N.Y. Times Hearts Dummies Part I : Thursday Edition
Apparently the New York Times has created an new community outreach program. While we are generally in favor companies being all civic minded and trying to help the less fortunate members of the community, We feel that the Times has made 2 regrettable mistakes in implementing their new program. First, the Times has apparently decided to reach out to the nations highly educated idiots. Second, the Times seems to think that the best way to help our nations highly educated idiots is to give them a bunch of column inches in their OpEd pages.
On Thursday, the Times gave Alan J. Kuperman a whole bunch of room the write about what a boom the new energy bill is for terrorist.
According to Kuperman's piece, Senator Pete Domenici (republican - New Mexico) used his position as head of the senate Energy Committee and his extraordinary supply of mojo to force the " Bush administration, a majority of the Senate, leaders of the House Energy Committee, and nuclear regulators from the five preceding presidential administrations" to look at dirty pictures on the internet, write bad checks, wear women's underwear, and include an amendment that "guts restrictions on the export of highly enriched uranium" in the new energy bill. Obviously these are all bad things and we feel that no one should ever be forced to do any of them [ed. Except women - we think women should have to wear women's underwear. We're fascist that way.]
Pete did all these bad things because several foreign pharmaceutical companies wanted to avoid the expense of upgrading facilities that currently use highly enriched uranium (HEU) to produce medical isotopes. The old law only allowed these companies to import HEU from the US if they were in the process of converting their production facilities to use low-enriched uranium. Apparently this would be expensive so these foreign pharmaceutical companies all said "Fuck it! We'll just call Pete and have him fix it for us." Calls were made, checks were written, someone might even have gotten a blowjob ...
Anyway, the point is that Pete did a really bad thing. We agree with Kuperman on this. Pete should not be using his mojo to bend the entire U.S. government to the will of foreign pharmaceutical companies. But in the process of making this point Kuperman say this :
Which makes it sound like once they get their hands on some HEU all the terrorist will need is some string, duct tape, a pulley, a mousetrap, a skateboard, a case of Mountain Dew and an angry high school student to create the ultimate weapon of terror.
We will be the first to admit that the concept of a backpack nuke with a skateboard base delivery system powered by the limitless energy of caffeine, sugar, and the anger of disaffected youth is a very frightening thing. In all fairness Kuperman, he is hardly the only one to everdrop the scare quote from Alvarez into a paper and say "QED: You should all shit your pants now!". None the less, telling the world that once you have acquired HEU, you can construct a reliable high yield nuclear weapon provided you have a high school education in the science of dropping things is still quite idiotic.
Seeing as how we agree with Kuperman about the whole "we shouldn't go handing out HEU all willy nilly" thing, we would have been happy to forgive this one slide into moron-dom. But Kuperman couldn't stop himself from dipping into the idiot well a second time :
Bush's energy bill does nothing about gas prices and, near as we can tell, no sane person ever thought it would. But according to Kuperman, Bush and CO. were helpless to stop big, mean Pete's "HEU for Terrorist" amendment because rising gas prices forced them to pass a bill so that would do nothing to stop rising gas prices!
The Bush administration would have passed this bill and bragged about even if it included funds to research ways of converting kittens hearts into oil. The republicans who control the house or the senate, and the white house could have stopped this bill but they didn't because tax breaks to oil companies and the right to beat their chests about how they finely passed and energy bill were more important to them than national security. Same as always.
On Thursday, the Times gave Alan J. Kuperman a whole bunch of room the write about what a boom the new energy bill is for terrorist.
According to Kuperman's piece, Senator Pete Domenici (republican - New Mexico) used his position as head of the senate Energy Committee and his extraordinary supply of mojo to force the " Bush administration, a majority of the Senate, leaders of the House Energy Committee, and nuclear regulators from the five preceding presidential administrations" to look at dirty pictures on the internet, write bad checks, wear women's underwear, and include an amendment that "guts restrictions on the export of highly enriched uranium" in the new energy bill. Obviously these are all bad things and we feel that no one should ever be forced to do any of them [ed. Except women - we think women should have to wear women's underwear. We're fascist that way.]
Pete did all these bad things because several foreign pharmaceutical companies wanted to avoid the expense of upgrading facilities that currently use highly enriched uranium (HEU) to produce medical isotopes. The old law only allowed these companies to import HEU from the US if they were in the process of converting their production facilities to use low-enriched uranium. Apparently this would be expensive so these foreign pharmaceutical companies all said "Fuck it! We'll just call Pete and have him fix it for us." Calls were made, checks were written, someone might even have gotten a blowjob ...
Anyway, the point is that Pete did a really bad thing. We agree with Kuperman on this. Pete should not be using his mojo to bend the entire U.S. government to the will of foreign pharmaceutical companies. But in the process of making this point Kuperman say this :
If terrorists obtained enough such uranium they could fashion a full-fledged nuclear weapon, not merely a "dirty bomb" that would scatter radioactive waste. As the late Manhattan Project physicist Luis Alvarez noted in his memoirs: "With modern weapons-grade uranium, the background neutron rate is so low that terrorists, if they had such material, would have a good chance of setting off a high-yield explosion simply by dropping one half of the material onto the other half. . . . Even a high school kid could make a bomb in short order."
Which makes it sound like once they get their hands on some HEU all the terrorist will need is some string, duct tape, a pulley, a mousetrap, a skateboard, a case of Mountain Dew and an angry high school student to create the ultimate weapon of terror.
We will be the first to admit that the concept of a backpack nuke with a skateboard base delivery system powered by the limitless energy of caffeine, sugar, and the anger of disaffected youth is a very frightening thing. In all fairness Kuperman, he is hardly the only one to everdrop the scare quote from Alvarez into a paper and say "QED: You should all shit your pants now!". None the less, telling the world that once you have acquired HEU, you can construct a reliable high yield nuclear weapon provided you have a high school education in the science of dropping things is still quite idiotic.
Seeing as how we agree with Kuperman about the whole "we shouldn't go handing out HEU all willy nilly" thing, we would have been happy to forgive this one slide into moron-dom. But Kuperman couldn't stop himself from dipping into the idiot well a second time :
Although President Bush signed the energy bill under the pressure of spiraling gas prices, his Energy Department strongly opposed lifting the export restrictions. Its top official for nuclear nonproliferation, Paul M. Longsworth, warned last month that the provision "may undermine support of the U.S. highly enriched uranium minimization policy and nuclear export control system."
Bush's energy bill does nothing about gas prices and, near as we can tell, no sane person ever thought it would. But according to Kuperman, Bush and CO. were helpless to stop big, mean Pete's "HEU for Terrorist" amendment because rising gas prices forced them to pass a bill so that would do nothing to stop rising gas prices!
The Bush administration would have passed this bill and bragged about even if it included funds to research ways of converting kittens hearts into oil. The republicans who control the house or the senate, and the white house could have stopped this bill but they didn't because tax breaks to oil companies and the right to beat their chests about how they finely passed and energy bill were more important to them than national security. Same as always.
posted by mad science at 2:30 PM
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