"If you think your employer is being unfair THEN LEAVE!"
That only works if there is a labor shortage. With outsourcing dramatically expanding the labor pool and a never ending tide of illegal immigrants cratering wages for manual labor in the U.S. there is a near inevitability that there is going to be a huge labor surplus in the U.S. There probably already is though the government cleverly drops the long term unemployed out of the unemployment rate and labor statistics.
Employers are astute enough to know when there is surplus labor. They dream of it and pay their politicians to make it happen (which is why politician look the other way and allow massive illegal immigration and promote out sourcing). When the labor surplus arrives most greedy businessmen cut benefits and salaries, and praise be their profit margins go up. There are a few smart businessmen that value and nurture good employees but they are few and getting fewer.
American workers are going to really suffer in the near future, more than they already are. It is good you praised unions from the early 20th century. If it hadn't been for them everyone would be working 7 days a week 12 hours a day for poverty wages. It took violence to break greedy businessmen who thought thats all workers deserved. Without unions and with a labor surplus workers may well start marching back to the dark ages.
Unions did turn corrupt for the most part, it was to bad, but all big institutions corrupt, government and political parties included. But its also true business and the Republicans, starting with Reagan in particular, have worked hard to destroy them.
The disappearance of unions and the pressures of outsourceing, globalization and illegal immigrants are going to destroy the middle class in America. The U.S. is going to end up 95% poor and 5% filthy rich like most 3rd world countries. In the news today, Los Angeles is already there. The majority of people in LA are now functionally illiterate.
If your in the lucky 5% you wont care either. You will drive in to a gated community next to the golf course and just not care.
You might think you are just going to retrain and be immune I think you are wrong. Unless you have skills that can't be outsourced, or you have the benefit of being born affluent so you land in the 5% you simply wont be able to compete with workers and wage rates in China and India.
When manufacturing cratered they said retrain for IT. When IT got outsourced they said retrain for biotech. When biotech moved to India they said....
"After all, who was the sitting president who had information of 9/11, but willingly left his seat so that another could take the fall?"
I have no clue what you just said there.
"At least Bush has the stones to do something about it...."
Maybe Cheney or Rumsfeld has the balls, I doubt George does. If you recall when George first heard about 9/11 he sat like a deer in headlights for a half an hour reading "My Pet Goat". He continued his deer imitation for seven minutes after he was told there was a second crash at the World Trade Center making it obvious it was an attack. Cheney was actually running things during this period. If you recall George went from there to Air Force One and spent the rest of the crisis running and hiding at various obscure air force bases.
I'm amazed people think Bush actually is in charge. Cheney and the rest of Bush's staff are the ones with the brains that make his decision for him, he just picks one of the options. His speech writers are the ones that put the words and catch phrases in his mouth when he is reading the teleprompter. Everytime he has to ad lib he tends to turn in to a gibbering idiot. Its a tribute to his staff that they can coach him on all the predictable questions so he holds it together at press conferences as well as he does.
He is an empty headed figure head. He has the name, and the family, and he has a likable demeanor especially to his base. He is electable. Its not like he actually knows what he's doing or is really running things.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
"So reading the Vice President's words, in context, one can easily see that Cheney was not saying "a vote for Kerry is a vote for Al Qaeda"
I said "a vote for Kerry is a vote for Al Qaeda". I was just exposing the cutting edge just underneath the surface of what he was saying.
What Cheney said,
"If we make the wrong choice".
I would translate that as voters choose Kerry assuming this is Cheney's idea of "the wrong choice". Many people would define "the wrong choice" as reelecting Bush/Cheney which would put a whole new spin on this:)
I dont care how you try to parse this, "then the danger is we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that'll be devastating from the standpoint of the United States" he is saying if you elect Kerry then the U.S. will suffer another devastating attack. Its not might be attacked or the chances are higher of being attacked or the response to the attack might be weak, its a danger of a devastating attack.
No matter how you slice it, it is the worst kind of fear mongering.
Problem #1 there is no way in hell he can assure us there wont be another devastating attack if the U.S. makes the "right" choice and reelects Bush/Cheney. They really don't have total control of the situation.
Problem #2 there is no way in hell he can have the smug confidence to say there will be an attack on Kerry's watch. Zel Miller shredded Kerry for tearing down the commander in chief. Well Cheney is doing exactly the same thing to a potential commander in chief. Hypocrites.
"As to your other complaints, if 200+ vets come together to voice their opinion about a candidate, who are you to say they're wrong?"
Uh the vets that were actually on John Kerry's boat and served under him for starters. One of the Swift Boat Vets in the ads is on video tape praising his courage under fire eight years earlier. If you side by side that tape with the Swift Boat commercial its obvious he is lieing in one of them.
But I'm not gonna defend Kerry's record, it is kind of pathetic. All I ask if he is going to be raked over the coals for it then George W. deserves the same treatment. He was arrested for Cocaine possession in Texas, he got off with six months community service thanks to connections and it was wiped off his record. If it has been a black guy or a poor guy it would have been a felony conviction and his political career would have been over before it started.
He used family connections to get in to the Air National over hundreds of better qualified applicants, he apparently flunked the pilots aptitude test, scoring 26.
He moved to Alabama without getting it approved with his Texas unit. In Alabama he was mostly partying, drinking, doing coke and not fulfilling his service. When the Guard instituted drug testing as part of the physical during this time he refused to take it since he would have been nailed for cocaine use. Refusing the physical resulted in his grounding and should have bounced him out of the guard and in to regular military service. And of course Bush political operatives were given unsupervised access to his Guard file so the docs on this really embarrassing stuff disappeared from his file.
"The RNC wants people to know that Kerry is the wrong choice. You expected them to go easy on him? You must be new here."
Wrong choice is one thing. Fear mongering and smearing is another. It just shows you what kind of hopeless pit of dispair this country is sliding in to because fear mongering and smear campaigns usually work, especially when the Bush team does it because they are EXPERTS at it. I really would prefer candidates campaign on their record and their platform, not on one cheap shot after another. Bush's record is pathetic, so is Kerry's so I guess it follows we get, as Joe Trippi calls it, "six second sound bites of mutual assured destruction" instead.
"As to the alleged smear on McCain, obviously it's not that big of a deal, since McCain spoke on
"by influencing the vote with last-minute emotions rather than thoroughly contemplation."
God forbid that should happen...
Dick Cheney yesterday saying if you vote the wrong way there will be another 9/11 attack (translation a vote for Kerry is a vote for Al Qaeda)
Swift Boat Vet ads.
Zel Miller at the RNC. In fact the whole RNC which was designed to stoke peoples fear of terrorism and that their grandchildren would be in danger if Kerry would be elected.
In 2000 the Bush campaign smearing John McCain in South Carolina with charges he fathered a black baby.
The Bush campaign deserves everything they get on the propaganda front because they dish it out non stop. Its just leveling the playing field for Michael Moore and MoveOn.org to give it back to them in kind. If it weren't for them the Kerry campaign would be dueling without a pistol.
Here is a good reference on the basis of church state separation. In particular look for quotes from James Madison on the subject since he was one of the principals in writing the amendment.
As I understand it the founders intent, and their statements factored in to the interpretation of the law in the courts, is to insure government does not aid or hinder religion. I would be inclined to say that attacking "In God We Trust" is probably a bit excessive but it is in fact a case where government is promoting religion and probably shouldn't. Making people pledge allegiance to a nation and God at the same time is really over the top though all the people in the U.S. who are excessively proud of their belief system will NEVER see it that way though it is obvious.
George W. Bush's faith based initiative is a sterling example of why the founders wrote the amendement. He can argue that they are social services and charities, and its OK for him to fund them with my tax dollars. Unfortunately there is a high probability that when they pull needy people in to their aid network they will promote their religious beliefs and will endeavor to convert the unfortunate souls to their religious persuasion, in fact in many cases the bible and religion is going to be the basis of their social outreach and treatment. As soon as they do that using government funding they have violated the bill of rights, no ifs, ands or buts. Religious institutions should want to disavow Federal funding since it really compromises them and it will tie there hands in their religious outreach unless they want to get sued.
"Religion is part of what makes a person."
I'm sorry but with this statement and some of the others you make me nervous and make me glad there is separation of church and state in this country.
Religion is NOT part of what makes a person unless you exercise your right to freedom of religious choice and make it so. For anyone who doesn't want to make religion part of their person IT IS NOT and our Constitution defends their right to make that choice.
Many early Americans were fleeing states were there was a dominant religion that was intertwined with the state. It inevitably resulted in discrimination against religious minorites at a minimum and more often in outright persecution. It is simply a bad thing to do because once you start it a little here and a little there it will snowball into religious persecution almost inevitably.
I don't want, and I don't think the Founding Fathers really wanted government leaders making decisions colored by religious doctrine. Certainly their religious and moral upbringing will factor in to their decision making and perhaps they might even pray or meditate on the subject but they should leave the specifics of their belief system at the door when it comes times to enter the oval office and make a decision.
George W. Bush and John Ashcroft in particular can't seem to keep their religious views apart from their government duties. I also don't want Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson influencing my government and passing laws which enforce their religious and moral doctrine. Even worse is the possibility U.S. policies in the Middle East, including waging war are colored by apocalyptic beliefs peculiar to evangelical Christians. For example one of those doctrines which is disturbing is that there must be a Jewish state in Israel to set the stage for the second coming which leads to giving Israel a blank check from the U.S. and to the U.S. taking down Iraq, Iran and Syria for no reason other than they are hostile to Israel.
As for when and where you pray I think you are right. You should be able to do it whenever and wherever you want. In fact I'm pretty sure you can. Close your eyes and quietly pray to yourself. But I don't think you really just want to pray in school or the office, you want to flaunt the fact that you are praying, get others to join in, do it out l
It started with FAA security directives, SD's. The first was in 1990. There were 3 SD's in effect on 9/11 with a short list of names of people who were banned from flying because they were presumed terrorists. It wasn't actively enforced until after 9/11 though/
Here is a TSA memo describing the justification for the no fly and selectee lists. This was acquired by EPIC though FOIA requests. They weren'f very successful since you see most of the memo is censored. In particular they wanted to know who was putting names on the list and could take them off, and they wanted a copy of the list to see if the people on it are terrorists or if it includes political opponents of the Bush administration and anti war activists as anecdotal evidence suggests.
After 9/11 there was a slew of FAA directives that expanded the lists and then the TSA came on the scene, took over the lists and it ran amuck.
I'm not positive these are the basis of the ID requirement though I think they are. Since there is a list of people who are not allowed to fly and people allowed to fly only with extra scrutiny(selectees) it follows you have to submit an ID so your name can be checked against the list. It is needless to say insane to identify potentially dangerous travelers based on a simple name but the U.S. government, especially since 9/11, has gone completely insane.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
I'm not sure there is proof there is a law/regulation requiring an ID but it is a proven fact that there is a no fly and selectee list. If your name is on the no fly list you dont fly and they call security at the counter. If you are on the selectee list you fly but with additional scrutiny. EPIC submitted a FOIA and got some stuff on it from the TSA, airlines etc. Unfortunately most of the interesting memos were censored to the point they are useless.
