Category Archives: politics

Indiana and the West Virginia spill

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Update:  Indiana actually noticed that there was a chemical spill upriver!  /just a little sarcasm, folks

Reading this, though, Indiana just seems….passive.  Cincinnati is taking a proactive stance in shutting off the water intake.

And, I have to wonder as I’m reading this, how will they separate the West Virginia chemicals from the toxins already in the Ohio River?  Will they be able to tell which are our chemicals and which are Freedom Industries?  /just a little snarky

Meanwhile, Louisville, Kentucky  is business as usual.  I just shake my head at the laissez-faire attitude  “we will treat the water and make it smell and taste good.”  WTH?

I want water that is free of chemicals, not just “taste good”.  Charcoal is fine for removing impurities, but it doesn’t remove everything.

I found a couple of websites advocating bamboo charcoal for water filtration here and here.  I haven’t tried these, but they do look promising…and since bamboo is sustainable, all the better.  Finally, there this site on a primitive charcoal filter.

Reverse osmosis is supposed to remove much more–but it also removes needed minerals.  Some sites suggest putting a high quality salt (that hasn’t had the minerals removed as they do with sodium chloride, or table salt) back in as a way to counteract it.

I had a tough time finding much information that wasn’t a company website, but this was the best one to explain what reverse osmosis removes.

 

Education: Throwing kids into the deep end

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Seamus McCarville has a thoughtful post up on the nonsensical approach of Common Core and its proponents.

I went to the NYSUT website and briefly looked over the cheerleading of Common Core.  It states that up until now, there has been a wide variation of standards from place to place…like that indicates failure…

…and as I’m reading that, I’m thinking of all the contributions to America that have happened by people who came from different areas of the country with different educational systems–Neil Armstrong pops into my head as I type–he was not educated under Common Core…

What about the artists? What about the musicians?  What about culinary endeavors or farming?  This is just sooo short-sighted and myopic in that it has such a narrow focus of what these self-appointed education gurus have deemed important.

They seem to want robots teaching class…instructing them which side of the classroom to be on? Seriously??  Micro-manage much?

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More on Education:

Mercedes Schneider has this up on Arne Duncan blaming everyone else but himself.

 

 

Mercury and Autism

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(Most of you have read this stuff before, so it will be boring to you.  I’m posting for folks who are new to this info.)

Dr. Andrew Hall Cutler, whose protocol I follow, spoke out on the deliberate act of confusing the public (and even the medical profession) about mercury and autism.

He referred to this paper, by M. Catherine Desoto, PhD, and Robert Hitlan, PhD. , that appeared in the Journal on Child Neurology, Nov. 2007.

I know that when I was really sick, I did not want to leave my home.  I wanted no contact with people at all.  As I started to get better with chelation, I wanted to be around people–I just didn’t want to talk to anyone—this was more pronounced in new situations or with people I was unfamiliar with (that kind of goes with learning new things–if I learned something before being mercury poisoned, I’ve had an easier time learning a new aspect of it.  If, however, it was totally new, my eyes would glaze over from being overwhelmed.)

I still have autistic symptoms when I’m chelating–don’t want to talk (or write a blog).    This proves me beyond a doubt that there is a connection between mercury and autism.

As the authors of this paper explore, mercury exposure does not necessarily correlate with presence of mercury in the hair.  Dr. Cutler had said that the ability to excrete mercury is an individual thing, with some of us being poor at mercury/heavy metal elimination.  Again, the Irish are particularly susceptible to this as we lack the gene to excrete mercury properly.  Gluten intolerance also allows more mercury to enter the blood stream via “leaky gut” (holes in the gut caused by inflammation from the inability to digest the gluten)—a double whammy.

Dr. Cutler also mentioned something that happened in 1972 in Iraq:  many were poisoned by ethylmercury in grain (reports that it is methylmercury are wrong, according to Dr. Cutler).  Boy, there’s a study to end all studies of how these folks who survived and reproduced, passing mercury damaged DNA on to their offspring and how that affected their personalities/level of tolerance.

As I read about the seed sown in millions of acres, I’m wondering about the contamination of the soil?

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In other health news, the FDA has come out with a lame warning on acetominophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol.  An Eli Lilly researcher once told me that acetominophen damages liver cells.  Ibuprofen damages kidney cells.  I don’t think there is a *safe* amount to take.  You have to weigh the options–how bad do you really feel?  Bad enough to kill off some liver or kidney cells?  This is why people need to be given the information and let them make up their own minds how much they are willing to risk their health…

 

Geoengineering: Insane and Delusional

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A report here on Al Gore speaking out on geoengineering.  I totally agree.  The Earth is a magnificent living, breathing, organism that can take care of herself quite well, thank you, without any *help* from us.

