Don't Drive . . . Drink!

h/t Theo

The Lesson of Fukushima is "Where Do We Put All The Spent Fuel?"

Where do we put all the spent fuel?

The Japanese haven't had a clue, because like everyone else with common sense, the Japanese also are NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard). So they've been dragging their feet on what to do with all those spent fuel rods for years.

In the interim they've had nowhere to go with them, so they've ganged them up in the pools in the reactor plants themselves in ever increasing numbers, in effect putting them in everyone's backyard anyway. And as we've been seeing, the failure to keep those pools, some thirty and forty feet deep, full of water in a crisis has caused most, if not all, of the trouble.

The problem is the nuclear waste.

But Richard Cowan for Reuters says that problem is even worse in America:

Of 104 nuclear reactors in the United States, [Robert] Alvarez [a former US DOE official under Clinton] said, 34 are of the same design -- open-air, elevated storage pools -- as the Fukushima plant.

But the U.S. pools are storing much more spent fuel than the ones in Fukushima and "are currently holding, on the average, four times more than their design intended," he said.

That's because the United States has been unable to settle on long-term sites for storing waste from nuclear power plants.

You can thank Harry Reid of Nevada for that. He doesn't want Yucca Mountain to be the home for all that radioactive waste anymore than anyone else wants it in their backyard.

Most Republicans, meanwhile, remain enthusiastic boosters for nuclear power, even as they push to curtail spending at the Office of Nuclear Energy and elsewhere. The House budget bill passed earlier this year included more than $330 million in cuts for nuclear waste disposal, safety oversight and other programs, according to advocacy groups.

So says Dan Eggen for The Washington Post, who provides a detailed accounting of the nuclear industry's lobbying efforts this week in the wake of the disaster, and how three major players have been throwing around upwards of $20 million in recent years, much of it to Democrats.

As in Japan, we have an on-going but bi-partisan decision to make no decision about a gorilla in the living room who glows in the dark.

It's high time we made one, or give up on nuclear power altogether, because we're just asking for it if we maintain the status quo.

Mark Levin Defends Reagan's Conservatism Against W's and Pete Wehner

In an extended but very worthwhile comparison of the Reagan and GW Bush records for Human Events, Mark Levin begins at the end of the Bush record:

Who said? "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system." Well, those words would never have passed Reagan's lips.  It was infamously said by Bush, in defense of his massive spending spree in the last weeks of his presidency.  There's nothing conservative about it.  But it sums up Bush's lack of confidence in the free market system, and his repeated and excessive use of government intervention in American society.  

Bush never claimed to be the conservative Reagan was, nor did he spend his early political career challenging GOP orthodoxy, which, until Reagan won in 1980, was mostly incoherent mush of the Rockefeller-Scranton-Nixon-Ford-Bush/41 kind. George H. W. Bush and other mainstream Republican primary challengers sought to thwart Reagan because, they insisted, his conservatism would be rejected by the voters.  Now, Pete insists that as president, Reagan's record, in virtually all respects, is inferior to George W. Bush's, in advancing conservative principles.  This is not only counter-intuitive, it is factually defective.  As I proceed with this discussion, I believe it will become evident.

And it does.

But I missed in the discussion of taxes how the top rate eventually came down to 28% for a brief shining moment in 1988, 1989, and 1990 because of Reagan's sometimes maligned 1986 tax legislation.

Nor does Levin really discuss what W was doing in his early political career, like getting sober and glad-handing Texas Democrats.

And how about how Bush thought of himself as the person who would redefine the right: "That conservative movement stuff is over. I've redefined the Republican party"?

The office went to his head, because loyalty was his lodestar, not conservative principles.

Ronald Reagan Wasn't Really Conservative, Either

(Well, how could he be? He was a Democrat in recovery).

So says Peter Wehner in Commentary here, without really intending to do so.

Some people will do anything to defend George W. Bush (who was a Bush in recovery).

Japan Admits Radiation at Fukushima is Deadly: 4,000 mSv Per Hour

Ten times worse than a previous report, and over 7.5 times the normal lifetime average total exposure of 483 millisieverts, and all in one hour.

The UK Daily Mail has all the details and photos, here, but most pointedly, this:

The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens. ...

Unlike the other reactors which use uranium, Reactor 3 uses a mixture of uranium and plutonium. Plutonium, best known as an ingredient in nuclear weapons, is particularly dangerous if released into the environment. In the worst case scenario, exposed fuel will melt, triggering a chemical explosion that will send radioactive dust hundreds of yards into the air. Chinook helicopters flying at less than 300 feet dropped four loads of water over the wrecked building in the hope that some water would seep into the dried-out pool and cool the fuel. However, footage suggested much of the 2,000 gallons of water missed its target. Later, six fire engines and a water cannon tried to spray the building with 9,000 gallons of water from high pressure hoses. However, radiation levels within the plant rose from 3,700 millisieverts to 4,000 millisieverts an hour immediately afterwards. People exposed to such doses will suffer radiation sickness and many will die.

We've been lied to all week while the media in America have been full of apologists for the nuclear industry, soft-peddling the seriousness of this situation.

Radiation in Perspective

Over the course of an average American life of 78 years, cumulative normal overall radiation exposure of 6.2 millisieverts annually amounts to about 484 millisieverts in a lifetime. Expressed in microsieverts, 6,200 annually amounts to 483,600 microsieverts in a lifetime.

The Wall Street Journal reports here about current radiation conditions in Fukushima City, 60 miles from the damaged reactors on the Japanese coast:

At Fukushima City, 60 miles from the plant, the recorded amount of radiation on Thursday was 20 microsieverts per hour, a level that is roughly 1,000 times higher than in Japanese cities far from the plant. Still, scientists say it isn't enough to cause long-term health effects.

Officials at Fukushima City also said that they found iodine, cesium-135 and cesium-137 in drinking water, at about one-quarter the levels that would make the water unfit to drink.

If the rate of 20 microsieverts per hour persisted indefinitely, it would take just 2.76 years for a resident of Fukushima to absorb what under normal conditions an American might expect to be exposed to in a lifetime: 483,600 microsieverts.

Expressed in millisieverts, the present rate of exposure 60 miles away is the equivalent of 175.2 millisieverts per year. Normal in America would be 6.2 millisieverts per year. So over the course of a lifetime, that's about 13,666 millisieverts for residents of Fukushima, 54 times above what is normal in America. The cumulative one time exposure limit for an emergency worker is 250 millisieverts, which is reported to be the amount radiated HOURLY above Fukushima I, reactor 3.

"Scientists say it isn't enough to cause long-term health effects" in this context is completely unbelievable.

Are they just saying this stuff to keep a lid on the anger which is threatening to boil over?

Just remember, it's all in the name of mere electricity.

Once in a Lifetime Emergency Dose of Radiation Emitted Hourly at Fukushima Reactor 3

The New York Times reports here about the high levels of radiation thrown off of reactor no. 3 at Fukushima I, the only plant reported to be using plutonium fuel:

Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said . . .

. . . that radiation of about 250 millisievert an hour had been detected 100 feet above the plant. In the United States the limit for police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers engaged in life-saving activity as a once-in-a-lifetime exposure is equal to being exposed to 250 millisieverts for a full hour. The radiation figures provided by the Japanese Self-Defense Force may provide an indication of why a helicopter turned back on Wednesday from an attempt to dump cold water on a storage pool at the plant.

Reports of much lower measurements at the gate to the whole complex may be meaningful in the context of relative measures of safety at various distances, but the reality is that these damaged reactors pose a deadly threat to human life and health. 

Joan Baez Thinks Obama's Just a Victim of His Inputs

What is he, a mere animal without a will? Pavlov's dog?

"[H]e could do extraordinary things by not falling into the trap that I think he is: of waking up in the morning and meeting with the military. So that's all he gets for input, unless we can make ourselves heard somehow."

-- Joan Baez, quoted here

Remember this from last September, the president complaining how he thought his opposition likened him to a dog?:

"And over the last two years, that's meant taking on some powerful interests -- some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time. And they're not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. (Applause.) That's not in my prepared remarks, it's just -- but it's true."

Who knew those powerful interests included Joan Baez?

Radiation Bullshit Repeated by CNBC from Thomson Reuters? Ah, No.

Updated and corrected, because yours truly mixed up millisieverts and microsieverts before he had his morning coffee and flew off the handle and accused CNBC and Thomson Reuters of being morons:

The average individual background radiation dose for Americans is 3 millisieverts/year, according to Wikipedia here. In microsieverts, that would come to 3000 in one year, the same dose a woman gets once a year from a mammogram in addition to the individual background radiation.

From all sources, the average American presently gets a dose of 6.2 mSv/year, or 6200 microsieverts in one year.

Taking a story from Thomson Reuters, CNBC this morning publishes this, entitled "Risks at Each Reactor of Japan's Stricken Plant Explained":

Radiation levels were higher than normal but not dangerous, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on Thursday.

They were measured at 338 microsieverts per hour at the west gate at 2000 GMT March 16 (5 am local time March 17). If a person stands outdoors for a year, they would be exposed to a  radiation level of 400 microsieverts, the agency said.

The wind is blowing northwest-to-southeast, towards the Pacific Ocean, Japan Meteorological Agency said.

If 6200 microsieverts per year is normal for an American, 338 microsieverts per hour does not become out of the ordinary until after 18 hours of continuous exposure. But compressing into the course of two or three days the radiation exposure one gets normally in a year is nothing to sniff at.

Standing outside for a year equals 400 microsieverts? That's about 0.4 mSv/year.

Acute radiation exposure over one day begins near 250 millisieverts, with possible symptoms including nausea and appetite loss, and damage to the bone marrow, lymph nodes and the spleen. In microsieverts, this would be 250,000 IN ONE DAY. On Tuesday there was a brief time in which radiation levels at Fukushima reached way beyond 250 millisieverts to 400 mSv/hour, or 400,000 microsieverts. Very dangerous.

So I figured it out . . . before I died!

And apologies to Reuters, which I now realize had a good post on the milli/micro ins and outs here yesterday.

The Tariff: Workhorse of the US Treasury Until 1913

James Grant reviews "Peddling Protectionism" by Douglas A. Irwin here for The Wall Street Journal and concludes that Ben Bernanke was already alive and hard at work wrecking the economy in 1914.

The money line of the book:

"The magnitude of the tariff shock in the Smoot-Hawley legislation, which increased the domestic price of imports by 5% at a time when dutiable imports were just 1.4% of GDP, was simply not large enough to trigger the kind of economic contraction experienced after 1930."

The money line of the review:

Here is a model of the economic tract. Lavishly illustrated with political cartoons, it contains but one algebraic equation, and that probably unavoidable.

The World Owes More Money to Japan Than to Any Other Country

So what happens if they cash in all their chips to pay for this mess?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard asks us to think about that, here:

We are discovering once again that [Japan] is the world's top creditor by far with nearly £2 trillion of net assets overseas. ...

