Rumors, Lies, Innuendo, Fear, Uncertainty, and Despair

NHK, Japan’s public news agency, reports the death toll from last week’s earthquake and tsunami is likely to exceed 13,000; around a half-million Japanese are homeless.

Have you seen a headline similar to the one above? Not likely. Almost every story on the earthquake has a headline and opening paragraph on the possibility of a nuclear disaster. A sampling from today’s press:

Emperor Akihito’s speech underlines gravity of Japan’s nuclear crisis (Los Angeles Times)
Japan races to prevent nuclear reactor meltdown (ABC News)
Japan to spray water, acid on stricken nuke plant (Associated Press)
Panic, confusion over Japan plant evacuation (CBS News)
Devastation, confusion in Sendai amid nuclear fears (Bloomberg)
1st fire at Japan nuclear reactor not extinguished (Newsday)
Radiation risk from Japan puts prevention plans to test (USA Today)

and my personal favorite, from countless sources:

Anti-radiation pills flying off store shelves in US

This morning, I received a text message about an earthquake in Japan. I had not heard about this so I immediately went to Google News to find out what had happened. Here were Google’s headlines:

Japan trying to fix nuclear plant cooling problem
Nuclear emergency as Fukushima cooling system fails after Japan quake
Quake triggers shutdown of nuclear generators
Japanese PM declares atomic power emergency
Japan declares emergency at nuke plant; no radiation leak now
Quake-hit Japan declares nuclear power emergency

As you probably know by now, news agencies are reporting that this is one of the largest  (9.0 Richter) earthquakes in history. Hundreds are reported dead; trains have stopped operating; some airports and highways are closed; tsunamis have caused major damage along the coast of Japan; an oil refinery is on fire; a ship and a passenger train are unaccounted for; cell phone service in Tokyo is out. In other words, this is a major disaster with all of the attendant death and devastation one would expect.

But what does Google report? Nuclear disaster!

Get a grip, guys. Nuclear reactors across Japan shut down automatically, as designed, when instruments detected an earthquake. Yes, at one reactor emergency power to operate the cooling system failed so they had to switch to battery power; they have enough battery power to keep the reactor cooled until backup generators are brought on line and the reactor is shut down gracefully. End of nuclear story.

It took Google about an hour to recognize that, perhaps, the wide-spread catastrophe in Japan was more important than a nuclear reactor that performed as designed during an earthquake.

On Monday, March 14, The Wall Street Journal put the matter in perspective:

“Even while thousands of people are reported dead or missing, whole neighborhoods lie in ruins, and gas and oil fires rage out of control, press coverage of the Japanese earthquake has quickly settled on the troubles at two nuclear reactors as the center of the catastrophe…

“If a meltdown does occur in Japan, it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company but not for the general public. Whatever steam releases occur will have a negligible impact. Researchers have spent 30 years trying to find health effects from the steam releases at Three Mile Island and have come up with nothing. With all the death, devastation and disease now threatening tens of thousands in Japan, it is trivializing and almost obscene to spend so much time worrying about damage to a nuclear reactor.”

You can read the whole article here.

President Obama announced he has ordered plans drawn up giving the US military “full capacity to act, potentially rapidly,” in Libya. Apparently the idea is to divert our attention from trillion-dollar deficits, 9% unemployment, and the new season of American Idol.

Libyan Dictator Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi, (Quadafi, Khadaffy, Gadaffi). Motto, "I don't care how you spell my name as long as you mention it." Colonel? This guy's been in charge for forty years and he still hasn't been promoted to General?

Or perhaps he’s hoping that we’ll pay less attention to the fifty American soldiers returning from Afghanistan every month in aluminum boxes.

It’s a shame that Libyans are dying in the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi. But the Arab world has made it plenty clear that, when they’re busy killing each other, they don’t want Americans intervening and spoiling the fun. We should honor their wishes.

The one real “hope” when Obama was elected was that he might have the balls to get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq. (According to a recent Gallup poll, 76% of Americans think we should bug out of Afghanistan most ricky tick). No such luck. Obama upped the ante, sending in more troops and money. We are now losing 10 soldiers and $2 billion a week in Afghanistan. The only thing we’ve accomplished is to stabilize the price of heroin.

Now Obama is toying with the idea of yet another foreign adventure. Apparently he’s tiring of “George Bush’s wars” and would like one of his very own.

The big story in last fall’s election was the Republican resurgence in Congress. The red states took over the House and cut the Democrats’ margin in the Senate.

Why the Republican success? Well, they promised to reduce spending and bring an end to our projected multi-trillion dollar deficits. Now, the Republicans have spoken. If their budget plan is adopted, federal spending will be reduced by $82 billion in 2011. In any other arena $82 billion might mean something but, on the scale of federal budgets, it is truly chump change. If all of the Republican ‘cuts’ are enacted the federal budget will be reduced by a whopping 2%. Instead of being $1,482,000,000,000 the 2011 deficit will be only $1,400,000,000,000. Wow. Way to go guys. At this rate we can expect the federal budget to be balanced by, uh, never.

__________________________________________________________

Speaking of red states and blue states—why do you suppose the Republican states are red and the Democrat states are blue? Logically, the Democrat states should be red because red is the color usually associated with the Left. Blue, on the other hand is a cold, unwelcoming color—much more appropriate for the classic characterization of Republicans.

The answer, of course, is that the extreme Left, the communists, expropriated the color red over a century ago. It would be unfair to associate modern-day Democrats with folks like Trotsky, Lenin, and Che Guevara. After all, those guys carried guns.

What concerns me is that the choice of red and blue for our two parties really precludes a third-party movement from ever getting off the ground. Why? Logically, this would be the ‘white’ party and that would never do.

We should just mix red and blue together and paint the country purple.

There are 14.5 million people on the unemployment rolls. Six and one-half million of these have been jobless for more than six months. The unemployment rate has been above 9% for almost two years, longer than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

Initial jobless claims have averaged over 400,000 per week for several years. If the unemployment rate remains more less or steady at 9-10% we can assume that, while 400,000 people filed initial jobless claims, 400,000 other people must have found work. That might be good news because it appears that, while unemployment isn’t getting any better, perhaps it’s not getting any worse.

But it is. Consider these figures from the US Department of Labor (DOL). (Hey, if you can’t trust the government, who can you trust?)

Unemployed Long-tenured Displaced Workers According to DOL, a long-tenured worker is someone who had three or more years of tenure on a job before becoming unemployed. So, a long-tenured displaced worker is someone who had a career, or at least a steady job. This is not an occasional worker, someone who’s in and out of the labor force depending on the weather or hunting season. This is probably a family man, or woman, who is a sole or major provider. The bad news, again according to the DOL, is that 36% of long-tenured workers who lost their jobs over the past three years are still unemployed.

It gets worse. Only 49% of these workers found new jobs and 55% of them are earning less than they did in their previous jobs. Thirty-six per cent of those who found jobs are working for less than 80% of what they earned at their old jobs. The Wall Street Journal cites these unfortunates as indicative of the trend:

• A former auto worker whose new job (found after a five-month search) pays 20% less
• A former manufacturing manager who took a 50% pay cut to work as a night janitor
• A former money manager who used to earn $150,000 a year is now a Starbuck’s barista making less than $20k

The United States is becoming more like a third world country: a small percentage of rich citizens catered to by low-wage Starbuck’s baristas, shoe clerks, and ‘sales associates’ selling them foreign goods (which, ominously, are getting better every year).

Perhaps we can dig our way out of this mess but it won’t be easy and it won’t come through the extension of unemployment benefits and a health-care program we can’t afford. Our economy needs some fundamental changes and they won’t come from Washington or, I should say, they won’t come until Washington gets out of the way.

Can anyone explain to me why the stock market is at its highest level in two years?

At a cost of $130 million to British taxpayers the pope is in the UK for, well, ‘good will.’ If he’s trying to win back the people who separated from the Church Universal back in the days of Henry VIII, he’s a little late. Britons are overwhelmingly non-believers; 71% answered ‘No’ to a Gallup poll that asked, “Does religion occupy an important place in your life?” Actually the pope is in town to mend fences with the Anglican Church. He sees an opportunity to recruit Anglicans who are disenchanted with the Church of England’s willingness to ordain gays and women. The One True Church would never tolerate women running around the sacristy like they owned the place. Like the Muslims, the Church sees only a subordinate role for anyone lacking an appropriate level of testosterone. During his poaching expedition to the UK the pope had something to say about the failure of secular democracy in the modern world:

“By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? If moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident – herein lies the real challenge for democracy.”

"Sieg heil. Piss on you. Er, peace be upon you."

Underlying this careful phrasing is His Holiness’ contention that the only reliable source of moral guidance for this world is The Church. This, of course, is the same church that was still executing heretics less than two centuries ago and, in the modern era, has released a battalion of pedophiles upon young believers. The pope fails to recognize that the Judeo-Christian religion for which he is the front man has two millenia of tradition at least as barbarous as that of Islam. Animal and human sacrifice, animism, rape, murder, slavery, and misogyny permeate the Old and New Testaments. If the Bible sanctions these outrages, why doesn’t the Church espouse them today? Only because their Good Book, a confusing, contradictory document written primarily by ignorant shepherds, has been overtaken by Western philosophy. That’s right folks, it is secular, godless thought that has corrected the worst abuses of Judeo-Christian theology. Read the Bible, Your Holiness. What does Deuteronomy say about our duty to kill our children if they stray from the path of righteousness? Oh, that’s the Old Testament, you say? What about Paul’s exhortations to women and slaves to be subordinate to their masters? Christianity, as practiced today, is marginally palatable only because it has been tempered by the influence of secular thinkers from the Greeks to Eric Hoffer. It is difficult to envision the living hell in which we would exist were the Good Book our standard for moral conduct.

