Gina Rinehart Is A Bubble

The article should have been called "Gina Rinehart is bigger than a goddamned planetoid and probably smells like a toxic waste dump," but the author has more class than I.  I pray for the day when we get to see this waste of humanity, depleted of her INHERITED wealth, working at McDonald's, cleaning toilets, foraging roadkill for food, something soooo beneath her station, harassed every day, every step of the way by those she used to harass simply by being "Gina Rinehart, Obnoxious Blimp and second generation mining mogul."  Please let me see that day..  Zero Hedge.  Excerpts:

Last week she said:


If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself — spend less time drinking, or smoking and socializing and more time working.

Today she claimed that Australians should be willing to work for less than $2 a day:

Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart has criticised her country’s economic performance and said Africans willing to work for $2 a day should be an inspiration.

Ms Rinehart is said to make nearly A$600 (£393) a second.

The richest woman in the world is making an increasing number of public appearances, and speaking of increasingly controversial topics.

I wonder why.

It couldn’t be that she is becoming increasingly aggressive and controversial because her core business is in trouble, could it?

Marc Faber suggests so:
There have been four mega bubbles in the past 40 years. In the 1970s it was gold; in the 1980s it was the Nikkei, and in the 1990s it was the Nasdaq. Bigger than all of them, though, has been the iron ore bubble, a tenfold increase in prices in less than a decade.

Pop!  Motherfucker, Pop!  I wanna see her sweat!  And not her normal "my heart is beating, so you know I'm damp" kind of sweat, either.  You'd think with all that money she could pay for a less repulsive exterior to hide her repulsive interior.  The epitome of a horrible human..  Dis.

Gusting.

Latest WuJo From Clif High

In Clif's podcast, he describes a bit of the already-present and upcoming (various!) complexities of life here on Earth in the upcoming nine months.  He's certain it's gonna get hairy, so don't say you weren't warned.  The good news?  The closer we get to whatever this is, there does to be more optimisim expressed within the data Clif is processing.  Hope for humanity type optimisim.  This is heartening, as more people seem to be waking up.  And not a moment too soon!

Run time is about 56 minutes.  I will listen again.

Note:  When at the download link, choose the top report:  The one that doesn't contain "$300." 

Hal David Has Died. Long Live Hal David!

We'd drive all over Taney County, every Sunday, in a 1972 Chrysler New Yorker.  My grandparents, mom, sometimes dad, or an aunt or cousin or both and I would drive around, some roads being more familiar and/or dangerous than others, of course.  Grandpa drove.  Always.

And he chain smoked while driving.  Also; Always.   He only cracked the windows, never fully rolling them down.  Between the curves and the second-hand smoke, I was usually car-sick moments after our drive started.  Unpleasant.

The best part of the day was always Dionne Warwicke on the eight track.  My grandparents loved her, and so did I.  As they were, at the time, in their late 60's, it was the only way I ever thought of my grandparents as being "cool" in any way.  They had both volumes of her greatest hit collections.  Within the confines of that car, I can't remember hearing any other artist played.  Dionne Warwicke made nausea much more tolerable, and in some cases, cured it completely.

When I say "Dionne Warwicke," I am also referring to the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Ms. Warwicke being their Muse.  There are many, many other talented artists that worked both with Bacharach and David together and alone, but I prefer to focus on my favorites.  In no particular order, here they are:

Thank you, Hal David, for creating some amazing pop perfection.  Your contributions are greatly appreciated.  Greatly.

Taibbi Talks: You Listen

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, or How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill.  Rolling Stone.  Excerpts:
..Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America's federal borrowing. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation," he declared. "Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love." Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it's going to burn our children alive.
And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.
By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

The unlikeliness of Romney's gambit isn't simply a reflection of his own artlessly unapologetic mindset – it stands as an emblem for the resiliency of the entire sociopathic Wall Street set he represents. Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect front man for Wall Street's greed revolution. He's not a two-bit, shifty-eyed huckster like Lloyd Blankfein. He's not a sighing, eye-rolling, arrogant jerkwad like Jamie Dimon. But Mitt believes the same things those guys believe: He's been right with them on the front lines of the financialization revolution, a decades-long campaign in which the old, simple, let's-make-stuff-and-sell-it manufacturing economy was replaced with a new, highly complex, let's-take-stuff-and-trash-it financial economy. Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of "creative destruction," and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America's rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt.
Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation's wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He's Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up paying for the acquisition.

If he were a drug addict and much more hilarious, Matt Taibbi might be mistaken for the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson. As it is, he may be the best American political journalist working today. Maybe among The Best Political Writers Ever. Only time will tell. Read the whole thing.

Ventura talks 9/11, makes Fox idiot leave stage

Jesse Ventura made brian kilmeade scared, so he had to leave.  Too bad he didn't make him a broken nose, too.  Video from You Tube, via We Must Know.

Giant filament explosion erupts on the Sun: massive CME to glance Earth’s magnetic field – Earth dodges dangerous bullet

Space Weather, via The Extinction Protocol, with video at the link:

September 2, 2012 – SPACE – Chance of flares: Sunspot AR1560 has more than quadrupled in size since August 30th, and now the fast growing active region is directly facing our planet: movie. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of M-class solar fares during the next 48 hours. A filament of magnetism curling around the sun’s southeastern limb erupted on August 31st, producing a coronal mass ejection (CME), a C8-class solar flare, and one of the most beautiful movies ever recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory: The explosion hurled a CME away from the sun traveling faster than 500 km/s (1.1 million mph). The cloud, shown here, is not heading directly toward Earth, but it could deliver a glancing blow to our planet’s magnetic field on or about September 3rd. This date is preliminary and may be changed in response to more data from coronagraphs on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). – Space Weather

Jon Stewart Celebrates Clint Eastwood’s ‘Fistful Of Awesome’

In a special Friday night Republican National Convention edition of The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart took on Clint Eastwood and the now-infamous empty chair. 


Found it on Raw Story.  Video at their link: 

Guest Post: The End Of The Euro: When Will It Happen?

This time, it's Italy.  Zero Hedge:

In Rome, the main post office is in a majestic old building with imposing architecture. It was a procession just to buy a few stamps. Stand here, stand there. Take this ticket, fill out this form, print that form. What should have taken 10 seconds took 10 minutes; the process it took to get there was a real eye opener. They have all these fancy IT systems, but we get the sense that this ‘technology’ just gives the post office a veneer of modernity and sophistication without actually being necessary or adding any value. This is typical of bureaucracy: take a simple task, make it unnecessarily complicated, then spend a bunch of money on technology that makes it even more complicated. Given this experience, Italy has clearly mastered the art of unnecessarily complicating the simple. It’s no wonder they have serious problems paying the bills. Moreover, the country’s demographic challenges indicate the country’s fiscal situation cannot improve. Robust economies are productive… and productivity is typically not associated with the elderly. Italy has one of the world’s oldest populations concurrent with one of the lowest birth rates. This trend drives an unsustainable fiscal quandary: bloated public sector bills with lots of old people to pay pensions to, coupled with a rapidly shrinking population devoid of young workers to pay taxes.

At this point, there can be little doubt that Italy will exit the eurozone... most likely voluntarily. A return to the lira means the Italian government (probably to be headed by Berlusconi once again)(ugh) would be free to print currency at will. This is the only reasonable solution remaining. When will it happen? Probably sooner than we think.

They're Doing It Again..

Some people never tire of talking out of or leading with their asses.. 

Leader of Army Plot to Assassinate Obama Apparently Attended the 2008 Republican Convention as a Page  Sigh..  Gawker.  Excerpts:

Isaac Aguigui, the Army private and alleged ringleader of a plot to assassinate Barack Obama and "take over" Ft. Stewart in Georgia, apparently served as a page at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota. That's his mug shot after he was arrested for the alleged murder of Pvt. Michael Roark on the left. At right is a 2008 Reuters photo with the caption: "Republican National Convention page Isaac Aguigui watches from the edge of the floor at the start of the first session of the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota September 1, 2008."

Republican Senate Candidate Says Daughter’s Out-of-Wedlock Pregnancy is ‘Similar’ to Rape  Also from Gawker:


Meet Tom Smith, the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania. Smith has never had to deal with a situation as difficult as his daughter being impregnated by a rapist. But he's had to deal with, in his words, "something similar": his daughter becoming pregnant after consensual sex with a man to whom she wasn't married.


