talk about snowball

[Xavier_Onassis]

Just google "Missile gap" and you will find a lot of stuff.

I recall only that I read about this in one or more magazines: the NewYorker, Harpers, Utne Reader, Atlantic Monthly.

There was no missile gap: the US had vastly more missiles. JFK was unable to prevent the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. The profits from building secret crap were huge.

[Plane]

N. Kruchev bragged that there were factories turning out missiles "like sausages", what could a president have done?

The public would have demanded exactly what Kennedy gave them if he had not gotten in front of it.

Of course what missiles there were, were being placed as far forward as possible in Turkey and in Cuba.

There was a real possibility of war , or at least serious coercion , it was really being prepared .

Do you think that the Soviets would have built no missiles if the US had built none?

[Xavier_Onassis]

That is not the issue.

Khruschev saying stuff did not make it true, and JFK as president had the intelligence data to know how many missiles the Soviets had. The Soviets had been invaded by the Nazis and millions of them were killed. The US had previously invaded the USSR after the Revolution. No one invaded the US in WII unless you count a couple of useless Aleutian islands. The Soviets had certainly never invaded the USA..

 Khruschev had replaced Stalin, he was a Ukranian in a mostly Russian federation, and he was trying to prove that he was up to the job. Many Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and the Russians did not entirely trust his leadership. 

The issue is that the US had vastly more missiles than the Russians,  and at least one base in Turkey, not 90 miles from the border, but right on the border of the USSR before the Soviets set up bases in Cuba.  None of this was mentioned in the press in the US. JFK and following presidents p!ssed away fortunes on missiles that were never used. The Soviets did the same. It was a huge waste of resources. The Cold War was stupid, just like telling me and my classmates that the USSR was likely to bomb Kansas City next Thursday and we could save ourselves by hunching under our desks.

[Plane]

Khruschev saying stuff did not make it true, and JFK as president had the intelligence data to know how many missiles the Soviets had.

Most of what you posted sounds right or at least close, but this bit, I don't see.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The US had been sending U-2 spyplanes over the USSR for at least a decade before the Soviets managed to shoot down Gary Powers. The Soviets knew that they had been watched, they knew that their airspace had been violated, but they could do nothing to stop it until they finally shot down a U-2. JFK, as president, should have had access to all the information that  was acquired.

The purpose of the Sputnik program was to put an eye in the sky to spy on the US eventually, since orbiting satellites did not come under international treaties.  The first Sputnik did nothing useful, but it did indicate to the Americans that the Russians had a technology that the US had yet to develop.

[Plane]

I know a little of U2.

Although the U2 could take terrific and detailed pictures , it was recording only what it could point its camera .

Each flight over Asia would have caught, at most, a narrow stripe of this vast territory.

I do not know how many U2 aircraft existed , nor do I know how often they flew.

However I do surmise that the number of flights needed to prove  that there was not a particular thing somewhere in Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, China and Tibet would be a vast and unlikely number of flights.

[Plane]

Just google "Missile gap" and you will find a lot of stuff.

This turns out to be good advice.

Check out this synopsis, covers everything we have discussed so far and ties in the 1964 movie version .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap

I never knew that Kennedy was embarrassed by the "Missile gap", or that he was briefed by the CIA before he was elected.

Looks as if the Soviets could have nipped the whole thing in the bud by being a bit more open, but this would not be like changing iron to ivory, not very likely.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Soviets were interested in protecting themselves first and foremost. They also had an evangelical streak, believing that they had the best system for governing a society. The Americans had and still have a similar evangelical inclination.

South Vietnam was a poor country ruled by a small number of neocolonialists. After the Vietnam War, it is now a poor country ruled by a party elite. I believe that perhaps education is better now and that life expectancy is longer than previously. Had somehow South Vietnam had become a capitalist country, I think it would be more likely to resemble the Philippines than South Korea, because Vietnamese are quite different from Koreans . The main exports in both cases would be sneakers intended for the Western market.

Every country should be allowed to decide its own system of government. It is pretty obvious that we have not improved Iraq much after all the money we spent and all the people that were killed, dislocated, expelled and otherwise inconvenienced.

[Plane]

Every country should be allowed to decide its own system of government.

   That seems reasonable and easy to agree with.


     When a weaker nation is having its fate decided from without do we help ?

[Xavier_Onassis]

We certainly do not help if it is likely to cause problems for the American people. I suppose that if there was a takeover by a military junta in Palau, the US government would try to restore a democratic order. I am opposed to the US messing with the relations between Ukraine and Russia, because that could get some Americans killed or harmed, and Ukraine is now and always has been in the Russian sphere of influence. I am against messing with Venezuela, because Nicolas Maduro was fairly elected president of Venezuela and is not a dictator.  I think the US should try to get some of the two hundred odd Egyptians sentenced to death a reprieve or a change of sentence, because their crimes were not capital offenses.

Each case should be dealt with separately.

[Christians4LessGvt]

and for the record.....

Hobby Lobby employee insurance already pays for 16 different types of contraception, so its not like they are not
paying for birth control items. Hobby Lobby just does not wish to pay for what they consider "abortion pills" or
similar type contraception items.

Here are the 16 birth control items Hobby Lobby employee insurance already covers: Imagine that a woman starts work
at Hobby Lobby Momday morning July 7th. She joins Hobby Lobby's health care plan. It includes access,
copay-free, to the following categories of FDA-approved birth-control:

Male condoms
Female condoms
Diaphragms with spermicide
Sponges with spermicide
Cervical caps with spermicide
Spermicide alone
Birth-control pills with estrogen and progestin (Combined Pill)
Birth-control pills with progestin alone (The Mini Pill)
Birth control pills (extended/continuous use)
Contraceptive patches
Contraceptive rings
Progestin injections
Implantable rods
Vasectomies
Female sterilization surgeries
Female sterilization implants

[Plane]

Free Vasectomies


For all employees!

[kimba1]

that`s why I wrote snowball on the title . somehow the abortion aspect became a women`s right to choose issue. If hobby lobby successfully points out they did not deny birth control it may backfire with the people who protest.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The major problem here is that the decision opens the door for thousands of employers to deny coverage because of their alleged religious beliefs.
The actual decision probably does not affect many employees. Of course, it does apply to the morning-after pill, which is the sort of thing women would want in the case of an emergency, which could be a condom breaking. 

[Plane]

The major problem here is that the decision opens the door for thousands of employers to deny coverage because of their alleged religious beliefs.

    I sincerely hope so , the other choice opens the door for the government to forbid or allow anything and everything it pleases , the moral feelings of the citizens forced to participate and fund it all be dammed.