Obama: Really Put the Nuclear Genie Back in the Bottle

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday April 11, 2009 · 1:50 PM PDT

2009/04/11 · 13:50

If Obama is truly serious about eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons once and for all, then he should also be considering the elimination of nuclear power.

Here's the problem: fissionable atoms don't know the difference between atoms for peace and atoms for war. The training and technology for running nuclear power plants and for building nuclear weapons overlap so intimately that we have not been able to untangle the two, more than 60 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday October 02, 2008 · 8:38 PM PDT

2008/10/02 · 20:38

Sarah Palin lost this debate when she was unable to summon even a scintilla of human kindness after an emotional answer from Biden.

The defining moment came towards the end of the debate,right after Joe Biden's deeply felt claim that fathers had the same feelings about their children in peril as mothers did. Biden even choked up a little bit, reflecting on the auto accident that killed his wife and daughter, and left his two boys in the hospital.

It was Biden's most authentic moment in the debate. It was THE most authentic moment in the debate.

And how did Palin answer in reply?

She proceeded in her zombie debate-prep mode. Not a shadow crossed her face. Not a single word in recognition of the emotional quality of Biden's story about his own family. No indication that she was even in the same room.

It was the only point in the entire debate where there was an opportunity to respond to something that wasn't in her scripted answer book. She couldn't, or wouldn't, do it.

If a friend told you a story like the one Biden told, and your response was to start talking about yesterday's vote at City Hall, you'd think there was something wrong with your friend. There's something wrong with Sarah Palin.

McCain: On a box or lifts?

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday September 26, 2008 · 8:28 AM PDT

2008/09/26 · 08:28

I have a reliable source with access to negotiations about the production of tonight's debate. Whether McCain shows or not, his team is proceeding as if he were going to be there. Latest sticky point: how to keep Obama (6'1") from towering over the shorter McCain (5'6").The taller candidate does not always win, but the statistics for the last 100 years or so suggest that height helps. Here's a summary from the Wikipedia article on presidential candidate heights:

If considering restricting to elections in the 20th and 21st centuries, only 8 out of 27 elections were won by the shorter candidate

Were McCain elected to the presidency, he would be the shortest president in 120 years and tied for the second-shortest president of all time.

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday September 11, 2008 · 5:19 PM PDT

2008/09/11 · 17:19

On the morning of 9/11, I was enjoying the cloudless blue-sky vista out of my office window overlooking Dupont Circle, when someone yelled to check out the office TV about a plane crash in New York. And so we sat, and watched the 2nd plane come in, and soon were looking out across the low DC skyline (no building can be higher than the Washington Monument, about 12-14 stories) at the smoke rising from the attack on the Pentagon.

As has been noted many places, "everything changed." Now in the unfolding election, we are seeing the results of one of the most pernicious of those changes, John McCain's decision to abandon the last whimpering vestiges of any commitment to truth.

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday May 14, 2008 · 3:38 PM PDT

2008/05/14 · 15:38

What does it feel like to wake up in the morning, get out of bed, have a little breakfast, and then head off to work knowing that this day, like all the days before, what you do will unobtrusively and effectively send more and more African Americans to a slow but certain death?

In her book on Adolph Eichmann, Hannah Arendt coined the off-repeated phrase, "the banality of evil," in her attempt to describe how apparently normal, seemingly non-insane people could so easily participate in the monstrousness of the Final Solution.

Banality is where you find it.

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday July 24, 2007 · 7:41 PM PDT

2007/07/24 · 19:41

What did John Conyers want?

That’s the question I kept asking myself while watching the highly stylized kabuki-theater-like unfolding of the impeachment drama yesterday afternoon outside Conyers' office.

Getting arrested for civil disobedience in the District of Columbia isn’t what it used to be. If you go through the process of applying for a demonstration permit, there is a check-off box on the form asking if you are planning to have people arrested as part of your demonstration.

