How President Nixon Saved/Wrecked the American Space Program 125
MarkWhittington writes John Callahan posted an accountof a talk given by space historian John Logsdon on the Planetary Society blog in which he described how President Richard Nixon changed space policy. The talk covered the subject of an upcoming book, After Apollo: Richard Nixon and the American Space Program. Logsdon argued that Nixon had a far more lasting effect on NASA and the American space program than did President Kennedy, most famous for starting the Apollo project that landed men on the moon.
Nixon came to office just in time to preside over the Apollo 11 lunar mission. At that time, the space program was a national priority due to the Kennedy goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. However by the time Neil Armstrong made that first footstep, public support for large-scale space projects had diminished. Nixon, therefore, made a number of policy decisions that redound to this very day.
Nixon came to office just in time to preside over the Apollo 11 lunar mission. At that time, the space program was a national priority due to the Kennedy goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. However by the time Neil Armstrong made that first footstep, public support for large-scale space projects had diminished. Nixon, therefore, made a number of policy decisions that redound to this very day.
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Somebody owns one of those "Word Of The Day" calendars, apparently.
"to have an effect for good or ill"
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it's a word. Look it up.
Re: did you really just say "redound"? (Score:1)
Nixon getting credit for starting Apollo? (Score:1)
It was VP Johnson who began the push for space in the first place. What evidence is there that Kennedy would not have taken the necessary steps to fulfill his own famous proclamation? Because, you know, without it, all this article is doing is underscoring the fact that Nixon just reaped the rewards for something he didn't personally undertake.
Re:Nixon getting credit for starting Apollo? (Score:4, Informative)
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This truism failed after 2008. In fact, if Hillary wins in 2016, she will be blaming W. for everything that goes wrong on her watch.
Obama's head is stuck in 2003 (Score:1)
Leon Panetta has already laid the blame for the rise of ISIS at Obama's feet.
As he should. Obama's head is stuck in 2003. In 2003 Al Qaeda was not in Iraq.
However in 2006 they were in Iraq and the proto-ISIS groups were defeated by US forces and Sunni tribal fighters during the Anbar Awakening.
Today, without US support and without real support from their own government in Baghdad those same Sunni tribal leaders have sided with ISIS.
If the US had maintained a sizable special ops / rapid reaction force / anti-terrorist force in Iraq, and with the US air support such a force w
Re:Nixon getting credit for starting Apollo? (Score:4, Insightful)
What evidence is there that Kennedy would not have taken the necessary steps to fulfill his own famous proclamation?
The most important step he took was getting shot. Once he was dead, few people wanted to challenge his legacy by opposing the moon race.
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It's funny how people look back at Kennedy and his "we choose to go to the moon" speech which ultimately led to Apollo but as others have pointed out it was Johnson who pushed for NASA and continued pushing the funding until he was out of office. From a timeline perspective it was politically expedient to push for more investment in the space race because of the Bay of Pigs Invasion which was a huge embarrassment for Kennedy. One month separated those epochs in time.
Kennedy did *not* believe in manned spaceflight (Score:3)
As a Senator Kennedy did not believe in manned space flight, he thought the money should be spent on social programs. He was more open to less expensive robotic missions.
As President he was still not interested in manned flight. The "new frontier" was actually of little interest to Kennedy. What did get Kennedy behind the Apo
The NERVA Project (Score:5, Interesting)
Coincidentally, just today I've read about the NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) and related projects and their cancellation again. It really boggles the mind... They basically had a working and thoroughly tested nuclear engine design, ready for use in manned missions to Mars and beyond by the 1970s, which was, ironically, its own downfall:
The RIFT vehicle consisted of a Saturn S-IC first stage, an SII stage and an S-N (Saturn-Nuclear) third stage. The Space Nuclear Propulsion Office planned to build ten RIFT vehicles, six for ground tests and four for flight tests, but RIFT was delayed after 1966 as NERVA became a political proxy in the debate over a Mars mission. The nuclear Saturn C-5 would carry two to three times more payload into space than the chemical version, enough to easily loft 340,000 pound space stations and replenish orbital propellant depots. Wernher von Braun also proposed a manned Mars mission using NERVA and a spinning donut-shaped spacecraft to simulate gravity. Many of the NASA plans for Mars in the 1960s and early 1970s used the NERVA rocket specifically, see list of manned Mars mission plans in the 20th century.
The Mars mission became NERVA's downfall. Members of Congress in both political parties judged that a manned mission to Mars would be a tacit commitment for the United States to decades more of the expensive Space Race. Manned Mars missions were enabled by nuclear rockets; therefore, if NERVA could be discontinued the Space Race might wind down and the budget would be saved. Each year the RIFT was delayed and the goals for NERVA were set higher. Ultimately, RIFT was never authorized, and although NERVA had many successful tests and powerful Congressional backing, it never left the ground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
Re:The NERVA Project (Score:5, Insightful)
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Still, I cannot fathom why Elon Musk is sticking to chemical propulsion (ie. classic rockets) for his Mars endeavour.
Whith his knowledge and SpaceX, he CANNOT not know about NERVA and space nuclear propulsion, and the point of readiness of such technology achieved in the 70s.
I can understand avoiding using it for earth lift-off, due to common hysteria about anything labeled nuclear, but for the half year trip to Mars ?
I mean, come on, we're using nuclear to make our electricity, to power our aircraft carrie
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Still, I cannot fathom why Elon Musk is sticking to chemical propulsion (ie. classic rockets) for his Mars endeavour. Whith his knowledge and SpaceX, he CANNOT not know about NERVA and space nuclear propulsion, and the point of readiness of such technology achieved in the 70s. I can understand avoiding using it for earth lift-off, due to common hysteria about anything labeled nuclear, but for the half year trip to Mars ?
I mean, come on, we're using nuclear to make our electricity, to power our aircraft carriers, to power our submarines, to power our ice-breakers, but we won't use it for where it is sorely needed which is a trip to Mars, where no one has gone before ?
The journey to Mars is a catch-22 situation. The length of the trip using chemical rockets requires shielding of the crew, which weighs down the craft, which makes it harder to accelerate and decelerate, which makes the trip longer/harder, etc ...
Most problems are simply dealt with if you use a much powerful propulsion technology.
More thrust available means shorter trip, means less shielding, means more cargo or a ship big enough for artificial gravity (self-rotating part).
I'll be really happy and take Mr Musk's Mars ambitions seriously the day he announces nuclear propulsion for his Mars ship. Until then ... I really have a hard time doing that.
No one is going to let you launch a nuclear rocket (a la the Orion project) from Earth. This means to get people into space the only viable option is chemical rockets. No matter what technology gets from Earth to Mars, we need inexpensive chemical rockets (that could include other technologies like Skylon or Stratolaunch). So step one is inexpensive non-nuclear launch vehicles. Step two is the ability to get a lot of cargo and people into space, which means developing a really big (Apollo plus) size roc
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Remember: malfunctioning rockets have a tendency to EXPLODE, and rockets that do not explode but either place a payload into orbit or fail to properly push it out to escape velocity have put something above everybody's heads that WILL come back down someday and probably in an inplanned location.
Saffaya never suggested using a nuclear rocket to launch cargo from the Earth directly to Mars. He suggested using a nuclear engine to propel a ship to Mars, from Earth orbit. Did you miss the bit about the ship ha
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Which means the nuclear engine has to be launched into orbit. At some point, nuclear fuel is going to have to be launched, and that's what GP is saying could go very wrong.
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Yes, but I thought he was saying it was dangerous because a nuclear engine could fail, not because a regular chemical rocket launch could fail. If a nuclear engine fails in space, big deal (except for the crew....). But to keep things low-risk, you launch everything dangerous with highly reliable and proven rockets from the earth. It's not going to be risk-free; nothing in life is. But we do have some very reliable rocket engines now, and by the time we're ready to build a nuclear-powered ship to Mars,
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Also think about it - you are flying a freaking high-powered nuclear reactor on a rocket. What if something goes wrong? Well, say 'hello' to your own mini-Chernobyl conveniently delivered into the upper atmosphere!
And once
He did some decent things as president. (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading this article, I get the sense of his pragmatic realism, especially in light of a country which was at-the-time engaged in a very costly war, and a nation riven with socio-economic strife. (It is a good thing those days are behind us).
