machievelli

They were working on the tank cannon that later became standard, the smoothbore high velocity penetrator. In the air they were working on a long range jet bomber capable of bombing New York, and the upgraded A10 version of the V2 which could have delivered a nuclear warhead to the East Coast. In Naval combat they had created the Walther hydrogen peroxide submarine. The one that was in service sailed into a harbor to surrender, and the captain marked the position of the British cruiser for a day or so of their cruise. He knew it because he literally trailed him at the same speed, unheard of at the time

The question isn't what they were working on, but what they weren't.

thanks, kid

working on my fic. Going to post another chunk today

So what do you think of Zakal? She's going to reall strut her stuff in the next section.

The problem with monarchy is that you can't guarantee what the kids are going to be like. In the Armageddon Inheritance series they made military service a tradition because learning discipline would make that heir a more responsible person later.

The Expunging group would not be a government per se, they would be a limiting group that would force people to think before they pass laws. Robert Heinlien in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress pointed out that restrictive laws are passed because people don't like other people doing something. They never use themselves as the target, it's always 'I hate when someone (Insert peeve).

Some writer have pointed out that the only truly honest government is a benign absolute monarchy or Empire. What we need is what a Star Trek book called an Expunging group. The idea was that a group voted on laws (All laws and regulations) and if a third of them said know, it had to be removed or rewritten. Of course only the Vulcans could have created such a thing.

Read 'if you think it matters' over in the community political forum.

Jae, could you check with the mods and see if I can get a tag (Like the one for political humor) that I can use to mark everything I have already read? I'm starting to run into a wall of things taken from Outer Rim and Javar's cantina where they are posted by date they were posted so I never see them.

yep

MacNamara said it best. During the CUban Missile Crisis he went to the Pentagon and asked them what they planned. The answer was; One nuke flies out of Cuba, every bomber already in orbit goes to attack, and every missile gets launched. He looked at them, then said, 'Gentlement, that is not a strategy, it's a spasm'

But at first the RUssians weren't capable of hitting us, then when they were we had parity in warheads. So we entered the era of MAD. WHile everyone gave Reagan crap about Star Wars it was him forcing that extra expende that broke the Communist piggy bank

Besides the Russians had taken the German Border Guards in East Germany and started the Eastern German army. It was believed that the Russians would create an incident requring them to occupy Western Germany for their own 'protection'.

we had the monopoly for only three years, from August 1945 until January 1948. The only advantage we had remaining was that the Russians had only one plane capable of carrying those huge bombs, the TU4 knock off of the B 29. But the Russians got hold of it by copying the three B29s they had on hand, and buying the engines and landing gear from the US so they could build a 'civilian airline'

The idea was we needed allies and they couldn't protect themselves. When the US suggested the European allies supply Germany's needs the answer was pretty much 'eff them'. So we needed to pay for it. In the East Japan couldn't legally rearm so we came up with the idea of them having a 'self defense force' instead.

I spent almost five years working as a story teller at the renaissance faire, and was used to describing with my voice. Try reading it aloud to see how it sounds. Another thing is to remember that in first person, you can automatically go to internal dialogue. Think of all the things you might be thinking in the middle of a conversation. If you'd like, I can beta it or another work if you wish

fine. I did read the line and didn't even think about it.

DOn't have time to read anything and everything (Maybe I should try to win a million while I live here in Vegas?) so what work and chapter did you use any of my stuff?

DOn't worry, if I yelled at everyone who used a line I had posted here I'd have a raw throat even today

Oh, btw, the primary reason I don't get into screaming agruments here is because there are enough idiots who will argue for the sake of arguing, so try to tone it down and don't get banned again, K?

The problem, And again everyone ignores it, is that before 1933, all money the Feds got were from tarrifs, customs duties, and a percentage of income taxes and the States and cities divied up the rest of the property taxes. After 1933 only the states and cities got the property taxes but like the Feds came up with new ones. As an example where I work at Verizon I have seen taxes as follows; Federal Telecommunications ta, State sales tax and Telecommunications tax, County sales tax and Telecommunications tax, even city sales tax and Telecommunications tax.

It was still Military intelligence then The forerunner of the Cia, the OSS didn't exist yet.

The name by the way is Theobold, sorry) commented that of the people who were on the Magic list, two Military officers (CNO Army Chief of Staff, and War Plans for both the Army and the Navy) have a constitutional mandate to inform their troops of danger unless they recieve orders to the Contrary. Yet none of these men passed on the information. In fact in 1948 when they had the last inquiry into Pearl Harbor, Admiral King stated before a combined subcommittee that he had specific orders not to. However everyone ignored the fact that only one man has such authority, and that was Roosevelt. Theobold pointed out that Roosevelt by himself could not have hidden this. There was a combined effort by the Democrats (His party) to conceal it because the voters would have hung them like Mussolini if it had become public knowledge.

What was interesting about treatment of our enemies; Japan, who attacked us so nastily were allowed a negotiated surrender while Germany, who didn't were brutalized. Under military regulations issued under order 2506 (I think it was) were told that under no circumstances was there to be any fraternization between our troops and the Germans. Yet the Japanese supplied guards for American posts standing alongside the Americans.

We didn't give them money until after 1950 because Secretary of State George C Marshall spent 87 Billion dollars (In 1950-53 dollars) on the Marshall Plan to rebuild and rearm both Japan and Germany. To make it even more interesting The US had framed the present Japanese Constitution with Article nine that doesn't allow them a navy army or air force.