HSBC said the pattern after the 1987 crash, the 1998 Asia crisis, and Lehman's collapse, was that Japanese repatriation kicked in violently with a lag of a week. The impact may be greater this time given the trauma, and power-rationing as 11 nuclear reactors are shut down.

Jeff Immelt: Obama's Crony Nuclear Capitalist

Rachel Layne for Bloomberg has a lengthy article about GE's nuclear business, which its chairman Jeff Immelt, was hoping to expand dramatically in India:

General Electric Co. (GE)’s goal of broadening its $1 billion nuclear service-and-parts business with sales of new reactors risks stalling as world leaders reconsider the future of atomic energy.

Governments from Germany, which halted 25 percent of its nuclear-generated electricity, to India, with $175 billion in planned spending by 2030, are reassessing the technology after Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled a power plant and raised the threat of a meltdown.

Immelt is the new head of Obama's team of economic advisers, on which he also sat before he replaced Paul Volcker.

He was among numerous American corporate figures who accompanied Obama on his lavish trip to India after the November elections in 2010.

Watch for GE to make a huge contribution after Obama is out of office to his presidential library.

Self-Described Slave of the NFL to Make Over $10 Million in 2011

He must be drinking the same stuff as Al Franken:

"The players are getting robbed. They are. The owners are making so much money off of us to begin with. I don't know that I want to quote myself on that.

"It's modern-day slavery, you know? People kind of laugh at that, but there are people working at regular jobs who get treated the same way, too. With all the money. ... The owners are trying to get a different percentage, and bring in more money. I understand that; these are business-minded people. Of course this is what they are going to want to do. I understand that; it's how they got to where they are now. But as players, we have to stand our ground and say, 'Hey, without us, there's no football.'"

-- Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, story here

GE Chairman Jeff Immelt Should Resign His Presidential Appointment

GE designed the Mark I containment vessel used by reactors at Fukushima One, as reported here, one of which appears to be leaking water underneath due to an explosion.

GE's current chairman, Jeff Immelt, defends the nuclear industry here, even with what is happening. He recently replaced Paul Volcker as the head of Obama's outside team of economic advisers, and is said to be close to the president.

GE's containment design has been challenged from the beginning, as reported here and here, including by three of its designers who quit rather than lend their names to it.

President Obama, who should be bothered by the appearance of impropriety but isn't, is carrying on with what are in comparison mere frivolities while our most important ally in East Asia is experiencing its worst crisis since the second world war.

Is it because he doesn't want to spoil GE's efforts to win new reactor business in India?

Jeff Immelt should resign immediately from Obama's team.

And so should Obama. He is a disgrace.

Fascist pigs.

Fukushima Reactor No. 2 Update: Did the Fire Engine Run Out of Fuel?

The UK Daily Mail has these details, reported here:

There were reports that a fire engine pumping water in to the Number Two reactor failed shortly before last night's explosion -- which would have led to an increase in temperature inside the reactor and could have caused the blast. ...

The latest explosion last night is feared to have cracked the main protective barrier around reactor number two at the plant.

The International Atomic Agency said radioactive material is leaking 'directly' into the air from the stricken plant at a rate of 400 millisieverts per hour.  Anyone exposed to over 100 millisieverts a year risks cancer.

Engineers are using sea water to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods.

That is a sign of the desperation of the situation because the corrosive salt water will put the reactors permanently out of action. It is the first time in 57 years that sea water has been used to cool a reactor.

Although the plant’s three working reactors shut down automatically when the magnitude nine earthquake struck on Friday, the cooling systems which keep the radioactive uranium and plutonium fuel rods cool have been hit by a series of failures. ...

'It is too dangerous to go outside and even if they did they would not be able to be transported to a safe place because we have no fuel for our vehicles,' [the mayor of Fukushima City] said.

Fukushima Reactor No. 2 Overheats: Water Pumps Ran Out of Fuel

Logistical difficulties supplying traditional fossil fuel in the wake of the quake and tsunami emergency may mean a third reactor at the Fukushima complex is toast.

As reported by Kyodo News, here:

Tokyo Electric Power said the water level of the No. 2 reactor had fallen as fuel for pumps used to inject seawater to the reactor to cool it down ran out. The firm had reported the loss of cooling functions as an emergency to the government.

US Domestic Oil Production Increased in 2009 and 2010

The data are clearly shown at the link here to the US Energy Information Administration website, and show that after five consecutive years of domestic production declines, 2009 production exceeded 2008 production, and 2010 production exceeded 2009 production.

This was true despite declining production from Alaska. There were remarkable back to back years of production increases both in the Gulf of Mexico and in the lower 48 states, especially in North Dakota.

Conservatives who wish to dispute this are idiots. Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt are brushing up awfully close to this.

Obama's attempt to take credit for it is completely disingenuous. He would stop the use of oil tomorrow if he could. Pure snake oil.

To Unions Wisconsin is Shaped Like a Fist, Against Democracy

So Pat McIlheran for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, here:

Unions choose war because the warlike arts - fighting, regimenting, taking - are what unions do best. Conflict dominates their talk, just like that image of Wisconsin as a fist is all over their posters. The chief strategy of unions is to heighten complaint and to monetize dissatisfaction by organizing it.

It is war because the peaceful alternative, democracy, didn't work out for the unions. They lost; taxpayers won. Don't imagine they'll leave it at that.

Obama: If Only I Were President of China

So the president has let it slip that it would be so much easier to be the president of China.

To Michael Goodwin for The New York Post, here, this is evidence of how reality keeps intruding on the president, who protests too much that he is not an ideologue:

[M]y suspicion is that it's not the problems per se that have Obama envying a lower rung on the global ladder. It's that he regards them as endless distractions that keep getting in the way of his transformative agenda.


He is a man of the faculty lounge who wants a blank slate so he can remake the nation into a more perfect place, as he sees it. ...


But damn it, the country and the world won't cooperate.


Or as Socrates put it:

He who is the real tyrant . . . is the real slave . . .. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor . . . he ...  is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles.

Is There a Nuke Plant Near You?

The Argonne National Laboratory operates this interactive map (here) of US nuclear-powered electric generation plants for the US Department of Energy at the website of the International Nuclear Safety Center.

Here is the map for Japan and here the link to the interactive map:

Liberty Shmiberty: The Thin Gruel Offered by The Tea Party

"[T]he proper solution would be to get us back to liberty."

-- Rep. Michele Bachmann, self-appointed leader of the Tea Party Republicans in the US House, in New Hampshire today, here

"Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones."

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1978, here

Wisconsin Senate Republicans Receive Death Threats

The Wisconsin State Department of Justice is trying to find out who sent the following email to Republican Senators in Wisconsin, threatening them, and their families, with death:

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we've had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it's going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn't leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so "high" on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won't tell you all of them because that's just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it's necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will "get rid of" (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it's worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

The email was published here by AM 620 WTMJ News Radio.

Commies With Bullhorns Storm Wisconsin State Capitol Building in Madison

Ann Althouse and Meade in Madison have the stories and the pictures, for example here, here and here.

Protestors, including assorted Socialist Workers Party members, got inside because someone inside opened a window in a Democrat's office.

As a public employee, Althouse stands to lose personally if Walker and the Republicans get their way, but she provides remarkably objective reporting on the threats to democracy in Wisconsin posed by the actions of Democrats.

Declaration of Independence 'Decidedly Un-Revolutionary'

John Fea seems to agree with historian David Armitage that ours was a revolution not made but prevented, and takes the view that Abraham Lincoln was a revisionist in his reading of the Declaration:

Historian David Armitage, in a fascinating book entitled The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, has argued convincingly that the Declaration of Independence was written primarily as a document asserting American political sovereignty in the hopes that the newly created United States would secure a place in the international community of nations. In fact, Armitage asserts, the Declaration was discussed abroad more than it was at home. This meant that the Declaration was "decidedly un-revolutionary. It would affirm the maxims of European statecraft, not affront them." ...

Lincoln was a revisionist. He found the Declaration useful for reasons that were not primarily intended by its writers.

Unemployment Hits 900 at AOL after Buying HuffPo

As reported here:

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said Thursday the company is cutting 200 jobs in the US and 700 in India following its $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post.

Moochelle's Handbag: A Thousand Large

Story here.

Wisconsin Republicans Find Way To Strip Union Power Without Quorum

They separated the union-limiting measures from the spending part of the pending legislation which requires the quorum and passed them without the Democrats, who ran away to prevent legislative action and who remain out of state.

Story here.

Miami Police Want Honeywell Spy Drone to Stare into Homes and Backyards

The story is reported by CBS Miami here:

Police admit the MAV, if flown low enough, has the ability to look into people’s home, but that is not its intended purpose.

For a description of the Honeywell (designed-for-the-military-backpack-able) Micro Air Vehicle, see here and here:

The story uses the word "scan," which is alarming and is reminiscent of the backscatter scanners being used at airports, but these MAVs are equipped with cameras only, as if that isn't bad enough. The technology isn't developed enough to make scanners this small (13 inches in diameter), but don't say you weren't warned when I'm telling you again that that's coming.

Largest Monthly Deficit in History, Senate Can't Agree to ANY Spending Cuts

So says The Washington Times, here:

The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February, a $223 billion shortfall that put a sharp point on the current fight on Capitol Hill about how deeply to cut this year’s spending. ...

The Senate plans to vote Tuesday on competing proposals to cut spending, but Democrats have rejected GOP-backed cuts of more than $50 billion, and Republicans have ruled out Democrats’ cuts of less than $10 billion, meaning neither plan will draw the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and pass.

The country should consider that when established institutions become incapable of resolving problems of such great significance, history teaches that time and again they are replaced, sometimes violently and at the expense of life and liberty.

Only the effete would pay such a price for intransigence.

John Locke Believed in Neither Sodomy nor Same Sex Marriage

From the First Treatise of Government:

Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto.

"Their principal aggravation . . . that [adultery, incest and sodomy] cross the main intention of nature . . . with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto."

In other words, these sins are the enemies of marriage and the family.

Growing Ranks of Hidden Unemployed Explains Recent Drop in Unemployment

So says Alfred Tella, here:

Fully two-thirds of the 0.9 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate [from November 2010 through February 2011] was due to the decline in labor force participation. If the participation rate had behaved normally, the unemployment rate would have declined by only 0.3 point between November and February, to 9.5 percent last month [instead of 8.9].

He shows this has happened before, too, in 1950, 1958 and 1983.

Stealing Food From the Future Depends on Stealing its Water

After reading this important story from Charles Laurence for the UK Telegraph, you will understand the necessity of industrial scale farming and genetically modified seeds, except that even after all that, the water beneath the High Plains isn't coming back, 20 percent of the world's food supply will disappear, the Colorado River will be the West's last lifeline, and T. Boone Pickens aims to make a mint in the process.