Coulter: I ‘laugh and laugh and laugh’ at unemployed youths  And you thought the GOP wasn't inclusive as a party:  Hell, they even give Drag Kings like Arthur Coltrane a microphone and air time!

Top 5 Fibs In Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech   Oh Sexy Dumbass, You do understand that people can also use the Internets to fact check don't you?

Boehner Says Out Loud He Hopes Blacks and Latinos 'Won't Show Up' This Election  Oh Boner, shouldn't you be obstructing some legislation or crying about MTV cancelling Jersey Shore?

New AZ Law ‘Pregnancy Begins Two Weeks Before Conception’ Not Onion Article   Are they all trying to out-crazy each other?  Seems to be..  Stepping up to the plate, Arizona Representative Kimberly Yee..  And she knocks it out of the park!  Amazing for pregnant womyn, yeah?  Or maybe she's only half pregnant..

  2012:  The Year of Batshit Crazy.  It's gonna get a whole lot worse before it even gets a little better..

Back From Vacation.

Needed it.

M5.1 hit Fukushima JMA seismic intensity 4 “Live cam recorded Fukushima plant shaken”

I bet that was some serious on-site excitement.  Fukushima Diary.  Bonus "That's a lot of shaking for a 5.1 earthquake!" video of the plant during the quake.

The People’s Top 200 From the First 15 Years of Pitchfork

Power to the People!  The People pick the best CD's!  The best "Best Of" list I've ever seen!  And it's not just because I have over 50 of the 200 CD's mentioned, or that Radiohead has three of the Top 10..  It that and so much more..  Here's the Top 20, and the rest is at the link.  Enjoy!

1 Radiohead OK Computer

2 Radiohead Kid A

3 Arcade Fire Funeral

4 Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

5 The Strokes Is This It

6 Radiohead In Rainbows

7 Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

8 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion

9 Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

10 Sufjan Stevens Illinois

11 LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver

12 Interpol Turn On the Bright Lights

13 Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago

14 The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin

15 The xx The xx

16 Arcade Fire The Suburbs

17 Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica

18 Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes

19 The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

20 Radiohead Amnesiac

So many good albums to choose from..  I have some shopping to do!

More hospital food will be from contaminated area

Unbelievable.  But not really.  Fukushima Diary:

Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is spreading the propaganda called “Support by eating”.


They are pushing food from contaminated area even to hospital and senior citizens’ home.

On 8/22/2012, MAFF sent an official request to Public Interest Incorporated Association “Japan medical kyushoku (Lunch) association” to consume more food from the contaminated area.

In order to improve the consumption of food from disaster area, we request you to actively purchase and consume food from disaster area for medical facilities and nursing facilities.

When you are hospitalized, you can not choose the origin of food.

Wow.  What upside down times we live in.

Tropical Storm Issac poses threat to southern coast of Florida

Stay mellow, Issac; I have some friends in Key West who'd sure appreciate it..  Weather Watch, via The Extinction Protocol:

