Gulf Oil

BP PLC is pushing to fix its runaway Gulf oil well by July 27, possibly weeks before the deadline the company is discussing publicly, in a bid to show investors it has capped its ballooning financial liabilities, according to company officials.

At the same time, BP is readying a series of backup plans in case its current operations go awry. These include connecting the rogue well to existing pipelines in two nearby underwater gas and oil fields, according to company and administration officials.

Much of the additional planning has been pushed by the U.S. government, which has urged BP to develop what one official called the "backup to the backup plan."

  WSJ

Let's get real and face it. There never was a backup plan. No company drilling in the sea has a backup plan. It's quite obvious from all the myriad 'plans' that have been drawn up in hasty attempts to fix the 'leak'. Nobody knows how to fix it. There never was a backup plan. Just like we have no backup plan for the possibility of disastrous radiation leaks from buried 'spent' nukes. Nobody knows how. Nobody cared. There was big money to be made. Does anybody care yet?

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet. --Mark Twain

The Insanity of Hope

This particular affair is over. The "hopium" has worn off.

[...]

What I [...] hear from almost every progressive liberal [...] is a jaw-dropping naïveté regarding the nomination of candidate Obama and the system he represents. It is the epitome of the definition of insanity: repeating a behavior proven erroneous without exception, time after time, yet expecting that the next time, the result will be different. [...] [The] Supreme Court ruling lifting limits on campaign financing by corporations was truly the last nail in the coffin of democracy and sealed the fundamental definition of fascism attributed to Mussolini which was simply, "the corporate state." Abramoff rules, and politicians no longer have any reason to function other than corporate whores. As a friend suggested to me a few days ago, members of Congress should now dress themselves in NASCAR uniforms indicating which corporations own them so that we don't need to bother researching the facts but can see them wearing the information on their bodies.

During the 2007-2008 hyperventilating euphoria of progressives regarding the candidacy of Obama, my website, Speaking Truth to Power, was exposing Obama's corporate connections and forecasting that little if anything would significantly change with his election. I was labeled Debbie Downer from Doom and Gloomville and called a conspiracy nut. And so here we are: Revelations from Matt Taibbi and others regarding Goldman Sachs as the largest contributor to Obama's election campaign, an escalation of war in Afghanistan above and beyond the proportions of Bush's war in Iraq, Obama's sanctioning of Bush's policies on torture, Obama's prone position in relation to Wall St. and his choice to surround himself with economic advisors who were directly responsible for creating economic collapse-I could continue ad nauseum.

[ed: I also read that BP's largest campaign contribution went to Obama. This article was written before the Gulf oil disaster. Hmm. Gulf oil - has a new meaning, eh?]

In this teaching moment, those disappointed and despairing of their tryst with Obama have a golden opportunity to ask themselves what his betrayal of them reveals regarding the political and economic systems of America and the reality that no politician can even be nominated for the Presidency by the two-party monstrosity, let alone elected, unless that candidate is permanently dressed in his or her NASCAR uniform. If you do not ask this question, you will continue living out the definition of insanity with every national election because you refuse to look deeply at the fundamentals of how the corporate state functions. You will cover its rotting stench with some cloying cologne of "hope" and thereby not only enable your betrayers but waste precious time by not attending to life and death issues.

  Carolyn Baker

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

There Oughta Be a Law

UPDATE: So now they're saying those tarballs in Galveston weren't from BP's disaster after all. You'll never know.

[M]arine scientists are worried even more of the deep-sea reefs could be damaged as the thick goo [from the BP undersea gusher] creeps into two powerful Gulf currents.

[...]

Marine scientists say diffusing and sinking the oil helps protect the surface species and the Gulf Coast shoreline but increases the chance of harming deep-sea reefs.

[...]

"At first we had a lot of concern about surface animals like turtles, whales and dolphins," said Paul Montagna, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi who studies Gulf reefs. "Now we're concerned about everything."

[...]

The loop current could carry oil from the spill east and spread it about 450 miles to the Florida Keys, while the Louisiana coastal current could move the oil as far west as central Texas.

  Huffington Post

Maybe Jesus at the bottom of the sea off Key Largo will protect the Keys, eh?

(I got that picture from a blog posting pictures of the Giant Jesuses of the world, from Big Butter Jesus – who, as you know, was recently struck by lightning and burned to the ground – to a gigantic Lego Jesus in Sweden.)

Tar balls found on [Texas] Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston’s East Beach during the holiday weekend were reliably traced to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the U.S. Coast Guard and state officials said Monday.

[...]

Officials are looking into the possibility the oil that washed ashore came from the side of a ship or from the bilge of a vessel that had [passed] through the spill.

[...]

The consistency or “weathering” of the tar balls is inconsistent with what they would look like if they had drifted directly from the site of the spill 400 miles away, Woodring said.

[...]

Ships that have been navigating through the oily water in the Gulf are required to go to a decontamination station near Louisiana.

There have been a couple of ships, however, that came into port without the Coast Guard’s knowledge.

  Galveston County Daily News

I don't know. A ship is a pretty big thing. Not much place to hide out there on the water coming into port. After reading how the Coast Guard is bowing to BP in the area of the Horizon well disaster, it wouldn't take much for me to believe that the Coast Guard was fully aware of those ships and the skirting of the decontamination process.

Not to mention, the government has colluded with BP for months to downplay and deny the true extent of the disaster, and to keep independent investigators and reporters from learning the truth.

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

[...]

