President Obama, Chuck Krauthammer, Iran’s uranium, and the French

Any loyal Rebel reader knows that Charles Krauthammer is often the focus of snarky posts and sometimes finds himself as the butt of jokes for the positions he espouses and the hyperbole that spills from his brain. But today, in a first for Rebel, we will actually agree with Chucky K’s analysis!

Pick your jaw up off the floor. Every dog has his day, and even broken clocks can show the right time if you wait long enough.  The Kraut Hammer is known as a foreign policy heavyweight (in addition to his primary job as shill for the neo-con agenda), so it should be no surprise that the question we find ourselves in agreement over is one of international politics, namely Iran’s stubborn obsession with building The Bomb.

Here’s the article from RCP.

The news came out this week that (surprise!) Iran has been less than forthcoming regarding its uranium enrichment project and nuclear program. This was announced September 25, while President Obama was in Pittsburgh for the G20 meetings. However, it seems that Obama (as well as Sarkozy of France and Brown of England) had this information the day before, when Obama was busy becoming the first President to chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. The meeting was focused on nuclear weapons, specifically disarmament. Seems like the perfect time to mention a rogue nation moving forward with its own nuclear proliferation program, right?

Wrong.

President Obama chose not to bring up the news that Iran had been hiding the existence of an illegal uranium enrichment facility in the region of Qom. Why? Because, according to White House officials, our President did not want to “dilute” the issue of nuclear disarmament with news of illegal nuclear proliferation.

Isn’t that kind of the same issue? Two sides of the same coin, maybe?

France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy wanted Obama to use his platform before the entire U.N. Security Council to drop the bombshell news. He was livid when Obama held back. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the U.K. also expected these latest transgressions by Iran to be mentioned. Obama didn’t mention this illegal activity though. He held back so that the news about Iran wouldn’t overshadow the hard-fought victory he had won for nuclear disarmament.

But if you get a bunch of countries to promise that someday in the future they will think about the possibility of destroying their arsenals of nuclear weapons, while simultaneously Iran and North Korea work ever closer to bringing more of these weapons into existence, then what, exactly, is the point?

There is no way to create Obama’s dream of a “nuclear-free world” unless all countries decide to forsake these weapons. Obama had a chance to ram that point home during his performance at the U.N. Security Council meeting, but he didn’t. He held back so that the meeting would look more successful than it really was. That’s not leadership, that’s image control, public relations. That’s not what we expect from the leader of the free world.

When the French are pissed at you for not being tough enough, you know you screwed up. And when you have Charles Krauthammer and Rebel in agreement against you, you must have made one hell of a big mistake.

What’s Wrong With America?

This disgusting display from a woman at a recent townhall:

Newsflash: Yelling “heil Hitler” anywhere isn’t cool, but yelling it at an Israeli guy who was simply talking about Israel’s health care system is a whole new level of ignorance.

Rethinking health care

By Chief Contributor Frederic J. Rohner

I was all ready to post the following idea regarding health care this morning when, to my utter shock and surprise, I read this piece from the Huffington Post (via RealClearPolitics) in which contributor Bill Maher basically echoes the exact sentiment I will present to you.

Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait. Done? Good.

Why is it that health care is a for profit industry? How is a doctor any different than a police officer or a firefighter? All tend to us in times of emergency, albeit in varying degrees. All describe their occupations as “callings” more than just a way to make a buck. All serve the public good, and as such, none should be for profit businesses.

With all the debate raging and centered around health care and the prospect of “socialized medicine,” the thought occurred to me that we really must rethink health care and the way the entire industry is constructed. Critics of “socialized medicine” and the “single payer option” have pointed to the fear of government bureaucrats getting between them and their doctors, but isn’t that what is already happening? Why is a corporate bureaucrat any different or more desirable than one from the government? If doctors come to be thought of in the same vein as police officers, firefighters, and even soldiers– that is, government employees who serve the public–then why would we need paper pushers to decide who gets what coverage, who gets denied, or who has to die waiting for treatment? Think of it this way: does a police officer demand payment from you for arresting the person who mugged you? Do you have to fill out pages of paperwork before your house fire is extinguished?

No. So then why do we currently do these things for the people who revive, cure and heal us from knife wounds, broken bones, and third degree burns?

You want to cut costs for health care? Then stop making money off of it. You want to expand health coverage? Then make it truly accessible for all, make it non-profit. Don’t take over the insurance companies, take over the hospitals.

The only entity or person hurt by this would be the insurance companies and the people who make money from human suffering.

And don’t give me that bullshit about stifling innovation. You mean to tell me that no innovations have been made in catching criminals? You really want to argue that firefighters are worse at putting out fires than they were twenty years ago?

A health insurance company is merely a parasitic middleman. It’s time to cut out the middleman. It’s time to rethink health care altogether.

James Taranto is shockingly, sickeningly self-righteous

James Taranto offers his take on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates at WSJ today. If you don’t feel like reading the article, here’s his position in a nutshell:

“Henry Louis Gates wasn’t a victim of racism because I was in a similar situation and I’m white. What’s the big deal? Get over it already.”

That’s basically it. Except there’s a few problems with the story related by Mr. Taranto. A) He wasn’t arrested. He was allowed to explain his predicament to the officers who arrived at the scene and that was the end of it. B) He wasn’t at his own fucking house. Taranto was staying at a friend’s home in Alexandria, he had a key, he had permission to be there, but a neighbor reported seeing a stranger in the backyard and called the police. Taranto was a stranger. The neighbor more or less did the right thing.

In Henry Louis Gates’ situation, he was not a stranger. He was entering his own home. He was in his own neighborhood. Let’s get one thing straight though, the police who were called to Gates’ house are not to be blamed for doing their jobs. Maybe they could have handled the situation better, maybe not, but the fact of the matter is that they were called to the home because of racism. And Henry Louis Gates was arrested as a result.

The neighbor who called the cops to Mr. Gates’ home is a racist who saw two black men trying to open a jammed door and assumed that they didn’t belong there, assumed that they were burglars, assumed they were strangers when in fact, one was her neighbor. The neighbor who called the cops on Mr. Taranto saw someone in their neighbor’s house who hadn’t been there before, a stranger, not a  neighbor.

The two situations could not be more different, but Mr. Taranto wants you to read them as the same so that he can argue that racism is dead.

The Military Industrial Complex actually loses for once

Fred Kaplan over at Slate has a great breakdown of the recent vote to scrap new production of more F-22’s, and what makes it so remarkable and amazing. It’s not often that the Military Industrial Complex loses out on what it wants, and it is also a rare occurrence to have politicians speak on the floor and transparently argue for their own self interest, but to read excerpts of speeches from the floor, that is exactly what happened yesterday.

From Kaplan’s piece:

“…it was a vote that reflected corporate contracts. The floor leaders of the faction in favor of more F-22s were Sens. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, where the F-22 is assembled, and Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, where parts of the plane are built. Joining this strange couple were such erstwhile doves as Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, which also hosts several F-22 contractors.”

But what’s the bottom line? Why don’t we need to make F-22’s anymore?

The F-22 is a hold over from the Cold War, when there was a much higher probability of being drawn into a war that would require the kind of air combat that F-22’s were designed for. Seeing as how the two wars we are fighting now have been almost entirely fought on the ground, the F-22 has become a very expensive piece of badass equipment that sits in a hangar and gets dusted off for air shows. Not to mention the fact that no U.S. soldier has been killed by enemy aircraft since 1951.

Oh yeah, and we’ll also be maintaining nearly 200 F-22’s just in case Russia wants to start something. And, production of the new hotness, the F-35, starts in 2010.

We’rrrrrrrrreeeeee Baaaaacccckkkkkkkk!

