If you don’t want to read this, let me sum it up in a sentence. Radioactive Iodine-131 from Japan’s nuclear reactor meltdown has now reached the US rainwater in concentrations 3300%greater than allowed in drinking water but the government says its OK because no one drinks rainwater (except maybe your pets and plants, huh?).
By the way, radiation is accumulative. Radioactive iodine has a short half life (8 days), but there are other components arriving from this disaster that will stick around a lot longer.
So, in 16 days, the iodine-131 radiation in the rainwater will ONLY be 1650% about federal drinking water standards…unless of course it rains again.
Pennsylvania Office of the Governor
HARRISBURG, Pa., March 28, 2011/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Governor Tom Corbett today said weekend testing of public drinking water found no elevated levels of radioactivity.
On Friday, concentrations of Iodine-131, likely originating from the events at Japan’s damaged nuclear plants, were found in rainwater samples collected from Pennsylvania’s nuclear power plant facilities.
The numbers reported in the rainwater samples in Pennsylvania range from 40-100 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). Although these are levels above the background levels historically reported in these areas, they are still about 25 times below the level that would be of concern. The federal drinking water standard for Iodine-131 is three pCi/L.
“Rainwater is not typically directly consumed,” Corbett said. “However, people might get alarmed by making what would be an inappropriate connection from rainwater to drinking water. By testing the drinking water, we can assure people that the water is safe.”
While the radioactive element is believed to have originated from Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it is not considered to be a health risk in Pennsylvania or anywhere else in the country. Similar testing in other states, including California, Massachusetts and Washington, has shown comparable levels of Iodine-131 in rainwater samples.
Read full article with all the political doubletalk bullshit here (I just gave you just the cold hard facts):
If you are building a fence and you try using a hammer rather than a shovel to dig the postholes, progress will be slow if not nonexistent. The Federal Reserve is supposed to maintain the value of the currency and keep the banking system sound and stable – which it has not done (more on that below). Yet, in 1978, Congress passed the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, which, in part, also gave the Fed some explicit responsibility for maintaining full employment but did not provide the tools to do so.
TheFed does have the tools to increase or decrease the money supply, which means it can control the rate of inflation or deflation. However, the Fed has done a poor job of maintaining the value of the currency, as the dollar is now worth only about one-twenty-second of its 1913 value. The Fed also was supposed to maintain a sound and stable banking system; however, since theFed was created in 1913, bank failures have been at a higher rate than during the pre-Fed period.
Great Exchange! Senator Bernie Sanders can’t contain himself during today’s (03/03/09) Senate Budget Commitee hearing in Washington. Bad Boy Bernie demands to know who got the 2.2 trillion of dollars in loans from the Fed. Bernanke won’t tell him. He’s also angry that banks that get tax payer funds for nothing, are charging credit card customers 25% interest. Also discusses A.I.G. and who got those credit Defautl swaps. He also demands to know why Bernanke didn’t raise the alarm when the Bush Administration was claiming the economy was sound when it obviously wasn’t.
Video – Sen. Bernie Sanders scolds Helicopter Ben
At the Bail, we hang Federal Reserve criminals with their words.
Islamist-allied operatives appointed by Obama are undermining U.S. security policy – explains counter-Intelligence expert, Prof. Clare Lopez. Aimed at co-opting Americas foreign policy in the Middle East, a network including well-known American diplomats, congressional representatives, figures from academia and the think tank world – with ties to the clerical regime in Tehran – is directing the Obama Administration’s policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Middle East.
This summer, techies across Africa are racing to develop mobile-phone “apps” that make their users’ everyday lives just a little bit better. The best among them will be chosen as the winners of the “Apps <4> Africa” contest, sponsored by the U.S. State Department and three local technology communities: the Nairobi-based iHub, Kampala-based Appfrica Labs, and the Social Development Network, which works throughout East Africa. Judged on such criteria as their “usefulness to the citizens, civil society organization or government of East Africa,” the winner will receive “a small bit of fame and fortune” and the tools to keep honing his or her craft. What the United States hopes to get out of the project is a little bit of grassroots, bottom-up development driven by nothing more than African ingenuity and the continent’s mobile-phone network.
This is “21st Century Statecraft,” a new diplomatic initiative that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has fully embraced over the past year. Forget the grandiose name; the idea behind it is actually a modest, practical one: In today’s interconnected world, individuals and organizations — not just countries — can play a defining role in international
affairs, and the State Department needs to capitalize on this new landscape. Ultimately, Foggy Bottom plans to infuse its mission with an understanding of how the global communications network ties the world together; for now, the initiative consists of a series of smaller projects designed to use the Internet, mobile phones, and social media to promote U.S. foreign-policy goals.
Just months into the new strategy, there are already many skeptics of tech-based statecraft. Last week, Emmanuel Yujuico and Betsy Gelb argued in Foreign Affairsthat this new strategy — which they equate with previous U.S. efforts at “social engineering” — will fail to change societies and governments. The authors compare Washington’s efforts to a screwball attempt by automotive entrepreneur Henry Ford to construct an idyllic Midwestern-like town in the heart of the Amazon rainforest to supply him with rubber. The idea that “U.S.-directed methods can spur development in other nations” is, they argue, flawed from the outset — with or without new technology.
Thankfully, however, the State Department’s recent work bears little resemblance to the sort of social engineering that Yujuico and Gelb describe. In fact, it is if anything more pragmatic and humble than much of the statecraft that the United States has practiced over the years.
The new strategy is essentially a recognition of the networked world we live in. The global network of information and communication technology now connects more than half of all people on Earth, mostly through mobile phones. More than 4.5 billion people currently own a mobile phone, and within the next decade, that number will reach 90 percent of the global population. So when Clintonspeaks of“a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas,” she is not describing some messianic attempt to impose American technological solutions on the rest of the world. She is talking about the world as it soon will be — and in many ways already is.
Sheriff Babeu is not the only one who believes that our own federal government has become our enemy. Writing for Investor’s Business Daily, attorney Ernest Christian and economist Gary Robbins co-authored a July 30, 2010, column entitled “Will Washington’s Failures Lead To Second American Revolution?”
Christian and Robbins write, “People are asking, ‘Is the [federal] government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?’
“Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency.
“Too many overreaching laws give the president too much discretion to make too many open-ended rules controlling too many aspects of our lives. There’s no end to the harm an out-of-control president can do.”
But it’s not just an imperial presidency we need to worry about; and it certainly did not originate with Barack Obama–although he has certainly accelerated the pace of this federal aggression. For all intents and purposes, the last four Presidencies have been imperialist in nature. In other words, we have endured at least 22 years of federal imperialism, encompassing both Republican and Democrat Presidential administrations. But it has also been Republican and Democrat congresses (along with a compliant federal judiciary) that have assisted and facilitated this out-of-control federal imperialism. In other words, folks: the entire federal system is now illegitimate and broken!
There’s a new conventional wisdom forming in Washington, DC this July 4th, one that transcends party lines and the usual classifications of “left” and “right” as they’re understood in that city. It’s only being recognized now, because it deals with a number of different economic issues, but the underlying theme is the same: The American dream of financial independence and security is gone. The sooner you accept that and raise the white flag the easier it will be, so stop struggling.
Theyre saying the ideal of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is dead. Deal with it.
Why, there hasn’t been this much unanimity among Washington elites since – well, since they “knew” there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Here’s what they “know” now: The United States is doomed to a future of staggeringly high unemployment. Social Security is part of our national deficit and, like that notorious village in Vietnam, we need to destroy it in order to save it. And we must face an open-ended future where the public treasury and personal security are held hostage to the whims of a few “too big to fail” banks.
Some of these “conventional wisdoms” have been around for years, while others are forming as we speak. Most of them began as politically partisan ideas, but have only been Sacred Truths for a few months. Yet they’re already acquiring the false gravitas of ancient received wisdoms. What’s the common thread behind these three ideas? They provide a rationale for not resisting the enormous political influence of corporations and wealthy Americans.
The last few days – ironically, those that led up to our celebration of Independence – saw a sudden rash of white-flag declarations. This latest wave of surrender demands involves joblessness. First Digby noted that Jonathan Alter said the followingin an interview with Chris Hayes on the “Ed Show” : “We are going to have to accustom ourselves to some higher than, you know, old normal percentage of unemployment. You know, I don’t know whether it’s seven percent, six percent, whatever.”
The ideology that supports big government has been undermined at the intellectual level and it is increasingly rejected at the public level. Lacking a coherent ideological structure for their rule, they rely on available ones that are leftovers from the New Deal/Cold War period ofAmerican history.
The political class flounders around demonizing civilian sectors that dare to resist its rule. What the commentators decry as public indifference to public affairs is actually a reflection of widespread revulsion at the character and actions of the political class.
Polls consistently reveal that about one third of the American people fundamentally object to the political system as it currently exists and instead seek radical change. Even government officials themselves sense the deep lack of public support for their activities. They believe a fundamental disconnect separates them from the public. Washington, DC, has become an armed camp, not to protect itself against foreign attack, but to guard against citizen reprisal. The young and talented no longer aspire to political office or public service. Voters no longer have faithin the integrity of the system.
Most important for gauging our present historical moment, discontent is spreading within the rank-and-file of the nation’s military. They are outraged at the politicization of promotions, disgusted by the wild-goose chases and murderous expeditions that the commander-in-chiefhas foisted on them, and no longer believe the patriotic clichés that once put a moral gloss on imperial globe-trotting.
Those who can flee for civilian sectors do so, while potential recruits are loathe to sign their lives away to people they no longer trust. Indeed, the dynamic of state collapse is already set in motion right here in the US. There’s no point in making predictions about precisely when and how the process will end. All we know, based on every other occupying powerin human history, is that the means and the shape of the restoration of liberty will surprise us all. At some point, the people will tell Caesar precisely what he is entitled to and claim the rest for themselves, while those in captivity will ask in bemusement: “What has happened? Where are the guards?”
