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Saturday, June 12, 2010

BP Is Too Busy In Iraq to Help Gulf

There are many stories, theories, and postulates about why Bush II invaded Iraq.

One theory is that it was done for oil, seeing as how Iraq has the second or third largest reservoirs of oil on the planet.

The official story was that everyone in the whole wide world just knew that Iraq had so many WMD that it was a clear and present danger to the United States.

The fact that not everyone believed that, the fact that no WMD were found there, has faded into the memory hole of time.

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster has taken everyone's eye off Iraq, which makes BP happy in one sense.

Now that the BP oil barons have been given the green light to handle "Iraq's oil", they are too busy there to help much in the Gulf of Mexico:
Rumaila, the workhorse of Iraq's oil industry and its biggest oilfield, is buzzing with activity as executives, engineers and drillers begin a massive overhaul to nearly triple its million-barrels-per-day output.

At the airport in Basra, capital of southern Iraq, staff struggled to process the unprecedented numbers of people arriving to join the country's nascent oil boom.

Iraq may be struggling to form a new government almost three months after elections, but oil firms chosen to carry out the biggest oilfield development projects on the planet were ploughing ahead with investments that could take the country into the elite of global oil producers.

And, though the old administration failed to pass a new law to govern an energy sector considered vital to rebuilding the country after years of war and sanctions, Iraq's oil industry is booming.

"The companies are not going to sit back and just wait," said Raad Alkadiri of Washington's PFC Energy.

"Iraq's government has itself encouraged this by saying ‘Keep going and the politics will sort itself out'."

The Rumaila project is the most advanced and was the first Baghdad signed, with BP and China's CNPC taking it on.
(Gulf Oil News, emphasis added). The reality that Iraq has dysfunctional government, but it has a booming oil industry, indicates the actual priority does in not?

Bush II said we went in there to get rid of WMD and to replace the Al Qaeda supporting Iraqi government with a democracy.

Meanwhile, no "respectable" establishment journalist, pundit, or politician would admit that all this raises suspicions that the Iraq war had nothing to do with making a "good Iraqi government", or that it had anything to do with oil addiction.

That is because they are clearly in denial.

The narrative is that BP gets the Iraqi oil after the U.S. with bushies in the lead spends trillions killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Then BP leaves the U.S. with a disaster in the gulf that keeps on killing life "in that other gulf", while they feign caring what happens to the economies of several gulf states, and millions of gulf residents.

What is this BP (British politics) thing of gulfs, wars, killing, maiming, and polluting?

These are the elite of the world?

Why is BP forced upon us "to help our states in the gulf", from BP's own disaster, and why are they forced upon us by our own federal government?

I think we now know why BP is a prima donna don't we?

Friday, June 11, 2010

From Deepwater I To Deepwater II

The K-T extinction event ("Deepwater I") caused as much controversy as the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe ("Deepwater II") currently ongoing.

The Deepwater II controversy (what caused the oil rig to explode and sink) concerns high pressure in the oil / gas reservoir deep under the sea floor, and the equipment being used to handle those pressures.

These two events are separated by about 65 million years of time, but the Deepwater II disaster is close to the location of the Deepwater I disaster that happened 65 million years ago.

Very recently most of the controversy concerning Deepwater I ended when scientists got together and determined:
A panel of 41 international experts, including UK researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge, University College London and the Open University, reviewed 20 years' worth of research to determine the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which happened around 65 million years ago. The extinction wiped out more than half of all species on the planet, including the dinosaurs, bird-like pterosaurs and large marine reptiles, clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth.

The new review of the evidence shows that the extinction was caused by a massive asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub (pronounced chick-shoo-loob) in Mexico. The asteroid, which was around 15 kilometres wide, is believed to have hit Earth with a force one billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. It would have blasted material at high velocity into the atmosphere, triggering a chain of events that caused a global winter, wiping out much of life on Earth in a matter of days.
(Asteroid Killed Off the Dinosaurs, emphasis added). The K-T extinction was obviously a very big deal, but lets focus on what the asteroid did, besides creating a huge crater named Chicxulub:
The Chicxulub crater ... is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named. The crater is more than 180 km (110 mi) in diameter, making the feature one of the largest confirmed impact structures on Earth; the impacting bolide that formed the crater was at least 10 km (6 mi) in diameter.