Rebel is now officially back! We took some time off to get away from the Blogosphere for a little while (kinda got sick of the hypocritical gushing over Obama as well as the hypocritical Obama bashing).

Break time is over, the time card has been punched, we are back.

Pundits and politicians, consider yourselves warned.

 

–Rebel Editorial Staff

What is biochar?

From CNN.

Researchers at the University of Georgia are working on a project that could help absorb and sequester CO2 while simultaneously enhancing crop yields for farmers. The substance is called biochar and to hear research engineer Brian Biben discuss it, it seems this could be the next great discovery in agriculture.

Here’s how it breaks down (pardon the pun): Researchers load organic material (things like wood chips, peanut shells, etc.) into a container and then cook it at temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees fahrenheit. A thermochemical process called pyrolysis transforms the organic matter and after a few hours, what is left is a charcoal-like substance that can be used as renewable fuel or to enrich soil for agriculture.

A lot of researchers are focused on using biomass for renewable fuel, but at the University of Georgia, the renewable fuel generated is secondary to the creation of biochar. For agriculture, biochar could be something of a magic bullet, or as scientists are calling it, “black gold.”

“Its high carbon content and porous nature can help soil retain water, nutrients, protect soil microbes and ultimately increase crop yields…Biochar [also] helps clean the air two ways: by preventing rotting biomass from releasing harmful CO2 into the atmosphere, and by allowing plants to safely store CO2 they pull out of the air during photosynthysis. “

And now for the most interesting part of the story, biochar isn’t exactly “new.” The substance created by scientists at the University of Georgia, closely resembles what is known as terra preta (Portuguese for black earth), an extremely fertile soil found in the Amazon basin created centuries ago by the indigenous tribes of the area. Terra preta consists of  half-burned wood and animal waste and is so rich that it has remained fertile for hundreds of years without the addition of any fertilizer.

Mexican drug lord on Forbes list

From Reuters:

“Mexico’s most wanted man Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, blamed for thousands of deaths in a drug war, has made it onto the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s richest people with an estimated $1 billion fortune.”

Looks like the War on Drugs that’s been going on for more than a quarter of a century has worked out really well…for “Shorty” at least.

Science is back. Plus, floating cities?

Both articles from CNN.

President Obama reversed George W. Bush’s policies towards stem cell research Monday. This means that federal funding will now be able to be applied towards this vital research which may be able to make drastic advances in the treatment of many now incurable diseases and injuries, from spinal trauma to cancer. This (hopefully) also marks an attempt by the new President to  seperate science from political ideology. We’ll see how that works out.

Also, engineers are discussing a prototype floating city to be located off the coast of California. The Seasteading Institute says it will use technology loosely based on oil rigs to create cities at sea built upon floating platforms. In addition to testing the limits of oil rig technology, the Seasteading Institute wishes to use the floating city to experiment with new forms of government. Weird.

Bobby Jindal is an idiot, and why volcano monitoring is important

Everyone has already piled on Bobby Jindal for his poor response to President Obama’s address of Congress. From his sing-song delivery and awkward smile, to the irony of a republican offering lessons learned from the disastrous, Republican-led response to hurricane Katrina, only Rush Limbaugh is in Bobby Jindal’s corner. We didn’t plan on joining the chorus denouncing Jindal until he characterized volcano monitoring as waste in his speech. For that, he is now on Rebel’s radar.

What is it about government funded science that Republicans hate so much? John McCain made a fool of himself during the election by railing against grizzly bear DNA research (a program that any scientist will tell you has been a great success), and now Bobby Jindal has joined the anti-science brigade by denouncing volcano monitoring.

As Governor of a state that suffered one of the worst natural disasters in history, Bobby Jindal should know the importance of early warning systems. Apparently he does not, but if he wants to know how “wasteful” volcano monitoring really is then he should just ask this guy:

Victim of Mount Vesuvius eruption.

 

We are not in the business of advising Republicans, but they would be well served to remember that money used for scientific research is not automatically a waste of tax dollars.