A three-way debate among GOP POTUS contenders Trump, Palin, and Cain would be Teabagger Comedy Hour. Let’s look into the special Dirty Hippies crystal ball, and see what would transpire. It would be broadcast on FOX and co-moderated by David Brooks (in a show of bipartisanship) and for gravitas, Andrew Breitbart.

The night gets off to an energetic start as Palin demands Trump and Cain’s foreign policy credentials. She wilts a little when she realizes (belatedly) Cain has actually served overseas. Oopsie! (No, it was actually Alan West who served overseas, not Cain.) It just doesn’t hold up to some closed-door speech she gave to a trade group in Hong Kong. That’s what happens when the only newspapers you read are your own press clips.

Trump goes on the attack by challenging first Cain’s citizenship and then Palin’s college grades. Cain boasts about his business expertise and tells The Donald, “You’re fired!”

There’s a lengthy interlude where Trump and Cain compete to see who loves capitalism more, but when a moderator pipes up and reminds them that Presidents must make public their tax returns, The Donald balks and Palin blanches a little.

The two reality tv stars ridicule the radio guy. (Breitbart gets some licks in too, as he has a dog in this fight.) Trump offers his beauty pageant and many (ex-)wives as proof he loves women; Palin offers herself as proof she loves women. “See? I love them so much I am one.”

Cain says he embodies the American dream of hard work and pizza sales. Crickets from Palin and Trump.

Results from real-time polling show it’s a three-way split: people who like bumpits say Palin won, bald people say Trump won, and people who like pizza say McCain won.

(Eh, what’s that you say? That’s not John McCain? OHHHH. *blink* *blink*)

Post-debate, Trump sends angry photocopies of magazine articles marked up in Sharpie to his opponents, while Palin’s ghost-Tweeter snarks in unintelligible sentence fragments and then longer, equally unintelligible sentence fragments on Facebook.

Cain issues a press release reminding his opponents that his name is Herman, not Barack. And it’s Cain, not McCain.

You betcha.

OK, whatever you say, Herbert McCain.

There’s a kerfuffle over whether Palin trademarked the term “You betcha” or no, and whether anyone else can use it besides her.

FOX, CBS, CNN, ABC, and NBC devote THREE days of news coverage over the tag line “You betcha.”

There, I think I just saved you from paying attention to three months of GOP presidential campaigning plus a “debate”. You may safely ignore them now.

When the massive tsunami smacked into Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power plant was stacked high with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold. . . . the equivalent of almost six years [almost 4,000] of the highly radioactive [spent] uranium fuel rods produced by the plant  . . . stored in deep pools of circulating water built into the highest floor of the Fukushima reactor buildings.

. . . reports Reuters.

The pile-up of used radioactive fuel stored at Fukushima underscores a dilemma that the nuclear power industry has faced in Japan and in the United States for decades: there is no easy answer to the question of where to store radioactive nuclear fuel after it has been used to produce power. In the United States, industry planners had once assumed that spent fuel rods would be moved to the Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada. But political opposition in that fast-growing state helped put the plan on hold, meaning spent fuel has largely piled up in on-site cooling ponds.

Just the Vermont Yankee nuclear energy plant alone, reports Christian Parenti at the Nation “has a staggering 690 tons of spent fuel rods on site.”

Increasingly, spent fuel rods — with the half lives of their radioactive elements running into the tens of thousands of years — are finally taking a star turn in the leading role of nuclear risk. For those who advocate nuclear energy as a “bridge” technology to more carbon-free fuel, or as the devil we know, or for those who, with unapologetic counterintuitiveness, declare (I’m talking to you, George Monbiot) “the crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power,” what do you propose that we do with all the spent fuel rods?

As one frankly biased toward the possibility of life on other plants (at however far a remove), it helps me to provide perspective by asking, “How did they handle it on another planet?” With the financial crisis, I can’t help but conclude that capitalism was but a blip in their history. But that’s another story. If, because of the dilemma disposal of nuclear waste poses, nuclear energy was also a blip, what did they do with their spent fuel rods?

Why, shove them over the edge of a black hole, of course. But it may have been 10,000 years after their nuclear period that they developed the technology to ship their fuel rods out of sight and out of mind. Unless we want to wait until that time when we too can dispatch space freighters to black holes, perhaps we should consider whether we want to consider using an energy technology that produces such lethal waste.

X-posted from Jazz from Hell

But like just about every other transgression that occurs in the name of commerce or political expediency, I got used to it, and didn’t think about it much anymore.

And then I had a seeing-the-matrix-moment in my email in-box.

Here is what I saw. The personalized line intended to hook my attention read:

Dear Unsupported global dynamic element: index=1, parameter=first_name,

Yep, I copied and pasted that greeting right from the mail into this diary. Clearly something went wrong when the machine attempted to call me by name.

