5 ms·

Replace "people I like" with "actual constitutionally-mandated functions of the federal government, such as national defense".

asveikau 9y ago
I don't think this is the right place to discuss this, but the so-called "Star Wars" program under Reagan to which I'm referring was considered by many to be wasteful spending. I don't think there is much in the constitution mandating space lasers.
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
  (Franklin was going to put in "don't let the people get nuked from orbit", but it slipped his mind. Or perhaps he figured that was covered by the "right to life" bit.)
  - asveikau 9y ago
    A penny saved is a penny earned, especially when you're lasering communists from space.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      The Star Wars program was designed to zap incoming missiles (i.e., a pure self-defense system), not for "lasering communists from space". I suspect that you're not actually interested in the facts here.
      - DonHopkins 9y ago
        You just said it was designed to bankrupt Russia, not zap incoming missiles. Which is it?
        Zuider 9y ago
        I don't see the implied dichotomy here. The separate goals of 'zapping incoming missiles' and provoking the Soviet Union into a destructively expensive arms race are not incompatible.
        DonHopkins 9y ago
        The point is that if it was a head-fake to provoke the Soviet Union into destroying itself by defense spending (which is NOT the reason the Soviet Union collapsed), then 'zapping incoming missiles' was a lie. And if it really could 'zap incoming missiles', then it wasn't a head-fake. The fact of the matter is SDI was a fraud on the American people, the United States wasted huge amounts of money on it, it couldn't 'zap incoming missiles', the defense contractors cheated, took the money and ran, which could have been used for much better purposes, because the Soviet Union collapsed for completely different reasons than overspending to compete with SDI. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/18/science/technical-failures-bedevil-star-wars.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/18/science/technical-failures... Technical Failures Bedevil Star Wars >For the first time, after years of level financing at around $4 billion, opponents are on the verge of pushing through deep budget cuts in the program, which so far has cost $20 billion. The House leadership is moving to slice in half the Bush Administration's request of $4.7 billion for Star Wars for the fiscal year 1991, to $2.3 billion. The Senate voted to set aside $3.7 billion. >[...] In a dozen or so major tests conducted this year, half have experienced problems, ranging from runaway rockets to warhead explosions to satellite malfunctions. The failures have marred the most ambitious and costly agenda in the program's history, intended to be the first broad demonstration of anti-missile technologies that have been incubating in laboratories, often amid great secrecy, for more than seven years since President Ronald Reagan started the program in March 1983. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/reagans-great-lie-in-the-sky-star-wars-scientists-may-have-deceived-moscow-and-congress-about-the-1463972.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/reagans-great-lie-in... Reagan's great lie in the sky: Star Wars scientists may have deceived Moscow and Congress about the project, writes David Usborne in Washington >Now, however, allegations are being made that the entire experiment was a scientific fraud. According to a New York Times report based on interviews with four unidentified former Reagan officials, the two missiles had secretly been fitted with radio beacons to guarantee their meeting in space.
      - asveikau 9y ago
        I think it must have been your sense of humor that ended the cold war. The comment you're replying to is very obviously not serious. Actually, the best commentary I have heard on this subject is that the Soviet Union fell of its own internal conflict and didn't need help from your pal Ronnie. And to further reply to your cousin-comment to this one there is a huge difference between a constitutional mandate and a very specific implementation... Nobody mandated Star Wars.
        ci5er 9y ago
        Breaking the back of OPEC, plummeting the price of oil played no small factor. Even today, with the bounties of modern production tech, Saudi Arabia and Russia and Venezuela are hurting more than a little...
      - mcguire 9y ago
        "a pure self-defense system" There is no such thing. A good defense is the best offense.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    Which "right to life" but was that?
    - B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
      This one is kind of famous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_...
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  "the so-called "Star Wars" program under Reagan to which I'm referring was considered by many to be wasteful spending." And was considered by others to be the final straw that broke the Soviet Union and put an end to a 70 year Cold War and eliminated one of the most evil empires in the history of the human race. "I don't think there is much in the constitution mandating space lasers." Article I, Section 8. Unless you're one of those people who attempt to argue that armies and navies are limited to 18th century technology.
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    >"and eliminated one of the most evil empires in the history of the human race" Yet ironically, so many of those very same people who once argued that are now enthusiastically supporting and carrying the water for Trump's total capitulation to Putin. Makes you wonder if they really mean what they say, or if they just lust for power and hold party over country. Hmm...
    - Recurecur 9y ago
      What "total capitulation to Putin" would that be, exactly? Be very specific and cite believable sources!
      - Recurecur 9y ago
        No response, eh? How shocking...
  - yongjik 9y ago
    From "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan: > It is claimed by apologists for the Reagan administration that, whatever the exaggerations in capability, some of it intentional, SDI was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is no serious evidence in support of this contention. Andrei Sakharov, Yevgeny Velikhov, Roald Sagdeev, and other scientists who advised President Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that if the United States really went ahead with a Star Wars programme, the safest and cheapest Soviet response would be merely to augment its existing arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In this way Star Wars could have increased, not decreased, the peril of thermonuclear war. At any rate, Soviet expenditures on space-based defences against American nuclear missiles were comparatively paltry, hardly of a magnitude to trigger a collapse of the Soviet economy. The fall of the USSR has much more to do with the failure of the command economy, growing awareness of the standard of living in the west, widespread disaffection from a moribund Communist ideology, and - although he did not intend such an outcome - Gorbachev's promotion of glasnost, or openness. Ten thousand American scientists and engineers publicly pledged they would not work on Star Wars or accept money from the SDI organization. This provides an example of widespread and courageous non-cooperation by scientists (at some conceivable personal cost) with a democratic government that had, temporarily at least, lost its way. * I know Sagan isn't exactly a historian, but I'll choose his assessment of space war technology over other people's.

asveikau 9y ago

I don't think this is the right place to discuss this, but the so-called "Star Wars" program under Reagan to which I'm referring was considered by many to be wasteful spending. I don't think there is much in the constitution mandating space lasers.

