US News has an interesting graphic up that shows just how bad voter turnout was in the election last Tuesday. Barely 40 percent in Arkansas and Louisiana. Wow. Under 40 percent in Illinois and Florida. Completely pathetic. Basically the only people that turned out to vote were old, white people. No wonder the GOP won so handily.
Republicans have been proclaiming that United States voters have rejected the president's policies. Which ones? The economy is better, unemployment is down to 5.8 percent, the deficit has shrunk, and more Americans have health care. What am I missing?
The only answers I have gotten are a bunch of ideological nonsense.
Friday, November 07, 2014
Thursday, November 06, 2014
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
The Big GOP Win
The Republicans had their day in the sun yesterday winning (for right now) a 52 seat majority to 45 for the Dems. Alaska looks like it will go GOP and Virginia looks like it will stay blue. Louisiana will have a run off in December which Landrieu will likely lose. The GOP also gained 13 in the House. So that makes it 54-46. Republican governors (save Pennsylvania) stayed in office and won big as well.
What does it all mean? Well, a large part of it is voter turnout. People just stayed home or didn't know there was an election. The rest was pure anger, hate and fear of President Obama. The GOP ran on nothing but that and won.
It's going to be interesting to see if the GOP actually works with the president or acts like adolescents. I predict the former because if they want to have any chance of staying in power in 2016, they are going to have to work with him.
What does it all mean? Well, a large part of it is voter turnout. People just stayed home or didn't know there was an election. The rest was pure anger, hate and fear of President Obama. The GOP ran on nothing but that and won.
It's going to be interesting to see if the GOP actually works with the president or acts like adolescents. I predict the former because if they want to have any chance of staying in power in 2016, they are going to have to work with him.
Monday, November 03, 2014
Election Eve
Twas the night before the midterms and all seems lost for the Democrats...
I'm still not changing my prediction. It's going to end up 51 R 49 D. Further, I also predict that the GOP will caterwaul about how this means the country is moving right, hates Obama, and liberals/progressives are over.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. If the GOP does indeed prevail, as I believe they will, it will simply be due to low voter turnout. Nikto put up a nice piece yesterday about why people should vote in every election. I've often wondered if compulsory voting would make things better. Part of me thinks it would make things worse.
Go vote tomorrow!!
I'm still not changing my prediction. It's going to end up 51 R 49 D. Further, I also predict that the GOP will caterwaul about how this means the country is moving right, hates Obama, and liberals/progressives are over.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. If the GOP does indeed prevail, as I believe they will, it will simply be due to low voter turnout. Nikto put up a nice piece yesterday about why people should vote in every election. I've often wondered if compulsory voting would make things better. Part of me thinks it would make things worse.
Go vote tomorrow!!
Sunday, November 02, 2014
Why You Should Vote in This -- and Every -- Election
There have been several articles, like this one, that say Republicans win more seats in off election years because Democrats are disappointed, unmotivated and disengaged with politics.
Why? Conservatives seem to be driven by fear, and every election year the Republican fear machine cranks into high gear. Remember how Obama was gonna get all your guns? And how the economy was going to be destroyed by the meager stimulus that was passed? And how the deficit was going to cause runaway inflation and all our 401Ks would be destroyed, and the stock market would be trashed because all confidence would be lost. And that Obamacare would be terrible and would we all die?
As always, the Republican predictions of gloom and doom were cow puckey. But they did get lots of conservatives to vote in 2010, which elected a lot of Republicans to state legislatures, which allowed them to gerrymander congressional districts to give them control of the House in 2012, even though Democrats received more than a million more votes than Republicans in House races.
Republicans use scare tactics because conservatives respond to fear and negative emotions such as closet racism and homophobia, anger and hatred. Moderates and liberals respond more to positive emotions, so when things are blah, and everything looks like crap (mostly because Republicans have stymied any sort of progress since they took back the House in 2010), Democrats tend to be unmotivated.
Well, that should end immediately. Because things really aren't all that crappy, considering the twin disasters of the Iraq war and the 2008 recession that Bush left us with. However, if the current crop of Republicans gets any more power, the slowly positive trend of the last six years will be reversed. Because that's how Republicans like it: they intentionally make everything bleak because that's how they keep their power.
The way to change that is to vote. In every election. In particular, in every Congressional election, such as this year's House and Senate races. But it's also important to vote in every other election, especially state legislatures. But also including the boring ones in odd-numbered years for municipal races like city council, county commissioner, and even school board. And don't forget primaries -- primaries pick who will run for the office, and since so few people vote in them one primary vote is worth five to 10 times as much as a general election vote.
Why should you vote in these elections? Because you put the people that you like in positions of power that affect things in your everyday life -- like the quality of the schools, the upkeep of roads and bike trails, noise ordinances, but more importantly who appoints the police chief, who makes the election laws and who runs county clerk's office (where many of the inroads in gay marriage took place).
With all the problems we've seen in recent months in places like Ferguson, MO, it's clear that these "boring" local elections are especially important for people who want to see people of all ethnicities treated fairly by the cops. And the large crop of Republican-sponsored voter suppression laws masquerading as "protecting the integrity of the system" means that your right to vote is in danger as long as Republicans retain control of state legislatures.
