The missile defense Epistemic Closure of the “reality-based community”
How will the really, really smart set come to grips with Iron Dome and Magic Wand?
Less than 2 years ago Rachel Maddow, unofficial spokeswoman for the really, really smart “reality-based community,” parroted the left-wing line that missile defense cannot work, despite evidence to the contrary. Via Newsbusters (emphasis mine)
MADDOW: You know what? Here’s the country, here’s the kind of thing you put over like a cake to protect the cake from flies. Missiles don’t work that way. That’s the whole idea of SDI. We’ll protect ourselves by shooting missiles at other missiles. It’s never worked in a test. We spent billions on it.
MOORE: It’s worked.
MADDOW: And anybody who understands this knows it can never work.
MOORE: If you don’t think it works, then why did the Russians not want us to do it?
MADDOW: The Russians were very happy to sign this thing.
MOORE: No they weren’t. They didn’t want us to do SDI because they knew they didn’t want us to blow up their missiles.
MADDOW: You know what? If you think you can shoot the bullet with the other bullet, you can have an awesome life in Annie Oakley’s side show, but you should not be in charge of billions of dollars of the defense budget. It’s such a hysterical fantasy. I love it.
Maddow was not out of line with general Democratic thinking, and the Democratic president who routinely referred to “unproven missile defense systems” as targets of budget cuts.
We all saw how well Iron Dome, which shoots shorter range missiles out of the air with missiles, worked in Israel against Hamas rocket fire. Not perfect, in part because Hamas tried shooting missiles in large salvos to test the system’s capabilities, but very, very impressive.
In many ways a game changer. Without Iron Dome, a ground invasion of Gaza was a certainty.
As mentioned the other day, Israel also successfully tested the Magic Wand (or David’s Sling”) system to shoot medium range missiles out of the air with other medium range missiles. It was just a test, and the cost per interceptor missile currently is $1 million, but it holds the promise of being another game changer.
The Israelis just released an official video of the test, available at Ynet News (h/t @Jewtastic).
The rest of the world now is clamoring for the technology, with the South Koreans and Indians first in line.
That’s the reality which the “reality-based community” never wanted to happen.
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Comments
Dear Wretched Madcow: YOU, Dearie, are living-breathing proof that verbal nimbleness doesn’t necessarily mean one is smarter than….ohhhh…a pissant.
Be it ALSO remembered that one of the first acts of Pres. Bumps on the international stage was the unilateral surrender of our space-based weapons superiority.
How many of us even remember that, what with all the other crap you have to keep track of…???
A simple rule that rarely fails…”If Reagan wanted it, worked for it…it would work and America would be stronger for it”.
Then there is the Obama Lemma: anything that Obama seeks to promote is antithetical to US interests
Rachel is right.
For such a “hysterical fantasy,” you might as well name it something like, oh, I dunno, … “Magic Wand”?
Hmmm… Madcow… Fantasy…
“Magic Wand”…
Hummmm, huemmmm…as the Ents would say…
There are no live dragons in Maddow’s very very smart “reality-based” hobbit hole anymore. Since they pried Olbermann from the bathtub without the need for missile defense Maddow thinks the Russians would be a snap. All is safe now in Maddow’s fairyland.
“How will the really, really smart set come to grips with Iron Dome and Magic Wand?”
Well, there’s your answer. Mindless denial of the reality that stands before them. Astounding.
Do all the liberal idiots that rant from the airwaves have bomb shelters? Is this why they don’t want us to protect ourselves? Of all the stupidity they spout this is the worst. Do they not have families, friends and associates that would be harmed if we’re attacked? Do they not care? There is no way to even try to explain this kind of existence so divorced from reality. What do they accomplish by opposing this? Their own demise. Maybe they do have a death wish. It’s really impossible to explain this kind of ignorance because it makes no sense no matter how they try to explain it.
Rachel Maddow works hard at making up her lies, and she libels those she decides are her political enemies.
That poisonous activity has no place in our society, polite or otherwise.
” Democratic thinking, and the Democratic president ”
NO!! There is not, and never has been, anything democratic about the Democrat party.
Its, ‘Democrat thinking, and the Democrat president’
An effective (i.e. reactive countermeasure and proactive deterrent) missile defense system is another step to America repositioning our military to a strategic stance. Along with correcting insane energy policies defined by limited-value “green” technology and a phobia of nuclear processes, enabling our allies to defend their interests will permit us to focus on our own.
“Without Iron Dome, a ground invasion of Gaza was a certainty”
How’s that Land for Peace deal looking about now? Unmitigated disaster, yes? When does Israel take the land back? Will NOT invading now, as a result of Iron Dome result in an Iranian made nuclear bomb exploding five or ten years from now in Tel Aviv?
My precursor for a cease fire would have been either 1) Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist (ie. officially remove destruction of Israel from Hamas’ charter) or, 2) Hamas must cease to rule in Gaza.
Short of either of those conditions, how do you NOT send ground troops? The current cease fire is a huge loss for Israel. Hamas stays in power, Iran rearms them, Israel has made yet more concessions, and Israel has delegitimized its own right to self defense. Again.
