Now we know why the McCain campaign has been so sensitive about mentions of lipstick.
At more than $600 a day for what Delbert McClinton would call lipstick, powder and paint, can the U.S. afford Sarah Palin?
High cost of lipstick
October 24, 2008
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Campaigns, Humor, John McCain, McCain 2008, Politics | Tagged: Campaign 2008, Humor, Lipstick, McCain, Politics, Sarah Palin, Wasteful Spending | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Obama “most liberal,” McCain “most absent”
October 20, 2008Anyone who has staffed Congress knows the various ratings of the votes of Members of Congress are most often skewed by the organizations that make them. They pluck a dozen votes out of several hundred cast by a member in a year, to claim that special dozen can tell the character, or value, or liberalness or conservativeness of the member.
So when campaign surrogates claim that one of the candidates is “the most” whatever, it need be taken with a few grains of salt.
Presidential campaigns can wreak havoc on a members voting record — heck, reelection campaigns can do the same — because candidate forums and primary election dates almost always conflict with the work of Congress. A candidate for president might be lucky to make even the major votes.
Obama missed several key votes, but got enough in to get rated. According to one rating, by National Journal, Obama is “the most” liberal U.S. senator. In today’s U.S. Senate, that’s not really saying much, since moderate Republicans have gone extinct there, and most of the liberal lions of the Democrats are at least retired, if not dead.
Listening to the Sunday talk shows today, I wondered why McCain’s people, always anxious to brand Obama as “most liberal,” don’t point to McCain’s own ranking. Why not show the differences between the two on the issues, where it counts, in the votes?
So I checked. John McCain missed more than half the votes in most areas rated by National Journal, and so could not be ranked. It looks worse when you look at the company McCain keeps in the “unranked” category.
Three senators do not have scores for 2007 because they missed more than half of the rated votes in an issue area: John McCain, R-Ariz., who was running for president; Tim Johnson, D-S.D., who was recuperating from a brain hemorrhage and returned to work on September 5, 2007; Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., who died on June 4, 2007; and John Barrasso, R-Wyo., who was appointed to succeed Thomas on June 22, 2007.
John McCain: Most absent.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Barack Obama, Campaigns, History, John McCain, McCain 2008, Obama 2008, Politics, U.S. Senate | Tagged: Barack Obama, Campaign 2008, History, John McCain, Most Liberal, Politics, U.S. Senate, Voting Record | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Atomic history, nuclear future
October 19, 2008We’re going to see more nuclear power plants in the U.S., it’s a safe bet. Both presidential candidates support developing alternatives to oil and coal. Nuclear power is one of the alternatives.
John McCain kept repeating his comfort words, that ‘storage of wastes is not a problem.’ There is not a lot of evidence to support his claims. With turmoil in financial markets, however, the nuclear power issue has gotten very little serious attention or scrutiny. From the push to get compensation for radiation victims of atomic weapons and development in the U.S., I learned that the issue is not really whether wastes and other materials can be safely used and wastes stored. The issues are entirely issues of will.
Advantage to Obama, I think. He’s not claiming that the storage problems are all solved. A clear recognition of reality is good to have in a president.
Son Kenny sent a link to a history site, Damn Interesting, and it tells the story of the Techa River in the old Soviet Union — a place condemned for generations by the nuclear excesses of the past.
To make the story briefer, in their rush to produce nuclear weapons, the Soviets did nothing to protect Russia from radioactive waste products until it was much too late. Efforts to reduce radioactive emissions, by storing them in huge underwater containers, resulted in massive explosions that released more radiation than Chernobyl (What? You hadn’t heard of that, either?).
It’s a reminder that safety and security with peaceful uses of nuclear power depend on humans doing their part, and thinking through the problems before they arise.
Can we deal with radioactive wastes? We probably have the technology. Do we have the will? Ask yourself: How many years has the U.S. studied Yuccan Mountain to make a case to convince Nevadans to handle the waste? How many more decades will it take?
How is our history of dealing with nuclear contamination issues? Not good.
Last spring SMU’s history department sponsored a colloquium on a power generation in the southwest, specifically with regard to coal and uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation. We’ve been there before.
One of the photos used in one of the lectures, by Colleen O’Neill of Utah State, showed two Navajo miners outside a uranium mine during a previous uranium boom. Neither one had a lick of protective equipment. Underground uranium mining exposes miners to heave concentrations of radon gas, and if a miner is unprotected by breathing filters at least, there is a nearly 100% chance the miner will get fatal lung cancers.
