OT: Have politicians always lied so much?

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The Republican enthusiasm for "defence spending" does put one in mind of protection rackets.

The US now spends as much on "defence" as the next ten countries down the pecking order put together. One might wonder who the U.S. is being protected against, since most of the money is being spent on baroque high-tech weapons systems that don't seem to be all that much use in the low-tech wars that the U.S.is fighting at the moment.

If you look at the way the high-tech defence contractors support their local politicians, you can get a better idea of where the US defence dollars are actually going.

The Mafia might well be a cheaper option, if it was genuinely independent - Lenny Bruce's claim that the FBI and the Mafia conspire together to keep the price of drugs high is about the only rational explanation of the US persistence in their Prohibition-style style approach to recreationa drugs. Prohibition didn't work for ethanol and it clearly isn't working for other recreational drugs.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I believe so, right from the earliest days. Some of the stuff that occurred in, say, Andy Jackson's campaign makes the present stuff seem tame. Of course, no TV, internet, but they did what they could. And there is a lot more at stake, world-wise, now. Stuff back then was pretty provincial. No effect on the world at large. Eric

On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:09:05 -0700, Joel Koltner wrote: ...

Yes but your duration is wrong - it's been more like 3,000 years.

Cheers! Rich

I wonder what the likes of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson would do today, since it's not like you can just go and start your own little township anew like there were able to after being banished from Massachusetts.

Granted, Anne and all but one of her children were later killed by Indians, and this sort of problem isn't a worry anymore... at least within the U.S.

Ehhh? Study the drunken Indian problem in AZ :-(

...Jim Thompson

Aagh! I'm getting sucked into an off-topic thread!!! Help me!!!

The US was still in the process of getting invented in Andrew Jackson's day, and the presidents had a huge effect on its development (think of George Washington refusing to be kind). But even then the US, as the first modern democracy and inspiration for dozens of revolutions, was Big News for a lot of people in the European world. Aristocrats that wanted to hold on to power had to pay attention, revolutionaries that wanted to emulate us had to pay attention, even Karl Marx had to explain why the US revolution wasn't sufficient and had to be replaced by communism.

So the effect may have been slower, but I would contend that it was as large, or larger, than the effects that have been affected in the last

We might have to emigrate to Mars or Titan or something.

Thanks, Rich

You may be right. No way to know really. At least no nukes were involved...

Eric

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

What, they go around committing sprees of drunken carnage or somesuch?

What I meant was that the murder rate in the U.S. today is nothing like what it was in the 1600s... we're at least not at war with the Indians anymore. :-)

The democrat congress just passed the legislation - Dubya signed off on it. If he wasn't such a freakin' idiot, he might have showed a bit of restraint there.

And, of course, as George Carlin noted, the problem is stupid voters.

Thanks, Rich

The merely ignorant can learn the facts, but stupid is forever.

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My favorite quote from Ron White ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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