Debt Limit

I'm sure this will all work out in the end, but this Christian Science Monitor article provided some much needed insight I didn't see elsewhere--Brian Williams, are you listening?

...it is becoming ever clearer that the two most important numbers in the debt-ceiling crisis are 1982 and 1990.
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What happened in those two years? Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both agreed to tax increases after Congress promised to make even greater cuts to spending. In both cases, the tax increases took effect, the spending cuts did not.

Another 30,000 Year Monument to Our Arrogance

Assuming that one two three six seven perhaps up to eleven (including one three at the Daiichi facility that wasn't even active at the time of the earthquake that sufferred a fire in a storage pond) of the nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini and Onagawa power plants don't just explode and contaminate a large percentage of the globe or it doesn't melt through the floor and contaminate the ground water for most of Japan, they will probably be encased and closed forever.  Forever is along time.  Really, only 30,000 years.  As with Chernobyl  a vast area will have to be abandoned for the foreseeable future.  What will out grandchildren think of us?




According to the NeW Your Times (March 15th):


Worryingly, temperatures appeared to be rising in the spent fuel pools at two other reactors at the plant, No. 5 and No. 6, said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary.

Consent of the Governed

This is great!  I can hardly believe it.  In this day & age there are revolutions happening now!  Incredible.  To think that all these years of the U.S. trying to foment, encourage, cajoul various organizations to overthrow their countries' oppressive governments & autocrats and establish a more democratic government.  And all of that was money seems to have been wasted.  We paid people to revolt and all they did was collect the money.  Did we paid people in Tunisia?  I doubt it.  They wanted freedom from their oppressive and greedy government.  Egypt saw it.  Bahrain. Yemen.  Libya.   I am heartened by this.  My Christian Lebanese friend always tells me that everything that goes on in the Middle East is all about religion.  Religion that I don't understand: Islam and Judaism.  But, these revolutions give me hope that there is more to it, that there are reasonable people there that are willing to stand up, fight back and, hopefully, take charge.

As the U.S. Declaration of Independence states...

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed