouragement of madmen, inventors and lunatics as just about anything really cool in the world traces back to a single person.  There's no need to make a list as you know this already.  Crazy Eddie, every damn one of them.  Ask anyone of the time before these people found success what they thought of them and I positively ga-ron-tee they will say they thought they were crazy.  No point in hammering that as you know that's true already too.


There is almost no preparation for the future and the general response is we can't afford it.  The response inevitably is why not.  If you can't afford that, how can it matter what you can afford.


Herewith, the reasons you can't afford it:

The B2 bomber is mentioned sometimes in the news but it doesn't do anything a B-52 couldn't do already.  It's so ludicrous and the military tells you via CNN, oh, we used the B-2 for this as then you know you (cough) really did get your money's worth on it.  They've even rolled out a B-1 every so often to show that wasn't a complete waste of money.

Here's the beauty part:  they're making a Son of B2 right now.  It's another huge, nuke-carrying behemoth which can't ever be used to its actual potential or we all die.  You've seen the movies and hopefully you know the science.  We will all die if they use it.

The F-35 comes up over and over and it still doesn't work.  The MiG 31 is the fastest jet fighter in the world and the Russians built it twenty years ago.  You haven't heard of it because they rarely use it.

None of the US bombers match the payload capacity of the Soviet long-range bomber, the Tu-160, and that was built (I believe) about twenty years ago.  They stopped production but Obama's ridiculous pretensions in Ukraine have encouraged them to start production back up again.  Well done, Barack.  You'll be right up there with Truman any day now in the Worst of the Worst list.

Aircraft carriers are in continuous production at some billions per copy.  The same is true for nuclear submarines and any number of replacement vehicles for the Navy.


And we can't afford the future?  It sure looks like the military can, albeit with not much success as one aircraft doesn't exist and the other one doesn't work.


So, General Sturgeon, why is it important for the military to prepare for the future but it is too expensive to do it anywhere else.  Political persuasion really doesn't make much difference as both parties will behave in largely the same way.

Moreover, the US budget for military spending is the biggest in the world and it's larger than the aggregate of the next fifteen countries.


Would you not consider it appropriate to declare the country is trying to defend something that slowly falls apart due to lack of attention and support.


I'm looking for an FDR or Eisenhower visionary.  Quibbling over details accomplishes not much but passing time as the above is the fundamental.  Why is America spending so much on the military, particularly when almost nothing comes of it and there are high-priority open items in the civil realm.

The reason the GOP has nothing to do with the future is they would not run Eisenhower if he were a candidate today.  Compare his positions to those of Jeb Bush or any of the GOP candidates and could you really think otherwise.

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