Re:He did some decent things as president. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what's funny is that the two guys who immediately followed him, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, were probably the only two presidents going back to Eisenhower who were actually pretty decent human beings. Moral, honest and pretty authentic. It's no wonder they got eaten alive. Every president and vice president after Carter have been more or less sociopaths, weak in the face of an elite that has an agenda hostile to most everyone but themselves.
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Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, were probably the only two presidents going back to Eisenhower who were actually pretty decent human beings
I'm reading "The Invisible Bridge" right now, and Ford does come across as relatively decent - hopelessly out of his depth, but also a victim of unfortunate circumstances.
Every president and vice president after Carter have been more or less sociopaths
I didn't think Bush Sr. was a sociopath - his foreign policy was a stunning triumph compared to everyone who followed, and
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Old boy was head of the CIA during all the ugliness in Central America. Remember "School of the Americas"? I don't think there's ever been a head of the CIA who was not a sociopath. It's part of the job description, after all. And I'm not joking.
Well, they have sociopathies, such as extreme narcissism and dissembling behavior. If they're not full-blown sociopaths, they're definitely well along the spectrum.
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Way to redefine history. Ronald Reagan was hated by the elites, specifically because he came from the common people. Eureka College...REALLY? Can you even tell me which state Eureka is in? I don't know, and neither did any of the Washington DC elites. They didn't know anyone who went there, and if you didn't go to an Ivy League university then you must not be any good at life.
No, seriously, that's how they think. Sad but true.
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Reagan was "hated" by the elites?
http://www.newrepublic.com/art... [newrepublic.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Ronald Reagan was a great friend to the elites.
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Don't ever forget that Ford was a member of the Warren Commission and had signed on to the 'magic bullet' and other nonsense. I have difficulty figuring out what other qualification he brought to the table which could outweigh a number of other arguably better candidates.
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Considering the sick shit presidents have inflicted upon the US in the past 35 years, being on the Warren Commission hardly seems all that bad. I know there will always be people who are mad because the alien CIA organized crime lords that killed Kennedy got away with it, but I doubt the individual members of the committee really got very much information.
And, considering that a lot of forensic scientists with ballistics experience do believe
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So did I.
Inaccuracies in article (Score:5, Informative)
Nixon was the first U.S. President to see a human space launch (Apollo 12).
Someone forgot Project Mercury.
President Kennedy - Jan 20 1961 to Nov 22 1963
Freedom 7 (May 5 1961), Liberty Bell 7 (July 21, 1961), Friendship 7 (February 20, 1962), Aurora 7 (May 24, 1962), Sigman 7 (October 3, 1962), and Faith 7 (May 15, 1963). Kennedy, as president, saw ALL the manned Mercury spaceflights. Here's a pic of Kennedy watching the Shepherd launch on TV in the White House [wikipedia.org], same as millions of other people.
And Project Gemini.
President Johnson - Nov 22 1963 to Jan 20 1969
Gemini 3 (23 Mar 1965) through 12 (11-15 Nov 1966), all manned. Apollo 1 (fatal fire), Apollo 7 (11 October 1968), Apollo 8 (21 December 1968) - the "around the moon mission". Here's a pic of Johnson watching the launch of Gemini 3 [gettyimages.ca]
And there were the other flights, Apollo 9 through 11 - the first moon landing, all observed by Nixon as president.
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So, if I saw it on TV, I didn't see it? Come on. It might have worked that way in Nixon's world, but reality is a bit different.
From many accounts, Nixon was a troubled, insecure man. Miniscule differences like this would have been magnified out of all proportion both in his mind, and the minds of his supporters, to make him look better than his enemies (remember his "enemies list"?) He was so desperate to have an "important" presidency that it led him to break laws, throw those close to him under the
Hate Nixon (Score:2)
I really want to hate Nixon for what he did to NASA. But... There is a small voice of reason that keeps reminding me that I do value Democracy and the president SHOULD act on what the people want. Therefore instead I should hate all the supersticious luddite voters!
But.. if I feel like Nixon hating there is always Vietnam....
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There is a small voice of reason that keeps reminding me that I do value Democracy and the president SHOULD act on what the people want
There's a balance. If the elected representatives are going to vote exactly how the people feel right now then you may as well save the money, fire them all, and have direct democracy. The point of representative democracy is to elect people who have similar world views to you, who will vote in the same way that you would if you had time to study all of the issues.
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Yes but that balance still has to stay somewhere near what the population wants. It's hard to convince a population to spend money on space exploration that believes that nothing interesting could be outside the Earth because Earth was created especially for God's image (humans) only a few thousand years ago. And, there is no reason to spread out from Earth when they know all of creation is going to end soon and they all get to go to heaven anyway.
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"But.. if I feel like Nixon hating there is always Vietnam"
Which part do you hate him for? Ike and especially Kennedy were already playing in that sandbox. LBJ was the one to get the Tonkin Gulf resolution passed and massively enlarge the commitment of troops.
If it's that you think he lost the war, that was already well underway since the crisis of US public opinion after Tet. The draw down of troops and the cut off of ammunition to South Vietnam were nearly mandated as a result of public opinion and congre
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Ike point blank refused to get involved in Vietnam, both when it was French Indochina (which indirectly led to NATO becuase the French vetoed a European Defense Force as a result) and afterwards. He was, as I recall, quoted as saying something along the lines of "if we go in there it will be difficult to get out". He was not, however, against giving the French tactical nuclear artillery shells until the British asked him if he was insane.
Ike was most definitely not playing in that particular sandbox.
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All depends on how you define "playing in that sandbox". We had several hundred military advisors there during the 50s. Now, you may be able to say that Truman was also "playing in that sandbox" while it was still French, but you can't say the US wasn't there in more than just casual numbers during Eisenhower's administration.
Now, if you mean standard combat troops, that was the Kennedy administration. But, advisors and intelligence personnel are a nebulous area (a bit like our current anti-gravity personne
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That's a fair enough point. When you say "playing in that sandbox" I was thinking beyond casual meddling, which is what I think the post I was responding to was referring to. Ike absolutely refused to put combat troops on the ground, even at a high cost to the US-French relations. The advisors, observers and intelligence people I was putting to one side.
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No, I know he didn't start that one. My understanding was that he kept it going well after failure, with little public support even to the point of interfering with peace talks all for his own gain.
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That was in the 68 campaign (i.e. I'm a bit young to remember much of it personally, unlike Watergate and the fall of Saigon). How much effect it really had can be argued. One thing I do know is that even later the Paris talks weren't looking all that promising until at least 1972, and Thieu had to be strongarmed to go along. Whether Johnson/Humphrey could have delivered Thieu to the negotiating table even without interference is a question we'll never know the answer to.
There's plenty of things to dislike
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Re:Hate Nixon (Score:4, Interesting)
It is even worse than that: They were refilled in Utah. That means for refilling, they had to be transported overland for huge distances - twice!
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Oh, ok. They built the rockets in the wrong place so it is a good thing that all manned exploration beyond LEO was canceled for what will probably be all of our lifetimes and then some. Yup, that makes sense!
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The problem is actually with the electorate.
If a Senator got even slightly more mileage out of trimming $50 billion from the Federal budget than bringing in $1 billion of pork into his or her home state, and similar reasoning went on in the House elections, we'd all be much better off. The politicians who cut up the space program to benefit their home states were acting as their constituents in general wanted.
*Sigh* Once again, the half truths. (Score:5, Interesting)
Logsdon and Callahan, for reasons best known to themselves and like so many others, continue to mythologize the space program... to the detriment of the facts.
They forget, as so many do, there's a third President (Johnson) and a number of years between President's Kennedy and Nixon. Nixon's policy decisions were shaped largely by decisions made by and during the Johnson Administration by the President and Congress. Most notably, in the budget battles of '65-'67 Apollo's budget was sharply cut, capping hardware production (and thus limiting the number of landings) and all but cancelling the follow on Apollo Applications program. During the same period, both NASA management and the Administration began to concentrate on the Shuttle as an Apollo follow on as cheaper access to space began to loom as a more important national priority than flags-and-footprints stunts. Nixon was thus caught between a rock and a hard place - inheriting (as every President after him has) a rudderless, directionless mess that would take far more money to fix than the public would stand for and far more political capital than the returns could possibly justify.
And really, Apollo has screwed us up in space pretty much for all time... Because it's lead too many people to believe that progress is only made by Great Leaps Forward. Because it stuck us (as a nation) with a bloated and inefficient NASA bureaucracy. Because it's blinded too many people to the fact that it was an accident of history and a detour from any rational path of space development.