It kind of follows if there is a no fly list you are going to need to show an ID so they can see if your name is on the list. If he flew out of SFO without an ID check I imagine the person at SFO who let him violated the regulations and probably could have been fired over it.
It goes without saying its insane to use a simple list of names to identify travellers. Many of the names on the no fly list are known aliases of terrorists which means pretty much any name they felt like using, including Edward or Ted Kennedy. If you are so unfortunate to happen to have the same name as some alias on the list you are going to be screwed in the airport. In the EPIC docs are complaints from senior citizens who have never had so much as a traffic ticket and are massively hasselled when they fly.
In the EPIC docs are indications of the near impossibility of getting your name off the list. There are letters to congressman from constituents desperate to get off. People are routinely bounced between the airlines, the TSA, the FBI and Homeland security and get no where since it is secret exactly who puts the names on the lists and who takes them off. It would be extremely easy for the Bush administration to put names of political opponents and dissidents on the list and they can't prove it or do anything about. There is anecdotal evidence it is being done but you can't prove it thanks to the classified nature of the list.
It should be pointed out the no fly list dates from 1990 and George's dad. Back then the FBI administered it and it was pretty small. After 9/11 it was turned over to the TSA and turned in to a Kafkaesque nightmare.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 2000
"You got your wish George. You have two wishes left"
If Slashdot wants to develop some political enlightenment and sophistication they need to realize politics isn't like a turn signal, left and right. Its more like a wheel with spokes in every direction.
If someone trashes the Republicans believe it or not it doesn't necessarily mean they are a Democrat/liberal and vice versa. There are plenty of true conservatives that despise what the Republican party has turned in to and Liberals who despise the Democrats. I imagine you can chalk this up, in the U.S. at least, to a two party system which has tried to con everyone in to thinking there are only two parties and two ways to look at things and if you don't agree with one of those two, in all their current corruption, you are basically adrift in an empty ocean.
Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager was on Charlie Rose on PBS recently. One thing he said I like. In 2008 there is at least a chance people are going to unite on the Internet and back an independent candidate with $300-400 million dollars coming in hundred dollar checks from millions of people and bitch slap the two major parties, a slapping they've come to gloriously deserve, especially after the pathetic candidates they've fielded in the last two presidential elections. The hope is there will be an independent candidate who will actually talk about issues, from a fresh perspective, not regurgatating the entrenched party platforms, and put an end to the campaign of the "six second sound bites of mutual assured destruction".
The first challenge is to find a candidate with the right mix of charisma, judgement and brains. One who can form a common sense platform, on issues that matter, that will appeal to enough people to get elected and not pander to the inflammatory issues that dominate the debate between the two parties.
The second challenge is to get this candidate on the ballot in the face of the two parties unconstitutional onslaught on third party candidates like Nader.
The third challenge is to get this candidate enough credibility in the polls that he/she can't be dismissed as an also run and pushed in to obscurity as the media and the two parties are want to do.
I would vote for John McCain were it not for his recent grovelling at the feet of the Bush administration, people who savaged him in 2000, and his irrational level of support for the invasion of Iraq. I would vote for Dean were it not for his grovelling at the feet of Gore and Kerry along with his penchant for saying dumb things. I'd vote for Nader if he has a chance of getting elected just to see him shake up Washington and big business and see how long it would be before someone in the establishment assassinated him. Wouldn't vote for Perot.
You can keep denying it until you are blue in the face but calling up the ready reserve, stop loss orders and pressing the guard and reserve in to indefinite active duty is a back door draft. Don't know why you apologists for the Bush Administration can't just admit the obvious.
It would be a lot more honest if they reinstitute the draft, preferably without the loopholes, the 5 deferments Cheney used, and of course the Air National Guard dodge George W. abused. That way the burden would be equally shared among rich and poor, black and white alike.
I recall back to the Republican convention when Zel Miller and Dick Cheney were ranting about how they had to be strong in the war on terror to keep their children and grandchildren safe. Someone should point out the fact the Bush/Cheney have killed children and grandchildren 998 times in Iraq with thousands more with disfiguring burns and amputated limbs. Where is their concern for those children and grandchildren they keeping putting them in harm's way in a war that, rather than making America safer, has fueled animosity to America around the world.
If some of the Bush/Cheney clan were driving trucks in Iraq they wouldn't be the flaming hypocrite chicken hawks they obviously are.
"When China has achieved world economic dominion...the U.S. and Europe will be annexed and we'll all be living on one big happy planet."
Actually the lower, and what used to be the middle class, in the U.S. and Europe will be living in third world class poverty, the upper class will still be rich, and there is going to be a huge middle class enjoying economic prosperity in China. Maybe China will start offshoring to the U.S. when Americans are desperate for the future equivalent of 30 cents an hour.
This is economic warfare. There are winners and losers. Odds are against a rising tide lifting all boats.
"China has been doing this ever since the U.S. helped defend Taiwan during its succession. How could you expect otherwise when they believe Taiwan is theirs?"
You miss the point. They've always wanted to dictate to the U.S. on Taiwan and a host of other issues. When the U.S. is completely dependent on China, which it practically already is, China will have the leverage to dictate successfully. That is the key point, leverage.
"Calling our Labor secretary openly hostile is a bit spurious; open hostility to the (American, European, or other first world nations) working people is synonymous with competing against China"
Sorry but what you said here makes no sense to me. The Labor secretary and the Bush Administration are openly hostile to U.S. working people, they know it, working people know it, business people know it. The want some of their votes, they babble concern about unemployment, and they get some of them especially in the South by conning less than bright working people with flag waving, race cards, bible thumping, gay bashing etc, and then they turn around and screw them economically every chance they get. To the Republicans/most businessmen workers are a commodity. The best workers are the cheapest, most repressed workers, with the fewest benefits, and at the moment those are in China.
"Is China a threat because of its export laws or because of its labor system?"
Its a threat because of:
- Trade barriers - Currency manipulation - Repressive labor system - Gigantic labor pool - Intellectual property theft....
"Until China starts showing signs of collapse don't think that we can compete unless we keep the technological edge that has kept us going so long. Sure China's gotten good at ripping off a lot of 1st world technologies, but so long as their tech companies aren't turning a profit on their American sales it's not much of a worry for the U.S."
Sure we can. This is economic warfare. You fight fire with fire, currency manipulation, trade barriers, etc. The U.S. still has vast wealth. If U.S. political and business leaders weren't complete morons, blinded by short term greed they could just say no to China until it lets its currency float, drops its trade barriers, respects intellectual property, and insures a fair wage and good working conditions for its workers. At the moment U.S. political and business leaders loyalty to the U.S. is completely trumped by loyalty to the beloved buck/yuan.
As an example of what not to do, Walmart is in the middle of a campaign in which it is telling all its U.S. suppliers they have to slash wages and benefits for their U.S. workers and match Chinese prices, or fire all their U.S. workers and off shore or Walmart will switch to a supplier who does. Walmart's prices are wonderful but it is almost single handedly laying waste to the U.S. economy. Its a two pronged devestation. They are destroying all competing retailers and they are destroying all U.S. suppliers.
"If you want to boil it down to the "working man," China is a land full of them"
It isn't the duty of the United States and the U.S. government to insure full employment in China or anyplace especially when that full employment translates in to poverty for American workers and the destruction of the American middle class.
Articles on recruiting in 2002 and 2003 aren't relevent. 2002 inevitably had a surge in recruits who wanted to do their part avenge America from attack. I wager there was a surge in 2003 when Iraq looked like a dashing cavalry charge and a quick victory. It wasn't until the second half of 2003 that Iraq turned in to an obviously bad place to be.
The only recruiting numbers that really matter are the Army and Marines in 2004 and 2005. The Navy and Air Force aren't seeing the hard time in Iraq the Army and Marines are. I recall the Pentagon was trying to con Air Force and Navy truck drivers in to taking transfers to the Army to drive trucks in Iraq. I assume most were smart enough to not do something that stupid.
In that article your own reference says:
"Though the Army has been meeting its recruiting goals for active personnel, it is behind in its year-to-date goal for recruiting reserve personnel, Hilferty said."
"We are concerned," Hilferty said. "We're reallocating resources to recruiting and retention."
"Part of the reason the Army is not meeting that goal is because its best spokesmen aren't here to encourage young men and women to join."
"The best recruiter for the National Guard is a National Guardsman," he said. "Our best recruiters for the Guard are in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Its a nice spin to put on it that they are having problem with Guard and Reserves because their best recruiters are in the middle of a war. Its bullshit. Most people don't sign up for the Guard to end up in one lengthy and dangerous deployment after another while their careers and finances crater, and their families suffer. They do sign up to do their duty in a national emergency but Iraq simply wasn't that and isn't that when you are staring at year after year of occupation propping up a puppet government as the U.S. has always done(same thing in Vietnam). I imagine they might tolerate the duty if it didn't suck, but occupation duty sucks especially when the locals hate your guts, and insurgents are using you as a shooting gallery target.
Its also pretty obvious the Army is going to have to dramatically increase its troop strength as soon as the election is over. They are pulling in vets that left the military years ago, some in their 50's using the ready reserve backdoor draft. Some people are heading towards their 3rd rotation in to Iraq which is incredible in this short period of time. Its inevitable there is going to be an exodus from the guard and reserves unless they continue to use stop loss orders to prevent it which they no doubt will.
And then the Bush administration is almost certain to start new adventures in Iran and Syria as soon as they can drum up a crisis to justify. The Pentagon and the White House is wrapped around Israel's thumb and they want those two nations take down so they can dominate the Middle Easy uncontested. For Iran the fact that they have a Russian built nuclear reactor coming on line in 2005 will probably serve to precipitate the crisis. The media is already starting the drum beat that Iran can't be allowed to join the nuclear club and Rumsfeld is talking up the possibility of an uprising in Iran to topple the Ayatollahs.
The thing I'd most like to see. I'd like to see the children of Kerry, Bush and Cheney enlist and volunteer for service in Iraq, as PFC's. It would be a site to see, Bush in particular, if his Ivy league daughters ass was on the line in a convoy in Iraq.
"I fail to see the corellation between the economic differences between China and the U.S. and our current administration."
Well you are correct that Democrats are about as much to blame as the Republicans. They were integral to America's destroying its economic base through the WTO and NAFTA. The WTO might have worked if it had led to really free markets and fair trade but its resulted in American markets being nearly wide open while places like China are maintaining massive barriers and are engaging in wholesale cheating. They know they can get away with it as long as American CEO's are turning a profit. When China has achieved world economic dominion and they don't need American companies any more those CEO's are going to rue the day they sold out America to China, but of course they probably wont because by that time they will probably be rich and retired to a life of luxury so why should they care as long as the gate on their gated community works to keep out the starving people they sold down the river.
The only thing in the Democrats favor is they've realized now it was a mistake and are backtracking. The problem with the Bush administration is they are still singing praises of the current trends, and are encouraging it to accelerate in face of the obvious evidence its going to devestate the U.S. economy in the long run. It is a tribute to blind stupidity driven by short term greed.
They fail to realize that, in China's case in particular, this is warfare, economic warfare designed to defeat the U.S. and Old Europe, something that would have been difficult or impossible to do militarily, but is proving to be child's play to do economically. China has already started to try to dictate to the U.S. about policies and arms sales to Taiwan. In the not to distant future they will be able to blackmail the U.S. in to doing anything they want by the simple threat of stopping the container ship traffic from China to the U.S. Even more so if there is eventually armed conflict between the U.S. and China, the U.S. will realize it was a mistake to move all of its machine tools and steel mills to China. The U.S. wont be able to manufacture anything. It will wake up one day and realize the last machine tools were sent to China and it will take years to rebuild the U.S. industrial base, from scratch, in a time of crisis. Having machine tools and being able to build machine tools is pretty important to a manufacturing base.
"Also, given the fact that China is where U.S. companies are looking to move jobs wouldn't it make sense to have someone with some Chinese ties directing the American job market in hopes to maybe fight fire with fire?"
I could see you making this argument for Commerce Secretary. I don't see anyway you can rationalize it for Labor. Its just a basic indicator the people who appointed her are openly hostile to working people. Everyone knows they are, its not like its a secret. Your union comment is just classic Republican rhetoric. Fact is working people should have a shot at making a living and surviving, unions, CEO's and you be damned.
"What happened to the workers in that industry some of who would obviously have lost jobs?"
In many cases they've landed in unemployment, and in poverty. The unemployment rate might reflect this but for this entertaining little trick that the long term unemployed are, once their unemployment runs out, quietly removed from the unemployment rate as having left the work force.
Some went on Welfare but since Welfare reform under Clinton its not the safety net it used to be.
In other cases they've been pushed in to service sector jobs which pay less and have fewer benefits, especially no health insurance. Pizza delivery is a leading career opportunity.
There was this government propaganda program, during the collapse of manufacturing jobs, that its the responsibility of American workers to retrain themselves as high tech knowledge workers to deal with the changing job market. Unfortunately many people in every country don't have the intellectual abilities to be a programmer or accountant, or acquire an MBA. Many workers did try to retrain for tech jobs. Low and behold as soon as they did all those jobs started disappearing off shore and they were screwed a second time. No one is really sure what jobs they should be training for now outside of pizza delivery. Biotech looked promising but its offshoring now too, though pharmaceutical sales rep is still a high growth field in the U.S.
Its pretty important for every country to have diversified industries so people can find employment they are suited for.
Everyone will mod me as flame bait for saying it but you are really seeing a major rebirth of class warfare in the U.S. like you haven't seen in over a century. Class warfare never quite went away but its gone to such extremes in the last 4 years no one in the U.S. can quite grasp whats happening. The affluent in America have decided to sell the other 90% of America down the river. They will get richer doing it, wealth will concentrate further in their hands. They will be happy in gated communities, served by Mexican gardeners and maids, sailing their yachts on weekends. They will need to put in a potent police state to maintain law and order as the 90% that are being screwed realize they are being pushed in to poverty by the increasingly super rich. Actually they already have it, which is why America now has more people in prison per capita than any other country on Earth, in part thanks to the "War on Drugs". Our politicians are big on "War on" things. They haven't said it yet but there is a well established "War on the Middle Class", and "War on the Poor" as opposed to "War on Poverty".
The Republican party is all about making the rich richer and screwing working people. It is their mantra. They have done a really neat trick by suckering enough people, people they are screwing, in to voting for them so they have, and will continue to have, complete control of the government and economy. How do they do it. They sucker less than bright people, especially in the South and West in to voting for them by waving the flag, singing praises of Jesus, scareing people with the "War on Terror" and images of mushroom clouds over your cities if you vote Democrat. They sucker people with gay bashing, and pro life rhetoric which plays very well in the bible belt and with people who aren't very bright. They subtly play the race card to make sure whites don't vote Democrat because its the black peoples party. The end result lower and middle income people still vote for them, even though the Republicans are going to destroy the jobs they depend on for survival and eventually push them in to poverty.
Unfortunately you've really oversimplified the situation. Do you work for the Bush administration? They do that too.
Your glossing over the fact that countries like China artificially manipulate their currencies and wage rates, and have a dramatically lower cost of living. It will simply be impossible for anyone living in a developed country with a free floating currency to complete against them in any field outside of the service sector. If you want to rant about free trade then China has to let their currency float. Until they do they are going to steal the rest of the world blind.
Amazingly enough the U.S. is evolving to nothing but service sector jobs for precisely this reason.
To put it another way, if a Chinese worker and an American worker are equally educated, equally qualified and equally hard working the Chinese worker will win everytime.
Now lets turn to an area where the U.S. did have an advantage. If a creative mind in the U.S. invents something and patents it, or a company invests a bunch of money developing a complex and innovative device. This is a one of a kind device that would insure the company financial success especially with the backing of a patent. You see patents are bad in software but they are priceless in the hardware world. What does China do. It buys the device, reverse engineers it for a fraction of what it cost to develop originally. They sell a knock off for half the price and the American company goes out of business.
Another path to the same demise, an American company has over the years developed a huge portfolio of intellectual property, a dumbass CEO decides he wants to exploit cheap labor and offshore the manufacturing of the products based on the IP. When he does his IP is quickly stolen by an employee and a competing company pops up owned and operated solely by the Chinese and they again bury the American company.
All in all I agree America has spent all its history singing praises of free markets so they should live and die by them, but if you are going to have them they have to be really free, which means freely floating currency and wages along with intellectual property protection. We don't have free trade today, we have trade completely stacked in favor of America's competitors. Unfortunately the Bush administration is to stupid to realize this is going to bury the U.S. in the end. All they see at the moment is cheap labor and improved profitability for corporations who are off shoring. Republicans are generally dumb enough to think thats all that matters.
It should also be noted that Bush's labor secretary is, I think second generation American. Her family is from China. Intestingly enough they make their family fortune in container shipping from China to the U.S. Isn't it interesting the Labor Secretary who should be looking out for the welfare of American workers actually has a personal conflict of interest in favor of off shoreing. Of course she isn't heading the Labor Department to look out for American workers, she is entirely there to drive down wages and improve corprate profitability, for example through the new overtime rules designed to deny overtime pay to millions of American workers.
The problem with you and most of the people who've pilloried me in this thread is you seem to lack the healthy dose of skepticism necessary when considering nuclear technology from an industry with a history of downplaying the dangers. You all seem to be saying its safe, prove its not. I'm saying prove it is. I'm not saying nuclear is inherently BAD but it is a technology with catastrophic results when there is failure so it DEMANDS inordinate scrutiny.
The two issues with PBMR relating to the coating:
A. A track record of manufacturing defects in the pebbles resulting in cracks and defects that may defeat the coating
B. A track record of damaging the pebbles in handling.
Here is a website with pictures of defective pebbles and some healthy skepticism.
"There was a pebble bed reactor accident at Hamm-Uentrop West Germany nine days after the Chernobyl accident. On May 4 1986, a pebble became lodged in a feeder tube. Operators subsequently caused damage to the fuel during attempts to free the pebble. Radiation was released to the environs. The West German government closed down the research program because they found the reactor design unsafe."
It simply isn't the infallible technology suckers like you are saying it is. Sure if they fix the problems or at least have a mechanism for rejecting manufacturing defects in pebbles then maybe it is a solvable problem.
But, PBMR's are still a pile of graphite in a reactor without a containment buildinb which means they could in fact be extremely dangerous if something unexpected happens.
So you are saying because they are mad about last time it would be better if their votes disappeared in to a partisan corporation which can change their votes at will, presumably to support the Republicans, Republicans running both this company and the Pentagon that hired them.
I'm sorry but this really looks like the final round in the on going efforts by the Department of Defense to put a huge pool of millions of votes under their control so they can fix the election and keep themselves in power. They will no doubt rationalize it as good for America because they have most definitely convinced themselves they are the only ones qualified to run America and to defend it from its enemies. It is their patriotic duty to insure they stay in power. If they let someone else take power the "War on Terrorism" is lost.
You recall the Pentagon was going to try internet voting until critics pointed out their system was ripe for fraud. They dutifully killed it and quietly waited until just before the election to roll out a new scheme that is just as ripe for fraud so it will take a miracle for critics to rally enough support to kill it before the election. Its the same strategy they used for Total Information Awareness. Kill it when public outrage gained momentum and quietly reconstitute it under new names below everyone's radar.
Absentee military ballots are an exceptionally good way to rig a presidential election that is hanging in the balance on a handful of very close swing states. They are a pool of ballots evenly distributed across the country so someone intent on fraud can flip votes in just the critical states swing states in one easy location.
Omega is certainly a great name for this company. Omega being the last letter in the Greek alphabet and defined in Webster's:
2. The last; the end; hence, death.
Perhaps a sick Republican like John Poindexter picked the name since this is part of the plan to put an finally finish off the nuisance that is free elections and Democracy in the U.S. Everything will work so much more smoothly if the people in charge can pick the leaders themselves and cut the American people out of the loop.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 2000
Much truth is said in gest.
Re:Breed Plutonium? Steam?
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Port-A-Nuke
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· Score: 1
The biggest issue with the current PBMR design is the pebbles contain large quantities of graphite. It is quite safe as long as the inert Helium coolant loop is in tact but if the coolant system is breached and oxygen reaches a red hot graphite there is at least a chance the graphite in the pebbles is going to ignite and burn furiously. The graphite fire at Chernobyl burned for nine days and was the main source of the toxic plume.
"Some authorities believe that pyrolytic graphite can burn in air, and cite the famous accidents at Windscale and Chernobyl?both graphite-moderated reactors. Others insist that it cannot. Of course, all pebble-bed reactors are cooled by inert gasses that prevent fire. However, all pebble designs also have at least one layer of silicon carbide that serve as a fire break, as well as a seal."
It possible this is a solvable safety issue but it is a source of concern the PBMR advocates seem to downplay without being able to prove its not an issue.
I'd tend to agree that PBMR sounds a lot safer for this kind of thing than a breeder reactor with a steam loop.
The interesting case study on the horizon is Iran. It has a nuclear reactor slated to come online in 2005. Iran is already warning Israel and the U.S. that things will turn ugly if either do what Israel did to Iraq in the 90's and take it upon themselves to bomb the reactor in to rubble before it comes online.
I doubt Iran will be stupid enough to start a direct military confrontation with Israel and the U.S. if they do but Iran could easily:
A. pump large numbers of insurgents and weapons in to Iraq and Afghanistan where America troops are extremely vulnerable as retaliation. B. escalate support for Palastine leading to an major upsurge in violence in Israel.
