Is That Silence Usually a Good Sign? | The West Wing 

hilarious

The beginning of Israel's "Iron Dome"?

"sharpen a pencil wouldja" 😅

I just have this idea. Why don’t you put all in the money invested in R&D for the interceptor into corrupting the Russian military, as in bribing them. Wouldn’t that be more effective?

@@Haannibal777 I’d have to say no. The reason the Russian military is in such a sorry state now is because their officers are already so corrupt. They take money meant for maintaining their equipment and keep it for themselves. Additional money from the US might make the Russian situation worse, but it might not. Bribing their officers would add money to the Russian economy, which is bad for NATO. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

@@Haannibal777 Who says we haven't? It's not exactly something they'd report to the public.

Though "Leo, were you BORN at the age of 55?" is a close second.

OK, one final observation...I'm noticing through these clips that Bartlet had a habit of saying the most random things to Leo while in tense Situation Room circumstances...I wonder if he did that just to mess with Leo sometimes. The look on Leo's face with Bartlet suddenly mentions James Michener's typewriter....

@@KellySedingerif you look at photos of a young John Spencer he looks like old John Spencer with a crappy wig; he really was born to be in his fifties.

Still playing with guns too!

Thank you! I was trying to place him!

@@alexpeartree2019 If Tackleberry knew there was a chance to miss by 137 miles he would have brought a way bigger gun.

Huh. Didn't even recognize him. But then, he's a lot older than he was in Police Academy.

@@jursamaj that is indeed how time works.

Absolutely! That or "The Charlie Brown of Missile Defence".

A Colonel actually.

holy shit lol

@@JJZephyr374 I have ammended my comment accordingly. 🙂

Toby: "Is that a lot?"

Tackleberry IS a situation

When your actions don’t change your opponents strategy, you’re playing a game, not a sport. Like with darts, or bowling. What you do only affects your own scorecard.

@@CertifiedIndustryProfessionalI was going to say that I agree but then I thought about chess….

@@normanlazarus1836 mmm, true. I wouldn’t argue that chess is a sport, I feel that you at least have to change your shoes to be playing a sport. But I do think that you and your opponent sharing ground at the same time should be a requirement for a sport. Like in motorsports, or boxing. But then I do feel that track and field events like javelin are sports, even though it’s only one person competing at a time. It’s tricky business. Anything you can do drunk, like golf, is not a sport worth anyone’s time.

@@CertifiedIndustryProfessional I never thought track and field was sport either.

Golf is absolutely not a sport. Golf is a game that you play against yourself even if you are competing in a tournament. Just like pool or billiards.

Problem is the missiles are too fast and agile now to intercept in the "cruise" phase as this was intended. Energy weapons are the only defense to a hypersonic glide vehicle.

Well except maybe (over decades) infiltration into both the ruling parties, the government infrastructure, control over its manufacturing base by relocating it to your country by utilizing that countries capitalist greed, as well as influence the educational system and change ideologies to either conform to your country’s beliefs or cause enough division to negate any decision policy of using them ICBM’s or the military system either through lack of maintenance funding or confusion over control management as well as degradation of the mental competence of leadership, and spread distrust from those in uniform as well as the greater population in the said competency of said leadership. Seems a better tactic than direct nuclear / non-nuclear confrontation that is known to be a no win situation for anyone. Hello China 😊

There is. It's called PRISM. While this scene is funny, it is meaningless. The prototype they're testing in this scene goes on to become the Patriot missile which is currently intercepting Russian missiles in Ukraine successfully each and everyday.

@@jpa5038 There's a big difference between intercepting atmospheric missiles like in Ukraine or Israel, and intercepting ICBMs, which is what this scene is about.

@@rockon41 That literally is the difference between Patriot missiles and PRISM. PRISM can intercept ICBMs outside earth's atmosphere.

@@jpa5038 Is that the only system that has a 100% Success rate? Because they only tested it once in 20 years?😅

well, yeah. we wish we had anyone else running really. corpse still better than theocracy enabling Nazis tho.

Everyone wishes Bartlett is president.

You have him. His name is Joe Biden.

@@suestroud

Bartlet

That's okay. I still don't even know what it means.

EXACTLY! Like so many weapons systems that didn't work until they did.

While I agree in principle, I'm more on the side of Lord Marbury: if you beat the nuclear missile, someone will build a better missile.

​@@bladactaniaPlus as Marbury points out, there are international treaties against what Leo is trying to build with the shield... Indeed as Marbury brings up; even if the treaties weren't an issue and no one developed a better bomb in response (which they absolutely would), the shield simply doesn't work. Despite years and billions in R&D money, they are still missing the target by over a hundred miles during a training exercise. Now I completely agree that Leo's intentions are noble here, he wants the threat of nuclear warfare stifled and that is a desire I can get behind, but at least based on the Shield's performance in this test, negotiation is still the most viable path to that goal.

Leo's well intended and Bartlet and Mrs. Landingham are dumb and short-sighted about technology, but there are good reasons why people don't like ABMs. A missile shield could set off a new nuclear arms race, since countries will be racing to build more nukes than the shield can defend against which will in turn force the US to build more nukes. Then it arguably makes the threat of conventional wars higher, since if no one has to worry about nuclear retaliation, then aggressive nations might be more likely to wage conventional wars. That said, technology is going to advance anyway. Someone, somewhere is eventually going to build a viable counter to nuclear weapons.

That's why you make it a top-secret program, so people don't know you have such a shield.

@@JamesTobiasStewartThe ABM Treaty limited the number of ABM sites. Marbury and his country may have been banned from developing an ABM shield, but not the USA.

He initially thinks they missed it by about 40 metres, only to be told it actually missed by 220 km

You have the entire internet at your finger tips and you can't use it to do it yourself?

@@PeterHarlequinWhite I think it is referencing another scene involving space where the president did make the calculations in his head. But by all means miss the reference and make a snarky comment that makes you appear stupid.

NASA is great at naming things.

Well it was actually in low earth orbit and mostly within our own atmosphere.

Kinda hard for me to view hitting a little ball with a bent stick into a hole as a sport. Although I must admit, I’m jealous of people who are proficient at such a useless activity becoming millionaires. Funny old world, eh?

As much as IQ dislike golfers in general, golf is a sport because winning is determined by the participants themselves, ie by running the fastest, jumping the highest, or in golf, having the lowest score. I don't consider anything a sport where judges decide who the winner is.

@@davidcat1455 obviously never tried it. It's a lot harder than it sounds, and you don't just turn up on course and become a millionaire. Like any other sport you have to train and practice every single day. To say nothing of the mental strength this requires. My favourite story about golf is how back in the day Dan Marino the QB for Miami Dolphins tried to qualify for the US Open but he said he didn't have the mental strength to compete at that level. Dan Marino! Not mentally strong enough for Golf!

To be totally fair to Jed on this one, Leo's high-minded rhetoric about nuclear disarmament doesn't stop this particular method from clearly being a boondoggle that's obviously not working. And to be further fair to Jed, as Marbury points out, this particular system would only work to shield the United States -- i.e. one country -- from nuclear weapons, not every single person on the planet. You're somewhere not covered by this shield and the bombs start flying, you're shit outta luck I guess. And to yet again be totally fair to Jed, when Leo says this exact same thing in the scene you mention, Jed clearly doesn't get "lippy and dismissive" but reacts perfectly respectfully. Because he's clearly all for removing the dangers of nuclear weaponry from the world, he just thinks that this particular method is dumb and unlikely to work no matter how much money is thrown at it.

In short, you dislike Bartlet because you fail to understand the nature of the interpersonal dynamic between him and Leo. Got it.