Where Are Those People Who Say Nuclear Power Is So Safe Now?

Okay, I've tried to leave the earthquake news out of Japan to the new sites and newspapers, but this news is just too horrific to ignore:

WASHINGTON — An explosion at a nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Saturday blew the roof off one building, brought down walls and caused a radiation leak of unspecified proportions, Japanese officials said, after Friday’s huge earthquake caused critical failures in the plant’s cooling system.

Television images showed a huge cloud of white-gray smoke from the explosion. Soon afterward, government officials said an evacuation zone around the plant had been doubled, to 12 miles. The chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, confirmed earlier news reports of an explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 15o miles north of Tokyo, saying: “We are looking into the cause and the situation and we’ll make that public when we have further information.” He was speaking amid fears that a disastrous meltdown could be imminent because of critical cooling failures at that plant and another nearby, Daini, after both were shut down.

Images on Japanese television showed that the walls of one building had crumbled, leaving only a skeletal metal frame standing with smoke billowing from the plant. The Associated Press reported that the damaged building housed a nuclear reactor, though that report was not immediately verified by nuclear officials. The cause of the explosion was unclear, with some experts speculating that it may have resulted from a hydrogen build-up.

There was no immediate confirmation of news reports that the container of the nuclear reactor itself had escaped damage.

Bloomberg News quoted Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant’s operator, as saying the explosion happened “near” the No. 1 reactor at around 3:40 p.m. Japan time on Saturday. Four people were reported injured. The explosion came roughly 26 and a half hours after an 8.9-magnitude earthquake caused a deadly tsunami that killed hundreds and caused both plants to be shut down. Authorities issued broad evacuation orders on Saturday for people living near the plants and warned that small amounts of radioactive material were likely to leak out.

Officials said even before the explosion that they had detected cesium, an indication that some of the fuel was already damaged.

Now I seem to remember there was somebody in the United States who was saying nuclear power plants, when built safely and securely, were an important energy investment.

Who was that guy again?

Oh, right - this guy.

Wasn't he the same guy who said offshore oil platforms are very safe and never explode just 18 days before one exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and unleashed millions of gallons of oil into the environment?

Yes, it was the same guy.

How is it this guy manages to avoid accountability for the stupid things he says about energy and the environment?

Only 14 Schools Enter Contest To Bring Obama To Commencement

Now THIS is change I can believe in:

The White House did not receive enough applicants in a contest it launched for schools to win a commencement address by President Obama so it extended the deadline and made the application process easier.

The contest, officially called “Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge,” invites schools to demonstrate how their school best prepares students for college and a career.

CBS News reports on an internal Feb. 22 White House memo that says only 14 schools had applied, and it asks recipients to "please keep the application number close hold."
The deadline was moved from Feb 25 to March 11.

A Feb. 28 memo then reported that there were 68 applications, compared with more than 1,000 schools in the 2010 contest. The memo says, according to CBS, “Something isn’t working,” and it urges White House staff to ask legislators and other public officials to encourage schools to apply.

Indeed, SOMETHING isn't working, Obama White House.

It's your education policy.

Cathie Black Says Even MORE Stupid Stuff

My God, does Cathie Black never let up? Here's her latest gaffe:

Cathie Black – The awkward roll-out continues. After the revelation that charter school magnate Geoffrey Canada, not Black, was Bloomberg’s first choice for chancellor, Black’s citywide school tour has continued along at a bumpy pace. She has breezed through a number of schools, spending less than an hour at some and leaving principals with a blurry impression rather than a clear picture of their future boss. She has yet to visit any failing schools or schools slated for closure, and press access to these visits have been spotty and inconsistent. And then, the coup de grace: she tells a group of Crown Heights sixth graders that if they are lucky, they can all get jobs in the burgeoning Chinese media market someday. Wasn’t Black brought on as chancellor to improve the schools so that we could prevent U.S. jobs going to China?

If Black had been chancellor back in the 80's, she would have told students if they were lucky, they would all get jobs with Sony or Mitsubishi over in Japan.

And, after 15 years of a stagnant Japanese economy, those students would be unemployed Sony or Mitsubishi workers!

Now she's promoting working in China as the goal to shoot for?

Jesus - she's dumb.

Seriously - NOBODY could say all the stupid things she says and not be one of the dumbest people on the planet.

Maybe she's the Peter Sellers character from Being There?

