Office by Alex Penny
Politics • Snark • EcoFriendly • Veggie • Photos I Like • Doctor Who
When the world says, Give Up, Hope whispers, Try it One More Time.
http://bit.ly/tt-blog; http://bit.ly/tt-pins; psychedelictara.etsy.com
[NOTES* from Leftish - are always in brackets]
These hearings will be public. This will be one of the most famous, or perhaps infamous, committees in the entire history of the United States Congress. We’re going to be arguing about these points from now until Christmas which will prevent us from pivoting to jobs, unfortunately…so this is the BEGINNING of something, not the END of something.
~ Jonathan Alter, Author, “The Promise”
The facts all point to this “inconvenient truth” — the time has come to shut down California’s two nuclear power plants as part of a swift transition to an energy policy focused on clean and green renewable sources and conservation. The Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo and the San Onofre plant on the southern California coast are vulnerable to meltdowns from earthquakes and threaten both residents and the environment. Reactor safety is just one of the concerns. Each nuclear power plant creates radioactive waste that will remain deadly for thousands of years. This is not the kind of legacy that we should leave for future generations.
[Quick Note; I know this is an exceedingly long post, and I apologize in advance for that. I also know that I could use the thingy that shortens posts, and supplies a click thru link, but I am well aware of how often I actually click thru, and truth to tell, it is not very often, so I figure, if you don’t want to read this post you can just scroll on, but if you DO want to read my commentary, it will all be there in one L-O-O-N-G swatch of text, without you having to click away from your feed in order to read it. You will, however, need to click through to read the actual article I am referencing, which is WAY longer than my commentary! Again, my sincere apologies if this offends you.]
I am thrilled that so many of you care about Gay Rights, and Wikileaks, and the Government, as well as the other stuff I post about. Now, I am hoping you can see that if you don’t care about THIS particular issue, in THIS particular post, that there may not BE a government to even DISCUSS in the future!!
I know, I KNOW. There is a great temptation to bury our heads in the sand, and just ignore the ongoing terrifying disaster in Japan, and just continue posting on Tumblr instead…but the truth is, if we don’t SHUT DOWN EVERY NUCLEAR REACTOR ON THE PLANET, there might not BE a TUMBLR!! Our SPECIES WILL BE DOOMED…SO PLEASE, READ MY POST as well as the LINKED ARTICLE. I am not being over-dramatic here. This is a very real and serious concern.
Look we all know it — the fat cats who own the government and the power companies aren’t going to change on their own, nor fix this voluntarily. This is one issue that may just require “We the People” to make our voices heard if we want ANYTHING done.
All over the planet, other countries are choosing to shut down their Nuclear Reactors and to seek other, safer forms of energy. Other countries don’t want to use the AMERICAN-MADE NUCLEAR REACTORS any more, because the American reactors were NOT BUILT FOR EARTHQUAKE RESISTANCE, and citizens around the world are coming to their senses and are starting to acknowledge that there IS NO KNOWN VIABLE WAY TO “CLEAN UP” after a nuclear disaster, such as the one we have already witnessed in Japan. It’s starting to sink in that nuclear waste will not degrade, not for hundreds of thousands of years….And our world cannot continue to spin the dice on this. We’ve already had three serious disasters, and we cannot risk having more.
Here in America, the populace seems to be apathetic and asleep about this issue. If it is not being talked about on the Evening News, we Americans are content to forget about it. We are lazy and just want somebody else to solve this problem.
Well, we screwed up big time on this one. There is no current solution known to man at this time that can fix this.
Please realize the scope of this. It is mind-boggling, I know.
Maybe you’re just hoping you can scoot by, and live your life before the shit hits the fan…but if you care about anyone besides yourself, other people, your ancestors, the animals and plant life on our beautiful planet, you might want to see what you can do to reverse this dangerous course that a few rich and powerful men have set for our entire planet.
If you care about the survival of human life on earth, please read and REBLOG this.
We need to get together globally on this issue. Seriously.
WE MAY NEED TO MARCH, WE MAY NEED TO WRITE LETTERS, WE DEFINITELY NEED TO GET ORGANIZED AND WE DEFINITELY NEED TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD (I will write more on how to actually accomplish getting our voices heard in future posts). Here in California, there is already a ballot measure scheduled that would close both of our Nuclear Power Plants, effective within 6 months, if passed).
In Sacramento, in the 80s, THE VOTERS DEFEATED the opening of the Rancho Seco Power Plant, and it was CLOSED before it was ever operated commercially. If we made it happen once, we can make it happen again…the same can be done with all Nuclear Power Plants throughout the world. Ben Davis, the lawyer who wrote the Rancho Seco ballot measure is also the author of the current one. He filed on March 19. 2011, just 8 days after the Fukushima Disaster.
THE PEOPLE need to stand together against governments, against big corporations, against police states that are willing to gamble with our health and safety for their own personal greedy agendas. We HAVE to stand up, as a group, and SAY NO! “WE THE PEOPLE” WON’T LET YOU DO THIS TO OUR PLANET!
The media is executing a full and complete BLACKOUT on reporting about this disaster, because they know that if they reported the truth, there would be mass hysteria and possible chaos. I’m not kidding.
Please force yourself to read this article, you NEED to KNOW things like the barely published facts that:
STILLBIRTHS in eight U.S. Western Cities increased 35% in the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, and that “Hot Particles”, too small to be detected by geiger counters are showing up in Seattle NOW!!
PLEASE, don’t be an OSTRICH!
[EXTRA NOTE* from Leftish: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE READ AND REBLOG THIS ARTICLE! I know it’s not NEARLY as salacious as a good Congressional Sex Scandal, but your LIFE AND HEALTH may depend on it.]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
FULL MELTDOWN: Fukushima Called the ‘Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in the History of Mankind’
(partial excerpt)
In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant
The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.
Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April.”
Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?
Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama’s biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.
“Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes,” Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. “I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan.”
“I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe,” he said. “Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity.”
Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units.
There is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They’ve not figured out how to cool units three and four.”
“Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years,” he said. “Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn’t exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor.”
“Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations,” he explained. “To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing.”
“With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started,” he said, “But they never end.”
IMPORTANT: We cannot ignore this issue, even though the media has been doing just that for many months. Our survival on Earth is at stake. Please Reblog if you want to replace all Nuclear Power Plants with Safe, Clean Energy.
2006: Campaigning for a seat in the House, Bachmann delivers a five-minute prayer for You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, an anti-gay heavy metal ministry that promotes the gospel to public school students: “I thank you for how you are going to advance them from 260 schools a year, Lord, to 2,600 schools a year. Lord, we ask by faith that you would expand this ministry beyond anything the originators of this ministry could begin to think or imagine.”
~ [Batshitcrazy] Michele Bachmann
via Alternet.org
Psycho Talk: The 32 Craziest Things GOP Presidential Contender Michele Bachmann Has Said
AMY GOODMAN: Do they raise foster children?
MICHELLE GOLDBERG: I think “raise” is the tricky word. You know, she has often said—she often says—as recently as this week, she said that she—her family has raised 23 foster children. Sometimes she talks about it as if they’re all in the house. You know, she’ll say, “I know the cost of food, because I have 28 children, and I go shopping, and I have these huge bills.” I think there’s no doubt that she’s had foster children, and that’s commendable, but when you say “raise,” you probably, I think, assume that you’re talking about a long period of time. And she had a foster care license for seven-and-a-half years. It allowed her to have three children at a time.
Everyone I’ve talked to, including, you know, senior social workers in Stillwater, said that some of these kids she had for—some of them she might have had for more than a year, some of them she had for a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I don’t know if you could say that somebody who stayed in your house for a couple of weeks—you certainly deserve a lot of credit for giving them shelter, but I don’t know that you could say that you raised them.
via “A Perfect Product of the Religious Right”: Deconstructing Michele Bachmann’s GOP Presidential Bid
In some interviews, [Michele Bachmann’s husband] has called homosexuals “barbarians who need to be educated.” He says, you know, “Just because you have certain impulses doesn’t mean you need to act on them.” He has been associated with, you know, reparative therapy, which can be obviously incredibly damaging to people who undergo it and kind of try to change their immutable sexual orientation. ~ Michelle Goldberg, The Daily Beast
via “A Perfect Product of the Religious Right”: Deconstructing Michele Bachmann’s GOP Presidential Bid
2004: “Songwriter Melissa Etheridge has breast cancer. That’s bad news. But there’s good news too, Bachmann tells the conservative education group EdWatch: maybe the cancer will give her time to reflect on her sinful lifestyle: “Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers.
This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.” In the same speech, she alleges that “almost all, if not all, individuals who have gone into the lifestyle have been abused at one time in their life, either by a male or by a female.”
~ [Batshitcrazy] Michele Bachmann
via Alternet.org
Psycho Talk: The 32 Craziest Things GOP Presidential Contender Michele Bachmann Has Said
KARL BREMER: Well, I started looking into this in 2007, when I first broke this story. Bachmann had reported on her congressional federal—her financial disclosure statement that she and her husband had an interest in the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership. So I started to poke around in the records for the Bachmann Farm Family Partnership. It’s in Buffalo County, Independence, Wisconsin, about 70 miles or so from Stillwater. And I found that her father-in-law, Paul Bachmann, who died in 2009, had collected—it was close to $260,000 in federal farm subsidies from 1995 through, at that time I guess it was 2006, 2007. All this data is online with the Environmental Working Group. And the Bachmann Farm Family Partnership was formed in 2001. It’s on record in the state of Wisconsin. And Michele Bachmann and Marcus are part of the Farm Family Partnership. So, she’s reported upward—anywhere upwards of from about $2,500 to $105,000 in profits from that family farm on her federal financial disclosure statements.