The crater was discovered by Glen Penfield, a geophysicist who had been working in the Yucatán while looking for oil during the late 1970s. Penfield was initially unable to obtain evidence that the unique geological feature was in fact a crater, and gave up his search. Through contact with Alan Hildebrand, Penfield was able to obtain samples that suggested it was an impact feature. Evidence for the impact origin of the crater includes shocked quartz, a gravity anomaly, and tektites in surrounding areas.
(Wikipedia - Chicxulub, emphasis added). Shocked quartz is another way of saying that this event crushed the rock layers under the Gulf of Mexico, sent rock from below the sea floor all around the world, and had an impact on the crust of the earth underneath the sea floor for hundreds of miles beyond the 110 mile wide crater itself.

Did it have an impact all the way to the sea floor under the oil drilling rigs BP is using today, which led to the death and destruction of Deepwater II?

Is there a relationship, any linkage, any nexus between Deepwater I and Deepwater II besides the closeness geographically?

The hypothesis Dredd Blog is proposing begins with the fact that the crushing shock waves from the hyper earthquakes and impact of Chicxulub disrupted the oil / gas reservoirs then existing at the time of Deepwater I, and all the crust under the sea floor, by sending shock waves strong enough to make "shocked quartz" and cracks everywhere in the Gulf of Mexico.

We pointed out in another post that oil technicians and analysts are telling us what the MSM and BP will not tell us, which is that the oil reservoirs under the gulf are not performing as predicted originally or as other fields elsewhere have.


First lets remember that BP Atlantis is a problem, BP Deepwater Horizon is a problem, BP Thunder Horse is a problem, and a couple of other rigs are also having problems including mysterious oil leaks.


Next lets ask "What is common to all of these rigs?", then lets contemplate the obvious answer that they are all within the shock zone of Deepwater I, which left a crater 110 miles wide under the Gulf Of Mexico, sent shocked quartz around the world, caused a 1,000 foot Tsunami that overflowed Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, and fractured the rock around and through the oil / gas reservoirs that these oil rigs are now drilling into.

The performance of some of these reservoirs is quite telling:
Thunder Horse field created huge excitement when it was discovered in 1999 in Mississippi Canyon blocks 788 and 822. Partners BP and Exxon announced that the field had a billion barrels of reserves. After nearly two years of production history on the field, it is becoming obvious to most outside observers that Thunder Horse field is not performing as it was expected to perform, if one is to believe the press accounts and specifications of the production facilities. If the field is underperforming, as the data available from the Minerals Management Service seems to indicate, this should be of concern and interest to those in the Peak Oil community, and to the world.
(The Oil Drum, emphasis added). Now, lets add a modern factor, that pressures on the crust are being torqued by the effects of global warming, first hypothesized on Dredd Blog in the post Is A New Age of Pressure Upon Us?.

The BP (big politicians) are running around describing the problem as one of BP (big pollution) falsifying forms and cutting corners, perhaps knowing there was danger afoot.

I am not yet convinced that elite oil barons would come on board Deepwater Horizon to drink champagne and celebrate the new well that would save them economically, because the other BP wells in the Gulf were underperforming and apt to loose BP (big profits); nor that while they were there drinking champagne and celebrating onboard they had any idea the rig was going to blow itself and their profits into smithereens.


Lastly, lets consider that the Ixtoc oil spill of 1979, in the same destabilized region, but closer to Chicxulub crater, was caused when unexpectedly soft strata layers were encountered wreaking havoc to the project and ending in a Deepwater II type of disaster.


We "have all been here before" as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young once sang; this is about the Earth's underground movement, which the BP (brain police) cannot put in prison:
And you know it does make me wonder
What's going on under the ground

Do you know?
Don't you wonder?
What's going on
Down under you
(Crosby Lyrics). Things really are changing, and things are not so free from mystery that snobby oil barons and their enabling politicians can take care of all that by filling out the forms properly before they put them in a bureaucrat's file to then turn brown over time.

UPDATE: Read a new post which shows that government scientist reports show that the instability of the seabed was known as early as a decade ago.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Testimony Of The Earth Under Oath

The famous J.R.R. Tolkien was an extremely brilliant writer and educator.

He intended his work The Lord of The Rings as well as The Hobbit to be fiction, but like other authors, what is written as fiction can sometimes enlighten in more ways than one.

A post on the Ecocosmology Blog mentions some of Tolkien's characters in his books, and goes on to point out that like one of his mythical creatures, the Ents, scientists have now discovered that vegetation around the Earth is also on the move because of climate change.

The entire Earth is changing so Dredd Blog has been asking if pressures on the crust are also changing, as other blogs point out that change is not an option.

Evidently the only ones that will never change are rocks and Senator Inhofe.

The Earth is testifying that global climate change is as real and as serious as a heart attack.

In 1973 during the Nixon escapade trying to pass as a presidency, the Gulf Oil Embargo took place and the U.S. realized it was vulnerable to Oilah Akbar, but did nothing about it, proving we are not as smart as 5th graders.

But are we as smart as the ecosystem that is warning us?

UPDATE: There is a link above, in this thread, to Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us - 2?

Blogger Randy commented in the comments section of that thread about a site where experts talk about mysterious events in other BP oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

I visited that site. Some experts who work in oil drilling / oil production point out that the Gulf of Mexico, underneath in the oil / gas reservoirs, is behaving very mysteriously, in an interesting article: BP's Thunder Horse to Under-Perform in the Wake of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout?.

There were many interesting comments, one of them by "Seismobob" who wrote the article, and who commented:
Gail iS right I am at work but on my ranch, which I bought because peak oil was coming. I wrote some web pages back in the late 90's and published in a magazine in 2000. Thus I have worried about this since then. I am turning my ranch into a food factory - fish on the lakes a big garden and right now a 60 tree fruit orchard - soon to get bigger These notes are sent from my iPhone
(Oil expert Seismobob's Comment, emphasis added). There is some comment in the comment section of that thread about how the MSM (main stream media) will not publish the story because it would cause panic.

"Stay thirsty my friends".

The Obama Doctrine - 2

The first of this series The Obama Doctrine, was posted on 6/6/10.

It takes a close reading of Dredd Blog to realize we do not criticize the Obama Administration for its handling of the Gulf Oil Spill (the BP disaster, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe).

Dredd Blog specifically said that once such disasters happen, those with the ungodly task of "cleaning up" will always be doing all they can do.

The point which we go on to make is that all they can do is very close to nothing, and in fact Dredd Blog pointed out quite clearly:
"BP isn't doing all that can be done, neither is the federal government" is the new [Redneck] mantra replacing "drill baby drill".

Yes they [BP & Feds] are doing everything they can do, it is just that a perfect response to this type of disaster can only mitigate 2% of the ecological damage at best.
(You Rejected Your Only Savior For Oilah). Dredd Blog's entire criticism is for Obama's statements in public, as well as his policy statements backing those statements up, that are contemptuous of environmental science in particular, and disrespectful of environmentalists in general.

His ignorance of Oilah Akbar technology was his justification for his policy and his beyond dumb statements about how good Oilah Akbar technology is.

All his "W" policies are equally dumb.

Those neoCon doctrines that have ruined our economy, our reputation, and our environment are not followed and embraced by enlightened people.

Obama has made his administration dangerous to peace and to long life for civilization.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Open Thread

Election cacophony ...

Oil spill cacophony ...

Indicative of an infestation of dementia?

There is a curious link between Exxon Valdez in 1989 and bank failures 2008 (blogged about here).

BP (big politicians and big polluters) said originally that there were 5,000 bbls of oil leaking at toxic ground zero; recently they said they were capturing 15,000 bbls a day from that same leak; now government hired scientists are saying 100,000 bbls a day are probably leaking.

Somebody go figure (without using voodoo math) ...

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us? - 2

In the first post of this series "Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us?" we breached (a.k.a. broached) the subject of triggers of changing pressures in the earth's crust.

Specifically, we hypothesized that changing pressures in oil and gas reservoirs under the ocean surface could be caused (a.k.a triggered) by the effects of global warming.

The hypothesis is based on both well known science and less well known science.

The gist of this hypothesis is that all offshore drilling engineering is based upon a reality that is passing away because a new reality is approaching.

