Nuke Monday

To celebrate Virginia Confederate History month, Radio Free America from a Midwest college broadcast Southern garage bands like Ray Tard. The college lost two students in John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry (then part of Virginia.) and John Brown's father was on the board of trustees.

John Kyl's demand that Obama's pick be "mainstream" reminded me of Roman Hruska's defense of Nixon's nomination of a southern judge. "Even the mediocre need to be represented."

President Obama could nominate another friend of his from the Senate. It would be a bold move and he would be replacing a Republican with a Republican. A DailyKos blogger suggested this and it's quite clever. Olympia Snowe--a Greek Orthodox (I think) with immigrant parents and a social liberal. Unlikely to tact right if freed from political pressure. Her heroine is Margaret Chase Smith, the first Republican to take on Joe McCarthy. Very independent. And the Democratic Governor of Maine gets to pick her replacement. It would be a gesture to bipartisanship even though the remains of the GOP consider Senator Snow a RINO. It would put a nail in the "socialist" insanity during an election year. And how are the Republicans going to vote against Olympia?

Scott Brown is hiding from the Boston teaparty that's going to be held with the Baked Alaskan. Larry Sabato pipes in that he's trying to mainstream himself.

Lansing, Michigan was the location for more madness--a arms carrying teabagger rally with "straight pride " shirts being sold. They must be produced from the guys who did the White Pride shirts during the civil rights days. Tea Party chairman Mark Williams said,"We need to purge the Republicans of all weaklings. We're on a Rino Hunt and we're going to drive them to extinction." (RINO is Republican in Name Only)

Mitt Romney's straw poll win was not only facilitated by cash and gift bags but the RNC allowed for two days of voting so that Ron Paul wouldn't win. It's clear that the big money is lining up behind Romney because they feel they can't afford any of the creationists running and that Ron Paul would actually have a shot through his Campaign for Liberty.

Dimitri Medvedev, Obama's new friend, is in town and said that the reason Russian-American relations are better is because Obama is a "thinker unlike some people". The some people was supposed to refer to Dubya.

Since I have little expectations for the Nuke summit, it should be pointed out that the organization has been rather clever. The whole issue of nuclear proliferation has been de-politicised. The idea is to keep nuclear materials--civilian or military--out of the hands of terrorists and to develop individual country plans for lessening nuclear materials just to fuel purposes and disposing spent fuel. The United States just completed its 19th such effort by extracting nuclear materials from Chile during the quake.

For me it's important that pubic education occur on the threat of nukes from anyone. During the 1990s, there developed popular novels in the Middle East, which extolled nuclear war. Most of them were a type of Islamic Science Fiction. Millions bought these sc-fi thrillers and they passed on a belief that if Arab states waged nuclear war against Israel Muslims would be protected from fallout. This lunacy actually made it into the belief system of the Iranians. Rasfanjani gave an interview with an Arab news service, who questioned him about the chances of nuclear war with Israel. His response was that "Only the Jews would be killed, the Palestinians would survive."

While Iran began the quest for nuclear energy during President Khatami's administration, a group of government scientists wrote an environmental impact study of what would happen if a nuclear accident occurred at the nuclear power station that was situated--and still is--on a major earthquake fault line. Their conclusions were that all marine life would die in the Persian Gulf and that whole towns along the Gulf would be radiated and thousands of people would die. The report was censored for national security reasons.

So anything to disseminate the impact of nuclear accidents and war will be useful.