These are certainly sad but interesting times.
I'm willing to bet the Bush administration is going to reinstitute the draft as soon as they are reelected. As soon as they have more warm bodies in army boots they will be parked in Iraq and the now combat veteran army will be heading in to Iran and Syria. It appears the U.S. is little more than Israel's proxy army a this point as those two countries on next on Israel's list to go down so they can completely dominate the middle east.
This certainly is an aptly named thread for your post. You certainly are arrogant. You are a case study in why most of the world really dislikes America and Americans today.
"Who made the United States the ruler of world affairs?
Europe."
Sorry friend, the U.S. made the U.S. the ruler of the world. Don't think very many many people in the rest of the world think its a good idea now that they've seen what George W. Bush and the extremists in the Republican party have turned in to using 9/11 as a convenient excuse.
You have a uniquely American centric and ill informed understanding of world affairs
I don't think anyone else was really consulted about this new global empire. Outside of Italy and Germany I don't think most of the rest of Europe was in favor World War II. The U.S. was just lucky there were two oceans between it and most of World War II so it came out largely unscathed and an industrial and military superpower.
"any war that Russia might start, so it was left up to the US to be the "good guys"
I don't think most of the people who live in the countries who endured the proxy wars and dictatorships the U.S. propped up, as it played global brinksmanship with the U.S.S.R, will agree the US are the "good guys". The U.S. propped up repressive right wing dictatorships and the Soviet Union propped up repressive left wing dictatorships, neither side were the "good guys" except in their own propaganda.
Here is a partial list of the U.S. hall of shame, long running repressive dictator who lined their pockets as the repressed and brutalized their people in the name of anticommunism... Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Marcos in the Phillippines, South Vietnam, Panama, Haiti, Chile, Cuba before Castro, Nicaragua before the Sandanistas. As long as a dictator was willing to be anticommunist and respects the property rights of American companies and individuals the U.S. let them engage in unchecked repression and brutality.
"Leave the US and England out of this. Our nuclear weapons are pretty much at the "yeah, we have some" point. A large chunk of our arsenal has been destroyed, and many of their silos abandoned. I'd say leave France out of this too, but they've had dealings with the Middle East that puts them in the spotlight."
Actually the Bush administration is actively pursuing an effort to develop tactical nuclear weapons that, unless someone(i.e. Congress) stops them, will be authorized for use on cave complexes and bunkers. Yes, the Bush administration is on a course to authorize use of nuclear weapons as a matter of routine in what would be otherwise conventional wars. Once they drop the threshold for first use of nuclear weapons this low its quite possible the U.S. could start using them any time they decide they are convenient. I didn't think I would see it in my life time but we may seen the routine use of nuclear weapons in war.
Presumably the U.S. will be relying on its ballistic missile defense to discourage China or Russia from complaining when the U.S. starts routine use of nukes.
The U.S. is at this point, with tactical nukes and missile defense, headed towards being the most dangerous nuclear power on the planet.
"Not the new pebble bed reactors. The old designs would melt down if you didn't actively control the reaction. The new designs just stop producing energy."
I'm sorry to say point out are claiming they are "safe" mostly because they have a low probability to melt down due to a loss of coolant (presumably Helium gas).
But you are either intentionally or unintentionally glossing over the possibility a graphite pebble bed would burn if there was a breach in the coolant system and the hot graphite was exposed to air/oxygen instead of inert gases. Burning graphite helped make Chernobyl the catastrophe it was.
"Some authorities believe that pyrolytic graphite can burn in air, and cite the famous accidents at Windscale and Chernobyl?both graphite-moderated reactors. Others insist that it cannot. Of course, all pebble-bed reactors are cooled by inert gasses that prevent fire. However, all pebble designs also have at least one layer of silicon carbide that serve as a fire break, as well as a seal. "
It appears this is the source of controversy that needs to be resolved before you can really claim PBMR is probably reasonably "safe". Someone needs to figure out a way to build a pebble bed sans radioactive waste and expose it to oxygen when its at its peak temperature and figure out if it will burn. The key problem being achieving the same thermal profile without fission in the loop.
"Also, I hate to break it to you, but burning coal produces much more environmental radiation than nuclear power."
It doesn't produce more radiation than a breached reactor vessel and burning pile of graphite laced with plutonium, and other assorted deadly isotopes.
As I said when I started this thread I'm all for nuclear energy since burning fossil fuels, coal especially, is obviously bad. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm willing to buy in to propaganda from the companies pushing nuclear power plants that their designs are infallible because they aren't. If they suffer a catastrophic failure they are a bloody mess. Coal fired power plants don't have this catastrophic down side so people tend to be more forgiving of living downwind from them.
I think they said "practically unsinkable" but it was a pretty unfortunate and ironic thing to claim for a ship that sank on it maiden voyage and is a case study in engineering hubris.
Rather than being practically unsinkable it had at least two serious design flaws. The steel in the hull was poorly manufactured and was probably brittle and easily ruptured. Titanic was only unsinkable if a sufficiently small number of water tight compartments were ruptured. It was thoroughly sinkable if enough of them were breeched which apparently enough were. As I recall the water tight compartments had a design flaw that they the only extended so high. When the first breached compartments filled with water, and the ship tilted and settled in the water, water probably started spilling in to the adjacent compartments and the domino effect doomed the ship. The water tight compartments were a great innovation but they apparently weren't actually water tight in the Titanic, they had a design flaw.
"Since you seem to be wanting to make the point that they where wrong, please provide your evidence of other contemperary(sp?) liners hitting icebergs in the same manner and remaining afloat?"
I'm afraid I don't see your point. My point was beware of engineers claiming the infallibility of their design. I wasn't contending that it is possible to make an unsinkable ship. It isn't. That is the point. All you can do is minimize risks which is all you can do in a fission reactor so I'm nervous when people seem to be argueing PBMR reactors are "safe".
The risk with PBMR appears to be there is a significant risk of fire if a hot bed is exposed to Oxygen by a coolant system breach. The people advocating them would have more credibility if they acknowledged the risk and explained how they are going to resolve it. If they can't resolve it that would be good to know because it means there is a chance of a catastrophic graphite fire just like there was at Chernobyl and I don't want to live down wind from one.
Re:One good reason at least
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China Goes Nuclear
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"I'm claiming that TMI couldn't have developed into a Chernobyl. They were radically different designs, so spreading FUD about light-water reactors on the basis of Chernobyl is totally ridiculous."
The only thing thats ridiculous is that, after that list of "possible", "very real risk", "further catastrophy", that you are still trying to contend that TMI wasn't extremely dangerous. I'll say it again, they were lucky. They pretty obviously didn't anticipate what happened in their design.
I should add that the PBMR reactor everyone is pitching as the next generation reactor here, not light water reactors, apparently does contain large quantities of graphite. If there is a breach in the coolant system and air or oxygen hits the pebble bed there is at least a chance its going to burn like Chernobyl. The graphite in their reactor burned for the better part of 9 days and was the main source of the plume.
In the limited reading I've done tonight and I've posted elsewhere I've seen that is at least one potential flaw in PBMR which suggests I'm right to at least have a healthy dose of skepticism about people who have the hubris to claim an infallible design. Remember what the engineers said about the Titanic before it set sail. You have to except some risk if you are going to develop complex systems but you should be very afraid of engineers who try to deny there is any risk in something that is obviously risky.
The PBMR articles I've read tonight indicate the pebbles are clad in graphite. This is OK as long as they are emersed in the Helium coolant gas. What exactly happens if there is a breach in the coolant line and Oxygen is introduced to a hot bead of graphite? It appears there is at least a chance the hot graphite pebbles would burn, perhaps furiously. If they did you would probably have a really ugly accident.
So the first strike against PBMR is it appears to be a fission reactor full of graphite and that immediately reminds people of Chernobyl which was a fission reactor full of graphite that burned furiously for something like 9 days and was the main source of the radioactive plume.
Re:One good reason at least
on
China Goes Nuclear
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"Umm, no. Physics makes it impossible for TMI to have become a Chernobyl. TMI is about a worst-case scenario for a light-water reactor. TMI shows that while a light-water reactor accident is a financial disaster for the company owning it, it won't kill thousands of people."
I didn't say it was going to be another Chernobyl exactly but you are simply BS'ing everyone if you are trying to claim everything was within the parameters of the design and there was no danger.
In particular you are leaving out the wild card which was a 1000 cubic feet 1000 PSI Hydrogen bubble that formed in the vessel from the breakdown of the superheated water. It had an explosive potential of 3 tons of TNT which would have been enough to breach the vessel and containment if it had exploded.
There was also a significant chance the Hydrogen bubble would have continued to grow. If it had it could have uncovered the entire core. If so the core might well have done a China Syndrome and melted through the floor of the vessel and containment building.
There was enough water pooled at the bottom of the vessel there was also a significant chance of a steam explosion when the melting core hit it and that could have also breeched the reactor.
All in all you seem to be claiming certainty about a situation that was unprecedented and anything but certain.
I think it means it is no longer naturally occuring, whether it never existed or it existed and decayed being not very relevent. At present the only significant quantities you are going to find were synthesized by man (barring the offbeat chance there is a natural fission reactor in a Uranium deposit someplace so I think I'll stand by synthetic. I'm inclined to say you are being a pedantic dick and a pretty rude one too so I guess its OK I return the favor. That you Twirlip? If not someone is stealing your style.
"please show me where nuclear waste has caused more cancer than"
The way your framing the question is kind of moronic. Unfortunately yes UV radiation is dangerous. You probably should wear sun screen, a hat and get checked for skin cancer periodically. You see it is dangerous so you seek to minimize the risk. Because one thing is dangerous isn't a very good justification for frolicing with something else thats dangerous.
As for tobacco the cigarette companies lied for the longest time, said it wasn't dangerous, and everyone believed them, asbestos, PCB's pretty similar story. As an exercise can you draw a parallel to what the nuclear power industry usually say about the safety of their plants, the safety of their waste, and the periodic releases of radiation in to the atmosphere. I'm all for nuclear power but when there are people trying to make a buck off it you really can't believe everything they say any more than you can the tobacco companies, or you may regret it. Coal plants are obviously pretty dangerous too. I think we need to look really hard for an energy source that is better. Just because coal sucks doesn't necessarily mean I want to jump on the fission bandwagon with blind faith, unless they do better than they have so far.
"please show me where nuclear waste has caused more cancer than"
The beauty of exposure to radioactive waste is that it is nearly impossible to estimate how many people got sicked or died unless it is due to massive and immediate radiation sickness which isn't very common. This can be said about survivors of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Chernobyl or those down range from all the open air testing in the 50's. The casualty and illness estimates from Chernobyl span a huge range depending on the predisposition of the people making the estimate. All in all I'd just soon not be exposed to it thank you very much.
So at this point I guess your saying you are OK with us piling high level radioactive waste in your back yard. Cool. I'll phone Nevada. They will be so relieved, assuming of course you don't live in Nevada.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you think your employer is being unfair THEN LEAVE!"
