NOTE: I just downloaded and installed Firefox 4 and IT ROCKS! It is super fast loading and smooth and I think the changes to the interface are nicely laid out (Those who use Safari will be pleased with this set up). Suggested add ons are Screengrab and Easy YouTube Video downloader. I put the LavaFox V1 (it comes in red, blue or green) theme on it and really like it, makes stuff much easier to read for me.
Japanese Earthquake:
Info Links:
- BBC
- NHK in English (Live feed in upper right corner)
- Telegraph of London
- Kyodo Wire
- Asahi Shimbun Facebook Page
- SPEEDI (Japan Radiation level map)
- Ibaraki Prefecture Geiger Counter Readings
- US National Radiation Map (updated every minute)
- Animated Radioactive Fallout Forecast
- Fukushima Potential Radiation Release (you can select area/type of radiation)
- Via Soylent Green: Radiation Exposure in Daily Life
- Radiation Dose Chart
- Donations to the American Red Cross that are being designated to Japanese Earthquake relief are already getting to the folks in Japan and are most helpful.
The latest in the tragic story that just gets weirder by the minute.
- TEPCO’s mishandling of info on nuclear crisis ‘unacceptable’: Edano
- Partial meltdown of fuel rods believed to be temporary: Edano
- Radioactive water from No. 2 reactor due to partial meltdown: Edano
- Contaminated water due to condensed steam, not reactor crack: Edano
And our personal favorite:
- Locals within 20-km evacuation zone asked not to return for now
As this whole farce has gone beyond the surreal, we are now actively waiting for a cartoon Mr. Burns to show up at any ongoing press conference and announce that Springfield Nuclear Power Plant has LBOed Fukushima with Discount Window financing, at a #Ref! EV/EBITDA considering 9501.JP will not see any positive cash flow for millennia, and is appointing Mr. Sparkle (aka Homer Simpson) chief safety inspector.
Japan earthquake: strong quake prompts tsunami warning for disaster zone
The earthquake, measuring 6.5 on the Richter Scale, was pinpointed to 50 miles east of Oshika peninsula in Miyagi prefecture, an area still recovering from the devastation of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Following the new earthquake, the Japanese authorities issued a 20 inch tsunami warning for the Pacific coastal region which was later lifted, with no reports of immediate casualties or further damage.
More Shock and Awe from the Tsunami
Nothing could prepare you for that, except get the heck out of the way . . . fast!
Last night I came upon a small account from a person in Japan. It had two videos only, and yet it summed up the combined experience of the Japanese over the last month.
The YouTube account is called YouTube – momophoto1′s Channel. It has two videos. One shows you an owl in a pine tree. The other shows you the end of the world.
Pregnant Women Are Fleeing Fukushima And Tokyo For Fear Of Radiation Birth Defects
From the derailed supply train department:
Japanese suppliers are crucial for global car companies, and parts and other supplies from Japan aren’t reaching factories because of quake damage and power outages in that country. That has interrupted car production around the world, from Louisiana to Germany.
After a Japanese plant that makes pigment for auto paint was damaged, for example, Ford told dealers to stop taking new orders for F-150 and Super Duty pickups and Expedition and Navigator SUVs in “tuxedo black,” a color that uses the pigment.
World News:
Mark Steyn: The Human Right to Suspend Reality
But I found it more poignant earlier in the day when I went to a favorite coffee place hoping to enjoy a beverage outside on a pleasant spring day as the massed ranks of British layabouts marched by. Instead, the Polish and Balkan baristas were hurriedly dragging in all the sidewalk tables and chairs before the Socialist Workers’ Party chaps showed up in search of projectiles. Nobody in the Socialist Workers’ Party actually works, which is one reason why it’s Mitteleuropeans frothing your coffee rather than any of the natives.
Read the whole thing! The price of fear
TWO factors determine the price of a barrel of oil: the fundamental laws of supply and demand, and naked fear. Both are being tested by the violence that is tearing through Libya, the world’s 13th-largest oil exporter.
