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Witty repartee on any subject
by Win Lose or Draw | Nov 17, 2013 | Witty Repartee on any topic | 27 comments

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A January 2021 Travesty
The Miami Dolphins won ten games but are not in the playoffs. The Washington Football Team lost nine games and had the least worst record in their division, thereby hosting a Wild Card playoff game. We need victor justice; abolish the practice of losers in the playoffs. Keep the division system but replace any division leading team that has a losing record with a team that has a winning record but is not in the playoffs according to the currently flawed system.
Good and get rid of most of the rules. The referees never get the calls right. Eliminate penalty delays. If a player intentionally levels another player, as in they need a stretcher, that should be a penalty.
Are you talking about football rules or the Geneva Convention?
WinLoseorDraw had not considered the possibility of broadening the call for rule deregulation to the Geneva Convention. It’s an intriguing suggestion, but shouldn’t we confine the mayhem to the football field?
I would also consider abolishing both “ineligible man downfield” and “ineligible receiver.” Scores will be higher, so what? What is so bad about an “illegal formation?” Ban political messages; make end zones fun again. The end zone celebrations are a nice feature.
Agreed. NFL policies and rules are strangling the game. One quibble. Political messages can be fun and amusing.
Performance News
President Trump calls reports that are on the left end of the deliberately-distorted-to-slanted-to-biased continuum, “fake news.” Radio broadcaster critic and author Mark Levin and others in his business say that much of the dominant news media has become advocacy for the expansionist political class, i.e., the modern Democrat Party. We have many sources of news and commentary to choose from and yet PBS-NPR is still subsidized. I scan the Drudge Report, Space.com and Spaceflightnow.com almost daily. Google kindly provides a list of interesting stories based on my previous selections. I get dozens of minutes of NPR almost daily and I hear the news on the hour from reactionary radio a few times a week. I subscribe to the fortnightly National Review and the weekly Beaches Leader. Those are my sources and biases.
All communication has bias. Reports must be scripted, edited, directed and presented. Every step involves judgement. The best that we can do in the realm of objective reality is experimental science, the hard sciences where the levels of error in measurements must be estimated and reported; where there are high levels of agreement on how to measure phenomena. In order to publish an article in a scientific journal, the report must be “elegant and interesting,” said a scientist in order to explain that the most objective philosophy ever invented has biases and limits. A tiny percent of the population reads actual scientific article, the vast majority get scientific news distilled through further layers of editing biases.
One source of bias is funding. Information produced must continue to attract funding because most people are biased toward preserving or improving their jobs. Scientists need funding for their next studies from individuals and organizations who have biases, news presenters appeal to customers and their biases.
Yesterday I consumed the CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell, the most popular News Anchor. First was the serious story about the virus epidemic from China. Next, much time was spent on the impeachment trial in the Senate where the outcome is thought to be certain. Scenes moved quickly from people looking and sounding sincerely serious, no time for the consumer to stop, think and comment unless he uses TiVo. Competitive broadcast news often ends with a happy “puff piece.” Yesterday there were two.
The first was about the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America that puts poor people into home ownership with no money down and deferred mortgage payments. A NACA worker with a giant smile filled the screen, he spoke extatically about the saintly work that he does. Single mothers also with giant smiles tearfully rejoiced in the miracles of “owning” houses that they cannot afford. Not included in the report was the fact that NACA is a taxpayer-funded agency or that government interference into home finance markets began in 1934 and expanded to cause the 2008 crash.
The episode of the CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell ended with a joyful tear streaming story of a rich man who is paying college tuition for all the graduates from an inner-city high school and for their mothers. Anchor O’Donnell ended the performance to an audience of 6 million with the imperative, “Expand it!” How do we compel the expansion of tuition paid for by others? Stay tuned.
Richard:
Please see my Post entitled Why We’re Polarized as my reply to your comment.
Things that are Not.
1. Some people think that Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) provides enough deterrence to make a massive nuclear attack on the US very unlikely. The mutual and assured parts are neither. Russia has twice as many nuclear warheads on intercontinental missiles than the US plus NATO has military targets. This does not include 200 or more warheads carried by bombers. A massive preemptive nuclear strike is possible. The US and the rest of the West is the world’s highest value target.
2. A large and dominating political faction in the US calls itself “progressive.” A better term is “parasitic” on the real progress created in liberty and private property market institutions. Self-called “progressives” seek to expand government at the expense of taxpayers. Mark Levin calls them “statists.”
