Now that I read this more carefully, I see why they are using a.GOV domain. This group that Congressman Watts is registering is an officially organized committee of the US House of Reps. It is the House Republican Conference. This is just like if, say, the Commerce Committee of the House, or the Appropriations committee of the Senate wanted a domain name. They would also use.GOV Any standing committee of either branch could do this.
I think the source of the misunderstanding here is that you guys think this is something coming out of the RNC (Republican Nat'l Committee) Headquarters-this is totally different. The Party Conference is an official standing sommittee of the US House, and exists as long as there are Republicans on the Hill. The Democrats could do the same thing. Any party could.
It's funny you should ask. Though I use only linux at home, the machine I'm typing this on - here at work - is WinNT and has been up since I installed it in June. I'm amazed. Is this a record? Divine intervention?
"Steve" is this Samoan guy with a journalism degree from Pago Pago Technical College. His real name is "Ubiquitous Bullshitus", but he says "Call me Steve!" -so we all do. Anyway, he was the recently announced winner (you must have heard of this) of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Relentless Smack-Talking. It's a great honor, and Time Magazine is fortunate to be interviewing him.
Of course I dare call him a Nazi. His ideas about the value of innocent human life fit so well. They believed, among other things, that the gene pool should be 'purified' by sterilizing or murdering the impure: particularly Jews, the handicapped, the senile, Gypsies, religious people, and eventually all non-Aryans.
In Weimar Germany there was a curiously misguided political group called (no kidding) Jews for Hitler. Though I doubt Mr Singer is a practicing Jew (how could he be?), he would be the sort of fellow who would've joined.
Hitler killed thousands of the people we now call the Handicapped right around the time he began rounding up Jews in large numbers. How disappointing that an American University will give this terribly wrong man, Mr. Singer, a position of respect, and a public forum. I doubt anybody who advocated killing blacks or Jews would get the same consideration from Princeton.
Deployment of this device would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missle Treaty. But it's toast, anyway. It was made with the USSR, which no longer exists. And they were violating it when they signed it, and continued to violate it, in spite of our weak wussy Carter-era protests. Finally, the Senate is likely to formally toss it when they get ready to deploy a missle defense.
Briefly, I think you are the one with the confused facts. China does not have a population in the "billions", they do not have "hundreds of millions" of troops, and they do not have the means to be "coming at you", if you mean the US or Europe. Or anywhere that's reached by boat.
China has just over one billion people, and their military budget is estimated somewhere around 20 or 30 billion US dollars (less than 10% of the US's). Their army is only a few million, but there is no way they could be deployed in large numbers overseas without taking ten years to do it. Furthermore, they don't have that many "nukes". They have about a dozen ICBMs pointed at the US, and a few others pointed elsewhere. That is a threat, but not insurmountable. A few dozen Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicles would make them about useless (assuming it works out).
As for targeting Alaska, they'd kill more polar bears than people considering the navigation on those missles isn't expected to be all that great. Hawaii isn't much better- the missle would be landing in water, almost certainly. (tidal wave!) They have undoubtedly targeted large urban areas like LA and San Francisco.
North Korea has indeed lobbed a missle right over Japan. Nobody knows for sure where their program stands, but there is really not much holding them back, technically. Most experts seem to think they could nail Chicago very soon, if not right now. Not the recent press conference on Capitol Hill warning of that.
Finally, yes it's true that a test is only a test. There will be lots of tests and lots of development. But last night it was demonstrated that a kinetic vehicle could nail an incoming missle with decoys in the upper atmosphere at a collion velocity of 15,000 miles per hour. I for one am impressed, and happy.
Absolutely! Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, and many others would flip turkeys over having such a defense. Thanks for the clarification about China, too.
No, the device does indeed work against an ICBM with a nuclear warhead. If you destroy the missle this way, at a 140 mile altitude, it will not "explode". The warhead would be completely destroyed. Not to mention that a nuclear warhead exploding in the upper atmosphere would be relatively harmless esp. compared to one in your kitchen.
Several posts here have missed the point of this device. It is not intended to intercept a volley of ICBMs. Rather, it could protect a region from (militarily)small countries and rogue states, like China, Iraq and North Korea, that can only afford or hide a few missles. This has nothing at all to do with Russia. They are not a direct threat to the US (right now).
Since so few people read the original article, note also that North Korea has missle technology that can hit Chicago (as well as the entire West Coast).