After you are done reading the whole thing burn this chart into your brain then reread this post. Those who are wise will grasp the point.
If anyone can make sense of the gibberish emanating from the Obama foreign policy team, please let me know.
The Russian Ties to the Islamic Uprisings
Libya: coalition attacks Sirte for first time
Coalition planes launched air strikes on Sirte, Col Muammar Gaddafi’s home town, for the first time on Sunday night.
LIBYA: The Rebels Capture Ajdabiya, Ras Lanuf And Brega In A Huge Offensive
NATO: Fine, We’ll Take This Libya Thing
Well, this is certainly a red letter day in our
kinetic military action time-limited, scope-limited military actionWAR in Libya. Now NATO will be in charge of not just the No Fly Zone but also the ground strikes to protect civilians.
Obama Regime: Libyan Operation Could Last Months…
Quagmire. Calling Code Pinko!
Libyan Rebels Continue to Advance East, Reach Key Oil Town of Ras Lanuf…
Libyan Rebel Leader Thanks Sarkozy: Now Please Get Lost
Libyan Rebels to Reporter: “Now Is the Time of Jihad!”
Children of the revolution:Yemeni children taking a stand as country teeters on brink
Syria’s Assad deploys army in port to keep order
Ministry of Irony: Two Reuters TV journalists missing in Syria
Israel deploys ‘Iron Dome’ anti-rocket system
Hillary Clinton hints at strained US ties with Pakistan
The seemingly endless flow of young Chinese workers that helped to create the country’s economic miracle has now finally “dried up”, according to a leading economist.
North Korea Sends 12 Officials To America To Learn About Capitalism
“ACORN Comrades Club”? Perfect.
Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys starting lineup are now thinking locally, but voting globally.
Police fear anti-monarchy anarchists planning to infiltrate royal wedding
Commander Bob Broadhurst, who will be responsible for securing the wedding celebrations, said investigators have already swung the spotlight on those involved in Saturday’s clashes.
He warned ‘different rules will be in play’ during the wedding and appealed to anti-establishment groups not to ‘spoil the party’.
He said he did not want to turn the wedding into ‘fortress London’ but, hinting at a more hardline approach, he added that intrusive counter-terrorism powers will be used to keep a lid on any protests.
US News:
A must read! Who Is The Real ‘Reich Wing’?
A favorite pejorative used by the progressive left is ‘Reich Wing’, designed to tar conservatives as Nazi-like extremists. Notwithstanding its nature as a premature violation of Godwin’s Law, the term implies a certain set of characteristics presumably endemic to conservatives.
But let’s examine those attributes to see if they have merit.
Secret Earmarks Remain in Federal Budget
Coburn also defunds earmarks in the FY 2010 defense appropriations bill. One example: a $20 million earmark for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Massachusetts. Elsewhere, highway and mass transit earmarks call for nearly $700 million in extra spending.
A major obstruction to Coburn’s efforts to pull the plug on earmarks is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Coburn has been offering this legislation as amendments to pending bills. Leader Reid has refused to let the Oklahoman call up any of his amendments to the small business jobs bill preventing a vote. The President also shares some blame for not calling for the CRs to eliminate all earmarks. Nor do House Republicans win any plaudits here; they have yet to pass a short term CR without earmark funding.
The Economy Tanked but, Hey, Wealth Inequality Declined
Alternate title 1: How to kill a golden goose. Alternate title 2: Progressive tax rates are evil.
Liberals need to grow up and get over their juvenile envy and hatred of the successful and productive. Otherwise, we’ll all continue to live with their “new normal”: high unemployment, bigger deficits, a lower standard of living and ever-increasing deprivation and want — for everybody, not just the Evil Rich.
Nuts. Far Left Activists to Fast Over Proposed Cuts to Record Obama Budget
All you need to know in order to undersand Obama and the Democrats energy and economic policies all wrapped up in one link-Obama’s EPA Chief Lisa Jackson Appearing With Leftist Radical Van Jones and Al Gore at Major Global Warming Conference…
6 Surprising Ways Oil Prices Affect You
Oil shows up in thousands of places besides your car’s fuel tank and engine. It’s true that most oil is used as a source of energy in the United States and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. The average barrel of oil yields the following: gasoline (42%), diesel (20%), jet fuel (9%), heating oil (4.5%), heavy fuel oil (4.5%), liquefied petroleum gases (4.5%) and other products (16%).
