Down at San Onofre

Marshall Islanders and Islands, R.I.P.

http://www.wbez.org/worldview/2012-02-23
About the 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall islands, including "Bravo" which was 1000 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb and the US govt's deliberately planned (proven by USDOE documents) exposure of the Marshall Islanders who recvd 9 lifetimes of radiation exposure. Over an inch of snow-like radioactive fallout (vaporized coral) fell. Burned, hairless irradiated islanders evacuated after 2-3 days. Listen from minute 6. Extremely racist govt archive audio from minute 13.

Here on GOP's Isle (a.k.a. Gullibles Island)

Mitt Romney reminds me of someone. I finally figured out he's trying to do Thurston Howell III.

But that doesn't seem to be the end of it. If you think about it, Rick Perry has been trying out for the part of Gilligan. He's very good at it.

That means the Skipper has to be Newt Gingrich. At least his personal relationships are known to be sailor-like. As the majority leader of the House of Reprehensibles, he was third in line to the presidency. He also skippered that deliberative body into weather that started getting rough, and his tiny ship was tossed.

Sarah Palin is obviously Ginger. MaryAnne, with her homespun midwestern values, could have aged badly and morphed into Michelle Bachman if the series had gone on a few more decades.

Ron Paul is The Professor. When he isn't trying to abolish the fed he's making a radio out of a coconut or something. He is a doctor, after all.

"And the rest" has to cover Herman Cain here. He could be a one-episode character who washed up on the island, gains popularity when he promises to build a pizza restaurant, takes their money with some 9-9-9 scheme, and then leaves, taking their best hopes to be rescued with him. Perhaps an episode featured a campaign to elect the island's leader.

The question is: How could we be living in a Gilligan's Island script gone haywire? What I hypothesize is that a nuclear bomb test in the Pacific coincided with a popular broadcast of Gilligan's Island, somehow amplifying the existing television signal and embedding the plot in the subconscious minds of young impressionable children at the time. These children grew up with a Manchurian candidate syndrome, subconsciously seeking to replicate the plot of the fateful episode.

Alternate explanation: scriptwriter or casting director for Gilligan's Island was plagued by horrific premonitions of the 2011-2012 Republican Presidential candidate nominating process. This was probably caused by the Higgs Boson generated in our time-frame tunneling back through a wormhole into the 1960s.

This is so obvious, excuse me if other people have already noticed and done a skit of the concept on tv. Obviously i haven't watched much tv since the 1960s.

President 1962

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AesVsRvOEo
1962.
JFK: Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Clown Car Update

Accidentally caught the Reptilian party "cnn tea party" "debate". There were 8 cards on the table. All appear challenged and slow. They represent the people who are a few decades behind the rest of the country, primarily the elderly. It seems that Republican candid-8 attending the debates should have the same right (or obligation?) to carry a concealed firearm that they enjoy when they go out for a drink. Let the sniping begin-- or continue. You have to fight for your right to "party". Didn't the Gipper say that?

Down the Banksters

Is there any way to get back to common sense and get rid of these two wallstreet parties' duo-cracy?
http://www.yesmagazine.org/pdf/liberateamericadownload.pdf
How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/19-8
The dominant story of the current political debate is that the government is broke. We can’t afford to pay for public services, put people to work, or service the public debt. Yet as a nation, we are awash in money. A defective system of money, banking, and finance just puts it in the wrong places.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/
Obama’s 2012 Budget Proposal: How $3.7 Trillion is Spent

How are the grapes now?
BBC News - In Steinbeck's footsteps: America's struggles in 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14296682
The BBC's Paul Mason retraces the harrowing journey taken by migrant workers the Joad family which John Steinbeck described in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, set during the Great Depression, to find out how it reflects the realities of America's current economic crisis.

Thank you, America.

Declassified papers show U.S. promoted atomic power in Japan | The Japan Times Online
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110725a4.html
The United States used atomic power cooperation with Japan in the 1950s to ease the Japanese public's aversion to nuclear weapons and remedy their "ignorance" about such energy, declassified U.S. papers showed Saturday.

the reaming » "It is important to our relations with Japan that we seek to remove the strong Japanese notion that atomic and nuclear energy is primarily destructive. We should accordingly attempt at an early point to include Japan in bilateral and multilateral actions intended to develop peaceful uses of atomic energy." That November, Japan got reams of atomic energy documents.

Robert Reich

An economics lesson from Robert Reich, complete with notes, in about the same time as a commercial break.

