I've been reading on-line news reports about the post-earthquake/tsunami nuclear crisis in Japan, and the reaction from the Obama Administration is, well, interesting to say the least. The Japanese government says stay 12 miles from the worst-affected nuclear power plant. The U.S. government says 50 miles, preferably more.
When the news shifted to reporting about active evacuation of U.S. citizens from Japan, White House spokesbeing Jay Carney said, "I will not from here judge the Japanese evaluation of the data. This is what we would do if this incident were happening in the United States." Oh really?
This reminds me of the reaction to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, when British Petroleum (BP) and the U.S. government insisted nothing too tremendously bad was afoot, but both were forced to eat their words times after time until forced to tell us--well, um, oops, it's really really bad! Even then BP tried to downplay the amount of oil gushing into the gulf by shifting from talking about GALLONS of oil to BARRELS of oil.
I believe we are also being encouraged to think that any amount of radiation that hitches a gulf stream, or Pineapple Express storm-track ride, to the West Coast (which means POOR Magazine and a bunch of our neighbors...) and beyond ain't about nuthin' because we ALWAYS get bad stuff like particles of lead and what-not from Asia in our weather diet.
You getting that warm fuzzy feeling I'm feeling? Yeah. Please, don't forget what the experts did the last time something ginormous happened! I haven't.