The formulas show how we can at once see a change coming as ocean levels change, as ice sheet thickness changes, and as the resultant torque (easing pressure on crust as ice melts; increasing pressure on seabed as ocean rises) works upon the thin crust of the earth.

The first effect of this new reality of pressures caused by melting ice sheets and ice caps and the resultant rise of ocean levels is already here, although in a degree we are not yet certain of.

It is obvious that p=pgh is at once impacted when "h" (e.g. ocean level) or p change, (since g is effectively constant).

The complication no engineers have calculated is the combined effect of both the torque and the pressures when both are concurrently changing.

In support of the hypothesis, a cool blog called Sky Truth has discovered what looks like two more leaking oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, not too far from the ill fated Deepwater Horizon graveyard of 11 souls human, a multitude of souls Earth flora, a multitude of souls Earth fauna, and a multitude of souls Earth marine.

Two posts at Sky Truth indicate suspicious oil at location one, and ditto at location two.

A new post shows that scientists knew of the unstable seabed as early as a decade ago. Also read this.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Health Care Reform Helps Everybody

Many Americans assume the new health care reform act will benefit mostly the poor and uninsured and hurt everyone else, according to polls. As Matt Yglesias wrote, “Basically, people see this as a bill that will take resources from people who have health insurance and give it to people who don’t have health insurance.” Those who still oppose the reform say that people ought to pay for their own health care.

We all believe in the virtues of hard work and self-reliance, but these days it’s a fantasy to think that anyone but the mega-wealthy will not, sooner or later, depend on help from others to pay medical bills. And that’s true no matter how hard you work, how much you love America, or how diligently you take care of yourself. The cost of medical care has so skyrocketed that breaking an arm or leg could cost as much as a new car. And if you get cancer or heart disease — which can happen even to people who live healthy lifestyles — forget about it. The disease will not only clean you out; it will leave a whopping debt for your survivors to pay.

And the truth is, we all pay for other peoples’ health care whether we know it or not. When people can’t pay their medical bills, the cost of their health care gets added to everyone else’s bills and insurance premiums. When poor people use emergency rooms as a doctor of last resort, their care is not “free.” You pay for it.

Another common fantasy about medical care is that the “free market” provides incentives for medical companies to develop innovative new drugs and treatments for disease without government subsidy. It’s true that private enterprise is very good at developing profitable health care products. But not all medical care can be made profitable.

For years, the U.S. government has been funding medical research that the big private companies don’t want to do because there is too much cost for the potential profit. This is especially true for diseases that are rare and expensive to treat. An example of a recent advance made possible by government grants include new guidelines for malignant pleural mesothelioma treatment developed by MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers. Another is a blood screening test for mesothelioma developed by thoracic surgeon Dr. David Sugarbaker. The health reform act provides for more dollars for such research, from which even many of the tea party protesters will benefit.

The biggest fantasy of all was that people who had insurance didn’t have to worry about health care costs. But the fact is that in recent years millions of Americans have been bankrupted by medical costs, and three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance. And yes, insurance companies even dumped hard-working, law-abiding patriots. But the health care reform act will put an end to that, and now America’s hard-working, law-abiding patriots are more financially secure, whether they like it or not.

Guest Post by Barbara O'Brien

Obama Doubles Down On Propaganda

This was originally posted 6/7/10.

Yesterday ("Today" in the original post) Obama met with his closet (a.k.a. cabinet).

When he came out after the meeting he slipped into bloviation.

He actually indicated that the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe would soon pass into history, even going on to say "we will make the gulf coast better than it ever was" (paraphrased).

Cheers must have emanated from every BP (big pollution) outpost on Earth.

Now, no place on Earth can "be all you can be" unless MomCom places her "holy oil" on it, then a joint force of BP and the federal government come in and make or leave it better than it ever was.

Expletives deleted.

This guy now suffers from what we all suffer from, the dementia of exceptionalism, refined to a whimper.

UPDATE (6/8/10): One of the transcripts puts it this way:
"And one of the things that I want to make sure we understand is that not only are we going to control the damages to the Gulf Coast, but we want to actually use this as an opportunity to reexamine and work with states and local communities to restore the coast in ways that actually enhance the livelihoods and the quality of life for people in that area."
(WH Partial Transcript, emphasis added). The meaning of this rhetoric was stated in the post originally (yesterday).

This rhetoric indicates two things: the oil spill will be contained, and everything is going to be made better ("enhanced") in the wake of this catastrophe.

The fact is that the oil will not be contained and things will get worse even after they say the reaction to the catastrophe is complete ("cleaned up").

The reality, all bloviating, blind faith, and exceptionalism aside, is that the Gulf of Mexico is orders of magnitudes worse off than it ever has been, and it will not recover fully ever.

Neither will the social make up recover. It hasn't even recovered from Katrina yet, many bodies are still missing, homes are still destroyed, lawsuits against insurance companies and oil companies continue still, and will do so for even more years.

The coast region and the underwater world of hurt they want to hide from us will become different, but never whole, never enhanced, never better than it was, and never cleaned up.

Until the warlords of the Earth, including Obama, learn that fundamental lesson of history, civilization will continue to move onward toward demise.

The plume truth is that the underwater plume oil will fuse with the garbage gyres to paint them with toxins that will be ingested to the demise of that ecosystem.

Monday, June 7, 2010

The Supremes Are Well Oiled - 2

Dredd Blog has done a series of posts concerning the growing neoCon composition of the federal judiciary.

For example, The Supremes Are Well Oiled, A Case of Big Oil vs. Climate Change - 2, Sanity Can't Win For Losing, Foreign Citizens v FEC, and Here Come De Conservative Judges, to name a few.

These cases show how far right the federal courts are, but what really shows it is the number of Oilah Akbar judges in the states now becoming toxic from the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe.

People who have been damaged but not repaid will need to sue BP in the courts, but it seems that the deck is stacked against the people:
More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows.

Thirty-seven of the 64 active or senior judges in key Gulf Coast districts in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have links to oil, gas and related energy industries, including some who own stocks or bonds in BP PLC, Halliburton or Transocean - and others who regularly list receiving royalties from oil and gas production wells, according to the reports judges must file each year. The AP reviewed 2008 disclosure forms, the most recent available.
(NY Daily, see also here and here). The problem this presents is obvious, but not as obvious is that this can corrupt the system of justice.

The Fifth Circuit recently did not have a quorum, so they let a district court judge decision in favor of the oil companies stand, even though three appellate judges had reversed the district court decision and instead had ruled in favor of those suing the oil companies.

Lets hope the cases are consolidated and put before a judge outside of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida who has no ties to big oil.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

The Obama Doctrine

Many libertarians and liberals fell out of their chairs laughing when Sarah Palin had no clue what "The Bush Doctrine" was when asked about that on national TV.

Many people laughing then do not know what The Obama Doctrine is now.

The Obama doctrine is wholesale, full on, and no holds barred unleashing of MOMCOM lust upon the environment.

This doctrine which will lead to wholesale, full on, and no holds barred destruction of the environment.

What is telling is that this is not what he wanted, not what democrats wanted, and not what the American people want, thus, we can conclude that our government is impotent, ineffective, and when they do something it is for MOMCOM's benefit instead of for the people's benefit.

Two things he has done already, through his proxy Secretary Salazar, are Opening The Great Tongas For Logging and then deliberately Opening The Great Oceans To Drill Baby Drill.

The economic portion of The Obama Doctrine is larger deficits, to the point that debt will take over GDP in the year of his re-election, 2012, as we pointed out recently in Gates Big Bucks The System.

His policies so far are to continue those things the neoCons were doing under Bush II that led to the destruction of the economy and the environment.

It is as if he thinks as long as democrats are doing the wrong thing it will come out ok anyway.

How democratic is The Obama Doctrine?

From State Secrets To State Propaganda

We are not getting the plume truth from this administration or from the oil barons.

Surprised?

Readers of Dredd Blog know we foresaw the likelihood of the disaster three weeks before it happened.

