Pax India? I'm glad that some superpowers are still responsible.

They were arrested after an Indian naval ship closed in on a hijacked fishing vessel just under 700 miles off the Kerala coastal port of Cochin.

...

The suspected pirates had hijacked the boat, the Mozambique-flagged Vega 5 in December last year and had since used it as a base for attacks on other ships.

They were finally caught on Sunday after they opened fire on the approaching Indian naval ship. They were forced to jump overboard when their own vessel was set ablaze caught fire in fierce retaliatory fire from the Indian ship. The 13 original crew members were freed in the raid. Indian officials said they found 80 to 90 small arms or rifles and some heavy weapons on the fishing vessel.

The number of pirate attacks and the scale of their demands has increased singnificantly in recent months. More than 660 people are currently believed to be held hostage in pirates from raids on 30 ships.

India has intensified its operations against pirates in the Indian Ocean. It arrested 28 pirates last month and 15 in January.

Did you know that 660 people were currently being held ransom by pirates?

Jay Cost spoke about the implicit, unstated powers of the presidency -- one of them is deciding when a foreign policy problem is a crisis or not a problem at all. The president can take a problem off the table simply by refusing to discuss it, and the complacent media takes it's cues -- as far as the American public knows, there is no problem.

But there is. People just don't know about it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:31 AM | Comments (84)
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I can't take credit because it's an obvious line of attack -- the president is obviously feckless, cowardly, and incapable of making a decision.

Given that it's obvious, it should be a strong theme for 2012.

Barone:

In the Illinois legislature state Sen. Barack Obama voted "present" 129 times. Today he seems to be voting present on two major issues, Libya and the budget.

...

Voting "present" may be a responsible move for a legislator genuinely undecided about which way to go. But an executive voting "present" is choosing a course with consequences whether he likes it or not.

"The buck stops here," said the sign on the desk of the 33rd president, Harry Truman, who was quick to make decisions -- sometimes too quick. The 44th president's tendency seems to be something like the opposite.

That's a good point; Obama is in fact choosing bankruptcy and Qadaffy. Those are the defaults; abstaining from making an alternative decision in fact chooses those.

Cost:

[A]ccording to the Post, not only is the administration's policy sideways, the commander in chief has been passive in its formulation. This is not the first time this has happened. The Obama White House left the drafting of the stimulus mostly to Democratic leadership in Congress -- so much so that aides to House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey complained about a lack of guidance -- and the result was a bloated, inefficient bill that quickly galvanized conservative opposition and ended the "post-partisan" age. He was similarly agnostic on the health care bill, allowing Congress to come up with an incomprehensible mish-mash that still required political trickery to pass. His recent budget fails to take seriously the mounting deficit crisis, which the White House is happy to let Republicans take the politically unpopular lead on. His administration was persistently behind the curve on the revolutions in Iran and Egypt, and now it is taking a backseat to the French on Libya.

...

Nobody in the United States is as intent on reminding his fellow citizens just how awesome he is than Barack Obama. That's what the "Age of Obama" is all about. But that seems to be about it. The sense of awe he has cultivated has not been used for any great purpose -- not to forge a bipartisan compromise on the stimulus, not to push through an intelliglble health care plan, not to handle the deficit, not to lead on any of the various foreign policy flareups. This is more a clerkship presidency, with a commander in chief either unwilling or unable to take the lead on the most challenging issues of the day.

...

. A billion dollars [in 2012 campaign spending], they hope, will change the public's currently low opinion of the Obama administration. Yet it cannot change one very good reason why the public has come to its opinion, which is that his has been a clerkship presidency. A glorified clerkship, no doubt, but a clerkship nonetheless.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (197)
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The Republicans need to read every word of this and memorize every single figure, and then memorize additional figures that illustrate the problem, and repeat them endlessly on every Sunday talk show they appear on and every speech they make.

I keep saying this: There simply are not enough rich such that taxing them at even high rates can do more than dent the enormous deficits.

See, the Democrats only remain competitive, and are able to not be ridden out of town on a rail when defending grants for Cowboy Poetry, because the woefully-uninformed public thinks there's always some easy method of fixing things.

They think if we just cut the pittance of what we spend on foreign aid we'll balance the budget. They don't think we need to reform entitlements; just cutting the $20 billion (or whatever) we spend on foreign aid should do the trick, they figure.

But more than that, they think if we're ever in a jam we can just tap the rich for more money.

I do not understand why the Republicans allow the Democrats to claim this. Even when they're not claiming it explicitly, they're claiming it implicitly -- Obama keeps selling his return-to-Clinton-tax-rates on the rich as the extent of his budget plan. The implication is if we just do this, we'll be solvent.

No. No no no no no. A thousand times no. As Kevin D. Williamson explains, even outright seizing the estates -- every last dollar -- of "the rich" will not get us anywhere near solvent.

The public is against making any real cuts to just about anything. (Except foreign aid.) That's understandable, I guess. But their reluctance to cut anything else is driven by the idea in the back of their heads that they would prefer that we just tax the rich a little more and cut foreign aid and everything will just be copacetic.

They have to be made to understand -- this cannot be repeated enough -- that the only way to sustain the current levels of spending (or even the much lower spending of the year 2001!) is to increase taxes on the middle class by 20% or 30% or so.

See, they don't understand the actual dimensions of this crisis. They think they can have their cake (same levels of spending) and eat it too (no tax hikes on them, but only on other people).

If they are made to understand the true situation, that the choice is not between lower spending and taxing the rich, but rather between lower spending and taxing the middle class, they will be a lot more inclined to vote for lower spending.

But as long as Obama and the Democrats and the media can hold out this phantasmal cake-and-eat-it-too option of taxing other people, they'll keep selecting that wonderful, but entirely imaginary, choice.

Every Republican should have this argument ready to be deployed at a moment's notice -- "Okay, let's concede we raise taxes on the rich to Clinton levels. That brings in $1 trillion over ten years. Now, what do we do about the addition $13 trillion in deficits your preferred level of spending requires?"

Republicans must, must, must make the public understand that the relevant question is not whether we tax the rich more. The important question -- the one they must ask again and again -- is who do you tax next after your piffle in tax increases fails to reduce the deficit by even 10%?

The Democrats want to just keep telling us who they'd tax first. Fine. They'll tax the rich first.

But who will they tax second, third, and fourth? Because their first round of increased taxation is only a bit more than a rounding error.

Posted by: Ace at 09:14 AM | Comments (188)
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The White House press corps, that is. Keith Koffler, who used to be part of the White House press corps while working at Roll Call, calls out the Obama Administration for its systematic and heavy-handed tactic of bullying and intimidating journalists who dare to write critically of The One:

The White House bullies reporters to try to ensure favorable coverage. When White House officials, particularly members of the press office, see a story they donÂ’t like, they often call and verbally abuse the reporter who wrote the piece.

In diatribes often peppered with obscenities, they complain of profound injustice, bias, lack of relevance – anything they can think of to get reporters to back off their story.

ItÂ’s not just a series of uncontrolled outbursts. It is a planned, methodical, and highly artificial effort to either squash a story or get inside a reporterÂ’s head so they think twice about doing a piece next time that negatively impacts Obama.

That this is an actual policy is evident from the consistency of the practice and its implementation by nearly every member of the White House press office staff. They are all nice, affable people who suddenly switch into an unmarked gear and begin running you over at full speed.

Hey, it's the Chicago way. Read the whole thing, particularly where Kofford contrasts it with the Bush and Clinton administrations. ..fritz..

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:21 AM | Comments (104)
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There were earlier reports that the fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor for over 2 hours, now it seems all three reactors are in trouble again.

There are no reports that the fuel has escaped the reactor or that there's been any damage to the containment vessels or buildings.

Still, radiation measurements are twice as high as they've seen before. That doesn't mean they are dangerous levels, just higher relative to what they've measured to date.

Just saw on FNC that the USN is moving the USS Ronald Regan away from the area near the plants. Apparently some aircrew and Marines delivering relief supplies received some minimal contamination.

The U.S. 7th Fleet has temporarily repositioned its ships and aircraft away from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant after detecting low level contamination in the air and on its aircraft operating in the area. The source of this airborne radioactivity is a radioactive plume released from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant.

For perspective, the maximum potential radiation dose received by any ship's force personnel aboard the ship when it passed through the area was less than the radiation exposure received from about one month of exposure to natural background radiation from sources such as rocks, soil, and the sun.
The ship was operating at sea about 100 miles northeast of the power plant at the time.

Using sensitive instruments, precautionary measurements of three helicopter aircrews returning to USS Ronald Reagan after conducting disaster relief missions near Sendai identified low levels of radioactivity on 17 air crew members. The low level radioactivity was easily removed from affected personnel by washing with soap and water. They were subsequently surveyed, and no further contamination was detected.

As a precautionary measure, USS Ronald Reagan and other U.S. 7th Fleet ships conducting disaster response operations in the area have moved out of the downwind direction from the site to assess the situation and determine what appropriate mitigating actions are necessary.

We remain committed to our mission of providing assistance to the people of Japan.

And the death toll continues to rise as bodies are being found, literally by the thousands.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:18 AM | Comments (134)
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The federal budget is a shambles, but that's only half the story: the other half is the rolling trainwreck that is the state budgets. Pull quote:

It is no consolation that a few heartland states are in decent shape. The Dakotas, Nebraska, and Indiana cannot compensate for the disaster that is Illinois, let alone the bicoastal basket cases. Moreover, while a robust economic recovery would create breathing room for some states, the most afflicted states' problem is structural, not cyclical. Under any plausible economic scenario, revenues will barely cover their ongoing obligations, let alone repay their debts.

When people talk about "quality of life", they are in part referring to their local environment. Roads, parks, police, civic centers, playgrounds, little league baseball, firefighters, schools -- all things funded by municipalities, and all things in dire danger of being cut unless the states and cities find some way to get their spending and debt under control.

And remember: debt is a symptom; spending is the disease. The problem is too much damned public spending, not too little public income.

[UPDATE: Link was broken. It should be fixed now.]

[UPDATE 2: No cute kitty-cat pictures unless some other cob-logger (ahem: lauraw) wants to add one. Just looking at those treacly pictures of cats makes me want to vomit.]

Posted by: Monty at 07:16 AM | Comments (132)
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Well the good news is that a Chernobyl-style accident could never happen here. Different reactor designs, different failure modes, and the presence of a containment dome make that impossible.

About the worst we could ever expect to happen here would be a full core meltdown along with a relatively large release of radioactive steam. This partially happened during the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. But also note that in the 30 years since TMI not a single death or case of cancer has ever been connected to it.

Still...in the event of a 9.0 earthquake here in the US it's always possible that reactors could fail in way that we can't predict. So then who should be most worried about that kind of situation?

Well here's a USGS map of earthquake danger zones in the US:

And here's the location of nuclear power plants in the US and their ages:

So if you're in Southern California, Illinois, or South Carolina, then maybe you should be worried prepared. And even if you aren't in one of these earthquake prone areas, it can still pay to be ready for a radioactive dirty bomb.

You can get your potassium iodide tablets here and gas masks here. And duct tape - you always gotta have duct tape.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 04:41 AM | Comments (204)
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If your only tool is a hammer, then all your problems start to look like people that need to be beat with a hammer.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:48 AM | Comments (133)
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New day. A few weeks ago a moron suggested I move the Art thread to Sunday (as the Book Thread happens at the beginning of the day). I thought it was a good idea, so here we are.

I will eventually get around to my 10 Works Every Moron Should Know, particularly the later works because they will probably cause lots of screaming and frothing and that is always entertaining here (perhaps not on a level like Pristine O'Connell versus Dike Tassel, but entertaining nevertheless).

However in that original thread a moron brought up an artist he felt I had slighted by not mentioning, and I have to agree with him.

So for those of you who are unfamiliar with him, let me introduce you briefly to Edward Kienholz.

more...

Posted by: CAC at 07:20 PM | Comments (21)
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Reports are the explosion is due to the same thing that caused the explosion of #1, buildup of hydrogen gas.

Update: As with #1, secondary containment is blown away. The inner or primary containment is still intact. From BreakingNews on Twitter:

Inner reactor container reportedly intact after explosion at Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant - AP

Update: Seven people are missing, and three are injured. From the Wall Street Journal Live Blog.

Update: Kyodo News: Radiation levels have not risen significantly. Control room intact. Three workers injured.

''According to the plant chief's assessment, the container's health has been maintained,'' Edano told a press conference. ''The possibility is low that massive radioactive materials have spattered.''

Edano said the blast that blew away the roof and the walls of the building housing the container was similar to an explosion Saturday at the No. 1 reactor of the same plant, following Friday's magnitude 9.0 quake.

It had been widely expected that the No. 3 reactor would follow the same path.

The top government spokesman said operations to pour seawater into the reactor to cool it down were continuing and the level of pressure in the container was stable.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said wind was not blowing in the area. The radiation level had not significantly risen, it added.

Again, for reference purposes, schematics of the Fukushima reactors (below the fold): more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 06:58 PM | Comments (201)
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