These local political offices are where the majority of politicians get their start. School boards are frequently the launching pad for state legislatures and city councils. These offices put candidates in front of the public, giving them name recognition, and attracting the attention of the most active voters in their districts. Those contacts give them the juice to run for higher office.
Running for local offices shows candidates the ropes and teaches them important governing skills. They get used to speaking in public. They learn how politics works. They learn how to talk to people who disagree with them without being disagreeable. They learn to work with others toward a common goal, and to work out mutually beneficial solutions.
Most politicians don't start out famous like Al Franken or Jessie Ventura or Ronald Reagan. They run for school board, then the city council, then the state legislature, then maybe secretary of state or state auditor, then maybe governor or representative or senator. All the while these people meet others of like mind, who they can count on when they want to run for another office.
Without this kind of background, only celebrities, the wealthy, and the notorious have the kind of name recognition -- and money -- required to win an election. And these celebrity candidates often don't govern very well, because they haven't learned the collaborative skills needed for effective governance.
That's why you need to vote in every election. You need to give the kind of people you want to be running things the support they need to be successful in the long run.
So don't get discouraged by Republican carping and deceit: go out and vote.
In 2012, conservative billionaires spent billions. Karl Rove was convinced they had bought the election, lock, stock and barrel. But they flopped because the people went out and voted in large numbers, proving that every vote counts.
If the people go out and vote again this Tuesday, the Republican takeover of the Senate will be a bust, just like Mitt Romney's 2012 "landslide."
Come on, do it. Vote this Tuesday. Don't you want to see Karl Rove go apoplectic again?
Why? Conservatives seem to be driven by fear, and every election year the Republican fear machine cranks into high gear. Remember how Obama was gonna get all your guns? And how the economy was going to be destroyed by the meager stimulus that was passed? And how the deficit was going to cause runaway inflation and all our 401Ks would be destroyed, and the stock market would be trashed because all confidence would be lost. And that Obamacare would be terrible and would we all die?
As always, the Republican predictions of gloom and doom were cow puckey. But they did get lots of conservatives to vote in 2010, which elected a lot of Republicans to state legislatures, which allowed them to gerrymander congressional districts to give them control of the House in 2012, even though Democrats received more than a million more votes than Republicans in House races.
Republicans use scare tactics because conservatives respond to fear and negative emotions such as closet racism and homophobia, anger and hatred. Moderates and liberals respond more to positive emotions, so when things are blah, and everything looks like crap (mostly because Republicans have stymied any sort of progress since they took back the House in 2010), Democrats tend to be unmotivated.
Well, that should end immediately. Because things really aren't all that crappy, considering the twin disasters of the Iraq war and the 2008 recession that Bush left us with. However, if the current crop of Republicans gets any more power, the slowly positive trend of the last six years will be reversed. Because that's how Republicans like it: they intentionally make everything bleak because that's how they keep their power.
The way to change that is to vote. In every election. In particular, in every Congressional election, such as this year's House and Senate races. But it's also important to vote in every other election, especially state legislatures. But also including the boring ones in odd-numbered years for municipal races like city council, county commissioner, and even school board. And don't forget primaries -- primaries pick who will run for the office, and since so few people vote in them one primary vote is worth five to 10 times as much as a general election vote.
Why should you vote in these elections? Because you put the people that you like in positions of power that affect things in your everyday life -- like the quality of the schools, the upkeep of roads and bike trails, noise ordinances, but more importantly who appoints the police chief, who makes the election laws and who runs county clerk's office (where many of the inroads in gay marriage took place).
With all the problems we've seen in recent months in places like Ferguson, MO, it's clear that these "boring" local elections are especially important for people who want to see people of all ethnicities treated fairly by the cops. And the large crop of Republican-sponsored voter suppression laws masquerading as "protecting the integrity of the system" means that your right to vote is in danger as long as Republicans retain control of state legislatures.
These local political offices are where the majority of politicians get their start. School boards are frequently the launching pad for state legislatures and city councils. These offices put candidates in front of the public, giving them name recognition, and attracting the attention of the most active voters in their districts. Those contacts give them the juice to run for higher office.
Running for local offices shows candidates the ropes and teaches them important governing skills. They get used to speaking in public. They learn how politics works. They learn how to talk to people who disagree with them without being disagreeable. They learn to work with others toward a common goal, and to work out mutually beneficial solutions.
Most politicians don't start out famous like Al Franken or Jessie Ventura or Ronald Reagan. They run for school board, then the city council, then the state legislature, then maybe secretary of state or state auditor, then maybe governor or representative or senator. All the while these people meet others of like mind, who they can count on when they want to run for another office.
Without this kind of background, only celebrities, the wealthy, and the notorious have the kind of name recognition -- and money -- required to win an election. And these celebrity candidates often don't govern very well, because they haven't learned the collaborative skills needed for effective governance.
That's why you need to vote in every election. You need to give the kind of people you want to be running things the support they need to be successful in the long run.
So don't get discouraged by Republican carping and deceit: go out and vote.
In 2012, conservative billionaires spent billions. Karl Rove was convinced they had bought the election, lock, stock and barrel. But they flopped because the people went out and voted in large numbers, proving that every vote counts.
If the people go out and vote again this Tuesday, the Republican takeover of the Senate will be a bust, just like Mitt Romney's 2012 "landslide."
Come on, do it. Vote this Tuesday. Don't you want to see Karl Rove go apoplectic again?
Saturday, November 01, 2014
Obama Still Not Destroying Economy
U.S. Economy Grows at Steady Clip
The economy grew at a solid pace during the third quarter, driven by an uptick in military spending and a drop in imports, showing the U.S. on relatively firm footing as worries mount about a global slowdown. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, expanded at a 3.5% annual rate from July through September, the Commerce Department said Thursday.
Maybe the Republicans should play the Ebola card again...
The economy grew at a solid pace during the third quarter, driven by an uptick in military spending and a drop in imports, showing the U.S. on relatively firm footing as worries mount about a global slowdown. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, expanded at a 3.5% annual rate from July through September, the Commerce Department said Thursday.
Maybe the Republicans should play the Ebola card again...
Friday, October 31, 2014
Thursday, October 30, 2014
The Real Health Problem Isn't Ebola, It's No Sick Time for Minimum-Wage Workers
Everyone in Maine is shaking in their boots because Kaci Hickox went on a bike ride. Hickox, a nurse who treated Ebola patients in West Africa, is fighting the state-imposed quarantine in court, saying that it violates her constitutional rights.
The fear is overblown. She is displaying no symptoms (fever, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding from bodily orifices), and Ebola is not contagious until you are showing symptoms.
So far, no Americans have been infected by Ebola except health care workers who deal directly with Ebola patients. And all the Americans who have caught Ebola have survived (though one doctor is still in the hospital in New York).
This year Ebola has infected 13,000 people in West Africa and 5,000 have died. The death rate appears to be so high in Africa because they don't have the ability to keep sick patients alive long enough for their immune systems to beat the disease on their own. Americans aren't dying of the disease because our hospitals can provide that basic level of care (though the religiously-affiliated hospital in Texas where two nurses were infected was obviously not competent to care for Ebola patients).
Ebola sure does sound scary when you hear the numbers coming out of Africa. But when you look at Ebola in the US, it's much less contagious than many other diseases that infect millions of Americans annually, including flu, pneumonia, measles, mumps, whooping cough, chicken pox, tuberculosis and hepatitis A, B and C. Hundreds of thousands of Americans die from these diseases every year. Some will leave you physically impaired or sterile even if they don't kill you.
Flu alone kills as many as 50,000 people a year in the United States -- 10 times more than have died of Ebola in the world in the last year. But people go in to work with the flu all the time. Why? Because they don't have a choice: they work in low-wage jobs without any benefits -- in particular, sick leave. If they don't work, they don't get paid, and they can't pay the rent or feed their kids.
It's especially bad for people who work in minimum-wage service jobs -- cooks, dish washers, cashiers, waiters, maids, day care attendants, home care attendants -- exactly the people who are most likely to spread disease to the largest number of people.
Hickox isn't demanding to go to a U2 concert or a rave. She just doesn't want to be imprisoned when she is displaying zero symptoms. If she should be locked up for a month on the off chance that she has Ebola, then why shouldn't every American be forced to into quarantine when they (or their children) actually have diseases like flu, chicken pox, mumps and measles, which are much more infectious than Ebola and can have just as serious consequences?
The real health problem here isn't Ebola: it's the lack of sick days for minimum-wage workers. If you're sick -- with a cold, the flu, or Ebola -- you shouldn't be infecting your customers and coworkers.
Companies don't want to give workers sick time because they're afraid workers will abuse it. But that forces honest workers to stay on the job when they're sick. And the rest of America suffers from unnecessary exposure to contagious diseases: millions of decent folks get sick for fear that a few jerks will game the system.
The medical workers who go to Africa to help stem the tide of Ebola are heroes. They shouldn't be treated like pariahs, though they should severely restrict their travel and social contacts during the incubation period.
They should also be compensated monetarily for any losses they might suffer during this period of isolation. And everyone in America should have that same right when they're sick with any contagious disease.
That would make all of us healthier and happier.
The fear is overblown. She is displaying no symptoms (fever, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding from bodily orifices), and Ebola is not contagious until you are showing symptoms.
So far, no Americans have been infected by Ebola except health care workers who deal directly with Ebola patients. And all the Americans who have caught Ebola have survived (though one doctor is still in the hospital in New York).
This year Ebola has infected 13,000 people in West Africa and 5,000 have died. The death rate appears to be so high in Africa because they don't have the ability to keep sick patients alive long enough for their immune systems to beat the disease on their own. Americans aren't dying of the disease because our hospitals can provide that basic level of care (though the religiously-affiliated hospital in Texas where two nurses were infected was obviously not competent to care for Ebola patients).
Ebola sure does sound scary when you hear the numbers coming out of Africa. But when you look at Ebola in the US, it's much less contagious than many other diseases that infect millions of Americans annually, including flu, pneumonia, measles, mumps, whooping cough, chicken pox, tuberculosis and hepatitis A, B and C. Hundreds of thousands of Americans die from these diseases every year. Some will leave you physically impaired or sterile even if they don't kill you.
Flu alone kills as many as 50,000 people a year in the United States -- 10 times more than have died of Ebola in the world in the last year. But people go in to work with the flu all the time. Why? Because they don't have a choice: they work in low-wage jobs without any benefits -- in particular, sick leave. If they don't work, they don't get paid, and they can't pay the rent or feed their kids.
It's especially bad for people who work in minimum-wage service jobs -- cooks, dish washers, cashiers, waiters, maids, day care attendants, home care attendants -- exactly the people who are most likely to spread disease to the largest number of people.
Hickox isn't demanding to go to a U2 concert or a rave. She just doesn't want to be imprisoned when she is displaying zero symptoms. If she should be locked up for a month on the off chance that she has Ebola, then why shouldn't every American be forced to into quarantine when they (or their children) actually have diseases like flu, chicken pox, mumps and measles, which are much more infectious than Ebola and can have just as serious consequences?
The real health problem here isn't Ebola: it's the lack of sick days for minimum-wage workers. If you're sick -- with a cold, the flu, or Ebola -- you shouldn't be infecting your customers and coworkers.
Companies don't want to give workers sick time because they're afraid workers will abuse it. But that forces honest workers to stay on the job when they're sick. And the rest of America suffers from unnecessary exposure to contagious diseases: millions of decent folks get sick for fear that a few jerks will game the system.
The medical workers who go to Africa to help stem the tide of Ebola are heroes. They shouldn't be treated like pariahs, though they should severely restrict their travel and social contacts during the incubation period.
They should also be compensated monetarily for any losses they might suffer during this period of isolation. And everyone in America should have that same right when they're sick with any contagious disease.
That would make all of us healthier and happier.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Mitt Romney on the 2014 Elections
So, Mitt Romney was on Morning Joe this AM talking about the 2014 elections. His message?
If the Republicans win back the Senate, then gridlock will end in Washington and bills can start being passed again. What exactly is holding them back now? President Obama? He's still going to be president for the next two years so what will be different?
If the Republicans win back the Senate, then gridlock will end in Washington and bills can start being passed again. What exactly is holding them back now? President Obama? He's still going to be president for the next two years so what will be different?
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Monday, October 27, 2014
In Defense of Obama
Even on a bad day, Paul Krugman single-handedly blows out several bowels a day but his recent piece in Rolling Stone is guaranteed to cause much mouth foaming. The title, "In Defense of Obama," says it all. Here is the executive summary...
Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it's working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it's much more effective than you'd think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.
Amen. Check out the full article, folks!
Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it's working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it's much more effective than you'd think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.
Amen. Check out the full article, folks!
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Good Words
As she has since she stepped onto the national stage six years ago, Palin is the ultimate avatar of base Republican culture since she views herself as an eternal victim, with all the grievance and resentment that entails.
So now, liberals, the media, Democrats, apparently anyone who thinks Palin is a buffoon of almost world historic proportions (which gets you to something like 80% of the country) are all abominable hypocrites for 'laughing' at what is now fairly preposterously portrayed as a violent assault against a woman. If you listen to the police interviews, which occurred just as the brawl had barely ended, all the witnesses beside Bristol said she attacked the homeowner. Indeed, even Bristol's younger sister Willow backed up the these other witnesses' account. She just said Bristol missed with her punches.
--Josh Marshall
Ultimate avatar indeed. This is exactly why conservatives blow a bowel about the so-called victim culture. They are the ultimate self-loathers.
So now, liberals, the media, Democrats, apparently anyone who thinks Palin is a buffoon of almost world historic proportions (which gets you to something like 80% of the country) are all abominable hypocrites for 'laughing' at what is now fairly preposterously portrayed as a violent assault against a woman. If you listen to the police interviews, which occurred just as the brawl had barely ended, all the witnesses beside Bristol said she attacked the homeowner. Indeed, even Bristol's younger sister Willow backed up the these other witnesses' account. She just said Bristol missed with her punches.
--Josh Marshall
Ultimate avatar indeed. This is exactly why conservatives blow a bowel about the so-called victim culture. They are the ultimate self-loathers.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Election 2014 Update
Today, I am wondering what percentage of Americans are unaware that there is an election in a week and half. I have a question out on Quora about it so we'll see what kind of responses I get.
Meanwhile, Democrats are pulling out what remains of the hair at all of the latest polls. Colorado and Iowa are shifting to the R column with Arkansas, Alaska and Louisiana seemingly out of reach. The only good news for the Dems is Georgia is now shifting their way. David Perdue is running a really bad campaign so that's no surprise. And Greg Orman is now making noises that he will caucus with the Democrats or, at least, do things they like.
My prediction still stands: 51R, 49 D
Meanwhile, Democrats are pulling out what remains of the hair at all of the latest polls. Colorado and Iowa are shifting to the R column with Arkansas, Alaska and Louisiana seemingly out of reach. The only good news for the Dems is Georgia is now shifting their way. David Perdue is running a really bad campaign so that's no surprise. And Greg Orman is now making noises that he will caucus with the Democrats or, at least, do things they like.
My prediction still stands: 51R, 49 D
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
The Ebola News the Right Is Ignoring
There's been a lot of shrill paranoid screeching about Ebola, particularly from the right. And it's a serious problem, to be sure. But here's some news that they seem to be ignoring:
The people who are really in danger of Ebola infection are health care workers who must be in close contact with their patients, and people who handle the dead. The reason Ebola spread so quickly in Africa in the first place was the foolish practice of mourners kissing and touching dead bodies, instead of isolating and cremating them immediately.
Long-held religious traditions and beliefs are responsible for so much death, and not just in Africa...
The domestic mess started when a privately-run religious hospital screwed the pooch and failed to diagnose Thomas Duncan. This wasn't a government screw-up.
Where the CDC did screw up was in trusting that this Presbyterian Hospital in Texas was competent to do the job. The hospital clearly did not have the equipment or the training to handle an Ebola patient. It should have said so up front, instead of making its staff cobble together protective gear from layers of rubber gloves and masks.
How clueless Presbyterian was should have been obvious after hey sent Duncan home after failing to add 1 + 1 (guy from Liberia who carried a woman who died of Ebola + fever) and not getting 2 (Ebola).
Anyone who has watched television coverage of the Ebola outbreak in Africa knows that health care workers should be wearing full Hazmat suits and be sprayed down with formaldehyde and blasted with UV after any contact with Ebola patients.Why Presbyterian didn't get this is a total mystery.
The CDC also screwed up by not asking health care workers to quarantine themselves, and giving them the go-ahead to travel on airplanes and cruise ships. They have corrected this oversight, and it looks like no one was infected. So the it seems the CDC was actually correct in their estimation that the potential for infection was quite low. Allowing the nurses to travel was a PR failure, not serious lapse in judgment.
The Ebola panic is not over. But it's clear that if people just exhibit a little common sense and caution it would be as low-key as the CDC has been saying all along. But I guess expecting people to act rationally is too much.
What this episode has made abundantly clear is that the general public has no clue what real health risks are. You are far more likely to die of the flu than Ebola. Yet millions of Americans categorically refuse to get flu shots.
Children are far more likely to die of whooping cough or measles than Ebola, yet their parents insist that immunizations will give their kids autism.
The right wants to restrict the freedom to travel to Africa. Yet you are far more likely to die of a self-inflicted gun-shot wound or shot by your irate husband than die of Ebola, because of the insistence of the gun lobby that people be able to buy any kind of deadly firearm on demand.
Millions of people die of heart disease, stroke, and obesity- and diabetes-related diseases every year, yet every time someone in government encourages people to exercise more, discourages alcohol use or proposes taxes on sugary drinks, the right screams "Nanny state!"
Tens of thousands of Americans die every year in car accidents because they can't be bothered to wear seat belts.
Get a grip, people.
- Four family members that Thomas Eric Duncan lived with for several days have finished their quarantine Ebola-free.
- No one who flew on the plane with Duncan was infected.
- So far, all the Americans who have contracted Ebola have either pulled through completely, or are still alive and in stable condition. With proper and prompt care, it looks like your chance of survival is much better than it is in Africa, where the death rate is forbidding.
- The lab supervisor on the cruise ship who handled Duncan's Ebola samples tested negative.
- WHO declared Nigeria to be Ebola-free.
The people who are really in danger of Ebola infection are health care workers who must be in close contact with their patients, and people who handle the dead. The reason Ebola spread so quickly in Africa in the first place was the foolish practice of mourners kissing and touching dead bodies, instead of isolating and cremating them immediately.
Long-held religious traditions and beliefs are responsible for so much death, and not just in Africa...
The domestic mess started when a privately-run religious hospital screwed the pooch and failed to diagnose Thomas Duncan. This wasn't a government screw-up.
Where the CDC did screw up was in trusting that this Presbyterian Hospital in Texas was competent to do the job. The hospital clearly did not have the equipment or the training to handle an Ebola patient. It should have said so up front, instead of making its staff cobble together protective gear from layers of rubber gloves and masks.
How clueless Presbyterian was should have been obvious after hey sent Duncan home after failing to add 1 + 1 (guy from Liberia who carried a woman who died of Ebola + fever) and not getting 2 (Ebola).
Anyone who has watched television coverage of the Ebola outbreak in Africa knows that health care workers should be wearing full Hazmat suits and be sprayed down with formaldehyde and blasted with UV after any contact with Ebola patients.Why Presbyterian didn't get this is a total mystery.
The CDC also screwed up by not asking health care workers to quarantine themselves, and giving them the go-ahead to travel on airplanes and cruise ships. They have corrected this oversight, and it looks like no one was infected. So the it seems the CDC was actually correct in their estimation that the potential for infection was quite low. Allowing the nurses to travel was a PR failure, not serious lapse in judgment.
The Ebola panic is not over. But it's clear that if people just exhibit a little common sense and caution it would be as low-key as the CDC has been saying all along. But I guess expecting people to act rationally is too much.
What this episode has made abundantly clear is that the general public has no clue what real health risks are. You are far more likely to die of the flu than Ebola. Yet millions of Americans categorically refuse to get flu shots.
Children are far more likely to die of whooping cough or measles than Ebola, yet their parents insist that immunizations will give their kids autism.
The right wants to restrict the freedom to travel to Africa. Yet you are far more likely to die of a self-inflicted gun-shot wound or shot by your irate husband than die of Ebola, because of the insistence of the gun lobby that people be able to buy any kind of deadly firearm on demand.
Millions of people die of heart disease, stroke, and obesity- and diabetes-related diseases every year, yet every time someone in government encourages people to exercise more, discourages alcohol use or proposes taxes on sugary drinks, the right screams "Nanny state!"
Tens of thousands of Americans die every year in car accidents because they can't be bothered to wear seat belts.
Get a grip, people.
Monday, October 20, 2014
A Fusion Breakthrough?
Lockheed's Skunk Works has announced a breakthrough in fusion research. Fusion is what powers the sun. It has the potential to generate electricity from the hydrogen in seawater.
Lockheed claims that they can have a working prototype of a fusion reactor in five years, and commercially available fusion power plants in ten years.
More incredibly, Lockheed claims that the reactor could be as small as seven by 10 feet -- small enough to fit on the back of a truck. A fusion-powered submarine could stay submerged indefinitely, getting its fuel (hydrogen) and air (oxygen) from seawater. A fusion-powered airplane could stay aloft for months.
Fission-powered subs can already stay submerged for months at a time. And practically speaking, aircraft require routine ground maintenance to avoid falling out of the sky. Where fusion is the real game-changer, though, is in generating electricity and spaceflight.
Generating Electricity
Lockheed says its fusion reactor could be plopped into existing 100 MW gas turbine power plant, replacing the methane-burning equipment with a fusion reactor and a heat exchanger.
Current nuclear reactors use fission, in which atoms of heavy elements like uranium are split to produce heat, which generates steam, which spins turbines to make electricity. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan used fission. The hydrogen bombs first detonated in the 1950s were fusion bombs: the intense heat and pressure required to fuse hydrogen atoms were produced by detonating fission devices.
Fission produces a lot of highly radioactive elements, such as plutonium, which need to be sequestered for thousands of years. Fission also produces high-speed neutrons (which is what causes fission reactions to proceed). If there are too many neutrons, the nuclear reaction can run away and detonate like an atomic bomb.
There are two major approaches to fusion for power generation: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses inertial confinement: giant lasers blast a pellet of hydrogen isotopes from all directions to produce high pressure and temperature.
The concept of magnetic confinement gained popular currency with Star Trek's "magnetic bottle," which they said contained antimatter. With fusion, magnetic fields are used to compress hydrogen plasma to very high pressures and temperatures, causing the atoms to fuse.
The sun does this using gravity instead of magnetic fields.
Both inertial and magnetic confinement fusion have been demonstrated in labs, but they have not achieved a sustained reaction, where they generate more energy than they consume.
Depending on exactly which reaction is used, fusion may use isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) and produce harmless helium, or it may produce short-lived radioactive isotopes such as tritium (hydrogen 3). It typically produces neutrons, which have to be trapped to convert their energy to heat.
Magnetic confinement has been on the cusp of a breakthrough for fifty years. This time, Lockheed thinks that by reducing the size of the hardware and increasing the strength of the magnetic field with superconductors they will finally be able to make magnetic confinement work.
Revolutionizing Spaceflight
Rockets work on Newton's Third Law of equal and opposite reaction. They burn fuel, which is ejected out the nozzle, propelling the payload forward. The acceleration you achieve depends on the mass ejected and its velocity: the faster the propellant is ejected (specific impulse), the faster you go.
When current spacecraft go to other planets they fire a quick burst from their rocket engines to put themselves in an elliptical orbit (the yellow orbit in the diagram on the right) that starts at earth (the green orbit) and ends at Mars (the red orbit), where another burst of the engines is required to enter orbit around Mars. Chemical rockets cannot fire the whole time because they can't carry enough fuel to accelerate the whole way, because the engine has a low specific impulse.
Because our spacecraft require this "Hohmann transfer orbit," we only launch when the planets are properly aligned. That imposes a launch window that lasts a short time and doesn't recur for months or years.
"Ion" engines with higher specific impulse have been in design for decades. These use electrical fields to accelerate charged particles to speeds much higher than can be obtained by chemical rockets. The high specific impulse allows the ion engine to fire constantly, producing a constant thrust with a modest amount of propellant.
A fusion engine could produce an even higher specific impulse, with the speed of light being the only limit. With such a high specific impulse, it becomes possible to accelerate constantly at high thrust without running out of propellant.