The email also revealed a second aspect of the confusion of the machine, and its blown attempt at manipulating me into sending them electronic monetary units.

The organization (which shall go unnamed) was sending me a second notice for renewal of a membership that I never had. My sole relationship this organization is that I have previously signed-up for and continue to receive useful email.

Dear Unsupported global dynamic element: index=1, parameter=first_name,

A few weeks ago we sent you your 2011 Renewal Notice and I’m concerned that we haven’t heard back from you yet.

Clever that machine. And concerned. Almost human!

These things said, I accept the need for fund-raising and for automation in pumping out appeals for this and that; and that list building for mass e-mailings is part of political mobilization. But I’m sure I am not alone in finding aspects of this offensive, alienating, and counterproductive, and not just when the machine screws up. I am also sure that I am not alone in thinking that an overemphasis on electronics over actual long-term on-the-ground organizing of human beings with a vision of a better world — can lead to political errors that are not easily undone, and political results that are not what they could have been.

In the news this week, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker “ginned up” a budget crisis, then introduced legislation that removes collective bargaining rights from public employees, and over time effectively destroys their unions. Similar measures have been introduced by Republican governors or legislatures in several other states.

This legislative attack on public employees follows more than a year of “preparing the ground” with a coordinated campaign from conservative organizations to convince the public that public employees are overpaid and that their pensions are “bankrupting” state governments — not the effects of the recession.

In the news soon, the coming strategic “shutdown” of the federal government by Republicans. After decades of forcing through tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, again and again — most recently just a few weeks ago — Republicans and corporate conservatives are engaged in a national campaign promoting the belief that there is a “deficit crisis.” Their solutions involve gutting the things government does for We, the People like consumer, health, safety, labor and financial, retirement and income protections, while keeping things the government does for corporations and the wealthy “off the table.”

We see variations of the same formula over and over. Here is how it works:

1) Cut taxes for the rich and corporations (corporate stock is mostly owned by the top 1%); big deficits result.
2) Claim a deficit emergency and use their domination of corporate-owned media to whip the public into a panic, creating the appearance of demand for corporate-approved “solutions.” Manipulate the appearance of consensus.
3) With taxes and military “off the table” push through cuts in the things government does for We, the People.

Repeat as often as needed to create a plutocracy.

Today’s “debt crisis” is the culmination of the long-term “starve the beast” strategy from an organized corporate-conservative movement. By cutting taxes for the wealthy they have starved the government, created massive debt (guess where the interest payments go) gutted the infrastructure, and put our country on the road to third-world status. This conservative movement has an agenda, and is not interested in working out “bipartisan” compromised.

In an example in the news this week, a hoax call, purported to be from David Koch, one of the billionaire-industrialists helping fund the conservative movement and major funder of efforts to make it appear that Wisconsin is having a budget crisis. In the hoax call, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker clearly understands that he and Koch are in engaged a joint effort, describing a Democratic Senator who could work with him as “not one of us.”

Koch: Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?

Walker: Ah, I—there’s one guy that’s actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he’s worked with us on other things, to tell him I wasn’t going to budge.

Koch: Goddamn right!

Walker: …his name is Tim Cullen—

Koch: All right, I’ll have to give that man a call.

Walker: Well, actually, in his case I wouldn’t call him and I’ll tell you why: he’s pretty reasonable but he’s not one of us…

Elsewhere in the call Walker and faux-Koch talk about whether “planting troublemakers” would “work” or not.

In another example of the self-awareness of this strategy: On public radio’s Marketplace, February 22 Vincent Vernuccio of the Koch/conservative movement/corporate front-group Competitive Enterprise Institute discusses how the real agenda of the state actions is to destroy unions and their ability to fight corporate power politically, not to solve budget problems. (Note, he was not identified on the show as funded by conservative/corporate interests and Koch.)

VINCENT VERNUCCIO: Union bosses want to inflate these budgets so they can get more members, so they can get more dues. And in turn, they take that dues money they have and give it to politicians who are going to give them more favors in the future.

Several states are considering bills that would allow workers to opt-out of a union. Again, Vincent Vernuccio.

VERNUCCIO: The main focus of this isn’t just the budget cuts. It’s actually giving workers the right to say no to the union if they so choose.

Professor Bruno also sees broader implications for the debate. Since union money helps support the Democratic party, he argues changes in collective bargaining could shake up the political landscape far beyond the Midwest.

These are just two small examples, in the news on the same day, showing the difference between the public pronouncements of concern for the country and a private agenda to fool the country. It is one thing when responsible leaders disagree on the best way to solve the country’s real problems. It is quite another thing when organized wealth pursues a strategy to scare the country into handing over our remaining wealth and power.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

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