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I could tell you many thing
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Because it's lead too many people to believe that progress is only made by Great Leaps Forward.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy! Not cool! WTF were you thinking with that? Casually using the name of the greatest human genocide of all time in an unrelated context? What's next, the Final Solution to the space problem?
Let us not forget, this man committed treason (Score:1)
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Recently released documents confirm that our then-president nixon committed treason, which directly resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000 US servicemen.
http://www.commondreams.org/vi... [commondreams.org]
President Nixon committed treason?! This is an utter outrage! It cannot stand that he is left unpunished!!!
Now we all know what the punishment for treason is, dont we...Death!!!
Death to Nixon for the Crime of Treason!! the man should be dragged out of whatever hole he is hiding in, and he should be executed by the State!
Death to Nixon for Treason!
Now where is he hiding....we must find him.....
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Nixon had to cut budgets (Score:3)
To build NASA’s post-Apollo program around the space shuttle without establishing a specific goal or long-term strategy the shuttle would support
Not true. The shuttle was designed to lift and recover spy satellites. It actually did put several in orbit (and the Hubble, same size as a spy satellite) but in the end it was more cost effective to use one-time rockets.
What about unmanned Planetary Science? (Score:2)
Redound? (Score:1)
What the hell does that mean?
Contents of the Mars Plan Nixon Rejected (Score:2)
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As a kid, I saw this summarized in the World Book Encyclopedia, but this is a much more grown-up explanation for it. By all accounts, Nixon was flabbergasted by the cost, and that's what really killed it. The shuttle was part of the plan, and it's all that got built, which explains why it seemed to have no purpose. http://www.wired.com/2012/06/t... [wired.com]
The Shuttle also a was too ambitious for when it was built and it served too many masters (NASA and the Air Force). This increased the complexity of the missions and craft, while Congress kept cutting funding and forcing design decisions (like segmented solid boosters so they could be produced in Utah.) It was an amazing but ultimately a fragile and ill conceived machine. Shortcuts forced on it by those constraints prevented building a truly reusable spacecraft and left us with an awesome "refurbishable"
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I used to feel that way about the Shuttle. It did have a lot of problems but it did also achieve a major advance of technology. The Shuttle was a first step to building truly reusable spacecraft in the future. Everything says that if Bush hadn't cancelled the Shuttle replacement it would probably be in service by now and would have been massively more capable than what we are building.
The key to the Shuttle though was the space tug - and it was basically Reagan who cancelled that. The space tug need
On topic: it's the GOP's fault (Score:2)
From the article, which none of you seem to have read,
Excerpt:
Logsdon points to three key decisions Nixon made regarding the U.S. space program, which had long-term consequences for NASA. The three decisions were:
To treat the space program as one area of domestic policy competing with other concerns, not as a privileged activity
To lower U.S. ambitions in space by ending human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit for the foreseeable future and not embar
Re:Long Time (Score:5, Insightful)
"Reagan's economic changes doomed Bush Sr due to debt but helped Clinton with a the good economy."
Thanks for the chuckle.
"But his support of a puppet in Iran led to a overthrow by an extremist regime that will be in power for decades more."
The revolution happened while Carter was president.
"Clinton's economic decisions are affecting us now through joblessness (Perot had it right - a big sucking sound as jobs leave)."
Perot was right, but it was Clinton's financial deregulation and capture of the remaining regulation that tanked the economy, and that's what caused the spike in unemployment. What NAFTA did was suck away *good* jobs.
"Bush Jr decisions will take at least another 10 years to pay off."
You ever hear of ISIS? The national debt? Massive wealth inequality?
Re:Long Time (Score:5, Informative)
Stop calling it that. The bill to repeal Glass-Steagall was written by three Republicans. Clinton only got on board because he had his mind on his dork and his treasury secretary was a wall street asshole who had promised his pals that he'd look out for them in a big big way.
The initial votes for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act were along party lines with all but one Democrat voting No. But the banks, smelling blood in the water, smoothed all the objections over with money and the rest is the ugly history of the 21st century so far.
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There was no "quota". The only part of the strategy that had the force of law was that lenders could no longer discriminate based upon the fact that black people lived in the neighborhood. The only part that was put into regulation was the anti-redlining provisions.