It’s not that she is wrong, but that she is also so condescending about it.
Awesome. Though probably just a stop-gap until the “Lasers” come on line!
As a practical matter, she really is kind of dumb.
Ever read any passages from her book? The reading is dumb, and her summations are ridiculous, if not anti-climactic.
Madcow’s appeal is her arrogant attitude — period. It appeals to the left and especially the Hollywood crowd.
The right is going to have to embrace the technique — or learn to live under leftism.
One thing I will give a ‘nod’ to Wretched Madcow for: Possessing more Testosterone than Cwissy Matthews+Eddie Schultz+Rev.Tawana Sharpton+Larry O’Donnell x 9. Ya know, like around a thimble-full.
What about the news guy that called her an “angry young man?” That is the best!
Dear Rachel Maddow,
Do you know how you “shoot a bullet with another bullet” computer guided bullets using GPS, heat seeking, SONAR (whatever). But I’m glad you killed that strawman! He was looking fierce.
The believers of “limited nuclear war” fear missile defense for the same reason that “Iron Dome” wasn’t perfect. They figure that missile defense will make war planners resort to larger salvos of missiles,but any sane person would know that one nuclear tipped missile can ruin your day just as we’ll as a larger salvo.
It is not out of politeness that I refrain from calling Rachel Maddow the c-word, but out of fairness to people who are merely c-words.
Rachel Maddow is smug and snarky and her opinions are so far removed from an honest assessment of the facts that if he were alive, the late Patrick Moynihan might revise his aphorism that everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own set of facts, with the caveat that Rachel Maddow is not even entitled to her own opinions.
Rachel Maddow is a continuing disgrace to Stanford University (and maybe even to Oxford University).
For all of the moaning that “talk radio” has rent the fabric of society, a much stronger case could be made (based on facts) that MSNBC is Exhibit A for the proposition that the internet and cable have “unbridled” the dissemination of political opinion and information in ways that are both atrocious (as in atrocity) as well as good (i.e., liberation from the oligopoly of the the large broadcast media and print media outlets of the 20th century).
Although, you have to admit that Olbermann makes even Maddow look dignified, kind of like the leper with the most fingers.
Maddow (who is MSNBCs biggest political programming draw) is to the plight of NBC what Dan Rather was to the Tiffany Network and what Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Thomas Friedman are to the New York Times franchise that once was called the paper of record and the grey lady.
Then again, why should anyone be shocked. Ted Kennedy got re-elected and re-elected to the U.S. Senatae and Elizabeth Warren is about to be the Conscience of the U.S. Senate. Madoff was a fraud. Corzine is immune. The Supreme Court upheld Obamacare by the vote of Chief Justice John Roberts. The U.N. had a $23 billion scandal/fraud with Cotecna and Kofi Annan’s son that shocked even critics of the U.N. (where countries like Libya sit on the human rights committee) and no heads rolled. And, even the Federal Reserve, has been turned into a naked instrument of politics and balance sheet accounting fraud. [No, I don’t own a gun or wear tin foil]. Not to mention Government Education and college education in this country.
All of our institutions have debased themselves. Diane Feinstein could fairly be called an “elder statesperson” of the Senate Democrats despite her rocky start in the 1980s.
Voters did not identify with Romney, and not on grounds of Mormonism but just because he’s too, ya know, “conventional.”
So, compared to all of that and Keith Olbermann and the fantastical utterances of so many of our Congresspersons and Senators (mostly left but a few on the right), what is Rachel Maddow? To paraphrase Paul Giamatti’s character in Sideways, Rachel Maddow isn’t even a “smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea.” She is a joke. And she is such a blatant joke that she is to NBC, Stanford, the Rhodes Scholarship (assuming scholarship has something to do with facts and honest analysis), and maybe even to Oxford, what the Nobel Prize Committee of today is to the Nobel Prize Committee of 1950.
P.S. – I figured out what is wrong with Chris O’Donnell. He is the sibling of Rosie O’Donnell and a picture of what she would be like after gender reassignment, lapband, and a smidge of testosterone pills.
Amen..AMEN…A*M*E*N, Jack!!
Looks like you’re comfy with being a post Nov.6th irascibile old Coot-Curmudgeon, too. It’s goooooood for me to have company.(-:
There’s a significant difference between tactical missile defense and strategic missile defense. While the former can be useful, the latter is unfeasible with any current technology.
The only thing that we know for sure that doesn’t work is Rachel Maddow’s offensive system of discussion – it’s hysterically fanatical and nothing more.
One could get a near-perfectly accurate view of the world by simply inverting everything that comes out of the mind of Rachel Maddow.
Take it from one who’s been there, Maddow’s ignorance on the subject of missile technology in monumental. Also, stupie is incurable.
“stupie” is the feminine for stupid.
I don’t watch “Pat” Maddow, but I feel certain that she embraces the Democrat dogma about being the party that believes in science! You know, embryonic stem-cells, climate change and evolution!
But, shooting a bullet with a bullet can’t be done? Impossible! Annie Oakley! Hysterical fantasy!