Hell Yeah!

Getting some help

A year ago, when POTUS Bush pronounced on America's Oil Addiction, I believe he misspoke. What he really meant was that American business is addicted to oil revenue and needed to be weaned from it.

As we stand now, it's believed that a good part of the cash torrent that's floated comestic markets and the global economy comes to us from the massive influx of revenue to the petroleum producers who really do have nothing better to do with their money than invest it. It would explain the disparity of wealth between rich and poor, and the great economic boom we're witnessing on paper isn't being enjoyed by the great unwashed in this country.

But today something interesting happens, on the eve of this year's State of the Union address that is expected to focus heavily on energy:

The addict's family is executing an intervention.

In the same way a crackhead's family confronts their loved one's addiction and trundles him off to rehab, the leaders of ten of America's largest corporations will confront POTUS and urge him to act aggressively on climate change.

WalMart, Alcoa, Duke Energy, GE, Lehman Brothers - the heads of some of the companies many on the left have considered the worst mega-culprits - will sit with the President and say that this man-made climate crisis is REAL and we must ACT because the actuaries predict the impact on the bottom line will be dramatically worse than the short term costs of change.

America's' major insurers have been beating the pans for a few years. Self-serving, indeed, but the insurers will be the ones who pay for the cities that get wiped off the map when sea level rises about their top floors.

All of the individuals who have spent the last decade or so throwing wrenches into the work of dispassionate, empirical scientists will be silenced and the work of the ideology driven "reasearch" organizations hired and funded by the likes of ExxonMobil will be relegated to the ranks of crazies crying in the wildernesss.

It's almost game over for them.

Unfortunately, the economic consequences of our failure to act expediently will be severe. Already, China is way ahead of us in developing cheap alternative infrastructure. The largest producer of photovoltaic cells in the world is there.

That company should be here, but we blew it. Never looking beyond the end of the quarter made a few people a hell of a lot of money, but with a heavy long term cost.

Hopefully, the President's speech tomorrow night will provide real incentive for America's entrpreneurs to begin ramping up research and production of green bulding technology and practices, but if the past is any indication, we will get more of the same: bogus platitudes and inaction.

I was walking along minding my own business when this stronium 90 landed on my head!

The Middletown, NY Times Herald Record newspaper published a story on January 18th that reported 4 of 12 fish tested in the waters around the Indian Point nuclear power plant were contaminated with strontium 90.

Entergy says no link between Indian Point plant and tainted fish

Of course, Jim Steets, spokesman for IP owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast, assures us that everything is just dandy in Buchanan. The levels of the radioactive isotope were considered "background levels", "But the results, for a lot of reasons, do not indicate Indian Point as the source."

If you aren't aware, there's a leak they can't find at Indian Point, and strontium 90 is one of the materials escaping into the environment through this source-unknown leak. It has contaminated the water pools beneath the plant, and local anti-Indian Point activists and politicians have been clamoring to force Entergy to shut down the plant until they can find and stop the "hot" water leak.

I find it amusing that a spokesman from Entergy can assert, with a straight face no less, that fish swimming in the waters around Indian Point who are contaminated with ANY level of a radioactive isotope (that is known to be escaping containment and has been predicted to leach into groundwater), are just a crazy coincidence. It's as though we're supposed to believe strontium 90 is everywhere, and any old fish - say one swimming in an Icelandic lake 1000 miles away from any nuclear power plant - could have detectable levels of this metal.

Four of twelve sampled fish were contaminated. I'd say 33% of even a small sample is significant and worth being worried about, particularly if your drinking water comes from the ground around there.

Regional economic impact be damned, an entirely unaccountable holding company (there's nobody to sue if Indian Point melts down, it's owned by a corporate shell) makes enormous profit with a facility that is clearly past its safe, useful life. It's time to close Indian Point and develop those alternatives.

Happy New Year

Two weeks into the new year, I've felt uttely unmotivated to write about anything I've read, seen or heard since the election.

The Iraq Study Group report? Yawn. It's 100 pages of horse sense tied with a red white and blue ribbon of faux sanctity. It could be summarized in a paragraph:
Iraq is a mess, we made it one. We need to try diplomacy, but good diplomacy, and we have an administration that's not known for its teamwork, so we're screwed.

The new congress' first 100 hours have been predictable and uninspiring. No real confrontations with an overextended executive branch - that will come soon.

The troop surge... unremarkable and so tepid. A half-assed hail mary toss by a quarterback with a rubber arm. It's only good for the body bag companies and nobody else. I pray for the troops who pay the price for the president's mule headed cowboy stupidity.

Strontium 90 in fish in the Hudson River - a recent survey of marine life found a quarter of the fish contaminated. If you live around there (hi, ren), I hope you're testing your water yourself, and not waiting for entergy to give you a Niedermeyer (Remain calm! All is well! All is well!).

A mercaptan release overwhelms the Manhattan area, scaring the living hell out of workers and residents. The same day, birds fall dead out of the sky in Austin, TX. Coincidence? I hope so. Hopefully not a large scale test of a distribution method + small scale test of a poison. Who knows? Certainly not Homeland Security.

I'm contributing to another blog, though free time is a luxury I have little of these days and have only posted once. It's turning out pretty well so far, thanks to other diligent contributors. Check it out if you're interested. Not a word about politics. www.newcritics.com.

I had a thought about the "troop surge" that I'd be interested in hearing comments about. What if Congress were to make good on their threat to deny "emergency" funding for additional troops in Iraq and cut the President off? What would there be to stop him from simply ordering the Treasury to ignore congress and send him a check? He's already assumed powers from the legislature and judiciary, so why wouldn't he simply close the loop and become an omnipotent dictator - all in the sacred and feared name of National Security?

My financial predictions for 2007:

Oil will hit $90 a barrel
Natural gas will hit $8
Gasoline will top at $3.50 a gallon
Uranium will hit $90 a pound
Gold will hit $750 an ounce
Silver will hit $20 an ounce
The base rate will hit 8.5%
The Fed will continue to run the presses at full tilt 7x24 all year long