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Open Thread

by — ,

No politics, just some great writing:

– A very sad story.

– When my dad and I were hustlers.

– Joe Posnanski on the death, and life, of Clarence Clemons.

– Lindy West’s Guide to Life for the Recent Graduates

– Even if you’ve read Eli Sanders’ Slog pieces about the trial of the South Park rapes and murder, it’s worth reading this whole article (although, damn, it’s a difficult read).

Comments

  1. 1

    Looking over at the ads on the right side of Carl’s post, I see an ad for Western Governors.

    I recommend HA fans take a look at this ad.
    Of Siemens and Washington’s newest state university

    If you have not done so already, I recommend going to the new website for Western Governors University Washington. Just think, “we” can now offer Bachelors and masters degrees at no cost to the State of Washington (unless you include state paid tuition and unemployment) !

    At the same time, you may want to read on The-AVE.US about a frightening report from Siemens that, even with 9.1% US unemployment, the company can not even find US workers qualified at the level of apprentice! Take a look at the WGUW website and then tell me if you think the WGUW degrees address that problem!

  3. 3

    Another Reason Why Nuclear Power Can’t Be Trusted

    “Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.”

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43.....vironment/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Nuclear power is one of the most unethical industries on the planet, perhaps even more unethical than the financial services industry. It abounds with liars, paperwork falsifiers, an industry-captive government regulatory establishment, cost cutters and corner cutters, crooked contractors, and shoddy engineering and maintenance. Whistleblowers are hounded, harassed, and silenced. The bottom line: Nuclear power plants are unsafe.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43.....vironment/

  4. 4

    Why should nuclear operators go to any effort or expense to build and operate their plants safely? They’ve succeeded in shifting the costs of a major accident to innocent homeowners and small business owners in surrounding neighborhoods through the Price-Anderson Act, which limits their liability. Would you carry auto insurance — or drive carefully — if you could get a law passed that immunizes you from liability and makes the victim pay for his injuries?

  5. 5

    Nuclear power just shouldn’t be built in the U.S. until the laws are changed to make the industry financially responsible and there’s a major housecleaning of personnel within the industry itself. The existing U.S. nuclear power industry just can’t be trusted.

  7. 7

    @6

    Something happened with John McCain. He used to be a fairly sensible guy, not someone that I agreed with very often, but someone that I could disagree with in good faith. Now he’s, as you pointed out, kinda nuts. I wonder if he had a stroke or something?

  8. 8

    @7 – I think it is easy to be a maverick when your seat isn’t in any jeopardy. The Tea Party has changed that in AZ. McCain now has to cater to a constituency (not that that’s unusual for a politician) if he wants to stay in the Senate. It turns out that he is a normal politician – keeping his seat is more important to him than being true to his beliefs.

  9. 9

    Carl,

    Thanks for the Nina story. It’s really sad!

  10. 10

    @7

    John McCain is an example of what you get with a long term alcohol abuse problem. Everyone points fingers at the Kennedys, but they have nothing On Boehner or McCain. Both are long term chronic alcoholics who have a lot of experience in manipulation and deceit. Alcohol cause real, physical damage to the central nervous system and that damage is permanent and cumulative. Their thinking abilities have long since been destroyed.

  11. 11

    Feds: $600M-plus of NY payroll project was tainted

    A city payroll technology project that has cost taxpayers more than $600 million was “corrupted to its core,” with nearly the entire sum tainted by an epic fraud that involved hundreds of contractors, systemic overbilling and an international money-laundering conspiracy, federal prosecutors said Monday.

    Privatization of government in action again.

  12. 12

    3-5 – The whole situation with energy has pushed me further to the left. We have one very successful model for nuclear energy in this country – the nuclear navy. In the world we have another model – the French nuclear program.

    Another commenter here, Zotz, has served in the nuclear navy and is concerned with the private sector capture of nuclear energy in this country. You both are right – it is not to be trusted and that’s why I think it’s too important to be left to private sector graft.

    Abundant cheap safe and environmentally friendly energy is crucial to human progress and should be one of the top five or so priorities of all governments – along with health, education, housing, food safety and security.

    Private sector graft has led to environmental degradation and high cost “solutions” which pad the pockets of the well connected. Energy should be a public good and taken out of the hands of greedheads.

    That being said – here’s one private sector outfit in startup mode that’s on the right track:

    http://flibe-energy.com/

    Let’s make sure they stay on the straight and narrow.

  13. 13

    @12 Msybe we should just park our subs at the dock and plug ’em into the grid?

    [*raucous bunny laughter*]

  14. 14

    Bachmann Backs Off Veterans Disability Cuts

    Michelle Bachmann has been forced to take a proposal to cut veterans’ health and disability benefits off her campaign website after veterans’ groups complained.

    http://www.mademark.net/2011/0.....t-off.html

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....rans-cuts/

    http://www.amvets.org/pressroo.....s_off.html

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Well that’s “supporting the troops” GOP-style. We’ve seen this tape played before — when Bush tried to eliminate combat pay for soldiers engaged in hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    To a Republican, “supporting the troops” means giving our troops an opportunity to practice their combat skills in “real time” by starting a war somewhere. It doesn’t mean paying them! If Republicans could fight their wars with unpaid slave labor (known as conscription) they would. Because they can’t the next best thing is cutting veterans’ benefits.

    Bachmann apparently thought she could slip this past voters. But the organizations that protect veterans’ interests saw right through her bullshit.

  15. 15

    @12 The most important thing to know about energy right now is that new technology has unlocked vast reserves of cheap domestic natural gas. These technologies aren’t without environmental impacts but those impacts are more manageable than, say, strip-mining Canada’s tar sands or reactor meltdowns a la Chernobyl and Fukushima.

  16. 16

    I’m not sure where Boeing is going with this, but I’ve got an unsettling feeling it’s not going to work out well. From today’s Boeing press release:

    “LE BOURGET, France, June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ —

    Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), China’s largest state-owned aviation company, today announced that they will open the AVIC-Boeing Manufacturing Innovation Center (MIC) in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China. ….

    The AVIC-Boeing MIC will enhance Boeing’s production system by increasing AVIC’s efficiency and capacity to supply high-quality parts for Boeing airplanes. The MIC will also support AVIC’s goals of improving its manufacturing and technological capabilities and the competiveness of its affiliated factories to achieve global Tier-1 supplier status. It was also announced today that Boeing has awarded a contract to produce 737 rudders to Chengfei Commercial Aircraft Co. (CCAC), an AVIC company located in Chengdu, China. That contract will serve as the initial work statement for the MIC.”

    I know airplane manufacturing companies have to outsource some of their work internationally if they want orders from foreign countries. China has been one of Boeing’s major buyers during the past couple of decades, and when U.S. carriers quit buying airplanes altogether for the better part of the last decade (except Southwest’s purchase of lots of 737 narrow-bodies), Chinese airlines filed the flight lines at Boeing Field in Seattle and Paine Field in Everett. It makes sense for Boeing to give China a piece of the work in what everyone understands is an exchange for future orders.

    But this seems to go far beyond that. Perhaps it’s the “innovation” in the title, but it seems to me that Boeing is taking the final step towards grooming China to be it’s competitor.

    You see, in China the company names may vary, but the interchange of people and technology isn’t restricted to divisions between the companies. And China aerospace manufacturers are currently developing both a narrow-body and wide-body airplane, both of which should be in service within a few years – perhaps by 2015.

    At that point, you will probably see orders dry up for future aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, as the Chinese government – which ultimately holds the keys to financing and governmental approvement of all aircraft purchases – leans on Chinese airlines to order from a Chinese domestic manufacturer.

    You have to ask – how much China’s entry into the commercial airplane market going to be hastened along by Boeing’s tutoring?