It's within the realm of possibility that a fusion-powered spacecraft could get to the moon in a day by accelerating constantly at 1 g (the acceleration of earth's gravity) to the halfway point, flipping around and decelerating the rest of the way. Getting to Mars would take two to four days, depending on where earth and Mars are in their orbits.
Will It Melt Down or Blow Up Like a Hydrogen Bomb?
Fission reactors can melt down, like Chernobyl in Russia or Fukushima in Japan. They depend on control rods, cooling or other mechanical means to prevent the fission reaction from occurring too quickly. A fission reactor contains tons of uranium. If too many neutrons are being shot through the nuclear fuel, there's a chance of a runaway reaction and an atomic detonation, or more likely, that the fuel will get too hot and melt through the containment vessel.
With fusion, the difficulty is not slowing down the reaction, the problem is sustaining it. The amount of hydrogen in a fusion reactor is quite small. That's because fusion produces so much energy: e = mc2, after all. One gram of hydrogen produces 339 gigajoules of energy, or 94 megawatt-hours. That means a 100 MW fusion reactor would use a couple of grams of hydrogen per hour: that's a couple of ounces a day. (It's also probably a hydrogen isotope -- deuterium and tritium, from heavy water.)
If something goes wrong in a fusion reactor, the magnetic field collapses, and the reaction stops. All that's left is a few ounces of hot hydrogen.
To stop a fusion reaction, you turn of the power. It's like blowing out a candle. The containment vessel does, however, need to be strong enough to contain the hydrogen plasma when the magnetic field drops.
A fusion reactor is probably a lot less dangerous than a fission reactor, but more dangerous than wind and solar because reactor cores become radioactive over time.
Drawbacks
Most magnetic confinement fusion reactions under consideration produce neutrons. Something needs to absorb those neutrons, heat up and turn turbines. Over time neutrons will affect the components of the reactor and its shielding, making them brittle and slightly radioactive, just as for existing fission reactors.
Some fusion reactions under consideration produce a radioactive isotope of hydrogen (tritium, or hydrogen 3), which has a half-life of 12.3 years. Tritium and old shielding have to be disposed of, but they're far less dangerous than fission byproducts like plutonium that are radioactive for millennia.
For spaceflight, these fast neutrons are reaction mass: the faster the better.
Is It for Real?
This is hard to say. Scientists have been on the brink of a fusion breakthrough for fifty years. They've used superconducting magnets in the past. Is Lockheed's approach that different? Have they miniaturized the reactor enough to remove the instabilities in the magnetic field that have plagued traditional tokamak designs for decades?
I can't say for sure. But this has the potential to totally change everything about energy production. With cheap, portable fusion reactors coal and natural gas plants will be totally obsolete: fuel for fusion is extracted from seawater. There's no need for miners to die miles beneath the surface of the earth, or for frackers to inject toxic chemicals into the earth.
Fusion plants will probably not be cheap initially, especially compared to wind and solar which are already becoming cheaper than coal and gas. Extracting deuterium and tritium from seawater will probably start out to be expensive and get cheaper over time, but will probably always be more expensive than free energy from the wind and sun.
Fusion is not a panacea because there is still the problem of disposing of radioactive reactor cores. But these are minor problems compared to radioactive waste from fission plants, and the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels.
That does make fusion plants good candidates to pick up the slack when wind and solar generation are slack.
And having the technology in our back pockets that allows us to go to the stars is probably the best insurance plan the human race can get.
Lockheed claims that they can have a working prototype of a fusion reactor in five years, and commercially available fusion power plants in ten years.
More incredibly, Lockheed claims that the reactor could be as small as seven by 10 feet -- small enough to fit on the back of a truck. A fusion-powered submarine could stay submerged indefinitely, getting its fuel (hydrogen) and air (oxygen) from seawater. A fusion-powered airplane could stay aloft for months.
Fission-powered subs can already stay submerged for months at a time. And practically speaking, aircraft require routine ground maintenance to avoid falling out of the sky. Where fusion is the real game-changer, though, is in generating electricity and spaceflight.
Generating Electricity
Lockheed says its fusion reactor could be plopped into existing 100 MW gas turbine power plant, replacing the methane-burning equipment with a fusion reactor and a heat exchanger.
Current nuclear reactors use fission, in which atoms of heavy elements like uranium are split to produce heat, which generates steam, which spins turbines to make electricity. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan used fission. The hydrogen bombs first detonated in the 1950s were fusion bombs: the intense heat and pressure required to fuse hydrogen atoms were produced by detonating fission devices.
Fission produces a lot of highly radioactive elements, such as plutonium, which need to be sequestered for thousands of years. Fission also produces high-speed neutrons (which is what causes fission reactions to proceed). If there are too many neutrons, the nuclear reaction can run away and detonate like an atomic bomb.
There are two major approaches to fusion for power generation: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses inertial confinement: giant lasers blast a pellet of hydrogen isotopes from all directions to produce high pressure and temperature.
The concept of magnetic confinement gained popular currency with Star Trek's "magnetic bottle," which they said contained antimatter. With fusion, magnetic fields are used to compress hydrogen plasma to very high pressures and temperatures, causing the atoms to fuse.
