Just Plain Insane

Related Link » Strategic Defense Initiative
“Although it is difficult to compile actual spending totals across the complete spectrum of space-based defense programs (including classified "off-budget" "black projects"), the U.S. has certainly invested well over $100 billion on "SDI" and follow-on programs, and holds a commanding lead over all current or potential future adversaries in the realm of space technology/warfare. The vast majority of this investment has been made in basic research at National Laboratories and Universities, and these programs continue to be a key source of funding for top research scientists in the fields of high-energy physics, supercomputing, advanced materials, and many other critical science and engineering disciplines: funding which indirectly supports other research work by top scientists, and which would be largely unavailable outside of the defense budget environment.”
— ‘From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia’

Related Link » Star Wars: The Next Generation
“Defense: The Air Force airborne laser program successfully completes a simulated kill from a plane able to find, track and destroy a live ballistic missile. We can shoot down enemy missiles. Instead, we're shooting down the laser program. [...] This latest in a successful series of tests comes after Defense Secretary Robert Gates' general slashing of missile defense — cuts that will reduce next year's Missile Defense Agency budget by $1.4 billion, or 15%. Gates has pulled the plug on buying a second plane. The Pentagon says the program has three tries to destroy a live missile or the program will be killed altogether. [...] We are confident the ABL will meet its testing goals in the three tests remaining. But the issue isn't whether we can afford to build and deploy the ABL, but whether we can afford not to. If we can afford Cash for Clunkers, we can afford the airborne laser.”
— ‘By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 19, 2009’

My fellow Americans, this is wrong. This is very wrong. This borders on the criminally wrong!

Back in the late 1980s, those of us working within the SDI program would have been thrilled to know that our technology would eventually reach the point that has been demonstrated by today's ABM programs. Thrilled, I tell you. To see the efforts of at least two generations of physicists and engineers on the brink of curtailment, at the point that clearly demonstrates a successful culmination of such a technological feat, is nothing short of grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Obama Administration is either the most myopic, or the most naive, or just plain the only insane administration in the history of national administrations.

Post #897 Just Plain Insane