Re: A Reagan quote

From: Mike Combs (mikecombs_at_nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti)
Date: 06/10/04 

Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 12:47:01 -0500

"quibbler" <quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1b318def3786785d989847@news.individual.net...
> mikecombs@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti says...
> >
> > I'd say money spent running communism into the ground was hardly a
waste,
>
> That's a complete myth. You can't spend a communist into the ground,
> because they are not functioning in a market economy.

Eh, maybe. Dunno. I just know that unlike the case under all other
administrations, the communists were unable to gain any ground during the
Reagan years, lost some, and ultimately gave up at the end.

> Reagan was one of the last people to
> give up his militaristic ambitions and accept that we would have peace
> with the soviets.

Reagan's plans included having peace with the Soviets... by defeating them.

> Actually, I'd bet you that ever single president, both democrat and
> republican has had some kind of space initiative.

OK, here's the list:

Space Shuttle: Nixon (R)
Space Station: Reagan (R) (the very president being attacked on this
issue)
SEI: Bush (R) (killed by Democrat-controlled Congress)
Moon-Mars: Bush (R)

Not many D's up there.

> Kerry is on the Space Subcommittee.

So? Kerry has already said he would like to see a "return to the moon" in
the form of social spending. He would have to literally say, "I'm going to
dismantle NASA and hand the money out to social programs," to be any less
diplomatic about it.

> Repubs were instrumental in getting things like SETI killed.

I wouldn't call SETI a space program. A space program is /doing/, not
/listening/.

> Things like the Apollo program, in adjusted dollars really were enormous
> expenditures, so it's not surprising that we eventually had to cut back
> that level of spending to some degree.

This is a point we can agree on: Waiting for Apollo II is futile. 

-- 
Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the
best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the
Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely.
Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable - the best site is
"somewhere else entirely."
   Gerard O'Neill - "The High Frontier"