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Nuclear stack spewing smoke

Oak Harbor, OH and Rockville, MD—A meeting held today by teleconference, between U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff at the agency’s headquarters near Washington, D.C. and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) officials from the Lake Erie shoreline atomic reactor in northwest Ohio, revealed that the problem-plagued Davis-Besse plant’s backup diesel generators (EDGs) likely would not work, if called upon to cool the overheating core in an emergency. The reason is the voltage setting has been set too low, for years or even decades. Watchdogs from Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, Ohio Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Committee, and Union of Concerned Scientists listened in, and members of the public provided comments to NRC.

The voltage, as documented in the plant’s Technical Specifications, has long been set at only 4,031 volts, whereas a minimum of 4,070, or perhaps even 4,088, volts is needed. First in May 2012, and again in April 2015, FENOC has applied to NRC for approval of a License Amendment Request (LAR) to address the still unresolved problem. 

Photo of Bernie Sanders

Editor's Note: The following is an article from The Outsider, by Shawn Gaynor, that establishes connections between Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and a vulnerable database should raise the obvious question: Is this another "Dean Scream?" The Clintons have a long history of political dirty tricks.
   In 1992, when I was a platform spokesperson for Governor Jerry Brown's presidential campagin, Bill Clinton campaign operatives knowingly lied and claimed I forged signatures on a death penalty plank. They later apologized. Democratic Party insiders destroyed Howard Dean's presidential bid as an outside in 2004. The Clintons, as the consummate Democratic Party insiders, seem to be doing little more than illegally hijacking Bernie Sanders' campaign database. The irony, of course, is that this is coming from a candidate who was accused of far worse thing in the "Filegate" scandal and has recently had her own computer email problems. ~ Bob Fitrakis

“…and the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame;
And on each end of the rifle we're the same” -- John McCutcheon

 

101years ago this Christmas season one of the most unusual aberrations in the bloody history of the organized mass slaughter that is war occurred. It was so profound – and so disturbing to the professional war-makers - that it was never to be repeated again. “Christian” Europe was in the fifth month of the 1914 – 1918, so-called Great War that finally ground to a mutually suicidal halt after four years, with all of the original participants financially, spiritually and morally bankrupted.

 

  A good newspaper understands the political sensitivities of the community it serves and reflects that understanding in the newspaper's coverage and opinion-making.
   A newspaper that fails to understand and reflect the nature of its community is bound to lose readers.
   Such is the plight of the Columbus Dispatch that was purchased by GateHouse Media in June.
   The political disconnect between the Dispatch's news and opinion policies and its core readers is likely a key factor  in a one-year drop in circulation of nearly 9 percent. The annual report published in the Dispatch in October stated that the average number of copies sold on the day nearest to the filing date was 127,477, down sharply from 139,696 the average number of copies sold during the previous 12 months.
   A copy of a print newspaper is read by an average of two people, so the Dispatch is reaching about 255,000 people per day.

“Money doesn’t win. Pre-primary polls don’t win,” said Jason Edwards. “Votes win, and we have the people to go out and get them.”

Edwards was speaking on December 16 outside the Ohio Secretary of State’s office as nearly 6,000 petition signatures were delivered to put presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on the Ohio ballot for the May primary.

Sanders’ prospects for winning the Democratic primary in Ohio are “very good,” said Edwards, a member of Central Ohio Grassroots for Bernie Sanders and a delegate for the national campaign. For the general election, “We’ve got a lot of work to do as volunteers,” he said. “As long as we keep up our grass-roots effort around the country, we’re going to be fine.”

 “I’m very confident that Bernie would win the general election,” said Bianca Davis, a graduate student in physics at Ohio State. “We need his policies. We need universal health care, we need maternity and paternity leave, we need infrastructure, and we need to address climate change. At the first Democratic debate, Bernie was the only one who said that climate change is the biggest security threat.”

Leaders provide vision. They help people understand where they are, how they got there and what they must do to go forward. They help calm nerves and strengthen courage. They are steady in times of trouble, inspiring in times of demoralization.

Donald Trump’s reaction to the terrorist acts in Egypt, Lebanon, Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., both divides and weakens us. And for the most part, his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination have allowed him to lead the Republican Party and its run to the White House to ignominy.

Americans are understandably worried. We have been fighting wars in the Middle East for over a decade. We lost thousands of lives and spent literally trillions of dollars in a wrong-headed war of choice in Iraq. We toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, producing failed states and generating more terrorists. Now we are trying to take out Assad in Syria even as his mortal enemy ISIS takes credit for terrorist horrors in Paris and Beirut. The violence keeps spreading; the terrorists keep reviving. And Americans grow more and more worried.

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace hold a symbolic menorah against racism and Islamophobia at the Ohio State University.

In response to the growing intolerance against Islam expressed in Donald Trump’s call for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S., Jewish activists in 15 cities are celebrating Chanukah by holding vigils against Islamophobia and racial profiling.

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) gathered at the Ohio State University on December 12. They held eight signs representing the candles of the menorah, each with a statement opposing a different form of racism or religious intolerance.

“Islamophobia is a frightening and terrible thing,” said JVP member Charlene Fix. “I don’t want any people to be hurt that way my people were hurt.”

resident Obama’s oval office talk on terrorism promises more of the same failed strategy based on no serious reconsideration of changed reality. From the top, by focusing on 14 Americans killed in San Bernardino, the President plays into the terrorists’ hands. President Obama, like the rest of the US establishment, appears to have learned nothing since President Bush played the fear card after 9/11, then used it to terrorize the Muslim world with ever more disastrous results (carried on by President Obama). 

Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for pointing out that the U.S. media is acting as though Donald Trump just invented bigotry this week (one of those ugly details I'm happy to miss by never watching television). But not only is explicit bigotry toward Muslims not new, implicit bigotry toward Muslims has been the foundation of the largest public project in the United States for the past quarter century.

 

Justifiable suspicions about what happened surfaced straightaway after the incident.

The alleged perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, appear to have been used as convenient patsies – the same way April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Dzhokhar were unjustly framed for a crime they didn’t commit.

False flag attacks are used to stoke fear, to enlist public support for planned domestic and foreign horrors. Events post-9/11 are well-documented. What’s unfolding now looks like more of the same – the phony pretext of combating ISIS, state-sponsored high crimes at home and abroad.

Eyewitnesses to the San Bernardino shooting said three white gunmen in black military attire, armed with assault rifles, were responsible.

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