  17. 17

    @16. rhp6033 spews:

    I’m not sure where Boeing is going with this, but I’ve got an unsettling feeling it’s not going to work out well.
    ————————————————-
    They are going to China with it, as the article points out. Be sure to thank Obama and his nitwit NLRB for this. When you wreck industry here it goes overseas.

  18. 18

    Msybe we should just park our subs at the dock and plug ‘em into the grid?

    Actually that’s not too much of a far-fetched idea. Some nuke advocates have proposed the same thing. When I first read that at certain pro-nuke blogs, I thought it was kind of absurd but sub nukes have been operated safely for decades.

  19. 19

    # 17: It’s been going overseas for quite some time, mostly during George W. Bush’s presidency. It was during the LAST decade that China built it’s aerospace industry, starting with repair stations, then overhaul and maintenance facilities, then major conversion programs, and finally (now) full commercial aircraft.

    Obviously, you don’t know anything about the aviation industry. And even less about the NLRA and the NLRB.

    But if you were a supporter of our previous President, I guess it makes since for you to believe in ignoring clear U.S. law, and interfering with federal legal prosecutions for partison political purposes.

  21. 21

    These technologies aren’t without environmental impacts but those impacts are more manageable than, say, strip-mining Canada’s tar sands or reactor meltdowns a la Chernobyl and Fukushima.

    I disagree – the fracking is causing problems all over the place. It’s just being done in primarily rural places so the noise level right now is relatively low. In Pennsylvania, the potential exists to pollute large watersheds that people downstream depend on for drinking water. Just recently a spill of fracking fluids polluted some river.

    The reactor meltdowns are due to the industry running old plants longer than their designers intended. They should have been replaced with better/safer designs by now.

  22. 22

    On the fracking front here’s a interesting bit of news:

    http://www.scientificamerican......wastewater

    RADIOACTIVE WASTEWATER! If the wastewater gets hot what about the gas?

    Reaction of elements like Uranium and Thorium keep the the core of the earth hot. That’s something to keep in mind as the fracking craze and the heat mining craze ramps up.

    In my opinion – if we’re to deal with radioactive stuff – it should be in safe controlled conditions like the reactors run by the U.S. nuclear navy and the civilian reactors operated by the French.

  26. 26

    25 – I didn’t look at that too closely but was that local? Mt Vernon? When I thought I heard that I started looking for Pudge and his silly musical act.

    What a turnout!

  28. 28

    Shit, that link must be from a pirated website! Maybe I shoulda run it thru Tiny URL.

  29. 29

    Speaking of Mount Vernon, Washington, whatever happened to the idiot mayor who took it upon himself to give the “keys to the city” to Glenn Beck? The local boy, um, made good?

    It appears he’s still mayor of that illustrious Pacific Northwest metropolis — through the end of this year. His current term ends Deember 31, 2011.

    http://www.ci.mount-vernon.wa......onid_E_460

  31. 31

    This is pretty big:

    The world’s chief bond vigilante calls bullshit on the deficit/debt-limit madness:

    Gross recommends a swift, deficit-financed investment in infrastructure. “[G]overnment must take a leading role in job creation,” Gross said. “Conservative or even liberal agendas that cede responsibility for job creation to the private sector over the next few years are simply dazed or perhaps crazed…. In the near term, then, we should not rely solely on job or corporate-directed payroll tax credits because corporations may not take enough of that bait, and they’re sitting pretty as it is. Government must step up to the plate, as it should have in early 2009. An infrastructure bank to fund badly needed reconstruction projects is a commonly accepted idea, despite the limitations of the original “shovel-ready” stimulus program in 2009.”

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.....?ref=fpblg

    Let’s call this one a cure for the common ld(iot) out there.