Dredd Blog also foresaw the clean up propaganda, as well as the plume, size, and other propaganda escapades, that were to come from a government partnering with BP to try to deceive the public about the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

The plume truth has now come home to haunt and expose government secrecy and propaganda, showing that it has metastasised from valid government secrets out into the open public debate as a form of state propaganda designed to deceive the public:
It was in mid-May that independent scientists — not any of the officials or researchers working for any of the government agencies on scene at the Deepwater Horizon disaster, let alone BP — first detected the vast underwater plumes of crude oil spreading like Medusa's locks from the out-of-control gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. BP immediately dismissed the reports, and in late May CEO Tony Hayward flatly declared "there aren't any plumes," stopping just short of accusing the scientists of misconduct. Federal officials called the scientists' claim "misleading, premature and, in some cases, inaccurate." Moreover, continued a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, any oxygen depletion in the surrounding waters due to plumes is not "a source of concern at this time," and critics blaming dispersants for the plumes had "no information" to stand on. NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, a respected oceanographer when President Obama tapped her to lead the agency, insists there are no plumes, only "anomalies"—though last week she acknowledged the possibility of oil beneath the surface.

Now it is increasingly clear that the initial reports of undersea oil were right, that life-giving oxygen in the water column is indeed being depleted, and that unless the laws of chemistry have been repealed, dispersants are likely worsening the tentacles of undersea crude.
(Newsweek, emphasis added). It is a terribly horrid state of affairs at best, flagrantly criminal at worst, when the government partners with the oil barons to deceive the public.

The conflict of interest is at once obvious when we remember that shortly before the cataclysm Obama made public statements in favor of offshore drilling, and at the same time he instigated policies in that direction.

He even made disparaging remarks about "tired old arguments" of environmentalists who were concerned about the national ecosystems that were endangered by offshore drilling.

Now the plume truth coming out even indicates that the plume truth was to be expected.

Scientists are pointing out that the deadly toxic islands under the ocean surface are not an anomaly after all:
"The dispersants are changing the chemistry and physics of the oil," says biological oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "They are creating microlayers of oil that are being carried by the deep currents." Even without dispersants, the crude gets broken into zillions of droplets suspended in the water column and corralled there, prevented from rising to the surface. The result is the undersea plumes that oceanographer Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia and colleagues first detected from the research vessel Pelican three weeks after the blowout. Despite years of research showing that undersea oil might form such plumes, BP's Hayward insists it cannot. "Oil floats!" he repeatedly says.
(Newsweek). The selfish conflict of interest cannot be denied, so the new oil spill commission must be independent and must have access to all data available to find out what BP knew and when they knew it; and certainly the same goes for the administration.

In closing, it appears once again that the "W" compass is a toxic oily albatross around the neck of the Obama Administration.

The Plame Truth was covered up by the "W" bushies, and now The Plume Truth is covered up by the lingering "W" personality of the Obama Administration.

The Newsweek article, linked to above, contains a blockbuster of a false statement:
There have been no suggestions that BP intended to keep the worst of the spill out of sight.
(Newsweek). Dredd Blog has not only suggested it, we have come out and stated it in no uncertain terms.

In two posts, Most Deceitful Month On Record?, and The Most Poisonous Months On Record?, we say exactly that in no uncertain terms!

Open Thread


According to BBC News, BP says it is capturing 10,000 barrels a day, or about half or better, leaving 7,000 to 10,000 a day to leak into the gulf.

Quite a trick when 5,000 was originally estimated as the leak size.

Half fixed is not fixed ...

Yesterday Dredd Blog pointed out that this administration still has not learned the lesson that Prevention beats all cures hands down.

Oilah Akbar has been to Nigeria and to the Amazon, causing destruction there too:
“As horrible as the gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse,” said Jonathan Abady, a New York lawyer who is part of the legal team that is suing Chevron on behalf of the rainforest inhabitants. (NY Times)

The oil baron CEO mentality must see themselves as better than other people who have to live with the destructive, toxic mess they impose around the world.

Let's hope BP does not get control of space now:
"A multimillionaire's test rocket blasted off on its maiden voyage Friday and successfully reached orbit in a dry run for NASA's push to go commercial." (HuffPo)

Robert Reich says double dip recession ahead:
"The Labor Department reports this morning that the private sector added a measly 41,000 net new jobs in May. But at least 100,000 new jobs are needed every month just to keep up with population growth.

In other words, the labor market continues to deteriorate.

The average length of unemployment continues to rise -- now up to 34.4 weeks (up from 33 weeks in April). That's another record.
"
(Why Double Dip Recession)