SPOUTS by Lenny Dee l\/la n y baseball experts have suggested that the Yankee collapse in the I V I World Series was due to mismanagement on and off the field. The true reason for their demise is the dreaded Curse of Cubness. Since 1945 (the last time the Cubs won a pennant) nine teams have gone into the fall classic with three or more Cubs on their roster and each have gone down to ignominious defeat. When your fans resort to tee shirts that read “Cub fever—catch it...and die," you know losing is more than a passing fancy. So it should come as no surprise that the fix was in this year when the “Bronx Bombers” showed up with a roster of six ex-Cubs. s big a ringer has been the Reagan administration's play on the AWACS / I sale. The excessive blather over the deal has been a brilliant decoy covering the biggest stings since Newman and Redford cleaned out Robert Shaw. The sheiks who want so desperately to hand back the money we give them at the gas pump are buying five planes that can pick up movements within a 350-mile radius. To adequately cover Saudi Arabia's border they would need hundreds of such planes. The Saudi's had a few borrowed AWACs when the Israelis crossed their territory to bomb Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The AWACs were worse than Reggie Jackson looking for a fly ball. At least Reggie managed to get hit with the encroaching projectile. We’ve conned the Saudis into buying five Edsels that will give our neighbors in Seattle work and help our balance of payments deficit. All the other "issues" are just sales pitch. W.C. Fields claimed that a sucker was born every minute. It seems that a few of them became Saudis. Unfortunately it is not only the Saudis that are being suckered in this deal. There is a bigger con being played and we are the ones being marked. While the administration, Congress and the media debated an issue that was as important to our security as the size of Shelley Winters ’ waistline, there was almost no discussion over the decision by Congress to invest a trillion and a half dollars in the military rather than a crash energy-development program to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. Without facing this we become as vulnerable as Jackie Gleason before a box of Lady Godiva chocolates. / I t least chocolate produces energy. The military hardware only consumes z l it. There is no military strategy that can assure the flow of oil. In effect this decision to spend a king's ransom on war toys produces some of the same consequences as military defeat. It gives foreign governments greater control over the country. As easy marks we are touted with bad tips. We are being led to place our bets on military spending deficits vis-a-vis the Russkies that in fact do not exist. The American intelligence community reconstructs the Russian military budget by asking what it would cost to buy the Soviet defense establishment in the U.S., at our prices. Our “experts" pretend that the Russkies procure their tanks from Chrysler and that they pay American wages to their conscripts. It’s much like saying that Caddies and Chevys cost the same because they’re both made by G.M. Is it any wonder that the administration discovers a huge Soviet defense manpower budget of more than 50 billion dollars that exists only in American documents? As Reagan leads us down the dark alleyway to the Big Fix his henchmen are busy providing the cover. The man in charge of disarmament, Eugene Rostow, has written that “we are living in a prewar, not a postwar world. " This shark is also of the opinion that a nuclear war is winnable, “for after all Japan not only survived but flourished after a nuclear attack. ” Couple that with the comment of National Security Council hit man Richard Pipes that the Soviet leaders will have to choose between peacefully changing their communist system or going to war, and you have thugs working with less than a full deck. Is it any wonder that massive demonstrations are occurring all over Europe, as they see these looney-tune characters so close to the button. Europe must wonder how long Americans will be easy marks for THE BIGGEST STING OF ALL. TH-TH-TH-TH-THAT’S ALL FOLKS LYNDA BARRY 7ft Azit At TloJuzvuMc •mizzHJw £ com. i f woA unonyClinton St. Quarterly 41
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