"Unprecedented Ecological Catastrophe" On The Danube... Although We Could Possibly Still Avoid One In Nevada

See all that red stuff? It can kill you... fast or slow

Hungary seems so very far away, and after all only four people are dead in this flooding, not nearly as bad as the thousands who died in Pakistan on CNN. And look, the Danube is only Europe's second-longest river. Now the Volga... that's a river! But it does flow through a bunch of countries, even if most Americans couldn't find them on a map if their lives depended on it: Germany (where it starts), Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine and Romania (where it empties into the Black Sea).

You might not want to eat too much of that yummy Black Sea turbot, or even the mackerel or mullet. That's because this week a toxic red sludge that burst out of a Hungarian aluminum factory's reservoir flooded into the Danube, killing fish, threatening an ecological disaster and heading towards the Black Sea (and the six other countries between Hungary and the Black Sea). The chemical spill was the biggest ever in Hungary and pumped at least 35 million cubic feet of toxic, carcinogenic sludge (arsenic, cadmium and lead) into the river. Every single fish in a Danube tributary, the Marcal, has died.

As Danube nations such as Serbia and Bulgaria brace for contamination, Hungary is still struggling to deal with the devastation of the initial spill that flooded the villages of Devecsar, Kolontar, and Somlovasarhely in northwest Hungary. Emergency response teams, including the Hungarian armed forces, began to evacuate residents within hours of the spill, and staved off the contamination of a fourth village by treating and removing the sludge. Despite that good work, authorities say up to 7,000 people in these and four other villages have been directly affected. And leaders are struggling to measure the spill's human and environmental cost. "Nothing like this has happened in Hungary before," Tamas Toldi, mayor of Devecsar, told Time. "Right now the most important thing is to save people from the [flood]."

Toldi admitted that even those people who have been saved and evacuated face an uncertain future. Authorities reported on Oct. 6 that up to 2,000 acres of farmland and 8.6 acres of populated areas have been poisoned. "The [chemical] sludge has gone into houses and has destroyed and corroded everything," he says. "It's also going into the soil and we don't know how we'll produce healthy food in our fields."

Sounds disastrous, doesn't it? And it is... but the Hungarians and the regional authorities in central and eastern Europe are, by all reports, handling it extremely well. They're mobilizing whatever resources they can to battle the effects of the catastrophe, and I've been hearing on the radio that the deadly pH level is being dealt with efficiently-- hundreds of tons of alkaline-neutralizing plaster and acetic acid being dumped into the river system-- and is steadily declining. Reports are that the pH is now below 10 and expected to fall to 8, where it won't be as damaging. But Europeans can work together; they know social cooperation is how man moves forward.

Here, on the other hand...

We have a whole grab bag of freaks and loons who have taken over the poor old Republican Party with the latest and greatest ideas of the (early) 17th century. Joe Miller wants to abolish the EPA. Most of the extremists in what can generally be referred to as the "DeMint Caucus," or which will be the DeMint Caucus if enough of them get elected-- Pat Toomey, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Christine O'Donnell, Ken Buck, Ken Buck, Joe Miller-- are convinced that government is a force for evil; not a force to protect society in general, but one that hampers the ability of the strongest and most aggressive to reach their full potential. It's a dark, Hobbesian view of the world, and most of them got it either directly or secondhand from Ayn Rand's cultish followers and her bitter, albeit silly and sophomoric, opus Atlas Shrugged.

How bad are they in the cooperation department? Yesterday Bill Raggio, the Nevada state Senate Republican Minority Leader, explained why he endorsed Harry Reid over his party's own nominee, Sharron Angle. Listen carefully. He knows her well, and this isn't something he did lightly. It will cost him. But what he says portends ill for America should Angle and the freaks like her wind up in public office:

"Only one of these candidates has sought my endorsement, Senator Harry Reid. I haven't heard from Sharron Angle or talked with her since long before she decided to run against me for State Senate two years ago. After losing to me in a primary, during which she ran a very negative campaign and distorted my record, referred to me as a liar and a RINO, I never heard one word from her, or a concession, or an offer of support. Instead, she lent aid and comfort to an effort to recall me as State Senator.

"Those are personal issues which I was willing to put behind me.

"What is difficult to overlook is her record of being totally ineffective as a four-term assemblywoman, her inability or unwillingness to work with others, even within her own party, and her extreme positions on issues such as Medicare, Social Security, education, veterans affairs and many others.