 As the devastation from Japan's near-apocalyptic disaster continued to grow, yesterday's media was filled with reports that the future of America's move to greater use of nuclear power was gravely threatened. But that was yesterday, and yesterday's gone. Today, a new dawn and a new round of Sunday talk shows proved the indominatability of the American spirit. There was, of course, a certain amount of caution. On 'Face the Nation', Senator Joe Lieberman said that the US needed to 'quietly' put the breaks on nuclear development "until we can absorb what has happened in Japan as a result of the earthquake and the tsunami". But then, after we finish absorbing, "I don’t want to stop the building of nuclear power plants. It's domestic, it's clean when nothing goes wrong, and it's ours. And when I say it's ours, I mean that it's mainly owned by people like John Rowe and the Koch brothers, who are Americans last time I checked." Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey agreed with Lieberman, all but conceding that we shouldn't build any more nuclear plants in seismically active areas until a safety review is completed. "I don't know about tsunami prone areas," conceded Markey, "but even if you took both areas off the table, that still leaves a whole lot of good places to build. Like Massachusetts." Senate Minority Mitch stood firm in his support for the nuclear industry. "I don't think right after a major environmental catastrophe is a very good time to be making American domestic policy," he told FOX News Sunday. "I called my friend John Rowe at Exelon and he agreed thoroughly. The Obama administration is always eager to use any catastrophe to impose new business-strangling regulations, and I am going to use this opportunity to denounce him preemptively." "The United States needs to work to free itself of dependence on foreign oil," Senator Chuck Schumer told 'Meet the Press', adding that he was "still willing to look at nuclear power. Look at it? That's putting it a little too lightly. I'm willing to gaze at it longingly. Nuclear power is like a dark and dangerous seductress, you've got to approach her safely, carefully, but you want her so much that it's hard to resist. It's black amour." |
 The warning signs were first apparent Friday night after Glenn Beck make a surprise appearance at a FreedomWorks convention. "When I first started planning this event, it was supposed to be political," Beck told the stunned TEA party group. "And then I kind of feel like God dropped a giant sandbag on my head." "I wish God would drop a giant sandbag on his head," said Joseph Barker. "When he told us last night that he had decided his rally was too important to be used for simple political goals, I felt like I'd been sucker punched. We'd already heard from Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, then Beck comes in and takes all the air out of the room. Nice work, dude." And so it was that in front of the Lincoln memorial, on a beautiful Washington day which was quite temperate for August, Glenn Beck did the one thing that nobody expected - he slowly and methodically bored the shit out of everybody. "George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Moses, and Martin Luther King - what's that got to do with taking back our country?" asked TEA party member Harriet Thatcher. "I'm a proud American and a devout Christian, and let me tell you, this was like being in church. For half the day. And I hate church, but at least today I got to wear shorts. Know what else I hate now? Beck. Who does he think he is, coming out here to lecture us and act like we need to be educated by him? I think we've been calling the wrong person 'the Messiah'." "He was out there talking about Martin Luther King, not Barack Obama," said attendee Joe Fulton. "For this I drove all the way from Memphis? I could have been at the big auto show down at the Cook Convention Center today. Tickets were only seven bucks, and I'm gonna end up spending more that ten times that much just on gas for this trip. And for what? Beck didn't rouse a bit of rabble, and that's flat out bait and switch. Sarah Palin didn't even wink at me. If I can ever make it back to my car, I'm heading straight down to Richmond and getting drunk as a skunk. At least that way this trip won't be a total loss." "Half the people he had on stage were black, and so was nearly all of the entertainment," said sunburned Tommy Addison. "This was supposed to be the TEA party Woodstock, and there were no rock bands at all. Gospel music? I just don't think that's appropriate at a rally where we were supposed to be taking back the civil rights movement. Oh, and lets not forget the bagpipes. Everybody loves bagpipes. If it wasn't for Jo Dee Messina, I would have given the whole show zero stars, but she didn't even sing any of her hits. I got one question for you Beck - Where was the Nuge?" Conservatives and rock fans weren't the only people disappointed by the event. Members of the media were left holding the bag on a story that never happened. "Yeah, I feel pretty betrayed by this whole thing," said Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. "We'd had our eye on this story for weeks, and Beck wastes the opportunity for what I guess you'd have to call public repentance. We didn't even get anything provocative out of Sarah Palin. What a waste of a day. Well, at least we have a new story line - The TEA party is hopelessly dull. I don't know why the heck we've wasted all this ink writing about them. Probably the only person happy with this is Rupert Murdoch, for FOX's decision not to air it live." Crowd size was estimated from as low as 100,000 to as high as a half million, but all sources agreed that it was probably the largest assemblage of bored people in the nation's history. |
 The Pew Research Center has released the results of a rather unsurprising survey which reveals that America's dumbass problem may be quickly growing out of control. In a sample of 3,000 people, 18% now think that President Obama is a Muslim. In a more recent poll, taken by Time magazine and Abt SRBI Inc (how's that for a catchy moniker?) after the President made his remarks about the 'ground zero mosque' found that 24% believed he was a Muslim. Which sounds about right, since the latest CNN poll on a related topic found that 26% believe Obama to be an illegal alien. The Time survey also found 33% of respondents believed that Muslims should be barred from running for president. Needless to say, the highest percentage holding these opinions identify themselves as conservatives or Republicans. Unfortunately, there is no cross-tabbing which would allow us to gage what the percent of conservatives who say Obama is a Muslim are also amongst the Birthers, but we can try and make an educated guess - 100%. All of which brings up an interesting question: Is the rising tide of the dim-witted an exclusively a conservative phenomenon? "Sadly no," says survey master Robert Pew, the man who personally makes every phone call. "The boneheaded reside equally in both of your major political parties, although the number goes up significantly when you look at those who identify with the TEA party... I don't get much data from them, however. As soon as I identify my organization they usually yell something about the lamestream media and hang up on me." "To be honest, you can't really call these beliefs, or even opinions. They're responses. For a lot of conservatives, I guess it's a lot of fun to say that Obama wasn't born in this country. And then you add being a Muslim, it's like putting a cherry on top. It's a double whammy. I mean, they might like to believe these things, but they really don't. I think they're just having a good time at my expense... You know, it's not nearly as much fun as you'd think being a pollster... And then there's always the liberal problem. You talk to them after they get off work, they've got a little buzz on, and... They like to goof on me. They put me on speaker phone... You can hear the laughter in the background. I swear, I liked this job so much better back after 911 when irony was dead." |
 People tell me that he's not real, but I don't believe them. Oh sure, sometimes I feign agreement, either to shunt off the conversation or perhaps to get closer insight into the mind of the skeptic. There's a sudden sadness to these people that makes you to shake them, an action which at times may prove unwise. There he was this morning, bright and early. I never doubted. I've never heard him speak, though he does so through his smile. Just sets down the cake and goes, off in his black sedan, much like the Lone Ranger, but without the mask. He showed up again this afternoon... The old gent is obviously getting a little addled from the years. I don't think he even remembered being here earlier. I would have tried to stop him, offer him a drink, but that seems to somehow breach the code. |
 Artist Dennis Hopper had been around forever without ever developing the slightest taint of nostalgia so it's not illogical to believe that he'll live on in digital form far into the future. |
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