They characterized the tax as an 'emergency measure' that had a sundown clause just like the Patriot act now. Yet they never let the emergency end. Befrore 1933, there was a pauper's oath you had to swear to get government assisntance here. By doing so, you also gave up the right to vote until you could rescind it. In return the government would have you work on roads etc in return for room and board. Every other charitable functions were controled by the churches, so the 'faith based initiative' Bush pushed was to get al of those government organizations out of the welfare business. As for taxes, read the section written by Tom Clancy in Executive Orders. He pointed out that title 17 (Income tax law) is 90 percent loopholes that can be used by someone to avoid paying their 'fair share'. What he didn't mention is the tax structure was created in 1970 when a CEO was making about 50,000 a year, yet has not been changed. So the upper middle class, the working stiffs, are getting screwed because they are suddenly 'upper management.

As for the industry the Russians were allowed to take any factories in the Russian zone, England France and the US was supposed to take 30 percent, giving ten to the Russians as reparations. Their actions were shabby because the New Dealers who had lost power when Truman took office were kicked to the curb, and they took over administration of the US zone. One of their acts was to take all of the landed estates and divide them into farms given to small farmers without compensation. Considering they had been brutalized by the Nazis then by us, it's not surprising they didn't want to deal with us for years. In fact ex treasury secretary morgenthau had sugested we make the entire nation agrarian, destroy all industry across Germany to force them to become farmers. The fact that the only way to do so was reduce the German population to less than 6 million was conveniently ignored.

Also, Roosevelt did everything he could to get us into WWII long before Pearl Harbor. He signed the North Atlantic Treaty in 1940, and began to escort convoys first within 200 miles of the coast then split the Atlantic so that east of Iceland Americans were escorting them. When USS Kearny prosecuted an atack against a German U Boat within that 'neutral zone (A violation of international law by the way) He used that as proof of German brutality when that sub dared to fire a torpedo that didn't even come close just to warn the destroyer off. Two American destroyers, the Rueben James and the Greer werre torpedoed during this time and the Democrats screamed about brutal attacks. What was brought out (And drove public opinion) was that both ships were of the same class as the 50 lend lease (Another violation of International law) destroyers we had given the English.

Now to make matter worse, read a book by Thorvald called the Last Secret of Pearl Harbor. Thorvald was the COMDESPAC (COmmander destroyers in the Pacific) in 1941who was incensed by the treatment of Admiral Kimmel. In 1953 he was able to get declassified records about Magic, the code breaking used to read the Japanese codes. He pointed out that while the British had two of the Magic machines, one in Singapore another in London, MacArthur had one, and High COmmand in DC did, Kimmel was not only cut out of that loop, but had to depend on telegrams and radio reports from the US. When the Japanese Ambassador in Hawaii was ordered to give the location of every ship in the harbor first once a month at in late november once a day, he was not told. The famous 'war warning he recieved told him to expect attacks against the phillipnes and points west from there. Worst yet, the US knew the night before that the enemy intended to attack at precisely 1 PM DC time. That meant the only place they could make a surprise attack was Pearl, since it would have been noon in the Canal Zone and 10 Am on the west coast.

FDR got the money for the federal projects by creating the first peacetime income tax. Before that they had been only allowed during time of war or right afterward until the war debts were paid off. The idea of a rich man not paying his 'fair share' came from that time as well. Something like 60 percent of the rich in this country left between 1933 and 1939 because they were expected to pay up to 90 percent of their income as a 'fair share'. They also tried to make welfare an honorable thing.

The 'New Dealers' still in government right at the end of WWII were used in of all places, Germany after the war. They showed their way of thinking by dismantling 90 percent of Germany's industry (Only 40 percent of which was linked directly to military suppliers) and handing it to the Russians. They stood back as three quarters of a million German soldiers captured in France were made into slaves unable to leave France without passports while forcine them to work just to eat in the iron and coal mines.

Then to put the icing on the cake, they ordered all Russian prisoners, including those who had been in POW camps to be returned to Russia whether they wished to be or not. The Liensk Cossacks were among these, 60,000 prisoners taken by British and American troops turned over to the Russians who didn't even bother to ship them home. They all lay in mass graves in Austria now. Among them were almost 40,000 women and children brought out by their families.

Our service is All volunteer now; but you still hear the 'brainwashed soldier' crap.

Face it, we haven't had a decent president since Theodore Roosevelt.

As Heinline pointed out, when service to your country becomes either a chore or duty others must carry, you're headed down. When all you have for your defenders is contempt, you are near the bottom. Rome went from the largest citizen army in their era to the lowest in less than two centuries because mercenaries and slave warriors were good enough for such nasty duties.

As for leaders, they cause a lot of the problems. Spending on stupid things (Such as Caligula spending money on parties. The term Bread and Circuses was coined for the last few Emperors of Rome, spending money on gladitorial games and enough bread to sooth but not remove the hunger of the poor.

We entered that stage when Franklin Roosevelt decided to tax the middle class into penury to keep the poor working, something I expect to see repeated in the next few years.

oh BTW, what is TOR? KOTOR 3?

I studied military history which got me to look into a lot of other histories so now it is my favorite subject. I see us following the path of the Romans, too busy worrying about our internal policies to deal with the world. While they were finally destroyed from without, they had already been reduced to a shell within their borders by their own supidity.

ah. Is that about complaining about TOR whatever it is?

burnseyy any idea why Darth Yuthura was banned?