Who's going to be the first to blame it on Clinton?

Step right up here -- don't be shy.

Alternatively, it's Kerry's fault. Right?

Don,

I am surprised. You are NOW finally waking up to the reality of how incredibly dangerous the Democrats are, especially when they are in entrenched bureaucracies.

Can we now expect sanity from you?

And you will be Voting Republican..... NO... well. O.K. ... I understand about Demon Rehab and Recovery.

Most of us go through that as we mature and see that the Democrats are mostly totally selfish people who want someone else to support them.

Most who work to create businesses know better than that. On the other hand, decent humans like my Father can still be "yellow-dog Democrats" until late in life.

I think my Dad, a hard working farmer, was in his 60's before he had finally had enough of the "slopping at the hog trough" tax crap. He NEVER VOTED Democratic again till the day he died.

This Los Alamos story goes back years. There is blame to go around on ALL SIDES .... but the facts are simple if you want a political BLAME GAME.

My personal opinion is that your comment shows INCREDIBLE IGNORANCE, but below is a FACT you cannot spin.

Democrats have been in the White House the MAJORITY of the time since Los Alamos began in the 1940's during Franklin Roosevelt's administration.

In order:

Roosevelt, Truman, Esienhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush

I remember the Wen Ho Lee fiasco under Clinton. It is obvious this agency has been out of control for years. It is probably time to get rid of a lot of bureaucrats there and get a new manager, instead of the University of California.

Yes, I do believe Clinton bears some blame here. The Wen Ho Lee fiasco, remember.

Who is going to be the first liberal to try and make a lame political point with this? Oops, too late, we have a winner.

Having actually been to Los Alamos, I can tell you like most university research labs, it's filled will a high percentage of liberal academics, you know, the 'million Mogadishu' types. I would imagine looking after security and safety at the labs is a bit like cat wrangling.

Listen guys: no lab accidents, no superheroes. It's that simple.

:-)

I worked at Los Alamos for about 3 years, so perhaps I can add something to this converstation. To give perspective to my remarks, I worked on non-classified research in T-Division (which mainly does unclassified work in theoretical physics, chemistry, and biology), I left in the early 1990's, and although I did non-classified work, I had Q-clearance (a DOE clearance which roughly corresponds to DOD Top Secret). As a whole, I liked working at Los Alamos. I had many accomplished and interesting collegues and the physical setting is remarkably beautiful.

T-division had much of the atmosphere of a university research lab. In terms of political views I would guess that most T-division scientists were solidly mainstream Democrats, with a few left-wing moonbats, and a yet smaller number of Republicans. Security and safety regulations were viewed as a hassle, as would be expected for a group of independent minded intellectuals.

Most of the scientists, including myself, took the security regulations fairly seriously. As a typical example, my group head would say, "Keep the weird science were it belongs." Many people questioned the need for so much security.

As I worked in theoretical physics, my work was with computers or with pen and paper, so I had little interactions with the safety rules. I did know people who did experiments, and listened to their complaints. The problem with the safety regulations seemed to stem from the general problems of a large bureaucracy. There were a large number of rules, they sometimes contradicted one another, they often did not make sense, and they could slow projects down. Combine this situation with very smart people who pride themselves on their independence (indeed, their intellectual independence is a large part of their ability to produce good science) and you have a large number of people who are likely to disobey safety rules.

I hope that these remarks help people put this story into context.

Heh!

The Wen Ho Lee fiasco was investigated to a fare-thee-well for quite some time. What did it come up with?

Nothing!

Unless someone has some actual evidence here, what these endless repetitions of past investigative failures leaves us with is content-free entirely.

Clearly someone was going to bring up Lee, and point to WJC as being At Fault for the episode. Consider my post a sort of Pre-Emptive strategy in the discussion.

Which is nonsense, but it's how the game is played in an election year.

Consider my post a sort of Pre-Emptive strategy in the discussion.

Which is nonsense, but it’s how the game is played in an election year.

Posted by: Don at July 17, 2004 08:47 PM

******************************************
Then you believe in Pre-Emptive strikes?

Average Joe:
Thanks for the perspective, much as I surmised. I lived in White Rock and also found it beautiful.

Don:
WTF are you on about? Can you manage to post anything of relevance? Try. No one seems to be taking any notice of your tired memes.

"Security and safety regulations were viewed as a hassle, as would be expected for a group of independent minded intellectuals."

I am including a link HERE to an AP story in my local rag from today.

"The problem with the safety regulations seemed to stem from the general problems of a large bureaucracy. There were a large number of rules, they sometimes contradicted one another, they often did not make sense, and they could slow projects down. Combine this situation with very smart people who pride themselves on their independence (indeed, their intellectual independence is a large part of their ability to produce good science) and you have a large number of people who are likely to disobey safety rules."

I cut some of the article: Head of the facility, Pete Nanos "blamed ‘‘cowboys'' who are disobeying rules on the handling of sensitive material. ‘‘I don't care how many people I have to fire to make it stop,'' he said.

‘‘If you think the rules are silly, if you think compliance is a joke, please resign now and save me the trouble,'' he said.

The italicized portion Posted by: Average Joe at July 17, 2004 05:22 PM

Don YOU are providing a display of Partisanship on this one. Are you an Expert on ScientificReality™ as well? Is there any Field in which you are NOT an expert?

BTW - The article made mention of a very recent accident involving LaserLight damage to the cornea of an intern. Hard drives were missing or misplaced last week. Too dang bad the Laser couldn't have shed a little light on the perspective of our Favorite Reality™ Expert.

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (Click here should you choose to sign out.)

As you post your comment, please mind our simple comment policy: we welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. We also ask that you avoid the extensive use of profanity, racist terms (neither of which we consider civil or respectful), and other boorish language.

We reserve the right to delete any comment, and to prohibit you from commenting on this site, if we feel you have broached this policy. As a courtesy, we will first send you an email noting a violation so you understand the boundaries. This will occur only once, however, and should we ban you from our comment forums we expect that ban to be permanent.

We also will frown upon those who suggest that we ban other individuals for voicing unpopular opinions, should those opinions be voiced in a civil and respectful manner. The point of our comment threads is to provide a forum for spirited though civil and respectful discourse … it is not to provide a forum in which everyone will agree with your point of view.

If you can live by these rules, welcome aboard. If not, then we’re sorry it didn’t work out, and thanks for visiting The Command Post.

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: