Saturday, April 30, 2011

Hold Me Barack!








This lady in Tuscaloosa may be worried about the tornado aftermath, but she wasn't going to miss her moment with the president. It didn't matter that his wife is standing right there. No one was going to get between her and her idol.
Tornado Disasters

TVA safely shut down its Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama with emergency backup power this week, but power outages across the Tennessee Valley still left the utility without enough emergency sirens to warn nearby residents of potential safety problems at both Browns Ferry in Alabama and the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near Soddy-Daisy.

In a notice to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released Friday, TVA said more than 60 percent of its sirens around Browns Ferry and about a third of its warning sirens around Sequoyah were inoperable this week when electricity service was lost to the sirens following Wednesday’s tornadoes and wind storms.
- Times Free Press

Three days ago tornadoes tore across the southern states of Mississipi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky. Last week tornados touched down and damaged St. Louis' Lambert Field international airport.

The tornados this week killed more than 300 people, mostly in Alabama. President Obama made the obligatory visit, shaking hands and making trite statements about devastation being really, really bad, and people sticking together and blah, blah, blah.

The facts are undeniable. These weather extremes are a result of human made climate change and even advanced countries like the U.S. do not have the means to care for people when natural disaster strikes. Nuclear reactors in Alabama were without power after the tornados and unable to warn residents should the need arise because alarm systems were without power, not to mention the reactors' cooling capacity. Sounds too much like Fukushima for my taste.

By the way, we can't talk about climate change denying republicans without mentioning how Barak Obama sabotaged the conference at Copenhagen. Mr. Environmentalist used his bully pulpit to force an agreement which allows world temperatures to rise two degrees. It doesn't sound like much, but that is the difference between having an ice age or not.

In any case, this country does not have a plan for dealing with large scale disaster and Alabamians and others will suffer like their fellow citizens during the Katrina crisis.

Monday, April 04, 2011

Citizenship duties or Drum Rhymes with Dumb

I have long believed that liberals are just as inclined as conservatives to give up their citizenship rights and duties as are the right wing. Most Americans like being led by a leader they love. The urge to exult in a cult of personality extends just as much to democrats as republicans. I pointed this out in my most recent Black Agenda Report column, "Attack of the Cruise Missile Liberals. " Yesterday Glenn Greenwald made an important discovery and just as importantly shared it with the world. These are the terrifying words of one Kevin Drum. "If it had been my call, I wouldn't have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted." If Drum doesn't know that much, I don't know why he bothers to be a writer and commentator. He should keep his little two cents to himself. "Literally trust his judgment over my own?" Why doesn't Drum just shut up then and leave the field open to those of us who don't give some politician greater respect than we give ourselves. No, Barack Obama is not any smarter than I am, and he probably isn't smarter than anyone reading this either. I don't care how "smart" he may be, I have a right to say that my country should stop killing people all over this world. Obama isn't Einstein. He makes decisions the same way other presidents do. They listen to a small group of people who have been elevated by a system which rewards anyone who will go along with the status quo. I don't defer to secretaries of state or national security advisers or UN ambassadors either. Their titles and their credentials mean nothing to me. The world is in a mess because we give up our ability to think to a bunch of brown nosing bastards who put themselves and their needs above those of humanity. As for Drum, if you check out the link you will see that he back tracked, but that is only because he was called out and embarassed. He meant what he said the first time, he and the rest of the liberals who will assist Obama in sending us all down the path to hell.