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The deregulation came about because Clinton put a quota on banks giving mortgages to people who didn't qualify. His “The National Homeownership Strategy" was what caused the housing bubble and burst.
As you point out "The National Homeownership Strategy" was deregulation, which I agree is the problem. But let's be clear, the banks wanted and lobbied for the deregulation. There's no quota, no bank was forced to give a loan (a quota would be a regulation). They were allowed to make loans they wanted to, not forced to and not regulated. But people that hate regulation point to this as if this is an example of government overreach and conflate it with the CRA which required banks to make some loans in t
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You might have been less angry if you'd actually read the words before responding to them.
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In the era of Obummer...
I just like my history as it happened and NOT as it is rewritten by partisan ideologues.
Throwing around "Obummer" makes you a partisan ideologue, you moron.
I might not care for his policies much myself, but using that term invalidates everything else you vomited onto this page.
Re:Long Time (Score:5, Informative)
But his support of a puppet in Iran led to a overthrow by an extremist regime that will be in power for decades more.
That particular one goes back a bit further than Reagan by a couple of decades itself. 1953 Iranian coup d'état [wikipedia.org] IMHO Putting the puppet dictator in power in the first place is the root cause of a hell of a lot of radical islamic behavior.
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1953 Iranian coup d'état IMHO Putting the puppet dictator in power in the first place is the root cause of a hell of a lot of radical islamic behavior.
While Ike certainly didn't help matters by agreeing to do this for the British. The British and French carving up the Ottoman empire as they saw fit happened much earlier than the 1950's and is the biggest catalyst for the current "radical Islamic behavior". It was certainly the first domino.
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And the Germans encouraging Jihad as a response to the Ottoman empire getting carved up. A 100 years and the Great War is still playing out.
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That's for sure. There's something about having some other country come in and install a brutal dictator in your country that causes people to get angry. Go figure.
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Wow - you mixed that up (Score:2)
As for Reagan, not even Republicans could stand him after part way into his second term. He was a pariah after what he did to the economy among other things, even though now he is revered as some sort of saint.
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Bush Jr decisions will take at least another 10 years to pay off.
Actually, the military-industrial-security complex has been benefiting enormously for quite some time now.
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Bush Jr decisions will take at least another 10 years to pay off.
Looking at Iraq, I think you're missing a couple of zeroes there...
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lol.. Silly, He couldn't have been traitorous as president, the president himself decides who our enemies are and are not. Any new president can declare a friendly country an enemy and and enemy a friend. It is all within his power as the commander in chief. Now, he does need the congress to back in if he wants war
(despite the war powers act which is somewhat unconstitutional). He does need congress to back him if he has to commit to a treaty in order to declare enemies friends again. But the simple status
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I bring to your attention King John, Magna Carta and how it's part of the foundation of the law of the USA. In fact a US president put a major part of it in modern terms "no man is above or below the law". Since divine right of kings and later presidents got thrown out they do not have unlimited power which was why there was so much sneaking about with Iran-Contra and selling weapons to Hezbolla less than a year after they had blown up more than one hund
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Lol.. Divine right of kings has absolut
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Because it is equivalent to the idea that a President is above the law and has had no place in the English and US legal systems since the 1200s. A President or King can be charged with treason if there are grounds for it. If a President were to declare or "undeclare" an enemy due to outside inducement and enough of the rest of the State saw it as a betrayal of the country then treason would be the charge. If a "Manchurian Canditate" situation was possible you c
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I see you are back to making separate posts in an attempt to drag someone out to the point of frustration and giving up. You seem to like to do that a lot when you are losing an argument. I will recombine them so save some time and effort.
Yes it has which is why you never should have brought it up. Nothing I said even resembles that and everything I said is backed b
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See - the argument is pointless since all I'm trying to say is a President can be charged with treason in the right circumstances. If a President could not then that's where that "divine right of Kings" which is the opposite of what George Washington wanted would be in play - a President is not supposed to be above the law or be the embodiment of the law. Does that make sense?
Maybe if Reagan wasn't mentioned all the irrelevant baggage wouldn't have come out.
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World War 2 would have had US involvement far earlier if that was actually the case.
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Not at all. You can have enemies without war.
