So I said... for February 25 to March 4

Updated to include links, which I failed to include before posting.

The next issue of my irregular compilation of comments I’ve made at various places on various issues over the past week or so, with some added context as seemed needed.

2026-02-25
[In the SOTU, the Orange Overlord endorsed forced school outing of trans kids.]

What still seems so tragic to me that is I can recall from a good number of years ago PSAs on TV (okay, maybe it was radio; the words are what I remember) telling children that if there were problems at home and they needed help, to tell an adult, including, I remember this specifically, “a trusted teacher.”

Now, that’s simply no longer true. If you’re trans and home feels like a hostile environment, a teacher is someone you dare not trust. Not just because they might expose you to your parents but because they might have no choice in the matter, so you remain silent, feeling trapped and isolated and alone - and potentially suicidal.

Ignorance leads to fear (transphobia). Fear leads to hate (transmisia). Hate leads to inflicting suffering. And the infliction of suffering will be described as doing good - because the alternative is facing the reality of what it is being done and that is too much to bear.

[Footnote: “Tell a trusted adult” is still standard guidance. The issue is, if you’re a trans child, who could such a person be?]

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2026-02-26
[H.R. 7661, introduced hours after the SOTU, would prohibit schools from “promoting” or “facilitating” anything involving “gender dysphoria” or “transgenderism” and codify the idea that anything to do with trans people is “sexually explicit.” The only thing other than being trans designated “sexually explicit” is depictions of sexual intercourse as defined in 18 USC §2256.]

This just goes to confirm what I’ve been saying for a long time: These are mentally disturbed, ethically warped people driven nearly mad by their obsession with sex such that they can’t conceive of being transgender as a matter of who a person is but only in terms of how they “do it” and “what’s in their pants” and all their attempts at disappearing trans folks are really attempts to repress their hidden, lurid, guilty fantasies.

==

2026-02-27
A simple question I have not seen asked regarding impending war on Iran:

WHAT THE FLAMING HELL IS “COMMERCIAL-GRADE ENRICHED WEAPONS MATERIAL??”

I have to assume the “enriched weapons material” refers to enriched uranium or plutonium. The only sense I can make of “commercial grade” is that it’s enriched to a degree useful for commercial applications - specifically, running a nuclear reactor.

That’s an enrichment level of 3-5% (i.e. 3-5% of the fuel is actual U-235 or Pu-239). Weapons-grade is >90% enriched.

So unless there is some explanation of which I am unaware, the administration of The Orange Overlord and his coterie of clowns and lickspittle liars is threatening to go to war because Iran is “a week away” from being able to operate a nuclear reactor.

[I made essentially the same comment just in a shorter form on another site on March 1 in reply to the observation that “they’ve been saying Iran is days away from producing nuclear weapons for decades. They’re probably hoping we don’t remember that so they can justify what he wants to do.]

==

2026-02-27
[In the Orange Overlord’s SOTU he said “The first duty of government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” The same day, a nearly-blind, non-English-speaking Burmese refugee was found dead after being dumped by CPB at night, in a Buffalo winter, five miles from his home.]

“If he’s going to die, the better he do it sooner, so to reduce the illegal population!”

Seems to me I heard that or something like it sometime in I think it was December.

==

2026-02-28
So Secretary of “War is Peace” Pete “Manly Man” Hogsbreath says the Pentagon has made a deal with Scouting America to eliminate DEI programs and end tolerance of transgender scouts.

To the relief of some, the group declared it would still “have transgender people in our program going forward.”

For my part, I’ll hold my applause until I hear more details. The statement says that yes, trans kids are still welcome - but it does not say that they will not be programmatically segregated by birth sex nor does it say anything about the cutting back on or elimination of DEI programs.

Suppose some state said “Of course trans people are welcome to use our bathrooms or compete in sports - as long as they do it according to their sex assigned at birth.” Would that satisfy? Because it shouldn’t.

This may turn out better than I think it sounds, but I’ll need to be convinced it isn’t just a smokescreen over what is essentially a surrender.

In any event and personally, I think Scouting America should tell the Pentagon to, as I used to put it, “remove thyself to an alternate location, there to engage in autoerotic activities” - i.e., GFY. Crafts, outdoor camping, and sports should not be pipelines to the military.

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2026-02-28
[In response to the same announcement, someone noted the Scouts are significantly dependent on the DOD, e.g., the Corps of Engineers maintains a lot of Summer Camp infrastructure.]

Yes, and why do they do it? Civic duty? Contribution to the public good?

Nah. It’s because Scouting America acts - whether consciously or by default - as recruitment for the military. The group will even brag about how many of its participants wind up in the military.

==

2026-03-01
[Robert Reich referred again to how offended he was by Randy Newman’s song “Short People.”]

Randy Newman’s song “Short “People” was intended as a satire about prejudice. Apparently he was unaware of the prejudice based on height, saying later he couldn’t see why people would think that anyone “was as crazy as that character” or something to that effect. It was not his only satirical song about bigotry where he spoke in the voice of the bigot, it was just the one that became well known. If you still wonder, you should read the lyrics to see that it is deliberately way over the top.

Just remember, Newman also wrote “Political Science” in which he said we should “drop the big one” on everybody because everybody hates us - except on Australia because we “don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo.” Failing to recognize obvious satire is a rookie mistake.

==

2026-03-01
So I see people saying “Iran is just another distraction from Epstein.”

NOT EVERYTHING IS A DISTRACTION, DAMMIT!

This is a real war with real people really dying, not a damn sideshow and I guarantee you it’s not a “distraction” to the people doing the suffering and dying.

Do you really think that there would be no war, no attacks on immigrants, no undermining of science and public health, no stripping of LGBTQ+, particularly trans, rights, no voter suppression, no pushing of white Christian nationalism, no assertions of near-dictatorial powers, no threats about Greenland or Canada, no the list just goes on and on and on, if it wasn’t for Epstein?

Get a flaming grip!

[This resulted in my being accused of being unconcerned with child rape so I’ll add this addendum, something I apparently should have included but didn’t because I thought it was apparent: When you label something as “a distraction,” you are saying it is unimportant, irrelevant, not worthy of attention and can be safely ignored; in fact it should be ignored so as to keep all focus on whatever is claimed in the particular case to be the singular “real” issue.

As horrific as the facts and the further implications surrounding the Epstein files are, I find myself incapable of letting pass without resistance all the other examples of heinousness coming from the court of the Orange Overlord. I will make no apologies for that and I reject the underlying suggestion that those actions would not have been undertaken, that is, were done only to serve as distractions, were it not for Epstein.]

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2026-03-03
[Hemant Mehta wrote about his doubts about a story that a combat-lever commander told officers under their command that Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon,” leading to the Second Coming.]

I come to this as, if you will, a virgin, as while I had seen the headline on [Jonathan] Larsen’s story, I hadn’t read it. I still haven’t.

That said, I was put off by your “just asking questions” approach, one that despite your disclaimers came across much more as debunking the story than as expressing healthy skepticism.

For example, you took a couple of personal shots at [Mikey] Weinstein[, President and Founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the source of the story] - “he brags about being repeatedly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,” “every email publicized by MRFF reads more like an internal fundraising email,” the group “takes in a lot of donations on the backs of stories like these,” he personally gets paid about $375,000, about half the group’s total income - while insisting they’re not relevant or “not accusations, just observations.” Then why bring them up?

What’s more, some of your “red flags” aren’t even flags, much less red ones. So the theology expressed by this commander isn’t the same as that of Pete Hegseth? Okay, now that is irrelevant not only to the truth of the story but to the central issue of such “last days” theology being expressed in the military and how far it is being spread, if it is. 

You also said “If they’re actively editing the emails, then they need to admit that” just a few paragraphs before stating that he did precisely that when you asked for an original.

So do I think that some commander could have expressed that sort of “final days” theology to those under their command? Yes. Considering the number of examples of right-wing pastors declaring Trump was “anointed of God” to be president and “Jesus is returning,” I have no doubt.

Beyond that, I suspect that a lot of the reports were repeating scuttlebutt and that they didn’t “call a reporter” because beyond concern about being outed - seriously, how many reporters would be willing to deal with a report from someone who wouldn’t ID themselves, leaving no way know the source - they didn’t have additional info to offer and it was more a case of “I heard about this and I thought you should know.”

The question of how widespread the particular form of religious extremism involved is in the military and if it’s being promoted by higher-ups are important ones and wholly worthy of investigation. But neither was the question at hand; the reliability of the story and therefore the trustworthiness of the MRFF was.

Bottom line: At this point, do I have cause to doubt that basic story? No. And bluntly, neither do you.

==

2026-03-04
[In this case, literally “said.” A local Board of Education was considering revoking its guidance on dealing with transgender students, that is, stripping away their protections. Several folks spoke against it at the meeting; this is from what I prepared (which likely makes it seem more polished than it was as delivered).  In the end, the motion lost on a tie vote of 4-4.]

Good evening.

I come before the Board tonight to urge you to continue to support and indeed where possible to strengthen the Transgender Student Guidance.

I say this despite the fact that I am not trans, no one in my family is trans, and in fact as far as I know I do not personally know a single transgender person.

The point is, you don’t need to have a personal connection to be to be aware, to understand, to have empathy.

I was bullied growing up. A lot. I was a fat, shy, bookish kid, the kind who becomes a natural target for bullying, for mockery, being picked on, teasing, and “jokes.” The result was that I never felt connected, never felt I belonged.

It was bad enough that in my teen years I seriously considered suicide and a few years later I attempted it.

Looking back on that time, I can understand to some degree what it’s like to be trans, indeed how much harder to be trans than it was for me. Because if you’re trans, you’re not just made to feel apart, you’re actively set apart, tagged, marked  as the “other,” as the “not us” by the society around you - increasingly, even legally so.

Transgender children deserve support, protection, and encouragement sufficient to thrive of the sort that any child should be able expect in any public school.

I’m not an expert, but as a layperson I’m fairly conversant with the science involved here. But you don’t have to be an expert to know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, between fair and unfair, just and unjust, between what is kindness and what is cruelty, to recognize the difference between performative concern and concealed contempt.

So I want to again, call on the Board of Education to continue, and where possible deepen, the support. the protection, the inclusion for trans students in this school system.

What’s more, I call on you to not be deterred or stampeded by the fears, fables, and fairy tales likely to be thrown at you in the course of considering this issue but rather to adopt just some portion of the courage it takes to be transgender and embrace the right, the fair, the just, and the kind.

I want to thank the members of the Board for taking on this civic responsibility of being on the BOE and I thank you for your time.

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Woodstock: the political life around it

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Woodstock: the political life around it

Okay, there is another reason besides aging hippie nostalgia that I wanted to bring this all up. Because Woodstock did not exist, did not occur, in a social or cultural vacuum.

For one thing, the Vietnam War was at its most intense levels. Casualty figures for the Indochinese are hard to come by, even overall totals of how many millions died are estimates. But for Americans, we have year-by-year totals and in 1968, 16,592 US soldiers were killed in Vietnam; in 1969. the figure proved out to be 11,616. But look at that 1968 figure. Those 16,600 killed are more than double the number of Americans killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined, across the entire history of those war, right up to the present.

Opposition to that war was also becoming more and more intense. There were major demonstrations on college campuses across the country throughout 1969. A few months before Woodstock, in April, there were mass antiwar demonstrations in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and other places. On October 15, two months after the festival, the National Moratorium against the War generated thousands of local actions across the country including mass rallies, some of them quite large, along with parades, teach-ins, forums, candlelight processions, prayers, and the reading of the names of the war dead, with the estimates of total participation ranging from two to five to seven million. A month after that, on November 15, a half-million turned out in Washington, D.C. to protest the war with 100,000 more in San Francisco.

But that wasn't the only issue. Civil rights had seen some legislative successes in the preceding years, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but the inadequacies of those gains was clearly demonstrated in what became known as "the long hot summer" of 1967, when riots driven by frustrations and economic desperation broke out in black neighborhoods in 159 US cities. At the time of Woodstock, the phrase "black liberation" and a discussion of what that meant was a part of every conversation about civil rights or race.

But in turn it was the very strength of those two movements - peace and civil rights - that gave strength to, gave extra vigor to, a third, as women in the movement began to get fed up with being always expected to keep to the background, to do the work but get little or none of the credit. The expression "male chauvinist pig" came into circulation, sometimes as a teasing warning when preceded by "don't be a" but also as a sneering dismissive putdown of deserving targets.

And speaking of being fed up, less than three weeks before Woodstock, in Greenwich Village in New York City, some patrons of a gay club and dance bar known as the Stonewall Inn decided they had had it with being hassled, assaulted, and arrested by cops for essentially nothing more than being gay or lesbian. What become known as the Stonewall Riots - more properly the Stonewall Uprising - continued on and off for five days, giving birth to the modern LGBTQ rights movement, with the first gay pride marches occurring just a year later.

Meanwhile the long-standing movement against nuclear weapons was beginning to expand into opposition to nuclear power, merging or at the least overlapping with the environmental movement, which continued to gain strength - recall the first Earth Day, in some ways the only real occasion of that now corporate- and government-approved event, came just eight months after Woodstock.

All this and more was swirling around and through the culture in the summer of 1969. That was the atmosphere, the if you will cultural milieu in which Woodstock happened. Woodstock was by no means intended as a political event, but it was a cultural event, as it proved, a major cultural event, and as such did not and could not stand apart from the political currents of the time. What Woodstock was, what it became, was affected by what was going on around it.

Now, I am certainly not saying that all those at Woodstock were dedicated political or cultural activists who went straight from the festival to the frontlines, even less that people went to Woodstock with the idea that the act of going was itself a conscious political statement. In fact, I expect most of those to be seen in tie-dye t-shirts, jeans, and sandals in 1969, whether at Woodstock or anywhere else, had no more interest in the world at large other than how it immediately impacted their personal lives than those sporting whatever hipper-than-thou gear is currently fashionable do today.

But at the same time, going was by its nature a statement of sorts. Semiotics is the study of sign process, that is, it is the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communication. That includes the way cultures and subcultures sign themselves. Ever since Monterey Pop in 1967, you pretty much knew that by going to a big rock festival, you would be surrounded by people with long hair dressed in colorful clothes and yes, tie-dye t-shirts, jeans, and sandals, people who were thereby signing that you and they shared a set of cultural values, that you were with your tribe.

The point here is that while you can't say Woodstock was a consciously political event nor can you say that those attending were all political or cultural activists, you can say that those political and cultural activists who attended the festival shared a number of cultural assumptions with those around them, certain cultural principles that had become emblematic of what had become known as the counterculture, cultural principles such as sharing, rejection of competition, and embracing of exploration and discovery, both physical and spiritual.

That is, they pursued a political activism rooted both in cultural, not just intellectual or traditionally political, concerns as well as in a lifestyle that knew the words “others” and “future” as emotional touchstones, not merely statistical measures - the precise difference between the so-called "New Left" of the '60s and the "Old Left" of previous generations, whose adherents could quote chapter and verse of political theory and chant slogans with the best of them but too often sounded as if they regarded the people on whose behalf they were trying to speak more like exhibits in a court case than living, breathing people.

Indeed, a significant part of ‘60s activism was almost purely cultural: The “live your life as an example to others” idea and the "conscious" or "intentional" communities that set out to prove that there are juster, fairer ways to organize our social relations.

Beyond that, one positive result of that footing in cultural as well as more traditional political concerns was the (relative) ease with which the movement became multi-issue: Whenever those distressing, depressing arguments about the issue or the tactic arose, a significant portion of the movement just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. “You work on what you think is important and I’ll work on what I think is important and whenever we can make the two overlap we’ll work together. Simple! We’re all after pretty much the same end, anyway, right?” The “same end” bit wasn’t always (maybe not even usually) true, of course, but it was true enough to keep things bubbling along without the movement getting bogged down in endless, unresolvable disputes about the relative importance of the arms race vs. feminism vs. the environment vs. racism vs. economic issues vs. and so on.

In short, I firmly believe, I argue, that a main - perhaps the - core energy source for the movement of the ‘60s was that area where political involvement and cultural/spiritual concerns overlapped to form a politically-involved counterculture.

That energy gave us the sense that you could make a difference, that your dreams could be lived out, that they really could come true, that the future was wide open and all things were possible. And it enabled us to keep trying. For all the sexism we came to acknowledge in the counterculture and the peace movement, people kept trying to live more egalitarian lives. For all the undercurrents of racism we dug out of white activist’s relations with black groups, people kept trying to work it out and live more justly. For all the awareness of our umbilical cord connections to the consumer society, people kept trying to live more simply, with greater ecological awareness. There was a sense that you could make it better both in yourself and in others by both your social example and your political actions.

It was that sense, especially when slammed up against the reality of the chasm between the America we saw around us and the America we were taught to believe in, in school that produced the anger and the joy, the tough determination and gentle compassion, the bitter awareness and sweet dreams that marked a movement that over a several-year span was powerful enough to end the draft, limit and finally stop a war, force one (and maybe two) Presidents from office, shake the foundations of a society’s judgements about half its population, open millions of eyes to the reality of racism, force the nuclear power industry to a virtual halt, set in motion other movements for justice, and change - perhaps not by much but clearly permanently - that society’s sense of its relationship to the environment.

And it's good to have that record of success, of progress, because it is of course true that ultimately, in many ways, we failed. Our dreams could not be lived out, at least not full force, the future was not wide open, and not all things were possible. Sexism and racism persist. Poverty and hunger still haunt us. Climate change is a Sword of Damocles over us. Yes, we stopped one war - but the changes we made weren't enough to prevent new wars and more wars, wars that, just like Donovan sang in 1970, "drag on." We got hemmed in, in some cases weighed down, by commitments and obligations of a different sort, commitments and obligations not to the whole community, but to the narrower community of spouses, of children, of aging parents, and the jobs and careers that sustained those commitments.

That doesn't mean we simply surrendered; the '60s generation went disproportionately into what are called "helping" or "caring" fields, fields such as health and medicine, education, social work, public interest law, and so on. But it does mean that the task we set for ourselves was bigger than we ever let ourselves imagine. Our community, our tribe, came together so easily, so naturally, that we just assumed it could stay together just as easily - which, and in retrospect it's easy to say "of course," it couldn't. The result was that when those other commitments arose, we didn't do the work, we didn't put in the effort, to maintain that community in part because we had fooled ourselves into thinking that effort wouldn't be necessary.

So we lost our tribe, we lost the sense that we were all part of the Movement, the Movement with a capital M, that vaguely defined but still somehow an organic whole of which we were part. Between that and the end of the Indochina War, which for a non-insignificant number had been the whole reason for their political activism, that core energy was gone - and so was, I would say, the '60s as a political movement.

234.3 - Good News: Iran deal advances

Good News: Iran deal advances

In some other Good News, the Iran deal is back in the news. That's the the one that involved Iran agreeing to modify its nuclear research and power program in a way that would prevent it from using it to build nuclear weapons in exchange for a lifting of political and economic sanctions against it.

Well, Secretary of State John Kerry said on January 7 that implementation of the deal may be only "days away" and that Iran is on track to meet its pledge to sharply reduce its ability to manufacture the nuclear weapons it probably was not trying to build in the first place and no, Kerry did not say that last part.

In fact, there was a report that, in line with the agreement, Iran had removed the core of its Arak heavy water nuclear reactor and filled it with cement, an act which Reuters, with notable British understatement, said would "reduce the plant's ability to produce plutonium." Yes, replacing the core with cement would do that.

Iranian officials denied that particular report, but indicated at the same time that the process of "modernizing" the Arak plant, which would involve removing the core, is underway.

It's possible the conflicting reports are due to jockeying among political factions in Iran; if the core has been removed, it would not be the first time that a report of Iran taking steps to accede to the demands of the so-called P5+1 nations was denied only to be confirmed later.

What can't be denied is that Iran has significantly reduced the number of its centrifuges, transferred the bulk of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia, and agreed to sell some of its excess heavy water to the US. Things are progressing.

Congressional war hawks

I say now as I have said in the past in discussing this that I was and am uncomfortable with this deal not only because, again, there was no solid proof Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon - certainly the frequent breathless predictions that Iran was anything from just a couple of years to a few months away from having nukes never came true - but also because it smacks of rank imperialism, of a group of big nations telling a smaller one "you will do this because we say so, like it or lump it."

But I approved it - accepted it is the better term - because the alternative was the real possibility of a stampede to war on Iran. And indeed, that idea still sits in the back of the heads of various Congressional troglodytes, who even now are pushing a bill that would block the lifting of sanctions on Iran - which is supposed to be our part of the deal - until the Administration can "certify the entity is not a terror financier, human rights abuser or involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." In other words, they want to wreck the deal by moving the goalposts not just further back but completely out of the stadium.

Even if that bill passes Congress, which it likely won't, it would be vetoed and there is no way such a veto would be overriden. But it does serve as a reminder that there are those in Congress (and not all of them are GOPpers) who have blood in their eyes and war lust in their groins who would, if given the opportunity, have US soldiers on the ground - I should say more US soldiers on the ground - not only in Syria and Iraq but in Iran as well. For some people, war is the only option they can think of. Which is why I accept the Iran deal and regard the progress as good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://news.yahoo.com/implementation-iran-nuclear-deal-days-away-kerry-193148623.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1108/Imminent-Iran-nuclear-threat-A-timeline-of-warnings-since-1979/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/goody-goody.html
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-removes-core-arak-heavy-water-nuclear-reactor-171943841.html
http://www.albawaba.com/news/iran’s-arak-nuclear-reactor-begins-process-‘modernization-792190
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/world/middleeast/iran-arak-reactor.html
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-sell-40-tonnes-heavy-water-us-official-145525336.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-elsner/opponents-of-iran-nuclear_b_8962566.html

212.8 - Iran: comments on "the deal"

Iran: comments on "the deal"

Finally for this week, the deal with Iran.

I have to say that I'm in an odd position to comment on the deal with Iran because the whole business was and is premised on the claim that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, that in fact it's on the verge of doing so and only constant pressure has prevented that.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been peddling that line since 1993, when he claimed Iran would have nukes in three to five years - which would make them 18 to 20 years over due now. He has repeated that claim over and over in the years since, varying only in the always-frighteningly-short time frame - and has done it even when his own intelligence agencies were telling him it wasn't true.

In fact, the Christian Science Monitor came up with warnings about an Iranian bomb dating all the way back to the late 1970s - when the Shah was still in power.

This has been so consistent over so long that I said a while back that the old riddle "What is always coming but never arrives?" now has two answers: "tomorrow" and "Iranian nuclear weapons."

So I'm in a funny position to comment because I was never convinced that the central conceit driving the whole sanctions-negotiations regime - the imminent Iranian bomb - was true.

So to me the negotiations appeared to amount to a group of mostly Western nations bullying Iran over its nuclear program without even any hard evidence that "nuclear" was an adjective for "weapons" rather than "energy," bullying which if it were directed against us, political leaders would denounce as the grossest affront to our national interests and rights and sovereignty and would provoke daily calls for war.

But in a way that doesn't matter now because we are sort of between the proverbial rock and hard place in that the failure of negotiations would have significantly increased the risk of a military attack on Iran, which is what a number of the agreement's opponents - and Israel - want the US to do.

So the success of the negotiations was clearly the better or more precisely less bad option available and so I have to be glad for what has been achieved and to say - I don't say it much, so cherish it - congratulations to Barack Obama.

The right wing, of course, is frothing with fury and full of predictions of catastrophe for the US or Israel or the whole world in some order or combination - none of which will come true unless they succeed in blocking the agreement, which would be likely to make Iranian leaders think hey, damn, we'd better get nukes for our own protection, these people be crazy, which would really ratchet up the prospects of bloody war of the sort the right wing has long wanted.

Asked his reaction to the new deal, House Majority leader John Boehner, Sir John of Orange, said "no deal is better than a bad deal."

In this case at least, no, it isn't. Even if this was a bad deal, which it actually is as it amounts to imperialist bullying, but even if it was a bad deal in the sense our leaders and our pundit class mean, still it is better than no deal. Let's hope enough people in Congress realize that.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.nytimes.com/live/iran-nuclear-deal-live-updates/key-provisions-of-the-accord/?partner=rss&emc=rss
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/goody-goody.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1108/Imminent-Iran-nuclear-threat-A-timeline-of-warnings-since-1979/Earliest-warnings-1979-84
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/14/2016-candidates-iran-deal_n_7793558.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=WorldPost

195.5 - The 47 Senators who signed the letter to Iran are tying to provoke a war

The 47 Senators who signed the letter to Iran are tying to provoke a war

Okay, I have to address The Letter. You know the one I mean, the one signed by 47 wackos in the Senate and directed to "the leaders" of Iran. Not anyone in particular, no names were included, just "the leaders."

Positively dripping with condescension, it opens with "you may not fully understand our constitutional system" and proceeds through several paragraphs that boil down to "there is no point in your reaching an agreement with the US and other nations on nuclear issues" with the clearly implied tagline "so why bother?"

A Farsi version sent to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif “in case you need a translation.” Just how deep is the wackos' grasp of the facts of the situation can be seen in the fact that Zarif moved to the US at age 17, has a Masters degree from San Francisco State University, and has a second Masters and a PhD from the University of Denver.

It's also safe to say that the Iranian leadership has a pretty good grasp of the US system, since Iran's current presidential cabinet has more members with doctorates from US universities than Obama's does.

Javad Zarif

Which is probably why Zarif felt no need to spare the sarcasm in his reply, in which he pointedly noted that, contrary to the wackos' letter, were a future president simply to ignore an international agreement reached at the executive level, even if it's not a treaty, it would be a violation of international law. Besides, he went on, the wackos' own argument would in fact render the great many of what the letter called  "mere executive agreements" into which the US has entered as meaningless and brand the US as untrustworthy.

But here's the point: None of that matters. None of it. The people responsible for this letter, the people who signed this letter, the people who say they support this letter even if they didn't sign it, they don't care. They don't care that they got the facts about executive agreements wrong. They don't care that they even got the Constitutional details of treaties wrong. They don't care because this has nothing to do with any of that.

Tom Cotton

The purpose of the letter is to discourage the Iranian government from agreeing to a deal, or, alternately, to push the White House into giving Congress the power to veto any deal - both of which would have the same result: destroying any hope of an agreement.

The people who signed this letter do not want an agreement. They want negotiations to fail. They want diplomacy to fail. They want this to fall apart. These people want a war. The closer it comes to where there may actually be a deal, the more rabid they become, the more obvious their desire, their intent, becomes, the more transparent their bloodlust becomes

You think that's overstating it? In January, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who organized the letter, told a conference hosted by the right-wing group Heritage Action for America that the whole purpose of Congressional action was to make negotiations fail. That the collapse of negotiations, quoting him,

isn't an unintended consequence of congressional action. It is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug.

He compared the international negotiations with Iran to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s (Godwin's law strikes again) and said the goal should be "regime change" in Iran - because, after all, that worked out so well in Iraq.

I mean, they're not even pretending any more. They will not be satisfied until the blood flows freely in the Middle East. Their bloodlust is palpable and I have to say that I think that at least for some of them it's because they think such a war will bring on the apocalypse and thus the second coming of Jesus, that they really do think these are the End Times. (And, of course, that they are among the saved.)

Even if I'm wrong about that, maybe I am, hopefully I am, it doesn't change anything about the rest. The people who signed this letter are bloodthirsty warmongers who will not be happy until the piles of burnt bodies and shredded limbs are too high to see over and the wails of the wounded drown out the drones. They are despicable.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/03/09/gop-senators-warning-over-us-iran-nuclear-negotiations/21151149/
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/10/Iran-Pushes-Back-Against-Senate-GOP-Letter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/senate-iran-deal_n_6832706.html
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/03/backstabbing-republicans-publish-open
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/tom-cotton-iran_n_6831328.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time

146.5 - Update: GOPpers still trying to push Iran sanctions bill

Update: GOPpers still trying to push Iran sanctions bill

Some weeks ago, I denounced a bill in the Senate that proposed to move the goalposts on negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, a bill that would like result in a breakdown of the negotiations.

Those negotiations, as I've noted several times, amount to a group of mostly Western nations bullying Iran over its nuclear program, bullying which if it were directed against us, political leaders would denounce as the grossest affront to our national interests and rights and sovereignty and would provoke daily calls for war. No matter; we are sort of between the proverbial rock and hard place in that the failure of the negotiations would significantly increase the odds of a military attack on Iran. So the success of those negotiations is clearly the better or more precisely less bad option available.

So it was good news when, as I noted last week, the move to pass the bill stalled to where even the rabidly pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, gave up on pushing it and said it's better to wait and see what happens with the negotiations.

But apparently, some people do not want to give peace a chance.

Forty-two senators, all GOPpers, signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid demanding that he allow a floor vote on the Iran sanctions bill.

If he doesn’t, the Daily Beast says, they are planning to make his life miserable by using every parliamentary trick in the book to raise the issue over and over again, perhaps even to the point of filibustering every other piece of legislation, demanding a vote as the price for letting anything else at all happen.

So let's see: The White House says the bill will blow up the negotiations. Iran says the bill will blow up the negotiations. AIPAC says "there should not be a vote at this time on the measure." Bob Menendez, one of the original sponsors, now says diplomacy should have time to work. But the GOPpers don't care.

I don't know if this is because they actually actively want a war with Iran - although some, such as John "bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" McCain give every indication of wanting just that - or because they just figure passing the bill will embarrass Obama and damn the consequences. One way or the other, they are either bloodthirsty warmongers or amazingly stupid.

Sources:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/05/gop-will-force-reid-to-save-obama-s-iran-policy-over-and-over-again.html
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/197722-aipac-breaks-with-gop-on-iran-sanctions

Left Side of the Aisle #96 - Part 2

Some peace and justice-related anniversaries

A few anniversaries in history this week that I wanted to mention, just because I felt like it.

The first is from World War II. After Nazi Germany conquered Norway, there was a plan to use Norway as a sort of laboratory for promoting Nazism in conquered lands.

In the autumn of 1941, Vidkun Quisling, the puppet prime minister who gave us a new term for "traitor," declared that teachers must educate their pupils in Nazism and must join a new Nazi-oriented Teachers' Association.

There were 14,000 teachers in Norway. On February 20, 1942, 12,000 of them - all on the same day, all in the same words - wrote to the Quisling government, refusing to join.

The government threatened to fire them all. When that didn't work, the schools are closed. Over 1000 teachers were arrested, 700 of those sent to forced labor camps in the Arctic.

None of it worked. Quisling's Teachers' Association never came into existence and by May, 1942, he was reduced to screaming at a group of teachers "You have destroyed everything for me!"

Next, a quick happy note: On February 21, 1975, 38 years ago, former Attorney General John Mitchell, his aide Robert Mardian, and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2-1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up. They were variously convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, fraud, and perjury. This from back in the days before we came to prefer to legalize White House criminality after the fact rather than challenge it.

It was February 22, 1974, when, in the first act what's known as direct action, of civil disobedience, against nuclear power in the US, an organic farmer named Sam Lovejoy took a few hand tools to the weather tower for a proposed nuclear power plant in Montague, Massachusetts - and left 349 feet of twisted wreckage behind. He then went and turned himself in to police. His action and subsequent trial galvanized the national anti-nuke movement and increased local opposition to the plant. At his trial, the charge against Lovejoy was dismissed on a technicality - which Lovejoy urged the judge not to use: He wanted a verdict.

Just under a year earlier, on February 27, 1973, came the occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota by hundreds of Oglala Lakota Sioux and members of the American Indian Movement. The occupation lasted 71 days. Despite the violent nature both of the occupation and the government siege against it, the occupation did bring the outrages still inflicted on Native Americans to the attention of the broader public, often for the first time.

Finally, this is actually for next week, but I wanted to include it here: Next Wednesday, February 28, is the 55th anniversary of the founding, in 1958, of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the United Kingdom. The CND still exists, still advocating for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the UK and negotiated nuclear disarmament by the rest of the world.

The group felt it needed a symbol, so it designed one.

It took the semaphore sign for N, for nuclear - like this -



and the semaphore sign for D, for disarmament - like this -



- and overlapped them in a circle, creating this:



I do have to say, however, that the symbol to the right is the one that I more identify with: The broken rifle is and has been literally for some scores of years the logo of the War Resisters League. The WRL, having been founded in 1923, will sometime later this year be celebrating its 90th anniversary. Which actually makes me feel quite old - because I helped to draft the statement the group released on its 50th anniversary.

Sources:
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/nvww2/ww2_nonviolence_norway2.html
http://fragmentsweb.org/fourtx/dishistx.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Watergate_scandal
http://www.ecn.cz/PRIVATE/Piano/Lovejoy.htm
http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/wounded-knee
http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peltier
http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/c/Campaign_for_Nuclear_Disarmament.htm
http://www.cnduk.org/information/info-sheets/item/435-the-cnd-symbol
http://www.warresisters.org

Left Side of the Aisle #96

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of February 21-27, 2013

This week:

Good news: Illinois state Senate approves same-sex marriage
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-illinois-senate-approves-gay-marriage-20130214,0,5929022.story

Some peace and justice-related anniversaries
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/nvww2/ww2_nonviolence_norway2.html
http://fragmentsweb.org/fourtx/dishistx.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Watergate_scandal
http://www.ecn.cz/PRIVATE/Piano/Lovejoy.htm
http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/wounded-knee
http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peltier
http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/c/Campaign_for_Nuclear_Disarmament.htm
http://www.cnduk.org/information/info-sheets/item/435-the-cnd-symbol

Outrage of the Week: Fox News' solar power stupidity
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/03/16/germany-80-times-more-peak-solar-power-than-u-s-compared-to-electricity-demand/
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/02/07/fox-cedes-solar-industry-to-germany/192568
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/08/germany-isnt-all-that-sunny-and-case-for-diversified-energy-world/
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Subsidies-For-Oil-Gas-Nuclear-vs.-Renewables
http://www.fastcompany.com/1751390/its-time-kill-permanent-energy-subsidies
http://www.naturalnews.com/034401_EPA_fracking_well_water.html
http://www.dangersoffracking.com/
http://www.cleanwateraction.org/page/fracking-dangers
http://www.alternet.org/fracking/4-horrifying-dangers-fracking

RIP: Richard Briers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Life_%281975_TV_series%29
http://news.sky.com/story/1053662/richard-briers-dies-good-life-actor-aged-79
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Richard_Briers

Clown Award: Missouri state Rep Mike Leara wants to make it a felony to propose gun control
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-missouri-gun-control-felony-20130219,0,1787720.story
https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/29474/leara_gun_bill_reaction?coverpage=2749
http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/2-12-13WebsterTestimony.pdf

Guns: State and individuals push back against the gun nuts
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/orange-county-shooting-spree_n_2717219.html
http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Shooting-spree-across-Calif-county-leaves-4-dead-4289852.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder%2C_Inc.
http://www.house.mo.gov/billsummary.aspx?bill=HB187&year=2013&code=R
http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills131/sumpdf/HB0545I.pdf
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2013/0219/Which-gun-control-measures-are-gaining-momentum-in-Congress-video
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/14/us-usa-guns-congress-idUSBRE90C0DK20130114
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/01/harry-reid-assault-weapons-ban.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/19/gun-control-bills_n_2507219.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/new-york-state-gun-laws-first-united-states-newtown-sandy-hook-shooting_n_2478418.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-guns-20130115,0,5165926.story?track=lat-pick
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/colorado-house-passes-gun_n_2713669.html
http://www.craigdailypress.com/news/2013/feb/19/state-house-passes-four-gun-control-measures/
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2013/February/Colo-House-Narrowly-Passes-Four-Gun-Control-Bills/
http://www.coloradoan.com/viewart/20130218/NEWS11/302180033/Colorado-House-passes-gun-control-measures-narrow-vote
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/gop-bill-that-would-allow_n_2573498.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/19/walmart-assault-weapons-protest_n_2507314.html?ref=topbar
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/us/politics/lawmakers-look-at-ban-on-high-capacity-gun-magazines.html
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/18/17003570-dem-forced-from-congressional-race-over-nra-support
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-hutchinson-expected-to-drop-out-endorse-kelly-in-jackson-jr-contest-20130216,0,5885704.story
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/50829055#50829055
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-sugarmann/gun-ownership-hits-new-lo_b_854564.html

And Amother Thing: the Higgs boson and the future of the universe
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/universe-lifespan-finite-unstable-higgs-boson_n_2713053.html

Environmental bullshit

Bullshit and blather. That's what it is. Bullshit and blather masquerading as an environmentally-sound energy policy. And oh how I bet it's giving the Obamabots an Obamagasm.

Facing a Congress that is more hostile to environmental regulation, President Barack Obama is moderating his environmental goals: a clean energy standard that mixes nuclear, natural gas and "clean coal" with renewable sources such as wind and solar.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Obama called for 80 percent of the nation's electricity to come from clean sources by 2035.

Yes! Eighty percent clean in 25 years! Ladies and gentlemen, it's the Amazing Mr. O!

And how is he going to do that? By, as Energy Secretary Steven Chu essentially admitted, simply changing what is meant by "clean." In Chu's words, what constitutes "clean" energy "depends on how you define it." Obama will do it, that is, by bullshit and blather.

I'd wager that when most people think of "clean energy," they think of things like solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower. But oh, no, now that's what, old school? Now it's more nukes! More natural gas! More "clean coal!"

More bullshit and blather!

Natural gas is very likely the least dirty of the fossil fuels, but it is still a fossil fuel, it still taints water supplies in the course of production, and it is not "clean" in the (until now) normally-understood sense of the term.

And nukes? Do we still have to argue about nukes? When, contrary to industry lies, there is still no safe, reliable means for disposal of the waste? (Even the World Nuclear Association, an international trade group, can only bring itself to claim that methods for long-term disposal "are currently being developed.") When, contrary to industry and politician lies, it is still no answer to global warming? When the entire damn industry still would not be economically viable but for government largesse?

What's more, contrary to the fanciful visions of some who should know better, nuclear power is not and will not be a "partner" to developing renewable energy and energy efficiency. Rather, according to a study from last fall, investment in an expansion of nuclear power will crowd out investment in renewables and actual clean energy, making matters worse, not better.

And "clean coal?" Oh my nonexistent lord have mercy, "clean coal?" Are we - is anybody - still talking about the chimera, the industry shibboleth, of "clean coal?" Really? Seriously?

First, recall that coal is most commonly mined now by a process known as MTM/VF, for "mountain top mining with valley fill." Simply put, you blast away the top of the mountain, dig out the coal that's exposed, and dump the debris over the side, there to fill the valley and often to clog up the streams or rivers running through it.

Okay. Two years ago, in the wake of the failure of a retaining pond that resulted in 500 million gallons of coal ash sludge being dumped on Harriman, Tennessee, that hotbed of radical leftwing rhetoric, "Time" magazine, had an article titled "Exposing the Myth of Clean Coal Power" which concluded

coal can be cheap or it can be (somewhat) clean. But the sea of ash in Tennessee shows it can't both.

Right around the same time, Fred Pearce, the environmental columnist for The Guardian (UK), who often bends over backwards to find a way to say "the critics of environmentalists have a point" in order to appear reasonable (aka Serious), called "clean coal" a case of "utter greenwash" - that is, just industry PR crap.

Even Popular Mechanics piped in:

There's just one problem with this [clean coal] scenario: Coal will never be clean.

It can be less dirty, but it will never be clean.

Then about one year ago, a study published in the journal "Science" of the environmental and health impacts of large-scale coal production revealed “serious environmental impacts that mitigation practices cannot successfully address.”

[W]e conclude that MTM/VF permits should not be granted unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer review and shown to remedy these problems.

Which still leaves the other side of coal, when it is burned at power plants to generate electricity, generating huge piles of coal ash in the process. But meanwhile, to hear the industry tell it, through the miracle of CCS (for "carbon capture and storage" or "carbon capture and sequestration"), the coal is magically made clean, green, and pristine! It's bullshit and blather.

CCS involves forcing gases from the combustion of the coal through a liquid that captures the released carbon dioxide. That gas is then separated, piped to a sequestration site, and injected into underground reservoirs. It is a unproven technology whose one and only commercial-level project, located at Weyburn, Saskatchewan, is under challenge as leaking CO₂. It also will quite possibly never become economically viable at industrial scales because of the large cost of the separation equipment and of all the new pipelines that would have to be laid to carry the CO₂ to the sequestration sites.

That is what President Hopey-Changey, who spoke just a couple of weeks after the release of "Dirty Business," the new documentary about "clean coal," and who, by the way, did not even mention, not even in passing, global warming, is describing as "clean" energy. Bullshit and blather. Bullshit and blather.

In response to the SOTU,

[Bob] Deans [of the Natural Resources Defense Council] called clean coal an oxymoron and said the government should not be subsidizing nuclear power, because of concerns over waste and nuclear proliferation.

"Coal, nuclear power, biofuels and natural gas are inherently dirty," said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. "Telling Americans anything else is just misleading."

But since being misleading is the only way a corporate energy policy of nukes, natural gas, and coal can be sold to the public, don't expect the bullshit and blather to stop.

Footnote: Something from the linked AP article that kinda did piss me off, not like the above but just was irritating, was this:

Chu called the new proposal "a recognition that solutions can be different in different parts of the United States, but ... this is the goal we're looking for and depending on the region, you have different options of getting to that eventual goal."

The administration's plan has echoes of the GOP's "all of the above" approach to energy.

"Let's not pick just wind or solar, let's pick everything," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Thursday. "Let's do all of it."

Over 30 fucking years ago I proposed an energy policy specifically to promote and maximize the use of renewable, environmentally-sound energy sources. I called it "No One Answer." It was based on the idea that no renewable source was useful everywhere, but everywhere some form of renewable was useful, so different types should be promoted in different areas. Thirty years later, at least some part of the political establishment has recognized that concept, even calls it pretty much the same thing, only to twist it into a stalking horse for more mining, more drilling, and more radioactive waste.

Damn.

Unhappy anniversary

I missed an important anniversay last week, but better late than never and all that.

Last Saturday, March 28, was the 30th anniversary of the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. As Democracy Now! described it,

[i]n the pre-dawn hours of March 28, 1979, the cooling system of Three Mile Island’s Unit Two reactor malfunctioned, causing temperatures inside to skyrocket. Without water to cool them, more than half of the reactor’s 36,000 nuclear fuel rods ruptured.

Lieutenant Governor William Scranton first appeared on local TV and told residents there was no need to evacuate but advised all citizens within ten miles of the plant to stay indoors with their windows closed. Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh then evacuated pregnant women and small children living within five miles of the plant. Some estimate that well over 100,000 people fled Harrisburg and the surrounding areas.

The breakdown, exacerbated by human error, lead to a situation that was much more serious than officialdom initially admitted. As the New York Times noted,

[w]hen the accident occurred, movie theaters nationwide were showing the movie "China Syndrome" about a nuclear plant meltdown. After engineers finally got inside the stricken Three Mile Island Unit 2 after the accident, they learned how closely reality had closed in on fiction.

With the initial loss of cooling water, portions of the 100 tons of radioactive uranium fuel quickly began to heat up. A chain reaction of multiple equipment failures and control room operators' mistakes followed. Before the damage was brought under control, nearly half of the reactor core with its fuel had melted down. A bubble of hydrogen gas exploded inside the reactor, and fears of another explosion gripped the Harrisburg area for several days.

It was very nearly a death blow to the nuclear power industry in the US. But while nuclear power was certainly was put into a coma, it didn't die and even today some people remain too willing to swill the swill the industry puts out about the accident. One such is Marc Levy of AP, who wrote last week that

[n]o one was seriously injured in the accident, in which a small amount of radiation was released into the air above the Susquehanna River island 12 miles south of Harrisburg. Studies of area residents have not conclusively linked higher rates of cancer to radiation exposure.

But as Harvey Wasserman has pointed out,

stack monitors were saturated and unusable, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later told Congress it did not know - and still does not know - how much radiation was released at Three Mile Island, or where it went. [Emphasis in original.]

He told Democracy Now! that

there’s just been two new studies released in Harrisburg this week. One indicates that as much as a hundred times more radiation escaped than the government and the industry have been willing to admit. And the other is that the statistics clearly show ongoing problems of cancer, leukemia, other radiation-related diseases.

(Video about those reports is available here.)

But that doesn't matter to the PR flacks of the industry.

"There's a lot of support for nuclear now, and most of that support is borne out of a concern for the desire to have emissions-free energy sources," said [nuclear industry economist Doug] Biden, who still advocates for power companies as the president of Electric Power Generation Association in Pennsylvania.

And the propaganda, driven in part by a bizarre notion that nuclear power is an "answer" to global warming, appears to be having an effect.

Policymakers in numerous states are warming to nuclear power, even in states where the facilities are banned. Nuclear reactors generate one-fifth of the nation's power. Some see nuclear as a stable, homegrown energy source in light of last year's oil price spikes. Others see it as a way to meet carbon-reduction goals.

Public interest is emerging, too: A Gallup Poll released in recent days shows 59 percent favor the use of nuclear power, the highest percentage since Gallup first asked the question in 1994. ...

In the last two years, 26 applications for new reactors been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which expects to issue a license no earlier than 2011. No such application was filed in the 28 years following the Three Mile Island accident.

Levy is misleading about nuclear's contribution: It provides about 20% of the US's electricity supply, not its power supply; the latter should include elements such as the heat supplied to homes and businesses by fossil fuels and solar panels as well as electricity.

More importantly, this push for more nukes is not happening without opposition. For one example, the original economic stimulus bill contained $50 billion for the nuclear power industry. It was stripped out in the Senate and attempts to reinsert it failed, all as the result of the efforts of a coalition of environmental groups and the work of some Congressional leaders. (Wasserman credited Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for their help; assuming that's true and not just political game-playing, good for them and credit where it's due.)

And yes, that is to the good because despite the claims and the hype and the desperation of some environmentalists, nuclear power is not the answer - or even an answer - to global warming. From Greenpeace:

The promotion of nuclear power as the answer to climate change is a dangerous diversion from the real solutions: a massive uptake of renewable energy and the adoption of energy efficiency are the only effective ways to combat climate change. They are available now; they are clean, cheap and have the added benefit of providing energy security.

Nuclear power belongs in the dustbin of history; it is a target for terrorists, and a source of nuclear weapons. The future can be nuclear free. Renewable energy is peaceful energy and it is available today. ...

Nuclear power has not suddenly become safer or cleaner. The legacy of the nuclear waste remains unsolved and accidents happen across the world daily. ...

The environmental, social, security and proliferation problems that have always plagued the nuclear industry continue to do so, despite over half a century of attempts to find solutions. We should not be conned into accepting one environmental threat on the premise that it will avert another when a future free of both nuclear and dangerous climate change is possible through the speedy deployment and development of renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency.

But perhaps the most telling point with regard to global warming is this:

Even if it were climate-friendly, nuclear power could do little or nothing in the fight against global warming. Nuclear power is used only to generate electricity. It represents a mere 16% of the world’s electricity. Electricity itself only accounts for approximately one third of greenhouse gases.

It's generally agreed by environmental scientists that a worldwide reduction in greenhouse gases on the order of 50% by 2050 is needed to head off the worst effects of global warming. That means that even if we were to more than sextuple the use of nuclear power in the next 40 years (even if that were possible, which it very likely isn't) so that all the world's electricity came from nuclear, we still would fall well short of what we need to do - even as we multiply the issues of the health effects of mining, milling, living near tailings piles, and the still-unsolved problem of waste disposal (as well as drastically driving up the price of uranium - already five times what it was a few years ago).

A "dangerous diversion" indeed.

Footnote: Another question about nuclear power is just how long the uranium for fuel will last. According to Steve Fetter, dean of the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, known and suspected uranium resources are enough to supply nuclear power for roughly 230 years at today's rate of consumption. If we max out nuclear power build enough plants to more than sextuple their total power output, those resources then would last only about 40 years. Yes, we could build fewer in order to stretch the supplies, but that would only reduce the nukes' already-insufficient contribution to adequately cutting greenhouse gases.

No matter how we cut it, it doesn't work.