On Wednesday, October 5, 2016 at 12:29:01 PM UTC-4, wrote:

No rockets either, the US buys them from Russia. So bitch Clinton wants to start **** with them. And both candidates probably want to start **** in the South China Sea.

Good thinking. How's that globalism working out forya now ?

RANT WARNING RANT WARNING

We have enough "Rockets" to vaporize all of Asia and Europe several times over, and with capacity to spare. What we do not have are man-lifting rockets in place. We absolutely have the capacity to make such rockets from the Saturn V up to de-mothballing a shuttle, and in surprisingly short order. My concern is related to not having the capacity to make it at all.

The LCD screen was invented in Pittsburgh, PA and refined in Switzerland. Despite that, we do not have the *CAPACITY* to make them in this country at all. Not the tooling, not the technology, not even the legacy knowledge. It is a subtle, but very important difference.

And, for the political record, it is the lack of understanding of this difference that is an indication of how big a problem systemic ignorance is in the good old USA.

We get exactly the government we deserve, as we vote them in time after time after time, and every part and piece of our government devolves back to those elected "representatives" as by deliberate choice or by neglect, they permit all those parts and pieces to continue.

The difference between *your* politicians and *my* politicians is that mine tell me the lies that I want to hear, yours tell you the lies you want to hear. That they are lying is neither in doubt or a subject of debate. But, to get direct, getting in bed with Putin is probably not a good idea. And 'starting ****' with him has the virtue of putting him in the same position as pretty much every other Russian/Soviet leader has been since the 1940s - on the top of a shaky edifice sustained only by the passivity of the populace. The greatest fear of any dictator/autocrat is the loss of that power. Putin is not stupid, and understands that he will get away with everything if not challenged. As long as there is a scintilla of actual risk to his power, he will back down.

Lastly, keep in mind that the Average American:

Does not have a college education.
Does not have a passport.
Speaks one language - badly.
Has never traveled voluntarily more than 200 miles from his/her birthplace.
Has never visited a foreign country, not even the Mexico or Canada.
Cannot name the Speaker of the House, even today.
Cannot name the three branches of government.
Does not believe in Evolution (42% creationism, 32% evolution, 26% no opinion).
Only 71.2% of eligible voters are registered.
Only 57.5% of registered voters voted in 2012.
Meaning that the average American eligible to vote does not vote (only 41.5% net).

And you think that our present government is anything other than exactly what we deserve, doing exactly what we should expect it to do based on what we tell it (and allow) it to do?

This has not one damned thing to do with party, democrat, republican, libertarian, communist, green, whatever. It has to do with massive, systemic and deliberate neglect, and industrial-grade stupidity mixed equally with mil.Spec. ignorance.

Like some few of you here, I have lived in another culture vastly different from here - and I have seen how Americans are perceived in other parts of the world. You might be surprised how easily it is for other cultures to separate Americans (whom they largely respect and admire) from American Culture (continuous amazement, mixed with a varying amounts of jealousy and horror) and the American Government (poorly understood, largely disliked - much as here). Would that Americans had the same ability to separate the individual and sub-group from the various other parts and pieces of the entirety in other cultures and regions.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA