Tomb

Finally, after 22 years, an International consortium is going to entomb the remains of the Chernobyl reactor. Russia really should have stepped up and done something about this sooner, now that it has huge income from gas and oil, but at least it is finally getting done. After shoring up the hastily-built sarcophagus that was erected after the disaster, the new plan is to build a giant dome and slide it over the entire ruin.

For years, the original iron and concrete shelter that was hastily constructed over the reactor has been leaking radiation, cracking and threatening to collapse. The new one, an arch of steel, would be big enough to contain the Statue of Liberty.

Once completed, Chernobyl will be safe, said Vince Novak, nuclear safety director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development which manages the $505 million project.

The new shelter is part of a broader $1.4 billion effort financed by international donors that began in 1997 and includes shoring up the current shelter, monitoring radiation and training experts.

The explosion at reactor No. 4 on April 26, 1986 was the world's worst nuclear accident, spewing radiation over a large swath of the former Soviet Union and much of northern Europe. It directly contaminated an area roughly half the size of Italy, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

In the two months after the disaster, 31 people died of radioactivity, but the final toll is still debated. The U.N. health agency estimates that about 9,300 will eventually die from cancers caused by Chernobyl's radiation. Groups such as Greenpeace insist the toll could be 10 times higher.

As usual, the media cannot get this right. People do not die from radioactivity. They may die from radiation exposure. Regardless, the RBMK reactor design of the Chernobyl facility was, despite Soviet claims, a weapons reactor with an inherently unstable design. It should not have been used for electricity production and should certainly not have been operated in the manner it was.

I Forget… Which One Stands For “Change”?

Finally, something that would make the Democratic campaign new and interesting! Clinton to Obama: Let's debate like Lincoln

Sen. Hillary Clinton called for a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with no moderator against her rival, Sen. Barack Obama, who says no more debates are needed before the May primaries.

In a TV interview to air Sunday, Obama flat-out denied any possibility that he would take part in a debate with Clinton before the next big round of primaries.

Shortly after maintaining that he isn't "ducking" debates with his Democratic rival, the Illinois senator admitted that the two hopefuls are "not going to have debates between now and Indiana."

Voters in Indiana and North Carolina will head to the polls May 6.

In the interview, Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Obama why he was ducking another one-on-one meeting.

"I'm not ducking one. We've had 21," Obama said. "We want to make sure we're talking to as many folks possible on the ground taking questions from voters."

How incredibly lame from Obama. This is the complete repudiation of the claim he represents any "new moment" in American politics. Ironically, he is now running as the "establishment" candidate. This would be fine were he crushing Clinton, but Obama's weaknesses are many and varied, and have directly contributed to this prolonged nomination battle. If Obama had the skills necessary to take on Clinton in a one-on-one-flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants debate he could end this race here and now.

He doesn't have such skills. In fact, when forced off of his prepared material he has shown himself prone to spectacular pratfalls of, almost, George Bush quality. (All he needs is Bush's penchant for stupid nicknames to equal the President on this score.) Given this truth, Obama's handlers have him taking the cowards way out and have him avoiding political risks at all costs. It isn't a stupid thing to do were this a general election campaign, where you just need to win no matter the way you do it. But in a nomination process, where you want to launch yourself into the general election with as much positive momentum as possible, this comes across as incredibly weak.

Obama is basically a mystery meat lunch special, which we are just supposed to take as is without asking a lot of questions about its origins (or what it will do to our insides after we consume it.) The more scrutiny he receives the less appetizing he becomes.

Cross-posted at The Iconic Midwest

Ding Dong

It sure ain't Avon calling. The Telegraph reports on a new trend in home sales parties. No, it isn't food storage systems, makeup, cookware or even sex toys. It's Tasers - marketed to women in home party settings.

First there were Tupperware parties. Then came cosy, at-home sales pitches to female consumers for everything from perfume to lingerie to Botox.

Miss Shafman, 35, is on a mission to persuade the fearful, but fashion-conscious, women of America to pack 50,000 volts of self-defence in their handbags.

"This device has changed my life," she told a room full of women in suburban Miami last week. "I no longer live in fear. I challenge you all with one question. How will you defend yourself if you’re attacked?"

The Arizona entrepreneur deployed her sales patter and folksy western charm as she praised the merits of the palm-sized C2 stun gun – available for $350 in a variety of fashionable colours, including the best-selling "hot pink".

Tasers are legal in all but eight states. I see nothing odd about this at all, incidentally. Tasers are small and light and easier to carry and handle than a gun in many cases. The only thing I'd caution here is that the devices should not give owners false confidence. You still have to be ready, willing and able to use the Taser when you need to. You also should not be putting yourself into risky situations just because you have one of these in your pocket. In other words, just possessing one grants no magic protection. Being armed with one - and being quite willing to use it when necessary - might make all the difference in the world.

Here's the product page for the C2 Taser.

Off Target

Michael Goodwin points out why the Obama camp is off target with its current racial rhetoric.

David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, sees white racism as a problem in the general election. "The vast, vast majority of voters who would not vote for Barack Obama in November based on race are probably firmly in John McCain's camp already," he told the National Journal.

You knew it had to come to this, but you hoped it wouldn't. "Race doesn't matter" was the chant of many Obama supporters when he was winning. But now that he has hit a wall with many voters on legitimate issues, race does matter, his supporters claim.

Never mind Obama's long relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose anti-American and anti-Semitic ties raise questions about Obama's willingness to confront bigotry. Never mind Obama's sneering comments that small-town Americans "cling to guns and religion" out of economic frustration. Never mind that Obama's plans for tax hikes and blame-America-first foreign policy fall on the left side of the political spectrum.

No, none of that could possibly matter.

For his campaign to blame voter prejudice is a poor excuse and a worse strategy. It also misses the point of Obama's stall.

After all, he is the same man who won in lily-white states like Iowa, Kansas, Idaho and Colorado. Are Ohio and Pennsylvania white voters more racist?

Also, whites have been more willing to vote for Obama than blacks have been to vote for Hillary Clinton. To liberals, blacks voting for Obama are expressing pride; whites voting for Clinton harbor racial prejudice, not gender pride or legitimate preference.

Yes, I had rather hoped this would not be played this way and it is a very bad move on the part of the Obama campaign. But then, it is a hallmark of David Axelrod's past - failed - political campaigns. Class warfare is his specialty. He tried "two New Yorks" with Fernando Ferrer in 2001 and "two Americas" with John Edwards in 2004. Both were spectacular failures.

That should make you wonder.

Losing History

There is a referendum today in Berlin. People are being given a chance to vote in a non-binding referendum on whether the city should close Tempelhof airport. The city planners have refused to be bound by the results, despite the public outcry that has forced the issue onto the ballot in the first place.

"Tempelhof is the pearl of the German capital," says Klaus Eisermann. 
Many Berliners feel strong nostalgia for Tempelhof airport

He has been working at Tempelhof airport for the last 44 years, and he knows every nook and cranny.

As he drives me around the vast airfield, the monolithic terminal building stretches out in front of us.

It is claimed that there are only two other buildings in the world bigger than Tempelhof - the Pentagon, and Ceausescu's palace in Bucharest.

"I'm really sad that they're going to shut down Tempelhof," says Mr Eisermann.

"It's such an easy airport to use and you can reach the city centre in 20 minutes - it's so simple and it's a beautiful historic building."

"Tempelhof survived World War II, it kept Berliners fed during the Soviet blockade of the city, but the authorities want to get rid of it. I can't understand it. It's a political decision which doesn't make any sense," he says.

On Sunday, Berliners will be able to give their verdict on the planned closure of Tempelhof airport. The referendum has become such a divisive issue that a big turnout is expected.

The city government is intent on shutting down the iconic airport, regardless of what the people want and are already publicly dismissing the voter's wishes. It's funny how soon they forget, isn't it? Tempelhof helped make sure that citizens of Berlin kept their right to choose for themselves during the Cold War.

Post war Germany was divided into three sections–the Allied part was controlled by the United States, Great Britain and France and other part by the Soviet Union. The city of Berlin, although located in the eastern Soviet half, was also divided into four sectors –West Berlin occupied by Allied interests and East Berlin occupied by Soviets. In June 1948, the Soviet Union attempted to control all of Berlin by cutting surface traffic to and from the city of West Berlin. Starving out the population and cutting off their business was their method of gaining control. The Truman administration reacted with a continual daily airlift which brought much needed food and supplies into the city of West Berlin. This Airbridge to Berlin lasted until the end of September of 1949—although on May 12, 1949, the Soviet government yielded and lifted the blockade.

When asked whether an airlift was even possible, General Curtis LeMay replied, "We can haul anything." And they did. Pilot Gail Halvorsen even made sure that candy and chewing gum for the children of Berlin were part of the effort.

Morning, With Frost

We had frost where I live this morning. These are pictures of the frost on my daughter's car.

Screw The Popular Vote, They’re Just A Herd, Anyway

A nasty, right wing thing to say? Not exactly. That is paraphrasing the words of Screamin' Howard Dean, the head of the Democratic National Committee. In an interview with the Financial Times, he expressed those feelings about the rank and file.

The Democratic party’s “superdelegates” have every right to overturn the popular vote and choose the candidate they believe would be best equipped to defeat John McCain in a general election, according to Howard Dean, chairman of the US Democratic National Committee……

….."It is not just the extra campaigning time – although that is an issue,” he said. “It is the healing time that is important. I know this because I went through it myself. [Your supporters] go to Iowa and knock on doors and spend their weekends in Pennsylvania. These are real investments and when your candidate doesn’t win it’s incredibly painful. It takes time to get over that.”

Mr Dean appeared confident that the uncommitted superdelegates would know what to do in early June even if he could not specify which yardstick they would use to select the winner. “Politics is a herd mentality,” he said. “There is a gestalt in politics when suddenly people see things in a synchronous way. Politically there will be some feeling at the end of this process that somebody is better than the other person in terms of taking on John McCain.” (Emphasis added)

Lovely sentiments from the head of the party, no? At this point, it is hard to hide the contempt the Democratic party leaders hold for the rank and file. It practically oozes out. Whether it is Obama and his slams on small town voters or the "people's choice" head of the DNC, the elitism is out there on full display.

You'd better hope your "herd" doesn't stampede right over you, Howie.

Note: I found this FT article via Hot Air who linked it as an "oh, by the way" to another point about Obama's penchant for revisionist history.

The Starving Peasants On The Far Horizon.

Mark Steyn has rather a lot to say about Time Magazines "Iwo Tree-ma" photo that I posted about yesterday. But the only thing the tree is good for is to block the view of the starving peasants.

Heigh-ho. In the greater scheme of things, a few dead natives keeled over with distended bellies is a small price to pay for saving the planet, right? Except that turning food into fuel does nothing for the planet in the first place. That tree the U.S. Marines are raising on Iwo Jima was most-likely cut down to make way for an ethanol-producing corn field: Researchers at Princeton calculate that, to date, the "carbon debt" created by the biofuels arboricide will take 167 years to reverse.

The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death. On April 15, the Independent, the impeccably progressive British newspaper, editorialized:

"The production of biofuel is devastating huge swaths of the world's environment. So why on Earth is the government forcing us to use more of it?"

You want the short answer? Because the government made the mistake of listening to fellows like you. Here's the self-same Independent in November 2005:

"At last, some refreshing signs of intelligent thinking on climate change are coming out of Whitehall. The Environment minister, Elliot Morley, reveals today in an interview with this newspaper that the Government is drawing up plans to impose a 'biofuel obligation' on oil companies … . This has the potential to be the biggest green innovation in the British petrol market since the introduction of unleaded petrol."

Etc. It's not the environmental movement's chickenfeedhawks who'll have to reap what they demand must be sown, but we should be in no doubt about where to place the blame – on the bullying activists and their media cheerleaders and weather-vane politicians who insist that the "science" is "settled" and that those who question whether there's any crisis are (in the designation of the strikingly nonemaciated Al Gore) "denialists."

Green is the new red. As always, read the whole thing, Steyn is in rare form over this one. The media might want to rethink their biased cheer-leading. The first victim of totalitarianism is freedom of the press.

Taxing Patience

The Wall Street Journal reports on Arizona governor Janet Napolitano's not-so-secret plan to deal with the falling real estate values and mortgage problems in that state: raise property taxes even more. Napolitano is not alone, many states are doing the same thing. While crying to Washington for money for struggling homeowners, state politicians are cheerfully planting a tax boot on the necks of those same homeowners.

Arizona has been hit hard hit by the real-estate bust, with the average home value down 17% in a year and a record number of foreclosures. So Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano has devised a clever way to revive the housing market: Raise property taxes.

Last week Ms. Napolitano vetoed a bill that would have made a two-year suspension of the state property tax permanent. "It's untimely. It's untenable. It's unwise," she said of her untimely and unwise veto. So as housing values slide, Arizonans next year will get walloped with an extra $250 million property tax bill.

Arizona is one of a growing list of states and big cities looking to raise taxes on homes to close budget gaps in 2008 and 2009. Housing values are expected to decline by $1.2 trillion this year, according to Global Insight Inc., an economic consulting firm, and that means tens of billions of dollars in lost taxes.

In recent weeks, Fairfax County in northern Virginia, Washington state, Chicago and Memphis have announced proposals to increase residential property tax rates to offset declining revenues. So at the very time that states and cities are begging for money from Washington to help distressed homeowners pay their mortgages, property tax hikes could push hundreds of thousands of homeowners under water.

So the states are choking their residents with tax hike after tax hike. Both Democrats running for their party nomination for President are promising huge spending which will require higher taxes. And Charlie Rangel has already laid out his plan to raise Federal taxes by one trillion dollars. And the economy is already shaky.

Anyone beginning to see the problem here, yet?

Floppy Truncheon?

A British man has been acquitted of all charges in a landmark case. 25-year old Stuart Kennedy will not have to display a floppy truncheon when he next delivers a strip-o-gram.

Three judges have ruled that a male stripper who dresses as a policeman can use a real truncheon in his act.

Stuart Kennedy, a student whose stage name is Sgt Eros, was arrested on his way to an engagement in Aberdeen by two female police officers.
 
They watched his performance in a city pub to confirm his explanation for wearing a police uniform before he was charged with carrying an offensive weapon.

A sheriff threw out the charge at a lower court amid widespread criticism of the Crown for pursuing the case, but prosecutors decided to appeal against the ruling.

They told the Appeal Court in Edinburgh at an earlier hearing that Mr Kennedy, 25, a genetics student and part-time strippagram, would not have been detained if his truncheon had been "floppy".

Men everywhere will be relieved that floppy truncheons are not required by British law.

Mobile Infantry

The late Robert A. Heinlein's vision of powered armor is rapidly approaching reality. A company in Utah has an operational powered exoskeleton and a contract with the US military to develop it even further.

Rex Jameson, one of his test engineers, has been trying out Jacobsen's 150lb XOS exoskeleton, a mechanised suit that shadows his every motion to give him the kind of strength and endurance usually reserved for Marvel comics.

The real life version does not have a flame thrower, like the one in Iron Man. But, thanks to its mechanical muscles, it is strong and moves seamlessly to mirror Jameson's every motion.

To show off his superhuman endurance, Jameson can lift a bar loaded with 200lb for hundreds of times. "As far as software engineering goes, this job is about as good as it gets," he says.

"We get to write programs and we see them working on actual robots, that's very exciting. I've had a lot of software jobs before this. This one is definitely the most fun."

Jameson works at Sarcos, a robotics company that was recently purchased by the defence giant Raytheon. Although the military is most interested in using this mechanical shadow to boost the strength and endurance of soldiers, others are too, from firemen to the wheelchair-bound.

The basic idea is simple. As Jameson moves his hand a sensor in exoskeleton's handle detects a force and the computer - on the back of his suit - calculates how to move the exoskeleton to minimise the strain on his hand as a series of valves controls the flow of high-pressure hydraulic fluid that act like tendons to drive the joints.

What is crucial is that, given a few points of contact - the feet and hands, in this case - the smart machine is able to interpret the intended movements of the person strapped into it and react accordingly, turning a nifty piece of robotics into a superhero suit. It has taken three prototypes to get the blend of speed, power and sensitivity just right.

They have a video of the exoskeleton at the link. It's fascinating and eerily like what Heinlein predicted back when he wrote Starship Troopers almost a half century ago now.

The (Rail) Road Less Traveled

Bill Thomas writes an article for the Washington Post today about an unusual hobby that he and A. L. Freed have been practicing for the last decade or so. That would be following old railroad right of ways in their travels. They have done this all across the country, the most recent outing in Texas.

My friend A.L. Freed is behind the wheel. I've been speaking at his public policy seminars since the early 1990s, and for the past decade have navigated our occasional out-of-town business trips, although "business" may be the wrong word, because the trips themselves are purely for fun, an excuse to forget about work for a few days and hit the road. On the first one, we drove a Land Rover from Omaha through the Sand Hills of northern Nebraska to a seminar in Denver, following railroad tracks the whole time. After that, whenever a program is scheduled outside of Washington, we fly part of the way then drive the rest along whatever train tracks we can find, some of which haven't seen a train in years.

Normally the shortest distance between two points would be a straight line, but dotted lines are what we always look for. On railroad maps, dotted lines indicate abandoned tracks, often just mounds of overgrown dirt where tracks used to be, and those can lead to some fairly incredible places.

A.L. and I had been talking about the Texas trip for weeks. Our ultimate destination is a Capitol Hill workshop for government scientists in Las Cruces, N.M., roughly a five-hour plane trip from Washington. But getting there in a hurry — or even knowing how to get there — isn't the idea.

IT'S EARLY FEBRUARY, and we're tooling along Fort Worth & Western tracks going to Brownwood, Tex., 150 miles southwest of Dallas. A.L., a former pro on the North American rally circuit, likes to drive, which is fine with me. In 10 years of traveling together, he's compiled an impressive record: no wrecks; only one speeding ticket; and we've never been stuck in the mud. After a recent trip through the Mississippi Delta, fishtailing over rain-soaked farm roads, we returned our car caked with dirt and debris.

"Where've you all been with this?" asked the rental agent.

"A White House seminar," A.L. said.

Many of the old right of ways have disappeared in recent years, some turned into bike trails, some used for other purposes. But Thomas and Freed have found enough still there to travel some unusual paths to places few people go these days.

Three Words Too Many From Time

Jonah Goldberg points out the pure, unadulterated propaganda Time Magazine pumped out for their celebration of Earth Day.

Time magazine recently doctored the iconic photo of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima in order to "celebrate" Earth Day. Instead of Marines valiantly struggling to lift the stars and stripes, they are depicted planting a tree.

No doubt Time's editors think they will be celebrated in poetry and song for generations to come for their high-minded cleverness. Still, if the symbolism wasn't clear enough, Time writer Bryan Walsh spells it out: "Green is the new red, white and blue."

There are any number of problems here, starting with the fact that this is simply a lie. Green is not the new red, white, and blue. Concern over climate change may be the most honorable and vital thing imaginable. But if "the red, white and blue" means anything, it means patriotism or love of country. Patriotism and environmentalism simply aren't synonymous terms. Two things can be good without being the same. Fatherhood and all-you-can-eat chicken wings, for example, don't describe identical phenomena.

Time should have left off the words "white and blue" and they would have been accurate in their assessment.

The yearning for a moral equivalent of war is an understandable desire, perhaps even noble in its intent. But it is not democratic. It is fundamentally authoritarian, which might explain why so many environmentalists envy China's ability to ban plastic bags without reference to a vote or a court or anything other than the will of the China's technocratic rulers. Indeed, the authors of "The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy" openly question whether the crisis of climate change should render liberal democracy obsolete. For some it seems the moral equivalent of war requires the moral equivalent of a police state.

Green is the new red. Go read it all. Goldberg hits it right on the head. I have posted about the increasingly authoritarian green movement for some time. Others have been pointing this out for quite some time as well.

Meanwhile, what Time is apparently unable to grasp is that there is heavy snow in the Dakotas and Minnesota. Or that the south polar ice extent is almost 2 million square kilometers greater that the average (which only goes back a very short time indeed.) 

Wright Place? Wrong Time.

ABC News is calling Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sudden public relations offensive a very bad thing - for Barack Obama.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's interview with PBS' Bill Moyers — to be broadcast Friday — (followed by a PR blitz that includes weekend appearances in Dallas and Detroit and a speech at the National Press Club in Washington Monday) vaults Wright back into the public eye after six weeks of silence.

Maybe he'll convince the public that he was misunderstood, his fiery words taken out of context. Or maybe (stop us if you think we're off) he's supplying oxygen and dry brush to the flames that have threatened to engulf Obama.

"When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public," Wright says, "that's not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they want to do."

He may be correct — but even trying to set the record straight ensures several more weeks of soundbites he and Obama don't get to choose.

"Barack Obama's biggest headache is back," Michael Saul writes in the New York Daily News.

"Wright, who for four decades built his reputation on straight talk and imperviousness to politicians, has been atypically quiet in recent weeks, canceling four appearances, declining all interview requests and bowing out of a news conference with other clergy," Manya A. Brachear writes in the Chicago Tribune.

That silence ends with a thud. The reverend wants context? As ABC's David Wright pointed out on "Good Morning America," his line about the chickens "coming home to roost" were actually referring to comments made by a former US ambassador, Edward Peck (who is white).

But: "Left out of the original sound bites broadcast on Good Morning America were Wright's version of how America was built on terror, his description of the United States 'as an arrogant, racist, military superpower,' and comments on the wealth or success of Oprah Winfrey, Colin Power, Condoleezza Rice and Tiger Woods," ABC's Brian Ross, Avni Patel, and Rehab El-Buri report.

The wrong time and place for Wright to be playing this. There will now be even more of Wright's "context" revealed. Like a kid picking at a scab, Wright does not know, apparently, when to simply leave it alone. How much damage has Wright already done to Obama and how much more will he do before this is all over? I think the answer is: a lot and a real lot.

Another Day, Another Scandal

It only takes the Washington Post until the third paragraph to name that party in this story about a mayor being arrested for trying to solicit a prostitute. How odd.

The mayor of District Heights was arrested early yesterday in the District after allegedly offering an undercover male police officer $40 for sex in a known prostitution area, authorities said.

James L. Walls Jr., 30, was arrested at 12:30 a.m. at Sixth and F streets NW, near Verizon Center. He was charged with solicitation for lewd and immoral purposes, police said. He was issued a citation and released.

Walls, who is single, was known as a rising star among young Democrats in Prince George's County. He was the youngest person elected mayor of District Heights — a community inside the Beltway with a population of about 6,000. He was elected mayor in May 2006; his term runs until 2010.

$40? Well, he certainly isn't Eliot Spitzer. The Post story does go on to describe some of Walls' supporters.

He was elected last year as vice president of tourism for the World Conference of Mayors, the Web site says. In 2006, he was selected as one of the most progressive leaders in the country younger than 40 by the People for the American Way Foundation.

Interesting definition of progressive.