All you have to do to see the effect of changing oil prices is drive by a gas station. However, the effects are more far-reaching than what is immediately visible since petroleum permeates our entire economy. Here are some areas of the economy and products that are affected by oil prices.
NRA Provides Details on Obama’s Mexican Gunrunning Operation
The Obama Misadministration apparently wants to scapegoat the Phoenix ATF office, but a plan this deranged could only have come from inside the Beltway. If this goes beyond Eric Holder to the very top of the dung heap — and the thorough congressional investigation that is obviously required will probably prove that it does — the only question is, do we impeach Obama for: A) treason, B) gross incompetence, C) complicity in Bryan Terry’s murder, or D) all of the above.
Federal judge to seniors: take Medicare or lose Social Security
For those of you who doubt that big government proponents want to inflict government dependence on every man, woman and child in the country, by coercion preferably, by force if necessary, this story puts any such doubts to rest.
Gov. McDonnell on the unconstitutional, economic boondoggle of Obamacare
McDonnell called on the Obama administration to have the urgency in passing Obamacare, to expedite the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of his health care bill.
The Virginia governor also pointed out that Obamacare also shifts billions in unfunded mandates onto state governments. This law has costly ramifications which states don’t want nor need in these troubled economic times.
Bachmann: “I Want A Waiver From The Last Two Years Of Obama”
An ‘As Caterpillar Goes, America Goes’ Update
In 2009, President Obama pitched the porkulus plan at a Caterpillar plant in the company’s home state of Illinois, claiming it would allow the company to rehire thousands of laid off workers (which Caterpillar’s CEO said wasn’t the case). Obama also said “you can measure America’s bottom line by looking at Caterpillar’s bottom line.”
Just a couple of months after that, Caterpillar posted its first quarterly net loss in 16 years — and America’s bottom line was off and running.
Fast forward the tape to this week. Caterpillar is now saying the company may be forced to pull out of The One’s home base altogether — a hopenchangus-interruptus of huge proportions — in order to to seek more welcoming business climes
US and Libya:
Louis Farrakhan is very mad at Barack Obama for attacking Farrakhan’s patron (Louey’s pockets have been lined with Libyan blood money for years). Obama is a handpicked tool of the Jews, America is evil, blah, blah, blah.
Read the whole thing! Decoding Libya
For nearly 20 years, we’ve willfully blinded ourselves to the Rosetta Stone that decodes our enemy’s war doctrine. But the jihad (or shall we call it “kinetic Islam”?) is catalyzed not by al-Qaeda but by sharia — by Muslim law. So is the “Arab Spring,” now playing in Tripoli (and elsewhere) after rave reviews in Cairo.
I have been opposed to our country’s starting a war against Libya. And starting a war is exactly what we have done, exactly what we would call it if the shoe were on the other foot — the “kinetic” and “limited” obfuscations of intervention proponents notwithstanding. My opposition is fourfold.
And Now: A Brief Vignette From the White House
So which is it?
Was Hillary Clinton defending the Secretary of Defense . . . or jerking him back into line?
It was a stunning power play. On Meet The Press this morning, after Defense Secretary Bob Gates conceded that Libya is not a “vital interest” of the United States–but before he could complete his comments–Hillary cut him off. She launched into a minute-and-forty-second monologue seeking to justify US military involvement in Libya.
Gates had to sit and take it . . . and never got to say another word.