The sun does this using gravity instead of magnetic fields.
Both inertial and magnetic confinement fusion have been demonstrated in labs, but they have not achieved a sustained reaction, where they generate more energy than they consume.
Depending on exactly which reaction is used, fusion may use isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) and produce harmless helium, or it may produce short-lived radioactive isotopes such as tritium (hydrogen 3). It typically produces neutrons, which have to be trapped to convert their energy to heat.
Magnetic confinement has been on the cusp of a breakthrough for fifty years. This time, Lockheed thinks that by reducing the size of the hardware and increasing the strength of the magnetic field with superconductors they will finally be able to make magnetic confinement work.
Revolutionizing Spaceflight
Rockets work on Newton's Third Law of equal and opposite reaction. They burn fuel, which is ejected out the nozzle, propelling the payload forward. The acceleration you achieve depends on the mass ejected and its velocity: the faster the propellant is ejected (specific impulse), the faster you go.
 |
| Hohmann Transfer Orbit |
Because our spacecraft require this "Hohmann transfer orbit," we only launch when the planets are properly aligned. That imposes a launch window that lasts a short time and doesn't recur for months or years.
"Ion" engines with higher specific impulse have been in design for decades. These use electrical fields to accelerate charged particles to speeds much higher than can be obtained by chemical rockets. The high specific impulse allows the ion engine to fire constantly, producing a constant thrust with a modest amount of propellant.
A fusion engine could produce an even higher specific impulse, with the speed of light being the only limit. With such a high specific impulse, it becomes possible to accelerate constantly at high thrust without running out of propellant.
It's within the realm of possibility that a fusion-powered spacecraft could get to the moon in a day by accelerating constantly at 1 g (the acceleration of earth's gravity) to the halfway point, flipping around and decelerating the rest of the way. Getting to Mars would take two to four days, depending on where earth and Mars are in their orbits.
Will It Melt Down or Blow Up Like a Hydrogen Bomb?
Fission reactors can melt down, like Chernobyl in Russia or Fukushima in Japan. They depend on control rods, cooling or other mechanical means to prevent the fission reaction from occurring too quickly. A fission reactor contains tons of uranium. If too many neutrons are being shot through the nuclear fuel, there's a chance of a runaway reaction and an atomic detonation, or more likely, that the fuel will get too hot and melt through the containment vessel.
With fusion, the difficulty is not slowing down the reaction, the problem is sustaining it. The amount of hydrogen in a fusion reactor is quite small. That's because fusion produces so much energy: e = mc2, after all. One gram of hydrogen produces 339 gigajoules of energy, or 94 megawatt-hours. That means a 100 MW fusion reactor would use a couple of grams of hydrogen per hour: that's a couple of ounces a day. (It's also probably a hydrogen isotope -- deuterium and tritium, from heavy water.)
If something goes wrong in a fusion reactor, the magnetic field collapses, and the reaction stops. All that's left is a few ounces of hot hydrogen.
To stop a fusion reaction, you turn of the power. It's like blowing out a candle. The containment vessel does, however, need to be strong enough to contain the hydrogen plasma when the magnetic field drops.
A fusion reactor is probably a lot less dangerous than a fission reactor, but more dangerous than wind and solar because reactor cores become radioactive over time.
Drawbacks
Most magnetic confinement fusion reactions under consideration produce neutrons. Something needs to absorb those neutrons, heat up and turn turbines. Over time neutrons will affect the components of the reactor and its shielding, making them brittle and slightly radioactive, just as for existing fission reactors.
Some fusion reactions under consideration produce a radioactive isotope of hydrogen (tritium, or hydrogen 3), which has a half-life of 12.3 years. Tritium and old shielding have to be disposed of, but they're far less dangerous than fission byproducts like plutonium that are radioactive for millennia.
For spaceflight, these fast neutrons are reaction mass: the faster the better.
Is It for Real?
This is hard to say. Scientists have been on the brink of a fusion breakthrough for fifty years. They've used superconducting magnets in the past. Is Lockheed's approach that different? Have they miniaturized the reactor enough to remove the instabilities in the magnetic field that have plagued traditional tokamak designs for decades?
I can't say for sure. But this has the potential to totally change everything about energy production. With cheap, portable fusion reactors coal and natural gas plants will be totally obsolete: fuel for fusion is extracted from seawater. There's no need for miners to die miles beneath the surface of the earth, or for frackers to inject toxic chemicals into the earth.
Fusion plants will probably not be cheap initially, especially compared to wind and solar which are already becoming cheaper than coal and gas. Extracting deuterium and tritium from seawater will probably start out to be expensive and get cheaper over time, but will probably always be more expensive than free energy from the wind and sun.
Fusion is not a panacea because there is still the problem of disposing of radioactive reactor cores. But these are minor problems compared to radioactive waste from fission plants, and the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels.
That does make fusion plants good candidates to pick up the slack when wind and solar generation are slack.
And having the technology in our back pockets that allows us to go to the stars is probably the best insurance plan the human race can get.
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