August 23, 2012 – CARIBBEAN - The churning center of Tropical Storm Isaac spun over tiny islands at the eastern entrance to the Caribbean, where many seafront bars and restaurants stubbornly remained open Wednesday evening as lightning and thunder crackled and choppy surf slapped against piers and seawalls. U.S. forecasters said Isaac was likely to approach Hispaniola, the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, as a hurricane late today or early Friday after intensifying over the Caribbean Sea. It was predicted to move on to Cuba as a tropical storm and perhaps eventually menace Florida as a hurricane. By late Wednesday, the storm was 270 miles southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, with maximum sustained winds of 45 m.p.h. Isaac was moving west at 20 m.p.h., the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters also said a tropical depression formed far out in the Atlantic Ocean and was expected to strengthen into a tropical storm today. It was about 1,045 miles west of the Cape Verde islands. But most eyes were on Isaac. The storm unleashed downpours on Guadeloupe, said local chief meteorologist Norbert Aouizerats. In Martinique, officials warned of swollen rivers and flooding. Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit urged people to stay home from work Wednesday. “I want us all to be safe,” he said. “I don’t want lives to be lost.” Military authorities in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, canceled several days of pretrial hearings in the case of five prisoners charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They also planned to evacuate about 200 people, including legal teams and relatives of 9/11 victims. In the foothills of Dominica’s Morne Aux Diables volcano, Tess Hunneybell, owner of Manico River Eco Resort, said most of the day was “weirdly quiet’ after she and others wrapped the resort’s signature tree houses in tarpaulin and nailed shut louvre doors. In Puerto Rico, Gov. Luis Fortuno declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard. He canceled classes and closed government agencies. Federal officials also closed the popular San Felipe del Morro castle. The storm was expected to pass south of Puerto Rico today. The U.S. Coast Guard closed all ports in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to incoming commercial ships. The U.S. Virgin Islands commissioner of public works, Darryl Smalls, said crews distributed sandbags to residents in St. Croix, where schools and government offices will close today. St. Kitts also announced similar closures for Wednesday. -Weather Watch


There's a video update at the link:  Issac has not strengthened.  C'mon now, Issac.  Keep it together..

Conjoint (Conjoined) Cucumber From Fukushima

"..So you see, kids?  There's nothing to be worried about:  Radiation doesn't kill things; It just horribly mutates them!"  Fukushima Diary, with Siamese cucumber hotness photo at the link..

Mutation has finally been recognized academically. (cf. ‘Severe abnormalities’ found in Fukushima butterflies [BBC])


Conjoint cucumber was found in Sukagawa city Fukushima. It’s about 60km from Fukushima plant.

In the morning of 8/18/2012, It was found in the kitchen garden of Mr. Ohno (60). He thinks it’s because of the intense heat and lack of rain. (No..)

60 kilometers from Fukushima, growing cucumbers.  That's rough.  On the up side, maybe by next harvest, the cucumbers will have superpowers allowing them to harvest themselves.

Louisiana sinkhole saltier the deeper it gets

I have no idea what this means.  At least one conspiritard thinks Assumption Parish is sinking into the Gulf.  I'm sure Roland Emmerich would like that, but probably not.  One way or the other, the hole's still getting bigger..  The Examiner.

The giant Louisiana sinkhole’s water is far saltier the deeper the hole gets, state environmental regulators said Monday.


“Salinity estimates based on water samples taken earlier this month from a large sinkhole in northern Assumption Parish suggest the water becomes far saltier, even more than in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the deeper the hole gets, state environmental regulators said Monday,” reports David Mitchell for The Advocate.

Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality officials said those test results are pending might indicate the source of the sinkhole water.

“We should be getting it this week,” Chris Piehler, DEQ Inspection Division administrator said Monday.

The expanding sinkhole is now approximately 427 feet deep, less than 300 feet from the top of Texas Brine's salt cavern that stretches down another 2,800 feet in the Napoleonville Salt Dome. Officials say they expect the sinkhole to continue growing.

It's always something with those Cajuns and their sinking land, right?

An Interesting Change Of Attitude Regarding Akin Within The Press..

Akin's supporters and talking heads keep blaming "MSNBC's(or CNN's) viewers" or "the liberal media" in general about Akin's troubles, but almost every reporter I've watched has challenged this stance as incorrect.  Republicans are the ones calling for Akin to step down, not Missouri Democrats.  I think the Democrats want him to stay in! 

Point being, this common Republican manipulation is being thrown back at them, and they're unsure what talking point to default to.  Republican cognitive confusion is fun to watch, and I hope more reporters seize on this tactic in future upcoming gaffes and scandals.

In The Second Largest Greek City, 1250 Companies Have Shuttered In 2012

Zero Hedge gets to the point:

According to Greek Thema, in Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece, so far in 2012, an unprecedented 1,250 companies have shut down. This means no jobs, no tax revenues, no money in circulation. A complete and total economic collapse.


So let us explain: while Greece and Europe may engage in endless check kiting Ponzi schemes: such as the most recent one, whereby Greece promises to pay Germany by issuing bills, bought by its banks, which in turn are repoed to the ECB via the ELA, with the cash used by the country to pay Germany and the ECB, even as Germany's contingent liabilities get more massive by funding the ECB's capital, the reality is that unless someone does some work, and creates real wealth, real money, instead of merely shuffling electronic cash from Point A to Point B, while the only thing increasing are German contingent liabilities, aka systemic debt, absolutely nothing will change.

And if nothing continues to not change, even perpetuating stasis will be unsustainable.  Greece is the world model:  They will be the first country to collapse, and ultimately, they won't be alone.  Can they come up with a workable internal solution to their accelerating implosion, or will anarchy rule their future?

Fall Music Preview 2012: The 24 Albums You Need to Hear

Courtesy Rolling Stone.  Not a bad list.  Not everything old should be new again, but Soundgarden should.

Fukushima Diary Is Offline..

Come back soon, Mochizuki..

Update:  He's back.  As single-minded as he's been regarding Fukushima news coverage, I was a little worried something might have "happened."  Thankfully, I'm just paranoid..

Akin staying in: ‘There is a cause here’ to spread God’s message

Looks like The Forehead's staying in, and It.  Is.  On!  A side note:  Wing sauce on your popcorn is an unexpected treat..  Or drizzle it with chocolate for dessert with a Pop!  Raw Story: (Audio at the link..)

Republican Rep. Todd Akin on Tuesday again vowed not give up his bid to be a Missouri senator because he said “there is a cause” to spread a message from his “creator God.”


During a radio interview with Fox News host Mike Huckabee, Akin was defiant as Republicans were calling for him to exit the race after he suggested that women who were victims of “legitimate rape” could not become pregnant.

“I want to make things absolutely clear,” he told Huckabee. “And that is, we’re going to continue with this race for the U.S. Senate. We’ve given it a lot of thought, and the first thing we thought we had to do — we had some offended some people, we tried to respond to that and let people know that we didn’t mean anybody or to take rape in any way less than very, very seriously.”(Who else is in there, Toddy?  Is there someone else hiding in your shirt?)

“But following that, I’ve had a chance now to run through a primary and the [Republican] Party people said when you win the primary, we’ll be with you. Well, they were with us and then I said one word in one sentence in one day and everything changed.”


Akin added that the “defense of the unborn” was as important to talk about as “the Obama-McCaskill-induced crisis of jobs and the economy.” 

“It’s also appropriate to recognize a creator God, whose blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the very source of American freedom,” the Republican congressman asserted. “And that part of the message, I feel, is missing. And I think that’s something that we need to encourage people and to let people remember in their hearts what it is that makes America such a great nation. And life is very much a part of that whole thing.” (Psst.. I think he intended to say "pre-life," not "life.")

“And that’s the reason why we’re going to continue, because I believe there’s a cause here and that there’s a part of the message that’s missing and a lot of people feel left out of the parties.” (Did he just position himself to continue his campaign if the Republicans can get him off the ballot?  I could totally see Toad staying in to wreck his former Republican friends..  Totally..  He would definitely be "That guy.")

Akin has(had..) until 5 p.m. on Tuesday to step aside. After that, a court order would be required to remove his name from the ballot.

Already riveting:  Could this be the biggest political circus outside the Presidential race?  What's everyone's next move?  Shh..  Clare..  Just watch..  Popcorn?  I drizzled chocolate on it..

Deutsche Bank under investigation for business with Iran

Too Big To Fail also means "Prosecute."  Probably.  Americablog:

Not to worry though because it's painfully clear after the crisis that the financial industry is the law, so little will come of this. Now that the US Department of Justice has taken a pass on prosecuting Wall Street for the 2008 banking crisis, it's hard to say what a bank has to do in order to be held fully accountable for their actions.

U.S. prosecutors are investigating Deutsche Bank and several other global banks over business linked to Iran, Sudan and other nations currently under international sanctions, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The U.S. Justice Department and the Manhattan District Attorney's office are investigating the banks for allegedly using U.S. branches to move billions of dollars in Iran-linked transactions, according to the report, citing unnamed law enforcement officials.

The investigation into Deutsche Bank is at an early stage and so far there is no suspicion the Germany-based institution moved money on behalf of Iranian clients through American operations after 2008, when a policy loophole allowing such maneuvering closed, the Times reported.

Deutsche Bank decided in 2007 it would "not engage in new business with counter parties in countries such as Iran, Syria, Sudan and North Korea and to exit existing business to the extent legally possible," a spokesman told Reuters on Saturday. He declined to comment further.

Equally unsettling is the NY Times report that our "allies" in Iraq (including those with deep ties to the government) are also finding lucrative business and banking partnerships with Iran.

In reality show terminology; Guh!  It's like that bank and that country are frenemies!  They hate each other in public, but help each other out and call each other all the time!  You know, like when the cameras aren't rolling or the Government isn't regulating..

Do not underestimate the severity of the Fukushima nuclear crisis: interview

Excerpts from The Mainichi:

Before her retirement in 2000 from the University of Bremen in Germany, Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake had been an experimental physicist who some 30 years ago had analyzed data on nuclear bomb survivors and warned of the dangers of low-level and internal exposure to radiation. Since 2004, she has been the chair of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), a Belgium-based civic organization founded in 1997 independent of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and various governments. In 2003 and 2010, the ECRR released recommendations on radiation risk assessment methods.

..
Mainichi: Some people claim that the stress from worrying about radiation is a much bigger health hazard than radiation itself, while others express concern over the effect that extreme reactions can have on economic activity. What are your thoughts on that?


Schmitz-Feuerhake: The argument that panic is a bigger health hazard than radiation is one that's used all the time. The same argument was used in Germany after the Chernobyl accident, but it's one that lacks a scientific basis.

Isn't people's health, including that of unborn children, more important than economic activity? Of course, it's not good to panic without any information. We must measure radiation levels in our environment and food, and get a grasp on our individual levels of exposure. Based on that, we must try to learn what the information means.
Mainichi: How would you evaluate the way the Japanese government has handled the crisis?

Schmitz-Feuerhake: I praise the government for designating the area within a 20-kilometer radius from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant as a no-entry zone. That it set annual radiation levels of 20 millisieverts as a standard for evacuation is understandable for a government that was unprepared for a large-scale nuclear disaster. But it's being grossly irresponsible by reactivating nuclear reactors and trying to shift the public's attention towards "recovery."
With the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and past atmospheric nuclear tests, the total volume of radioactive material released was clear. In the case of the Fukushima crisis, however, we still don't know how much radioactive material has been released. Nuclear fuel that far exceeds the nuclear bombs in both quality and quantity remain in very vulnerable conditions, and it's unclear whether it will be possible to retrieve them safely in the future. While the amount of radioactive material being released may be far less than immediately after the disaster began, the reactors still continue to release these materials. The government needs to recognize the gravity of this situation.

It might help if other governments(Any Other Government) step up and say something..  Anything..  But we all know that won't happen, either.  Nobody has any suggestions, any directives, or any volunteers for cleanup, for that matter. The global non-reaction to this ongoing crisis remains the most stunning aspect of the last 17 months.  It's quiet;  Too quiet.  Deadly quiet, to be exact..

Scott Brown calls on Todd Akin to quit after ‘legitimate’ rape remark

Since today's Republicans only listen to other Republicans..  Raw Story.  Excerpts(Video at the link):

Republican Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown on Monday called on his party’s Missouri Senate candidate to drop out following his claim that women who were victims of “legitimate” rape could not get pregnant.


“As a husband and father of two young women, I found Todd Akin’s comments about women and rape outrageous, inappropriate and wrong,” Brown said in a statement. “There is no place in our public discourse for this type of offensive thinking. Not only should he apologize, but I believe Rep. Akin’s statement was so far out of bounds that he should resign the nomination for U.S. Senate in Missouri.”
..
“Congressman’s Akin comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong,” presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney told The National Review. “Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive.”


Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) said that he also found Akin’s comment “offensive and reprehensible.”
And:
Update (11:30 a.m. ET): Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin suggested that Republicans should reconsider Akin’s nomination.


“There’s no sugar-coating or whitewashing this. It wasn’t a ‘gaffe.’ It was ignorant, garbled nonsense,” Malkin wrote. “The question for Republicans in Missouri is whether sticking by self-inflicted-wounded Akin is more important than securing a U.S. Senate majority.” (It's cute that Lulu acts like she's never heard Akin talk before, isn't it?)

Update (2:15 p.m. ET): New Mexico Senate candidate Heather Wilson (R) called on Akin to withdraw.

“As a woman and a mother, I found Representative Akin’s comments this weekend to be sickening and deeply offensive. There is no such thing as ‘legitimate rape.’ His remarks undermine his ability to command the respect necessary for leadership and he should step aside,” Wilson said in a statement.

And all it took was one super outrageous comment..

This only comes as a shock to anyone not familiar with either Akin himself, or any other Tea Party anti-abortion candidate.  This is just a window into his mind.. 

Hi America:  Welcome to the nightmare that is Missouri politics.  As of today, Akin is ahead in the polls.  That should change by the next polling cycle, but I don't know..  Some of my neighbors are super dumbasses..  No Republican pol seems to be too stupid for Missouri..  Please prove me wrong Missourians..

Here's The Opening Sequence For A Freaktastic SyFy Horror Movie..

Millions of larval creatures of unknown origin (even to biologists) washing up on Hawaiian beaches, aggressive or active enough to crawl on surfboards and surfers..  Where are they from?  A mid-Pacific trench?  Fukushima?  Space?  Other dimensions?  Andy Dick's last pool party?  It's not Sharktopus, but hey, it could be a nice little paycheck..  Plus a celebrity cameo by both Deborah Gibson and Tiffany!  Working title:  Crabtopus Vengeance:  Humanity Skitters.

Sinkhole Swells; Swallows - Seriously!

Giant Louisiana sinkhole expands to 526-feet and swallows a BOAT (but the two clean-up workers in it were rescued just in time).  Things is not kosher.  Daily Mail. Excerpts:

A ginormous 400-foot deep sinkhole in Louisiana is expanding and today swallowed a boat.


Two clean-up workers who were in the boat had to be rescued before they too disappeared into the watery mass, which today grew by another 50ft, authorities said.

The vessel was tied to a tree on the south west side of the site as the workers cleaned up diesel in the sinkhole.

The piece of land where the tree was standing sunk into the growing pool of water, pulling the boat in with it.


The workers were rescued by air boat and did not suffer any injuries but all clean up operations at the site have now been suspended until further notice due to concerns over safety.
'Early this morning they started the clean up operation of the diesel,' said John Boudreaux, director of Office of Emergency Preparedness for Assumption Parish.

'Two of the workers were in a small John's boat and had a rope skimmer. The boat was tied to trees but that edge slouched and basically the boat started to go in with it. There was an air boat nearby and they were rescued as the trees went in and took the boat in too.'

The gaping hole now measures about 526-feet from northeast to southwest and 640-feet from northwest to southeast.
..
Scientists said at a community meeting last Tuesday the sinkhole might be related to a brine cavern owned by Houston-based Texas Brine Co. contained within an underground salt dome.
It has been reported that local officials at Texas Brine have known since at least January 2011 that there have been problems with the structural integrity of a brine cavern that was plugged in June 2010. Officials did not mention those issues at the meeting.

'It's what I've been saying all along, that they've been hiding things,' Rousseau said. 'I think our local officials are trying to do the best they can, but I think they're being hindered by the higher-ups hiding things.'

Rousseau said he was especially worried after a parish official had him fill out a form asking him to list his next of kin last Thursday morning.

'That's a little disturbing to me. They said it's in case they can't reach us to evacuate. But I mean, come on. They can reach everyone,' he said.

Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Napoleonville, said he wanted more transparency and answers from the Office of Conservation. He said he had no idea about structural issues within the brine cavern until he read about them in the paper.

'There is a serious lack of competence now in the state, and we knew nothing. Nothing. Why did they close the mine? We didn't get any answers. It's a real lack of competence now,' Harrison said.

Hey, Representative Harrison, this is the logical end result of your party's "let corporations regulate themselves" approach.  Hiding potential dangers and obfuscating the actual risks.  Now those abstract dangers have become real and affect your district.  Still feeling the same about gutting the DNR or EPA?