Boston.com tweet (15APR): "controlled explosion opposite the library within one minute..."

why do some people look like the following at 70+ and others look like they're

a half a foot in the grave?

72

What's past is prologue...

How have the Feds handled California, where medical marijuana is legal?

Find out here

The Gorgon Stare

Gorgon Stare is a video capture technology developed by the United States military. It is a spherical array of nine cameras attached to an aerial drone.[1] The US Air Force calls it wide-area surveillance sensor system

Max Baucus on Obamacare: "I just see a huge train wreck coming..."

Max Baucus, facing an election next year, suddenly is "very concerned not enough is being done so far. Very concerned."

In the following video Baucus grills Kathleen Sebelius on Wednseday April 17, 2013 on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus called the first Senate meeting of interested parties before the committee to discuss health care reform, including representatives from pharmaceutical groups, insurance companies, and HMOs and hospital management companies. The meeting was controversial because it did not include representatives from groups calling for single-payer health care.

Advocate groups attended a Senate Finance Committee meeting in May 2009 to protest their exclusion as well as statements by Baucus that "single payer was not an option on the table." Baucus later had eight protesters removed by police who arrested them for disrupting the hearing.

Many of the single-payer advocates claimed it was a "pay to play" event. A representative of the Business Roundtable, which includes 35 memberships of health maintenance organizations, health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, admitted that other countries, with lower health costs, and higher quality of care, such as those with single-payer systems, have a competitive advantage over the United States with its private system.

At the next meeting on health care reform of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus had five more doctors and nurses removed and arrested

Baucus has used the term "uniquely American solution" to describe the end point of current health reform and has said that he believes America is not ready yet for any form of single payer health care. This is the same term the insurance trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), is using. AHIP has launched the Campaign for an American Solution, which argues for the use of private health insurance instead of a government backed program. Critics have said that Medicare is already effectively a single-payer system

Baucus has been criticized for his ties to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and has been one of the largest beneficiaries in the Senate of campaign contributions from these industries. From 2003 to 2008, Baucus received $3,973,485 from the health sector, including $852,813 from pharmaceutical companies, $851,141 from health professionals, $784,185 from the insurance industry and $465,750 from HMOs/health services, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A 2006 study by Public Citizen found that between 1999 and 2005 Baucus, along with former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, took in the most special-interest money of any senator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Baucus

intelligence operatives from before LBJ

like Operation 40

Operation 40 was a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored undercover operation in the early 1960s, which was active in the United States and the Caribbean (including Cuba), Central America, and Mexico. It was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban Revolution, and was presided over by Vice-president Richard Nixon.

The group included Frank Sturgis (who would later become one of the Watergate burglars); Felix Rodriguez (a CIA officer who later was involved in the capture and summary execution of Che Guevara); Luis Posada Carriles (held in the US in 2010 on charges of illegal immigration, he is demanded by Venezuela for his key role in the execution of the 1976 Cubana Flight 455 bombing); Orlando Bosch (founder of the counterrevolutionary Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, that organized the 1976 murder of Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier); Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero; Virgilio Paz Romero; Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz; Bernard Barker;

Porter Goss; and Barry Seal. Members took part in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion directed against the government of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Operation 40 had 86 employees in 1961, of which 37 were trained as case officers.

Take a look at Palo Verde Nuclear plant in Arizona

and the land it sits on.



full resolution fills your screen

There are various ways of storing heat

Storing electricity is a different problem. We can do it, we went to the moon in 10 years. I think we can do a better job. Our money and scientists have different priorities.

Here's an 18 year old tech solution for heat storage that was applauded by Bill Richardson, ex Energy sec:

In 1995 Solar One was converted into Solar Two, by adding a second ring of 108 larger 95 m² (1,000 ft²) heliostats around the existing Solar One, totaling 1926 heliostats with a total area of 82,750 m² (891,000 ft²). This gave Solar Two the ability to produce 10 megawatts—enough to power an estimated 7,500 homes.[1]

Solar Two used molten salt, a combination of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate, as an energy storage medium instead of oil or water as with Solar One. This helped in energy storage during brief interruptions in sunlight due to clouds.[1] The molten salt also allowed the energy to be stored in large tanks for future use such as night time—Solar Two had sufficient capacity to continue running for up to three hours after the sun had set.



