Truman’s decision garenteed the survival of my father-in-law who was already on the manifest to head into Japan as his unit rotated from Germany to the Pacific. Becuase he lived, I got to marry a great women and had three kids! Plus he saved 10s of millions of Japenese and American lives!
What a great day along with August 6 – Hiroshima Day!
You get an A plus in the PRP evaluation this week.
Beat the spears into ploughshares and hire a few firefighter back for Lawrence, Ma.
Nice sentiment, you obviously are okay with dropping the more modern versions.
Yes, the two bombs made aircraft carriers obsolete, as well as most other wars above those of profit, stalemate and occupation like Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and Vietnam. Places where the opposition has no bomb.
As to Nagasaki, more US POW’s were killed and a few hospitals destroyed than Japanese soldiers and sailors.
Nagasaki housed a few ammunition plants.
There also first reports of radiation sickness were censored.
Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb, while Hiroshima was an obsolete uranium bomb.
Did it make the world safe for empire? Or just make Mao’s kind of war the new paradigm?
WWII provided the incentive to build the bomb. We lived the next 50 years under the threat of WWIII ending life on the planet. I don’t see how the war made us safer. Had we sent oil to Japan rather then embargoed them they probably would not have bombed us at Pearl Harbor. Choices were made – we took postions and there were consequences.
I’m not sure that we would have ever tried to invade Japan. Remember, all the while we were staging troops for the invasion Truman knew he had the A-bomb. We broke Japan as a power in the pacific before the end of the war. The A-bomb was to achieve an unconditional victory and the Japanese onconditional defeat. What your father in law went through was probably a show.
I almost got creamed by an excessively speeding driver on my bike commute today. The poorly planned 4 lane government road has little space for a bike in the right lane – a road that was recently built, and has a center turn lane to nowhere. Do I have to ditch my bike commute efforts and simply drive to work? Driving sucks, but getting run over sucks more. Why is government so bad at factoring in multi-use on new roads? Isn’t this 2010? Why does government totally focus on cars to the detriment of pedestrians, bikes, and public transportation?
Glad to hear FDR had so much power as to convince both the Germans and the Japanese to arm themselves to the teeth and try to take the US, Dutch, British and French bankrupt empires from us all.
And Wilson had no small support from the war industry heaping on profits, happily making up for the empire bankrupted French, British and Italian shortfalls in manufacturing arms against the Germans.
Big wars, little wars implying that Max Boot is right or the US should continue bankrupting itself because Teddy Roosevelt liked Alfred Thayer Mahan’s thesis and the excuse to grab an empire on the cheap.
And the clash of empires between the Russian soviets and the US capitalists bankrupted both sides birthing the primacy of east Asia, exactly what Tojo wanted, this time with no big war.
Is it: big wars occur because every so often the empire is run by folks who are not for the empire so much.
Hey, nukes are tools, in the hands of some they might get misused.
There is an ad for Sarah Palin’s choice for US senate seat being vacate by Judd Gregg. It says if cap and trade comes in which one of the dems is accused of favoring then gasoline will go to $4 a gallon and little old ladies will lose sleep. This from an unknown group from outside NH who could care less about old folks eating cat food or going cold.
I think somewhere between 4 and 10 bucks a gallon makes sense.
Then the Chinese deal directly with the royals in the persian gulf.
I am in Baltimore. Unfortuantely, I am all for increasing the gas tax. Cap and trade is essentially a useless scheme that helps politicians and tehir buddies get rich trading carbon allowances. Al Gore stand to benefit quite a bit, and the price of energy will not budge.
OR we could tax only corporations. they would pass on the costs, of course. But their accountants would do all the tax figuring and filing. as for companies going offshore, i’d be glad to tax their products at ports of entry.
as for the health exclusion. in generaly i am in favor of a simple tax that lets the economy sort itself out. but first, without a health exclusion it is unlikely that working people would ever have gotten any health insurance at all. and given that the folks now talking about eliminating the health exclusion are also talking about cutting corp taxes, i’d guess they are not being patriotic.
The only reason health insurance is structured the way it is is due to the wage controls in WWII. The wage controls did not include health insurance as a part of wages. The system stuck. The reason not to tax corporations is that they are to slippery and will slither away, individuals have a much harder time since the US taxes all income of citizens and permanent residents world wide as contrasted with other countries. Essentially you cant duck the individual income tax without giving up citizenship or permant residence. Corporations can move their headquarters off shore and engage in more creative accounting. Given that we are finally cracking down on offshore banking the individual tax works better besides providing 6 and 8% of gdp yield. Of course the alternative is a vat which does not require the individual to file a tax return.
Or to amplify the point my dad was going to be in the first wave of the invasion of Japan, so if the bomb had not been dropped I would not be here. The question is how many americans and japanese can say the bomb gave them a life, I suspect the answer is a lot with expected american casualties over 1 million. (I suspect you would have seen the same sort of issues in the US if it had happend as in 1864 and a significant peace movement sort of saying just fence them off, let the battleships just sail around and bombard and blockade, and run one big siege.
Sadly, I think the trend is going the other direction…more personal tax, regressive no less, the ultimate goal being national sales tax (on top of state and local sales tax). How else can you tax the retiring baby boom? We may go VAT, but that is a worse accounting headache (but good for employment if you majored in accounting), but if you add sales tax we at least know what is tax and what is price. Of course the gov may see confusing us as an advantage, I guess.
The corporations have been playing the “international competitiveness” card and the Big O says we are going to grow exports. We can somehow tie tax breaks or levies to domestic production, but corporations are demanding France’s low corporate rates for starters, and will probably go for something bigger to compete with China, if the WTO lets ’em.
Then there is the one size fits all problem. Pick the rate that works for Boeing, Microsoft and brings Nike production lines to our shores?????
Yes, government planners are indeed stupid, just look at the last 10 years or so. They make policy based on strange fictional ideology, greed, and staying in office forever, rather than what works. Still waiting for those high speed trains the Democrats have been promising for the past few decades, and what do we still have? – Lousy Amtrak service.
I think that every elected official should be required to use public transport, and try riding a bike on the roads they are responsible for. You would see change real quickly. Here in Baltimore they are adding another light rail line, despite the total failure of the existing light rail line. It is slow, always brakes, does not get precedence over traffic, and the ticket machines are useless.
well the corp only tax ought to work about the same way as a vat. with only corporations filing, it ought to be easy enough to have the irs sit in on the accounting decisions. and you did neglect the point about a tariff to capture the offshores.
If we had never fought Germany — if there had been no WWI and therefore no WWII or Hitler — IT NEVER WOULD HAVE OCCURRED TO US to bomb populated cities (EGADS!!!) in Japan with any kind of bombs. The chief of the Eighth Air Force in Europe, Gen. Jimmy Dolittle — who ironically led the carrier launched B-25 raid on the home islands — even protested the order to begin bombing the German populations when Germany was no long a threat to conquer the world.
Japan all of took 13% of American military resources and none of anyone else’s. Other than a willingness to repeat Custer’s last stand over and over Japan’s military offered no special challenge to any fully modern military of the day. Surrounded by water with no oil or iron Japan should have been told to go back to rice farming for 25 years if it did not sign on the dotted line; that’s all. The idea of taking a million American casualties to physically take the islands made no sane sense at all.
in my heart i know you are right. the problems facing the government, however, are huge. they have to try to keep all the idiot citizens happy at once.
here in oregon we have lots of bike paths far away from traffic. only problem is the bicycle speeders whose attitude toward old folks children and dogs who get in their way ranges from arrogant to criminally stupid…. just like car drivers.
that said, long time ago, as a child, i was given a ticket for riding a bike facing traffic… the way i was taught to walk along the road. seems that in the eyes of the law a bike is a car, and in their great tenderness the legislators feel it is better if kids on bikes don’t see what is coming at them.
LOL….as a child I remember being very confused by that switch in direction, since watchfullness seemed so prudent. Getting sqashed from the back did not feel right.
Nice revisionist history. There were three options on the table. The first was to starve them out (Gen Lemay pushed this one). The idea was to cut the average caloric intake across the Japanes islands to 400 calories/day. Millions would have died including most of the very young and very old. The second choice was a direct assualt (Operation Downfall) to take the islands. Estimated losses to US/Allies at over 1 million. Expected Japanese melitary dead over 5 million. Japanese civilion losses expected north of 10 million. Or choice 3) Drop the bombs and hope the Japanese surrender, if not you still have options 1 & 2.
And no one was talking a negotiated settlement. That’s fantasy land.
Yep, If Democratic President Woodrow Wilson and occupied Germany after WW I like we did after WW II, well there would never had been a WW II.
If time-traveling South Africans and brought AK-47s to the South , the south would have won the civil war… if Hannibel had taken Rome after Cannae well Carthage would have explored the America’s in the 200 BCs…. yada, yada, yada…
Thanks Rdan!
HAPPY NAGASAKI DAY!
Truman’s decision garenteed the survival of my father-in-law who was already on the manifest to head into Japan as his unit rotated from Germany to the Pacific. Becuase he lived, I got to marry a great women and had three kids! Plus he saved 10s of millions of Japenese and American lives!
What a great day along with August 6 – Hiroshima Day!
Islam will change
You get an A plus in the PRP evaluation this week.
Beat the spears into ploughshares and hire a few firefighter back for Lawrence, Ma.