In Other News…
Free and Fair Elections True The Vote Style
Breitbart brings True the Vote summit to triumphant close
Donald Trump on Obama’s Birth Certificate: “I Don’t Want to Be Right on This Issue” (Video)
Here Come the Birther Commercials… New Ads to Run Questioning Obama’s Eligibility
First Female Veep Nominee Faced Democrat Rage in 2008
To follow-up on the previous post on Media Matters, the left’s punitive tone continues very much to this day: “Geraldine Ferraro Dies, Left Grossly Responds By Using Her Death to Bash Palin,” as spotted by Newsreal. And of course, after his minions rhetorically savaged Ferraro in 2008, the Obama machine makes nice-nice upon her death. Or as Jim Hoft writes, “Obama Releases Statement on Ferraro… The Same Woman His Team Destroyed During Election.”
Orlando Reporter Scott Powers Posting From the Closet
Flashback: Biden’s History of Stifling Orlando Reporters — “This cancellation is non-negotiable”
Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post has a novel idea: Save up to buy things.Disillusioned by the collapse of the housing market — and most of those “upside down mortgages” are people who bought crap they don’t need and and then took home equity loans to pay off their credit cards — Michelle Singletary is pushing the basics.
Illinois taxpayers are already suffering mightily and, based upon these developments, should prepare to bleed more. More companies will leave, fewer people will be able to pay the oppressive tax rates, the budget deficit will swell, and the entire state will follow Michigan into fiscal purgatory.
Well done, Democrats!
W.Va. spending is purer than Ivory soap?
If we cannot cut 0.04% from the budget without the liberal spend-it-alls going ballistic then really we will not survive as a nation.
Abercrombie criticized for selling push-up tops to little girls
“How is this okay for a second-grader?” asked Rebecca Odes in a recent post on the Babble parenting blog.
One Election Away from Serfdom
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wouldn’t even recognize today’s NAACP, which embraces inequality and radical divisiveness. Its one-sided advocacy for the Democrat Party, which has failed people of color for 8 19 decades in a row, is proof that it is little more than an anachronism.
Van Jones IS a ‘Cop Killer-Supporting, Racist, Demagogic Freak’
‘Barefoot Contessa’ taking heat for repeatedly rejecting ‘Make-A-Wish’ cancer patient
But perhaps the most biting comment came from Business Insider: “We’re sure that she truly is pretty busy. But if she had time to throw a charity lunch for six Hamptonites — who paid $100,000 to be there — she can make time to whip up some meringues with a six-year-old.”
Elizabeth Taylor Was Late to Her Own Funeral
The service was scheduled to begin at 2 PM but at Miss Taylor’s request started late. Miss Taylor had left instructions that it was to begin at least 15 minutes later than publicly scheduled, with the announcement, ‘She even wanted to be late for her own funeral,’
Look for the Union Label/The Badger Rebellion:
GOP Can’t Ignore Wisconsin Recall Battle
If Walker and other governors cannot tame public pensions and union contracts, you will see tax hikes enacted under freshmen GOP governors across the country in the next few years. It is simple math.
If Republicans don’t engage with real cash in Wisconsin, they could lose the state Senate in advance of redistricting this summer, embolden unions and scare hell out of Republicans in statehouses everywhere.
Walker may have won on policy — yet Republicans could face massive losses nationally if they don’t win those Wisconsin recalls.
Just because the Democrats returned from Illinois doesn’t mean the left surrendered.
The Chicken & The Egg: London unions school Madison mobs on anarchy
Today, England’s trade unions and their friends on the Left had a massive demonstration on the streets of London. It devolved into ‘madness‘ as anarchists hijacked the demonstration, breaking in windows, assaulting police, and generally causing mayhem. Union leaders were not displeased.
Gov. Rick Scott on law that introduces merit pay for educators
“We must recruit and retain the best people to make sure every classroom in Florida has a highly effective teacher,” Scott said, during a signing ceremony at a charter school in Jacksonville.
The new law will immediately impact new hires who come on board starting July 1. They will have to sign only annual contracts. Those new teachers with advanced degrees will not get more money unless their degrees are in the “area of certification.”
Starting the new school year, all teachers will be subject to new evaluation standards tied to student performance.
Half of the teacher evaluations will be based on how their students performed in the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and other exams over a three-year period.