3. Successful people are often seen in the media as “giving back” when they volunteer. They never stole anything, they have nothing to give “back,” they are makers and employers who provide good value for their customers. They are taxed at the highest rates.
4. Inequality is an often-mentioned “issue” among the commentariat. Inequality is caused by diversity of results among diverse individuals. All US citizens are subject to the same laws. Since the 1930s, government takes increasing amounts of wealth from makers and gives subsidies to takers. But it is not enough for the parasitic political class that seeks to expand its power.
5. A corollary to inequality is that the rich get rich at the expense of the poor. This is related to the Marxist claim that employers exploit employees. Employers and employees are mostly free to negotiate wages; the relationships are mutually beneficial. Generally, in the advanced countries as the rich get richer, the poor get higher paying jobs, or more subsidies and become less poor in real, not relative terms. Political parasites deride this reality as “trickle down” and demand the power to command and control people’s wealth.
6. It started with Russian “hacking” of the 2016 presidential election. Then came “interference,” “collusion” and “collaboration.” Someone hacked or leaked Democrat emails, nothing significant was released, Julian Assange claimed it was not done by Russians. Some Russians allegedly purchased $100,000 in Facebook ads in an election costing $6,800,000,000. Some people around Trump talked to Russians. As have I.
There is a historical similarity: After the First World War, Soviet policy was to engage and ally with the German military. In the 1930s Stalin eliminated potential political opponents with show trials for the crime of colluding with the German military.
7. “Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent people of color from voting.” I heard presidential candidate Hillary Clinton publicly claim this dangerous slander more than once. Democrats oppose voter ID laws. In Florida Democrats opposed efforts to remove names of the unqualified from the voter rolls. In Georgia Democrats argued that voter ID laws harm the poor. When the legislature offered to have taxpayers pay the costs of state IDs for the poor, Democrats opposed the plan because they claimed that transportation to the nearest state government office was too burdensome for the poor. Democrats favor legalizing illegal aliens. Candidate Clinton promised to “build on” President Obama’s executive orders to not enforce immigration laws. Democrats successfully push for restoring voting rights to ex-convicts, polls show that they will vote 67-70% Democrat.
8. “Predatory lending” is another Marxian claim that businesses exploit the proletariat. Federal government policies to promote home loans began in the 1930s. Further market distortions were imposed with the “Community Reinvestment Act” of 1977 to direct home loans to low income people. In the 1990s President Clinton interpreted the law to expand enforcement and worsen market distortions, lending institutions were threatened by the federal government if they did not lend enough money to the poor. In 2007 Republican President George W Bush and the late Senator John McCain publicly warned about the financial implosion that was soon to occur. Democrats dismissed those warnings. Individuals are responsible to borrow prudently, government-enforced bad lending combined with bad borrowing was the root cause of the 2008 financial crash.
9. “Single payer” is the misnomer for the parasitic political class’s goal of forcing millions of taxpayers to fund everyone’s health insurance.
10. “Some inflation is good.” The Federal Reserve has a goal to achieve 2% inflation per year. This hides the reality that increased productivity leads to decreased real prices for goods and services provided by competitive markets, i.e., cars and computers. Markets with government-caused distortions tend to have increased prices, i.e., health care, college tuition and homes. Inflation reduces the value of savings which is very bad. Milton Friedman said that the Fed could be replaced with a computer. Former Senator Connie Mack said that the Fed could target zero inflation. Or, we could abolish central government banking and allow free markets to determine prices.
11. “Trade deficit is bad.” Trading money for goods is good otherwise we would not do it. “China manipulates its currency.” Yes, governments do that. We buy imports with dollars that steadily lose value (see #10 above). The media has discovered the bad effects of tariffs; whatever is taxed its costs increase and demand for the taxed good decreases. Tariffs are only 1.3% of federal tax revenue, $44 billion per year. Payroll taxes, aka employment taxes, are 34% of federal tax revenue at $1.25 trillion per year. Where is the concern over raising the costs and reducing the demand for jobs? Personal income and business income taxes are 56% of federal revenue, $2.43 trillion per year. Where is the concern for raising the costs and reducing demand for producing wealth? Instead, we should tax consumption instead of production, place tariffs on tyrants and free trade with free people.
12. “The greatest problem for African and Meso Americans is racism from Euro and Asian Americans.” No, the greatest problem is disproportionally high rates of crime and poverty and low average cognitive ability. Belief in the “racist as cause” argument leads to retributions. Policies of free market economics and strong anti-crime measures are optimal for people of all abilities and for people of most proclivities.
