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Two Cheers for Tennessee
The Economist once called it "enlightened mountain Republicanism." For whatever reason, Tennesseans have long looked to retired Sen. Howard Baker (McCallie '43), a moderate Republican who forged compromise across the aisles until retiring from the Senate to be Reagan's chief of staff after Iran Contra, as the model for how senators should behave. When Republican senators have lurched too far to the populist right, as Sen. Bill Frist did during the Terry Schiavo mess, their approval ratings have plummeted. The same explains why the once admired former Sen. Al Gore lost the state of Tennessee in 2000 after he was perceived to have lurched too far to the left in the 1990s. Regardless, Sen. Lamar Alexander reminded me yesterday why I supported him in his last campaign, and Sen. Bob Corker (Chattanooga City High School '70) locked up my support for his next election campaign. It would have been all too easy for my two Republican senators to have been petulant drama queens about the New START treaty, but instead here is what Sen. Alexander said yesterday:
And here is Sen. Corker:
It almost makes up for Basil Marceaux:
Interesting. I was
Interesting. I was wondering if Oak Ridge was a player.
http://www.wreg.com/news/sns-ap-tn--start-tennessee,0,1721350.story
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) — A big role for the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex at Oak Ridge is part of the reason Tennessee's two Republican U.S. senators support the New START treaty.
Y-12's modernization program, including a proposed uranium processing facility, is expected to gain support from the treaty with Russia.
U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker are among Republicans who have pushed modernization of the nuclear weapons complex and both said modernization of U.S. nuclear capabilities was instrumental in their support of the treaty.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that the proposed uranium processing facility is estimated to cost up to $6.5 billion, with construction to take place over the next decade.
Howard Baker didn't retire
Howard Baker didn't retire from the Senate to become Reagan's Chief of Staff. He retired as Senate Majority Leader in January 1985, and accepted a desperate invitation from the Reagan White House to pull things together there some two years later, after the Iran-Contra affair had badly damaged Reagan's credibility.
Al Gore lost Tennessee in the 2000 Presidential election because he had neglected the state for years as Vice President, at a time when white voters who had previously voted for white Democrats started voting for Republicans. It probably is correct to say that Bill Frist's approval ratings in Tennessee dropped because of his conduct with regard to the Schiavo affair. It's too bad they didn't drop because as a Senator he was the opposite of Baker, a willing doormat for the Bush White House who treated the Senate as an institution with disrespect. There have been worse Senators in our history than Bill Frist, but I can't think of any offhand who held the title of Majority Leader.
Calm down with the East
Calm down with the East Tennessee love.
Middle Tennessee is where the action is.
Though I agree with the sentiment regarding Bill Frist's time in the Senate, he's been a pretty moderate ex-Senator in regards to education and healthcare.
Funny story about Baker. Supposedly a reporter told a Dem senator that Baker would win a plurality of the vote for President from his Democratic senate colleagues. Dem senator replied, "Wrong, he'd win a majority".
Though, I have to give credit to the "Golden Age of Tennessee Senators", the 1950s with Al Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver (my favorite TN senator, although unfortunately also from East Tennessee). The two, along with LBJ, were the only southern senators to not sign the southern manifesto of 1956.
I love the smell of BS in the
I love the smell of BS in the morning...it smells like victory.
You know, Corker's deal is this - backing more nuclear weapons production under the cover of "modernization" and ensuring that pork for bogus "missile defense" efforts remains in the budget - and yes, Lockheed-Raytheon-General Dynamics-BWXT-Pantex-Battelle etc. support this, but it really is such a huge and useless waste of money. Corker's line is absolutely ridiculous, but if you want to know why he turned against his party and gave Obama a "win" - well, in Congress, Party Loyalty comes second to serving up the bacon back home - that is the fundamental point here, perhaps. If you want the real picture, here it goes, with some editorializing on my part:
Corker's got a new name for New START: 'Nuclear Modernization and Missile Defense Act of 2010' (Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground)
"U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, who invested much of himself in the New START deliberations, including visits to multiple parts of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, had this to say following today's ratification of the treaty with Russia:"
"My only concern in consideration of this treaty has been the safety and security of the American people. [required preamble] In the final analysis, I am pleased to support a treaty that continues the legacy of President Reagan who signed the first nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia in 1987. [bull - Reagan called for the elimination of nuclear weapons and was undermined by Cheney etc.] Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen says the treaty is vital to U.S. national security; I agree [hardly] and am proud that as a result of ratification we have been successful in securing commitments from the administration on modernization of our nuclear arsenal and support of our missile defense programs, two things that would not have happened otherwise. In fact, thanks in part to the contributions my staff and I have been able to make, the New START treaty could easily be called the "Nuclear Modernization and Missile Defense Act of 2010."
Translation "My only concern here has been making sure my constituents at Oak Ridge nuke plant and their many associated contractors keep getting their pork! Not only that, we've managed to insert language that has a good chance of scuttling future nuclear weapons reduction agreements with Russia! Yahoo!"
Here's the relevant quotation from the posted video:
"We have over 5,000 nuclear warheads in our nuclear arsenal, all of which - all of which needs to be modernized. All of which is getting ready to be obsolete if we don't make the investment . . . there are seven facilities that we have in this country that deal with our nuclear arsenal, and many of those are becoming obsolete and need to have investment."
Come on, people - the fffing Cold War is over, and there is no need for this nonsense to continue - and no, the nuclear weapons are not "obsolete" by any stretch of the imagination. We can still obliterate ourselves at a moment's notice, have no fear.
We've got the Soviet malaise, and we've got it bad. Economic collapse under the weight of bloated military expenditures and top-down Central Committee decision-making - that should sound familiar, shouldn't it?
I posted the Oak Ridge
I posted the Oak Ridge article off the AP.
Yes, this one smells of smoked bacon in TN. Yes the cold war is over, mostly (we still have Korea, China has our nuclear warhead designs, I can go on....)
Yes, the US warhead count is large. It is also true that the warheads are aging.
When we took the weight out of the warhead to launch them, we also took out the reliability. Lot of the work done on FAT BOY was to get the symmetry right in the implosion. A lot of that is part of history, Oak Ridge processed that Uranium. When you get into the higher yielding stuff, you have to keep the structure together to let the neutrons do their business. That structure, the reduced weight, and materials chosen all combine into the science of materials. We are dealing with radiation and radiation causes materials to become embrittled. Bottom line is you loose your structure, symmetry, and the ability of holding it all together for that last jiffy second. The embrittlement thing is why we do testing in space, there are a lot of radiation effects out there past our atmosphere. It goes beyond embrittlement, the byproducts of radioactive decay (alpha, gamma, particles) change the physical nature of materials which changes how they behave in physics.
Only way to guarantee it, is to renew the materials.
I would be the first to chuck it all in the trash, if everyone else did the same. That is not going to happen anytime soon.
Until then, why not create jobs. Turn lead into gold. Rocky Flats is shut down and New Mexico and TN are the principles. It is also a matter of default. American does not manage its own ports anymore. Heard that the Russians were going take over our Uranium mining in the US of A. At least we can still manufacture something in the US.
There is moral hazard. How do you tell Iran not to process nuclear material when you yourself just dropped $80 Billion to do the same?
For all the spin...."LAME DUCK == SEASON OF PROGRESS" coming out of Washington these days, I do not know if US governement even understands moral hazard anymore. Sodomy never produced anything good and now you have a crowd complete with colored ribbons cheering you on.
I am a little confused anymore about what it means to be American.
Hardworking people with a puritain ethic? We just did a culture change in Congress. No wonder the US is focused on immigrants for population growth.
Manufacturing power house? Have you looked at the manufacturing labels on the junk you buy? Do you care? Your unemployed neighbor does. Corporate managment is too busy doing the backend deed to American workers anymore for a bonus gain.
Leader of the free world? What, in defict spending?
COIN niks are running around being kind to the folks in Afghanistan. Radical Islam is not too fond of sodomy. How does the military COIN book explain the repeal of DADT to the enemy? Kinda changes the hearts and minds argument.
At least the US is still good for something and it lives at Y-12.
Shame on you, Exum, for
Shame on you, Exum, for endorsing these two bigots. Both Tennessee Senators--Alexander and Corker--voted in the losing minority against repeal of "don't ask, don't tell."
Shaming someone for their
Shaming someone for their belief in government, morals.
.
.What does that make you?
"Belief in government,
"Belief in government, morals"? Huh? Say what? Makes no sense. The shame is endorsing bigotry. The DADT policy was wrong on every level (morally, militarily, foreign policy wise, you name it) and recognized as such by the leadership of the US military and the majority of both houses of Congress. But the two US Senators from Tennessee voted against its repeal. Rather than showing some morality and leadership, those two exhibited craven pandering to the most backward elements of the population. Endorsing them is shameful.
CA DADT court case was about
CA DADT court case was about "due process". Congress had to react to and recognize the court decision not the homosexual behavior. "Due process" has precidence going all the way back to the Magna Carta. Homosexual behavior is not uniquely protected some people want it to be. Some religions think homosexual behavior is a sin, therefore immoral. People depend on their religion to give them moral guidance that is a fact that can not be denied.
People that join the military sign a contact agreeing to the policies of the military. Discharge from the service is something that everyone in the military faces for not following policy. Everyone in the military gives up some form of civil liberties to serve. No one ever told a homosexual that they could not serve in the military, but the people pushing DADT claim homosexuals cannot serve.
There are a lot of misunderstandings and I think people just need to be reeducated to the issue.
Biology gives me guidance. Anything else is just enjoyment and self-indulgence. By itself, homosexual behavior is a failed concept because a society would fail if it can not reproduce itself.
There are a lot of homosexual groups wanting to make their behavior accepted.
Policitians like swing votes. I shame the politician that puts more effort into constantly serving his campaign rather than the people of his district. In TN, you are getting into the Bible belt and the Bible considers homosexual behavior a sin. We are back to the moral compass again.
You have to re-write the Bible and the Biology books. Ouch. There are a lot of parents out there that do not want their ten year old recruited to a failed biology experiment.
Sorry, facts of life.
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