As you probably know, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill authorizing police in Arizona to verify the immigration status of persons who are detained for misdemeanors, felonies, or just simple suspicion on the part of the officer that the person is in the country illegally. This law is Arizona’s rejoinder to a federal government that, Brewer claims, is not doing its job. Illegal immigrants, according to the Arizona’s legislature and governor, are costing the state hundreds of millions in welfare, medical, education, and incarceration expenses.

Enforcement of Arizona’s law has been restrained temporarily by a federal judge. It probably will be months, if not years, before this issue is ‘resolved’ in the courts. I put ‘resolved’ in quotes because the courts likely will rule on political considerations rather than strict construction of the Constitution. As I noted several days ago (The Feds Won’t Enforce Their Laws and Neither Can You), the Constitution makes it clear that Arizona does have the power to make and enforce immigration laws if it so chooses, particularly when the federal government abrogates its responsibilities.

Meanwhile, a rather interesting analogy is circulating on the web and in e-mails. I cannot verify whether Brewer or Robert Sarver, owner of the Phoenix Suns, actually said what is attributed to them below, but it really doesn’t matter. The analogy, whether composed by Brewer or some anonymous blogger, is valid:

The owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team, Robert Sarver, opposes AZ’s new immigration laws. Arizona’s Governor, Jan Brewer, released the following statement in response to Sarver’s criticism of the new law:

“What if the owners of the Suns discovered that hordes of people were sneaking into games without paying?

What if they had a good idea who the gate-crashers are, but the ushers and security personnel were not allowed to ask these folks to produce their ticket stubs, thus non-paying attendees couldn’t be ejected.

Furthermore, what if Suns’ ownership was expected to provide those who sneaked in with complimentary eats and drink?

And what if, on those days when a gate-crasher became ill or injured, the Suns had to provide free medical care and shelter?”

quotation attributed to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer

“Even less useful information than you get from the Weather Channel!”

______________________

The French government decided Wednesday to impose a $185 fine on women who wear a full-face Islamic veil in public…

Washington Post

Not so fast, Pierre. Sometimes the wearing of a veil is a public service.

______________________

District of Columbia High school students have been complaining to District officials that the free condoms the city has been offering are too small.  So D.C. officials have decided to stock up on Trojan Condoms’ super-size Magnum variety.

Washington Post

Sorry white boy, but it’s true.

______________________

In Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities.

USA Today

Maybe we can learn something from the Mexicans.

______________________

FDA officials visited 91 kitchens operated by airline caterers and found unhealthy preparation methods in 27 kitchens. The three major airline caterers, LSG Sky Chefs, Gate Gourmet, and Flying Food Group deliver food to Delta, American Airlines, and United Airlines.

Money Times

Obviously a Democrat conspiracy against those rich Republican bastards in first class.

______________________

The Somali Islamist group al-Shabab has said it is “very happy” about the twin blasts which hit the Ugandan capital Kampala on Sunday, killing 74 people.

BBC

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

______________________

Many Doctors Don’t Report Incompetent Colleagues. Survey Shows One-Third Don’t Blow Whistle on Peers Who Are Impaired or Incompetent.

Web MD

An old joke comes to life. Q: What do you call a guy who graduated at the bottom of his class in medical school? A: Doctor.  (Q: What do you call a guy who graduated at the bottom of his class in law school? A:Your Honor).

______________________

They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine.

The Atlantic

It’s true. If it weren’t for the fact that once in a while these assholes succeed, they’d be a laugh riot. The overhead Predator drone shots of these misogynists fucking sheep are priceless.

______________________

A Taliban commander and his assistant died when a bomb they were assembling blew up, Pakistani officials say. The militant leader, Irshad Khan, is suspected of several attacks on Pakistani soldiers in the region. Several of Khan’s family were wounded when the device exploded at his home in the Bajaur tribal region of north-western Pakistan, officials said.

BBC

That’s what happens when you let little Achmed play with the mercury fulminate.

______________________

A gay priest sex scandal has rocked the Catholic Church in Italy after a weekly news magazine released details of a shock investigation it had carried out. Using hidden cameras, a journalist from Panorama magazine filmed three priests as they attended gay nightspots and had casual sex.

London Daily Mail

Now that young boys are off limits, what did you expect the priests to do? (Q: Why don’t priests fuck sheep? A: They don’t want to be accused of being closet Muslims).