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Well, you used to be able to....
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The USA is not run by a King.
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Why don't you go back and read what i actually said. Your answer to that was posted before you even replied. Why in the hell are you ignoring what has already been stated and trying to press those things as if it somehow negates everything that has been said altready?
Here is a hint. A country can have enemies with a war. ISIS is considered an enemy of the US and no declaration of war has happened. In fact, congress has not even authorised the war like actions we are taking against them right now. Obama is
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Yes, let's look at the line I'm discussing shall we:
Does that sort out the attention span problem or mixing me up with another poster or whatever the hell is going on? "I am England/I am America" went out with Magna Carta when King John was put in his place, and it's never come back. A President CAN be found a traitor. The will of the people doesn't choose one King, they choose a pile of other peo
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Do you have a mental problem or something? If you go right past that sentence you will see the ones about war and congress. For fucks sake, can't you ttake an entire statement and process it?
I've already shown where the constitution authority for the president to declare enemies comes from. If you would get past your handicap and consider all the sentences in the constitution, you could see it too.
A president can be a traitor but only in a very limited set of circumstances. Now read the damn constitution an
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It's gravely wrong and that's enough to discuss even if you got something right a bit down the page.
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Then discuss it but do not set up straw men pretending i said something other than what i actually said.
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The US public was not enthusiastic about going to war, and Roosevelt was keenly aware of that. Roosevelt wanted to get the US into a war with Germany (and tried to avoid a war with Japan), but had to take it slowly. He did order the Navy to fight the German navy in September 1941, and at that time the US Army and Army Air Force were not in any sort of shape to fight the Germans.
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It appears you've got me mixed up with the other poster, so NOW I'm making separate posts to clarify. I raised the Iran-Contra situation (as distinct from the other Iran situation from the other poster) as a serious of examples of a sitting President doing weapons deals with two parties that were declared enemies of the USA at the time. Various extralegal actions made the players immune
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Re:Yeah, he also sabotaged the Vietnam peacetalks (Score:5, Informative)
He couldn't have been traitorous as president, the president himself decides who our enemies are and are not.
Except:
1) Reagan wasn't president at the time of the supposed deal that GP mentioned
2) Iran was subject to an arms embargo at the time the administration sold it arms
3) The profits from arms sales to Iran were then funneled to the Nicaraguan Contras, further violating the law
In defense of Reagan - a phrase I never thought I'd write - there's no proof that he actually knew about (3), at least. So, a dupe, but not necessarily a traitor.
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Then he couldn't have made any deal in violation of any law at that time. How can a presidential candidate sell US weapons without being president?
Which is likely why the US never sold weapons to Iran. Israel did and the US replenished Israel's. Splitting hairs I know, but if someone can argue the meaning of the word "is" in order to escape blame for
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Then he couldn't have made any deal in violation of any law at that time. How can a presidential candidate sell US weapons without being president?
The claim was that the deal happened when he was a candidate, the actual weapons transfers happened later. The latter is not in doubt, the former is more of a conspiracy theory.
Which is likely why the US never sold weapons to Iran. Israel did and the US replenished Israel's. Splitting hairs I know, but if someone can argue the meaning of the word "is" in order t
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But the later is documented to have happened over a completely different set of hostages.
Let me fix that for you. Providing arms via an intermediate to a state sponsor of terrorism
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Let me fix that for you. Providing arms via an intermediate to a state sponsor of terrorism in violation of an embargo had you actually provided those arms to them directly is equivalent to perjuring yourself in a deposition in a court of law and getting away with it by insisting ambiguity of one of the most simple words in the English language.
Let's not white wash one indiscretion in order to inflame another. A violation of a law is a violation of a law except when it isn't a violation of the law.
Nobody is whitewashing the perjury charge by saying that it is not treason. Providing arms to the enemy, even through an intermediary, is treason, and it is the highest offense the federal government can charge someone with.
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The president- absent an act of congress, can declare who is and is not an enemy. The president therefor cannot provide arms to an enemy unless we are in a state of war declared by congress and he has not ended the war. For instance, President Obama has provided arms to ISIS after he ended the war on terror and declared them to be a moderate force in Syria. Of course with the war on Terror still around, he would have been embargoed from d
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No, he said:
I am not a kook.
And he was wrong.