Well, if the family farm is getting federal farm subsidies, and the Bachmanns are profiting from the family farm, it only stands to reason that they’re profiting in part from federal farm subsidies. And yet, on Sunday, she told the media—I believe it was Chris Wallace on Fox News—that she and her husband had not received one penny from that farm. That’s simply a lie. You can look it up; it’s out there. And I, quite honestly, don’t understand why she would say such a blatant lie, when she knows it can be looked up in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, even our local political reporters here can’t seem to take the time to verify that. And it was reported locally in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that she just denied ever getting money from the farm, and that’s where they left the story. So, you know, as Michelle said, it’s shocking the lack of coverage on Michele Bachmann other than her outrageous statements that we’ve seen in the local media. But, you know, that’s where journalism is at these days.
via “A Perfect Product of the Religious Right”: Deconstructing Michele Bachmann’s GOP Presidential Bid
(from the Right-Leaning St. Louis Post Dispatch)
It’s sad to see what has happened to the Party of Lincoln, and for that matter, the party of lesser mortals like George H.W. Bush of Texas, Bob Dole of Kansas and Jack Danforth of Missouri. No one ever would mistake them for liberals, but they were statesmen who put country before party.
Today we have the spectacle of smart, patriotic men and women putting their brains and integrity on ice to please a party dominated by anti-intellectual social Darwinists and the plutocrats who finance and mislead them.
Consider the mythology that makes up GOP orthodoxy today. Imagine the contortions that cramp the brains and souls of men and women of intelligence and compassion who seek state and national office under the Republican banner.
• They must believe, despite the evidence of the 2008 financial collapse, that unregulated — or at most, lightly regulated — financial markets are good for America and the world.
• They must believe in the brilliantly cast conceit known as the “pro-growth agenda,” in which economic growth can be attained only by reducing corporate and individual tax rates, especially among the investor class, and by freeing business from environmental rules that have cleaned up America’s air and water and labor regulations that helped create America’s middle class.
• Though rising health care costs are pillaging the economy, and even though health care in America is now a matter of what you can afford, Republican candidates for office must deny that health care is a basic right and resist a real attempt to change and improve the system.
• GOP candidates must scoff at scientific consensus about global warming. Blame it on human activity? Bad. Cite Noah’s Ark as evidence? Good. They must express at least some doubt about the science of evolution.
• They must insist, statistics and evidence to the contrary, that most of the nation’s energy needs can be met safely with more domestic oil drilling, “clean-coal” technology and greater reliance on perfectly safe nuclear power plants.
• They must believe that all 11.2 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States can be rounded up, detained, tried, repatriated and kept from returning at a reasonable cost.
• Even though there are more than four unemployed persons for every available job, GOP candidates should at least hint that unemployment benefits keep people from seeking jobs.
• They must believe that the Founding Fathers wanted to guarantee individuals the absolute right to own high-capacity, rapid-fire weapons that did not exist in the late 18th century.
By no means is this list complete. It almost makes you feel sorry for the people who pretend to believe this stuff. Almost.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, PolitiFact has reported a number of lies, ranging from the regular ones to the “pants on fire” false lies, but, among them, saying that—oh, that President Obama released all of the oil from the strategic reserve. Bachmann said, “It’s ironic and sad [that] the president released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve.” The fact is, Obama did not release all the oil; he released something like four percent of the oil. And it goes on from there, saying that NATO, in one air strike alone in Libya, had killed something like 30,000 Libyan civilians in one air strike. Some of these are mistakes, some of them lies.
via “A Perfect Product of the Religious Right”: Deconstructing Michele Bachmann’s GOP Presidential Bid
“A Perfect Product of the Religious Right”: Deconstructing Michele Bachmann’s GOP Presidential Bid” Amy Goodman’s interview today on Democracy Now, with two Bachmann investigative reporters, Michelle Goldberg of The Daily Beast and Karl Bremer of Ripple in Stillwater.
[NOTE* from Leftish:
This is FASCINATING, NEW INFORMATION that I did not know until today.
A few facts these two reporters reveal include that Bachmann has ties to mobster, Franklin Vennes, Jr., who was imprisoned in Federal Prison in northern Minnesota for Cocaine Trafficking and Money Laundering, whose pardon she, Tim Pawlenty and Norm Coleman all championed, as he had donated generously to all of their campaigns, in an effort to validate his own credibiilty with Religious Right sects. Then, once he was released from prison he got involved in, and was later implicated for a Ponzi Scheme, ripping off Evangelical Christians.