13. “The New Deal ended the Great Depression.” No, the New Deal extended that depression into the Great one, it contracted the money supply, raised taxes, imposed price controls that prevented markets from adjusting prices, ran make-work projects that crowded out private labor markets, raised taxes again and ran up huge new government debt that crowded out private investment markets. After the war, the 1947-1949 Republican majority in Congress refused to renew the New Deal. Instead, they passed a tax cut, Democrat President Truman vetoed it, Congress over-rode the veto and the economy expanded.
14. “Fiscal stimulus” is when increased government spending is supposed to counter a recession. But there is lag time between measuring and determining economic downturn, passing legislation and the delayed macroeconomic effects of the increased spending. By the time the effects happen, the economy may be back to growing anyway, excess spending may exacerbate the cycle. John Maynard Keynes advocated deficit government spending during down times in the cycle and government surpluses during economic growth phases. Now-a-decades the US has large and growing permanent levels of spending, deficits, debt and future unfunded liabilities. “Fiscal stimulus” creates more dependencies, debt and market distortions. A related false claim is that war boosts the economy. The opposite is true: War really destroys land, labor and capital.
15. “Anti-science” is the term for those who are skeptical of the policy aims of the Government-Media-Science Complex that wants to use government power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and control industries. In addition to institutional biases in the research funding and presenting of climate studies, there was the 2009 email hack of East Anglia University, source of the UN’s political climate document, that revealed true anti-science where real science was suppressed to support the client’s wishes.
And science does not advance by “consensus,” it advances by testing hypotheses, it requires proof to make conclusions. Of course humans affect the climate but climate models are approximate and it will take decades to find out which ones are the best predictors. Some say we must act now because we do not know how severe the changes will be. Fair enough, how about this deal: We will enact a federal carbon tax along with a retail sales tax to permanently replace and repeal all income and payroll taxes; abolish all subsidies and shrink government to one third its current size. Deal?
16. “We only use 10% of our brains.” Try reading this while you are also trying to dribble a basketball against a good player who is trying to take away the ball. You can’t do it because your brain is maxing out while playing. Brain scans show that we use most of our brains most of the time while awake.
17. Here is another. “Robber barons” were neither. 19th Century US capitalists provided steamships, railroads, steel and electricity in growing quantities at plummeting prices. Before the presidency, Abe Lincoln was said to be the highest paid railroad lawyer in the US. Of course there were abuses but the net result of big capital was a higher than ever material standard of living for a growing share of the population. It wasn’t easy compared to today, but it was generally great improvement from previous decades.
Better Deaths
Langston Hughes said, “Birthing is hard, dying is mean so you better get some love in between.” Modern prolonged death is mean and very expensive. The Morphine Death Ceremony is a low-cost alternative, but it would require a change in laws and beliefs.
Morphine Death Ceremony
Family and friends gather around for the last hour with their loved one who gets to say goodbye, receives a lethal dose of morphine and dies smiling. Family and friends attending the ceremony could have the option of a low dose at the same time.
Final Adventure
Although Spacex has reduced the cost of launching things into space, this option is still very expensive, but may be an option in the future. A late terminal person could purchase a one-way launch with optimal drugs to cruise by our Moon, Venus and Mercury then plunge into the Sun to have one’s atoms boiled and scattered. Another name for this could be Hospace.
Another Future Corpse:
WinLoseorDraw appreciates the opportunity to discuss cosmic dissolution.
I agrees that the scattering of atoms is the final outcome, and I wish to contribute to that effort, not thwart it in any way. Here is a brief discussion from the Scientific American that sheds some light on the physics of cosmic dissolution.
Scattering our atoms through Space and Time
Scientists have speculated that we are breathing in the atoms of ancient deceased people with every breath. We, in turn, will be absorbed by the lungs of future descendants.
It does no one any good to bury our cosmic substance in a box six feet under ground.
WinLoseorDraw would like to die on a mountain top, open to the stars.
A Few Thoughts on John McCain
John McCain, prisoner of war of 1966 days, tortured, decorated combat pilot and US Senator (R-Media) will be canonized by the Antinational Socialist Welfare Party for (a) disagreeing with 2001 Republican tax cuts (b) co-leading an increase in political control of campaign spending 2001, (c) working with Ted Kennedy to legalize millions of illegals 2006, (d) above all for losing the presidential election to Obama 2008, and (e) helping Trump to talk stupid in 2016, help is not needed.
