Fukushima Mon Amor

I am against nuclear power for the same reason that I am against the XL pipeline: it is an imbecilic choice on a pure cost/benefit ratio. If humans are involved, accidents WILL happen. Period. Pipeline or plutonium, accidents will occur. And, given the nature of the price of an accident over TIME (astonishing time, geological time) versus a couple of kilowatts of power, only a greedy bastard with no regard for humankind, or very carefully arranged blinkers to avoid noticing that would MAKE SUCH A STUPID CHOICE. To wit:

Fukushima operator may have to dump contaminated water into Pacific
Senior adviser to Tokyo Electric Power says controlled release into sea is much safer than keeping contaminated water on-site
Justin McCurry / Guardian

A senior adviser to the operator of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has told the firm that it may have no choice but to eventually dump hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking to reporters who were on a rare visit to the plant on the eve of the third anniversary of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Dale Klein said Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] had yet to reassure the public over the handling of water leaks that continue to frustrate efforts to clean up the site.

Yep. All that fuss for all those years to clean up that pittance of electricity they generated (compared to the COSTS already associated with it — and that’s merely the cold cash equation.

It’s Not Easy, Being Clueless

Listen to the clueless analyzing the amoral:

Leading Republicans Move to Stamp Out Challenges From Right
Carl Hulse / New York Times

WASHINGTON — As conservative activist groups stirred up trouble for establishment Republican Senate candidates in 2010 and 2012, party leaders in Washington first tried to ignore the insurgents, then tried to reason with them …

No: an arriviste Fifth Column of former “libertarians” engaged in a hostile takeover of the GOP, with the payoff being 2010. Someone with a brain or a working amygdala would notice —  if only as an act of craven self-preservation — that these are NOT Republicans, NOR ARE THEY CONSERVATIVES!

Letter to a Burning Ham Fail

Dear George Will:

Have you lost that pittance of good sense the  lord saw fit to endow you with?

The IRS’s behavior taxes credulity
George F. Will / Washington Post

 What’s been said of confession — that it is good for one’s soul but bad for one’s reputation — can also be true of testifying to Congress, so Lois Lerner has chosen to stay silent.  Hers, however, is an eloquent silence.

The headline pun is as lame as the predictable prose that follows: wan, flaccid, pallid, feeble.

Polish the turd all you want, but the fundamental element to a scandal that’s missing from this whole, pathetic, transparent conspiracy to discredit the IRS on the eve of its administration of the financial aspects of Obamacare … the ESSENTIAL element required for a “scandal” … the logically and legally necessary component …

522 Years A Slave

In the aftermath of last Sunday’s “Best Picture” Oscar going to 12 Years a Slave, I have to point out that slavery isn’t over.  And I’m not talking about Africa or East Asia. I’m talking a little closer to home.  (I already wrote about slavery, per se, in “Slavery, It’s Not Over,” at the end of 2007.) And that it’s now the 522nd year since Columbus discovered America as far as European civilization was concerned, and get over it if that doesn’t work for you. The clash of civilizations commences in 1492.

Dali, “Columbus discovers America” or something to that effect

This was originally reprinted in 2010, from the earlier piece entitled, “Republicans Who Hate and their Gardeners” [14 MAY 2010 · 11:45 AM] but it actually goes back to the original, CONFESSIONS OF A SECOND CLASS CITIZENor, IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW [Wednesday, March 29, 2006].

This Wednesday, his vorpal sword, the blog, celebrates its TENTH anniversary. Leading up to that, I will be reprinting some of the best pieces therefrom.

Paraphrasing Eisenhower

The 2014 election just had its first primary, but this is the umpti-zillionth “polling” story for 2016  – a form of speculation GUARANTEED in American history to be meaningless by 2015. But here it is:

 Poll finds Republicans resistant to Chris Christie presidential candidacy
Washington Post

As conservatives gather in the Washington area on Thursday

for three days of speeches from prospective 2016 presidential candidates and discussions about the future of the GOP, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found …

Right.

Let me paraphrase something from Eisenhower, something that transforms mindless space-filling into actual treason-by-omission if not by COMMISSION, as the Fourth Estate looks more and more like a plutocratic Fifth Column:

The Death of Liberty in the Land of the Blind

The headline says it all, masterfully distilling a sea of BS into a single, transcendentally synesthetic quatrain of eight words*.  Even old Hemingway would be pleased:

Senate rejects Obama nominee who defended cop killer Alexander Bolton and Ramsey Cox / The Hill The Senate voted 47-52 Wednesday to reject controversial nominee Debo Adegbile as an assistant attorney general.  —  Seven Democrats voted against moving forward with President Obama’s nomination of Adegbile, which the Fraternal Order …

[* Or, Four of Eight in the Borg numeration system.] The sheer stupidity of this, the “policemen’s associations” and the yowling blight of American willful ignorance all play perfectly into the headline’s utter truth, and even the later “emendation” of the headline into the snarky, vicious with a new agenda direction backs up the veracity of that headline:

The American Revolution is about to fail

Evidently the process of self-governance produces MORE than its fair share of imbeciles:

President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy
Washington Post

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality.  It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces.

Now, you might, as did I, ask yourself: WHAT idiot writes such undermining, Fifth Column (and not Fourth Estate) agit-prop in the middle of an international crisis in extremely unstable times? Well, the proud, brave owner of this libel is a personage of no less august reputation than the anonymous fig leaf “By Editorial Board. “

I have not come here, however, to praise treason and cowardice, but to point out the terminus of the line that imbeciles like this are headed down.

YES: we have a right (and an addiction)  to criticizing anything that we don’t like, whether we actually know anything about it or not.  But, as my now Faux Nooz Narcotized mother told me, long before she joined the legions of the damned: He is OUR president (referring then to JFK) and we want him to succeed.