Author Archives: Florencepb7

Lunatic Conspiracy Theories Aren’t What They Used to Be

by Florencepb7 Posted on May 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago there was a minor hoorah over a military training exercise called Jade Helm, scheduled to take place this summer in various states in the southwest. A few lunatics in Texas got wind of this, along with a map or two, and decided that Jade Helm was really just a pretense for President Obama to take over Texas.

Sadly for me, this all happened while I was near the bottom of my chemotherapy regimen and I barely had enough energy to make an occasional run to the bathroom, let alone write blog posts about stuff like this. Today, however, the fine folks at PPP have given me a second bite at the apple. They polled a bunch of Republicans about Jade Helm, and then broke down the answers by which candidate they currently support. Here are the results:

Apparently a full third of the Republican base believes that President Obama plans to order the military to take over Texas. Booyah! And supporters of Ted Cruz and Rick Perry—who are probably mostly from Texas—believe this idiocy by 60-70 percent.

So what do we take from this? I think there are two main interpretations:

Fox and Rush and the rest of the conservative media have driven conservatives into such a frenzy that a third of them really, truly do believe that President Obama plans a military takeover of Texas.
Poll questions like this no longer have any real meaning. This is basically little more than a survey of mood affiliation that tests how much you hate and distrust President Obama. That is to say, a yes answer has little or nothing to with Jade Helm. It just means you really hate and distrust Obama.

I’m inclined to the second interpretation myself. It’s all good fun, but no, I don’t think that a third of Republicans really believe this nonsense. It’s just their way of showing that they’re members in good standing of the political faction that believes Obama is capable of anything in his power-mad struggle to turn the United States into a socialist hellhole. The rest is just fluff.

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Lunatic Conspiracy Theories Aren’t What They Used to Be

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BPA-Free Plastics May Not Be Safe

by Florencepb7 Posted on March 8, 2014

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BPA-Free Plastics May Not Be Safe

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Plants will reach point where they couldn’t possibly take another bite of our CO2

by Florencepb7 Posted on December 17, 2013

Plants will reach point where they couldn’t possibly take another bite of our CO2

By

John Upton

Plants love carbon dioxide. It’s their oxygen. That’s why forests, meadows, and the like are called carbon sinks — they help draw a fraction of our CO2 emissions back out of the atmosphere and into the soil.

But we can’t expect plants to clean up after us forever.

After running computer simulations, European and Japanese scientists concluded that plants that haven’t been bulldozed, poisoned, burnt up, or attacked by invasive pests will continue to absorb more carbon as atmospheric carbon levels rise. But they found that found that rising temperatures could eventually prevent vegetation from absorbing any more of our CO2 pollution.

That’s because heat waves dry out plants’ water reserves and put so much stress on vegetation that it can start releasing more carbon dioxide than it absorbs. As an example, one of the researchers, Andrew Friend of Cambridge, points to a 2003 heat wave in Europe during which “the amount of CO2 produced was sufficient to reverse the effect of four years of net ecosystem carbon sequestration.”

It appears that plants will hit the CO2 saturation point once the globe warms by about 4 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times, or 7.4 Fahrenheit. Which is kind of a terrifying number. Although the Earth has warmed a little less than 1 degree C so far, and although world leaders aim to cap warming at 2 degrees C, projections based on our current fuel-burning practices point to warming eventually peaking at about 4 degrees C — or more.

The conclusions of Friend and his colleagues, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that should we hit that 4 C point, carbon dioxide levels could start to really climb as Earth’s plants release more carbon than they absorb.

So there’s one more reason to try to not reach that point. World leaders, listen up!

PNASThe green on this map shows areas where the world’s plants will suck carbon out of the atmosphere — until global temperatures rise more than 4 degrees Celsius. Then we’re in trouble. (Click to embiggen.)


Source
Four degree rise will end vegetation ‘carbon sink’ (University of Cambridge press release), PhysOrg
Carbon residence time dominates uncertainty in terrestrial vegetation responses to future climate and atmospheric CO2, PNAS

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Plants will reach point where they couldn’t possibly take another bite of our CO2

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Why Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s New Action Flick Might Be the Most Left-Wing Film in Theaters

by Florencepb7 Posted on October 18, 2013

Mother Jones

Escape Plan
Summit Entertainment
116 minutes

This post contains some spoilers… but it’s the new Ahnold and Stallone movie, so I’m guessing that plot detail isn’t your primary concern.

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and hardcore gun-control advocate Sylvester Stallone have teamed up once again, this time for Mikael Håfström‘s jailbreak movie Escape Plan. The film is a vehicle for two legendary action stars to relive their days of vanquishing foes and dropping hot one-liners. “You hit like a vegetarian!” Schwarzenegger spits at Stallone as their characters tussle. But this action flick (written by Miles Chapman and Jason Keller) is also severely critical of military contractors, indefinite detention, solitary confinement, and private prison companies. In fact, the real villain of the movie is the for-profit prison industry. On top of this, Escape Plan presents a vigorous rejection of post-9/11, anti-Muslim fear-mongering. Call it shoot-’em-up liberal escapism, if you will.

Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a prosecutor-turned-security-expert who is paid by the government to test the security of maximum-security prisons—by posing as a prisoner and breaking out of them, of course. His team features 50 Cent as a bespectacled computer nerd, and the Oscar-nominated Amy Ryan as Breslin’s street-smart colleague-with-benefits. Their sweet, lucrative gig is ruined when Breslin is kidnapped and taken to a CIA-backed, privately-run black site that’s like Gitmo on steroids, where the guards torture with impunity (a hose shoved down a prisoner’s throat is a stand-in for waterboarding). The detention facility is described as “completely illegal” by one character. To break out of the prison, codenamed “The Tomb,” Breslin teams up with fellow inmate Emil Rottmayer (played by the Republican Governator), a man locked up for working with “Mannheim,” an international criminal who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. The Tomb’s corrupt warden Willard Hobbs (anti-stem-cell-research personality Jim Caviezel) and his staff of “Blackwater rejects” wage war on Breslin and Rottmayer. And so the fun begins.

The movie is essentially Erik Prince and Corrections Corporation of America vs. a radical-left detainee and Sylvester Stallone.

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Why Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s New Action Flick Might Be the Most Left-Wing Film in Theaters

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30 Ways the Shutdown Is Already Screwing People

by Florencepb7 Posted on October 2, 2013

Mother Jones

The federal government entered shutdown mode at midnight on Monday, after Congress failed to pass a continuing resolution that would keep departments and agencies up and running. Though some Republicans have dismissed the immediate impact of the shutdown, quite a lot of people have already been affected.

Here’s a quick guide:

Kids with cancer: 30 children who were supposed to be admitted for cancer treatment at the National Institute of Health’s clinical center were put on hold, along with 170 adults.

Head Start kids: When a new grant didn’t come in, Bridgeport, Connecticut, closed 13 Head Start facilities serving 1,000 kids. Calhoun County, Alabama, shut down its Head Start program, which serves 800 kids. Some were relocated to a local church.

Pregnant women: Several states had promised to pick up the tab if the US Department of Agriculture stopped funding the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)—but not Arkansas, where 85,000 meals will no longer be provided to low income women and their children.

Babies: 2,000 newborn babies won’t receive baby formula in Arkansas, due to those WIC cuts.

People who help pregnant women and babies: The 16 people who administer the WIC program in Utah will be furloughed—in order to free up money to continue funding the program.

Whales: The Marine Mammal Commission, which monitors whale populations, is on hiatus.

63-year-old Jo Elliott-Blakeslee: The shutdown of Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho has complicated the search for a woman who went missing in the park.

Military suicide prevention: Palm Beach, Florida, television station WPTV profiled Rosemarie Spencer, a contractor with the US Army Suicide Prevention Program who was furloughed on Tuesday.

Virginia: 2,000 workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard were sent home on Tuesday, and commissaries in northeast and southeast Virginia, which provide inexpensive groceries to members of the military, closed on Wednesday.

Firefighters: The Bureau of Land Management’s Little Snake Field Office in Colorado says its ability to respond to a fire is “severely limited.”

Firefighter widows: Heidi Adams, whose husband, Token, was killed investigating a fire in New Mexico last month, won’t receive survivor benefits because there’s no one at the National Forest Service to finalize the paperwork.

Fishermen: National Park Service blocked all access to Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina.

Domestic-violence centers: Facilities in Vermont and Montana stopped receiving reimbursement payments.

People who eat food: Eight thousand employees at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention were furloughed, including those tasked with monitoring the outbreak of foodborne illnesses.

People who cook food: The USDA’s food safety hotline has stopped fielding calls from people with questions about food storage and safe preparation.

Animal-semen exporters: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports, “No one in Louisiana will be able export livestock, embryos, fertilized animal eggs or animal semen.” Animal semen? Yup, the USDA monitors that too.

College students: Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and federal work study programs are officially on ice, as of Tuesday.

Bookworms: Arizona’s Marine Corps Air Station Yuma closed on-base facilities including a library, day care center, youth activity center, and pool.

Park rangers: 686 of Alaska’s 750 National Park Service employees are staying home.

First responders: The Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama, which trains first responders for states and municipalities, is closed.

Golfers: The Moffet Field Golf Course near Mountain View, California, is closed due to furloughs at the NASA facility where the 18-hole course is located.

Poor Louisianans: The state Commodities Supplemental Food Program, which serves 64,000 people each month, doesn’t have the funds to operate.

People with mysterious illnesses: The Undiagnosed Diseases Program at the National Institutes of Health has stopped accepting new patients, with the exception of children with life-threatening illnesses.

Meningitis researchers: A University of Hawaii research facility shut down.

Newt Gingrich: The former speaker of the House decried the closure of a “tour bus turnaround” at Mt. Vernon:

Antique-car lovers: The Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi, canceled its “Cruisin the Coast” car festival.

Native Americans: The Department of Health and Human Services cut off funding to the Urban Indian Health Programs, which offer dental treatment, primary care access, and substance abuse programs.

Football players: All athletic activities at service academies have been postponed, including Saturday’s Navy-Air Force football game.

Goats: 50 Nubian goats, tasked with eating poison ivy at a New Jersey historical site, were furloughed.

Klansmen: A planned march in Gettysburg by the Confederate Knights of the KKK was canceled because the national battlefield park is closed.

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30 Ways the Shutdown Is Already Screwing People

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Gridlock Might Destroy the U.S. Economy, But It’s Still Good for Business

by Florencepb7 Posted on September 17, 2013

Mother Jones

Robert Costa writes today that both Republican aides and veteran House members are worried that it’s fast becoming impossible to find a budget compromise that can win the support of the Republican caucus:

Both camps fear that a shutdown is increasingly likely — and they blame the conservative movement’s cottage industry of pressure groups.

But these organizations, ensconced in Northern Virginia office parks and elsewhere, aren’t worried about the establishment’s ire. In fact, they welcome it. Business has boomed since the push to defund Obamacare caught on. Conservative activists are lighting up social media, donations are pouring in, and e-mail lists are growing.

There you have it. Gridlock is good for business. Nuff said.

It’s all pretty remarkable, isn’t it? Our government is deadlocked because Republicans control one half of one branch of the government. The tea party faction controls that half because it can prevent John Boehner from being re-elected Speaker if he crosses them. So we’ve somehow maneuvered ourselves into a place where 40 or 50 fanatic representatives can bring the entire government of the most powerful nation on Earth to a screeching halt. And somehow this seems….kind of normal. It hardly even raises an eyebrow anymore.

Just thought I’d mention that.

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Gridlock Might Destroy the U.S. Economy, But It’s Still Good for Business

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Deep Throat’s Parking Garage to Be Demolished

by Florencepb7 Posted on August 27, 2013

Mother Jones

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As historic landmarks go, the parking garage at 1401 Wilson Blvd, in Arlington, Va., just outside DC isn’t much to look at. But parking space 32D helped in its own way to bring down a president. The parking space is the famous meeting spot of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and W. Mark Felt, better known as “Deep Throat” and Woodward’s source for the scoops on the Watergate burglary that eventually forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. But as with so many historic landmarks, nothing in this country is sacred. The parking space is on the verge of obliteration.

A developer is planning to raze the 50-year-old office building above the garage and replace it with—what else?—swanky new condos. Tim Helmig, vice president of Monday Properties, recognizes the historic import of the parking garage and plans to commemorate it with a plaque or something miniscule after 32D falls to the wrecking ball. But he told the Washington Business Journal that the garage has got to go, saying, “The garage is at the end of its useful life, and with the redevelopment the configuration of the garage itself is going to change.”

That’s the trouble with many of the Watergate landmarks. The critical moments in the greatest political scandal in modern American history took place in some of the most mundane locations. When members of Nixon’s reelection campaign watched as the burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate, for instance, they conducted their stakeout from Room 723 in the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge across the street. (The famous “plumbers’ unit” also had a room at the hotel a few floors down, where they listened to wiretaps from the bug placed in the DNC offices.) The hotel preserved the famous room and opened it to guests making Watergate pilgrimages. But in 1999, George Washington University bought the HoJos and turned it into student housing. Today, Room 723 is just another college dorm room. But at least it’s still there.

The parking garage demolition will wipe a famous site off the map, and given that this is part of Washington political history, the demo may not go off without a fight. Washington has an earnest core of history preservation activists, who’ve attempted to preserve all sorts of abominations for the sake of posterity. (See this “new brutalist” church, for instance.) By comparison, parking space 32D seems worth saving.

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Deep Throat’s Parking Garage to Be Demolished

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Can an ice wall stop Fukushima radiation from leaking into the sea?

by Florencepb7 Posted on August 9, 2013

Can an ice wall stop Fukushima radiation from leaking into the sea?

By Lisa Hymas

Shutterstock

The Fukushima ice wall would not look anything like this.

It’s been almost two and a half years since the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the place is still a huge, scary mess.

Here’s how The New York Times introduced this week’s grim news from the plant:

First, a rat gnawed through exposed wiring, setting off a scramble to end yet another blackout of vital cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Then, hastily built pits for a flood of contaminated water sprang leaks themselves. Now, a new rush of radioactive water has breached a barrier built to stop it, allowing heavily contaminated water to spill daily into the Pacific.

It turns out that radioactive water has been spilling into the sea almost since the initial disaster, at a rate of 75,000 gallons, or 300 tons, a day.

So now Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, which owns the plant, has a plan to build an underground wall of frozen earth to stop the radioactive water leakage. NPR explains:

[T]o understand, you need to know the geography of Fukushima. There are three melted down reactors, and they’re all right on the coast. To the west, you have mountains. To the east, you have ocean. And so what’s happening is groundwater flows downhill. It flows down through the ruins of the plant and then flows out to the sea. …

So now, TEPCO has proposed literally creating a wall of ice around the plant. And what they’re talking about is not a wall above ground, but freezing the ground around the plant to stop water from flowing in. …

So the basic idea is that they run piping into the ground and they put coolant in the piping and that freezes the earth around the pipes, and it all sort of gradually forms together into a wall. This is something that civil engineers see sometimes, but it’s not that common. And certainly, the way they’re talking about using it in Fukushima is unprecedented. This wall will be nearly a mile around according to TEPCO. It would require more than 2 million cubic feet of soil to be frozen. But if it worked, then it may be the only way to keep water from flowing into the plant and contaminated water from flowing out.

The New York Times points out another challenge: “the wall will need to be consistently cooled using electricity at a plant vulnerable to power failures. The original disaster was brought on by an earthquake and tsunami that knocked out electricity.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, fed up with continued ineptitude and deception from TEPCO, said this week that his government will get involved in the cleanup. It’s not clear what that involvement will look like, but it may include helping to fund the frozen wall — no small thing, as it’s expected to cost between $300 million and $400 million.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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