A Little Chuckle

Agence France Presse reports that the bomb squad was called out to a post office in the Russian town of Petrozavodsk, up in the northwest of the country.

A suspicious parcel was emitting a ticking sound.

After a few tense moments, the package was opened to reveal that a vibrator that had inadvertently gotten switched on.

New rule: When you send sex toys by post, take the danged batteries out, okay?

Tsunami, Before and After

Check out this link, courtesy of the New York Times. It has before-and-after satellite photos of selected areas struck by the earthquake and tsunami that bashed the northeastern part of the Japanese island of Honshu back on the 14th.

One hates to use the adjective "Biblical" when describing this disaster, which is still unfolding as the Fukushima nuclear plant is still posing major problems. Aftershocks continue, and it's taking a major bite out of the global economy.

If you don't think things can get worse, hang on to your hats, kids.

Drink, Drink, Drink...*

*From the "Student Prince" ~ 1954 - Mario Lanza singing.



First off, an apology for the length of this unedited article, and thanks to the PG for the article but those in areas affected by the "Godsend" of unlimited "cheap" natural gas through Marcellus Shale Drilling should read this. As should ANYONE who lives downstream from ANY waste water treatment plant that specializes in treating the effluent of the Fracking Process.
After you read it, if you had ideas that the glorious find of trillions of cubic feet of new natural gas would either make it cheaper or provide for longer lasting energy, ask yourself...would you rather have cheap gas or safe drinking water?
Oh, and by the way, the water provider in my area has already told our local government that to meet standards of "purity" by eliminating this problem, they will have to raise the cost of water distribution 3 to 5 times! That amount nearly offsets any saving in natural gas for consumers which the drillers, 75% of whom are from out of state and the companies who now do NOT have to pay taxes on the natural gas the take from Pa. say will provide for years of "clean natural gas."
I'll drink to that...but only water imported from some other country.