When it came to votes on spending restraint, Senator McCain was better than the average Republican according to the National Taxpayers’ Union. He also publicly warned about dangerous federal mortgage policies just before the 2008 financial crash. Like most men, his record in the Senate was mixed though he got more attention when agreeing with Democrats.
In the late 1960s McCain was tortured by North Vietnamese Communists. In 2008 he was defeated in the presidential election by a communist-leaning opponent. In 2018 he was tortured to death by nature.
Another Speaker of the Dead:
WinLoseorDraw appreciates the impetus to say a few words about the recently deceased John McCain who is survived his family and his 102 year old mother.
John McCain was a true American Hero, and not just because of his military service.
He was a Hero when he answered the American call to Duty as his father and grandfather had done.
He was a Hero after the wing was shot off his plane. His ejection breaking his arm and his leg. He landed in a lake in the middle of Hanoi, but he survived, both physically and emotionally, the “luxury accomodations” at the Hanoi “Hilton.”
He was a Hero when he got the bi-partisan McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act passed. Now that the political elites have succeeded in destroying and nullifying it, the country is in a much worse place.
When you speak of the “Antinational Socialist Welfare Party,” do you refer to the Democrats? WinLoseorDraw doubts that John McCain will be “canonized” by the Democrats. Although perhaps they should. He was never a “Yes-Man” for the Republican Party.
We need more politicians that can see past their party loyalties for the good of this Great Country.
You call Democrats “Antinational.” WinLoseorDraw agrees that most Democrats are short-sighted and fuzzy headed, but WinLoseorDraw would not call them “Antinational.” Here is what John McCain said on the subject in 2017:
“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems, is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”
Additionally, John McCain’s book, The Restless Wave,
contains the following quote which should reveal something about his abiding humility:
“I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times,” McCain notes, adding, “What an ingrate I would be to curse the fate that concludes the blessed life I’ve led. I prefer to give thanks for those blessings, and my love to the people who blessed me with theirs. The bell tolls for me. I knew it would. I hope those who mourn my passing, and even those who don’t, will celebrate as I celebrate a happy life lived in imperfect service to a country made of ideals, whose continued success is the hope of the world. And I wish all of you great adventures, good company, and lives as lucky as mine.”
Makers and Takers
Margaret Hoover resuscitated William F Buckley’s TV interview show called Firing Line. In the first episode she reopened an old psychic wound in Paul Ryan, currently lame duck Speaker of the House, former Vice-Presidential candidate and before that, co-author of a plan with then Senator John Sununu to painlessly ease the entitlement burden on taxpayers. The plan was never enacted, and today’s Republicans don’t even mention the ongoing automatic growth in dependency spending and debt. Democrat leaders steadfastly oppose reductions in entitlements, nay, they demand more as in vastly expanded subsidized daycare and college. Some Democrats also demand subsidized “basic income” for all.
Representative Ryan, during an earlier pro-reality phase of his career, used the terms makers (taxpayers) and takers (subsidy recipients). During the losing 2012 campaign for Vice President, someone publicly asked, “I receive benefits, are you calling me a taker?” Ryan cowered and learned that he could no longer use those words and now as Speaker he vows to never cut entitlements. He aborted his mission to save millions of taxpayers from trillions more in burdens.
If Ryan had anticipated the rhetorical ding on “makers and takers,” he could have answered along the following:
“Sir, you are talking to a taker as I am paid a government salary, but we are trying to help everyone who is in the tax-paying phases of their lives to earn as much as they can. Although you now receive benefits, you paid much in taxes during your working years. Our policies will help people to create more wealth for their families and reduce demand for subsidies. Their policies do the opposite. God bless you for all the good things that you indeed have made. We are on your side.”
Also, in 2012 a spy recorded losing Presidential candidate Mitt Romney engaging in too-real speech with his supporters. Romney said that appeals to the 47% who pay no direct federal income taxes are futile. Some critics said that Romney was mistaken, the correct number was 49%. I had hoped that this would be a great opportunity to start a public discussion on the costs and benefits to society of makers subsidizing takers and for the public to learn the size of the growing taker sector. It never happened. Romney apologized and lost.
The Tax Foundation estimates that 60% of households receive more in public benefits than they pay in taxes. Two thirds of the federal budget are on automatic increase, “nondiscretionary” entitlement spending; its share of federal spending is increasing. State and local governments spend an increasing share on public pensions. Takers win, Makers lose. Politically correct speech does not permit a draw.
Apparently the Pro-taxpayer Public Pensioner loves the hands that feeds him. At the end of the first paragraph he wrote, “Democrat leaders steadfastly oppose reductions in entitlements, nay, they demand more as in vastly expanded subsidized daycare and college. Some Democrats also demand subsidized ‘basic income’ for all.” But wait, there’s more: Some Democrats demand government action to reduce inequality. We have decades of redistributionist loot and bribe policies, what more can government do? Much, totally.
Some Democrats demand “reparations” to people of color for slavery which ended 153 years ago. How would that affect race relationships? Nazi was a contraction of the German word Nationalsozialistische which had an evil ethnicity issue. Some of our socialists do too. Defeat them and their party.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy
Dark Matter
Scientists say that there appears to be more mass than expected in galaxies that cause their outer arms to orbit faster than expected. One possibility is that expectations and estimates may be erroneous. Scientists are trying to find a different kind of particle to explain the apparent excess mass. Maybe the mass can be explained if there are more black holes than previously thought.
Another possibility is that undetected helium is widely diffused through space. Our sun emits a solar wind, mostly hydrogen, 8% helium and smaller amounts of other elements. Alpha decay produces helium and helium is also thought to be about 24% of the matter produced in the Big Bang. Helium and other inert elements (neon, argon, krypton) do not form chemical bonds so they do not electrostatically clump with other elements to form larger aggregations such as dust which then leads to comets, planets and stars. Only gravity weakly affects these lone inert atoms and they may be so widely spaced apart in galaxies that they are not observable, but their combined mass adds up to the total gravity in a galaxy.
Dark Energy
The universe is expanding and it was expected that gravity ought to slow the expansion, reverse it and cause a Big Crunch in the future. Scientists speculate that there many have been many cycles of bang and crunch in the past. 20 years ago they discovered that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerated rate and this increased expansion speed began 5 billion years ago after slowing for 8 point something billion years. They propose a dark energy that pushes outward.
Maybe we live in a second bang-crunch-bang relative to an outer shell of universe that is pulling us outward while our shell pulls the outer shell inward. Imagine the universe to be a spheroid. Biggest Bang One created matter which led to galaxies moving outward. Inner layers of the universe collapsed back into the center causing a second less massive Big Bang Two and an inner shell of expanding universe that gravitationally became more attracted to the outer shell than to the core 5 billion years ago. The next crunch will be when our inner shell meets the outer shell. The only thing dark about this is that the attractive outer shell of universe is not yet observable to us.
This is analogous to exploding stars which cast matter out and some of it collapses back to form a new smaller star leaving dust, comets and planets in orbit while solar wind continues to move out. We reason by analogy and think of new ideas in terms of old. For example, an early model of the atom, still in use for elementary school books, looks like a tiny solar system with electrons orbiting the nucleus. A later model turned particles into interacting space waves.
Is there an institutional bias for funding to search for yet-to-be discovered kinds of matter and energy while an adequate explanation can be found with existing knowledge? I acknowledge my own bias to question others’ biases.
The following article may be consistent with the speculation that our universe is made of concentric shells.
https://www.space.com/41163-universe-expansion-rate-changes-near-far.html
So, “The universe is expanding and accelerating in its expansion as it grows…”
Explanation:
We must be fairly early in the Expansionary Process.
Good to know.
As for dark matter, maybe there are also free neutrons in interstellar space.
The Parker Solar Probe has sent its first data from close brushes with our sun. Here is a quote from a Space.com article:
“It’s amazing — even at solar minimum conditions, the sun produces many more tiny energetic particle events than we ever thought,” David McComas of Princeton University, ISoIS principal investigator and lead author of one of the new studies, said in a statement. (Solar activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle, and our star is currently in a relatively inactive phase.)
If all of the stars are and have been emitting more particles than previously thought, could this account for dark matter?
https://www.space.com/parker-solar-probe-first-sun-science-results.html
On Abortion
In the US life expectancy is now 79 years. The compromise between abortion vs no abortion could be to allow parents to choose to terminate their offspring after 39.5 years. This would give parents plenty of time to see if their children turned out OK and it would give children incentive to do well and stay out of trouble.
