John King of CNN got one thing right in his coverage of the Biden pick: Strategically, the choice of Biden was aimed at winning over the swing voters of southern Ohio.

    As such, it was the ultimate defensive move. McCain must win big in the rural south to compensate for Obama's urban masses and win Ohio. And McCain MUST win Ohio to win the national election. Deny McCain a landslide in southern Ohio and you close off his one path to victory. Joe Biden does that and does it well.

    For that and four other reasons, McCain is now constrained in his choice of running mate to only one from his shortlist. That one is former OH-02 Congressman, US Trade Representative, and Bush OMB Diretor Rob Portman.
   

It seems that on Saturday Brian Murphy of the Associated Press is reporting that the US has removed uranium from Iraq.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

So?  So, the denizens of redstate.com are taking this effort as validation of Bush's invasion!    More in "there's moresville"...

crossposted from intercontinentalcry.org

After more than forty years, the U.S. government is finally moving to clean up the uranium waste on Navajo lands.

On June 13, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a five-year plan to start cleaning the radioactive waste left by more than 40 years of mining uranium on Navajo lands.

From 1944 to 1986, companies grabbed more than 40 million tons of uranium, producing 996 pounds of radioactive waste for every 4 pounds of uranium extracted. A great deal of that waste has never been cleaned up.

As a result, for three generations now the Navajo "have been breathing uranium-laden dust from mine tailings and drinking from wells tainted with minute traces of radioactive mining waste," explains tomdispatch.com

Thorium doesn't get mentioned much these days, but it is a great solution to the energy problems that we are facing as a world.

Of course, nuclear energy has a bad name in America, because of nuclear waste, potential for accidents, proliferation issues.

What if there was a fuel that didn't have the problems that uranium has?

What if there was a fuel that was more abundant that uranium?

What if there was a fuel that America has in plenty, enough to last thousands of years?

The response from the Bush administration and its amen corner to the blistering charges in former press secretary Scott McClellan's new book has been quick, brutal and predictable.  While his predecessor Ari Fleischer proclaimed himself "heartbroken" over McClellan's revelations, his eventual successor Dana Perino branded him "disgruntled."  Even as Karl Rove likened the man who once lied for him to a "left-wing blogger," former Bush homeland security adviser Frances Townsend trashed McClellan as "self-serving" and "disingenuous."  As for President Bush himself, he is said to be "saddened" and "disappointed."

Of course, it wasn't always this way.

Memo to Bush: Halloween isn't for five months. That's not a "cute costume" King Abdullah is wearing. And, no matter how much they may look like it, those sticks of uranium aren't "Applety Jolly Ranchers."

Crosposted from UNBOSSED

Well, this is good news:

A federal judge has blocked a British mining company from exploring for uranium near the Grand Canyon, agreeing with environmental groups which sued the U.S. Forest Service for approving the plan without full environmental reviews.

More on why we need the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor:
We discussed yesterday why the LFTR is a totally safe alternative not just for fossil fuels but also in relation to uranium-fueled Light-Water Pressurized Reactors. But let’s review:

1. The LFTR is incredibly stable against nuclear reactivity accidents—the type of accident experienced at Chernobyl.

2. Any increase in temperature results in a decrease in reactivity. Thus, as the liquid fuel temperature increases, reactivity decreases, thus reducing power and restoring the original condition.  This is analogous to a weight on a spring. It is intrinsically safe and stable because of this.

3. The LFTR is also totally safe against a cooling loss accident which is what happened at TMI.

4. It is not possible because the liquid fuel can drain safely into specially designed cisterns. Once removed from the moderator, all fission reactions immediately cease.

That was HRC on Fox News.
AIDS signing for $31,000,000. Sure thing, maam.
And they got shares in the Brooklyn Bridge to sell us.

$31,000,000 up front.
A $3-billion uranium mining deal for Frank Giustra.
AIDS, the cover story of all time.

Think that needs explanation ??? $31,000,000 speaks for itself.

Kazakh's Nursultan Nazarbayev had been in power for 19 years.
He wanted some window dressing.
He bought it. He bought Bill Clinton.

So why are Democrats hanging back, over in the corner of the room like wallflowers at the dance ?
Teddy drove his car off the bridge. That was an accident.
This was no accident.

Cumm'on folks. No effin' accident.

And HRC's AIDS cover story ???? No accident either.
Using AIDS to cover a flat out lie.