Bromide: A concern in drilling wastewater
Sunday, March 13, 2011
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Ballooning bromide concentrations in the region's rivers, occurring as Marcellus Shale wastewater discharges increase, is a much bigger worry than the risk of high radiation levels, public water suppliers say.
Unlike radiation, which so far has shown up at scary levels only in Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing wastewater sampling done at wellheads, the spike in salty bromides in Western Pennsylvania's rivers and creeks has already put some public water suppliers into violation of federal safe drinking water standards.
Others, like the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, haven't exceeded those limits but have been pushed up against them. Some have had to change the way they treat water.
Bromide is a salty substance commonly found in seawater. It was once used in sedatives and headache remedies like Bromo-Seltzer until it was withdrawn because of concerns about toxicity. When it shows up at elevated levels in freshwater, it is due to human activities. The problem isn't so much the bromide in the river but what happens when that river water is treated to become drinking water.
Bromide facilitates formation of brominated trihalomethanes, also known as THMs, when it is exposed to disinfectant processes in water treatment plants. THMs are volatile organic liquid compounds.
Studies show a link between ingestion of and exposure to THMs and several types of cancer and birth defects.
"Our biggest concerns are about bromide, which has become a problem over the last six months or so," said Stanley States, water quality manager with the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, which draws water from the Allegheny River for its 400,000 customers. "Trihalomethanes are strictly regulated because of the health risks. We've seen levels that are threatening the standards."
The federal safe drinking water standard for THMs is 80 micrograms per cubic liter, and removing them from finished drinking water is difficult. Keeping bromide levels in raw water sources low is a much easier way to address the problem.
Mr. States said the elevated bromide levels in the river could be coming from municipal sewage treatment plants and brine treatment plants handling Marcellus Shale drilling and hydrofracking wastewater or from discharges by coal-fired power plants water discharges. He said four municipal sewage facilities and four brine treatment plants are handling and discharging Marcellus Shale wastewater upriver from Pittsburgh's drinking water intake pipe in Aspinwall.
"Something's changed and it could possibly be related to the treating of Marcellus Shale drilling wastewater," Mr. States said. "There will be a lot more Marcellus Shale wells operating in the region before there are a whole lot less and our concern is in providing safe drinking water. We're not anti-Marcellus Shale. We're anti-bromide."
Problem through the region
Pittsburgh is not alone. The Wilkinsburg-Penn Joint Water Authority issued a notice to its customers in January informing them of the bromide problem and said it was necessary to change its water treatment methods to stay in compliance with state and federal drinking water standards.
"Due to the sudden increase in bromide concentration in the Allegheny River, all water suppliers are beginning to have a problem controlling this trihalomethane formation," the authority wrote on its Web page. "All water purveyors on the Allegheny River System are working together to try and find out the source of the elevated bromide levels."
Mr. States said a study is under way on the Allegheny River and its tributaries to identify sources of bromide in the river.
The Department of Environmental Protection is participating in that river sampling study and another in the Monongahela River watershed.
Katy Gresh, a DEP spokeswoman, said the department plans to order the industrial brine plants, sewage treatment facilities and coal-powered power plants on the rivers to conduct sampling at their discharge pipes.
"We will get and review those results," Ms. Gresh said. "If we can control the largest contributors, that will help solve the problem."
Jeanne VanBriesen, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of civil and environmental engineering, said testing there showed an unusual spike in bromide levels in July and August. Although they've tapered a bit since then, they remain higher than normal, said Ms. VanBriesen, who has been studying water quality in the Monongahela River since fall 2009.
She said the two biggest sources of bromide in the watershed are Marcellus wastewater from sewage treatment facilities and wastewater from new smokestack scrubbers at coal-fired power plants. The plants cannot remove the bromide in wastewater.
Bromide levels vary in discharges from both sources, but bromide is generally found at higher concentrations in Marcellus wastewater.
"It's difficult to make a definitive statement about where it's all coming from, but we do know it's going into our drinking water treatment plants and affecting the treatment of our water," Ms. VanBriesen said. "The most logical way to fix that is to reduce the amount of bromide in the rivers and creeks."
Millions of gallons