  32. 32

    This one is funny. More Bill Gross:

    Former Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota might be the Republicans’ extreme example, but his claim of 5% real growth based on tax cuts and entitlement reductions comes out of left field or perhaps the field of dreams. The United States has not had a sustained period of 5% real growth for nearly 60 years.

    Same tpm link above.

  33. 33

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.....?ref=fpblg

    PIMCO Founder To Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Back To Reality
    Brian Beutler | June 21, 2011,

    One of the most influential investors in the world of finance has a message for lawmakers — particularly conservative lawmakers — on Capitol Hill: rejoin the real world.

    In a prospectus for clients, Bill Gross, a co-founder of investment management giant PIMCO, says members’ of Congress incessant focus on deficit — and in particular, the manner in which they obsess about deficits — is foolhardy, and a recipe for disaster. What the country needs, Gross said, is real stimulus now, and a measured return toward fiscal balance in the years ahead.

    Here’s that DAMN LIB-RUL that the puddybitch loves so much…

  35. 35

    @DF: That was awesome! Did you check out the right hand side? Lots more stuff.

    I regret that I have but one life to live as a white douchebag American!

  38. 38

    YLB @ 32: A little over 15 years ago I worked in a major oil company, the department was involved in environmental remediation of oil-contaminated properties. During that time, I got to talk quite a bit with a lot of geologists.

    One of the things they kept mentioning was the need to be extremely careful when drilling test wells to measure the extent of hydrocarbon contamination in the soil and groundwater. If you drill too deep, in the wrong place, you can punch a whole through a layer of rock and in essence, make a drain through which the contaminated groundwater can enter an acquafer, spreading the contamination considerably, with a much wider impact.

    Now, the whole purpose of “fracking” is to break up the rock which is trapping the natural gas below ground. But all this fracking is also going to open up all sorts of cracks in the sub-strata, resulting in unkown consequences to the water supply burried deeply underneath. I’m not sure how much of that issue has been studied very well.

  39. 39

    TPAW/Gov Bridgefail?

    Keep that thought yelling loser beta boi since the US government said otherwise about the I-35 bridge and it’s on leftist WikiPedia. No wonder only rujax listens to you. Two funny peas in the same pod.

  40. 40

    Gov. Bridgefail!

    Niiiiiiiice…not the ONLY reason tpaw won’t cut it, but nice.

    So does the puddybitch think Mormons are REALLY REALLY REAL christians?

    Most of his fellow cultists don’t think so.

    I’ll bet the puddybitch doesn’t either.

    Too bad the only two candidates that AREN’T bat-shit crazy are LDS.

  41. 41

    Nahhhh the puddybitch didn’t see where Gov. Bridgefail TWICE vetoed highway funds that would have fixed the bridge. Nope, the dope just missed it.

    Fucking teabagger just won’t spend the money to protect his citizens. Let’s have a pool on which hero will spring it first.

    I say Bachmann in Iowa but I’ll add Cain for the daily double.

  42. 42

    http://thinkprogress.org/econo.....aid-taxes/

    32 Corporations Spent More On Compensation For Top Executives In 2010 Than They Paid In Income Taxes

    By Pat Garofalo on Jun 21, 2011 at 1:10 pm

    Over the last few decades, executive pay at large corporations has skyrocketed. Today, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. In 2010 alone, CEO pay went up 27 percent while average worker pay went up just 2 percent.

    At the same time, corporate tax revenue has plunged to historic lows. During the 1960s, for instance, the United States consistently raised nearly 4 percent of GDP in corporate revenue. During the 1970s, the total was still above 2.5 percent of GDP. But the U.S. now raises less than 1.5 percent of GDP from the corporate income tax.

    According to a new report called “S.& P. 500 Executive Pay: Bigger Than …Whatever You Think It Is,” put together by the independent research firm R. G. Associates, there are currently 32 companies that actually spent more on compensation for their top executives in 2010 than they paid in corporate income taxes:

    Everybody get this????

    This is dead fucking wrong.

  43. 43

    Of course misogynist rujax dipshithead missed the final NTSB report

    The NTSB cited a design flaw as the likely cause of the collapse, and asserted that additional weight on the bridge at the time of the collapse contributed to the catastrophic failure. – direct from WikiPedia the lefty leaning site.

    Now why did rujax miss this… because like yelling loser beta they are both idiots. Butt back to WikiPedia…

    FHWA advised states to inspect the 700 U.S. bridges of similar construction after a possible design flaw in the bridge was discovered, related to large steel sheets called gusset plates which were used to connect girders together in the truss structure. Officials expressed concern about many other bridges in the United States sharing the same design and raised questions as to why such a flaw would not have been discovered in over 40 years of inspections. This flaw was first discovered by Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., an independent consulting firm hired by MnDOT to investigate the cause of the collapse.

    You see when you are born an idiot and you never aspire to anything higher than moronic monotonic, you accept leftist pinhead web sites as gospel truth.

    So misogynist conservative lady hating rujax, please stay stupid.

  44. 44

    Gotta love that GE story from rujax. Laid off almost 30,000 in the US while creating more than 30,000 jobs in India alone.

    Barack Obama and his tax-averse jobs czar Jeff Immelt

    It will be interesting to see what the Obama panel proposes considering that General Electric earned $14.2 billion in international profits, including, $5.1 billion in the United States — yet, as the New York Times reported, GE did not pay a dime in federal income taxes last year. And GE is trying to reduce its workforce while Immelt’s compensation package doubled to $15 million last year.

    Former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold wrote, “Someone like Immelt, who has helped his company evade taxes on its huge profits – and is now looking to workers to take major pay cuts after his compensation was doubled – should not lead the administration’s effort to create jobs.” I see the Obama-Immelt jobs alliance and can come up with one conclusion: The administration is just going through the motions.

    GE lover of the Obummer and the misogynist conservative lady hating rujax pulled a Rip Van Winkle during this time. Otherwise why would he post an article that featured Obummer loving Immelt front and center. May stinky progressives ASSumed none of it’s DUMMOCRAPTIC stupid readers would check into GE’s politics.

    ABC news reported GE has more peeps working overseas that it does in America now. GE stock has fallen 60% under Immelt.

    Thanks for the laugh misogynist conservative lady hating rujax!

  45. 45

    Gotta love that GE story from rujax. Laid off almost 30,000 in the US while creating more than 30,000 jobs in India alone.

    Barack Obama and his tax-averse jobs czar Jeff Immelt

    It will be interesting to see what the Obama panel proposes considering that General Electric earned $14.2 billion in international profits, including, $5.1 billion in the United States — yet, as the New York Times reported, GE did not pay a dime in federal income taxes last year. And GE is trying to reduce its workforce while Immelt’s compensation package doubled to $15 million last year.

    Former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold wrote, “Someone like Immelt, who has helped his company evade taxes on its huge profits – and is now looking to workers to take major pay cuts after his compensation was doubled – should not lead the administration’s effort to create jobs.” I see the Obama-Immelt jobs alliance and can come up with one conclusion: The administration is just going through the motions.

    GE lover of the Obummer and the misogynist conservative lady hating rujax pulled a Rip Van Winkle during this time. Otherwise why would he post an article that featured Obummer loving Immelt front and center. Maybe stinky progressives ASSumed none of it’s DUMMOCRAPTIC stupid readers would check into GE’s politics.

    ABC news reported GE has more peeps working overseas that it does in America now. GE stock has fallen 60% under Immelt.

    Thanks for the laugh misogynist conservative lady hating rujax!

  46. 46

    Hmmm a double post from overseas.

    Last point about GE.

    From the official postings… from 2005 until now GE has made $24 BILLION in US profits alone and also received over $4 Billion in US Tax credits. In 2010 it received 14 grants wirth $24 Million + while laying off 18,000 peeps. Way to go libtardo GE!

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