Also note that this successful test was against a fairly sophisticated Minuteman II ICBM with several decoys around it. The combined velocity at impact was 15,000 mph, or about 6 or 7 kilometers per second.
For a transcript of a military briefing on friday that covered this click here.
That's totally absurd. If you believe that's why they're outlawed, you're smoking crack. They were rounded up after a the spontaneous peaceful demonstration in Beijing. The Chinese Communist party will not allow the smallest threat to their supremacy in that country, and Falung Gong has many more adherents than the Party itself. They consider Falung Gong a threat in the same way that any organization of, say, more than three people a threat, if it is not directly controlled by the party. This is even true of organizations (like Falung)with no political component.
If you really think their views on medicine got the Falungs in trouble, then why does the Chinese government imprison Catholics or Christian Protestants for going to Mass or holding tiny little prayer services in their homes? Hell, go to China and start a Linux Users Group without Party approval, and see how far you get.
You remember that peace dividend we were supposed to get after the cold war? Remember when Reagan was pumping most of our annual budget into the military to outspend the Commies?
The US has never spent most of the annual Federal budget of Defense. Even at the height of the Cold War, when Reagan was catching up from the dangerously wussified Carter 70's, Defense never consumed more than 35 or 40 percent of the Federal budget. Of course, it really doesn't matter. You should spend what is necessary. A newly-freed Eastern Europe and a much-diminsihed threat of nuclear war are both worth a lot of billions.
We were supposed be able to cut back that spending dramaticly after the Cold War was over. After WWII the US military budget dropped by 90%.
We were fighting a ground war overseas, for most of the time in two hemispeherically separated theatres. Of course, it was very very expensive. The Cold War, however, was never that expensive in terms of a percentage of the Federal budget, or of the GNP.
Most of that $ went to the Marshall plan to rebuild Japan and Western Europe. It also went to the GI Bill which produced the most romanticized and idyllic time in most American's memories.
Great! And the Federal government spends much, much more than that now on Federal aid for university students.
But didn't we cut back on military spending after the Cold War and close all those bases? Yeah, about 15% of our top Cold War spending levels. During 1998 we spent over $321 Billion on National Defense...
You are not using Real dollars. There has been inflation since the mid-80's. The big complaint right now from bothe parties in Congress is that the military is underfunded. Defense expeditures right now, as a percentage of our GNP, have not been lower since before World War I, when we were just another pissant republic
Now compare that to the 50 Billion we spent on education and training, the 23 Billion NASA got...
No, totally wrong. First, NASA is obsolete and mostly useless. Private companies will soon so far surpass NASA that it'll just be another very expensive joke. It's funding should be cut and folded into traditional research funding channels. Second, the Federal money for education and training may be small, but those things cost a lot less than aircraft carriers. Historically, the State and local governments run education and training. And they currently spend hundreds of billions on education and training. On top of that, what makes you think spend for Federal dollars on those things will improve them? There is zero evidence of that, and much to the contrary.
and the fact that China, only spent 40-60 Billion on their National Defense.
Well, they don't have to fund their own R&D, since they steal it all from the US. In addition, you really can have no idea how much they spend on defense. They are a closed totalitarian regime. They don't just hand out accurate statistics at the Defense haedquarters to curious foreign citizens.
As a percentage of our GDP we spend 6 times what countries in Western Europe (England, France) who have also been participating in our policing operations around the world.
Incoherent, and totally untrue.
We need to take a chunk of that money and invest in the public infrastructure (education, health care, public utilities, small business resources) in our country and many 'pontential rogue nations' in the former Soviet Union, Africa, Asia and South America.
First of all, our infrastructure in the US is just fine. We fund all that stuff you mention to the gills. Second, those countries you mentioned would be a lot better off if they quit their bellyaching and freed their economies up and did their own development. It's nice to give advice, and to help sometimes, for sure.
Once our people and other people are able to trade with one another, make a living for their families and provide a future for their children, I garuntee that the liklihood of war is 0.000000000000000000001.
Your gurantee is worthless. We have traded previously with every country with which we've gone to battle. We bought oil from Hussein and Ghadaffi, traded with the Soviets all through the Cold War, traded heavily with Germany before both World Wars, and with Japan before WW II etcetera etcetera. History is not on your side.
History has shown that we have created many of the dictators we have had to overthow (Noriega, Suharto, Sadam) and we have managed to help countries get on their feet (W. Europe, Japan). We are at that crossroads again and must decide how to spend our money.