Marcellus Shale drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations use an average of 4 million gallons of water to drill and "frack" each well. The drilling industry says it recycles approximately 70 percent of the wastewater from its well fracking operations, but millions of gallons are still funneled through 11 sewage treatment facilities and five brine treatment plants, then discharged into the state's rivers and streams.
Together, the eight facilities on the Allegheny and its tributaries are allowed to discharge an average of 1.5 million gallons of Marcellus drilling wastewater and hydraulic fracturing fluid a day, according to state Department of Environmental Protection records. Marcellus discharges from three treatment facilities on the Monongahela River total 185,000 gallons a day. Another 650,000 gallons a day flow into the Ohio and its tributaries.
Drilling companies and the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an advocacy and lobbying organization representing most of the companies doing shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania, said the industry isn't to blame for higher bromide levels.
"When you look at the amount of Marcellus Shale wastewater that is being discharged it's low" compared to the river flows, said Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources. "So those [bromide] increases are not an impact of Marcellus Shale." Range Resources recycled 90 percent of its wastewater last year and has set a goal of 100 percent for 2011.
"We certainly see this as a non-Marcellus issue," said Steve Forde, a shale coalition spokesman, who cited a 2010 U.S. Geological Survey study that noted higher bromide levels nationwide, especially in urban areas. "Road salt use has been identified as one of the culprits for that."
Ms. VanBriesen said that's not likely because road salt contains more chloride and little bromide, and her water testing didn't find a corresponding spike in chloride levels. Plus the bromide spike in the rivers first occurred in the summer.
"So to implicate road salt, well, I wouldn't buy that," she said. "The bromide spike happened in July and August when you wouldn't be applying road salt. So that wasn't a factor."
Changing treatment process
Whatever the origin of the bromide spike, Jerry Schulte, manager of source water protection for the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, said bromide is "absolutely an issue" for water treatment plants.
"We've identified bromide as a compound of concern," Mr. Schulte said, adding that ORSANCO's triennial review of pollution control standards in April will focus on developing a new, first-time standard for bromide in the watershed.
Discharges of bromides and bromide levels in rivers or streams are not now regulated by ORSANCO or by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Josephine brine treatment facility, also known as Franklin Brine, on Blacklick Creek in the Allegheny's watershed, discharges an average of 120,000 gallons a day of Marcellus wastewater that, at peak levels, contains high concentrations of bromide, chlorides and total dissolved solids, according to sampling done by the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Healthy Environments and Communities.
"There's pretty high bromide going into the creek. Certainly it is a public health threat," said Conrad Dan Volz, director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities. "And to remove brominated THMs, that's going to break the bank for public water systems."
Water treatment plants can get around the bromide problem by changing their treatment methods -- substituting chloramines for the chlorides they normally use in the disinfection process. That's what the Wilkinsburg-Penn water authority did.
The chloramines produce different, less toxic, treatment byproducts, but those can produce other problems, including causing lead and copper to leach out of old water pipelines and into drinking water as happened in Washington, D.C., when it made such a switch in 2000.
Ms. VanBriesen said water utilities making such a change can add phosphate to their finished water to prevent lead from leaching out of the pipes.
Another way to avoid THMs, she said, is to change the way water utilities mix, aerate and store their finished water, and a number of suppliers are considering that.
One water treatment facility that has had problems with keeping THM concentrations in finished water below the 80 parts per billion federal standard is Beaver Falls, in Beaver County, which was required to notify its 50,000 customers in 22 municipalities of the problem for the first three quarters of 2010.
The authority changed its treatment methods, from chlorine to chloramines, which don't form THMs, at a cost of approximately $15,000 last year. That allowed the water supplier to meet the standard for the last three months of the year, said Jim Riggio, general manager of the water system.
Although testing done by the state DEP hasn't been able to pinpoint a cause of the higher bromide levels in the Beaver River, Mr. Riggio said they coincided with upriver discharges of treated Marcellus Shale fracking wastewater.
"We went from non-detectable levels of bromide to increased levels a couple of years ago," Mr. Riggio said. "When I see the whole frack water thing taking off and the same time we start to have problems, well, until you can tell me different, that's what I assume it is. And it seems like a lot of the water suppliers on the Beaver and Mon rivers had similar problems to what we did."

The dumbing down of America's Youth is beginning with the Corporate Right's Selected Minions...

How is dictatorially cutting the Education Funding of America's Schools any different from burning books? Both produce the same result:
a nation of mindless followers!

Is it..."The End of the World as We Know It?"

Update:
New URL for Al-Jazeera live blog

...with O-pologies to R.E.M.

The "nukyular" problem in Japan gets more interesting all the time. Could it meltdown? Could it be OK?
Here's a url that sheds some more info on the situation. Especially click the link to the Al-Jazzera Live Blog.

I wonder how long it will take the Coal Spinners in this country to start promoting ads about the "safe" uses of "clean" coal - you know...the methane explosions, cave-in, black lung myths? All, of course, being much safer than turning "Murikans" into mindless toads! (Hmmm? Isn't that statement repetitively redundant? lol!)

Let's see...which way do the prevailing winds blow from Japan? Hmmm? Maybe Sarah better cover the porch where she watches Russia with some of Tom Ridge's Plastic and Duct Tape. The Aurora Borealis won't be the only thing glowing in Alaska...and that glow will make a lasting impression even down here, sooner than you can say nukyular! But don't fret, those of you who have never seen it. If it's half as bad as the talk (and that may mean many times worse than Three Mile Island), all us here in the good ol' Corporate States of "Murika' will get to see it up close and very personal.
Watch for the CEOs, Banksters, most politicians and Evangelicals all decide to take extended vacations over the next month - somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere! I guess this is one of the possible reasons why Georgie Boy and Heartless Dick bought all that land in Paraguay.