I-131 exposure in the years of atmospheric nuclear bomb tests

http://www.ieer.org/latest/iodnart.html
or
http://books.google.com/books?id=vgwAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA1&pg=PA46#v=onepage&q&f=false

IEER's article on I-131 fallout: "Let Them Drink Milk"
By: Pat Ortmeyer and Arjun Makhijani
Article published as "Worse Than We Knew,"
for November/December 1997 issue of
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
www.ieer.org

On August 1, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) revealed that as a result of U.S. nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), American children were actually exposed to 15 to 70 times as much radiation as had been previously reported to Congress.

Rolling Stone on America's Nuke Industry, Safety, and the revolving door of the toothless NRC

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/america-s-nuclear-nightmare-20110427

Some choice excerpts:

NRC has long served as little more than a lap dog to the nuclear industry, unwilling to crack down on unsafe reactors. "The agency is a wholly owned subsidiary of the nuclear power industry," says Victor Gilinsky, who served on the commission during the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979.

Even President Obama denounced the NRC during the 2008 campaign, calling it a "moribund agency that needs to be revamped and has become captive of the industries that it regulates."
...
In the years ahead, nuclear experts warn, the consequences of the agency's inaction could be dire. "The NRC has consistently put industry profits above public safety," says Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear executive turned whistle-blower. "Consequently, we have a dozen Fukushimas waiting to happen in America."
...
In his 2012 budget, President Obama included $54 billion in federal loan guarantees for new reactors — far more than the $18 billion available for renewable energy.

Without such taxpayer support, no new reactors would ever be built. Since the Manhattan Project was created to develop the atomic bomb back in the 1940s, the dream of a nuclear future has been fueled almost entirely by Big Government. America's current fleet of reactors exists only because Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, limiting the liability of nuclear plant operators in case of disaster. And even with taxpayers assuming most of the risk, Wall Street still won't finance nuclear reactors without direct federal assistance, in part because construction costs are so high (up to $20 billion per plant) and in part because nukes are the only energy investment that can be rendered worthless in a matter of hours. "In a free market, where real risks and costs are accounted for, nuclear power doesn't exist," says Amory Lovins, a leading energy expert at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Nuclear plants "are a creation of government policy and intervention."

They are also a creation of lobbying and campaign contributions. Over the past decade, the nuclear industry has contributed more than $4.6 million to members of Congress — and last year alone, it spent $1.7 million on federal lobbying. Given the generous flow of nuclear money, the NRC is essentially rigged to operate in the industry's favor. The agency has plenty of skilled engineers and scientists at the staff level, but the five commissioners who oversee it often have close ties to the industry they are supposed to regulate. "They are vetted by the industry," says Robert Alvarez, a former senior policy adviser at the Energy Department. "It's the typical revolving-door story — many are coming in or out of jobs with the nuclear power industry. You don't get a lot of skeptics appointed to this job."
...
Jeffrey Merrifield, a former NRC commissioner who left the agency in 2007, is a case in point. When Merrifield was ready to exit public service, he simply called up the CEO of Exelon, the country's largest nuclear operator, and asked him for a job recommendation. Given his friends in high places, he wound up taking a top job at the Shaw Group, a construction firm that builds nuclear reactors — and he's done his best to return the favor. During the Fukushima disaster, Merrifield appeared on Fox News, as well as in videos for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying group. In one video — titled "Former NRC Commissioner Confident That Building of New U.S. Nuclear Plants Should Continue" — Merrifield reassures viewers that the meltdown in Japan is no big deal. "We should continue to move forward with building those new plants," he says, "because it's the right thing for our nation and it's the right thing for our future."
...
America has 31 aging reactors just like Fukushima, and it wouldn't take an earthquake or tsunami to push many of them to the brink of meltdown. A natural disaster may have triggered the crisis in Japan, but the real problem was that the plant lost power and was unable to keep its cooling systems running — a condition known as "station blackout." At U.S. reactors, power failures have been caused by culprits as mundane as squirrels playing on power lines. In the event of a blackout, operators have only a few hours to restore power before a meltdown begins. All nukes are equipped with backup diesel generators, as well as batteries. But at Fukushima, the diesel generators were swamped by floodwaters, and the batteries lasted a mere eight hours — not nearly long enough to get power restored and avert catastrophe. NRC standards do virtually nothing to prevent such a crisis here at home. Only 11 of America's nuclear reactors have batteries designed to supply power for up to eight hours, while the other 93 have batteries that last half that long.
...
Indeed, the NRC's "safety-last" attitude recalls the industry-friendly approach to regulation that resulted in the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Nuclear reactors were built to last only 40 years, but the NRC has repeatedly greenlighted industry requests to keep the aging nukes running for another two decades: Of the 63 applications the NRC has received for license extensions, it has approved all 63.
...
According to a 2003 study, it would cost as much as $7 billion to move the spent fuel out of the pools and into more secure containers known as dry-cask storage. So why hasn't the NRC required such a precaution? "Power companies don't want to pay for it," says Alvarez. "They would rather let the public take the risk." Gilinsky offers another explanation. "After insisting for years that spent fuel pools were not a problem," he says, "the NRC doesn't want to admit what everyone knows after Fukushima: They were wrong."
...
Some critics argue that it's time for an outside agency, such as the National Academy of Sciences, to take an independent look at the safety and security of America's aging nukes. A better idea might be to simply repeal the Price-Anderson Act and force the nuclear industry to take responsibility for the risks of running these old plants, rather than laying it all off on taxpayers. The meltdown in Japan could cost Tokyo Electric some $130 billion — roughly three times what the Deepwater Horizon spill cost BP. If nuke owners had to put their own money where their atoms are, the crumbling old reactors would get cleaned up or shut down in a heartbeat.
...
Instead, by allowing the industry to cut safety margins in exchange for profits, the NRC is actually putting the "nuclear renaissance" itself at risk. "It has not been protesters who have brought down the nuclear industry," said Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts. "It has been Wall Street." Wind and natural gas are already cheaper than nukes, and the price of solar is falling fast. And with each new Fukushima, the cost of nukes — as well as the risks — will continue to rise.