Here's an excerpt:

[I]t was only in the 1940s, after the Dust Bowl (the result of a severe drought and excessive farming in the early 1930s), that the US Geological Survey worked out that the watering holes were clues to the Ogallala [Aquifer], now believed to be the world's largest body of fresh water. They were about to repeat the dreams of man from the days of Ancient Egypt and Judea to turn the desert green, only without the Nile or Jordan. With new technology the wells could reach the deepest water, and from the early 1950s the boom was on. Some of the descendants of Dust Bowl survivors became millionaire landowners.

'Since then,' says David Brauer of the US Agriculture Department agency, the Ogallala Research Service, 'we have drained enough water to half-fill Lake Erie of the Great Lakes.' Billions upon billions of gallons – or, as they prefer to measure it, acre-feet of water, each one equivalent to a football field flooded a foot deep – have been pumped. 'The problem,' he goes on, 'is that in a brief half-century we have drawn the Ogallala level down from an average of 240ft to about 80.'

Brauer's agency was set up in direct response to the Dust Bowl, with the brief of finding ways to make sure that the devastation never happens again. If it does, the impact on the world's food supply will be far greater. The irrigated Plains grow 20 per cent of American grain and corn (maize), and America's 'industrial' agriculture dominates international markets. A collapse of those markets would lead to starvation in Africa and anywhere else where a meal depends on cheap American exports. 'The Ogallala supply is going to run out and the Plains will become uneconomical to farm,' Brauer says. 'That is beyond reasonable argument. Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That's all we can do.'

Obamacare Waivers Climb 311 Since Jan. 26 to 1,040, New Website Obscures Data

From the new reporting site here:

As of the end of February 2011, a total of 1040 one-year waivers have been granted.  This update includes 126 new approvals.  Key facts about annual limits waivers:

Of all the waivers granted to date, the vast majority – more than 95 percent of all waivers – were granted to health plans that are employment-related.  These include self-insured employer health plans, health reimbursement arrangements, collectively-bargained multi-employer plans, and health plans sold by issuers to fully-insured employers.  The links below contain descriptions of these and other types of entities receiving waivers.

The number of waivers processed each month continues to decline.  After granting over 500 waivers in December (an increase related to the fact that December 1 was the final day to apply for a waiver for a plan or policy year that begins on January 1, as many plans do), HHS granted less than 200 waivers in January, and 126 in February.

The number of enrollees in plans with annual limits waivers is 2.62 million, representing less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance today.

The old site listed the waivers sequentially (here), with the cumulative total of persons affected clearly shown. Now you have to cull the data from no less than 7 separate links.

In less than three months we've gone from 222 waivers in December 2010 to 1,040 waivers in early March 2011, and from 1.5 million affected to 2.6 million.

So we're told the number of waivers processed is declining even though the total waivers granted continues to climb dramatically, and the new website makes the data more difficult to retrieve and entitles it "promoting transparency."

Up is down, wrong is right, night is day. Obama isn't a Bolshevik. He is not an ideologue. 

How Much Capital Backs Your Assets?

Spanish banks are scrambling to raise capital amid new rules upping the requirements for "solvency":

Under the new rules, [Spanish] savings banks must raise the proportion of core capital they hold to 8.0 percent of total assets from the current six percent, or 10.0 percent if they are unlisted.

So imagine you have assets (for example, loans outstanding on a house and a car), together actually worth about $250,000.

Up until now, if you were a Spanish bank, you'd have to have 15,000 simoleons stashed away to cover the "business." The new rules mean you're going to have to have 20,000, or 25,000 simoleons.

In your case, think IRA, or 401K, or your brokerage account. Or some CDs at the bank. How much do you have stashed away?

And then consider that the median amount saved for retirement in America is only $2,000. That means half of the country has more than that saved, and the other half has less than that saved. But even at the median, that $2,000 is less than 1 percent of $250,000 in assets.

Easily half of the US population is probably insolvent by this measure, as are many US banks.

My own bank operates under a Consent Decree requiring Tier 1 capital of 8 percent, and total capital of 11 percent. Roughly 10 cents on the dollar.

Most of America is built and runs on this kind of debt. And much of it is insolvent, even on these less easy, easy terms.

"Owe no man anything . . .."

Observer Figures Obama Has Spent 2 Months of 25 as President . . . Golfing

As reported here:

This is the president’s 60th time golfing as president, meaning Obama has spent two months of his presidency on the golf course.

So far.

Does keeping track of this count as a stimulus job?

DC: Tops for Food Stamps, Surrounded by Richest Counties

DC ranks number one for the highest participation rate by population in the food stamp program, yet is surrounded by these, among the 25 richest counties in America:

 1. Loudoun County, VA
 2. Fairfax County, VA
 3. Howard County, MD
 6. Fairfax City, VA
 9. Arlington County, VA
10. Montgomery County, MD
12. Stafford County, VA (south of Prince William County)
13. Calvert County, MD
14. Prince William County, VA
21. Charles County, MD
23. Alexandria City, VA.

Story here.

Income inequality, writ large. Your tax dollars at work.

Housing Prices Fall to Q1 2000 Levels

With more declines of at least 5 percent expected.

Story here.

"I Am Surprised That People Are Not Even Angrier"

Me too:

'Too many current attacks on bank bonuses miss the point. There is no "right" amount of money. It is not fine to earn a quarter of a million but "obscene" to get £5 million. But what is true is that people who accumulate very large sums tend to think they are brilliant. In a proper market economy, if they are not brilliant, they get their comeuppance. In the too-big-to-fail economy, they just go on getting rich, paid for by the rest of us who go on getting poorer. Like Mr King, I am surprised that people are not even angrier.'

