Lil White Lies: How Glow Can You Go

I have written before about that “cheap Chinese Food” feeling I get from Bryan White’s reasoning when he blogs criticisms of PolitiFact’s rulings, or his Facebook commentary: It seems tasty and filling at the time, but a short time later one is hungry and has a headache from all the MSG. In other words, it sounds good, but later you say to yourself, after thinking about it…"Hey, wait a minute….that isn’t quite right…” and you're feeling a bit empty and kind of sick (and not from radiation).

Initially, I concurred a bit with  his recent criticism of a PolitiFact (PF) ruling on Ann Coulter, who said that “There is a growing body of evidence that radiation in excess of what the government says are the minimum amounts you should be exposed to are actually good for you and reduce cases of cancer.” He explained in a rhetorical mish-mash that PF missed the context of Coulter’s remark and replaced it with its own:

In context, Coulter was making the point that the media are passing on a classic "man bites dog" story. In other words she's making a point about media coverage of Japanese radiation leaks rather than jumping on a pseudoscientific bandwagon. Coulter tried to emphasize the same point on O'Reilly's program but ended up having to instead deal with the host's skepticism about the evidence.

He made it more clear on Facebook under the topic of Coulter’s statement at the PolitiFact page, when he was able to suck one Jason Curtis into his relentless debate machine:

Contrary to PolitiFact's stated principles, Coulter's point was ignored. She was making the point that the media was helping fan concerns about mildly heightened levels of radiation. That was overwhelmingly the point of the column she wrote, the one that O'Reilly had her on his program to discuss. O'Reilly introduces Coulter by saying she's "not down on radiation poisoning." And Coulter responds with "It's not me (...)".

Later he added, in the same vein:

…Coulter was trying to counteract media scare tactics. And it was improper to omit that point from the story.

When I first heard about the situation with the Japanese nuclear reactors on television, I also heard that there was no radiation threat to the United States, including Hawaii. In fact, it seemed to me it was being played down. From “mainstream media” ABC News:

Sidebar: Oh No! There goes Tokyo! It's BP-Zilla

History has repeated itself in Japan, just within one year. At first there was an explosion (the tsunami) and then there was an oil leak (radiation) which turned into a full grown spill disaster ( nuclear reactor meltdown and severe radiation). But most of all, most of all there was the cover-up.

The Japanese government has had problems because it could only get superficial, vaguely incomplete information from the company that owns the reactors.   Sound familiar?

 Well they had those 13 back up pumps—which one would think the Japanese should have known would all fail if there was a serious tsunami.

Last night I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.

These safety back-up systems are the 'EDGs' in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators. That they didn't work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn't save a building because "it was on fire."

AND that reminds me of those BP emergency shut-off valves, which weren't invested in because of the expense.   What can I say:  it's not just in America.

Postscript:  Just saw a great commentary at Bartcop's website:  "Nobody believes that all the backup systems failed....They gambled, like BP in the Gulf, and they got caught."    You can say that again, Bart.