Posted on 01/25/2004 9:12:37 PM PST by jwalburg
Prescott: Have you heard what the president is proposing now?
Howell: Something about exploration, isn't it?
Prescott: Right. He wants to send a crew out into the great beyond to explore uncharted territory. Have you seen the price tag?
Howell: Yeah. And I understand that much of the funding goes into the pockets of the president's close buddies. One of the guys in charge served as his personal secretary for years, and the other is his good friend, William Clark.
Prescott: There should be an investigation.
Howell: Definitely!
Prescott: It's almost as bad as that Louisiana Purchase deal earlier in the year.
Howell: Talk about wasting taxpayer money on frivolities! No one was even asked about this. The president just went ahead and squandered all this money on a bunch of wasteland no one will ever use!
Prescott: You're telling me!
Howell: How much was it? Twelve million dollars??? Man, you could do a lot of important things with 12 million dollars.
Prescott: Our sailors are being starved from Navy cutbacks and we are going to send 47 men to scamper around the wilderness at government expense? And you know what? Everyone thinks this exploration deal was because of the Louisiana Purchase, but I happen to know that the president was making plans for this back in January, BEFORE there was even talk about purchasing the territory.
Howell: That's pretty incriminating stuff! The Congressional Budget Office should get on this right away.
Prescott: No, I think we'll need a special investigator for this one. The thing is, it isn't 12 million. The public is being told it's 12 million - as if that wasn't enough - but really it's 27 million, with interest figured in. Talk about deficit spending!
Howell: You're kidding me!
Prescott: No. I've looked at the figures. This stupid idea is costing taxpayers 27 million dollars! And for what? It's all a public relations move for Jefferson.
Howell: I heard he thinks that by adding all this land we'll seem big and bad to the Europeans. They won't want to mess with us.
Prescott: That, and the stupid Northwest Passage idea. Northwest Passage! Only pea-brains believe in that Northwest Passage theory. But there's Jefferson for you.
Howell: I understand the vice president has some shady motives for this expedition, too.
Prescott: Aaron Burr! That guy's got ulterior motives in everything he does. And this Lewis and Clark thing is no exception. You knew he lost his seat in the New York Assembly when suspicious financial dealings were leaked to the public, didn't you?
Howell: I heard something about that.
Prescott: Well, now I hear he's been scheming to build up a Trans-Appalachian Empire using new land from this Louisiana Purchase.
Howell: Talk about conflict of interest!
Prescott: I wouldn't be surprised if this whole deal was secretly engineered between Burr and the French. Jefferson is just a puppet, you know. He's been a failure at diplomacy on his own. Burr's behind everything.
Howell: Well, just look at the mess Jefferson made of the Declaration. "Endowed by our Creator!" You'd think the new Republic was run by Church of England fanatics, with language like that inserted in the thing!
Prescott: Did you know that Burr's grandfather was that preacher, Jonathan Edwards? The two of them are in the pocket of the religious right, that's for sure. The explorers have already started this asinine trip, with no real public input, no hearings, no committee debate, no environmental impact reports - nothing! They're taking 6 tons of supplies along, mostly to bribe Indians with. Six tons! And much of it on a stupid keelboat.
Howell: Wonder how far they'll get.
Prescott: I don't know, but there are sure better things to be done with that kind of money. You know what Fisher Ames says about the Louisiana Purchase? "Now - we rush like a comet into infinite space!" He's right! This is a crazy idea. And the Lewis and Clark business is even crazier.
Howell: About as crazy an idea as going to Mars! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Donna Marmorstein writes and lives in Aberdeen. You can contact her at dkmarmorstein@yahoo.com.
Please don't have any children - since you can't quantify their relative worth and productivity over their potential lifespan, the risk is far too great for you to take.
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Going to Mars is good showy public relations chatter to impress halfwits, but it is, in fact, a bust. It is so cold there that there are carbon dioxide, dry ice, storms. It's a useless death trap. As long as I'm not one of the people chosen to go there, I don't care.
The nearest star is Alpha Centauri, if I remember correctly. It might have livable and productive planets similar to earth. It would be a potentially worthwhile trip. However, at 4 1/2 light years away it would require most of an adult lifetime to get there traveling 10,000 miles a second. If you hit a piece of space debris the suze of a pea at that speed, it would go through the space ship like a nuclear explosion.
It's one thing to be a man of vision and to talk about space travel. It's a far different to be a man of ignorant fantasy and hallucination. George Bush should have taken a course in Physics instead of guts courses.
Please see the following link: The Best of NASA Spinoffs. If you disagree so strongly with the money spent to date on a "single-minded technological forray with questionable benefits for the citizens at large", please do not use the technologies developed from such research.
If you think they are equivalent, you are delusional and can't be trusted with public monies.
In fact, I personally have saved the U.S. Taxpayer over $14,000.00 during the course of a very small research project for the U.S. Geological Survey. Can you say the same?
And your argument as to "know the value of" is a red herring.
A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic.
I propose that you do not understand what consitutes a "red herring". The relative value and potential of acquired real estate (in this case the Louisiana Purchase) is hardly an irrelevant topic in connection with your previous statements.
Have you drilled under your property to check to see if there are any hydrocarbons down there?
A classic example of a "red herring" - thank you for providing it. BTW, we own our property down to a depth of 200-feet...fairly standard within suburban residential real estate. I know because this was one of my first questions at closing.
any large domestic spending project
I can't think of any larger domestic spending project than having and raising children.
You have just insulted every geologist, geomorphologist, geophysicist, astrophysicist, planetary scientist, astronomer, assorted engineers, and the interested public on the planet. How does it feel?
$7 Trillion Clams? I heard it was a 100 Bajillion zillion. Where on earth did you get such a number? Let me lend you a hand space head, your off by a factor of about 14. It's not chump change, but it is not 7 trillion either. If your going to say crap that's off the wall like that at least be accurate.
Since we're on the subject of silly assertions, let us propose that all Americans move back to the 13 original colonies, or better yet, let's move back to England, there is no need to move forward after all, Better yet, lets really roll back progress, 2000 years ago, my family was likely a part of Rome, lets go back to there.
progress is expensive, but it turned a tiny country like Portugal into a major league power for a couple of centuries. You know why is not anymore? It turned it's back on expansion and exploration, now I hear it is a lovely little tourist spot.
That is how the world works you expand or you die, there is no status quo. The Romans Quit expading and died, the portuguese, the British, and now you would have America do the same, no thank you. The benefits will far out weigh the costs. Lewis and Clark, the manhatten project, the apollo project, human genome. All these have or will bear fruits that will benefit all man in our lifetimes. We should have done this 20 years ago, we have been idle too long and frankly I think America is stagnant because it is not really moving forward like it is capable of. This is the kick in the pants human civilization needs. You can put a man on Mars it makes all the petty little wars man fights look like the insignifigant speck it is.
This was, of course, the Golden Age of Science Fiction, when we didn't know enough science to understand most of the fiction was impossible. There's no life on Mars or at least none able to invade Earth, and the Galactics, if any, don't call back. However, in the 1940s many of us believed we'd soon be mining the moon - already technically possible - and by 2000 have explored solar space. But you know what happened.
We went to the moon for the wrong reasons, without a backup plan and with no vision. The Little Earthers prevailed, those who say this planet is enough; who cares what's out there; and we should be content to cultivate our pastures, improve our lot and use our resources to make things better on earth. But I've never bought this; I do not believe the human race was made to ruminate and rusticate like sheep.
I believe we're made to push the envelope, climb mountains, cross the void, strive for heaven and raise hell in Hell if we could locate it. I recall the Little Englanders who could never see beyond their gardens and politics. It was the adventurers and misfits who braved the oceans in cockleshell ships, landed on hostile shores and made America in the first place. Providence provided enough people who paid the price of admiralty, to feed their seas with ships and bones. Without curiosity and bravado, our kind might still be cowering up African trees or in Ice Age caves.***
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Prove it.
Some of them have a vested interest in lifetime sinecures waiting for them if they make the sale. I don't.
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How does it feel?
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It feels good. If I don't disturb the stupid complacency and attempts at fraud of at least 100 people a day, then I'm wasting the gifts I was born with.
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