-- Charles Moore, here, for the UK Telegraph

To Forgo Something is Acting, Says Judge Kessler

But National Review's Rich Lowry is having none of it, here, responding to this statement by Kessler:

"It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not 'acting,' especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something." ...

Long ago, the Commerce Clause got stretched beyond recognition. In 1942, the Supreme Court used it to uphold a law penalizing a farmer for growing wheat in excess of his approved allotment, even though it was for his own consumption. At least the poor sap was doing something. According to Kessler, Congress could also punish him for acting on a thought not to grow wheat.

Opponents of ObamaCare say that if it's blessed by the courts, there will no longer be any limiting principle on federal regulatory power. If that seems far-fetched, behold the mental activities of one Judge Gladys Kessler.

Which begs the question, Isn't Kessler's reasoning a residual influence of the Christian religion on matters of state?

Christianity teaches that there are plenty of sins of commission, but also of omission, as per Paul's letter to the Romans, and the letter of James. By refusing to purchase health insurance, by Kessler's reasoning, one is almost committing a sin against the state, of, by and for the people, who will have to bear the costs of paying for the deadbeat's omission.

At the Last Judgment the offender would be punished in hell, but in the Immanentized Eschaton which ideologues are trying to foist upon us, he'll just pay a fine.

Virtue should be so easy. 

FDIC Rewards Banks Which Themselves Violate Regulatory Guidelines

Richard Suttmeier noted here on February 22 that three banks which acquired the assets of failed banks on Friday, February 18, 2011, are themselves overexposed to construction and development loans or commercial real estate loans, or both:

Three of the banks that acquired the assets of Friday’s failed banks were also in violation of the regulatory guidelines for exposures of risk-based capital to construction and development loans and to commercial real estate loans. SCBT National Association (SCBT) has risk ratios of 145% for C and D loans and 423.7% for CRE loans that are 89.3% funded. Bank of Marin (BMRC) has a risk ratio of 67.4% for C and D loans, which is fine, but has a 485.2% exposure for CRE loans with a loan pipeline that’s 78.7% funded. First California Bank (FCAL) has a risk ratio of 41.5% for C and D loans, which is fine, but has a 358.2% exposure to CRE loans with a loan pipeline of 86.9%. ValuEngine rates each of these banks a Hold. The FDIC policy of rewarding banks with overexposures to real estate loans is deciding which banks fail and which banks survive, which is wrong.

State capitalism is the official economic policy of the American Fascist Police State.

78 Year Old Louisiana Molester Undergoes Castration for Early Release

Nuts to the victims.

Story here.

Broadest Measure of Unemployment/Underemployment Drops Below 16 Percent

After 21 consecutive months at or above 16 percent, U-6 has fallen to 15.9 percent in February, as illustrated by portalseven.com here:

February Unemployment Drops .1 to 8.9 Percent, Breaking 21 Month Record

For 21 consecutive months, unemployment had been at or greater than 9.0 percent.

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports here the headline number of 8.9 percent:

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 192,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.9 percent, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today . . ..

The number of unemployed persons (13.7 million) . . ..

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was 6.0 million and accounted for 43.9 percent of the unemployed.

Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.2 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, were unchanged in February . . ..

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 8.3 million in February . . ..

In February, 2.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, up from 2.5 million a year earlier. ... These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. ...

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.2 hours in February . . ..

In February, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 1 cent to $22.87. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.7 percent.

Break out the party hats and fireworks.

January Unemployment Marked the 21st Consecutive Month At or Above 9 Percent

January unemployment fell .4 point to 9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here.

Just Undo It.

http://www.thoseshirts.com/jus.html

"The Euro Crisis is First and Foremost a Banking Crisis"

"Essentially, all Germany and France want to achieve with these [austerity and bailout] measures is to protect their own banks from collapsing. Now people are beginning to realize that there is no way around rescheduling Greece's debt -- and that will also involve the banks. For this to happen, there is only one solution: Europe needs to strengthen its banks! Greece lived beyond its means, but in Ireland and Spain it is the banks that are the problem. The euro crisis is first and foremost a banking crisis. ... Europe's banks are in far greater danger than people realize."

-- Barry Eichengreen, quoted here

TSA Misses Boxcutters in Carry On at JFK

The New York Post has the exclusive story:

A passenger managed to waltz past JFK's ramped-up security ga[u]ntlet with three boxcutters in his carry-on luggage -- easily boarding an international flight while carrying the weapon of choice of the 9/11 hijackers, sources told The Post yesterday.

Read the rest, here.

Bush's DHS Planned to Test Mobile Scanning of Pedestrians

The creeping American fascist police state may have begun in earnest under Bush, but Obama is doing nothing to stop it. There are mobile scanning vans in the possession of the federal government right now. And you'd know nothing about it from Obama, either, but for a Freedom of Information Act request by EPIC.

Forbes has the story, here:

Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. ...

“When you’re out walking on the street, it’s not acceptable for an officer to come up and search your bag without probable cause or consent. ... This is the digital equivalent” [said an attorney for EPIC]. ...

[S]ecurity contractor American Sciences & Engineering ... sold more than 500 of its backscatter x-ray vans to governments around the world, including some deployed in the US. Those vans are capable of scanning people, the inside of cars and even  the internals of some buildings while rolling down public streets. ... [T]he van scans do penetrate clothing, and EPIC president Marc Rotenberg called them “one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

The Forbes story has links to the documents obtained under the FOIA request.