Read the article!

A.C.L.U. (Restore the rule of law)

In retrospect, the 2008 Obama presidential campaign looks like a slick marketing campaign. "Change we can believe in" had to be dreamt up by a marketing executive after extensive polling, the iconic poster and color schemes all look like they came out of a corporate campaign. It's no wonder there has been so little change. Coming from the one-party system of the Democratic Republican party, what more could we expect? The Democratic wing of the one-party state represents straightforward corporate capitalism with a populist survival instinct, while the Republican wing of the party represents crazy cowboy capitalism. The rulers have found it sufficient to allow the public, once every 2 to 4 years, a chance to flip this binary switch to the other setting and manufacture sufficient consent around that choice. Third parties have only been able to drain off a little of the power from the binary party system. I'm glad I didn't vote for Obama or send money to him. Money, if one has it to donate, should go to Democracy Now, the ACLU, or, if possible, perhaps Wikileaks, since they are the ones to do what was once the work of a free press. Third parties in the US should unite with a program to break the one-binary-party system with Preferential Voting. In the best case, candidates of the Democratic-Republicans would also feel pressured to support Preferential Voting in order to win election, and local, state, and national offices. This would at least have a chance to break the system open to free competition by third parties.

When Obama took office, there was some hope that he would enforce the laws and defend the Constitution of the United States, arresting war criminals and torturers of the previous administration. Ideally, this could have meant reviewing any and all laws passed during the previous administration, having referendums on judges and appointees of the previous eight years, reviewing the qualifications of all federal employees added during the Bush administration (a great cost-cutting measure, and they can be replaced with non-nutjob Obama appointees). None of this was to happen, as the Obamas decided to look forward rather than backwards. Given the pile of things to do, and the choices that had to be made, that may have been the best and most positive choice. Perhaps it will even work politically for Obama in 2012. In any case, the moment when justice was possible is gone. Now they will have to deal with the crap thrown at them by a Republican congress.

This is from the ACLU website. It is full of hope for justice, but the hope that torture would be properly dealt with seems to be fading as people accept the reality of an Obama administration that has little or no more respect for civil liberties, open government, or human rights than the previous administration did.

In order to restore the rule of law and the credibility of the American justice system, there must be a thorough investigation of those who ordered and authorized the Bush administration's torture policies. Torture is a crime, and the fact that crimes were committed during the interrogations of detainees can no longer be doubted or debated. Despite the voluminous evidence that senior Bush administration officials authorized torture, the only people who have been held accountable for this maltreatment of prisoners are low-ranking soldiers. President Obama has said that no one is above the law, and Attorney General Eric Holder has said that the Department of Justice will follow the facts wherever they lead. It's time to hold them to their word.

Until the guilty parties are held accountable and justice is done, the government will just get more and more closed and corrupt. Obama, if he is not making it better, is making it worse. This political system tends gradually toward an imperial presidency.

