Friday, Febuary 11, 2011
In a 1984 in speech to the nation President Reagan called on the scientific
community to render nuclear missiles "impotent and obsolete" with a
futuristic missile-defense system, dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, that
would use powerful space-based lasers to zap enemy missiles out of the
sky. Reagan had been sold this bucket of bovine excrement by Edward
Teller, a physicist well known for wild exaggeration in support of his
right-wing beliefs. In 1987, the American Physical Society, released its
largest and most important study, "The Science and Technology of Directed
Energy Weapons." It zapped no no the Strategic Defense Initiative. It
concluded that a global shield such as "Star Wars" was impossible for the
foreseeable future. Nine years and $30 billion after President Reagan's
1984 speech, the Strategic Defense Initiative, having accomplished nothing,
was terminated. All that's left of space-based missile defenses are artist
renderings, and the YAL-1A, a gigantic chemical laser, crammed into a
lumbering Boeing 747. If you ask what it's for, they reply "testing." If
we learned anything from 9/11 it is that, against this enemy, sophisticated
weapons are not a defense. Secretary of Defense Gates wanted the YAL-1A
taken out of the budget; for the lobbyists, however, it's a pipeline into
the treasury. On Monday the Obama administration will submit its budget
request for fiscal 2012. I'm betting the YAL1A will be in it. I suppose
it could incapacitate an enemy with laughter.
Yesterday the President spoke at Northern Michigan University about a plan
to get 98% of the nation connected to the Internet in five years. That's
what governments are for. We hire them to perform certain services for us,
but I expected to hear a howl from those who suffer EMF phobia. So far
theyve been pretty quiet. Okay, maybe those of you who have written to
tell me to give the cell-phone/cancer story a rest have a point. This
brings up a particularly aggravating TV ad that invariably comes up during
the morning news. An unpleasant woman with a child is pushing a grocery
cart down the aisle, and complaining loudly about food and beverage taxes.
Those are the taxes that allow the government to monitor the safety of the
food and drink in her grocery cart. The ad was paid for by Americans
Opposed to Food Taxes or some such organization. Who do you suppose
those "Americans" are?
CONGRATULATIONS EGYPT!
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