Of the 150 Navajo uranium miners who worked at the uranium mine in Shiprock, New Mexico until 1970, 133 died of lung cancer or various forms of fibrosis by 1980 ([Ali, 2003] ).
Our Senate hearings on radiation compensation, in the 1970s, produced dozens of pages of testimony that Atomic Energy Commission officials understood the dangers, but did nothing to protect Navajo miners (or other miners, either). It is unlikely that anyone depicted in those photos is alive today.
"Mine memory - Navajo miners work the Kerr-McGee uranium mine, 7 May 1953. Today, uranium from unremediated abandoned mines contaminates nearby water supplies. image: AP Photo" (borrowed from ehponline.org) This photo is very close to the one used by Prof. O'Neill. It may have been taken at nearly the same time. If you know of any survivors from this photo, please advise.
At a refining facility on the Navajo Reservation, highly radioactive wastewater was stored behind an inadequate earthen dam. The dam broke, and the wastes flowed through a town and into local rivers. Contamination was extensive.
Attempts to collect for the injuries to Navajo miners and their families were thrown out of court in 1980, on the grounds that the injuries were covered under workers compensation rules (where injury compensation was also denied, generally).
Navajos organized to protest the power plant. One wonders whether they can win it.
Sen. McCain seems cock sure that radioactive wastes won’t kill thousands of Americans in the future as they have in the past. The uranium mining and uranium tailings issues occurred in Arizona, the state McCain represents. Does he know?
We regard ourselves in the U.S. as generally morally superior to “those godless communists.” Can we demonstrate moral superiority with regard to development of peacetime nuclear power, taking rational steps to protect citizens and others, and rationally, quickly and fairly compensating anyone who is injured?
That hasn’t happened yet.
When [uranium] mining [on the Navajo Reservation] ceased in the late 1970’s, mining companies walked away from the mines without sealing the tunnel openings, filling the gaping pits, sometimes hundreds of feet deep, or removing the piles of radioactive uranium ore and mine waste. Over 1,000 of these unsealed tunnels, unsealed pits and radioactive waste piles still remain on the Navajo reservation today, with Navajo families living within a hundred feet of the mine sites. The Navajo graze their livestock here, and have used radioactive mine tailings to build their homes. Navajo children play in the mines, and uranium mine tailings have turned up in school playgrounds (103rd Congress, 1994 ).
Think of the story of Techa River as a warning.
Resources:
- A recent study shows uranium wastes in low levels act as endocrine disruptors in drinking water; “The current study is of immediate relevance to the Navajo Nation of Arizona and New Mexico, where many rural Navajo water supplies currently contain uranium at concentrations exceeding the U.S. EPA standard. The uranium boom of the 1950s and 1960s left thousands of abandoned mine sites and derelict milling operations on Navajo lands. Uranium mining has been banned there, but there are active efforts to revive uranium mining in the Navajo town of Crownpoint, New Mexico. The findings may also soon apply to other populations living amid the uranium boom now under way in central Colorado, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.:
- See this site: Impacts of Resource Development on Native American Lands (from Carlton College?); see especially the link on uranium development on Navajo lands.
- Douglas Brugge and Rob Goble have a remarkably brief but comprehensive study published in The American Journal of Public Health in 2002, “The History of Uranium Mining and the Navajo People.“
- Radiation Protection, at EPA’s website (features information about cleanups of abandoned uranium mines and facilities on the Navajo Reservation)
5 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Barack Obama, Economics, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Health care, History, John McCain, McCain 2008, medicine, Native Americans, Natural resources, Navajo, Nuclear power, Obama 2008, Politics, Science | Tagged: Arizona, Environmental protection, health, History, McCain, Natural resources, Navajo Reservation, Nuclear power, Nuclear Waste, Obama, Politics, Science, Techa River, Uranium Mining | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
What if Obama carried Alaska?
October 6, 2008Just wondering, after reading the latest news from Mudflats: “McCain Palin Rally vs. Obama Biden Rally in Anchorage! The blow by blow.“
2 Comments | Barack Obama, Campaigns, Elections, John McCain, McCain 2008, Obama 2008, Politics | Tagged: Biden, Campaign 2008, Elections, McCain, Obama, Palin, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 