Over Memorial day weekend Libertarians came together from across the country and around the world to nominate their president and vice presidential candidates at their annual national party convention. And for many the top of the ticket for the fall and the general election season is troubling, deeply troubling.
But lets look at it from this perspective for just a minute, shall we? My prediction is that the Johnson-Weld ticket will be Libertarian-lite in that they’ll run under the Libertarian party banner but will, instead, draw from the well of the Never Trump Never Hillary movements in a kind of “A Coalition of the Willing.” Or as Bill Clinton and Dick Morris did so infamously in the 1990’s, “Triangulation.”
In either case I like Bill Weld and have enormous respect for Gary Johnson, ever since 2011 when he first ran for the presidency. Then as now Johnson stands for some of the same things that I do, but with Charles and David Koch, through Bill Weld, pulling on Johnson like he’s a puppet and they’re the masters even I can’t stomach that!
I hate Charles and David Koch with every fiber of my being for what they have done to this great country of ours and this beautiful world in which we all live. They are evil incarnate, in my opinion, and hell itself would be a far worse place with them in it.
I call LINO – Libertarian in Name Only! And for those disgruntled and disaffected Libertarians I offer this as your Battle Cry:
Hold fast, and as Jesse Ventura says, “Stay Vigilant…”
–Rhett.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SHARE! PLEASE? THANK YOU. COME AGAIN.
BERKELEY (CBS SF) — Just how rampant is the sexual harassment problem at UC Berkeley? According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a total of 11 Cal staffers have been fired or disciplined for sexual harassment since 2011. That’s in addition to three more recent cases involving the law school dean, an astronomy professor, and an assistant basketball coach. Read…
The catastrophe at Fukushima was not an accident. It’s unfolding again in California.
The next west coast quake could easily shake the two reactors at Diablo Canyon to rubble.
They are riddled with defects, can’t withstand potential seismic shocks from five major nearby fault lines, violate state water quality laws and are vulnerable to tsunamis and fire.
Diablo’s owner, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), is in deep legal and financial crisis.
A 42-page report from NRC inspector Dr. Michael Peck says new fault line discoveries challenge Diablo’s “presumption of nuclear safety.”
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has just proposed that PG&E be fined $1.4 billion for a 2010 gas explosion and fire that killed eight people and obliterated a neighborhood in San Bruno. The federal government has announced 28 indictments, meaning the CPUC fine may just be the tip of a very expensive iceberg for PG&E. The San Bruno disaster was caused by pipeline defects about which PG&E had been warned for years, but failed to correct. The fines cover 3,798 separate violations of laws and regulations, both state and federal. PG&E was previously fined $38 million for a 2008 pipeline explosion in Rancho Cordova.
Similar defects remain uncorrected at Diablo Canyon, whose radioactive cloud could span the continental U.S. in four days. Mass citizen action recently shut two coastal reactors at San Onofre. It must do the same at Diablo before the next quake hits.
Ironically, as America’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) allows Diablo to operate, all 54 reactors in Japan remain shut. Its Nuclear Regulatory Authority has just ordered the Tsuruga reactor to be scrapped because of its vulnerability to earthquakes. Two more elderly reactors at Mihama may also be terminated before year’s end.
At Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power now admits that far more radiation is spewing into the Pacific than previously admitted. The thyroid cancer death rate among children in the area is 40 times normal. So is the still-rising childhood thyroid abnormality rate, a terrifying re-run of downwind Chernobyl.
Tepco has begun paying compensation to local suicide victims, including the widower of a woman who doused herself with kerosene before burning herself alive.
All of it predictable.
For decades Japanese citizens warned Tepco not to build reactors in an earthquake/tsunami zone. The company repeatedly ignored safety warnings and tolerated known defects that worsened the disaster.
Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors sit eight miles west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco, surrounded by earthquake faults.
The Hosgri, three miles offshore, was found as the reactors were being built. Design specifications were never fully altered to account for it. Nor have they been upgraded for the newly-found Los Osos, San Luis Bay and Shoreline faults. The Shoreline lies just 650 yard from Diablo’s cores.
The massive San Andreas fault is just 45 miles away, about half as far as was the March 11, 2011, Richter-9.0 epicenter from Fukushima.
A shock that size from any of the fault lines near Diablo could reduce it to a seething pile of radioactive hell, far deadlier than Fukushima. Prevailing winds could blanket virtually all of North America with its deadly fallout.
The nuclear industry would immediately deny all health impacts. It would blame “unpredictable” God and nature.
Peck has a doctorate in nuclear engineering and was Diablo’s chief on-site inspector for five years. He’s now a senior instructor at the NRC’s Technical Training Center in Tennessee. His status as a current NRC employee makes such a critical report highly unusual—and alarming.
Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen has warned about sea-level intake pipes like those at Diablo. When the tsunami struck Fukushima, he writes, “The cooling equipment along the shoreline was turned into a scrap yard of twisted metal.”
Then there is fire.
Diablo Canyon, writes David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “has never, ever complied with fire safety regulations, not even for a second by mistake.”
“The one-two punch of earthquake/tsunami caused Fukushima,” Lochbaum wrote in an email to me.
“A one-two punch of earthquake/fire could cause Diablo Canyon.”
But, says Lochbaum, “It can’t be an accident. Not when the company and its alleged regulator both know that the plant does not met earthquake and fire safety regulations.
“That cannot cause an accident. Criminal negligence perhaps. At least malicious mayhem. But not an accident.”
More than 10,000 people were arrested trying to stop Diablo in the 1970s and ‘80s. During the delays they caused, PG&E found major errors in reading key blueprints involving some of Diablo’s most critical equipment.
Damage is still being tallied from California’s Aug. 25 Napa Valley quake. The 1994 Northridge quake killed 57 people, injured roughly 5,000. The Loma Prieta quake during the 1989 World Series killed 63 people, injured more than 3,700. The infamous 1906 San Francisco quake leveled the city and killed thousands.
New shocks at Diablo Canyon could dwarf all those numbers—and Fukushima’s.
Tens of millions of Americans would be irradiated. Our continent’s eco-systems would be poisoned. Our nation’s economy would be gutted.
SACRAMENTO, California — My friends and colleagues at CBS News, San Francisco are reporting that the proposed ballot initiative to split the Golden State up into 6 smaller states MAY, MAY NOW, be Dead On Arrival (D.O.A.).
Backers/supporters of late report a growing lack of interest in the proposal and it may not even receive any votes?!
SO, what do you think, Should California Be Divided Into Six Smaller States? Vote in our poll and we will give you the results at the end of the week.
Editorial:
On a lighter note as a Californian I do not support such a measure just like I do not support the clear cut Media Induced Voter Suppression that is clearly going on here when it comes to this proposed ballot initiative. Unlike Proposition 8 this ballot initiative is clearly worded/written and easy to understand.
Additionally the supporters/backers of this initiative went out and got the signatures necessary and lobbied the California State Legislature for many months. As well Governor Jerry Brown, who himself does not publicly or privately support the measure agrees that the effort undertook was yeoman and commendable and that it quote, “deserves a fair amount of consideration by the voters of California” end quote, close quote.
But and clearly there are those amongst us who wish and want you and I to be under informed. Under educated. Under determined, to vote for or even consider casting a vote, YES or NO, toward this measure. Perhaps, and this is just speculation on this blogger’s part here, these very same folks are in fear that maybe, just maybe there actually might be some interest in dividing the state?
At any rate, watch this space very, very closely folks.
Peace.
–Rhett.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SHARE! PLEASE? THANK YOU. COME AGAIN.
California has a water problem. And although the state is working hard to correct it. They can only do so much. And as the summer winds on more and more scenes, not unlike this one above, continue to pop up everywhere. State and local authorities are cracking down, BUT they are cracking down on the wrong individuals, the owners, instead of the local school-age children who kick the tops of the yard sprinklers off just to watch the water flow. Ridiculous? My sentiments exactly, so to was the focus of the highlighted article below via my friends at CBS San Francisco, Bay Area 7 News, when they interviewed a Mr. Paul Sinz.
Mr. Sinz is the owner and operator of Park N Shop a local convenience store in the Concord, CA. area.
He has, so far this summer, according to the report below, paid out over a $1,000.00 a day in fines, fees and penalties. Watch this space.
TODAY California Gov. Jerry Brown, Democrat signed two important and ‘key pieces of legislation’ ,according to CBS San Francisco, into law that will go a long way in curbing the use of guns by people who may be ‘mentally unstable’.
The first bill he announced signing Friday, AB1964, addresses single-shot handguns.
Democratic Assemblyman Roger Dickinson of Sacramento says a loophole in existing law lets people buy guns that do not meet state safety requirements if they had been temporarily turned into single-shot weapons. The buyer then could convert them back into a weapon that fires multiple bullets.
Brown also signed AB1591, which speeds up how quickly courts must notify the state Department of Justice when it is determined that a person can no longer legally own a firearm in California.
On a lighter note I appreciate, like anything else, gun safety and keeping guns safe and legal for avid hunters and outdoors people. I use to count myself amongst both categories, still do in many ways and respects, but I am doubly glad to know that in the State of California at least these two pieces of legislation are keeping the unchecked checked while still not infringing on your and might right to ‘keep and bare arms’. BRAVO Gov. Brown!
Peace.
–Rhett.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SHARE! PLEASE? THANK YOU. COME AGAIN.
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.
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