Thousands of LA Union Protesters March For Jobs & to Tax the Rich
Remembering the Triangle Fire: Why the Left is Urging us to Recall the Event
One has to pause in disbelief. Does Raynor and film producer Levin really believe that a teacher today, with high union benefits not enjoyed by private sector workers, who works 9 to 3 with time off, and with three months off in summers, is anywhere near the same boat as those who worked twelve hour days in a New York City sweatshop in 1911? Do bus and train engineers earning salaries sometimes amounting to close to $100,000 a year or more, really think that despite a high cost of living, their conditions are akin to those of the Triangle workers?
And one wonders how NBC, which put the above post on its own website, feels about these claims, and whether they are endorsed by parent company General Electric or the new owners, Comcast? Somehow, the statements do not endorse strikes or organizing in those particular companies, or argue for any analogy to them between the conditions of their workers and those at Triangle a century ago.
So yes, learn about Triangle- and honor the victims and remember their struggles and sacrifice. But don’t be so shortsighted as to try and use the past to draw non-existent parallels to the conditions of today’s workers, or to sully their memories by using the tragedy as a reason to get people to support the extortionist attempt of the public sector unions to refuse to help rescue the states in which they live from a growing unsustainable deficit. 2011, quite simply, is far away from 1911.
MSM Circus and Celebutard Side Show:
The final litmus test for the media
During the last election the press pool was so fawning of candidate Obama as to defy belief. Their promises of open access during this administration has proven empty. If the mainstream media doesn’t treat the locking up of one of their own as it is, an affront to the first amendment and freedom of the press and act accordingly then they are simply abused spouses whose obsessive hatred of all things conservative (particularly all things Palin and Bachmann) is so great that they will pay any price to keep them down.
‘Sabotage’: Media Matters Dumpster Diving for Dirt Against Fox News Employees
Media Matters is no longer even pretending to be interested in journalism. In fact, it is approaching illegal activities with this campaign. Certainly Media Matters is lapsing into immoral activities if nothing else.
But this is the left, folks. This is the hatred and the attack dog-style that the left specializes in.
Media Matters was once a perfectly legitimate, though left-wing media critic. Now it is a gutter sniping, mud slinging, dumpster diving, blackmailing, saboteur. I’d call it the National Enquirer of the Internet, but even that isn’t mean enough to describe MM.
More like Media Matters has become the KGB of the left.
The Newspeak Dictionary on Domestic and Overseas Warfare
I suppose the correct Orwell meets Dr. Strangelove language would be kinetic man-caused incidents of collateral mutual impairments.
The media is tasked with watching the government and our politicians for us. But this begs the old question, who will watch the watchers? If you want to be upset about anything, perhaps you should be put off that there isn’t a better organized set of similar watchdogs digging in to MSNBC as well as the major network news shops, papers and radio.
RedState: A “Nerve Center” of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
It is rather funny. In the Politico, the story is about Media Matters making it their new mission to destroy Fox. In the Washington Post, the story is about how Media Matters is training lefty pundits to get on Fox.
But the key takeaway is that we now know that by being a RedState user you are seen as part of the nerve center of the vast right wing conspiracy.
NBC’s Dateline: Using Subtle Social Media To Turn Stories Into Trending Topics
Fun and Interesting Stuff:
Absolutely gorgeous must see TV! Run the video full screen in HD. Watch his other videos, too! The Aurora
Angry Birds: The Movie (Trailer)
Speaking of angry birds…Getting in a flap: Nesting birds evicted from their home by bully boy starlings
35 Strange Doritos Flavors From Around The World (But Mostly Asia)
They brought back the Mini and now the MG is back: MG6 1.8T Fastback review
Via Vanderleun: The Music of the Spheres (animation of the solar system) I put this one under Fun Stuff in the blogroll.
Russians Wish to Strip Obama of Peace Prize
Our Russian comrades wish to strip President Obama of his Nobel Peace Prize like a well built blonde in an airport screening line.
Presented as a public service to all the guys out there (via Ace of Spades): World Boobage Map
