You deserved it because during these years, you worked harder than ever before. You deserved it because when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out movie nights and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you’re an American and you don’t quit. You did it because it was what you had to do.

But driving home late from that second job, or standing there watching the gas pump hit 50 dollars and still going, when the realtor told you that to sell your house you’d have to take a big loss, in those moments you knew that this just wasn’t right.

But what could you do? Except work harder, do with less, try to stay optimistic. Hug your kids a little longer; maybe spend a little more time praying that tomorrow would be a better day.

"You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that."

“Investment carries a risk and you have to encourage people to take that risk otherwise they’ll take the easy way out and just start earning a salary …. When you have to compensate for a risk, you have to provide an extra incentive.”

Labels: employment, FUBAR, R.I.P. American Middle Class, We Are So Screwed

During an appearance on NBC’s Tonight Show, host Jay Leno told Romney that he knew people that had never been able to get insurance before “Obamacare” was passed.

“It seems to me like children and people with preexisting conditions should be covered,” Leno noted.

“People with preexisting conditions — as long as they’ve been insured before, they’re going to continue to have insurance,” Romney explained.

“Suppose they were never insured?” Leno asked.

“Well, if they’re 45 years old, and they show up, and they say, I want insurance, because I’ve got a heart disease, it’s like, `Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well, and if you get ill, then you’re going to be covered,’” Romney replied.

Labels: Alan Grayson, corporatism, FUBAR, greed, health care

The Keystone XL pipeline, awaiting a thumbs up or down on a presidential permit, would increase the import of heavy oil from Canada's oil sands to the U.S. by as much as 510,000 barrels a day, if it gets built.

Proponents tout it as a boon to national security that would reduce America's dependence on oil from unfriendly regimes. Opponents say it would magnify an environmental nightmare at great cost and provide only the illusion of national benefit.

What's been left out of the ferocious debate over the pipeline, however, is the prospect that if president Obama allows a permit for the Keystone XL to be granted, he would be handing a big victory and great financial opportunity to Charles and David Koch, his bitterest political enemies and among the most powerful opponents of his clean economy agenda.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democratic sellouts, FUBAR, futility, R.I.P. America

A fire in Nebraska's Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant briefly knocked out the cooling process for spent nuclear fuel rods, ProPublica reports.

The fire occurred on June 7th, and knocked out cooling for approximately 90 minutes. After 88 hours, the cooling pool would boil dry and highly radioactive materials would be exposed.

On June 6th, the Federal Administration Aviation (FAA) issued a directive banning aircraft from entering the airspace within a two-mile radius of the plant.

"No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM," referring to the "notice to airmen," effective immediately.

Since last week, the plant has been under a "notification of unusual event" classification, becausing of the rising Missouri River. That is the lowest level of emergency alert.

The OPPD claims the FAA closed airspace over the plant because of the Missouri River flooding. But the FAA ban specifically lists the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant as the location for the flight ban.

The plant is adjacent to the now-flooding river, about 20 minutes outside downtown Omaha, and has been closed since April for refueling.

WOWT, the local NBC affiliate, reports on its website:

"The Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Facility is an island right now but it is one that authorities say is going to stay dry. They say they have a number of redundant features to protect the facility from flood waters that include the aqua dam, earthen berms and sandbags."

OPPD spokesman Jeff Hanson told Business Insider that the nuclear plant is in a "stable situation." He said the Missouri River is currently at 1005.6" above sea level, and that no radioactive fuel had yet been released or was expected to be released in the future.

Asked about the FAA flight ban, Hanson it was due to high power lines and "security reasons that we can't reveal." He said the flight ban remains in effect.

Labels: 2011 Japan earthquake, environmental death watch, FUBAR, nuclear power

The Japanese government's nuclear safety agency has decided to raise the crisis level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident from 5 to 7, the worst on the international scale.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency made the decision on Monday. It says the damaged facilities have been releasing a massive amount of radioactive substances, which are posing a threat to human health and the environment over a wide area.

The agency used the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES, to gauge the level. The scale was designed by an international group of experts to indicate the significance of nuclear events with ratings of 0 to 7.

On March 18th, one week after the massive quake, the agency declared the Fukushima trouble a level 5 incident, the same as the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979.

Level 7 has formerly only been applied to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 when hundreds of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the air. One terabecquerel is one trillion becquerels.

Labels: 2011 Japan earthquake, FUBAR, nuclear power, We Are So Screwed

Federal aviation authorities said on Monday that they would order airlines to inspect some early Boeing 737 models after Southwest Airlines found subsurface cracks in three aircraft during checks that were conducted after a five-foot hole ripped through the roof of a 737-300 jetliner on Friday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said that it would issue an emergency directive on Tuesday requiring inspections for fatigue damage. The action would initially apply to about 175 aircraft worldwide, 80 of which are registered in the United States, and mostly operated by Southwest Airlines.

“Safety is our No. 1 priority,” the Transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said in a statement. “Last Friday’s incident was very serious and could result in additional action depending on the outcome of the investigation.”

The statement came shortly after Boeing said it was preparing a service bulletin that would recommend “lap-joint” inspections on certain 737-300’s as well as the 737-400 and 737-500 models.

Friday’s incident unfolded at nearly 35,000 feet with the sound of an explosion during a flight involving a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 carrying 118 passengers from Phoenix to Sacramento. Some passengers reported feeling dizzy during the swift loss of cabin pressure. Oxygen masks were released and at least two people passed out as the pilot guided the plane to an emergency landing at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station in Arizona. No one was seriously injured.

The F.A.A. directive would require initial inspections using electromagnetic, or eddy-current, technology in specific areas of the aircraft fuselage on Boeing 737 aircraft in the -300, -400 and -500 series that have accumulated more than 30,000 flight cycles — one takeoff and one landing. It would then require repetitive inspections at regular intervals.

Labels: air safety, corporatism, FUBAR

Labels: enough already, FUBAR, icepick meet forehead, weather

When Brooks Anderson boarded a Spirit Airlines flight from Chicago to Ft. Myer's, Fla., to spend Christmas with his family, he said he didn't expect to be standing for the next two-and-a-half hours.

"I was in an aisle seat and I clearly didn't fit into the seat at all," he said. "I couldn't even stuff myself in there."

The 25-year-old is 6'7" and as he tried to squeeze his knees under his chin, his tall frame proved to be too big to fit into Spirit's tiny coach seat.

"This is the most crammed I've been by far," Anderson said.

Even though he was in the last row of the plane, Anderson said the flight attendants wouldn't let him stick his knees out into the aisle, so he was forced to sit with them jammed into the metal tray table on the seat in front of him.

"It's incredibly painful," he said.

Anderson said he asked to be moved to an exit row seat, which typically has more legroom.

"The stewardess and I talked before the takeoff," he said. "She asked if anyone in the emergency row would switch spots with me [but] came back and said, 'You're stuck'."

Brooks Anderson stands at 6'7" and is shown here with his grandparents.

When none of the other passengers offered to help, Anderson said he decided to take matters into his own hands and asked if he could stand for the flight.

"I said, 'I need to do something about this, is it O.K. if I stand after the seatbelt sign is turned off?,'" he said. "She said it was O.K."

It got to the point where if the attendent wouldn't let him stand, Anderson said he seriously considered getting off the plane and missing the flight altogether.

"If I had to sit in my seat the whole time, I would have been in physical pain, with metal jamming into my knee caps for the whole flight," Anderson explained.

He then spent the remainder of the flight "dodging people going to and from the bathroom."

"It's like being in a subway car for two-and-a-half hours, which is awful," he said, adding that there was luckily no turbulence during the flight.

"It's bizarre," said Anderson's mother, Katie Anderson. "This was the first time he's been treated like this."

Labels: airline industry, FUBAR

It's harrowing enough when a commercial airliner mistakenly announces an emergency landing over water -- or, for that matter, when air passengers capture footage of an actual emergency landing on their cell phones. But passengers on a recent American Airlines flight from Miami to Boston experienced a much more vivid sense of airborne peril when a 2-foot hole opened up in the plane's fuselage about 30 minutes after takeoff.

The Boeing 757 was cruising at 31,000 feet Tuesday when the cabin began to decompress rapidly -- a "super-terrifying" experience, a passenger told WSVN-TV in Miami. The flight was carrying 154 passengers and six crew members.

But soon enough, the crew established emergency procedures: The passengers donned the oxygen masks that drop down when cabin pressure decreases, and the pilots were able to reverse the flight and land the damaged plane safely at Miami International Airport.

"The crew declared an emergency and made a normal landing. There were no injuries," American Airlines said in a rather terse statement. "The aircraft has been taken out of service."

Once the plane was on the ground, inspectors discovered the problem -- not that it was exactly easy to miss. A 2-foot-by-1-foot hole had opened just above the "A" of the logo near the plane's front left cabin door. Initial reports indicate that the plane probably took off with a smaller crack in the fuselage -- and that wind pressure caused it to expand after the jet's takeoff. However, investigators say that they have yet to isolate the precise cause of the hole. Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

Labels: air safety, deregulation, FUBAR, outsourcing

Labels: bloggers, FUBAR, This. Just. Sucks.

America's war on terrorism is widely perceived throughout Pakistan as a war on Islam. A muscular Islamic fundamentalism is gaining ground there and threatening the stability of the government, upon which we depend to guarantee the security of those nuclear weapons. Since a robust U.S. military presence in Pakistan is untenable for the government in Islamabad, however, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are likely to remain parked next door in Afghanistan for some time.

Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan. Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, "black sites," extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it -- more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead. Our military is so overstretched that defense contracting -- for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence -- is one of our few growth industries.

We have raced to Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently to Yemen and Somalia; we have created a swollen national security apparatus; and we are so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy's intentions that we inflate the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan into a national debate and watch, helpless, while a minister in Florida outrages even our friends in the Islamic world by threatening to burn copies of the Koran.

If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. "All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qaeda' in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses."

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald's. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Labels: 9/11, FUBAR, warmongering, wingnuttia

f you somehow missed the hoopla, there are two types of machines being installed, which have raised concerns about privacy, health risks and even their effectiveness at catching terrorists. The more controversial “backscatter” devices project an X-ray beam onto the body, creating an image displayed on a monitor viewed by a T.S.A. employee in another room. The “millimeter wave” machines, which are considered less risky because they do not use X-rays, bounce electromagnetic waves off the body to produce a similar image.

Unlike metal detectors, these machines can detect objects made with other materials, like plastic and ceramic. But they can’t see anything hidden inside your body, or detect certain explosives.

[snip]

The T.S.A. claims that the machines have been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, the Commerce Department’s National Institute for Standards and Technology and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. But when I called these organizations to ask about their evaluations, I learned that they basically tested only one thing — whether the amount of radiation emitted meets guidelines established by the American National Standards Institute, a membership organization of companies and government agencies.

But guess who was on the committee that developed the guidelines for the X-ray scanners? Representatives from the companies that make the machines and the Department of Homeland Security, among others. In other words, the machines passed a test developed, in part, by the companies that manufacture them and the government agency that wants to use them.

[snip]

Mr. Kimball said passengers can choose not to go through the scanner and opt for the metal detector and a pat down instead, information that is also on the T.S.A.’s Web site. But the message travelers are getting at the airport isn’t that clear.

“It definitely didn’t feel optional at all,” said Drew Hjelm, an Army veteran who recently encountered the X-ray machine at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. After asking to go through the metal detector, being turned down and even speaking with a supervisor, he was given other choices.

“The officer said, either you go through the body scanner or you leave the airport or we’re going to call the police and they’re going to come and arrest you,” Mr. Hjelm said. “After I went through the body scanner, they still patted my pants down.”

Since other passengers have said they weren’t given a choice, or were subjected to an aggressive pat down if they declined to be X-rayed, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has created an online form for travelers to report problems.

The advocacy group has also filed a motion in court to suspend the body scanner program, saying that it violates the Fourth Amendment (and other statutes) by imposing search procedures that are more intrusive than the courts have allowed for routine screening.

Labels: 9/11, air safety, Fourth Amendment, FUBAR

But as the troops move out, the oil companies are moving in. According to a July report from the U.S. government’s Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, oil production in Iraq is currently about 2.4 million barrels per day. The goal, by 2017 is to produce 12 million barrels per day. That’s quite a leap, especially since average production levels have held steady for more than two years. It’s going to a take a lot of investment to expand production by 10 million barrels per day.

How much? That’s anybody’s guess. For example, in January, ExxonMobil signed an agreement to redevelop and expand an oil field in southern Iraq. A company spokeswoman says that “total field capital expenditure will depend on full project scope,” which is currently being examined.

There’s a pile of oil money pouring into Iraq right now. Since last year, the Iraqi government has awarded 11 development deals to various consortia. BP and China National Petroleum Corp. are developing the enormous Rumaila field, which has a total proven reserves of about 18 billion barrels. Other companies winning awards include Royal Dutch Shell (working with ExxonMobil on one project and Malaysia’s Petronas on another), France’s Total SpA, Angola’s Sonangol, Italy’s Eni SpA, Russia’s Lukoil and China National Offshore Oil Corp. The signature bonuses to be paid by the consortia are anywhere from $100 million to $500 million.

More investment is on the way. Iraq’s oil ministry is planning to build four new refineries that will nearly double the country’s refining capacity. Oil services firms like Weatherford International and Schlumberger are expanding their operations in the country. Earlier this month Halliburton won a deal to drill 15 wells in the Basra province in southern Iraq, though the financial terms have not been disclosed.

If development goes as planned, rebuilding Iraq’s oil sector could be a highly profitable investment for these companies over the long-term. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Iraq has the third largest proven oil reserves in the world (after Saudia Arabia and Canada). In 2008, oil exports accounted for nearly 90% of the country’s revenues.

Labels: america R.I.P., Bush family, Dick Cheney, FUBAR, Greedy Republican Bastards, Iraq War

Hundreds of people have been sickened in a salmonella outbreak linked to eggs in four states and possibly more, health officials said Wednesday as a company dramatically expanded a recall to 380 million eggs.

[snip]

Initially, 228 million eggs, or the equivalent of 19 million dozen-egg cartons, were recalled by the Wright County Egg company of Galt, Iowa, but that number was increased to nearly 32 million dozen-egg cartons.

Labels: comedy gold, food industry, FUBAR

Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
  
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck,
  which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
  
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
  
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
  
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
  
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
  
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
  
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional
  income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
  
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential
  housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
  
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
  
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
  
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
  
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
  
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
  
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
  
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
  
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
  
• For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on
  food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
  
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker
  makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
  
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
  

[snip]

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job?

Labels: corporatism, economic death watch, FUBAR, Greedy Republican Bastards

In the 17th inning, home plate umpire Terry Tata ejected Met star Darryl Strawberry and manager Davey Johnson for arguing a called third strike. When asked about it after the game, Tata responded with the words later engraved at the Tomb of the Unknown Umpire: "At three o'clock in the morning, there are no bad calls."

Next inning, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. The Mets capitalized on Brave reliever Rick Camp's throwing a would-be double play ball into the outfield, and scored the go-ahead run for an 11-10 lead.

Atlanta had the bottom of their order due up. The hitters looked as weary as they must have felt. In a handful of pitches, the first two batters each feebly grounded out. At 3:30 a.m, the Braves were down to their last man; not only was it the pitcher's slot in the order, but they had no more position players left to pinch hit.

Thus Rick Camp strode to the plate, representing Atlanta's last and least hope. Even for a pitcher, he was never much of a hitter in his decade-long career. A few years earlier he'd gone 1-for-41 on the season. Now a reliever, he rarely even hit. This would be his eighth plate appearance on the year, and he hadn't had a hit all season. As he faced Tom Gormon at 3:30 a.m. on what was now July 5, 1985, his lifetime batting average was .060.

Gorman, now in his sixth inning of work, saw no need to mess around with Camp. He quickly got two quick strikes on the hapless "hitter." Brave fans still in attendance—and one truly had to be a fan to stay in attendance this late through all that rain and time—could at least console themselves that it had been a hard fought battle, even if Atlanta was doomed before the better team.

Ah, but here is where the game became something for the ages. Part of the appeal of sports is that you never know what will happen next. What has just happened and what ought to happen merely serve as indicators for what could and should happen, not what will. The next moment was so ridiculous, that it defied all logic and a damn good chunk of all illogic. An ape on a typewriter would have a better chance typing out the complete works of William Shakespeare by sheer happenstance than a repetition of this at-bat.

When Gorman threw his third pitch, Camp went for broke on the 0-2, two-out offering and took a mighty swing. Crack! He made contact, and the ball floated out past the infield, into the outfield, beyond the wall and to the stunned horror of the Mets, landed in the bullpen for a game-tying home run. The Met outfielder in pursuit was so shocked he fell to his knees and grabbed his head with his hands. The fans were ecstatic, as well they should be, for if any fans deserved to see something great, it was the small band still in the stadium. Suffice it to say, it was not just Camp's biggest career home run, but it was his only one. The game went on, tied 11-11.

You know the Braves were in trouble when Camp left the dugout to pitch the 19th inning. Fresh from his first and last homer, he had an unstoppably huge grin on his face. Upshot: he was not in the best frame of mind to pitch. In the space of three singles, a double, and two intentional walks, the Mets had a 16-11 lead, putting the game away.

Or was it out of reach? As difficult as it might be to top a five-run lead in the 19th inning, that would be nothing compared to what happened in Atlanta's previous turn at the bat. The Mets weren't leaving anything to chance, putting in star starter Ron Darling to pitch.

By all rights, it should've been an easy 1-2-3 inning. Two of the first three batters made simple outs. The inning stayed alive because Keith Hernandez, normally a superlative fielder, made an error to put a man on. With two outs, Atlanta went into its surreal clutch mode: two straight walks loaded the bases, and a single scored two runs. 16-13.

Not only that, but incredibly the tying run came to the plate. Again. Surely enough—you could not script it any better—the batter was the very last man on planet Earth the Mets would want to see represent the tying run with two outs in this Twilight Zone of a game. That's right, up there stood the god himself: the man, the myth, the legend, Rick Camp, only now he stood tall with a whopping .065 career batting average. Though the rain had long since stopped, I like to think a dramatic thunderclap occurred when he stood in the batter's box and faced Darling.

Just like last time, Camp fell behind quickly, and he stared down the barrel of a 1-2 count. At 3:55 a.m., Camp was in a perfect position to certify his position as the all-time grand master of the fourth hour of the morning, game-tying homer.

Darling threw his pitch and Camp swung. Somehow, someway, the ball miraculously sneaked past the uber-fearsome batter. Strike three. Game over. Camp, the most disappointed hitter since Mudville cut Casey, slammed down his bat on the plate in frustration. One can only assume in his previous 168 at-bats he had never been nearly so upset by any of the 83 earlier times he'd fanned.

The fans weren't disappointed. How could they be after witnessing a game like that? Even the players in the Brave dugout stood and applauded as the game ended.

However, many others would soon be very upset. You see, like all games scheduled for the Fourth of July, this one advertised a fireworks display. And sure, even though the sky was beginning to lighten, the Braves began exploding their picturesque bombs promptly at 4:01 a.m. The noise woke up many in the neighborhood, causing many frightened souls to call the police, claiming Libya was bombing Atlanta!

Labels: Baseball, FUBAR, New York Mets

The problem with the April 20 spill is that it isn't really a spill: It‘s a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing, black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch, impossible for divers to endure. Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.

[snip]

Accidents have occurred before in which oil has gushed from damaged wells, he said. But he knew of none in water so deep.

And "everything is bigger and more difficult the deeper you go," said Andy Bowen, a research specialist who works with undersea robotics at the Woods Hole center. "Fighting gravity is tough. It increases loads. You need bigger winches, bigger cables, bigger ships."