That only works if there is a labor shortage. With outsourcing dramatically expanding the labor pool and a never ending tide of illegal immigrants cratering wages for manual labor in the U.S. there is a near inevitability that there is going to be a huge labor surplus in the U.S. There probably already is though the government cleverly drops the long term unemployed out of the unemployment rate and labor statistics.
Employers are astute enough to know when there is surplus labor. They dream of it and pay their politicians to make it happen (which is why politician look the other way and allow massive illegal immigration and promote out sourcing). When the labor surplus arrives most greedy businessmen cut benefits and salaries, and praise be their profit margins go up. There are a few smart businessmen that value and nurture good employees but they are few and getting fewer.
American workers are going to really suffer in the near future, more than they already are. It is good you praised unions from the early 20th century. If it hadn't been for them everyone would be working 7 days a week 12 hours a day for poverty wages. It took violence to break greedy businessmen who thought thats all workers deserved. Without unions and with a labor surplus workers may well start marching back to the dark ages.
Unions did turn corrupt for the most part, it was to bad, but all big institutions corrupt, government and political parties included. But its also true business and the Republicans, starting with Reagan in particular, have worked hard to destroy them.
The disappearance of unions and the pressures of outsourceing, globalization and illegal immigrants are going to destroy the middle class in America. The U.S. is going to end up 95% poor and 5% filthy rich like most 3rd world countries. In the news today, Los Angeles is already there. The majority of people in LA are now functionally illiterate.
If your in the lucky 5% you wont care either. You will drive in to a gated community next to the golf course and just not care.
You might think you are just going to retrain and be immune I think you are wrong. Unless you have skills that can't be outsourced, or you have the benefit of being born affluent so you land in the 5% you simply wont be able to compete with workers and wage rates in China and India.
When manufacturing cratered they said retrain for IT. When IT got outsourced they said retrain for biotech. When biotech moved to India they said....
"After all, who was the sitting president who had information of 9/11, but willingly left his seat so that another could take the fall?"
I have no clue what you just said there.
"At least Bush has the stones to do something about it...."
Maybe Cheney or Rumsfeld has the balls, I doubt George does. If you recall when George first heard about 9/11 he sat like a deer in headlights for a half an hour reading "My Pet Goat". He continued his deer imitation for seven minutes after he was told there was a second crash at the World Trade Center making it obvious it was an attack. Cheney was actually running things during this period. If you recall George went from there to Air Force One and spent the rest of the crisis running and hiding at various obscure air force bases.
I'm amazed people think Bush actually is in charge. Cheney and the rest of Bush's staff are the ones with the brains that make his decision for him, he just picks one of the options. His speech writers are the ones that put the words and catch phrases in his mouth when he is reading the teleprompter. Everytime he has to ad lib he tends to turn in to a gibbering idiot. Its a tribute to his staff that they can coach him on all the predictable questions so he holds it together at press conferences as well as he does.
He is an empty headed figure head. He has the name, and the family, and he has a likable demeanor especially to his base. He is electable. Its not like he actually knows what he's doing or is really running things.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 2000
"So reading the Vice President's words, in context, one can easily see that Cheney was not saying "a vote for Kerry is a vote for Al Qaeda"
:)
I said "a vote for Kerry is a vote for Al Qaeda". I was just exposing the cutting edge just underneath the surface of what he was saying.
What Cheney said,
"If we make the wrong choice".
I would translate that as voters choose Kerry assuming this is Cheney's idea of "the wrong choice". Many people would define "the wrong choice" as reelecting Bush/Cheney which would put a whole new spin on this
I dont care how you try to parse this, "then the danger is we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that'll be devastating from the standpoint of the United States" he is saying if you elect Kerry then the U.S. will suffer another devastating attack. Its not might be attacked or the chances are higher of being attacked or the response to the attack might be weak, its a danger of a devastating attack.
No matter how you slice it, it is the worst kind of fear mongering.
Problem #1 there is no way in hell he can assure us there wont be another devastating attack if the U.S. makes the "right" choice and reelects Bush/Cheney. They really don't have total control of the situation.
Problem #2 there is no way in hell he can have the smug confidence to say there will be an attack on Kerry's watch. Zel Miller shredded Kerry for tearing down the commander in chief. Well Cheney is doing exactly the same thing to a potential commander in chief. Hypocrites.
"As to your other complaints, if 200+ vets come together to voice their opinion about a candidate, who are you to say they're wrong?"
Uh the vets that were actually on John Kerry's boat and served under him for starters. One of the Swift Boat Vets in the ads is on video tape praising his courage under fire eight years earlier. If you side by side that tape with the Swift Boat commercial its obvious he is lieing in one of them.
But I'm not gonna defend Kerry's record, it is kind of pathetic. All I ask if he is going to be raked over the coals for it then George W. deserves the same treatment. He was arrested for Cocaine possession in Texas, he got off with six months community service thanks to connections and it was wiped off his record. If it has been a black guy or a poor guy it would have been a felony conviction and his political career would have been over before it started.
He used family connections to get in to the Air National over hundreds of better qualified applicants, he apparently flunked the pilots aptitude test, scoring 26.
He moved to Alabama without getting it approved with his Texas unit. In Alabama he was mostly partying, drinking, doing coke and not fulfilling his service. When the Guard instituted drug testing as part of the physical during this time he refused to take it since he would have been nailed for cocaine use. Refusing the physical resulted in his grounding and should have bounced him out of the guard and in to regular military service. And of course Bush political operatives were given unsupervised access to his Guard file so the docs on this really embarrassing stuff disappeared from his file.
"The RNC wants people to know that Kerry is the wrong choice. You expected them to go easy on him? You must be new here."
Wrong choice is one thing. Fear mongering and smearing is another. It just shows you what kind of hopeless pit of dispair this country is sliding in to because fear mongering and smear campaigns usually work, especially when the Bush team does it because they are EXPERTS at it. I really would prefer candidates campaign on their record and their platform, not on one cheap shot after another. Bush's record is pathetic, so is Kerry's so I guess it follows we get, as Joe Trippi calls it, "six second sound bites of mutual assured destruction" instead.
"As to the alleged smear on McCain, obviously it's not that big of a deal, since McCain spoke on
"by influencing the vote with last-minute emotions rather than thoroughly contemplation."
God forbid that should happen...
Dick Cheney yesterday saying if you vote the wrong way there will be another 9/11 attack (translation a vote for Kerry is a vote for Al Qaeda)
Swift Boat Vet ads.
Zel Miller at the RNC. In fact the whole RNC which was designed to stoke peoples fear of terrorism and that their grandchildren would be in danger if Kerry would be elected.
In 2000 the Bush campaign smearing John McCain in South Carolina with charges he fathered a black baby.
The Bush campaign deserves everything they get on the propaganda front because they dish it out non stop. Its just leveling the playing field for Michael Moore and MoveOn.org to give it back to them in kind. If it weren't for them the Kerry campaign would be dueling without a pistol.
Here is a good reference on the basis of church state separation. In particular look for quotes from James Madison on the subject since he was one of the principals in writing the amendment.
As I understand it the founders intent, and their statements factored in to the interpretation of the law in the courts, is to insure government does not aid or hinder religion. I would be inclined to say that attacking "In God We Trust" is probably a bit excessive but it is in fact a case where government is promoting religion and probably shouldn't. Making people pledge allegiance to a nation and God at the same time is really over the top though all the people in the U.S. who are excessively proud of their belief system will NEVER see it that way though it is obvious.
George W. Bush's faith based initiative is a sterling example of why the founders wrote the amendement. He can argue that they are social services and charities, and its OK for him to fund them with my tax dollars. Unfortunately there is a high probability that when they pull needy people in to their aid network they will promote their religious beliefs and will endeavor to convert the unfortunate souls to their religious persuasion, in fact in many cases the bible and religion is going to be the basis of their social outreach and treatment. As soon as they do that using government funding they have violated the bill of rights, no ifs, ands or buts. Religious institutions should want to disavow Federal funding since it really compromises them and it will tie there hands in their religious outreach unless they want to get sued.
"Religion is part of what makes a person."
I'm sorry but with this statement and some of the others you make me nervous and make me glad there is separation of church and state in this country.
Religion is NOT part of what makes a person unless you exercise your right to freedom of religious choice and make it so. For anyone who doesn't want to make religion part of their person IT IS NOT and our Constitution defends their right to make that choice.
Many early Americans were fleeing states were there was a dominant religion that was intertwined with the state. It inevitably resulted in discrimination against religious minorites at a minimum and more often in outright persecution. It is simply a bad thing to do because once you start it a little here and a little there it will snowball into religious persecution almost inevitably.
I don't want, and I don't think the Founding Fathers really wanted government leaders making decisions colored by religious doctrine. Certainly their religious and moral upbringing will factor in to their decision making and perhaps they might even pray or meditate on the subject but they should leave the specifics of their belief system at the door when it comes times to enter the oval office and make a decision.
George W. Bush and John Ashcroft in particular can't seem to keep their religious views apart from their government duties. I also don't want Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson influencing my government and passing laws which enforce their religious and moral doctrine. Even worse is the possibility U.S. policies in the Middle East, including waging war are colored by apocalyptic beliefs peculiar to evangelical Christians. For example one of those doctrines which is disturbing is that there must be a Jewish state in Israel to set the stage for the second coming which leads to giving Israel a blank check from the U.S. and to the U.S. taking down Iraq, Iran and Syria for no reason other than they are hostile to Israel.
As for when and where you pray I think you are right. You should be able to do it whenever and wherever you want. In fact I'm pretty sure you can. Close your eyes and quietly pray to yourself. But I don't think you really just want to pray in school or the office, you want to flaunt the fact that you are praying, get others to join in, do it out l
It started with FAA security directives, SD's. The first was in 1990. There were 3 SD's in effect on 9/11 with a short list of names of people who were banned from flying because they were presumed terrorists. It wasn't actively enforced until after 9/11 though/
Here is a TSA memo describing the justification for the no fly and selectee lists. This was acquired by EPIC though FOIA requests. They weren'f very successful since you see most of the memo is censored. In particular they wanted to know who was putting names on the list and could take them off, and they wanted a copy of the list to see if the people on it are terrorists or if it includes political opponents of the Bush administration and anti war activists as anecdotal evidence suggests.
After 9/11 there was a slew of FAA directives that expanded the lists and then the TSA came on the scene, took over the lists and it ran amuck.
I'm not positive these are the basis of the ID requirement though I think they are. Since there is a list of people who are not allowed to fly and people allowed to fly only with extra scrutiny(selectees) it follows you have to submit an ID so your name can be checked against the list. It is needless to say insane to identify potentially dangerous travelers based on a simple name but the U.S. government, especially since 9/11, has gone completely insane.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 2000
I'm not sure there is proof there is a law/regulation requiring an ID but it is a proven fact that there is a no fly and selectee list. If your name is on the no fly list you dont fly and they call security at the counter. If you are on the selectee list you fly but with additional scrutiny. EPIC submitted a FOIA and got some stuff on it from the TSA, airlines etc. Unfortunately most of the interesting memos were censored to the point they are useless.
