Posts from — April 2011

The USGS is reporting a 7.1 earthquake struck at 10:32AM CDT [14:32:41 UTC] off the East coast of Honshu – 66 km (41 miles) East of Sendai, 116 km (72 miles) East-Northeast of Fukushima.

They definitely did not need this.

After reviewing his plan for the budget, it is time to award the ancient Order of Brave Sir Robin to Representative Paul Ryan.

Having read that this plan was a “courageous” and “bold” blueprint for cutting the deficit and dealing with the Federal budget I eagerly perused it to see how he was dealing with the largest single item in the Federal budget, and the fastest growing for years – the Defense budget … and I read it again, because I apparently missed it the first time … and I checked the people who were calling it “courageous” to see where that part was located …

So, you end up taking money away from the old and sick to give to the rich and powerful, and the commentariate thinks it’s “courageous”? Every tinpot dictator on the planet does that. Every monarch who ended life a head short, did that. Going after the military-industrial complex would be a sign of courage, but stealing from the poor to give to the rich is the easy way out.

Not that anyone actually cares, but if you crunch the numbers, the “plan” actually increases the deficit, until the Medicare theft kicks in after ten years.

The Transocean executives are giving their “safety bonuses” to the families of those killed on the Deepwater Horizon.

But Others Don’t:

TEPCO is offering the people who were “inconvenienced” by the problems at the Fukushima plant $12.00. Twelve dollars for being forced out of your home and not knowing if you will ever be able to return. Believe it or not, some of those people are upset with the gesture.

The ABC says that Japan stops water leaks from nuclear plant

Engineers have stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea from a crippled Japanese nuclear power plant, a breakthrough in the battle to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

However the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), still needs to pump contaminated water into the sea because of a lack of storage space at the facility.

“The leaks were slowed yesterday after we injected a mixture of liquid glass (sodium silicate) and a hardening agent and it has now stopped,” a TEPCO spokesman said.
…

TEPCO says it has detected radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times above the legal limit in seawater near the facility, adding to fears contaminants had spread far beyond the disaster zone.

The government is considering imposing radioactivity restrictions on seafood for the first time in the crisis after toxic caesium was found in fish off Japan’s east coast.
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A few helicopter gunships make.

The BBC is reporting there are surrender talks taking place in Côte d’Ivoire:

The UN says three generals loyal to Ivory Coast’s besieged President Laurent Gbagbo are negotiating terms for surrender in return for guarantees of safety for him and themselves.

France says negotiators are on the brink of agreeing his departure.

Mr Gbagbo is sheltering with his family in the basement bunker of his residence in the main city, Abidjan.

Troops loyal to Mr Gbagbo’s rival, UN-recognised President Alassane Ouattara, say they have surrounded the compound.

The UN says Mr Gbagbo’s military and civilian advisers are leaving him.

Three of his generals – the head of the armed forces, the head of the police and the head of the republican guard – have opened negotiations, the UN told the BBC’s Andrew Harding, who is on the outskirts of Abidjan.

The UN said the generals had instructed their forces to stop fighting and hand in their weapons to the UN.

Without heavy weapons, Mr. Gbagbo’s supporters cannot win, or even draw, so the generals are going for the best deal they can get from the UN, rather than waiting to be defeated.

How many thousands have died because of the personal pride of one man?

That’s the logo of the latest version of the “Committee to Re-Elect the President” [CREP – pronounced “creep”]. Obama is truthfully represented as the zero, because that is what he has done for the people who voted for him – nothing, nil, zilch, nada.

Now he wants those people whose interests he has ignored to send him money so he can ignore them for another four years, based solely on the premise that a Republican will be worse. He misses the fact that by promoting and enacting policies that are only wanted by people who hate him, he has managed to push the Democratic base into the financial insecurity of unemployment and foreclosure.

What about the health care reform, you ask? That was a give away to insurance and drug companies, people won’t see any benefits from it, and he is on the road to attack the programs that do help people with their medical bills – Medicare and Medicaid. He is a Reagan Republican and will, in the end, help the Republicans in Congress disable them both.

You don’t have to vote for the Democrat or the Republican, other people run for office and you can write in anyone qualified for the office. People tell you that voting for someone else doesn’t affect the outcome, and they are wrong. If you vote, but don’t vote for either of the major parties, you are sending a message that can’t be sent by not voting. You are saying that you pay attention, and will go to the polls, but you don’t like what the major parties are “selling”.

CREP is trying build a grassroots campaign. They should give up. The White House killed the grass by pissing on it.

The ABC reports that the UN isn’t going to take it anymore:

French and UN helicopters have attacked forces loyal to Ivory Coast’s incumbent leader, Laurent Gbagbo.

Mr Gbagbo’s presidential palace and residence were hit, along with military camps used by pro-Gbagbo forces, in what UN chief Ban Ki-moon said was a mission of self-defence.

The French military said its action “aimed to neutralise heavy weapons positions in barracks and armoured military vehicles equipped with cannons and rocket launchers”.

After Srebrenica a lot of people have been advocating that the UN Peacekeepers be allowed the support needed to defend themselves and civilians, and not just be a symbol. This is the first time I can remember the UN actually reacting to threats with force.

You may have heard about the juvenile female Egyptian Cobra [yearbook photo] who was having a “walkabout” in New York, and the Twitter account [also a Facebook page proposing she host Saturday Night Live].

Well, as a New Yorker, she developed a following, and now the Bronx Zoo is having a poll to name her.

Getting named by a poll? No wonder she split. The spraying of “Eau de Mouse” on wood chips to con her into coming out of hiding – that was low. What – they couldn’t afford a pizza? [Even if she didn’t like pizza, it would have provided real mice.]