Although he has not been intelligent, resourceful, cunning, or creative enough to find a way to close Guantanamo Bay, President Obama has sought to leave some avenues open for future action. The indefinite detention of people without charge or trial is a gross violation of human rights under the US Constitution as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unconventional solutions are better than the status quo. If they cannot be returned to their home countries, airdrop them back into the rural Afghanistan where they were found, or Iraq, or Turkmenistan, or tag them and release them in Guam, the Antarctic Research Station, Brunei, or somewhere. Obama must be afraid of the political costs of freeing illegally held people.

NYT Interactive Budget Puzzle

It really isn't so hard to balance the US budget and eliminate the deficit. That was my go at it. You don't need to go back to the policies of the Eisenhower administration or even the Clinton administration. I think the hard part comes in when you have to convince 100 Senators and 438 Congresspeople to vote for your plan. Perhaps it's also a problem that there is no single person to come up with a budget and push it through (as far as I know, it's a committee thing).

Give it a try, if you haven't done so already.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html

Results as tabulated in late November. The comments people made in the related article "16 Ways to Cut the Deficit" also reveal a lot more common sense than you usually hear from politicians and the illiterate man-in-the-street.

Legalize Arizona

A check of the relevant papers has determined that Arizona entered the United States illegally. The state has been returned to Mexico.

The flow just won't stop:-(

As thousands of sea birds, endangered turtles, fish, and wildlife of all kinds lay dying in a sea of oil, millions of Americans were disappointed today to see the live video feed showing that the valve work has failed to stop the flow of blood to Dick Cheney's brain.

"Paul the Octopus" vs "Sarah Palin"

Paul the Octopus is currently leading Sarah Palin in the polls for the preferred Republican Presidential candidate in 2012. Voters are weighing doubts about the candidate's eligibility for the office and a suspected foreign place of birth with the possibility that the other candidate's brain is a sac of water. The creature's "brain", or water-filled sac, is believed to help propel the creature through the surrounding media.

Carry On My Hayward Son

Hayward (as in Tony) sounds a little like "wayward". It makes a guy think...


Carry On My Hayward Son
(adopted from KANSAS)

Carry on my Hayward son(-of-a-bitch)
There'll "BP" when you are done
Stop the gushing leaking oil
Don't you spill no more

Once I sank below the noise and confusion
"Beyond Petroleum" was just an illusion
I was drilling ever deeper
But I drilled too deep

Killed eleven on the rig in the fire
Burned alive to help our stock price go higher
I hear the voices when I'm drilling
I can hear them say

Refrain
Carry on my Hayward son(-of-a-bitch)
There'll "BP" when you are done
Stop the gushing leaking oil
Don't you spill no more


Tried the Top Hat and the Junk Shot and Top Kill
Lied to everyone about how much we spill
"Boot on your neck!" said Salazar
but his balls are in our jar.

On a stormy sea of moving emulsion
Nauseated by oceanic revulsion
I try to hide it with dispersent
But I hear the voices say

Refrain
Carry on my Hayward son(-of-a-bitch)
There'll "BP" when you are done
Stop the gushing leaking oil
Don't you spill no more

No!

Carry on, you will always remember
Carry on, it's the fault of the vendor
Blowout preventer from Transocean
Halliburton's concrete plug

Carry on my Hayward son(-of-a-bitch)
There'll "BP" when you are done
Stop the gushing leaking oil
Don't you spill (don't you spill no more)



The original lyrics are not irrelevant to the situation, either.

(by KANSAS)
Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more

Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher
But I flew too high

Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man
Though my mind could think I still was a mad man
I hear the voices when I'm dreaming
I can hear them say

{Refrain

Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man, well
It surely means that I don't know

On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about I'm like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune
But I hear the voices say

{Refrain
No!

Carry on, you will always remember
Carry on, nothing equals the splendor
The center lights around your vanity
But surely heaven waits for you

Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry (don't you cry no more)

BP-irates of the Caribbean

BP-irates of the Caribbean: "Dead Man's Deepwater Horizon" -- coming soon to a coastline near you!

Update: Perfectionism kicked in; I wasn't happy with kwik'n'dirty version and edited it.

¿(¡Viva la immigración!)?

Could wearing a sombrero and bandana (and growing a bushy mustache) be a viable way for Arizonans to protest state law SB1070?

BRL and beyond

I never used to watch Break Room Live because I listened to it. They had some good video clips that I never noticed until now.

Our poor fallen masters. Give generously.


Sam


Marc's House!


Cats.

Bluster and threat in software "patents"

Jonathan Schwartz of Sun describes getting shaken down by Bill of the Gates and Steve of the Jobs.