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This thought popped into mind last night. WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, & Bosnia/Kosovo were all begun with a Democratic Party US President. Desert Storm and the war in Afghanistan & Iraq by Republican presidents.
Simple. GOP always votes for increasing the military budget which mostly goes to the weapons producers like Lockheed or Martin Marietta.
Simple. GOP always votes for increasing the military budget which mostly goes to the weapons producers like Lockheed or Martin Marietta.
You'd be amazed at how deep it goes. I spent 30 years in a county where LM was the largest employers.
From the lowliest petty politician to the State House, they "buy" as many as they can....and in our particular area of NJ, that largely means Republicans. Even the small town Councils are made up of Lockheed and Ex-Military (and they get tied in or otherwise paid by LM or it's many offshoots)....
No matter how useless the person is.....they get a contract or a job (often low-show or no-show). They look at it as an investment in the future.
Of course, these people are anything but honorable and chaste....we had murder and orgies and Rentboys and the like galore with the MIC tied in bigwigs. But, hey, they run the place so it's all legal.....
Well, except the LM employee who was Mayor who the Rentboy took a pic of and extorted. He had to leave town.....a real family values guy.
I'd say that a large portion of the population is willing to sell out for money or security or the like.....
We used to have one customer who did R&D for a MIC...coming up with new weapons. He was an OK guy but in looks and personality reminded me of a Himmler type. He would describe how they tested these weapons on animals.....seemed to enjoy the "innovation". Well, I guess someone has to do it.
"The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) experiments extensively on a wide range of species. There are currently 34 (DOD) labs worldwide, with four outside the U.S. During Fiscal Year 1999 DOD reports experimenting on 327,097 animals, a 12% increase over the previous year. 187,257 animals die in actual DOD labs, and 139,840 suffer in non-DOD labs funded by DOD contracts. Most (80%) of these animals are experimented on by the Army, the Air Force using 8%, the Navy using 3%, and unaffiliated DOD labs using 9.3%"
I am not suggested that Dems and Independents are blameless. But we do have companies like Google who refuse, for "liberal and humanistic reasons" to work for the war machine. You won't find many Republicans with the same ethic.
Not only did the Germans bomb an american ammunitions factory, they planted military vessels off the US coast along the Atlantic and Gulf coast and attacked American ships as well as French and British ships with plenty of US citizens on them.
If you dont like the end result of war, fine, but please stop saying we had "no reason" to be in it. We absolutely did.
again, a history book would help you, but honestly, it seems your problem is the end result, not the act of going to war.
This can be argued or debated. Once we choose a side and started suppling vast amounts of weaponry to England and Russia...of course we had reason to be in it.
But to say we had a moral foundation to ally with Stalin against Germany is a stretch. The events may have been partially out of our control, but it wasn't like we were just minding our own business and were attacked.
Now, if you have evidence of the Germans attacking us in 1938 or so...then you have a strong point.
War is a Racket and although much of WWII may have been a racket that needed to happen it still was certainly not a matter of "Right (Stalin?) against Wrong"....in fact, Hitler the madman aside, the Germans were/are vastly more civilized and moral then the Ruskies and many others to their East (both then and now).
Militarism, IMHO, caused WWII. Some say WWI caused WWII. Before that the USA was really not a country based on Militarism. BUT, I would suggest some of that has changed from Korea to the modern day.
You'd be amazed at how deep it goes. I spent 30 years in a county where LM was the largest employers.
From the lowliest petty politician to the State House, they "buy" as many as they can....and in our particular area of NJ, that largely means Republicans. Even the small town Councils are made up of Lockheed and Ex-Military (and they get tied in or otherwise paid by LM or it's many offshoots)....
No matter how useless the person is.....they get a contract or a job (often low-show or no-show). They look at it as an investment in the future.
Of course, these people are anything but honorable and chaste....we had murder and orgies and Rentboys and the like galore with the MIC tied in bigwigs. But, hey, they run the place so it's all legal.....
Well, except the LM employee who was Mayor who the Rentboy took a pic of and extorted. He had to leave town.....a real family values guy.
I'd say that a large portion of the population is willing to sell out for money or security or the like.....