Bachmann has also exaggerated her “raising of 28” children to imply that she had ALL 28 children for their entire childhoods. No, she only was licensed to have 3 Foster Children at a time for a duration of 7.5 years, so the most she ever had was 8, not 28. And, some of these children were only in her care for a few days or weeks. (see below)
Also, let’s not forget that Bachmann has had her eye on this prize for quite a while, and there was much to be gained by taking in Foster Children. States pay families to take in Foster Children. So it is highly likely that Bachmann’s Fostering of Minnesota Children may have had several other motives that were less than sheer altruism. She could earn money, while upgrading her political resume as well as directly steering her charges toward a life dedicated to Born-Again Christianity. It was a win-win-win for the future Tea Party Power Player.]
See below for more details, or just go straight to the TRANSCRIPT.
Excerpt from the Interview:
AMY GOODMAN: Who is Franklin Vennes?
KARL BREMER: Frank Vennes, Jr., was one of her largest contributors in 2006. He’s a convicted money launderer. He did time in federal prison in Sandstone Prison in northern Minnesota. And upon his release, he became involved in Tom Petters. And if you are familiar with the Petters Ponzi scheme, about a $3.5 billion Ponzi scheme that operated in Minnesota, Frank Vennes steered primarily evangelical Christian groups to invest with Tom Petters. And he became implicated in the Petters scandal in 2008. But that was after Michele Bachmann had written a recommendation for pardon for Frank Vennes. Vennes and his family and his personal lawyer have given Bachmann tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Vennes also contributed heavily to another Minnesota presidential candidate, Tim Pawlenty, and the state Republican Party. And Vennes got letters of recommendation from Tim Pawlenty, or recommendations for a pardon from Pawlenty, from Norm Coleman, former U.S. senator from Minnesota, and from Bachmann.
When Vennes was implicated in the Petters scandal in 2008, Bachmann withdrew her letter of support for a pardon, and she gave back a portion of the money that Vennes had donated to her campaign. Just in April of this year, Vennes was actually indicted in the Petters scandal, and he’s scheduled to go to trial later this year, which could make for an uncomfortable time for Michele Bachmann, because in her letter of support for a pardon, she indicated she had a very close personal relationship with Frank Vennes and was quite familiar with his personal finances. She has, of course, never returned my calls regarding Frank Vennes, and she’s really never explained fully her relationship with this convicted money launderer.
and this:
AMY GOODMAN: Do they raise foster children?
MICHELLE GOLDBERG: I think “raise” is the tricky word. You know, she has often said—she often says—as recently as this week, she said that she—her family has raised 23 foster children. Sometimes she talks about it as if they’re all in the house. You know, she’ll say, “I know the cost of food, because I have 28 children, and I go shopping, and I have these huge bills.” I think there’s no doubt that she’s had foster children, and that’s commendable, but when you say “raise,” you probably, I think, assume that you’re talking about a long period of time. And she had a foster care license for seven-and-a-half years. It allowed her to have three children at a time. Everyone I’ve talked to, including, you know, senior social workers in Stillwater, said that some of these kids she had for—some of them she might have had for more than a year, some of them she had for a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I don’t know if you could say that somebody who stayed in your house for a couple of weeks—you certainly deserve a lot of credit for giving them shelter. I don’t know that you could say that you raised them.
also this:
AMY GOODMAN: What books did she work on?
MICHELLE GOLDBERG: Well, one of the—I don’t know why this hasn’t gotten more attention. So when she was at Oral Roberts University, which is, you know, kind of a charismatic Pentecostal school in Oklahoma, she was a research assistant to a guy named John Eidsmoe, who she still cites as a major influence on her. John Eidsmoe is—often people on the Christian right are kind of called theocratic. But he is unquestionably a theocrat. He wrote a book that she worked on called Christianity and the Constitution, which argued that the United States was founded to be a Christian theocracy and that it should become one again. He, John Eidsmoe, is an interesting figure. He’s someone who has been asked not to speak at Tea Party—who has been—has had invitations to speak at Tea Party rallies rescinded because of his ties to white supremacist groups and history of advocating for Southern secession.
Please read the entire transcript.
VIDEO: New Kicks by Le Tigre
PEACE…NOW!! One of the most inspiring Anti-War videos EVER!! Stirring footage of the world-wide 2003 Peace Rallies with speeches by Amy Goodman and Susan Sarandon, and exciting music by Le Tigre. “While wearing matching outfits with the words “Stop Bush” printed on them, the members of Le Tigre march and make Anti-War Signs over brightly colored images of antiwar protests all over the world.”
With all that opium lying around, you’d think it would be a mellower place.
~ Jimmy Kimmel
there’s a 50-50 chance he’ll run for President. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin said there’s an 80-50 chance she’ll run.
~ Conan O’Brien
Melissa Etheridge is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers. This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.”
~ Michele Bachmann
[Delivered with a big smile, I’m sure. Disgusting. ~ Leftish]