Obama Vows "A Relentless Effort" To Create More Jobs

That's what he promised today after the dismal June payroll report.

Except for teachers, of course.

For teachers, he prefers layoffs and school closings.

He calls those things "education reform."

Dems In Congress: Obama Full Of It

President Accountability asked Congress to appropriate $50 billion in funds to avert "massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters" late last week.

But Dems in Congress don't think he's really serious about the request:

According to multiple aides briefed on the meeting, top lawmakers expressed doubts that there was an appetite for additional spending, noting the difficulties that the chamber already has had in passing provisions designed to extend emergency benefits for jobless workers and avert layoffs of public school teachers. The letter sent by Obama pleading with Congress to help avoid "massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters," was viewed more as a publicity generator -- timed appropriately for discussion on the Sunday show circuit -- than legislative lobbying.

"They all were caught off-guard," said one Democratic leadership aide. "It is great to finally have a request from the White House but what was the intent?"

"I think I would describe it as unhappy," added another aide with direct knowledge of the discussion. "It seems it was done for the Sunday shows rather than for serious dialogue with us... and to not offer us any guidance about how to pay for it in this environment after talking about the deficit commission was striking."

A cynical request for federal funding to avert massive public layoffs that the president issues not because he thinks the Congress will pass his request (indeed - the president himself has been wagging a finger at the deficit and warning of spending and entitlement cuts to come, thus ensuring it won't) but simply to make news for the Sunday morning political shows and SOUND like he's doing something.

How's that for more change you can believe in from President Hopey/Changey?

Cleaning Up His Mess

Quote of the Day, via Political Wire:

"Even though I'm president of the United States, my power is not limitless. So I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw."

-- President Obama, quoted by the Washington Post, on the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Maybe not.

But I'd sure like to see him try.

Obama Wants To Kick Some Ass...

...only he's not sure who is responsible for the gulf oil mess.

Seriously:

In his toughest words yet on the billion-dollar oil disaster, President Obama said Monday that he's been boning up on "whose ass to kick."

Frustrated over BP's inability to stop a deepwater gusher and fed up with criticism that he hasn't seemed to be mad as hell, Obama turned as salty the Gulf of Mexico.

"I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick," Obama fumed in an interview to air this morning on NBC's "Today" show.

That is one of the silliest quotes I have seen from a politician in a long, long time.

Seriously, Barack, you don't know whose ass to kick?

Start with BP's ass.

Fine the company 10 million a day for every day this thing goes on.

Next, the BP CEO's ass.

Fine him one million a day for every day this goes on.

Then, your own hypocritical ass for reversing course on Drill, Baby, Drill in the Gulf of Mexico just 18 days before the BP rig exploded and began spewing oil all over the place.

Oh, and stop blaming teachers for the mess.

We had nothing to do with it.

Doing To Education What He Has Done To The Gulf Of Mexico

It's clear as hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spew from the Gulf of Mexico every day, polluting the waters, killing the plant and animal life and now starting to wash over toward Florida, that President Accountability has no idea how to solve the problem.

He talks a good game about holding BP accountable and having the government do what the oil company will not to clean up the mess, but it is all just talk.

By the time they finally stop the spewing of the oil (perhaps by August, perhaps later, perhaps never), the Gulf of Mexico region (and perhaps even aparts of the Florida coast) will never be the same.

They will be ruined for generations.

President Accountability is doing the same with education.

By dangling out cash to cash starved states in return for phony fixes to education like additional standardized testing, teacher evaluations and teacher pay tied to test scores, and opening thousands of charter schools, President Accountability is ensuring that by the time he gets finished, public schools will be mostly privatized entities run by for-profit education management organizations like the one that does "school turnarounds" in Chicago (owned by the same guy who owns Devry University - a bullshit diploma mill), the teacher corps will be deprofessionalized and destabilized and the only thing that will matter in education will be test scores - therefore the only thing that will be taught will be test prep.

In other words, public education will be ruined for generations.

It will look like this:

Obama's Oily Summer

Day 41, America still held hostage by spewing oil, spreading environmental damage, a corrupt oil corporation and arrogant, incompetent government officials who have no clue how to solve the crisis.

And Obama - known as President Accountability in these parts for cheerleading the firing of Rhode Island school teachers for "incompetence" - is the HEAD INCOMPETENT in this tragedy of Biblical proportions.

And I am not overstating that part about Biblical proportions. Here is how the Associated Press wrote up the story yesterday:

BOOTHVILLE, La. - There is still a hole in the Earth, crude oil is still spewing from it and there is still, excruciatingly, no end in sight. After trying and trying again, one of the world's largest corporations, backed and pushed by the world's most powerful government, can't stop the runaway gusher.

As desperation grows and ecological misery spreads, the operative word on the ground now is, incredibly, August — the earliest moment that a real resolution could be at hand. And even then, there's no guarantee of success. For the United States and the people of its beleaguered Gulf Coast, a dispiriting summer of oil and anger lies dead ahead.

Oh ... and the Atlantic hurricane season begins Tuesday.

...

Trouble is, the longer it lasts, the more beasts emerge ready to wrestle. Crude-coated birds are becoming a frequent sight along coastal areas. At the sea's bottom, no one knows what the oil will do to species like the newly discovered bottom-dwelling pancake batfish — and others that remain unknown but just as threatened.

Perhaps most alarming of all, 40 days and 40 nights after the Deepwater Horizon blew up and began the underwater deluge, hurricane season is at hand. It brings the horrifying possibility of wind-whipped, oil-soaked waves and water spinning ashore and coating areas much further inland. Imagine Katrina plus oil spill.

Has a certain Armageddon vibe to it, doesn't it?

Summer is a notoriously slow time for news, so you know the cable news networks and the papers are going to be covering all facets of this story - from the oil-soaked wildlife to the economic devastation wreaked upon the fishing and vacation industries by the disaster to the mix of corruption and sheer "Don't Give A Shittedness" that BP has displayed in first allowing this to happen and then not doing all that much to stop it.

And of course the entity that will get the worst of the press coverage will be the Accountability President who toured some of the devastation the other day on a beach while wearing a suit and a tie.

As somebody said about that photo op, it's never good when a president is being photographed in a suit and a tie on a beach.

Just ask Nixon.

The problem is that the Accountability President has done almost nothing else but photo ops to mitigate the effects of the disaster. As the NY Times reported today

The administration has left to BP most decisions about how to move forward with efforts to contain the leak.

Is this the best leadership that Obama can display in time of national crisis (and make no mistake, hundreds of thousands of spewing gallons of oil washing ashore and polluting the Gulf of Mexico from top to bottom is a national crisis)?

Colin Powell doesn't seem to think so:

Despite the White House efforts, the criticism also intensified. Colin L. Powell, who served as secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told ABC’s “This Week” that the administration must move in quickly with “decisive force and demonstrate that it’s doing everything that it can do.”

Neither does Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal:

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, appearing on “Meet the Press,” again criticized the administration’s efforts, saying: “We need our federal government exactly for this kind of crisis. I think there could have been a greater sense of urgency.”

Leaving aside the irony of Small-Government Is Better Jindal calling for a larger display of federal power and action in this time of crisis, I would like to note that Obama - who seems to think the feds should make every call in education policy right down the lesson plans teachers teach - suddenly is taking a "hands-off, let BP take the lead" on this.

Even when it is obvious BP has no idea what to do and maybe doesn't even give a shit since their liability is capped at $75 million.

Hell, that's chump change they can recoup the next time there is a run-up in oil prices.

Which there just might be after this disaster.

I think this mess will permanently tar President Accountability as the "Do-Nothing President" and "President Incompetent."

Part of the problem for Obama is that he had reversed course on oil drilling just two weeks before this mess, saying we need to drill for off-shore oil in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic Coast and there would be no environmental impact because

"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced."

-- President Obama, quoted by Think Progress on April 2, 2010.

Just 18 days later, Deepwater Horizon exploded and began the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history

Actually it turns out, President Accountability, that oil rigs are NOT technologically very advanced nor safe from oil spills.

Given the documents that the NY Times has obtained from BP from BEFORE the explosion, it is clear BP knew Deepwater Horizon could blow up and/or fall into the sea and cause a disaster.

The question is, why didn't YOU know that and why were you saying something so stupid and inaccurate about oil drilling in the gulf and the safety of oil rigs just 18 days before this tragedy started?

This has been one heckuva job for a man who says he wants to hold people accountable for their actions.

So far, other than one scapegoat in the government that Obama fired, nobody else has been held accountable for it.

Maybe he'll fire some teachers for it?

And of course Obama thinks he has no complicity in the mess.

Hell, he is still blaming the Bush (and Clinton) administrations for this mess.

But just as George Bush could not recover from the damage done to the administration from Katrina, Obama will NOT recover from this mess if it continues into August or later as is thought will happen.

Hell, he is even starting to sound like Bush with stupid quotes like this:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is encouraging Americans to visit the Gulf Coast despite the huge offshore oil spill.

At a White House news conference Thursday, Obama said while three beaches in Louisiana have been fouled by oil, the rest of the region's beaches are clean and safe. He says Gulf state governors have asked him "to remind everybody" the beaches are open.

Actually, I take that back. Obama is not sounding like Bush after 9/11 when he told people to go shopping to make things better.

He is sounding like the mayor of Amity in the movie Jaws talking jive as the shark continues to chow down on swimmers:

Mayor Vaughn: [to reporter] I'm pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers. But, as you see, it's a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time. Amity, as you know, means "friendship".

Where's Quint when you need him?

President Accountability Doesn't Much Like Being Held Accountable Himself

President Obama is bristling at criticism from members of his own party and the press that he is not handling the mess in the gulf well.

The White House has complained to members of the press that they are asking too many questions about the oil leak and the damage to the gulf and not enough about other things.

How ironic - the guy who promotes accountability and firing for teachers doesn't like being held accountable for his own mistakes.

What a hypocrite.

Whattya Know - Obama's Firing Somebody Who Isn't A Teacher!

Must be cold in hell or something:

ABC News has learned that President Obama will replace Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. His resignation will come as soon as tomorrow.

"On the heels of a number of intelligence failures involving the Fort Hood shooter, failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab, and questions about failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, it was no longer clear that Blair -- tasked with coordinating the 16 intelligence agencies and ensuring that they cooperate and share information - still had the full and complete confidence of the president, sources say."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would be the first time Obama has fired ANYBODY for performance-related issues other than those teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island (although they did get their job back after they agreed to longer school days, a longer school year, additional professional development and accountability performance test tracking.)

Of course there have been not one but TWO terrorist attacks while Obama in the year and four months that President Accountability has been running things, and they stopped NEITHER of them.

In the case of the penis bomber, the bomb fizzled and set his crotch on fire and passengers subdued him.

In the case of the Times Square bomber, the bomb fizzled and a T-Shirt vendor alerted police to the smoking car. Then the bomber ALMOST got away on a plane to Pakistan before he was finally apprehended by authorities.

Heckuva job in both cases - not by Obama or authorities, of course, but by the airplane passengers and the T-Shirt vendor.

But if either of those bombers had been competent and the bombs actually gone off the way they were supposed to, there would be hundreds of dead people in Detroit and New York.

And the Obama administration would be at fault.

He knows that.

So the Director of National Intelligence is gone on Obama's orders.

But it took TWO terrorist attacks to get him canned. And nobody else has been held accountable - not even the clueless Homeland Security Director who said the system worked after the penis bomber nearly brought the plane down on Christmas Day.

So you really do have to fuck up before Obama fires you.

Unless you're a teacher, of course.

Then you are automatically suspect and subject to firing because every social problem kids suffer from is YOUR fault.

Not coming to school?

Your fault.

Parents are divorced and mom's boyfriend drinks and plays poker until 4 AM every morning?

Your fault.

Parents are unemployed and the family is now homeless and moving from shelter to shelter?

Your fault.

Students just don't give a shit and enjoy a marijuana and Newport cigarette breakfast before coming to school to giggle and eat french fries in the cafeteria for four periods?

Your fault.

Remember, it's ALWAYS the teacher's fault.

Hell, the Obama administration actually laid partial blame for the financial collapse (the one in '08, not the one we're undergoing this week) on teachers.

Said if the education system was better, it wouldn't have happened.

So you know he must think the same thing about the bombers.

In fact, Obama apparently wanted to fire teachers along with the Director of National Intelligence and replace them with T-Shirt vendors.

But with all the layoffs, it was hard to find any teachers who actually still have jobs.

Heckkuva job, Barackie!!!!

Heckuva Job, Obama!!!

So how is President Accountability dealing with that oil spill in the gulf?

Turns out not well at all:

Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope.

The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean. They are especially concerned about getting a better handle on problems that may be occurring from large plumes of oil droplets that appear to be spreading beneath the ocean surface.

The scientists point out that in the month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the government has failed to make public a single test result on water from the deep ocean. And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well.

“It seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled,” Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “It seems baffling that we don’t know where the oil is in the water column.”

The administration acknowledges that its scientific resources are stretched by the disaster, but contends that it is moving to get better information, including a more complete picture of the underwater plumes.

“We’re in the early stages of doing that, and we do not have a comprehensive understanding as of yet of where that oil is,” Jane Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator, told Congress on Wednesday. “But we are devoting all possible resources to understanding where the oil is and what its impact might be.”

And how well is President Accountability holding BP accountable for the spill?

Again, not well at all:

Oceanographers have also criticized the Obama administration over its reluctance to force BP, the oil company responsible for the spill, to permit an accurate calculation of the flow rate from the undersea well. The company has refused to permit scientists to send equipment to the ocean floor that would establish the rate with high accuracy.

Ian MacDonald of Florida State University, an oceanographer who was among the first to question the official estimate of 210,000 gallons a day, said he had come to the conclusion that the oil company was bent on obstructing any accurate calculation. “They want to hide the body,” he said.

And the Obama administration is helping BP to do it.

This comes just weeks after Obama reversed his opposition to off shore oil drilling, saying that modern oil rigs almost never spill so off shore drilling is really, really safe.

Except it's not.

And just as the Bush administration couldn't figure out how to fix the problems after Katrina (or didn't seem to give a shit how to do it), the Obama administration doesn't know what to do about the oil spill.

President Accountability says teachers need to be held accountable for "failing" schools and low test scores and need to be fired.

How come nobody in the government gets fired when a major disaster like this takes place and both the government and the companies that created the spill do everything they can to hide the magnitude of the disaster and nearly nothing at all to mitigate the consequences?

Surely that is NOT change we can believe in.

Houston Education Miracle Redux

Hey, look - Texas is funking with the education data again:

More than 22,620 Texas secondary students who stopped showing up for class in 2008 were excluded from the state's dropout statistics because administrators said they were being home-schooled, according to Texas Education Agency figures.

But that's where the scrutiny of this growing population seems to end, leaving some experts convinced that schools are disguising thousands of middle and high school dropouts in this hands-off category.

While home-schooling's popularity has increased, the rate of growth concentrated in Texas' high school population is off the chart: It's nearly tripled in the last decade, including a 24 percent jump in a single year.

"That's just ridiculous," said Brian D. Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute. "It doesn't sound very believable."

No, it doesn't sound very believable.

No more so than Rod Paige's "Texas Miracle" back during the Bush days that claimed the achievement gap between white students and minority students had been narrowed by his business-style education reforms.

Those claims turned out to be bullshit too.

In point of fact, Paige and Texas just didn't count drop-outs in their stats.

That certainly helped with the graduation rate data and it helped to show the achievement gap had narrowed.

But it was fake, false, a load of horseshit.

Just like the "accountability movement" that Paige and Bush were promoting through No Child Left Behind.

Of course we have left all that behind with the current administration of President Accountability and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, who claims his own "Chicago Turnaround" miracle for the reason why Chicago-style accountability reforms - including teacher pay tied to test scores, teacher evaluations tied to test scores, and the lowest performing schools turned over to for-profit charter operators like the non-profit started by the guy who runs diploma-mill Devry University - are being forced on states all over the country.

Oh, wait, we haven't left behind the accountability movement or No Child Left Behind-style reform at all.

Actually we're getting it in triplicate from the current regime in Washington.

And they're basing it on Duncan's Chicago Miracle data.

But of course the Chicago Miracle is bullshit too - just like the Houston Miracle was.

But it's going to be replicated all over the country by President Accountability and his little basketball buddy at the Education Department and by the time the evidence becomes clear just how horseshit all these reforms are, the total damage to public education will be complete.

And the guy from Devry University - or guys just like him in the for-profit education world - will be running entire urban school systems.

Heckuva Job, Barack

From Political Wire:

"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced."

-- President Obama, quoted by Think Progress on April 2, 2010.

Just 18 days later a rig operated 41 miles off the Louisiana coast exploded and caused what may be the largest oil spill in history.

The picture above is one of those technologically-advanced oil rigs that generally don't spill anymore.

It is STILL spilling oil as I write this.

They haven't figured out how to shut the rig off.

It is leaking 5,000 barrels of oil per day.

Spill, baby, spill.