HRC/WJC have tried carefully to conceal the donations to this foundation.
They knew what was in the hopper.
Where is morality where the problem is other Democrats ?

This $31,000,000 scam is worse -- on balance -- than anything that any of the 2008 declared presidential candidates have done.
The AIDS cover story on Fox News is a close second.

We have already seen Hillary take money from News Corp. It appears now that Bill has even more interesting bedfellows.

I am not sure if we know all the implications of this Kazakhstan uranium deal detailed by the NY Times at http://www.nytimes.com/... but just playing devil's advocate, that Uranium will be mined one way or another.  Are we all not better off that it will be mined by a sensible Canadian rather than an Iranian, a Saudi or a Chinese company?

I don't know that I care about the $137 million if it goes to end world hunger. It could have gone to Hezbollah or Hamas.

The media hasn't dug up too much of what Bill Clinton has been up to in the private sphere since leaving office 7 years ago.  Please spare us the embarrassing tales of marital infidelity, I used to think.  Now, I'm wishing it had only been just that.

The New York Times, which has endorsed Senator Clinton mind you, today published details surrounding an international humanitarian trip that former President Clinton took in 2005, during which he made a stop in Kazakhstan where he was partially involved in an unusual business deal.

In order to combat global warming, provide our future energy needs in a sustainable way, reduce respiratory and heart diseases, and gain energy independence simultaneously, the United States must adopt nuclear power as a primary part of an energy strategy including wind, solar, hydroelectric, and biomass while eliminating fossil fuel sources such as coal and natural gas.  The times of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have passed.  Redundant and modular reactor designs have taken the majority of the human effort out of maintenance and control. Waste management solutions such as pyroprocessing have reduced overall waste by a factor of over 100.  Dry cask storage allows for safe, on-site storage of waste until a national solution is found.  New reactor designs such as PBMR and IRIS are cost competitive with wind. The benefits of this shift would affect all social classes over many years, and the shift from energy consumer to energy exporter would give us an edge in the world energy markets.

It's time that environmentally conscious progressives reexamine the conventional wisdom on nuclear power.

The two primary technological challenges to producing a nuclear weapon are 1) amassing a sufficient amount of weapons-grade uranium, and 2) developing the sophisticated electrical triggering circuitry and conventional explosives required to initiate a nuclear chain reaction.  What is weapons-grade uranium and why is it so difficult to obtain?  Naturally-occurring uranium consists of a constant mixture of isotopes having different atomic masses due to varying numbers of neutrons in the nucleus.  The principal isotopes of uranium are U-238 and U-235.  Of the two, U-235 is the fissile isotope used for fuel in nuclear reactors and as the core of nuclear weapons.   In order to be used as a fuel, the fraction of U-235 in the mixture must be enriched to at least 5%.  In order to obtain "weapons-grade" uranium, it is necessary to enrich the fraction of U-235 in the mixture to greater than 90%.  This would be a trivial task if it were not for the fact that the fraction of U-235 in naturally-occurring uranium is less than 1%.  (The abundance of U-238, which is non-fissile, is greater than 99%).

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - Two Hungarians and a Ukrainian arrested in an attempted sale of uranium were peddling material believed to be from the former Soviet Union, and it was enriched enough to be used in a radiological "dirty bomb," police said Thursday.
The three men, who were arrested Wednesday in eastern Slovakia and Hungary, were trying to sell about a pound of uranium in powder form, said First Police Vice President Michal Kopcik.

Kopcik said three other suspects — including a Slovak national identified only as Eugen K. — were detained in the neighboring Czech Republic in mid-October for allegedly trying to sell fake radioactive materials. It was unclear to what degree, if any, they played a role in the thwarted uranium sale....READ MORE

Reading the Washington Post and New York Times stories about the International Atomic Energy Agency report (PDF) on the Iranian nuclear program, one could easily conclude that Iran has been surreptitiously moving forward with wholesale development of nuclear weapons.

The problem with both articles is that they bury what should be the lede: the IAEA report indicates that Iran has never diverted any nuclear material to a weapons program.

Are the combinations of environmental toxins and contractor neglect putting our troops at greater risk of health concerns?

Vladimir Putin arrives in Sydney tomorrow for the APEC summit. It's a historic visit - the first time a Russian president visits Australia.

While he's here, Putin is expected to sign a massive uranium deal with Australian PM John Howard -- and that's bad news for everybody.

More below.