Solar Two was decommissioned in 1999, and was converted by the University of California, Davis, into an Air Cherenkov Telescope in 2001...Solar Two's 3 primary participants were Southern California Edison (SCE), the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

"We're proud of Solar Two's success as it marks a significant milestone in the development of large-scale solar energy projects," said then U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.

"This technology has been successfully demonstrated and is ready for commercialization. From 1994 to 1999, the Solar Two project demonstrated the ability of solar molten salt technology to provide long-term, cost effective thermal energy storage for electricity generation.", Boeing

On November 25, 2009, after 10 years of not producing any energy, the Solar Two tower was demolished[1] The mothballed site was levelled and returned to vacant land by Southern California Edison. All heliostats and other hardware were removed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project

Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

By David Roberts 10 Apr 2013 grist.org

Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground.

[IMG][/IMG]
Neuhardenberg Solar Park, Germany Coordinates: 52°36?50?N 14°14?33?E

That is not wild-eyed hippie talk. It is the assessment of the utilities themselves.

Back in January, the Edison Electric Institute — the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities — released a report [PDF] that, as far as I can tell, went almost entirely without notice in the press. That’s a shame. It is one of the most prescient and brutally frank things I’ve ever read about the power sector. It is a rare thing to hear an industry tell the tale of its own incipient obsolescence.

I’ve been thinking about how to convey to you, normal people with healthy social lives and no time to ponder the byzantine nature of the power industry, just what a big deal the coming changes are. They are nothing short of revolutionary … but rather difficult to explain without jargon.

So, just a bit of background. You probably know that electricity is provided by utilities. Some utilities both generate electricity at power plants and provide it to customers over power lines. They are “regulated monopolies,” which means they have sole responsibility for providing power in their service areas. Some utilities have gone through deregulation; in that case, power generation is split off into its own business, while the utility’s job is to purchase power on competitive markets and provide it to customers over the grid it manages... >MORE
http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Germany can Do It, why not here

Germany is the world's top photovoltaics (PV) installer, with a solar PV capacity as of December 2012 of more than 32.3 gigawatts (GW). The German new solar PV installations increased by about 7.6 GW in 2012, and solar PV provided 18 TWh (billion kilowatt-hours) of electricity in 2011, about 3% of total electricity. Some market analysts expect this could reach 25 percent by 2050. Germany has a goal of producing 35% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and 100% by 2050.

Large PV power plants in Germany include Senftenberg Solarpark, Finsterwalde Solar Park, Lieberose Photovoltaic Park, Strasskirchen Solar Park, Waldpolenz Solar Park, and Köthen Solar Park....

911-the Official Story

It goes something like this :

Directed by a beardy-guy from a cave in Afghanistan, nineteen hard-drinking, coke-snorting, devout Muslims enjoy lap dances before their mission to meet Allah…

Using nothing more than craft knifes, they overpower cabin crew, passengers and pilots on four planes…And hangover or not, they manage to give the world’s most sophisticated air defense system the slip…

Unphased by leaving their “How to Fly a Passenger Jet” guide in the car at the airport, they master the controls in no-time and score direct hits on two towers, causing THREE to collapse completely…

Our masterminds even manage to overpower the odd law of physics or two… and the world watches in awe as steel-framed buildings fall symmetrically – through their own mass – at free-fall speed, for the first time in history.

Despite all their dastardly cunning, they stupidly give their identity away by using explosion-proof passports, which survive the fireball undamaged and fall to the ground… only to be discovered by the incredible crime-fighting sleuths at the FBI.

Meanwhile down in Washington…Hani Hanjour, having previously flunked 2-man Cessna flying school, gets carried away with all the success of the day and suddenly finds incredible abilities behind the controls of a Boeing…

Instead of flying straight down into the large roof area of the Pentagon, he decides to show off a little…Executing an incredible 270 degree downward spiral, he levels off to hit the low facade of the world’s most heavily defended building……all without a single shot being fired…. or ruining the nicely mowed lawn… and all at a speed just too fast to capture on video……

Further south in Florida…President Bush, our brave Commander-in-Chief continues to read “My Pet Goat” to a class full of primary school children… shrugging off the obvious possibility that his life could be in imminent danger…

In New York…Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein blesses his own foresight in insuring the buildings against terrorist attack only six weeks previously…While back in Washington, "the dick" Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz shake their heads in disbelief at their own luck in getting the ‘New Pearl Harbor’ catalyzing event they so desired to pursue their agenda of world domination…