What we need to do is put on our big adult pants and scale down the polluting.  It means stop giving industry the right to pollute what belongs to all of us.  Well, that’s not accurate, either, because it doesn’t really *belong* to us, but rather, we are borrowing it while we are here.

It’s not ours to do with as we please, but a gift to be cherished and given back….what  a wonderful humble idea…

…meanwhile, that 15 MILLION pounds of toxins into Indiana waterways keeps flashing in my head….

AIPAC influencing Senators on Iran

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AIPAC is behind the new bill to put new sanctions on Iran–a list of those willing to risk peace with Iran and the Middle East here.

Netanyahu is always flailing his arms about Iran’s nuclear capabilities…so why would he and the bankers want to destroy an agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

(hat tip to commondreams.org)

 

 

 

The PR ads against Teachers and Public Education

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Mercedes Schneider has this up on a billboard blasting Randi Weingarten and teachers  unions (read: public education).  (hat tip to Diane Ravitch)

Note that sleazy Rick Berman is behind this attack ad.

This is what parents have to look forward to, with dictatorships as Charters:

This is a comment signed Concerned Charter Teacher:

I work at Success Academy and thought you might be interested in the following. Just heard that we are planning a pro-charter parent march on October 8th. Our schools are being closed for the morning. Teachers, parents, students, and central office staff are being required to join the march. Other charter schools are joining as well. Several emails from senior leadership make it clear that the event is not optional. It seems very unethical that adults and children are being forced into this political statement, but I don’t know what, if anything, can be done. [Emphasis added.]

 

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Event is not optional.

Thinking is not optional.

Art is not optional.

Music is not optional.

Being a kid is not optional.

 

Ohio River and the West Virginia spill

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So…the spill in West Virginia in the Elk River has gone into the Ohio River and is headed our way…so I went looking to see how the authorities are dealing with it…

I found that the Cincinnati folk are right on this–

When I looked for Indiana authorities’ action on it…nothing.  No surprise there.  The Indiana Dept. of Environmental (MIS-) Management allows businesses three years between inspections.  West Virginia could happen here. (and probably already has, but without nary a peep from anyone who knows about it.)

But I did find this disturbing report.  Indiana is guilty of dumping 15 MILLION pounds of toxins into the waterways.  Good Grief!

Here’s yet another disturbing report of BP once again poisoning a body of water from the Whiting, Indiana, refinery…you know, the petcoke we’ve talked about.  This time,  it’s our wonderful Lake Michigan they’re dumping mercury into….where is the media coverage here?  *crickets*

If you don’t think two pounds of mercury sounds like a lot, keep in mind it only take a thermometer of mercury to poison a 20-acre lake.

(Of course, I take exception to this article ignoring amalgams as sources of mercury along with vaccines.  And ignoring GMO’s as impacts on the gut, allowing heavy metal poisoning.)

…and it’s not just the water they’re poisoning…

Slanting the news

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Diane Ravitch has this up on Politico’s slanted reports on Education.  I have noticed this myself lately of the few articles I’ve read on there–a definite change in the wind, so to speak.  The comments are interesting, too, as others have noticed and some suspect the Billionaires Media Club is at work here.

From the comments:

Ryan

January 14, 2014 at 11:20 am

It’s the billionaire boys club at work again, I’m afraid. Stephanie B. Simon was a superb reporter working stories on the privatization of public schools, and Silicon Valley’s and Wall Street’s pieces of the pie. Then she was hired by Politico, and her stories have changed. Similar thing happened to the NYT Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Mike Winerip, who early on did a great piece on the scam that is K-12 Inc’s so-called ‘virtual schools.’ Really K-12 is just peddling incredibly overpriced software and a few overloaded teachers to answer questions. NYT offered him full-time work, and put him on the baby boomer beat (?) and now he is writing its Motherlode blog — dispensing advice to parents. Gates $$ have totally shifted Ed Week’s reporting — it seems they aren’t even bothering to re-write the press releases fro the privatizers. PBS has done only a little reporting on the privatization of education. Rachel Maddow is silent. And on it goes.

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(underlining is mine to emphasize reporters’ collaboration by silence or slanted reporting.)