We did not 'create' any of the dictators you mentioned, or any other, for that matter. Sometimes we dealt with them when our interests coincided. Sometimes we hoped we could convince them to open up their countries. We also allied with Stalin during WWII to defeat Hitler. Do you think that was a bad idea, too?
Investing in Peace is always a better idea than investing in War.
But investing in Defense is the best way to prevent war.
This would be very useful to negating several very real threats.
First of all, the Chinese have about a dozen ICBM's targeted to American cities. Why? Umm.. I dunno, maybe because they are waiting for a moment of weakness when they can invade Taiwan? Or maybe they don't want to be hindered when they're making other mischief. Now remember, Taiwan is the good Democratic country, and China is the autocratic politically repressive Communist regime. In China you are sent to labor camps or executed for going to Church (among other things). This might not bother the half-educated neo-pagans who read Slashdot, so look at it this way: If you are caught with pornography in China, you are sent to jail for quite a while. Freedom of speech, worship, or association is unheard of. Last month 10,000 members of a harmless meditation group Falung Gong gathered around the Communist Party building for a few hours in Beijing to quietly meditate. For that, their organization has been outlawed, and it's members and leaders arrested and either executed or sent to "re-education" camps. This very nasty regime has ICBMs pointed at LA and Chicago. I'd like to think we could make those missiles useless.
Second, there is North Korea, one of the few Stalinist holdouts (besides Berkeley) and they have every intention of destabilizing peace in the Pacific Rim. A few of you might have noticed that, in spite of their many-years-running famine and extreme poverty, they lobbed a finely-crafted missle right over Japan this summer. The UN fought them in a war 45 years ago. The US has 50,000 troops still sitting in South Korea to prevent an invasion. The North Korean government is very rude and unfriendly, to say the least, and they scare the bejeezus out of nominally disarmed countries like Japan. No doubt many of the peaceful countries in that part of the world would love to have a few ICBM-killers deployed strategically around the area. It would make that part of the world much safer. (BTW N Korea will soon be able to reach the West Coast of the US with those missles. How nice)
Finally, there are all the pissant dictators like Saddam Hussein, who may not be able to develop sophisticated missles, but could easily buy them from greedy corrupt Russian mobsters. Don't even think this is unlikely. The US government is constantly on the lookout for something like that to happen. This could potentially threaten any country in Europe, or Israel, or many of the allies of the US, which is bad enough in itself, but it could also draw the US into another bloody war. A few missle-killers deployed in Turkey, Germany, and Israel would go a long way towards making that part of the world safer.
The point is, guys, that defensive military equipment is a very, very good thing, and would be a boon to peace in many areas of the world.
Your comment is cute! But remember that Thatcher had to wait to invade the Falklands until the US aircraft carrier and support ships had arrived to back up the tiny British navy. (Man, I love Thatcher!)
Your low class and lack of manners is your own problem, but as a point of fact, the Queen pays the same taxes as any other British citizen, and, though not elected, her office is certainly wanted by the vast majority of her subjects.
Almost true. If there is an inconclusive parliamentary election, the Queen can appoint a Prime Minister, and it can be whomever she pleases. This has almost happened a number of times. Also, she can technically dissolve parliament and call for a new election at her whim. This, as you've said, is a prerogative not exercised since the time of Queen Anne. It probably wouldn't fly today, unless some very important crisis called for it.
All this ignores the real power of a Monarch, though. They have a sort of centrifugal effect on a country- they draw a sort of uber-loyalty that transcends mere politics. It's very valuable to have such a symbol of continuity and immutability, particularly in tough times. Ideally, they'd serve as a role model for the nation, though some royal families (the Windsors!!) have done an awful job of fulfilling this responsibility.
Maybe choosing Linux for Her Majesty's Web Servers is a good first step on the road to Windsor redemption.
Carl Sagan mentions Teller in his book "The demon haunted world" and his view of the guy isn't very positive. From that book I got the feeling
You can't quote Carl sagan and still be taken seriously. Have you ever heard of the TTAPS study? It faked speculative climactic results of a nuclear exchange. It was the work of Sagan (the 'S' in TTAPS) and some other left-wing scientists. (Of course, the idiots at SciAm bought the whole sack of bullshit.) It turns out they skewed a bunch of variables in their model to make the results come out the way they wanted. Ever the fool, he was heard before the Persian Gulf War, using the same faked model to predict global cooling as a result of oil fires in Kuwait and Iraq. It would be generous to have called him a crank
The point is, Sagan was always one to put his ideological agenda before scientific truth. He was a fraud on this, and other occasions.
Using the everpopular "If we don't they will" mentality...it's just a sick attitute.
Why is it sick? It was certainly true. The Soviets were always trying to lull the West into complacency, and then they'd strike out unexpectedly and do things like... put missiles in Cuba, invade Afghanistan, invade central America (through their Sandanista proxies in Nicaragua), and spawn Marxist revolutions in Africa (Angola, Ethiopa) and Asia (North Vietnam). If you are under any illusions about the imperial nature of Soviet Communism, then you must've learned history from Soviet textbooks. Ask any citizen of Hungary or Poland about it - they'll be glad to tell you.
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I think the source of the misunderstanding here is that you guys think this is something coming out of the RNC (Republican Nat'l Committee) Headquarters-this is totally different. The Party Conference is an official standing sommittee of the US House, and exists as long as there are Republicans on the Hill. The Democrats could do the same thing. Any party could.
(By the way, it's Congressman J.C. Watts, Not J.C. Watt)
It's funny you should ask. Though I use only linux at home, the machine I'm typing this on - here at work - is WinNT and has been up since I installed it in June. I'm amazed. Is this a record? Divine intervention?
"Steve" is this Samoan guy with a journalism degree from Pago Pago Technical College. His real name is "Ubiquitous Bullshitus", but he says "Call me Steve!" -so we all do. Anyway, he was the recently announced winner (you must have heard of this) of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Relentless Smack-Talking. It's a great honor, and Time Magazine is fortunate to be interviewing him.
Are you sure about that? Seems like a lot of age>13 folks are sitting in the theatre when I see them.
They don't have two pennies to rub together.
Oh sweet moderator, this isn't flamebait, and you are a jackass.
In Weimar Germany there was a curiously misguided political group called (no kidding) Jews for Hitler. Though I doubt Mr Singer is a practicing Jew (how could he be?), he would be the sort of fellow who would've joined.
Hitler killed thousands of the people we now call the Handicapped right around the time he began rounding up Jews in large numbers. How disappointing that an American University will give this terribly wrong man, Mr. Singer, a position of respect, and a public forum. I doubt anybody who advocated killing blacks or Jews would get the same consideration from Princeton.
Deployment of this device would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missle Treaty. But it's toast, anyway. It was made with the USSR, which no longer exists. And they were violating it when they signed it, and continued to violate it, in spite of our weak wussy Carter-era protests. Finally, the Senate is likely to formally toss it when they get ready to deploy a missle defense.
China has just over one billion people, and their military budget is estimated somewhere around 20 or 30 billion US dollars (less than 10% of the US's). Their army is only a few million, but there is no way they could be deployed in large numbers overseas without taking ten years to do it. Furthermore, they don't have that many "nukes". They have about a dozen ICBMs pointed at the US, and a few others pointed elsewhere. That is a threat, but not insurmountable. A few dozen Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicles would make them about useless (assuming it works out).
As for targeting Alaska, they'd kill more polar bears than people considering the navigation on those missles isn't expected to be all that great. Hawaii isn't much better- the missle would be landing in water, almost certainly. (tidal wave!) They have undoubtedly targeted large urban areas like LA and San Francisco.
North Korea has indeed lobbed a missle right over Japan. Nobody knows for sure where their program stands, but there is really not much holding them back, technically. Most experts seem to think they could nail Chicago very soon, if not right now. Not the recent press conference on Capitol Hill warning of that.
Finally, yes it's true that a test is only a test. There will be lots of tests and lots of development. But last night it was demonstrated that a kinetic vehicle could nail an incoming missle with decoys in the upper atmosphere at a collion velocity of 15,000 miles per hour. I for one am impressed, and happy.
Absolutely! Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, and many others would flip turkeys over having such a defense. Thanks for the clarification about China, too.
I guarantee that a few pounds of plutonium disintegrated upon reentry into the atmosphere will not give anybody, anywhere cancer.
The ICBM and warhead would be atomized, and those small particles would burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere from the altitude of 140 miles.
No, the device does indeed work against an ICBM with a nuclear warhead. If you destroy the missle this way, at a 140 mile altitude, it will not "explode". The warhead would be completely destroyed. Not to mention that a nuclear warhead exploding in the upper atmosphere would be relatively harmless esp. compared to one in your kitchen.