We used to have one customer who did R&D for a MIC...coming up with new weapons. He was an OK guy but in looks and personality reminded me of a Himmler type. He would describe how they tested these weapons on animals.....seemed to enjoy the "innovation". Well, I guess someone has to do it.
"The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) experiments extensively on a wide range of species. There are currently 34 (DOD) labs worldwide, with four outside the U.S. During Fiscal Year 1999 DOD reports experimenting on 327,097 animals, a 12% increase over the previous year. 187,257 animals die in actual DOD labs, and 139,840 suffer in non-DOD labs funded by DOD contracts. Most (80%) of these animals are experimented on by the Army, the Air Force using 8%, the Navy using 3%, and unaffiliated DOD labs using 9.3%"
I am not suggested that Dems and Independents are blameless. But we do have companies like Google who refuse, for "liberal and humanistic reasons" to work for the war machine. You won't find many Republicans with the same ethic.
I was in the military and witnessed first hand the abuse and graft. Often we could not repair our own equipment due to "contracts" with civilian companies. It was absurd as it deteriorated our combat readiness. 95 percent of military budget increases goes to civilian pork projects.
Vietnam started under Eisenhower, Bosnia wasn't really a war. WW2 and Korea had legitimate reasons for our involvement and were approved by both parties as were all wars we have been involved.
Democrats, LBJ expanded it greatly. It's known Kennedy wasn't too fond of it.
Democrats, LBJ expanded it greatly. It's known Kennedy wasn't too fond of it.
LBJ wasn't fond of it either. He didn't want to be the one who lost the war, so he put in just enough to not lose (right away at least), but not enough to cause himself too much trouble politically (or win).
LBJ wasn't fond of it either. He didn't want to be the one who lost the war, so he put in just enough to not lose (right away at least), but not enough to cause himself too much trouble politically (or win).
do you know how much profit their was on each of the thousands of Bell helicopters that were bought?
did you ever hear of Walter Dornberger? he was a real live Nazi major general who was in charge of slave labor for the V2 program and was made a vice president of Bell Helicopters...luck? or coincidence?
BARRY GOLDWATER
"“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
Now, Travis, you'd have to have the opinion that Barry picked up this out of thin air well over a decade before.
He didn't.
The Religious Right has come in many forms. Most tied that in with the "Southern Strategy", both of which appealed to racism and fundamentalism.
"Richard Nixon brought evangelicals into the Republican Party by focusing his campaigns on cultural issues and by using Billy Graham as a liaison to conservative Protestants. The growth of the heavily evangelical suburban Sunbelt increased evangelicals’ political power and induced the Nixon administration to make a special appeal for their vote. Nixon used White House church services, evangelical events, and interference in the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention to win the support of conservative Protestants."
(Certainly you know when Nixon was POTUS, right?)
A Rose by Any other name...is the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
"the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans"
"the Republican Party had served as the "vehicle of white supremacy in the South", particularly during the Goldwater campaign and the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972, made it difficult for the Republican Party to win back the support of black voters"
It sure appears as if facts and history might dispute your claims...but I ask you to read more and think.
You're all over the place here as usual. I will just comment on one of your phantasmagorias. Nixon never had a "Southern Strategy." I bet I've posted this a dozen times now, but many still don't get it so I'll post it one more time.
One of the most near and dear principles for the Southern segregationists was school segregation. This was the main thrust of the "Southern Manifesto" of people like Richard Russell and Sam Ervin. It had been declared unconstitutional in 1954 (Brown v Board), but by 1968 when Nixon was elected, 70% of black southern school children were still in segregation. The ruling was not enforced by Kennedy and LBJ.
By the time Nixon left office, the 70% number had declined to 8%, almost entirely due to Nixon's efforts (according to liberal NYT columnist Tom Wicker).
Now could you please explain to us unwashed, unread, unthinking how this rapid desegregation push fit in with Nixon's Southern Strategy and his plan of "appealing to racism?"
...
Now could you please explain to us unwashed, unread, unthinking how this rapid desegregation push fit in with Nixon's Southern Strategy and his plan of "appealing to racism?"
So no explanation, as usual. Just the usual partisan-based blabbering and nattering, Very much akin to what you might get from a local nutjob preacher. Only difference is that at least the nutjob preacher gets paid and probably gets some nookie for his efforts.
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