John Jonik

A new find for me - John Jonik.

Iran's Unclear Ambitions

From The Agonist today:

Over at Nuclear Diner, veteran Los Alamos nuclear engineer Susan Voss analyzes the amount of 20% enriched uranium Iran has made to date and concludes "The 98 kgs is more than needed for one core for TRR but a reasonable amount if the Iranians are planning on producing a batch of fuel for the TRR rather than producing it every 5-6 years when it is needed." It's exactly on par with the batch of three full fuel cores Argentina supplied Iran in 1992 which is estimated to run out this year.

So, it's probable that all the talk about this material being for bomb production is just warmongering hype.

Bonus: Gareth Porter talks to former top Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who tells Porter that France and Germany were prepared in spring 2005 to negotiate on an Iranian proposal to convert all of its enriched uranium to fuel rods, making it impossible to use it for nuclear weapons, but Britain vetoed the deal at the insistence of the United States.

That last bit seems pretty important. I wonder why The US would want to make it nearly impossible for the French and the Germans to prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb(?)  Hmmm.

Parade Of Stoopid

This is some high-quality stoopid right here:

 

 Not even Juan (The Twin Token) Williams can go along with Bolling's malarkey.

Listen Up

It's A Wonderment

Thinking about some things that recently popped into my silly little head.

Here's one: Welfare Cheats.
And another'n: Voter Fraud

How long have we heard about this?
"Young bucks eatin' steak and lobster on Food Stamps".
"Dead people voting numerous times".

Here's my basic premise: There's an element of truth to it - the notion that some people are gaming the system has to be assumed.  I'd hafta be stupid to believe it never happens.  But what I think I know now is that this is "truth with a lower case t", which means it's a Political Truth, which in turn means it's a Political Lie.

And here's my take-away:  The Political Truth is always much smaller than they want you to believe it is, and the Political Lie is always a lot bigger.

On Wisconsin

Sometimes you win by losing and sometimes you lose by winning.  It all depends on how you react to whatever just happened.

via Balloon Juice:

Exit polling showed tepid majority support for public unions (51%), with equally tepid support for Walker’s handling of collective bargaining (52%). This reflects the resentment towards public unions based on the perception that they’re getting a better deal than the rest of us :

Some random stuff:
1) Resentment works.  Voters aren't trying to raise everybody to the level of Unionized Workers, they're convinced that "those damned union bastards are gettin' some kinda free ride at the expense of everybody else".  This is what the race to the bottom looks like.

-because-

2) Advertising works. The prevailing message was that Gov Walker was just doing what he told you he'd do when he ran for the office.  You voted for him; now stop whining and take your medicine.

3) The double Standard is alive and well.  It's OK to attack Obama for being successful at what he's done, but going after Romney means you're engaging in class warfare.  Also, it isn't fair to criticize Romney for his success, but those successful unions; well they're just evil.

Hopefully, having outspent the Dems 10-1, the Koch Suckers have a pyrrhic victory on their hands and there might be a somewhat diminished enthusiasm for making the same effort on the next fight.  I'll admit to being a bit dubious on that one - we'll have to see what goodies Mr Walker offers up to reward his benefactors.

Also too - remember that the Dems won another seat in the State Senate, which takes the Repub majority away.

Dr Krugman

Austerity is bad policy because it's not Economics at all - it's an Ideological Religion.  A true faith.  The big problem is that Demand has dried up, and the Supply-Siders just can't stand thinking their pet theory might not work all that well this time.

Mr Escher

MC Escher with a kind of western European yin-yang thing.

The Five Monkeys

One more on the power of conditioning.

On Being A Hero-In-Waiting

Philip Zimbardo:

Conform And Be Dull

This is nothing new.  The marketeers (commercial and political) know about all this, and they use it to manipulate us at every turn.



The Asch Experiments:
Of particular interest to me (in the context of the current political climate) is the bit regarding united opposition at about 3:00.



Now, try not to think about DumFux News, and the simple fact that there's an awful lot of "low-information voters" (aka the independents) out there who pay no attention to what's happening until it's time to decide; and who then simply try to get a feel for which way the wind is blowing so they can vote according to what they perceive as the "majority sentiment".

Today's Pix

Meanwhile, over at The War On Drugs...

Disconnected

Almost every opinion survey tells us a coupla things that have now passed into "facts" of Conventional Wisdom.

First, approval ratings for Congress are always somewhere down around 10%.  And yet, in spite of those numbers, sometimes 60% of us show up to cast our votes - obviously trying in some way to fulfill the promise of self-governance.

Second, approval ratings for US Military always come in up around 70%, but fewer than 1% of us are signing on to serve.

We've become extremely well conditioned to a weirdly reflexive Political Correctness that requires a basic hypocrisy.

We claim to hate The Government, but we love trying to make something useful of it.

And we profess an undying love for the Military, but we hate the tho't of wearing the uniform ourselves.

And God help you if you ever say anything like that in public.

Like my mom always said, "Conform and be dull".

The Real America

(hat tip = Crooks and Liars)

Pick 'Em

When it comes to policy regarding the US Economy, what we hear over and over from "conservatives" is that the Gubmint shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers.  And yet, here's a nearly unanimous GOP saying they'll continue subsidizing fossil fuels at a rate of 6-1 over alternative fuels.  And they'll do it in spite of what their pets over at DoD ask for every time they get a chance.

From Wonkette:

We remember a time when if “the generals” wanted solid-gold ballwashers, they got solid-gold ballwashers! But now, it seems, the Republican members of the House are a little more frugal. Oh, not for the important stuff, like building East Coast Star Wars installations that the Pentagon doesn’t want — no, that they will get. But for stupid stuff, like biofuels to power their infernal machines, and this:

The Conaway amendment included in the fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4310) was meant to limit the Defense Department’s participation in an interagency agreement with the departments of Energy and Agriculture to spend $510 million to construct biorefineries capable of producing “drop-in” biofuels for the use by the Navy in its ships and jets, according to a summary.

Seems like the whole world is waiting for us lead on this shit, and it looks like we're just standing around with our dicks in our hands, wishing it was 1965 again so we didn't have to worry so much about all this complicated stuff.

More from The Burrill Report.