Another explosion rocks Japanese nuclear reactor damaged by earthquake, site of meltdown

Reuters reports that the new blast has not damaged the #3 reactor.

More on the hydrogen blast that hit the plant an hour ago (10:01 pm Eastern US time).

A hydrogen explosion occurred Monday morning at the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's troubled No. 3 reactor, the government's nuclear safety agency said.

The 11:01 a.m. incident came after a hydrogen explosion hit the No. 1 reactor at the same plant Saturday, and prompted the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to urge residents within a 20-kilometer radius to take shelter inside buildings.

It also followed a report by Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant's operator, to the government earlier in the day that the radiation level at the plant had again exceeded the legal limit and pressure in the container of the No. 3 reactor had increased.

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NLRB: White House muzzled us in budget debate

The NLRB is the National Labor Relations Board. As in, Labor.

To the extent you think that Obama's a Democrat, you would call that his base. And if you're a fan of political non-interference in "independent agencies," in the story below the non-political move for the White House would be not to intervene.

Instead, something else happened. Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post has the sorry tale (my emphasis):

When House Republicans targeted the budget of the National Labor Relations Board last month, the agency shot back, warning that such cuts would force it to largely cease operations for an extended period of time, creating a backlog of thousands of cases.

It was one of the few counterattacks from the Obama administration, which was otherwise busy proposing its own cuts and endorsing the Republican call for slashing spending -- and it didn't last long. The White House demanded that the NLRB scrub the statement defending the agency from its website, an NLRB spokesperson told The Huffington Post. ... The Office of Management and Budget, an arm of the White House, reached out to the NLRB and told the agency to back off and take down the statement, according to the NLRB spokesperson.

The rest of Grim's reporting contains the weaselly WH explanation. Read it if you like.

Frankly, I think this is a two-fer for the White House. They signal "preemptive compromise" to the Republicans; and they signal "we're weak, not complicit" to progressives. In the biz, they call that win-win.

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'Red State' writer-director to donate portion of proceeds from DC screening to family that sued Fred Phelps

Writer-director Kevin Smith, whose new movie "Red State" is, shall we say, "inspired" by Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps, will be donating a portion of the proceeds of the film's DC screening to the family that sued Phelps and lost (the family now has to pay Phelps' court costs). I should be going to screening this week, so I'll let you know how it goes. Oh, he's also going to have boxes throughout the theater where patrons can donate to the court fund as well. Here's more info on where the movie will be playing, around the country. Read the rest of this post...

GOP assault on teachers continues - Texas $9bn short

How does the GOP think the US is going to recover and compete globally with these attacks? In many cases, the costs will be pushed from the state level to the local level so wealthier areas will find a way to fund schools. (Yes, that means higher taxes but the state people can still claim that they didn't raise taxes.) For students living in lower income areas, they will be economically punished. The Republicans ran on right wing agendas but they never said it would be this extreme. The far right, radical agenda is likely to stir Democratic voters in 2012. The big problem though is that the Democrats are still afraid to confront this extremism and shift the country back to the center. How inspiring is it to vote for "we stink but the other team is worse?"

Robert Scott, Perry’s appointed education commissioner, has said he needs at least $6 billion more than legislative leaders have proposed just to keep the schools functioning.

On this weekend’s rally, Perry added, “I welcome folks to come to Austin and be engaged in the process. But I also remind them that Austin, Texas, particularly when we’re talking about schools, is not the be-all, end-all from the standpoint of decision-making.”

Lawmakers have proposed budgets that would leave schools more than $9 billion short of the money they need to fulfill current law. Many school districts have looked first to reductions in their administrative and nonteaching force before cutting teachers.

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NH agrees with Hitler, says 'defective people' should be sent to Siberia to die

And yet another step backwards for humanity thanks to the modern Republican party. Although it doesn't sound like he was joking the first time, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and then ask him who the hell even makes jokes like this?

