thanks a million for taking the Sunday Open Thread, that opens up a lot of time for me. It's very much appreciated, my friend.

I am too old. Oh well, on to other subjects. Nukes! What a monumentally bad idea. Yes, plants break, and they leak. Sometimes catastrophically. But what happens when everything works right? In the best possible nuke situation, thousands of Navajos get cancer and die...miles of their land get dug up into open wounds that are permanently useless. The wind blows the dust east to...whoever lives downwind. (I fly for a living...I see the open sores...when it gets a light snowfall, I see the plumes of dust painted across the snow.) The hottest stuff gets turned into weapons. Weapons that can theoretically destroy the Earth several times over. Good deal. But, to make "enriched" uranium, you must by definition end up with a pile of "depleted" uranium. Well, you can't leave that shit sitting around; it's hazardous, and there is only so much room. How about we make armor out of it! And then, to complete the circle, armor piercing weapons! Win win! Then, you have the middle stuff. Lets put it in a giant sealed concrete box...but then it needs lots of cooling, so we better put it near a major water source. How about an island in a river? Or maybe on the ocean, near a major fault? (San Onofre is my favorite, because it makes some really nice waves poisonous. Keeps the crowds down. Waves, man.) Then you need plumbing to run the water into the box. But this stuff is corrosive! Not to mention really hot. And Joe the Plumber doesn't want to fuck with it...so it inevitably leaks. But only enough to slightly raise the level of "background radiation", you know, that normal amount that has always been there? Ensuring that your grandkids will have a higher incidence of cancer than you do. Then, at some point, the shit is used up...for fuel purposes, anyway. The leftover is only dangerous for another 10,000 years or so, so lets put it in a steel drum full of water, and stick it in a building somewhere, and put a big fence around it. That ought to do it. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah...CLEAN Energy, Baby.

I think I'll give that music another try.

Arr! Here be a " Report " I don't know what it means.

24 Feb 2016
China now has the most billionaires despite the country's economic slowdown, stock market plunge and crackdown on corruption, according to a China-based wealth research firm.

The Hurun Report said China now has 568 billionaires versus the United States' 535, giving it the largest population of billionaires in the world.

According to Hurun, China's billionaire population first surpassed the U.S. in August, and grew by a total of 90 last year.

I said it before, my ex's dad had a tattoo from Dachau when you see it for real you never forget. Speak out! You've got to speak out against the madness. Thanks.
Long Time Gone

Give yourself a big pat on the back for a great first morning open thread. Also, I know JtC is grateful for your stepping up to the plate to commit doing one day a week. For a while, we had trouble finding people willing to do these and often JtC acted as the substitute on the open days. I think you are going to do a fantastic job on this.

For anyone else who thinks they might want to give the morning open thread a try, consider job sharing with someone else. One great thing about the open thread is that it can be all your own and does not have to be serious.

it's much easier to bear each other, if we at least know the basics of our conversation partners online. Thanks for writing future OTs. It's pretty, pretty much of a weirdo hard work, in Sanders-like words ...

the OT, DMW, enjoyed your music and looking forward to many more mornings with you.

various VA issues, down the road. My intent was to wait until the Dem Party Primary was over, but (thankfully) now it looks like it will go on quite a while.

Anyhoo, I'm following Zell Miller's 'replacement,' Chairperson of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and Georgia Senator, Johnny Isakson, as he proceeds to make the privatization of many VA health care services permanent, extending it beyond the 3-year test pilot program.

Later, I will write about our own experience with (active duty) military medical facilities, and 'why' I think this is a toxic policy, and a dreadful mistake if Democrats allow it to go forward. Although Mr M qualifies as a Category 3 vet to receive VA care, so far he has not needed to do so. But, I'll fight tooth and nail to stop the VA system from being destroyed, and the high costs of health care being shifted onto veterans. (which is what privatization will do, eventually)

Additional funding and personnel would have taken care of the problems of timely access, without a crisis, if lawmakers had been on the ball. I have to wonder if it was intentional--to set up an opportunity to call for privatization (since that's what has happened).

It's the old 'Camel's nose under the tent scenario' that Democrats so often employ when they 'negotiate' with conservative Republicans.

*Sigh*

Have a nice afternoon, All!

(Music City) Mollie
elinkarlsson@WordPress

same thing only different. His supporters believe he's challenging the status quo. I've even seen many progressives and democrats say they think Trump would be better on foreign policy than Clinton. I don't believe that because he adheres to the same false narratives and lies that all the imperialists do. Take ISIS for example. ISIS was created by the U.S., it's CIA and others to act as a mercenary army within Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere (on to Russia and China), and as a cover to aid in taking down governments and tearing apart sovereign countries, just like Al Qaeda was created and used as such in Afghanistan when the Russians were there in the 80's., and in concert with the entire War OF Terror's purpose from the beginning. The U.S. and others have funded, trained, recruited, organized, and aided ISIS while pretending to fight against it. It's all been a sham, a standard type war maneuver that's been used forever.

So here's Trump's latest.

"Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is claiming that the man who tried to rush the stage at his Ohio rally Saturday morning is connected to Islamic State militants — an allegation Middle East experts dismiss as farcical.

Trump was mid-speech at a rally at an airport near Dayton when a man, later identified by authorities as Thomas Dimassimo of Fairborn, Ohio, jumped a barricade and rushed at Trump. Video from the rally shows Dimassimo was able to touch the stage before security officials tackled him.

Speaking at a rally later Saturday in St. Lois, Trump told the crowd about the incident and said that, after learning the man's name, one of his "Internet people" discovered something shocking: alleged evidence that linked Dimassimo to Islamic State militants.

"It was probably ISIS or ISIS-related. Do you believe it?" Trump asked the crowd. He said that an online search had revealed "the guy is playing all sorts of, let's say music that you wouldn't be liking, dragging an American flag along the sidewalk, making all sorts of gestures, having all sorts of things on the Internet. And he's probably or possibly ISIS-related."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-claims-man-who-tried-to-rus...

I believe if you read between the lines with Trump, you see he tells the same lies and spouts the same propaganda they all do. It also shows his supporters are as big of dupes as the conservadems backing Clinton and Obama because they believe the War OF Terror lies.

This is a short clip explaining the expections of an increase in votes of the right-wing AfD party in Germany three or four days before today's election:
[video:https://youtu.be/uEWxdeOAl00]

Memories about refugee transition camps "Friedland" by a former refugee from Poland in 1945 and the new refugees transitioning into there today. This is a forty minutes documentary, calm and slow moving in its editing style with lots of original interviews of refugees.
[video:https://youtu.be/q3CS-v5UDsM]

Transit Camp Friedland - Part 1
For millions of people, arrival at the Friedland camp in Niedersachsen marked the beginning of a new life - or at least a respite from a life on the run. The British military government opened the camp for German refugees and returning soldiers in September 1945. Today, Friedland is a reception center for asylum seekers and refugees. Many have abandoned everything back home and risked their lives getting to Europe. We accompanied some refugees during their stay in the camp and also talked to people who came to Friedland in the early days. All had dramatic stories to tell. "When I meet children from Syria or elsewhere in Friedland today, I am always meeting myself,” says Annelie Keil, who arrived there as an eight-year-old child in 1947. How different are the feelings, experiences and aspirations of the people in this place where so many decades of escape stories intersect?

Some other video clips:
Euronews: Germany Elections Today:
German voters punish Merkel’s conservatives in regional elections – exit polls
Frauke Petry: The force behind Germany’s rising nationalist party
Merkel faces regional election setback after nationalist surge

A nationalist party powered into three German state legislatures in elections Sunday held amid divisions over Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal approach to the migrant crisis, according to projections.

Actual results of today's election in Germany in "Baden-Wuerttemberg", in short huge win of the Green Party and the AfD (right-wing and NeoNazis), losses for the Christian Democratic Union CDU (Merkel's Party) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Election Results in Three Bundesländern (states): An Overview

Oh, and now something nicer, actually quite beautiful I think: Nice photos in there!
This Is What Peaceful Borderlines Between European Countries Look Like

There are better reports / videos coming up at France24, but it's not yet on YouTube.

Graph of the money behind #climatedenial pic.twitter.com/t9ZvpOoJzY #globalwarming#climatechange

— #BoycottKoch (@GoodbyeKoch) March 13, 2016

US Climate Change Countermovement Organizations - May be they need to be occupied.