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday May 29, 2007 · 7:34 AM PDT

2007/05/29 · 07:34

Watch Barbara Kingsolver talk about her new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and her experiment with her family of eating only local foods for a year.

http://globalpublicmedia.com/...

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday May 14, 2007 · 6:38 AM PDT

2007/05/14 · 06:38

Live blogging from Mike Gravel, who has a plan to end the war by Labor Day.

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 20, 2007 · 10:13 AM PDT

2007/04/20 · 10:13

This diary is Part II of today's live blog on a major conference in Pittsburgh, PA on Women's Health and The Environment: New Science, New Solutions. Some of the leading scientists in the field are here to share the latest knowledge in the field, including Mr. Herbert Needleman, the world's leading expert on the effects of low exposures of lead, Tyrone Hayes, who works on amphibians and pesticides, Pete Myers, a co-author of Our Stolen Future, etc.

To read morning Live Blog, go to

http://www.dailykos.com/...

"If You Don't Build It, They Will Come": The Evolving West

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday March 02, 2007 · 2:07 PM PST

2007/03/02 · 14:07

Watching a new paradigm about energy and climate change grabbing hold in the U.S. Congress is a fascinating sight, even if the process is still agonizingly slow in comparison to the rate at which the world is changing.

The paradigm change is not uniformly partisan; members of both parties sit there squirming at hearing after hearing, as witnesses explain that all of us must come to understand the world in a new and different way. The long-cherished, fossil-fuel based, "markets know all" paradigm has broken down, while the outlines of a new paradigm are visible but still tenuous.

This paradigm shift was on sharper display than usual at a hearing on "the evolving West" on Wednesday, Februrary 28, before the House Natural Resources Committee.

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday February 20, 2007 · 6:41 PM PST

2007/02/20 · 18:41

Back in the days before the Internet (if you can imagine back that far), there were magazines. If you went into any half-way decent news stand, you could find me somewhere towards the back looking for the odd, the eccentric, the out-of-the-ordinary magazines (not the ones in plastic wrappers), many of which would flash across the newsstand like shooting stars, one issue and then they were gone forever. Finding a new one was like finding a new species, and if you liked it, hoping that it would not go extinct before you saw another issue.

My passion has carried over to the Internet, but the thrill of finding something new has attenuated. What can you do when even a few minutes of poking around brings you to "Cats that look like Hitler"?

richardbelldc

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday February 14, 2007 · 5:38 AM PST

2007/02/14 · 05:38

Global warming is sweeping Capitol Hill. Tuesday featured three different committee hearings, with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee featuring heavy-hitter Sir Nicholas Stern. Stern is the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

Stern told the Senators that the costs of inaction in dealing with global warming far exceeded, by at least 5 times, the cost of dealing with global warming today.

Stern was a tough witness, taking everything the Senators threw at him and swinging back with the confidence of someone in complete control of one of the most complex problems on the planet. He deftly demolished bipartisan attacks on China and India as global warming spoilsports. More worrisome was Stern’s agreement with the Senators that coal was critical, despite the absence of technology that can sequester CO2.

The big question left hanging at the end of the hearing was whether Congress, an unwieldy beast even on its best days, can cobble together legislation flexible enough to cope with the dynamic challenges of global warming. See below for a complete report on the hearing.

Newer
Older

RSS

Obama: Really Put the Nuclear Genie Back in the Bottle

Sarah the Debate Zombie

McCain: On a box or lifts?

Lying our Way to Tyranny

African Americans, This Way to the (Menthol) Gas

What Did John Conyers Want?

Barbara Kingsolver Video on Local Food

Live Blogging Mike Gravel's Press Conference to End the War

Live Blog: Women's Health and Enviro Conference

"If You Don't Build It, They Will Come": The Evolving West

Roses, Rings, and Manure: The Carbon-Neutral Wedding

"The Biggest Market Failure the World Has Ever Seen"