It kind of follows if there is a no fly list you are going to need to show an ID so they can see if your name is on the list. If he flew out of SFO without an ID check I imagine the person at SFO who let him violated the regulations and probably could have been fired over it.
It goes without saying its insane to use a simple list of names to identify travellers. Many of the names on the no fly list are known aliases of terrorists which means pretty much any name they felt like using, including Edward or Ted Kennedy. If you are so unfortunate to happen to have the same name as some alias on the list you are going to be screwed in the airport. In the EPIC docs are complaints from senior citizens who have never had so much as a traffic ticket and are massively hasselled when they fly.
In the EPIC docs are indications of the near impossibility of getting your name off the list. There are letters to congressman from constituents desperate to get off. People are routinely bounced between the airlines, the TSA, the FBI and Homeland security and get no where since it is secret exactly who puts the names on the lists and who takes them off. It would be extremely easy for the Bush administration to put names of political opponents and dissidents on the list and they can't prove it or do anything about. There is anecdotal evidence it is being done but you can't prove it thanks to the classified nature of the list.
It should be pointed out the no fly list dates from 1990 and George's dad. Back then the FBI administered it and it was pretty small. After 9/11 it was turned over to the TSA and turned in to a Kafkaesque nightmare.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 2000
"You got your wish George. You have two wishes left"
Demachina, September 2004
If Slashdot wants to develop some political enlightenment and sophistication they need to realize politics isn't like a turn signal, left and right. Its more like a wheel with spokes in every direction.
If someone trashes the Republicans believe it or not it doesn't necessarily mean they are a Democrat/liberal and vice versa. There are plenty of true conservatives that despise what the Republican party has turned in to and Liberals who despise the Democrats. I imagine you can chalk this up, in the U.S. at least, to a two party system which has tried to con everyone in to thinking there are only two parties and two ways to look at things and if you don't agree with one of those two, in all their current corruption, you are basically adrift in an empty ocean.
Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager was on Charlie Rose on PBS recently. One thing he said I like. In 2008 there is at least a chance people are going to unite on the Internet and back an independent candidate with $300-400 million dollars coming in hundred dollar checks from millions of people and bitch slap the two major parties, a slapping they've come to gloriously deserve, especially after the pathetic candidates they've fielded in the last two presidential elections. The hope is there will be an independent candidate who will actually talk about issues, from a fresh perspective, not regurgatating the entrenched party platforms, and put an end to the campaign of the "six second sound bites of mutual assured destruction".
The first challenge is to find a candidate with the right mix of charisma, judgement and brains. One who can form a common sense platform, on issues that matter, that will appeal to enough people to get elected and not pander to the inflammatory issues that dominate the debate between the two parties.
The second challenge is to get this candidate on the ballot in the face of the two parties unconstitutional onslaught on third party candidates like Nader.
The third challenge is to get this candidate enough credibility in the polls that he/she can't be dismissed as an also run and pushed in to obscurity as the media and the two parties are want to do.
I would vote for John McCain were it not for his recent grovelling at the feet of the Bush administration, people who savaged him in 2000, and his irrational level of support for the invasion of Iraq. I would vote for Dean were it not for his grovelling at the feet of Gore and Kerry along with his penchant for saying dumb things. I'd vote for Nader if he has a chance of getting elected just to see him shake up Washington and big business and see how long it would be before someone in the establishment assassinated him. Wouldn't vote for Perot.
You can keep denying it until you are blue in the face but calling up the ready reserve, stop loss orders and pressing the guard and reserve in to indefinite active duty is a back door draft. Don't know why you apologists for the Bush Administration can't just admit the obvious.
It would be a lot more honest if they reinstitute the draft, preferably without the loopholes, the 5 deferments Cheney used, and of course the Air National Guard dodge George W. abused. That way the burden would be equally shared among rich and poor, black and white alike.
I recall back to the Republican convention when Zel Miller and Dick Cheney were ranting about how they had to be strong in the war on terror to keep their children and grandchildren safe. Someone should point out the fact the Bush/Cheney have killed children and grandchildren 998 times in Iraq with thousands more with disfiguring burns and amputated limbs. Where is their concern for those children and grandchildren they keeping putting them in harm's way in a war that, rather than making America safer, has fueled animosity to America around the world.
If some of the Bush/Cheney clan were driving trucks in Iraq they wouldn't be the flaming hypocrite chicken hawks they obviously are.
"When China has achieved world economic dominion ...the U.S. and Europe will be annexed and we'll all be living on one big happy planet."
....
Actually the lower, and what used to be the middle class, in the U.S. and Europe will be living in third world class poverty, the upper class will still be rich, and there is going to be a huge middle class enjoying economic prosperity in China. Maybe China will start offshoring to the U.S. when Americans are desperate for the future equivalent of 30 cents an hour.
This is economic warfare. There are winners and losers. Odds are against a rising tide lifting all boats.
"China has been doing this ever since the U.S. helped defend Taiwan during its succession. How could you expect otherwise when they believe Taiwan is theirs?"
You miss the point. They've always wanted to dictate to the U.S. on Taiwan and a host of other issues. When the U.S. is completely dependent on China, which it practically already is, China will have the leverage to dictate successfully. That is the key point, leverage.
"Calling our Labor secretary openly hostile is a bit spurious; open hostility to the (American, European, or other first world nations) working people is synonymous with competing against China"
Sorry but what you said here makes no sense to me. The Labor secretary and the Bush Administration are openly hostile to U.S. working people, they know it, working people know it, business people know it. The want some of their votes, they babble concern about unemployment, and they get some of them especially in the South by conning less than bright working people with flag waving, race cards, bible thumping, gay bashing etc, and then they turn around and screw them economically every chance they get. To the Republicans/most businessmen workers are a commodity. The best workers are the cheapest, most repressed workers, with the fewest benefits, and at the moment those are in China.
"Is China a threat because of its export laws or because of its labor system?"
Its a threat because of:
- Trade barriers
- Currency manipulation
- Repressive labor system
- Gigantic labor pool
- Intellectual property theft
"Until China starts showing signs of collapse don't think that we can compete unless we keep the technological edge that has kept us going so long. Sure China's gotten good at ripping off a lot of 1st world technologies, but so long as their tech companies aren't turning a profit on their American sales it's not much of a worry for the U.S."
Sure we can. This is economic warfare. You fight fire with fire, currency manipulation, trade barriers, etc. The U.S. still has vast wealth. If U.S. political and business leaders weren't complete morons, blinded by short term greed they could just say no to China until it lets its currency float, drops its trade barriers, respects intellectual property, and insures a fair wage and good working conditions for its workers. At the moment U.S. political and business leaders loyalty to the U.S. is completely trumped by loyalty to the beloved buck/yuan.
As an example of what not to do, Walmart is in the middle of a campaign in which it is telling all its U.S. suppliers they have to slash wages and benefits for their U.S. workers and match Chinese prices, or fire all their U.S. workers and off shore or Walmart will switch to a supplier who does. Walmart's prices are wonderful but it is almost single handedly laying waste to the U.S. economy. Its a two pronged devestation. They are destroying all competing retailers and they are destroying all U.S. suppliers.
"If you want to boil it down to the "working man," China is a land full of them"
It isn't the duty of the United States and the U.S. government to insure full employment in China or anyplace especially when that full employment translates in to poverty for American workers and the destruction of the American middle class.
Articles on recruiting in 2002 and 2003 aren't relevent. 2002 inevitably had a surge in recruits who wanted to do their part avenge America from attack. I wager there was a surge in 2003 when Iraq looked like a dashing cavalry charge and a quick victory. It wasn't until the second half of 2003 that Iraq turned in to an obviously bad place to be.
The only recruiting numbers that really matter are the Army and Marines in 2004 and 2005. The Navy and Air Force aren't seeing the hard time in Iraq the Army and Marines are. I recall the Pentagon was trying to con Air Force and Navy truck drivers in to taking transfers to the Army to drive trucks in Iraq. I assume most were smart enough to not do something that stupid.
In that article your own reference says:
"Though the Army has been meeting its recruiting goals for active personnel, it is behind in its year-to-date goal for recruiting reserve personnel, Hilferty said."
"We are concerned," Hilferty said. "We're reallocating resources to recruiting and retention."
"Part of the reason the Army is not meeting that goal is because its best spokesmen aren't here to encourage young men and women to join."
"The best recruiter for the National Guard is a National Guardsman," he said. "Our best recruiters for the Guard are in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Its a nice spin to put on it that they are having problem with Guard and Reserves because their best recruiters are in the middle of a war. Its bullshit. Most people don't sign up for the Guard to end up in one lengthy and dangerous deployment after another while their careers and finances crater, and their families suffer. They do sign up to do their duty in a national emergency but Iraq simply wasn't that and isn't that when you are staring at year after year of occupation propping up a puppet government as the U.S. has always done(same thing in Vietnam). I imagine they might tolerate the duty if it didn't suck, but occupation duty sucks especially when the locals hate your guts, and insurgents are using you as a shooting gallery target.
Its also pretty obvious the Army is going to have to dramatically increase its troop strength as soon as the election is over. They are pulling in vets that left the military years ago, some in their 50's using the ready reserve backdoor draft. Some people are heading towards their 3rd rotation in to Iraq which is incredible in this short period of time. Its inevitable there is going to be an exodus from the guard and reserves unless they continue to use stop loss orders to prevent it which they no doubt will.
And then the Bush administration is almost certain to start new adventures in Iran and Syria as soon as they can drum up a crisis to justify. The Pentagon and the White House is wrapped around Israel's thumb and they want those two nations take down so they can dominate the Middle Easy uncontested. For Iran the fact that they have a Russian built nuclear reactor coming on line in 2005 will probably serve to precipitate the crisis. The media is already starting the drum beat that Iran can't be allowed to join the nuclear club and Rumsfeld is talking up the possibility of an uprising in Iran to topple the Ayatollahs.
The thing I'd most like to see. I'd like to see the children of Kerry, Bush and Cheney enlist and volunteer for service in Iraq, as PFC's. It would be a site to see, Bush in particular, if his Ivy league daughters ass was on the line in a convoy in Iraq.
"I fail to see the corellation between the economic differences between China and the U.S. and our current administration."
Well you are correct that Democrats are about as much to blame as the Republicans. They were integral to America's destroying its economic base through the WTO and NAFTA. The WTO might have worked if it had led to really free markets and fair trade but its resulted in American markets being nearly wide open while places like China are maintaining massive barriers and are engaging in wholesale cheating. They know they can get away with it as long as American CEO's are turning a profit. When China has achieved world economic dominion and they don't need American companies any more those CEO's are going to rue the day they sold out America to China, but of course they probably wont because by that time they will probably be rich and retired to a life of luxury so why should they care as long as the gate on their gated community works to keep out the starving people they sold down the river.
