Here’s a little nugget buried in Harold Meyerson’s column today: “Before last week’s quake, House Republicans cut funding for training first responders to radiation disasters.” Not that we’re all that well prepared now.
Meyerson hopes that the tragedy in Japan might provide us with a “Lisbon Moment.” He was referring to the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, which apparently changed a lot of peoples’ minds about a lot of things.
However, there are those with no minds to change. Not even a year past the BP Gulf oil spill, Newt Gringrich is resurrecting the old “drill baby drill” chant and his “American Solutions” organization promoting unregulated and unrestricted oil drilling in the Gulf. He doesn’t say in so many many words, but it’s apparent if you read between the lines.
And this is choice — the chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, Rep. “Doc” Hastings of Washington state, is pushing to get rid of Obama Administration offshore oil and gas policies and regulations.
Insane? Hey, the House is moving toward barring the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. They are also moving toward repealing climate change science. There are no limits to “crazy” any more.
So no, no one in the U.S. will learn anything from what’s happening in Japan.
Someone help me and call EMS pronto!
It seems I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!
I think I’ve overdosed on a ‘stupidball,’ which is kind of like a “speedball,” but is a trifecta of an overdose on ‘stupidity, ignorance, and mendacity.”
It’s commonly called an “OO” – an ‘Outrage Overdose.
I’m sure you all know the symptoms very, very, well.
Some of you may already be suffering from this too, though I pray not.
The options, if you are, are very, very limited.
Please check yourselves.
Common symptoms are:
-Dry throat/raspy voice – from watching 23 hours of cable and network news – the only help for this? Watching Rachel for an hour.
-Insomnia – waiting to watch for Rachel for her hour.
-Dry eye’s – from crying over what’s happened/happening to this country.
-“Womb with a View” – the fear that females have that every Conservative in the area wants to look into her reproductive organs to make sure she’s not even thinking of not bringing a child into this earth.
-“Rubber Soul” – the fear of excommunication if your church finds out you’ve been planning any parenthood and not just letting Jesus decide, and bounces you out, but still demands that you to tithe.
‘Munches Houses by Proxy Syndrome” – where you keep checking your mortgage/rental agreement to see if banks/landlords can find any reason to kick you out of your home or increase our rent astonomically to the point where you can’t afford it – including if your 5 year-old left bubble gum residue in a visible area, a tricycle in the yard, or you have a bumpersticker for a Democrat before any election.
The only known antidote’s are:
1 – Converting into a Conservative. But, since you already suffer from this, this is very unlikely. People in the world converted to Catholicism faster – no bad reflection on them.
2 – The other is drinking heavily and driving fast.
If you decide to try the latter, and you are not successful in eliminating your symptoms and/or yourself, please make sure you have a Republican Voter Registration Card and an NRA sticker visible on your vehicle. That helps the police decide whether to taser you to death of not. Of course, you may want them to taser you, so I’d leave them off, and when the police pull you over, mention that you know your Miranda rights and want to strip your clothes off while you sing along as they read them to you, and to demonstrate to them how you taught Heavyweigh Champ Larry Holmes to throw his terrific left jab by taking pokes at their faces to see if they know how to block punches.
I’m making a double-martini and hope I can get some sleep.
And to think, I’m actually looking back fondly on the Bush Administration, and the restraint of the Republican Party a few years ago!
OOOOH! That first one tasted soooooo good.
I think I’ll make it a twi martooni night.
Gud two!
OK, ma ge, may by, bay, by, bee, may bee 3…
Make lat, lat, urp, lat thast tartini a miple!
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
We’re Americans. We don’t learn anything from any other country. Except torture techniques.
Learning something is un-American. Preparing for something is un-American. We are the Greatest Country That Has Ever Existed, and nothing bad can ever happen to us, and if it does, that just means we have to purge the infidels and God will make the Real Americans among us even more awesome for the experience.
Just for the record, the EPA was created by the Nixon Administration.
I’m afraid you may be right, especially considering that the CEO of GE, which among other things makes money building nuclear reactors, was recently made Obama’s “jobs czar”.
Maybe the GOP in Montana will pass a law to go along with their “global warming is good for us” bill and declare that radiation is healthy. Then they could build all the nukes there, and we’d just have to string power lines to the rest of the country.
Since I live upwind from there, I don’t think I’d mind too much, and I could probably avoid most of Montana for ten thousand years or so, if needed.
Pity about all that wheat, though. Might be a food problem.
And with this post, I’ve now given more creative thought to the issue of nukes than we should expect from congressional Republicans. Sigh.
The Newt makes it sound as if all that oil from off-shore drilling is going to go for U.S. consumption. It’s been awhile, but near as I can recall, it’s only OUR oil until the lease is signed, then it belongs to an oil company and is sold on the international market.
As we have seen from the B.P. spill, this is not exactly a win-win for Americans. Oil companies get the money, we get the job of cleaning up after them. Beats me why Newt thinks this is a good idea. But then again, when has the man ever had a good idea?
I disagree about Americans not learning based on what I see in Wisconsin. They voted these clowns into office based on promises of eliminating waste. Now that they are in, the definition of waste has reached way into the middle class, cutting badgercare in half. That’s affecting hard-working folks who have no access to a group policy through work.
Everyone with kids in public school stands to see class sizes go up, while school resources dry up. So the cover is blown. ‘Eliminating waste’ sounds great until you discover that essential services (essential to you) have been classified wasteful because they don’t benefit the aristocracy.
I know it’s early to say it, but it comes down to the Senate races in 2012. The GOP doesn’t have anyone who can challenge Obama. But if the wingnuts control all Congress, life in the White House will be no fun at all.
We won’t learn anything, because our minds are closed – we already know everything, and cannot therefore learn anything.
As soon as a major disaster hits the front yard of one of these freedom-lovin’ imbeciles – and that’s what it’s going to take – they’ll finally wake up.
“House Republicans cut funding for training first responders to radiation disasters”
Today the house passed a three-week spending bill. The GOP demanded that all funding for the NOAA’s tsunami warning system be eliminated. It passed, of course.
Grover Norquist told us about a decade ago that the long-cherished goal of the GOP is the complete and total destruction of all governance in America.
“the EPA was created by the Nixon Administration”
That wild-eyed Jacobin!
Comrade Rutherford,
Please don’t disparage our last real Liberal President!
A NYTimes article today, front page on the website, says that the spent fuel storage problem is much larger than the problems with the reactors, and goes on to say that Japan’s long-term dithering on finding a safe storage site for spent nuclear fuel is now coming back to haunt them.
Seriously. Apparently without a speck of self-awareness.
“Oil companies get the money, we get the job of cleaning up after them. Beats me why Newt thinks this is a good idea.”
That’s EXACTLY why Newt thinks it’s a good idea. Because oil companies get the money and we get the job of cleaning up after them.