Additionally, experimental explosive materials were reportedly disposed of in the area. Activities were conducted at the site from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Discrepancies exist between documents regarding the number and size of the pits located at the GPBA. Tonopah Test Range documents indicate that three burn areas and three corrugated pipe pits existed on the site and were used to burn excess black powder. Sandia National Laboratories (SNL)documents noted that two shallow pits, and one deep and one shallow vertical corrugated pipe pit were used to burn the black powder. Documents and interviews also indicate that artillery testing took place in the area from approximately 1963 and 1990, and a burn test of a unit containing High Explosives (HE), depleted uranium, and beryllium was conducted at the TTR in 1970.

--Nevada Environmental Restoration Project, Corrective Action Investigation Plan for Corrective Action Unit 490: Station 44 Burn Area, Tonopah Test Range, Nevada.

This excerpt is mostly for historical value to show that Clinton's Yucca Mountain attacks tap a fear Nevadans have.

When you look at the relatively small areas described in the above test, all that goes away when the layperson or journalist reads that last sentence about the 1970 burn test(s). Nevadans are probably tired of all the killer stuff being tested in their state.

When I wrote in a previous piece about Nevada's new, fashionable wildfire-charred planet look, I wrote it while Barack Obama was there to discuss the state's bad education record according to national statistics.

This Clinton emphasis on Obama's backers and their ties to those wanting to put a nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain was a shrewd issue-shifting move.

Not only should Obama poke fun at the Clinton praying-mantis persona in self-defense, but he should lead on the issues he spent time on during his visits. That goes for future state contests for the nomination as well. He ought to go beyond Yucca Mountain to make Clinton's focus look like a shoot-and-run tactic. He ought to show his awareness of many environmental concerns for the area while he shifts attention to the bigger picture.

When people feel someone has heard them out, such as Obama reviewing his notes from previous visits if fruitful, they tend to trust that person more than one who has 10% of their mind on the present and 90% on schmoozing the next interest group.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080118/ap_on_el_pr/obama_mocking_clinton

Google "Circuit City Sucks" and I get 4,440 results. A search on Yahoo! nets 20,800 results.

Google "Microsoft Sucks" and I get 56,200. Yahoo! it and I get 270,000 with an alternate search suggestion of "Microsoft Vista sucks".

Google "HP sucks" and I get 9,940; Yahoo!? 30,900.

Now that I've written this blog, it won't be long before there is 4,441, 20,801, 56,201, 270,001, 9,941, and 30,901.

These are just the folks who have an online writing inspiration. Reading about Circuit City retail horror stories and dealing with Microsoft Windows shutdowns because the laptop with Vista software I paid for at Circuit City apparently doesn't "validate".

What is with this? Is this the result of Class Action "reform" in many states? Most likely in the states which consumers must agree to as the jurisdiction selection for disputes with these companies?

Credit Mister Foo, a TPMCafe blogger for inspiring this post with his reference to the article discussed below.

Steven Pinker wrote a lengthy piece in New York Times magazine with some thoughtful observations and science on collective and individual morality.

In it, he sought to capture reader attention up front by introducing "facts" about comparitive morality, stressing the counter-intuitive. He chose to compare Mother Teresa's small charitable outfit in Calcutta with the achievements of Bill Gates and Norman Borlaug, whose respective monetary power and scientific expertise have multiplied their contribution to people in poorer nations avoid disease and eat well!

True as it is how great Gates and Borlaug's contributions are, his point was that these were perhaps better examples of morality than Mother Teresa. This requires a response that it seems Pinker skipped:

*Gates does not seem to inspire those who hold corrupt control over so many third world nations to change their ways because he puts his money into disease control, whereas, Mother Teresa's example has been influential in India and elsewhere;

*few have the wealth or expertise of Gates or Borlaug that they may imitate them, however, nearly everyone could imitate Mother Teresa in some fashion, from pauper to tycoon, and that would change the face of power worldwide.

That's all I wanted to say.

When "tort reform" laws increase burdens of proof or intensify intent requirements in civil suits against institutions which abuse elderly persons in their care it is a political fraud on Americans.

Civil cases seek money, not imprisonment of corporate actors, therefore the changes in many state laws requiring criminal or near criminal burdens of proof or actual intent, are falsehoods.

To lie to the American people that legal reforms such as this are necessary to protect them is tantamount to the legislators and their cheerleading Bush Administration personally dunking elderly people in their own urine, letting it soak into bedsores that develop from wilful neglect at these homes, and then pouring bacteria into the wounds.

It is as if the Bush Administration has help put the restraints on elderly arms that seek to defend themselves or escape the brutal minimum wagers who serve as glorified prison guards over them.

Punitive damages are not fines by the state. They are monies paid as reimbursement to society for the deep scars that these tortfeasors inflict on members of American families.

I would like to see Focus on the Family take up this issue against the Bush Administration's unthinking steamroller of anti-jurisprudential legal deformation.

The right comparison to GOP legal system reform in antiquity would be the gladiator games in the unholy Roman Empire.

There, the poor, the middle class, Christians and their associates who dared stand up for basic human dignity and freedom to be themselves, were trotted out against well-financed gladiators who tore them apart for the sins of failing to renounce their dignity or for calling out for fairness. Many in the bloodthirsty crowds cheered in cowardly fashion, scoffing at the insubstantial physiques of the condemned folks thrown in the ring. Then, there were false convictions or edicts.

Today, the falsehoods are glazed into a hardened coating by which the middle class and poor slip off of the pedestal of Lady Justice. This specially processed gloss comes from corporate and financial interests. And the president unquestioningly, blithely and sickeningly paints coats all over Lady Justice's feet with every speech he gives about the need to "rein in" frivolous lawsuits and "greedy lawyers." It's falsehood portends toxic results for those attempting the redress of grievances.

Truly frivolous lawsuits are rare, punishable by sanctions, hard to conceal, subject to trial court remittitur, always appealed and controlled by other rules of civil procedure governing petitions, certifications and filings.

As such, the "tort reform" movement infects the Republic with damage caps, class action fee caps, intensified standards of proof for plaintiffs, spread of tort reform to intentional torts, and constant lobbyist-puffed abberations from well-established laws that were already reined in by procedural safeguards.

With this false issue the Bush Administration has run interference for companies that are ripping off the American people at per capita amounts not worth hiring lawyers to recover. Doing this at volume is lucrative for such companies and their lobbyists, whether it is high tech retail rebate rip-offs or insurance company reimbursement delays or shorted payments. (For the latest on credit card company rip-off tactics, something that amounts to organized crime, see Professor Elizabeth Warren's Warren Reports on the Middle Class.)

Christian values are decidedly on the side of helping the weak or isolated stand with dignity and equal play for just results when they face the corporate or government titans that can wilfully or negligently grind theirs or their family's finances, health or lives into the ground. However, the GOP does not stand for such justice and access.

The strains of legal "reform" that President Bush and his partisan owners conjure into "issues" are deformities of justice. They are spiritual cancers turned to law. Greed, avarice, covetousness and apocalyptic hatred for the poor may be found in each example of a little person who takes an unjust loss because of an immoral policy to refuse claims under an agreement, or to skim money from them because it can be done easily and the busy little folk stonewalled.

Tort reform, true to the Moody Blues' description of the average insurance corporatist heart, is the killer on the road. Killing justice, killing human lifetime, and stealing from the innocent to give to the undeserving. Routine denials of health claims and shorted reimbursements it would cost too much in expenses to sue over make it hard for middle class and lower income households to get legal relief.

If you took $300 in petty cash from an insurance company office manager's petty cash drawer, you would likely do time and pay a fine. If you sleight-of-hand millions of dollars out of consumer accounts every year on the basis of what you didn't promise but only implied, using a faux-error or calculated volume rip-off scheme, you'll seldom get challenged. Instead, you'll dine well on the blood, sweat and tears of the downtrodden. And who knows how many desperate people with crying kids to feed hurt or neglect their kids in part because the fat ass diners' club crowd has eaten their hope alive?

In the only parable of Jesus Christ in which he places a person in hell, it is the rich man who daily, knowingly stepped over the sickened pauper Lazarus to go into his mansion and dine on sumptuous foods. The parable says he would not drop so much as a crumb for Lazarus. No, Lazarus's appeals are ignored. His cause is summarily dismissed every day by the rich man.

Who has a greater heart for justice at the expense of special interests? Obama or Clinton?

On one hand we had a White House that even the Washington Post then recognized as a favor factory with a revolving door. Hillary Clinton participated in that.

And in Washington, Senator Clinton is better connected than Senator Obama. To what? To a system in which nearly everyone took money or favors from Abramoff's firm. And then there is this report at The Hill, lest we forget.

Isn't that the problem in a Washington that has made itself synonymous with kow-towing to special interests and doing what's necessary to stay an incumbent via back-slapping Leadership PACs, lobbying firms, favors, gifts and soft money?

Has Barack Obama used his office as a launderer of special and private interests in the name of public representation? The Clinton WH record raises the question for Clinton.

These targets will make presses in the two party battle to come. I do not think anyone can sustain an argument of similar vulnerability against Obama. Already, in that comparison, I do not think a Hillary Clinton White House has the ring of Justice that an Obama White House would have.

Let us say that Tiger Woods is to golf as Obama is to politics in general. Hillary may say that she is to the presidency as Annika Sorenstram was to the PGA, but not to golf in general. As this observation relates to the course of the country rather than a milestone in careerism, it is a significant difference.

Some argue that Obama has too little experience. It is possible to counter that the wrong experience is worse than a blank slate of objectivity. It is also possible to make a blank, objective state of mind a resume positive. If innate leadership ability and intelligence are there, a special capability may arise by virtue of the previously uncompromised candidate.

Obama's baggage will be carry on, and no one else has asked him to carry theirs to the extent that powerful interests are vested in Hillary Clinton's campaign. Well, there's Oprah. But Oprah's a populist connection to the people. Another positive association for Obama in my view.

It seems that when opponents challenge Obama's experience, they may subtextually be justifying their own baggage as a product of experience. Now it is true that if you are someone who tries to get important things done that offend others' interests, you will be falsely accused and attacked. However, actual baggage is not the same as phantom baggage.

Remember how Ronald Reagan was a "teflon" president? No matter what goop the other side threw at him, it didn't stick? However, many of the same folks later lionized him. Many world leaders looked back on his life and governance and appreciated his genuineness in person, and his powerful common sense by which he led. He wasn't just a manager, he was a leader.

Obama is such a candidate. He holds promise because he's outside of the establishment in the main. Perhaps it can be said that someone without prostitutional "experience" will not bring it to the Oval Office. That's a good thing, right? No one of either party ever wants their sons or daughters marrying prostitutes. It isn't considered a good start. Why they should expect the nation to marry one in the social contract should be beyond us.