FourScore
FourScore's JournalI am now a Democrat!
Mon May 14, 2012 at 08:04 PM PDT
I am now a Democrat!
by sjburnman
...I first registered to vote in 1980 and I registered as an independent, just like my Dad. I had always told people that I would vote for whichever candidate I thought was best, "regardless of their party"...
..."Regardless of their party", I always said. Well, I remained a registered independent all those years but to this day I have never voted for anyone other than a Democrat. Carter, absolutely!, Mondale, you bet! Dukakis, yes I did. Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry and of course Obama. I voted for local Dems, State office Dems, Dems for Congress and Dems for the Senate. I have been unable to justify voting for anybody who wasn't a Democrat for 32 years. So why did I hang on to that independent/no political affiliation registration for so long?
It was my Dad. I thought of him as someone who judged candidates by who they were, not what party they belonged to, and in his day I think it was actually possible to put a Republican in office and not have that necessarily be a bad choice. He was a Kansas boy, my Dad, a career military man who had a great deal of respect for fellow Kansan, Dwight D. Eisenhower who was perhaps the last decent Republican president we will ever see.
Now however, especially now, Eisenhower Republicans are an extinct species. The religious and neoconservative extremism that is controlling that party is completely out of control! Democrats aren't perfect but there is absolutely no degree of equivalence here, none whatsoever.
With all due respect to my Father who has been gone now for over six years, I went on line today and I changed my political affiliation to Democrat, and I am proud to finally call myself one. I really had been one all along, I just didn't know it. I'm sure my Dad would understand my decision. I lost my Mom a few years after my Dad, she was a life long Democrat. Happy (belated) Mother's Day, Mom and Happy (early) Father's Day, Dad...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/14/1091712/-I-am-now-a-Democrat-
TOM TOMORROW: Circular Debate
Mon May 07, 2012 at 06:50 AM PDT
Circular debate
by Tom Tomorrow
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/07/1088725/-Circular-debate
If Fukushima Unit 4 Falls, Hazardous Radioactive Cesium-137 Release Could be 8x Worse Than Chernobyl
If Fukushima Unit 4 Falls, Hazardous Radioactive Cesium-137 Release Could be Eight Times Worse Than ChernobylTAKOMA PARK, MD--(ENWESPF)--May 4 - Beyond Nuclear today joined with concerned Japanese citizen groups and US Senator, Ron Wyden (D-OR), urging that swift international action be taken to prevent a catastrophic high-level radioactive waste fire at the precarious Unit 4 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan.
Unit 4 is leaning and could topple if hit with another earthquake or tsunami, resulting in a deadly high-level radioactive waste fire. The ability for the unit to withstand another seismic event is rated at zero.
Today, a coalition of concerned Japanese citizens is urging United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, to properly inform the Japanese people of the perilous situation at Fukushima Daiichi, and to work together to prevent what would be an irreversible disaster that would release huge amounts of lethal radiation, dwarfing the scale of the original disaster.
Since the nuclear catastrophe began in March 2011, Beyond Nuclear has called attention to the ongoing risks of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi high-level radioactive waste storage pools. A similar danger persists at the 23 identical GE Mark I boiling water reactors still operating in the US.
“If the cooling water supply is lost to the high-level radioactive waste storage pool in Unit 4, it could be just a matter of hours before the irradiated nuclear fuel is on fire,” warned Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “A fire in the Unit 4 high-level radioactive waste storage pool could release up to eight times more hazardous cesium-137 than the Chernobyl reactor explosion. That in turn would mean the site would have to be evacuated, risking the potential for all seven high-level radioactive waste storage pools at the site to ignite. If that happened, Fukushima Daiichi would release 85 times the levels of cesium released by Chernobyl, potentially forcing an evacuation, and permanent condemnation, of hundreds to thousands of square miles,” Kamps added...
http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/science-a-environmental/33192-if-fukushima-unit-4-falls-hazardous-radioactive-cesium-137-release-could-be-eight-times-worse-than-chernobyl.html
On Facebook: From the School of Practical Philosophy
"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." ~ C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963) Novelist and poet
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