For a guy who won't disclose any of his academic or medical records, Obama sure does think he has the right to invade your privacy, against your will and without your knowledge.

Mubarak should have resigned? Gaddafi? I say Obama should resign, NOW.

Obama's Baked Brain Eludes Ruth Marcus

Ruth Marcus asks "Where's Waldo?"

Not about Bush . . .

But about Obama:

Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action - unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. ...

Each of these instances can be explained on its own terms, as matters of legislative strategy, geopolitical calculation or political prudence. ...

Yet the dots connect to form an unsettling portrait of a "Where's Waldo?" presidency: You frequently have to squint to find the White House amid the larger landscape. ...

[T]he White House - much to the frustration of some congressional Democrats - has been unclear in public and private about what cuts would and would not be acceptable. ...

Obama seems more the passive bystander to negotiations between the House and Senate than the chief executive leading his party. ...

Hum. Passive, startlingly missing in action, unwilling, reluctant, late . . . and unclear, a bystander . . . all that from a sympathetic liberal supporter, an honest observer, who can't quite put her finger on the problem.

You would think someone born even in 1958 could theorize psychotic effects of THC overexposure when she sees them.

Just why is it again that Obama keeps his medical records sealed? And why is it that so-called journalists just don't seem to want to know?

Come on, Ruth. You might even get that Pulletsurprise after all.

Present-a-tive Justin Amash Bucks His Freshman Peers As He Did His Party In Michigan

Politico has part of the story here:

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) voted against the class 30.1 percent of the time, including the five times he recorded himself as “present” rather than supporting or opposing an amendment outright.

We had the other part, here, on February 27:

In Michigan Amash's record meant that he went against his own party almost 36 percent of the time (472 votes), which makes perfect sense of the rhetoric to get more Democrats and independents into the Republican Party (without the singular "libertarian" votes, Amash voted against his own party 30 percent of the time). His election night remarks in that regard were jarring and startling in a year marked by one of the biggest partisan Republican victories nationwide in decades, but play well in a district full of Democrats and independents and union members. The clarion call of the Tea Party was not bipartisanship, but that's often the ploy of libertarians, whose small numbers keep them forever in need of allies. It's smart politics, not but it's not principled conservatism.

Amash promoted himself as consistent, principled and conservative in his campaign for the MI-3 House seat. So far, he's batting a thousand on consistent. The question is whether the voters will decide next time that consistency is, after all, merely the proverbial hobgoblin of little minds if he too often sacrifices his conservatism, and his principles, to it.

We've Already Got a Democrat Stoner Schizophrenic as President, We Don't Need a Republican One

With more and more people realizing that repeated use of the weed is bad for your health, a new study in the news links marijuana use to various mental problems like schizophrenia:

Sir Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at Kings College London, said: "This study adds a further brick to the wall of evidence showing that use of traditional cannabis is a contributory cause of psychoses like schizophrenia."

Among the signs and symptoms which schizophrenics may exhibit are these behaviors not often firmly attributed to habitual use of marijuana as a cause of the mental illness:

. . . disorganized thinking and speech. The latter may range from loss of train of thought, to sentences only loosely connected in meaning, to incoherence known as word salad in severe cases. Social withdrawal, sloppiness of dress and hygiene, and loss of motivation and judgement are all common in schizophrenia. There is often an observable pattern of emotional difficulty, for example lack of responsiveness.

The American people should think about that paragraph and ask themselves:

Why does Obama rely so much on his teleprompter, even in the smallest of settings?

Why did Obama exhibit such an inappropriately light mood in his first public comments after the Ft. Hood terrorist incident?

Why did it take Obama so many days to respond to the Fruit of Kaboom bomber incident?

Why was Obama the last world leader to come out and condemn Gaddafi?

And then they ought to think about this from Jacob Sullum for Townhall.com, here, about Indiana's Republican Governor and presidential hopeful, Mitch Daniels:

But like many pot smokers who became politicians, Daniels -- a potential contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination -- seems to have two standards of justice: one for him and one for anyone else who does what he did.

Although Daniels was caught with enough marijuana to trigger a prison sentence, he got off with a $350 fine. Yet he has advocated "jail time" for "casual users" -- a stark illustration of the schizophrenic attitudes that help perpetuate drug policies widely recognized as unjust.

According to the Princetonian, "officers found enough marijuana in (Daniels') room to fill two size 12 shoe boxes." Under current New Jersey law, possessing more than 50 grams (about 1.8 ounces) of marijuana is a felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison. Given the amount of pot Daniels had, he easily could have been charged with intent to distribute, which under current law triggers a penalty of three to five years.

At the time of Daniels' arrest in May 1970, New Jersey's marijuana penalties were even more severe.


Not exactly your daddy's Republican.

I Guess That British Kid Who Told Obama He was a Pussy was Right

Matthew Franck weighs in here with an excellent discussion of Obama's concession to judicial supremacy in the case of DOMA:

Obama is the "un-Lincoln," a president who would rather hint, and wheedle, and pine for an eventual Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, than forthrightly assert the equal standing of each branch of government to act on its own understanding of the Constitution. He makes no challenge to the reigning doctrine of judicial supremacy. Obama is instead the Court's courtier, surrendering the dignity of his office, and the legislative power of Congress, to a hope that the Supreme Court too will "evolve" in its view, change the effective meaning of the Constitution, and foist same-sex marriage on the American people with an authority more difficult to challenge than that of a mere president.