They should schedule her for a couple of interviews … on Fox 😈

Today the BBC is reporting on TEPCO dumping radioactive water into the ocean. Not to worry, though, because the thousands of gallons being pumped into the Pacific is only 100 times legal limit for radiation, primarily iodine-131.

They have to do it to make room in their storage facilities for the water that is 10,000 times legal limit, which will be dumped in time for the water that is 1,000,000 times the legal limit, even after they triple the legal limit.

TEPCO is annoyed that Pampers lied about the absorbency of their product [the special “polymer” that they used was developed for disposable diapers], and it did not seal the 8-inch crack in the storage pit that is the source of all of the water coming out of Reactor 2.

I have to assume that the crack is 8 inches wide, based on the amount of water leaking, and they never thought to put a metal plate over it before they tried plugging it with concrete. They could have at least dumped rocks and then gravel into the hole before trying concrete, but they apparently didn’t talk to anyone in construction, especially someone in dam construction, before they made the attempt.

What they did was the equivalent of putting oatmeal in a radiator to plug a leak, i.e. a bad idea in the long term.

The BBC is reporting that Wreckage from Air France jet found in Atlantic

Searchers located wreckage during the past 24 hours, investigators in Paris said, without giving details.

Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris came down in a storm on 1 June 2009.
…

The search has been financed jointly by Air France and Airbus. It involves dives to depths of up to 4,000m (13,120ft) with the use of special robots to examine the ocean floor between Brazil and West Africa.
…

France’s Bureau of Investigations and Analysis (BEAR) said that plane parts of the plane had been located by the searchers, led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“These parts have been identified by BEA investigators as belonging to the wreck of the A330-203, Flight AF 447,” it added.

It is possible that they might locate the flight recorders, which, if they are still intact, will provide information on what happened to the flight.

A lot of civilians are dying in the Ivory Coast [Côte d’Ivoire], so why hasn’t there been an intervention?

There is no room for a new intervention. The French Operation Unicorn has been in place since September 2002, and the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire followed in February of 2004 in response to UNSCR 1528.

When the Ivorian Air Force “accidentally” attacked the French units in the country, the French responded by “accidentally” eliminating the Ivorian Air Force. Notes of regret were exchanged regarding the “accidents”.

The former President, Laurent Gbagbo, lost an election to Alassane Ouattara according to everyone except Gbagbo and his friends, and refuses to step down. This has resulted in the civil war that French and UN forces have twice stopped, breaking out again. The situation is that the “government forces” of the Ivory Coast are fighting for a man the world considers illegitimate, while the “rebels” are fighting for the internationally recognized President of the Ivory Coast.

To anyone who thinks the US should get involved I would ask how? People are being killed by small arms fire and edged weapons. There is no simple way of knowing who is doing what to whom. This is why “one size fits all” doesn’t work in interventions. Taking out air forces and eliminating armor is a simple straight-forward operation that eliminates “wholesale” slaughter, but once it becomes “retail” you need very large armies on the ground to reduce it.

The CBC reports on the latest TEPCO screw-up: New effort to plug radioactive leak at Japan plant

Engineers tried to seal the crack with concrete on Saturday, but that didn’t work. So on Sunday they injected a mix of sawdust, shredded newspaper and a polymer that can expand to 50 times its normal size when combined with water. The polymer mix had not yet stopped the leak Sunday night but engineers have not given up hope and should know by Monday morning whether it will work.

Apparently they were inspired by BP’s “junk shot”.

Before a red oak took it out during one of out little storms, my Mother had a concrete water garden. Because of settling the concrete would crack and the water would begin to leak out. To repair it I used the same product that is used routinely in cold climates to repair cracks in basements that allow groundwater in. Whether you are attempting to keep water in or water out, it is the same product.

This miracle product is called expansive hydraulic cement. It sets under water, and unlike regular Portland cement which shrinks, it expands to seal the leak. You make it thicker than regular cement when applying under water to push it in place without worrying about it being washed out. If you are sealing something like my Mother’s pond or the sump of a nuclear reactor the water pressure will hold it in place for setting.

I am not aware of a hardware store that doesn’t have it stock.

This is the reason you do not run government or anything you really want to see prosper like a business.

This is not an April Fools joke, and was reported by the BBC: Transocean gives bonuses after Gulf of Mexico BP spill

The offshore drilling firm responsible for running the Deepwater Horizon rig has given its top executives bonuses for its “best year” for safety.

Transocean was blamed along with BP and Halliburton after last year’s massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Eleven workers, nine of whom worked for Transocean, died when the Deepwater Horizon exploded almost a year ago.

But Transocean said there had been a drop in the rate of recorded incidents and also in their potential severity.

Apparently “only” getting 11 people killed, and “only” losing one deep-sea drilling rig is an improvement over previous years.

It’s bad enough that it doesn’t look like anyone will do jail time over the Well from Hell, but having the low-life scum at the top receive bonuses after the ruin their actions caused along the Gulf Coast is rubbing salt into a lot of still open wounds. Doing this shows clearly that corporations are sociopathic.

Update: Not exactly a blogswarm, but Badtux, Attaturk, and tristero, and Digby felt this was a bit outrageous.

I feel really bad about being so late in acknowledging John McKay’s eighth blogiversary™.  archy is among the small group of paleo-blogs still active. He is also getting close to finishing his first draft on his book.

Jams O’Donnell just hit his fifth at Poor Mouth, and is celebrating by scaling back so he can spend more time with his photography.

At some point I will probably update to the newest version of WordPress, but I’m still waiting for the bug fix release. I wouldn’t bother, but it hardens some things that people think might be subject to attack. The attacks won’t gain access, but it is possible they might “break something”.

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