Or things will be just peachy and we'll all forget about the dangers involved!
Have a nice day!

Domo Arigato Mr. Capitalist and to all who believe in "Clean, Safe, Nukyular Energy!"

Me? I'll be spending my tyme..."On the Beach!"

Bradley Manning for President

You say you want a revolution?

Karl Rove’s dream is almost true. Very soon now, we’ll have a one party government. If by government you mean Corporations deciding how you and your children will live the next 50 years (if you can survive), then you indeed are getting what you wanted...if you weren't concerned enough to learn about the issues and if you didn't vote. And judging by the outcome of the 2010 mid-term election, most of the Left stayed home and watched Soap Operas, American Idol, Jerry Springer and People’s Court.
When Republicans take control of the Senate and the White House in 2012, and they will thanks to American apathy and computer election fraud, the last American Revolution will finally end.
You didn’t know there was a revolution? Have you paid attention to any source but the Main Stream Media since 2001? Evidently not.
Make no mistake. While those on both sides in the general population talked of “revolution” since “W” stole the 2001 election, the Corporations of the former United States of America have quietly conducted their own revolution. And they did it without guns or bullets or violence. They did it by buying politicians; politicians who changed or circumvented or discarded with impunity already established laws.
The revolution is nearly over. It won’t even end with a whimper thanks to the spineless Democratic Politicians and apathetic Americans. Hell, most Americans won't even realize there's been a revolution until the shit finally hits them and sadly, most think it never will (I got mine, you get yours).
When one of these Democratic Politicians accepts his thirty pieces of silver to vote against what the majority of the people want and in favor of Corporations, he or she is no longer a Democrat. Start calling them what they really are: Corporatons. It’s interesting that an online dictionary’s second definition of a politician is:
“a seeker or holder of public office, who is more concerned about winning favor or retaining power than about maintaining principles."
The Democrats and our current president have finally succumbed to the addiction the Republicans have main-lined for years - personal greed.
First it was the “Patriot Act” to protect us from Muslims (ironic title there, eh…Patriot!) by “temporarily” removing “some” of our freedoms. (Temporary. new definition. See Obama, 2010)
Some Democrats (along with most of the general population) stood silently while the First and Fourth Amendments were made obsolete under the lies of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and now Obama.
Those Democrats and our current president stood silently, or in many cases aided Republicans and Corporations while the Republican MINORITY of 2006-2010, with the help of a quisling president gave in to everything Republican businesses wanted.
They and our current president stood by silently, or in many cases aided Republicans and Corporations while trillions of tax payer dollars went to fund obscene bonuses in the name of bailouts for banks “Too Big to Fail” for those who caused the economic downfall of the last 10 years.
They and our current president stood by silently, or in many cases aided Republicans and Corporations while Americans watched their savings, their retirement funds, their pensions turned over to the Vermin of Wall Street and American Bankers.
They and our current president stood by silently, or in many cases aided Republicans and Corporations while Americans watched their health care costs skyrocket and treatment vanish.
These sorry excuses for Democrats sat by quietly while Bush/Cheney and the Rovian Republicans seated radical, lying Right Wing Crazies on the Supreme Court. Then they sheepishly accepted the ruling that allowed Corporations to become de-facto citizens of the United States capable of funding Republicans with unlimited finances to win elections without the requirement of adhering to laws.
They aided the Corporations in approving laws that allowed American Jobs to be outsourced to foreign countries; they allowed tax breaks to these same Corporations for sending jobs overseas.
They and especially our current president stood silently by and allowed those who corrupted the government, those who engaged in criminal activity, those who profited from their illegal activities to get off scot-free. And they continue to sit silent while an American Soldier who possibly showed the world how a lying group of criminals has run this country for 10 years is treated worse than any World War II Nazi POW.
They are still standing silently by while Republican Governors destroy unions, decimate medical care, reduce education and inflict hardships on a population that they say must sacrifice so that the wealthy become wealthier.
They and our current president continue to lie about social security being a problem. They continue, with their silence to allow America's seniors to try to exist in poverty so the wealthy can enjoy their lives.
They allow white men to decide in the name of religion how and what women can do with their bodies. Don't kid yourselves, there's no other way to justify other than with religion that a man can tell someone else's wife what she can do with her body. I imagine one of the reasons Republicans want to eliminate contraceptive techniques so much is they really must not like the feel of latex when screwing the public.
Maybe the worst of the Democrat's (and Pseudo Democrat's) stupidity was their support and continued support of two illegal wars, without which we would not be in this situation. They know what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan was wrong, yet they allow flag wavers and bible totting evangelicals from the Right to influence their actions; actions they take because they are more afraid of losing their Political Jobs and the greed that goes along than they are in doing what is right.
They’ve had chance after chance to do the right thing, yet when final decisions are made, they inevitably side with Corporations (thanks to heavily greased palms) and the Radical Right (only Gawd knows why - because supposedly, unless you're Reverend Ike, you can't buy your way into Heaven) against the will of the majority of their constituents.
They stand silently by and allow Corporations to pollute the earth because they say there's no proof Global Warming exists yet they quote a 2000 year old piece of fiction that has less proof of existence.
The Blue Dog Democrats and indeed, the majority of today’s Democrats (there are couple of exceptions) are quite reminiscent of the Vichy Government. If you’re not familiar with that term, it would expand your mind and views of the current Democrats AND our current president to Google it. Then perhaps, you can tell me how they are NOT alike.
The list of things done and not done by these Democratic Money Addicts is long and you should be familiar with most of them. In a sense, they joined in helping do what Jefferson Davis, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Nikita Krushchev couldn’t do. But those men were puny thinkers compared to the Corporatists and Corporate Collaborators, those “Americans for Hire” who sell their American souls to find loop holes in anything that could aid and abet business however unethical.
Blue Dog Democrats, who their constituents thought were acting in the best interests of the people, are little more than the junkies and addicts of the back alleys, except they get their highs from corporation cash. Their addiction continues to grow.
We’re losing freedoms that were our rights under a "Damn Piece of Paper" that the Republicans want destroyed while these craven Democrats continue to shoot more Corporate Heroin.
What is so incredible is much of this was done these last 4 years with a Democratic Majority in Congress then with a Democratic (or so we were to believe) President.
Imagine if you will, what would have happened in 2008 and what WILL happen if the Republicans take control of the House, Senate and Presidency in 2012 with the help of Corporations.
Won’t happen, you say? Looking at the financial “sustenance abuse” the Democrats now are enjoying, would you like to chance putting your life savings on that? Would you like to bet your and your children’s future on that? Oh, never mind. You already did.
The real terrorists are the Corporations with their legal staffs aided by Congressional Low-Life Democrats who really are pretty much worse than the drug addicts of the world. Eventually, drug addicts overdose and die. These manure sucking Democrats will live on much longer. And when they do leave the Political scene, a thousand other money addicted Democrats will be waiting to replace them.
Corporations didn’t need to fire a shot.
The Revolution IS over.
America and Americans lost.