The only thing in the Democrats favor is they've realized now it was a mistake and are backtracking. The problem with the Bush administration is they are still singing praises of the current trends, and are encouraging it to accelerate in face of the obvious evidence its going to devestate the U.S. economy in the long run. It is a tribute to blind stupidity driven by short term greed.
They fail to realize that, in China's case in particular, this is warfare, economic warfare designed to defeat the U.S. and Old Europe, something that would have been difficult or impossible to do militarily, but is proving to be child's play to do economically. China has already started to try to dictate to the U.S. about policies and arms sales to Taiwan. In the not to distant future they will be able to blackmail the U.S. in to doing anything they want by the simple threat of stopping the container ship traffic from China to the U.S. Even more so if there is eventually armed conflict between the U.S. and China, the U.S. will realize it was a mistake to move all of its machine tools and steel mills to China. The U.S. wont be able to manufacture anything. It will wake up one day and realize the last machine tools were sent to China and it will take years to rebuild the U.S. industrial base, from scratch, in a time of crisis. Having machine tools and being able to build machine tools is pretty important to a manufacturing base.
"Also, given the fact that China is where U.S. companies are looking to move jobs wouldn't it make sense to have someone with some Chinese ties directing the American job market in hopes to maybe fight fire with fire?"
I could see you making this argument for Commerce Secretary. I don't see anyway you can rationalize it for Labor. Its just a basic indicator the people who appointed her are openly hostile to working people. Everyone knows they are, its not like its a secret. Your union comment is just classic Republican rhetoric. Fact is working people should have a shot at making a living and surviving, unions, CEO's and you be damned.
"What happened to the workers in that industry some of who would obviously have lost jobs?"
In many cases they've landed in unemployment, and in poverty.
The unemployment rate might reflect this but for this entertaining little trick that the long term unemployed are, once their unemployment runs out, quietly removed from the unemployment rate as having left the work force.
Some went on Welfare but since Welfare reform under Clinton its not the safety net it used to be.
In other cases they've been pushed in to service sector jobs which pay less and have fewer benefits, especially no health insurance. Pizza delivery is a leading career opportunity.
There was this government propaganda program, during the collapse of manufacturing jobs, that its the responsibility of American workers to retrain themselves as high tech knowledge workers to deal with the changing job market. Unfortunately many people in every country don't have the intellectual abilities to be a programmer or accountant, or acquire an MBA. Many workers did try to retrain for tech jobs. Low and behold as soon as they did all those jobs started disappearing off shore and they were screwed a second time. No one is really sure what jobs they should be training for now outside of pizza delivery. Biotech looked promising but its offshoring now too, though pharmaceutical sales rep is still a high growth field in the U.S.
Its pretty important for every country to have diversified industries so people can find employment they are suited for.
Everyone will mod me as flame bait for saying it but you are really seeing a major rebirth of class warfare in the U.S. like you haven't seen in over a century. Class warfare never quite went away but its gone to such extremes in the last 4 years no one in the U.S. can quite grasp whats happening. The affluent in America have decided to sell the other 90% of America down the river. They will get richer doing it, wealth will concentrate further in their hands. They will be happy in gated communities, served by Mexican gardeners and maids, sailing their yachts on weekends. They will need to put in a potent police state to maintain law and order as the 90% that are being screwed realize they are being pushed in to poverty by the increasingly super rich. Actually they already have it, which is why America now has more people in prison per capita than any other country on Earth, in part thanks to the "War on Drugs". Our politicians are big on "War on" things. They haven't said it yet but there is a well established "War on the Middle Class", and "War on the Poor" as opposed to "War on Poverty".
The Republican party is all about making the rich richer and screwing working people. It is their mantra. They have done a really neat trick by suckering enough people, people they are screwing, in to voting for them so they have, and will continue to have, complete control of the government and economy. How do they do it. They sucker less than bright people, especially in the South and West in to voting for them by waving the flag, singing praises of Jesus, scareing people with the "War on Terror" and images of mushroom clouds over your cities if you vote Democrat. They sucker people with gay bashing, and pro life rhetoric which plays very well in the bible belt and with people who aren't very bright. They subtly play the race card to make sure whites don't vote Democrat because its the black peoples party. The end result lower and middle income people still vote for them, even though the Republicans are going to destroy the jobs they depend on for survival and eventually push them in to poverty.
Unfortunately you've really oversimplified the situation. Do you work for the Bush administration? They do that too.
Your glossing over the fact that countries like China artificially manipulate their currencies and wage rates, and have a dramatically lower cost of living. It will simply be impossible for anyone living in a developed country with a free floating currency to complete against them in any field outside of the service sector. If you want to rant about free trade then China has to let their currency float. Until they do they are going to steal the rest of the world blind.
Amazingly enough the U.S. is evolving to nothing but service sector jobs for precisely this reason.
To put it another way, if a Chinese worker and an American worker are equally educated, equally qualified and equally hard working the Chinese worker will win everytime.
Now lets turn to an area where the U.S. did have an advantage. If a creative mind in the U.S. invents something and patents it, or a company invests a bunch of money developing a complex and innovative device. This is a one of a kind device that would insure the company financial success especially with the backing of a patent. You see patents are bad in software but they are priceless in the hardware world. What does China do. It buys the device, reverse engineers it for a fraction of what it cost to develop originally. They sell a knock off for half the price and the American company goes out of business.
Another path to the same demise, an American company has over the years developed a huge portfolio of intellectual property, a dumbass CEO decides he wants to exploit cheap labor and offshore the manufacturing of the products based on the IP. When he does his IP is quickly stolen by an employee and a competing company pops up owned and operated solely by the Chinese and they again bury the American company.
All in all I agree America has spent all its history singing praises of free markets so they should live and die by them, but if you are going to have them they have to be really free, which means freely floating currency and wages along with intellectual property protection. We don't have free trade today, we have trade completely stacked in favor of America's competitors. Unfortunately the Bush administration is to stupid to realize this is going to bury the U.S. in the end. All they see at the moment is cheap labor and improved profitability for corporations who are off shoring. Republicans are generally dumb enough to think thats all that matters.
It should also be noted that Bush's labor secretary is, I think second generation American. Her family is from China. Intestingly enough they make their family fortune in container shipping from China to the U.S. Isn't it interesting the Labor Secretary who should be looking out for the welfare of American workers actually has a personal conflict of interest in favor of off shoreing. Of course she isn't heading the Labor Department to look out for American workers, she is entirely there to drive down wages and improve corprate profitability, for example through the new overtime rules designed to deny overtime pay to millions of American workers.
The problem with you and most of the people who've pilloried me in this thread is you seem to lack the healthy dose of skepticism necessary when considering nuclear technology from an industry with a history of downplaying the dangers. You all seem to be saying its safe, prove its not. I'm saying prove it is. I'm not saying nuclear is inherently BAD but it is a technology with catastrophic results when there is failure so it DEMANDS inordinate scrutiny.
The two issues with PBMR relating to the coating:
A. A track record of manufacturing defects in the pebbles resulting in cracks and defects that may defeat the coating
B. A track record of damaging the pebbles in handling.
Here is a website with pictures of defective pebbles and some healthy skepticism.
"There was a pebble bed reactor accident at Hamm-Uentrop West Germany nine days after the Chernobyl accident. On May 4 1986, a pebble became lodged in a feeder tube. Operators subsequently caused damage to the fuel during attempts to free the pebble. Radiation was released to the environs. The West German government closed down the research program because they found the reactor design unsafe."
It simply isn't the infallible technology suckers like you are saying it is. Sure if they fix the problems or at least have a mechanism for rejecting manufacturing defects in pebbles then maybe it is a solvable problem.
But, PBMR's are still a pile of graphite in a reactor without a containment buildinb which means they could in fact be extremely dangerous if something unexpected happens.
So you are saying because they are mad about last time it would be better if their votes disappeared in to a partisan corporation which can change their votes at will, presumably to support the Republicans, Republicans running both this company and the Pentagon that hired them.
I'm sorry but this really looks like the final round in the on going efforts by the Department of Defense to put a huge pool of millions of votes under their control so they can fix the election and keep themselves in power. They will no doubt rationalize it as good for America because they have most definitely convinced themselves they are the only ones qualified to run America and to defend it from its enemies. It is their patriotic duty to insure they stay in power. If they let someone else take power the "War on Terrorism" is lost.
You recall the Pentagon was going to try internet voting until critics pointed out their system was ripe for fraud. They dutifully killed it and quietly waited until just before the election to roll out a new scheme that is just as ripe for fraud so it will take a miracle for critics to rally enough support to kill it before the election. Its the same strategy they used for Total Information Awareness. Kill it when public outrage gained momentum and quietly reconstitute it under new names below everyone's radar.
Absentee military ballots are an exceptionally good way to rig a presidential election that is hanging in the balance on a handful of very close swing states. They are a pool of ballots evenly distributed across the country so someone intent on fraud can flip votes in just the critical states swing states in one easy location.
Omega is certainly a great name for this company. Omega being the last letter in the Greek alphabet and defined in Webster's:
2. The last; the end; hence, death.
Perhaps a sick Republican like John Poindexter picked the name since this is part of the plan to put an finally finish off the nuisance that is free elections and Democracy in the U.S. Everything will work so much more smoothly if the people in charge can pick the leaders themselves and cut the American people out of the loop.
From CNN:
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 2000
Much truth is said in gest.
The biggest issue with the current PBMR design is the pebbles contain large quantities of graphite. It is quite safe as long as the inert Helium coolant loop is in tact but if the coolant system is breached and oxygen reaches a red hot graphite there is at least a chance the graphite in the pebbles is going to ignite and burn furiously. The graphite fire at Chernobyl burned for nine days and was the main source of the toxic plume.
From WordIQ:
"Some authorities believe that pyrolytic graphite can burn in air, and cite the famous accidents at Windscale and Chernobyl?both graphite-moderated reactors. Others insist that it cannot. Of course, all pebble-bed reactors are cooled by inert gasses that prevent fire. However, all pebble designs also have at least one layer of silicon carbide that serve as a fire break, as well as a seal."
It possible this is a solvable safety issue but it is a source of concern the PBMR advocates seem to downplay without being able to prove its not an issue.
I'd tend to agree that PBMR sounds a lot safer for this kind of thing than a breeder reactor with a steam loop.
"...better than letting them" What arrogance."
The interesting case study on the horizon is Iran. It has a nuclear reactor slated to come online in 2005. Iran is already warning Israel and the U.S. that things will turn ugly if either do what Israel did to Iraq in the 90's and take it upon themselves to bomb the reactor in to rubble before it comes online.
I doubt Iran will be stupid enough to start a direct military confrontation with Israel and the U.S. if they do but Iran could easily:
A. pump large numbers of insurgents and weapons in to Iraq and Afghanistan where America troops are extremely vulnerable as retaliation.