Since so few people read the original article, note also that North Korea has missle technology that can hit Chicago (as well as the entire West Coast).
Also note that this successful test was against a fairly sophisticated Minuteman II ICBM with several decoys around it. The combined velocity at impact was 15,000 mph, or about 6 or 7 kilometers per second.
For a transcript of a military briefing on friday that covered this click here.
If you really think their views on medicine got the Falungs in trouble, then why does the Chinese government imprison Catholics or Christian Protestants for going to Mass or holding tiny little prayer services in their homes? Hell, go to China and start a Linux Users Group without Party approval, and see how far you get.
You remember that peace dividend we were supposed to get after the cold war? Remember when Reagan was pumping most of our annual budget into the military to outspend the Commies?
The US has never spent most of the annual Federal budget of Defense. Even at the height of the Cold War, when Reagan was catching up from the dangerously wussified Carter 70's, Defense never consumed more than 35 or 40 percent of the Federal budget. Of course, it really doesn't matter. You should spend what is necessary. A newly-freed Eastern Europe and a much-diminsihed threat of nuclear war are both worth a lot of billions.
We were supposed be able to cut back that spending dramaticly after the Cold War was over. After WWII the US military budget dropped by 90%.
We were fighting a ground war overseas, for most of the time in two hemispeherically separated theatres. Of course, it was very very expensive. The Cold War, however, was never that expensive in terms of a percentage of the Federal budget, or of the GNP.
Most of that $ went to the Marshall plan to rebuild Japan and Western Europe. It also went to the GI Bill which produced the most romanticized and idyllic time in most American's memories.
Great! And the Federal government spends much, much more than that now on Federal aid for university students.
But didn't we cut back on military spending after the Cold War and close all those bases? Yeah, about 15% of our top Cold War spending levels. During 1998 we spent over $321 Billion on National Defense...
You are not using Real dollars. There has been inflation since the mid-80's. The big complaint right now from bothe parties in Congress is that the military is underfunded. Defense expeditures right now, as a percentage of our GNP, have not been lower since before World War I, when we were just another pissant republic
Now compare that to the 50 Billion we spent on education and training, the 23 Billion NASA got...
No, totally wrong. First, NASA is obsolete and mostly useless. Private companies will soon so far surpass NASA that it'll just be another very expensive joke. It's funding should be cut and folded into traditional research funding channels. Second, the Federal money for education and training may be small, but those things cost a lot less than aircraft carriers. Historically, the State and local governments run education and training. And they currently spend hundreds of billions on education and training. On top of that, what makes you think spend for Federal dollars on those things will improve them? There is zero evidence of that, and much to the contrary.
and the fact that China, only spent 40-60 Billion on their National Defense.
Well, they don't have to fund their own R&D, since they steal it all from the US. In addition, you really can have no idea how much they spend on defense. They are a closed totalitarian regime. They don't just hand out accurate statistics at the Defense haedquarters to curious foreign citizens.
As a percentage of our GDP we spend 6 times what countries in Western Europe (England, France) who have also been participating in our policing operations around the world.
Incoherent, and totally untrue.
We need to take a chunk of that money and invest in the public infrastructure (education, health care, public utilities, small business resources) in our country and many 'pontential rogue nations' in the former Soviet Union, Africa, Asia and South America.
First of all, our infrastructure in the US is just fine. We fund all that stuff you mention to the gills. Second, those countries you mentioned would be a lot better off if they quit their bellyaching and freed their economies up and did their own development. It's nice to give advice, and to help sometimes, for sure.
Once our people and other people are able to trade with one another, make a living for their families and provide a future for their children, I garuntee that the liklihood of war is 0.000000000000000000001.
Your gurantee is worthless. We have traded previously with every country with which we've gone to battle. We bought oil from Hussein and Ghadaffi, traded with the Soviets all through the Cold War, traded heavily with Germany before both World Wars, and with Japan before WW II etcetera etcetera. History is not on your side.
History has shown that we have created many of the dictators we have had to overthow (Noriega, Suharto, Sadam) and we have managed to help countries get on their feet (W. Europe, Japan). We are at that crossroads again and must decide how to spend our money.
We did not 'create' any of the dictators you mentioned, or any other, for that matter. Sometimes we dealt with them when our interests coincided. Sometimes we hoped we could convince them to open up their countries. We also allied with Stalin during WWII to defeat Hitler. Do you think that was a bad idea, too?
Investing in Peace is always a better idea than investing in War.