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

[...]

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s.

[...]

Despite the likelihood of leaks large and small, though, abandoned wells are typically not inspected by industry or government.

  Raw Story

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Thinking Outside of the Box

Meet Alvin Greene, South Carolina Democratic primary "winner".

" I mean there's something that, you know, I knew so I just knew that. It was in my mind, I knew that, that, that, that the voters really, they really, that they really, erm, followed the candidate. That they really wanted substance in a candidate . . . "

[...]

"Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That's something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It's not something a typical person would bring up. That's something that could happen, that makes sense. It's not a joke."

[...]

Pundits have scrambled to explain how he pulled off his win. The voting machines must have been faulty; his name came before Rawl's on the ballot; the spelling of Greene is a black spelling that drew African-American voters; voters confused him with the singer Al Green.

  Guardian UK

Any one of those possibilities offers no better assessment of South Carolina's voters than the possibility that he actually is the winner of the state's primary, on the up-and-up.

Greene is the first black person to be taken on as a candidate for a US Senate seat in South Carolina since the days of reconstruction immediately after the civil war almost one and a half centuries ago.

D'oh

The aim is to win over the population by limiting Afghan casualties while securing new areas, eventually turning control over to local army and police and allowing foreign troops to withdraw.

[...]

NATO mistakenly killed five of its Afghan army allies in an airstrike Wednesday while they were attacking insurgents in the country's east, officials said.

  Yahoo

That can't help.

"This is not the first time such an incident has happened, but we wish that at least this would be the last one," [Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir] Azimi said.

Pipes and dreams, pal. Pipes and dreams. You know what they say about wishing: "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." Or as I heard an old ex-con say: "Wish in one hand and shit in the other; see which fills up first."

Another NATO airstrike on Tuesday in Paktika province killed several suspected insurgents [when] coalition aircraft fired a precision-guided munition to repel militants [...] near an unmarked mosque in Yahya Khel district. Windows of the mosque were broken in the fighting.

That can't help, either.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Israel's Control

Israel on Monday dropped its long-standing restrictions on allowing consumer goods into the Gaza Strip but retained limits on desperately needed construction materials, redefining the rules of its heavily criticized Gaza embargo on the eve of the Israeli prime minister's trip to the White House.

  Yahoo

Because the White House might house somebody who would ask Israel to change its ways? As if. And when the prime minister returns to Israel, will the restrictions resume?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Bored on the Fourth of July?

Watch yourself some Tosh.

Start here with Part 1.

And when you're finished:

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

It's Sunday

I'm saddened by the news that the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School couldn't get a masters of science degree program approved in Jesus' Texas. According to the scentistofascists who approve such things, approval was denied because "much of the course content was outside the realm of science and lacked potential to help students understand the nature of science and the history and nature of the natural world."

  Jesus' General

Saddened? I'm surprised.

Oil Wars

A fuel tanker flipped over and exploded into flames in eastern Congo overnight, killing at least 220 villagers and wounding more than 100 who had rushed in to siphon leaking liquid from the vehicle illegally, the U.N. and local officials said Saturday.

The truck was transporting fuel from neighboring Tanzania when it overturned at high speed late Friday.

[...]

Desperately poor people across Africa often descend quickly around damaged or disabled oil trucks leaking fuel on roads and highways, carting it away with plastic jugs, unaware of the danger of doing so.

The worst tragedies have occurred in the West African nation of Nigeria, where thousands have died as crowds siphoned fuel illegally from ruptured or pierced oil pipelines that subsequently exploded.

  Yahoo

Meanwhile…

President Barack Obama announced Saturday the awarding of nearly $2 billion for new solar plants that he said will create thousands of jobs and increase the country's use of renewable energy sources.

[...]

Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss said in the Republican's weekly address that the country's $13 trillion debt is a national security issue that will leave the U.S. vulnerable and force future generations to "pay higher taxes to foot the bill for Democrats' out-of-control spending."

  Yahoo

Never mind future generations, we're all paying right now for Republican out-of-control spending during the Dubya Debacle. While the estimated actual unemployment rate in this country is at least 16%. (The NY Post says 22.)

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Only Gets Worse

Picture from Juan Cole at the following post:

VOA reports that the oil skimming ships are gone. The booms protecting islands and marshes have been torn from their anchors. Sand bags have been overwhelmed. The headline is that Hurricane Alex is delaying the clean-up. But what is really going on is that Hurricane Alex is making a real clean-up unlikely.

  Juan Cole

Well, hand in hand with BP's method of cleaning up: dump sand on top of the oil.

I heard on the radio that somebody is giving the oil an 80% chance of reaching the Florida keys and Miami. No doubt it will. This is an incredible disaster, and the news about it is almost like a black-out. BP rules the waves, both kinds. Unbelievable. Our government is absent while the Gulf strangles.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

The Worst of the Worst

UPDATE: The ranking sheet is here: http://www.siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/parents_and_community/community_page/sri/independent_research/Presidents%202010%20Rank%20by%20Category.pdf

W's highest score was in the category "luck".

President Bush ranked worst among modern presidents -- and the fifth worst in history, according to the poll [of the nation's 238 leading presidential scholars] by the Siena Research Institute.

[...]

Bush was rated second from the bottom on “intelligence,” “foreign policy accomplishments,” and “handling of U.S. economy.”

  Raw Story

I wonder how many times he's cut brush since he left office. And what's become of his pickup now that he lives in Dallas.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

In Response to Tony Hayward