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
(Franklin was going to put in "don't let the people get nuked from orbit", but it slipped his mind. Or perhaps he figured that was covered by the "right to life" bit.)
- asveikau 9y ago
  A penny saved is a penny earned, especially when you're lasering communists from space.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    The Star Wars program was designed to zap incoming missiles (i.e., a pure self-defense system), not for "lasering communists from space". I suspect that you're not actually interested in the facts here.
    - DonHopkins 9y ago
      You just said it was designed to bankrupt Russia, not zap incoming missiles. Which is it?
      - Zuider 9y ago
        I don't see the implied dichotomy here. The separate goals of 'zapping incoming missiles' and provoking the Soviet Union into a destructively expensive arms race are not incompatible.
        DonHopkins 9y ago
        The point is that if it was a head-fake to provoke the Soviet Union into destroying itself by defense spending (which is NOT the reason the Soviet Union collapsed), then 'zapping incoming missiles' was a lie. And if it really could 'zap incoming missiles', then it wasn't a head-fake. The fact of the matter is SDI was a fraud on the American people, the United States wasted huge amounts of money on it, it couldn't 'zap incoming missiles', the defense contractors cheated, took the money and ran, which could have been used for much better purposes, because the Soviet Union collapsed for completely different reasons than overspending to compete with SDI. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/18/science/technical-failures-bedevil-star-wars.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/18/science/technical-failures... Technical Failures Bedevil Star Wars >For the first time, after years of level financing at around $4 billion, opponents are on the verge of pushing through deep budget cuts in the program, which so far has cost $20 billion. The House leadership is moving to slice in half the Bush Administration's request of $4.7 billion for Star Wars for the fiscal year 1991, to $2.3 billion. The Senate voted to set aside $3.7 billion. >[...] In a dozen or so major tests conducted this year, half have experienced problems, ranging from runaway rockets to warhead explosions to satellite malfunctions. The failures have marred the most ambitious and costly agenda in the program's history, intended to be the first broad demonstration of anti-missile technologies that have been incubating in laboratories, often amid great secrecy, for more than seven years since President Ronald Reagan started the program in March 1983. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/reagans-great-lie-in-the-sky-star-wars-scientists-may-have-deceived-moscow-and-congress-about-the-1463972.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/reagans-great-lie-in... Reagan's great lie in the sky: Star Wars scientists may have deceived Moscow and Congress about the project, writes David Usborne in Washington >Now, however, allegations are being made that the entire experiment was a scientific fraud. According to a New York Times report based on interviews with four unidentified former Reagan officials, the two missiles had secretly been fitted with radio beacons to guarantee their meeting in space.
    - asveikau 9y ago
      I think it must have been your sense of humor that ended the cold war. The comment you're replying to is very obviously not serious. Actually, the best commentary I have heard on this subject is that the Soviet Union fell of its own internal conflict and didn't need help from your pal Ronnie. And to further reply to your cousin-comment to this one there is a huge difference between a constitutional mandate and a very specific implementation... Nobody mandated Star Wars.
      - ci5er 9y ago
        Breaking the back of OPEC, plummeting the price of oil played no small factor. Even today, with the bounties of modern production tech, Saudi Arabia and Russia and Venezuela are hurting more than a little...
    - mcguire 9y ago
      "a pure self-defense system" There is no such thing. A good defense is the best offense.
- mcguire 9y ago
  Which "right to life" but was that?
  - B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
    This one is kind of famous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_...
Turing_Machine 9y ago
"the so-called "Star Wars" program under Reagan to which I'm referring was considered by many to be wasteful spending." And was considered by others to be the final straw that broke the Soviet Union and put an end to a 70 year Cold War and eliminated one of the most evil empires in the history of the human race. "I don't think there is much in the constitution mandating space lasers." Article I, Section 8. Unless you're one of those people who attempt to argue that armies and navies are limited to 18th century technology.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  >"and eliminated one of the most evil empires in the history of the human race" Yet ironically, so many of those very same people who once argued that are now enthusiastically supporting and carrying the water for Trump's total capitulation to Putin. Makes you wonder if they really mean what they say, or if they just lust for power and hold party over country. Hmm...
  - Recurecur 9y ago
    What "total capitulation to Putin" would that be, exactly? Be very specific and cite believable sources!
    - Recurecur 9y ago
      No response, eh? How shocking...
- yongjik 9y ago
  From "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan: > It is claimed by apologists for the Reagan administration that, whatever the exaggerations in capability, some of it intentional, SDI was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is no serious evidence in support of this contention. Andrei Sakharov, Yevgeny Velikhov, Roald Sagdeev, and other scientists who advised President Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that if the United States really went ahead with a Star Wars programme, the safest and cheapest Soviet response would be merely to augment its existing arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In this way Star Wars could have increased, not decreased, the peril of thermonuclear war. At any rate, Soviet expenditures on space-based defences against American nuclear missiles were comparatively paltry, hardly of a magnitude to trigger a collapse of the Soviet economy. The fall of the USSR has much more to do with the failure of the command economy, growing awareness of the standard of living in the west, widespread disaffection from a moribund Communist ideology, and - although he did not intend such an outcome - Gorbachev's promotion of glasnost, or openness. Ten thousand American scientists and engineers publicly pledged they would not work on Star Wars or accept money from the SDI organization. This provides an example of widespread and courageous non-cooperation by scientists (at some conceivable personal cost) with a democratic government that had, temporarily at least, lost its way. * I know Sagan isn't exactly a historian, but I'll choose his assessment of space war technology over other people's.