In an interview and in an e-mail Omand sent to her friends, Omand said she called Harty, who represents her district, to tell him her concerns about the House Finance Committee's proposed cuts to mental health services. Omand said Harty said he disagreed with her and made the comments about eugenics.

Omand says Harty then stated, "I wish we had a Siberia so we could ship them all off to freeze to death and die and clean up the population."

Omand said Harty appeared to be serious. After Omand responded that his idea sounded like what Adolf Hitler did in World War II, Omand said Harty responded, "Hitler did something right, and I agree with (it)."

Harty told the Monitor he was "just kidding" about Siberia. He denied making the comment about Hitler and said it was Omand who brought up Hitler.

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Maybe Rep. King can investigate home grown white terrorist organizations

You know, like the Timothy McVeigh types or the Alaska Militia extremists who were just arrested because of an alleged plot to murder Alaska State Troopers and a judge. Then again, we know that Rep. King has a soft spot for white terrorists.

Five people in the Fairbanks area were arrested Thursday by state and federal law enforcement on charges connected with an alleged plot to kidnap or kill state troopers and a Fairbanks judge, according to the Alaska State Troopers.

Francis "Schaeffer" Cox, Lonnie Vernon, Karen Vernon, Coleman Barney and Michael Anderson are accused of conspiring to commit murder, kidnapping, and arson, as well as weapons misconduct, hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence, according to trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters in a written statement late Thursday.

An investigation "revealed extensive plans to kidnap or kill Alaska state troopers and a Fairbanks judge," the statement said. The plans included "extensive surveillance" on the homes of two Fairbanks troopers, the statement said.

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No-fly over Libya gains momentum

Obama is officially on board.

The United States has thrown its weight behind the Arab League's call for a United Nations no-fly zone over Libya, where government troops backed by fighter jets are battling rebels seeking to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power.

Washington, which would play a leading role in enforcing any no-fly zone, called the declaration an "important step", but it stopped short of commitment to any military action and made no proposal for a swift meeting of the UN Security Council.

The Arab League's call for a no-fly zone was announced on Saturday by Oman's foreign minister, Youssef bin Alawi bin Abdullah, at a press conference which followed a meeting of the bloc's ministers in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

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The Clash - Safe European Home

One of their best from their best album.

The post-earthquake news in Japan has been like nothing I've seen in a while. Each story and each new video seems more shocking than the last. The story of a village or half of a village (depending on the report) being swept away with thousands dead is horrible. One of the two earthquakes that I was in was in Tokyo back in the 1990s and it was scary stuff for me but this one was so much more powerful. I can't even imagine how the people of Japan are making it through this period. Read the rest of this post...

Japanese ministers ignored reactor safety warnings

The Japanese tend to be much more in favor of regulation and oversight than many countries. Now that two reactors are in trouble, this will be a major blow to the government ministers. It's hard to imagine how much ignoring the Republicans would do in similar circumstances in the US. The Guardian:

The timing of the near nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi could not have been more appropriate. In only a few weeks the world will mark the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear plant disaster ever to affect our planet – at Chernobyl in Ukraine. A major core meltdown released a deadly cloud of radioactive material over Europe and gave the name Chernobyl a terrible resonance.

This weekend it is clear that the name Fukushima came perilously close to achieving a similar notoriety. However, the real embarrassment for the Japanese government is not so much the nature of the accident but the fact it was warned long ago about the risks it faced in building nuclear plants in areas of intense seismic activity. Several years ago, the seismologist Ishibashi Katsuhiko stated, specifically, that such an accident was highly likely to occur. Nuclear power plants in Japan have a "fundamental vulnerability" to major earthquakes, Katsuhiko said in 2007. The government, the power industry and the academic community had seriously underestimated the potential risks posed by major quakes.

Katsuhiko, who is professor of urban safety at Kobe University, has highlighted three incidents at reactors between 2005 and 2007. Atomic plants at Onagawa, Shika and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa were all struck by earthquakes that triggered tremors stronger than those to which the reactor had been designed to survive.

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