But investing in Defense is the best way to prevent war.
First of all, the Chinese have about a dozen ICBM's targeted to American cities. Why? Umm.. I dunno, maybe because they are waiting for a moment of weakness when they can invade Taiwan? Or maybe they don't want to be hindered when they're making other mischief. Now remember, Taiwan is the good Democratic country, and China is the autocratic politically repressive Communist regime. In China you are sent to labor camps or executed for going to Church (among other things). This might not bother the half-educated neo-pagans who read Slashdot, so look at it this way: If you are caught with pornography in China, you are sent to jail for quite a while. Freedom of speech, worship, or association is unheard of. Last month 10,000 members of a harmless meditation group Falung Gong gathered around the Communist Party building for a few hours in Beijing to quietly meditate. For that, their organization has been outlawed, and it's members and leaders arrested and either executed or sent to "re-education" camps. This very nasty regime has ICBMs pointed at LA and Chicago. I'd like to think we could make those missiles useless.
Second, there is North Korea, one of the few Stalinist holdouts (besides Berkeley) and they have every intention of destabilizing peace in the Pacific Rim. A few of you might have noticed that, in spite of their many-years-running famine and extreme poverty, they lobbed a finely-crafted missle right over Japan this summer. The UN fought them in a war 45 years ago. The US has 50,000 troops still sitting in South Korea to prevent an invasion. The North Korean government is very rude and unfriendly, to say the least, and they scare the bejeezus out of nominally disarmed countries like Japan. No doubt many of the peaceful countries in that part of the world would love to have a few ICBM-killers deployed strategically around the area. It would make that part of the world much safer. (BTW N Korea will soon be able to reach the West Coast of the US with those missles. How nice)
Finally, there are all the pissant dictators like Saddam Hussein, who may not be able to develop sophisticated missles, but could easily buy them from greedy corrupt Russian mobsters. Don't even think this is unlikely. The US government is constantly on the lookout for something like that to happen. This could potentially threaten any country in Europe, or Israel, or many of the allies of the US, which is bad enough in itself, but it could also draw the US into another bloody war. A few missle-killers deployed in Turkey, Germany, and Israel would go a long way towards making that part of the world safer.
The point is, guys, that defensive military equipment is a very, very good thing, and would be a boon to peace in many areas of the world.
Your comment is cute! But remember that Thatcher had to wait to invade the Falklands until the US aircraft carrier and support ships had arrived to back up the tiny British navy. (Man, I love Thatcher!)
Your low class and lack of manners is your own problem, but as a point of fact, the Queen pays the same taxes as any other British citizen, and, though not elected, her office is certainly wanted by the vast majority of her subjects.
That's right, they haven't. Actually since about 1700.
All this ignores the real power of a Monarch, though. They have a sort of centrifugal effect on a country- they draw a sort of uber-loyalty that transcends mere politics. It's very valuable to have such a symbol of continuity and immutability, particularly in tough times. Ideally, they'd serve as a role model for the nation, though some royal families (the Windsors!!) have done an awful job of fulfilling this responsibility.
Maybe choosing Linux for Her Majesty's Web Servers is a good first step on the road to Windsor redemption.
You can't quote Carl sagan and still be taken seriously. Have you ever heard of the TTAPS study? It faked speculative climactic results of a nuclear exchange. It was the work of Sagan (the 'S' in TTAPS) and some other left-wing scientists. (Of course, the idiots at SciAm bought the whole sack of bullshit.) It turns out they skewed a bunch of variables in their model to make the results come out the way they wanted. Ever the fool, he was heard before the Persian Gulf War, using the same faked model to predict global cooling as a result of oil fires in Kuwait and Iraq. It would be generous to have called him a crank
The point is, Sagan was always one to put his ideological agenda before scientific truth. He was a fraud on this, and other occasions.
Using the everpopular "If we don't they will" mentality...it's just a sick attitute.
Why is it sick? It was certainly true. The Soviets were always trying to lull the West into complacency, and then they'd strike out unexpectedly and do things like... put missiles in Cuba, invade Afghanistan, invade central America (through their Sandanista proxies in Nicaragua), and spawn Marxist revolutions in Africa (Angola, Ethiopa) and Asia (North Vietnam). If you are under any illusions about the imperial nature of Soviet Communism, then you must've learned history from Soviet textbooks. Ask any citizen of Hungary or Poland about it - they'll be glad to tell you.
Yes, it was Clinton, but no, it was this year.