Mr. Franck rather likes Mr. Lincoln. But even if olde Abe was an acute practitioner of a constitutional departmentalism now lamentably in decline, the War Between the States proves that correct interpretations of some things do not always protect us from fanatical interpretations of others. There's only one Trinitarian monotheism.

On the British kid, see here.

The Party of Nyet in WI and IN Merits Universal Condemnation

So says Nolan Finley, Editorial Page Editor for The Detroit News, in a scathing editorial entitled "AWOL Dems Defy Ballot Box" for February 27, 2011, here:

AWOL Dems defy ballot box

NOLAN FINLEY

American-style democracy holds together because no matter how nasty the political game gets, the players honor a few inviolable rules. We obey the laws, even the ones we disagree with. We respect the ballot box. And after even the most bitterly contested election, the loser accepts the results, works within the system and awaits another chance to prevail with voters.

These guidelines kept the nation from shearing apart in 2000, when supporters of Al Gore (wrongly) believed the presidential election was stolen by George W. Bush. A tense period of uncertainty ended when Gore, in perhaps his finest moment, conceded and urged his backers to work to heal the country.

But what's happening in Wisconsin and Indiana breaks that tradition and puts a crack in our democratic foundation.

Democrats in those states, as in most others, were shellacked in legislative races last fall, giving Republicans majority control of their legislatures.

Republicans interpreted their overwhelming victories as a mandate to change the course of the states. Specifically, they set about undoing decades of laws put in place by Democrats to favor labor unions over taxpayers.

Instead of staying on the field to defend their positions, Democratic lawmakers in both states fled to neighboring Illinois, where they hope to win with their absence what they couldn't at the ballot box — namely, the right to control policymaking.

Without the Democrats, the legislatures don't have the required quorums to pass budget measures, including cutting pay and benefits for public workers.

The lawmakers in exile call this a defense of democracy. In truth, it's a step toward anarchy. If it catches on as a practice, it will officially end government by, of and for the people.

It's part of a disturbing trend by Democrats to embrace a by-any-means-necessary approach to governing. We saw it during passage of Obamacare, when the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate blew up the rules to block a filibuster. In Massachusetts, Democrats used after-the-fact law changes in a failed attempt to keep a Republican from succeeding Ted Kennedy.

Obama trashed bankruptcy law to move the United Auto Workers ahead of General Motors' and Chrysler's secured creditors. And his regulatory agencies are bypassing Congress to enact policies he knows the elected representatives would never approve.

The strategy exposes the arrogant liberal conviction that they are justified in imposing their will on the people, because only they know what's best for America.

These Democrats in Indiana and Wisconsin merit universal condemnation.

What they are saying is that the people no longer have the right to use the ballot box to decide the direction of their government.

That's a rule change our system can't survive.

Obama is Deliberately Making Americans Poorer

So says Richard T. Rahn, here:

The Obama administration’s policies are causing Americans to pay far more for gasoline and other fuels than necessary. America is awash in fossil-fuel energy sources with almost 30 percent of the world’s coal and 80 percent of the world’s oil shale - which contains an estimated three times the recoverable oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. ...

The United States should be an energy exporter. ...

The Obama administration has a hatred of fossil fuels and is determined to reduce their use despite the economic damage. ...

[T]he Obama administration has stopped the new oil-production process in the Gulf of Mexico, even in the face of a court order requiring it to issue permits. The administration, through executive orders, has denied oil and gas producers access to millions of acres where large deposits of oil and gas are known to exist. The administration also is holding up permits for many new power plants, pipelines and industrial plants, all of which are costing Americans jobs and driving businesses to other countries.

A Re-Run of 2008?

Deflation, depression, inflation, recession, oh my.

Claus Vistesen for CreditWriteDowns here thinks we're in for a re-run of 2008.

Accidental Death Insurers Use ERISA Law as Shield to Deny Payments

So says an important story which appears here at Bloomberg.com, detailing the unintended consequences of the 1974 legislation.

The story, focusing on the lucrative $25 billion business for accidental death insurance purchased by employees through their employers' group plans, discusses notable cases involving MetLife, Prudential, and AIG.

Outrageous. 

Now Add "Shorters" to "Truthers" and "Birthers" in Conspiracy Theory Pantheon

I kid you not:

Another economic warfare tool that was linked in the report to the 2008 crash is what is called “naked short-selling” of stock, defined as short-selling financial shares without borrowing them.

The report said that 30 percent to 70 percent of the decline in stock share values for two companies that were attacked, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, were results of failed trades from naked short-selling.

The collapse in September 2008 of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, was the most significant event in the crash, causing an immediate credit freeze and stock market crash, the report says.

In a section of who was behind the collapse, the report says determining the actors is difficult because of banking and financial trading secrecy.

“The reality of the situation today is that foreign-based hedge funds perpetrating bear raid strategies could do so virtually unmonitored and unregulated on behalf of enemies of the United States,” the report says.

For the complete story at The Washington Times, go here.

The paranoid style in America lives to die another day!

Spreading the Misery Around

Moreover, as we were saying before, [the tyrant] grows worse from having power:

he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first;

he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.


-- Socrates, Republic of Plato, Book IX

Presentative Justin Amash: Making the Perfect the Enemy of the Good

As if there were the remotest possibility his co-sponsored measure would get passed, when de-funding Planned Parenthood was a complete no-brainer. Puh-leeze.

From Politico.com here:

Amash also voted present on Indiana Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood and said it was “improper and arguably unconstitutional” to single out one entity. He co-sponsored a similar measure that would deny so-called Title X family-planning subsidies to any organization that performs abortions.

Textbook Nirvana Fallacy, a la Voltaire, as here.