B. escalate support for Palastine leading to an major upsurge in violence in Israel.
These are certainly sad but interesting times.
I'm willing to bet the Bush administration is going to reinstitute the draft as soon as they are reelected. As soon as they have more warm bodies in army boots they will be parked in Iraq and the now combat veteran army will be heading in to Iran and Syria. It appears the U.S. is little more than Israel's proxy army a this point as those two countries on next on Israel's list to go down so they can completely dominate the middle east.
This certainly is an aptly named thread for your post. You certainly are arrogant. You are a case study in why most of the world really dislikes America and Americans today.
... Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Marcos in the Phillippines, South Vietnam, Panama, Haiti, Chile, Cuba before Castro, Nicaragua before the Sandanistas. As long as a dictator was willing to be anticommunist and respects the property rights of American companies and individuals the U.S. let them engage in unchecked repression and brutality.
"Who made the United States the ruler of world affairs?
Europe."
Sorry friend, the U.S. made the U.S. the ruler of the world. Don't think very many many people in the rest of the world think its a good idea now that they've seen what George W. Bush and the extremists in the Republican party have turned in to using 9/11 as a convenient excuse.
You have a uniquely American centric and ill informed understanding of world affairs
I don't think anyone else was really consulted about this new global empire. Outside of Italy and Germany I don't think most of the rest of Europe was in favor World War II. The U.S. was just lucky there were two oceans between it and most of World War II so it came out largely unscathed and an industrial and military superpower.
"any war that Russia might start, so it was left up to the US to be the "good guys"
I don't think most of the people who live in the countries who endured the proxy wars and dictatorships the U.S. propped up, as it played global brinksmanship with the U.S.S.R, will agree the US are the "good guys". The U.S. propped up repressive right wing dictatorships and the Soviet Union propped up repressive left wing dictatorships, neither side were the "good guys" except in their own propaganda.
Here is a partial list of the U.S. hall of shame, long running repressive dictator who lined their pockets as the repressed and brutalized their people in the name of anticommunism
"Leave the US and England out of this. Our nuclear weapons are pretty much at the "yeah, we have some" point. A large chunk of our arsenal has been destroyed, and many of their silos abandoned. I'd say leave France out of this too, but they've had dealings with the Middle East that puts them in the spotlight."
Actually the Bush administration is actively pursuing an effort to develop tactical nuclear weapons that, unless someone(i.e. Congress) stops them, will be authorized for use on cave complexes and bunkers. Yes, the Bush administration is on a course to authorize use of nuclear weapons as a matter of routine in what would be otherwise conventional wars. Once they drop the threshold for first use of nuclear weapons this low its quite possible the U.S. could start using them any time they decide they are convenient. I didn't think I would see it in my life time but we may seen the routine use of nuclear weapons in war.
Presumably the U.S. will be relying on its ballistic missile defense to discourage China or Russia from complaining when the U.S. starts routine use of nukes.
The U.S. is at this point, with tactical nukes and missile defense, headed towards being the most dangerous nuclear power on the planet.
"Not the new pebble bed reactors. The old designs would melt down if you didn't actively control the reaction. The new designs just stop producing energy."
I'm sorry to say point out are claiming they are "safe" mostly because they have a low probability to melt down due to a loss of coolant (presumably Helium gas).
But you are either intentionally or unintentionally glossing over the possibility a graphite pebble bed would burn if there was a breach in the coolant system and the hot graphite was exposed to air/oxygen instead of inert gases. Burning graphite helped make Chernobyl the catastrophe it was.
From WordIQ:
"Some authorities believe that pyrolytic graphite can burn in air, and cite the famous accidents at Windscale and Chernobyl?both graphite-moderated reactors. Others insist that it cannot. Of course, all pebble-bed reactors are cooled by inert gasses that prevent fire. However, all pebble designs also have at least one layer of silicon carbide that serve as a fire break, as well as a seal. "
It appears this is the source of controversy that needs to be resolved before you can really claim PBMR is probably reasonably "safe". Someone needs to figure out a way to build a pebble bed sans radioactive waste and expose it to oxygen when its at its peak temperature and figure out if it will burn. The key problem being achieving the same thermal profile without fission in the loop.
"Also, I hate to break it to you, but burning coal produces much more environmental radiation than nuclear power."
It doesn't produce more radiation than a breached reactor vessel and burning pile of graphite laced with plutonium, and other assorted deadly isotopes.
As I said when I started this thread I'm all for nuclear energy since burning fossil fuels, coal especially, is obviously bad. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm willing to buy in to propaganda from the companies pushing nuclear power plants that their designs are infallible because they aren't. If they suffer a catastrophic failure they are a bloody mess. Coal fired power plants don't have this catastrophic down side so people tend to be more forgiving of living downwind from them.
"it was the most unsinkable"
I think they said "practically unsinkable" but it was a pretty unfortunate and ironic thing to claim for a ship that sank on it maiden voyage and is a case study in engineering hubris.
Rather than being practically unsinkable it had at least two serious design flaws. The steel in the hull was poorly manufactured and was probably brittle and easily ruptured. Titanic was only unsinkable if a sufficiently small number of water tight compartments were ruptured. It was thoroughly sinkable if enough of them were breeched which apparently enough were. As I recall the water tight compartments had a design flaw that they the only extended so high. When the first breached compartments filled with water, and the ship tilted and settled in the water, water probably started spilling in to the adjacent compartments and the domino effect doomed the ship. The water tight compartments were a great innovation but they apparently weren't actually water tight in the Titanic, they had a design flaw.
"Since you seem to be wanting to make the point that they where wrong, please provide your evidence of other contemperary(sp?) liners hitting icebergs in the same manner and remaining afloat?"
I'm afraid I don't see your point. My point was beware of engineers claiming the infallibility of their design. I wasn't contending that it is possible to make an unsinkable ship. It isn't. That is the point. All you can do is minimize risks which is all you can do in a fission reactor so I'm nervous when people seem to be argueing PBMR reactors are "safe".
The risk with PBMR appears to be there is a significant risk of fire if a hot bed is exposed to Oxygen by a coolant system breach. The people advocating them would have more credibility if they acknowledged the risk and explained how they are going to resolve it. If they can't resolve it that would be good to know because it means there is a chance of a catastrophic graphite fire just like there was at Chernobyl and I don't want to live down wind from one.
"I'm claiming that TMI couldn't have developed into a Chernobyl. They were radically different designs, so spreading FUD about light-water reactors on the basis of Chernobyl is totally ridiculous."
The only thing thats ridiculous is that, after that list of "possible", "very real risk", "further catastrophy", that you are still trying to contend that TMI wasn't extremely dangerous.
I'll say it again, they were lucky. They pretty obviously didn't anticipate what happened in their design.
I should add that the PBMR reactor everyone is pitching as the next generation reactor here, not light water reactors, apparently does contain large quantities of graphite. If there is a breach in the coolant system and air or oxygen hits the pebble bed there is at least a chance its going to burn like Chernobyl. The graphite in their reactor burned for the better part of 9 days and was the main source of the plume.
In the limited reading I've done tonight and I've posted elsewhere I've seen that is at least one potential flaw in PBMR which suggests I'm right to at least have a healthy dose of skepticism about people who have the hubris to claim an infallible design. Remember what the engineers said about the Titanic before it set sail. You have to except some risk if you are going to develop complex systems but you should be very afraid of engineers who try to deny there is any risk in something that is obviously risky.
The PBMR articles I've read tonight indicate the pebbles are clad in graphite. This is OK as long as they are emersed in the Helium coolant gas. What exactly happens if there is a breach in the coolant line and Oxygen is introduced to a hot bead of graphite? It appears there is at least a chance the hot graphite pebbles would burn, perhaps furiously. If they did you would probably have a really ugly accident.
So the first strike against PBMR is it appears to be a fission reactor full of graphite and that immediately reminds people of Chernobyl which was a fission reactor full of graphite that burned furiously for something like 9 days and was the main source of the radioactive plume.
"Umm, no. Physics makes it impossible for TMI to have become a Chernobyl. TMI is about a worst-case scenario for a light-water reactor. TMI shows that while a light-water reactor accident is a financial disaster for the company owning it, it won't kill thousands of people."
I didn't say it was going to be another Chernobyl exactly but you are simply BS'ing everyone if you are trying to claim everything was within the parameters of the design and there was no danger.
In particular you are leaving out the wild card which was a 1000 cubic feet 1000 PSI Hydrogen bubble that formed in the vessel from the breakdown of the superheated water. It had an explosive potential of 3 tons of TNT which would have been enough to breach the vessel and containment if it had exploded.
There was also a significant chance the Hydrogen bubble would have continued to grow. If it had it could have uncovered the entire core. If so the core might well have done a China Syndrome and melted through the floor of the vessel and containment building.
There was enough water pooled at the bottom of the vessel there was also a significant chance of a steam explosion when the melting core hit it and that could have also breeched the reactor.
All in all you seem to be claiming certainty about a situation that was unprecedented and anything but certain.
"synthetic element"
I think it means it is no longer naturally occuring, whether it never existed or it existed and decayed being not very relevent. At present the only significant quantities you are going to find were synthesized by man (barring the offbeat chance there is a natural fission reactor in a Uranium deposit someplace so I think I'll stand by synthetic. I'm inclined to say you are being a pedantic dick and a pretty rude one too so I guess its OK I return the favor. That you Twirlip? If not someone is stealing your style.
"please show me where nuclear waste has caused more cancer than"
The way your framing the question is kind of moronic. Unfortunately yes UV radiation is dangerous. You probably should wear sun screen, a hat and get checked for skin cancer periodically. You see it is dangerous so you seek to minimize the risk. Because one thing is dangerous isn't a very good justification for frolicing with something else thats dangerous.
As for tobacco the cigarette companies lied for the longest time, said it wasn't dangerous, and everyone believed them, asbestos, PCB's pretty similar story. As an exercise can you draw a parallel to what the nuclear power industry usually say about the safety of their plants, the safety of their waste, and the periodic releases of radiation in to the atmosphere. I'm all for nuclear power but when there are people trying to make a buck off it you really can't believe everything they say any more than you can the tobacco companies, or you may regret it. Coal plants are obviously pretty dangerous too. I think we need to look really hard for an energy source that is better. Just because coal sucks doesn't necessarily mean I want to jump on the fission bandwagon with blind faith, unless they do better than they have so far.
"please show me where nuclear waste has caused more cancer than"
The beauty of exposure to radioactive waste is that it is nearly impossible to estimate how many people got sicked or died unless it is due to massive and immediate radiation sickness which isn't very common. This can be said about survivors of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Chernobyl or those down range from all the open air testing in the 50's. The casualty and illness estimates from Chernobyl span a huge range depending on the predisposition of the people making the estimate. All in all I'd just soon not be exposed to it thank you very much.
So at this point I guess your saying you are OK with us piling high level radioactive waste in your back yard. Cool. I'll phone Nevada. They will be so relieved, assuming of course you don't live in Nevada.