Nice sentiment, you obviously are okay with dropping the more modern versions.
Yes, the two bombs made aircraft carriers obsolete, as well as most other wars above those of profit, stalemate and occupation like Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and Vietnam. Places where the opposition has no bomb.
As to Nagasaki, more US POW’s were killed and a few hospitals destroyed than Japanese soldiers and sailors.
Nagasaki housed a few ammunition plants.
There also first reports of radiation sickness were censored.
Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb, while Hiroshima was an obsolete uranium bomb.
Did it make the world safe for empire? Or just make Mao’s kind of war the new paradigm?
ilsm will not change
ilsm,
It ended WW II. Made the world pretty safe and saved millions of Japanese and American lives. Sounds like an outstanding first use of the atomic bomb!
By a Democrat no less! Which makes sense since its been Democrats who get us in all the big wars for the past 100 years!!!
Time to cook ribs on the barbi, along with some baked potatoes & steamed vegetables, and microwave popcorn for desert!
Happy Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days!
Buff,
WWII provided the incentive to build the bomb. We lived the next 50 years under the threat of WWIII ending life on the planet. I don’t see how the war made us safer. Had we sent oil to Japan rather then embargoed them they probably would not have bombed us at Pearl Harbor. Choices were made – we took postions and there were consequences.
I’m not sure that we would have ever tried to invade Japan. Remember, all the while we were staging troops for the invasion Truman knew he had the A-bomb. We broke Japan as a power in the pacific before the end of the war. The A-bomb was to achieve an unconditional victory and the Japanese onconditional defeat. What your father in law went through was probably a show.
I almost got creamed by an excessively speeding driver on my bike commute today. The poorly planned 4 lane government road has little space for a bike in the right lane – a road that was recently built, and has a center turn lane to nowhere. Do I have to ditch my bike commute efforts and simply drive to work? Driving sucks, but getting run over sucks more. Why is government so bad at factoring in multi-use on new roads? Isn’t this 2010? Why does government totally focus on cars to the detriment of pedestrians, bikes, and public transportation?
You should advocate an end to the multitude of sudsibies for the oil cabal.
Then the US could shutter the war machine and you can do your bike commute.
Or hope gas prices climb to $10 a gallon.
Buff,
Happy Days.
Glad to hear FDR had so much power as to convince both the Germans and the Japanese to arm themselves to the teeth and try to take the US, Dutch, British and French bankrupt empires from us all.
And Wilson had no small support from the war industry heaping on profits, happily making up for the empire bankrupted French, British and Italian shortfalls in manufacturing arms against the Germans.
Big wars, little wars implying that Max Boot is right or the US should continue bankrupting itself because Teddy Roosevelt liked Alfred Thayer Mahan’s thesis and the excuse to grab an empire on the cheap.
And the clash of empires between the Russian soviets and the US capitalists bankrupted both sides birthing the primacy of east Asia, exactly what Tojo wanted, this time with no big war.
Is it: big wars occur because every so often the empire is run by folks who are not for the empire so much.
Hey, nukes are tools, in the hands of some they might get misused.
ilsm will not change
Do you live near New Hampshire?
There is an ad for Sarah Palin’s choice for US senate seat being vacate by Judd Gregg. It says if cap and trade comes in which one of the dems is accused of favoring then gasoline will go to $4 a gallon and little old ladies will lose sleep. This from an unknown group from outside NH who could care less about old folks eating cat food or going cold.
I think somewhere between 4 and 10 bucks a gallon makes sense.
Then the Chinese deal directly with the royals in the persian gulf.
I am in Baltimore. Unfortuantely, I am all for increasing the gas tax. Cap and trade is essentially a useless scheme that helps politicians and tehir buddies get rich trading carbon allowances. Al Gore stand to benefit quite a bit, and the price of energy will not budge.
Yes, I understand the Bourses would trade paper about caps among “players” making for a new game with CDO’s etc.
Lyle
OR we could tax only corporations. they would pass on the costs, of course. But their accountants would do all the tax figuring and filing. as for companies going offshore, i’d be glad to tax their products at ports of entry.
as for the health exclusion. in generaly i am in favor of a simple tax that lets the economy sort itself out. but first, without a health exclusion it is unlikely that working people would ever have gotten any health insurance at all. and given that the folks now talking about eliminating the health exclusion are also talking about cutting corp taxes, i’d guess they are not being patriotic.
mcwop
it is because government planners are stupid. just a little better than no planning at all.
The only reason health insurance is structured the way it is is due to the wage controls in WWII. The wage controls did not include health insurance as a part of wages. The system stuck. The reason not to tax corporations is that they are to slippery and will slither away, individuals have a much harder time since the US taxes all income of citizens and permanent residents world wide as contrasted with other countries. Essentially you cant duck the individual income tax without giving up citizenship or permant residence. Corporations can move their headquarters off shore and engage in more creative accounting. Given that we are finally cracking down on offshore banking the individual tax works better besides providing 6 and 8% of gdp yield. Of course the alternative is a vat which does not require the individual to file a tax return.
Or to amplify the point my dad was going to be in the first wave of the invasion of Japan, so if the bomb had not been dropped I would not be here. The question is how many americans and japanese can say the bomb gave them a life, I suspect the answer is a lot with expected american casualties over 1 million. (I suspect you would have seen the same sort of issues in the US if it had happend as in 1864 and a significant peace movement sort of saying just fence them off, let the battleships just sail around and bombard and blockade, and run one big siege.
Sadly, I think the trend is going the other direction…more personal tax, regressive no less, the ultimate goal being national sales tax (on top of state and local sales tax). How else can you tax the retiring baby boom? We may go VAT, but that is a worse accounting headache (but good for employment if you majored in accounting), but if you add sales tax we at least know what is tax and what is price. Of course the gov may see confusing us as an advantage, I guess.
The corporations have been playing the “international competitiveness” card and the Big O says we are going to grow exports. We can somehow tie tax breaks or levies to domestic production, but corporations are demanding France’s low corporate rates for starters, and will probably go for something bigger to compete with China, if the WTO lets ’em.
Then there is the one size fits all problem. Pick the rate that works for Boeing, Microsoft and brings Nike production lines to our shores?????
Yes, government planners are indeed stupid, just look at the last 10 years or so. They make policy based on strange fictional ideology, greed, and staying in office forever, rather than what works. Still waiting for those high speed trains the Democrats have been promising for the past few decades, and what do we still have? – Lousy Amtrak service.
I think that every elected official should be required to use public transport, and try riding a bike on the roads they are responsible for. You would see change real quickly. Here in Baltimore they are adding another light rail line, despite the total failure of the existing light rail line. It is slow, always brakes, does not get precedence over traffic, and the ticket machines are useless.
http://indyreader.org/node/117
http://www.baltimoreinnerspace.blogspot.com/
lyle
well the corp only tax ought to work about the same way as a vat. with only corporations filing, it ought to be easy enough to have the irs sit in on the accounting decisions. and you did neglect the point about a tariff to capture the offshores.
If we had never fought Germany — if there had been no WWI and therefore no WWII or Hitler — IT NEVER WOULD HAVE OCCURRED TO US to bomb populated cities (EGADS!!!) in Japan with any kind of bombs. The chief of the Eighth Air Force in Europe, Gen. Jimmy Dolittle — who ironically led the carrier launched B-25 raid on the home islands — even protested the order to begin bombing the German populations when Germany was no long a threat to conquer the world.
Japan all of took 13% of American military resources and none of anyone else’s. Other than a willingness to repeat Custer’s last stand over and over Japan’s military offered no special challenge to any fully modern military of the day. Surrounded by water with no oil or iron Japan should have been told to go back to rice farming for 25 years if it did not sign on the dotted line; that’s all. The idea of taking a million American casualties to physically take the islands made no sane sense at all.
mcwop
in my heart i know you are right. the problems facing the government, however, are huge. they have to try to keep all the idiot citizens happy at once.
here in oregon we have lots of bike paths far away from traffic. only problem is the bicycle speeders whose attitude toward old folks children and dogs who get in their way ranges from arrogant to criminally stupid…. just like car drivers.
that said, long time ago, as a child, i was given a ticket for riding a bike facing traffic… the way i was taught to walk along the road. seems that in the eyes of the law a bike is a car, and in their great tenderness the legislators feel it is better if kids on bikes don’t see what is coming at them.
LOL….as a child I remember being very confused by that switch in direction, since watchfullness seemed so prudent. Getting sqashed from the back did not feel right.
Templeton,
Nice revisionist history. There were three options on the table. The first was to starve them out (Gen Lemay pushed this one). The idea was to cut the average caloric intake across the Japanes islands to 400 calories/day. Millions would have died including most of the very young and very old. The second choice was a direct assualt (Operation Downfall) to take the islands. Estimated losses to US/Allies at over 1 million. Expected Japanese melitary dead over 5 million. Japanese civilion losses expected north of 10 million. Or choice 3) Drop the bombs and hope the Japanese surrender, if not you still have options 1 & 2.
And no one was talking a negotiated settlement. That’s fantasy land.
Islam will change
Yep, If Democratic President Woodrow Wilson and occupied Germany after WW I like we did after WW II, well there would never had been a WW II.
If time-traveling South Africans and brought AK-47s to the South , the south would have won the civil war… if Hannibel had taken Rome after Cannae well Carthage would have explored the America’s in the 200 BCs…. yada, yada, yada…
Islam will change