Economic Freedom
In 1995 the Heritage Foundation began its annual Index of Economic Freedom analyses of countries using a combination of 12 measurements. In 1995 the US scored 76.7% and ranked Number 4 in the world behind Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The highest score for the US was 81.2% in 2006 and 2007, when we ranked 6th and 7th, while the highest world average is 60.9% in 2017, up from 57.6% in 1995. This year the US ranks 17th with a score of 75.1%. See http://www.heritage.org/index/ for details.
Here are the top 20 for 2017:
1. Hong Kong, former British colony
2. Singapore, former British colony
3. New Zealand, former British colony
4. Switzerland, not a member of the EU
5. Australia, former British colony
6. Estonia, former conquered Soviet republic
7. Canada, former British colony
8. United Arab Emirates, former British protectorate
9. Ireland, former British conquered state
10. Chile
11. Taiwan
12. United Kingdom
13. Georgia, former conquered Soviet republic
14. Luxembourg
15. Netherlands
16. Lithuania, former conquered Soviet republic
17. United States, former British colony
18. Denmark (tied with US at 75.1%)
19. Sweden
20. Latvia, former conquered Soviet republic
A US economist told a British economist that the US tax burden is much higher than it was in 1775. The British economist asked, “So, how do you like representation?”
Today is the 47th anniversary of the first manned moon landing.
“Why did we stop going to the moon?” A friend asked.
“Because food stamps buy more votes than do moon rocks,” I reflexively replied.
On US Defense Spending
In 1958 US defense spending was 58% of the federal budget and 11% of gross domestic product (GDP). 1958 was the last year that the Soviet Union did not have intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and to attack the US they would have used planes. 2015 US defense spending was 16% of the federal budget, 4.5% GDP.
Russia now has around 1600 nuclear warheads on missiles, China 200. These estimates may have large errors. Each warhead has about 45 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Russia has accurately landed cosmonauts from orbit since 1961, China since 2003 so it seems reasonable to conclude that Russia’s and China’s 1800 or so missile-launched nuclear warheads will hit their targets.
In 2015 I asked an active US Air Force lieutenant general, “If Russia and China together launch a massive pre-emptive ICBM attack on the US, how many warheads can our missile defense system disable?” His answer was, “Very few; our missile defense system is designed for an accidental launch or a limited attack by a rogue nation.” He also added that while US policy is to not use nuclear weapons first, Russia’s policy is to use them first and negotiate after.
The Missile Defense Agency’s website states, “…National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate)…” Note the word “limited.”
In 2015 the Missile Defense Agency’s budget was 1.2% of defense spending, 0.2% of federal spending, 0.04% GDP.
Some argue that our surviving ballistic missile submarines would deliver “unacceptable damage” to the attackers. If we have 11 out of 14 deployed at the time of attack, perhaps the enemy could follow and destroy most of them in the first moments of the attack. The Russian-Chinese missile defense systems may neutralize the relatively small remaining US submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) retaliatory strike. In this case Mutual Assured Destruction would not be mutual; it would be all on us.
Numerous, modern and highly accurate Russian and Chinese ICBMs and SLBMs combined with our paltry missile defense system means that the US is now more at risk to a strategic nuclear attack than ever before. Some claim that nuclear war is “unthinkable” while Russia and China modernize and expand their offensive strategic nuclear forces—they are thinking and acting. History is full of disastrous wars and human nature remains warlike.
Recommendations:
1. Do NOT send weapons to Ukraine. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the nominee to replace him both advocate this huge provocation which could destroy the USA.
2. Rapidly shift money from the rest of the federal budget to strategic missile defense and to protecting all military assets and the electrical grid from electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and cyber attacks.
3. Abrogate the nuclear weapons nonproliferation treaty and encourage the following states to have their own nuclear weapons: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The main reason to form a federal government in 1787 from a confederation of States was “to provide for the common defense.” Zero point two percent of the federal budget to defend us from a total existential threat is monstrous neglect that does not come close to meeting the purpose of the US Constitution.
On January 8, 2021 the Washington Post reported, “Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her House colleagues Friday that she had spoken to the Pentagon’s top general about keeping an ‘unstable president’ from accessing the nuclear codes, as Democrats openly considered impeaching the commander in chief for the second time in just over a year.”
Russian and Chinese strategic rocket force commanders may believe that they have a twelve day window of opportunity for a massive preemptive strike. Did the Speaker think about this before creating this news event? What are her priorities?
Richard:
It’s all Political Theater. Level heads are still in charge, and level heads in Russia and China certainly know that.