An analogy, he said, is the difference between construction work on the ground versus at the top of a mile-high skyscraper.

To BP falls the daunting task of trying to stop the gush before it becomes the most damaging spill in American history. If the flow is not stopped, it will exhaust the natural reservoir of oil beneath the sea floor, experts say. Many months, at least, could pass.

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, FUBAR

It would be much less fair, however, to ignore the events that led us to this moment, when whatever choice he makes will offer no great guarantee of progress and no small prospect of trouble.

Those events began with the inexplicable decision by officials of the previous administration to allow Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other ranking leaders of Al Qaeda to escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. At the time, as a new Senate report on the battle of Tora Bora recalls, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, and Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, decided not to augment the tiny force of special operations troops on the ground with sufficient force to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden and his deputies. They later claimed to be worried that “too many American troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency,” a rationale that can only evoke bitter laughter now.

None of the reasons offered back then for inaction at Tora Bora made sense after the outrage of 9/11, when the entire world, including the Afghan people, were cheering the U.S. invasion. The pattern of deception that later led to war in Iraq began with expressions of doubt by both General Franks and Vice President Dick Cheney about Mr. bin Laden’s presence in Tora Bora—a doubt that none of the commanders on the ground shared and that always sounded more like an excuse than an explanation. If there was any chance that the perpetrators of 9/11 could be found in those mountains, then maximum force should have been deployed as rapidly as possible.

What we know now, of course, is that Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and President Bush himself were distracted from the vital necessity of victory in Afghanistan—which meant not only driving out the Taliban but installing a real government in their place—by their obsession with Iraq. Not only did the Al Qaeda leadership escape, but so did Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, who returned to mount a threatening insurgency two years later, just as the Bush White House and the Pentagon were declaring “mission accomplished” in Baghdad. The resulting neglect of Afghanistan—with all the corruption, disillusionment and anger that has ensued—had reached a critical stage when the Bush administration finally departed. Their own commanders were left behind to warn Mr. Obama that the enemy had gained the upper hand.

Months after the controversial presidential election that many Afghans consider stolen, there is no cabinet, and parliament is threatening to go on recess before confirming a new one because the president is unconstitutionally late in presenting the names. There are grave suspicions that some past and present cabinet members have engaged in the embezzlement of substantial sums of money. There is little parliamentary oversight. Almost no one bothers to attend the parliamentary sessions. The cabinet ministries are unable to spend the money allocated to them on things like education and rural development, and actually spent less in absolute terms last year than they did in the previous two years. Only half of the development projects for which money was allotted were even begun last year, and none was completed.

In other words, we can say of the Afghanistan government what Gertrude Stein said of her inability in later life to find her childhood home in Oakland, Calif.: "There is no there there."

Labels: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, FUBAR

He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."

But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.

He predicted that the so-called reformist camp -- who are not exactly humanists in the Western liberal sense -- may try and animate efforts to decapitate the regime and "do away with" Ahmadinejad and even the Supreme Leader himself.

I am not convinced that this source "knows" these things will definitely happen but am convinced of his credentials and impressed with the seriousness of the discussion we had and his own concern that there may be political killing sprees ahead.

First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi's supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man's face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles. It was the same all the way down to Vali Asr Square. Riot police in black rubber body armour and black helmets and black riot sticks, most on foot but followed by a flying column of security men, all on brand new, bright red Honda motorcycles, tearing into the shrieking youths – hundreds of them, running for their lives. They did not accept the results of Iran's presidential elections. They did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 per cent of the votes. And they paid the price.

"Death to the dictator," they were crying on Dr Fatimi Street, now thousands of them shouting abuse at the police. Were they to endure another four years of the smiling, avuncular, ever-so-humble President who swears by democracy while steadily thinning out human freedoms in the Islamic Republic? They were wrong, of course. Ahmadinejad really does love democracy. But he also loves dictatorial order. He is not a dictator. He is a Democrator.

Labels: FUBAR, Iran

Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.

In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.

They said Iran had accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.

If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.

“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.

Labels: Dick Cheney, FUBAR, Iran, Valerie Plame, WMD