Bush/McCain “Cousin” from Moveon.org

IYFR: Thanks you guys … you made our day!

9/11 Revealed Host Gives It A Voice

IYFR: No one loves his country more or is more of a patriot then the host of Thursday night’s 9/11 Revealed – MIKE BONO!! We love ya Mikey. Keep giving them HELL!

As Homes Foreclose in U.S., Squatters Move In

A new generation of squatters emboldened by America’s housing foreclosure crisis.

For squatters, foreclosed homes like this are like a camp-ground with free camping,” says real-estate broker Marc Charney, a foreclosure specialist, as he enters the home in Brockton, Massachusetts, and shines a flash-light at a mattress where homeless people have been sleeping each night.

Squatting is on the rise across the United States as foreclosures surge, eviction notices mount and homes go unsold for months, complicating the worst U.S. housing slump in a quarter century and forcing real-estate brokers to enlist the help of law enforcement and courts to sell empty houses.

IYFR: Back in 2000, when George Bush stole the White House, we said this will be the worst Presidency in history. Our off the cuff, on air, comments included a potential disaster in housing, a possible war, rising gas prices. We even joked about food and water shortages.

In retrospect, we’re sorry to the American people for putting that out there.  While little consolation, at least we didn’t vote for this clown … twice.   

Vito Fossella NY Rep – Adulterer/Drunk/Liar – Breaksdown On House Floor

IYFR: Add another REPUBLICAN POLITICAL LEADER to the YOU FILTHY PIG list.

Disgraced New York Congressman Vito Fossella broke down in tears on the floor of the House of Representatives today, apparently under the emotional weight of his recent behavior.

Fossella acknowledged on Thursday that he had fathered a daughter, now three years old, with a woman who wasn’t his wife. News of his adultery came just a week after the Staten Island Republican was arrested for drunk driving in suburban Virginia.

Appearing on the House floor today, Fossella broke down when talking with House Chaplain, Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin, a Hill source who witnessed the event told The Huffington Post. The episode occurred shortly after the congressman voted against the Neighborhood Stabilization Act of 2008, a housing bill that passed through the House by a 239 to 188 vote.

Fossella’s political and legal future is currently up in the air. He is expected to appear in court next week and could face jail time if convicted for his drunk driving charge.

According to the New York Times:

“A police report in Alexandria, Va., a suburb of Washington, said that Mr. Fossella ran a red light on Thursday just after midnight and had a “strong smell of alcoholic beverage” when he was pulled over. According to the report, Mr. Fossella told the officer that he was on his way to pick up his daughter, who needed to go to the hospital, although on Friday he said that he had been on his way to visit friends.

The report said Mr. Fossella failed several sobriety tests on the street, including a preliminary breath test on which he registered a blood alcohol level of 0.133 percent. After he was arrested, he recorded a level of 0.17 percent on another machine. The legal limit in Virginia, as in most states, is 0.08 percent.”

Army Ships Contaminated Kuwait Sand to Idaho

By Jill Kuraitis, 4-30-08

 The U.S. Army is shipping 6,700 tons of contaminated sand to Idaho from Kuwait.  It will arrive at American Ecology in Grandview, Idaho, sometime in May. 

Grandview, population 470, is 42 miles south of Boise in Owyhee County.

The sand is from Camp Doha in Kuwait, a former Army warehouse complex used by Army Forces Central Command.  The sand absorbed depleted uranium when some spent ammunition was caught in a fire (addition May 1:during the first Gulf War.)

It’s also contaminated with hazardous levels of lead, according to the two military guys who told me the story, whose branch and names won’t be used for obvious reasons. However, it’s no secret, since the story had already been written by Erik Olson in the Longview, Washington Daily News.

Chad Hyslop, spokesperson for American Ecology, did not return New West’s phone calls, but he told Olson that all the sand will be at the disposal site in Grandview sometime in May. 

It will take 76 rail cars to run half the sand to Idaho, and then a second trip will be required for the rest.  152 of the smallest size rail cars would build a four-story structure about the size of half a football field.

Andrea Shipley, the executive director of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho-based grassroots group with a mission to watchdog the energy industry and energy-related government departments, doesn’t like the idea of the sand coming to Idaho.  She told New West that “this is a major concern. Depleted uranium is both a toxic heavy metal and a radioactive substance creating health risks that may be far more varied than is recognized in federal regulations today.  Safe and responsible clean-up is critical to safeguard the health of Idahoans and our environment.”

The lead contamination, which the Army discovered before the ship carrying the sand to the Port of Longview arrived there, was nearly four times higher than the EPA standard for designating it “hazardous.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, even very low levels of exposure to lead in children can cause learning disabilities, and may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, strokes or heart attacks.  Lead is also associated with impaired visual and motor function, growth abnormality, neurological and organ damage, hearing loss, hypertension and reproductive complications.

Whether or not humans might be exposed to the contaminated sand, either during transport, unloading, or processing at American Ecology’s Grandview landfill is not clear.  No Army official returned calls. Follow-ups to this story will be posted.

Addition May 1:  The full post about depleted uranium on Wikipedia can be found here, but here are two relevant paragraphs.

Depleted uranium (DU) is uranium primarily composed of the isotope uranium-238 (U-238). Natural uranium is about 99.27 percent U-238, 0.72 percent U-235, and 0.0055 percent U-234. Because U-235 is used for fission in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, natural uranium is enriched in U-235 by separating the isotopes by mass. The byproduct of enrichment, called depleted uranium or DU, contains less than one third as much U-235 and U-234 as natural uranium, making it less radioactive due to the longer 4.5 billion year half-life of U-238. The external radiation dose from DU is about 60 percent of that from the same mass of natural uranium.

Depleted uranium munitions are controversial because of numerous unanswered questions about the long-term health effects. DU is less toxic than other heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury, and is only very weakly radioactive because of its long half life.  While any radiation exposure has risks, no conclusive epidemiological data have correlated DU exposure to specific human health effects such as cancer. However, the UK government has attributed birth defect claims from a 1991 Gulf War combat veteran to DU poisoning, and studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure. Until such issues are resolved with further research, the use of DU by the military will continue to be controversial.

Updates to this story will continue to be posted.

Update May 1:  NewWest blogger Irwin Horowitz of 6degrees – named because of his six college degrees including a B.S. from MIT in physics, an M.S. in astronomy and another M.S. in electrical engineering, has a strong interest in nuclear issues and follows them regularly.  He told New West that the primary issue with the sand from Kuwait is the heavy-metal toxicity more than the U-238, and the radiation, in the form of alpha particles, doesn’t penetrate skin. Lead, said Horowitz, gets into the soft tissues of the body.  “Depleted uranium could enter the body from ingesting it, breathing it in, or through surface skin cuts, so you’d almost have to play in the sand.”

More calls to American Ecology have not been returned.