Rep. Peter King (R is for Racist) - NY

No Drama Llamas Alert!

The Word for Wisconsin Republican is Wanker

In the biggest travesty of government and the shabbiest political trick since the 2003 AUMF, the Republicans in the Wisconsin state Senate managed to ramrod through a ban on collective bargaining rights for the state's public service unions.

Here is how they done it:

Working so fast that the bill had little time to be properly reported, a committee severed the union-fucking from the rest of the budget bill, which gave the lie to Governor Wanker's - er, Walker's - assertions that castrating the unions was essential to balancing the state budget. Standing alone, the collective bargaining strip only needed a simple majority to pass, which it did, 18-1.

No Democrats required.

No Democracy required, either.

Probably unlawful, too.

Needless to say, people raised a howl, and efforts to recall six GOP state satraps and their odious Koch-sucker of a governor are proceeding.

What Are You Giving Up?

Memento, homo, quia pulvis est . . . Remember, Man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return . . .

Tuesday was Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday.

Which means that yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of the forty days of Lent.

Which means you'll see otherwise serious people strolling bout with smudges of ash on their foreheads, and much talk of penance and Giving Things Up.

I like to play along, at times, so most years I give up my relatives for Lent.

This year, though, I think I'll give up something I actually like, so I'll give up beef liver for Lent.

Ahh, beef liver, cut into thick steaks, washed and soaked in milk to kill the strong taste, then dredged in a light dusting of flour and sauteed in rendered bacon fat, then served with crisp bacon and caramelized onions . . .

Sorry. I digress.

What might you give up for Lent this year?

The easy to understand screwing of the American People!

From AmericanProgress.com


If this doesn't piss you off, you're a wealthy Republican and have no feelings about others, unless they're wealthy, too.
Show this to your Republican friends and O-pologists.

Click to really piss you off!

UNEMPLOYMENT DROPS!!!

UNEMPLOYMENT IS DOWN TO 8.9%!!!


Woohoo!

Time to celebrate! It's only taken 2 fucking years for the wonderful people of the Obama Administration to completely undo the bullshit and unemployment the Bush Administration caused in 8 years.

At this rate we'll be at 8% unemployment by 2011...and less than 7% by election time 2012! Who'd a thunk it? Great planning. Whoopie! Way to go Barry!

Now let's show some good ol' Amurikan Bipartisan ship and all get behind the Republicans and Tea Partisans and Blue Dogs and Barry and Timmy and Hanky and Johnny and get rid of those nasty things we all know are causing unemployment, such as:

Laws Overturning Job Outsourcing
Social Security
Unions
Health Care for the Lazy
Medicare
Medicaid
Public Education
Abortion
Planned Parenthood
Contraception
High Taxes on Big Business
Women's Rights
Minority Voters
Immigrants of all types
Low Fuel Prices
Low Income Housing
LIHEAP
Too much Regulation on Banks
Too much Regulation on Wall Street
Incandescent Bulb Advocates
Tree Huggers and Environmentalist
Climate Change Supporters
National Public Radio, Television and the Arts
The other 20 some Amendments

Maybe in Khruschev's "We will bury you" speech,
he didn't spell "BURY" correctly. Either that or he was way ahead of his time.

Resetting the Bar

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled, by an 8-1 margin, that the egregiously hateful, despicable and downright awful entity known as the "Westboro Baptist Church" has First Amendment protection for its homophobic rhetoric and its unspeakably evil penchant for picketing military funerals while waving signs reading God Hates Fags.

Well, maybe so. It's nice to see where the bar is set.

The Revved-Up Phred Phelps and his ricket-ridden, milky, gammy-handed family of things (seriously, Phred, you really shouldn't let relatives screw, you know?) aren't dead, which surprises me.

So ...

God hates Scott Walker, the Koch-sucking union hating Governor of Wisconsin.

God hates John Boehner, the orange skinned cocksucker who'd sell his own mother to a Port Said pimp if it'd help his golf game or line his pockets.

God hates Lindsey Graham, the prissy pussy-ass cracker motherfucker who wants people to believe he's a macho man, but is in actuality a mincing nancy boy.

God hates Glenn Beck, which is why Glenn is getting so incoherent that his rants don't even qualify as Beat poetry anymore. It's more like the ravings I've come to associate with people experiencing prolonged hallucinogen binges.

God hates Rush Limbaugh, or Rush might lose weight, lay off the drugs and stop jerking his micropenis to pictures of naked Caribbean boys.

God hates Ann Coulter, or he'd fulfill her dreams by increasing her weight and finding her a proper conservative man to treat her the way she wants to be treated - by beating her every time she dares open her mouth, and by keeping her in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant.

God hates John McCain, or he wouldn't have saddled him with Sarah Palin.