Interesting Article, needs a better title...

Sorry for all the cracked.com article lately.  The real world is just so frustrating & depression that, yes, I've spent most of my time reading a comedy site that specializes in dick jokes.  BUT... They do do a good job writing pieces that are political in nature, although they (1) hardly ever realize it, and (2) IMHO, try VERY hard not to be liberal.  (Which makes them almost as bad as the MSM, but Cracked at least does some actual... what's the word?  Oh yeah: RESEARCH!)

Anyway, here's a really good piece on environmentalism, or rather, it sounds that way from the title: The 5 Biggest Backfires in the History of Disaster Relief.  BUT, if they had any real balls, and weren't so afraid of being accused of being liberal (or just embracing the liberalism that lies right beneath the surface of 99% of what they do, even though they can't bring themselves to just come out and admit it) they might called it: Four Ways Conservatives and Industry Fucked Up the Environment Even Worse, and what Happens when one Liberal Starts Acting Like a Conservative.

Or maybe: What Happens when Conservatives do a Half-Assed Job of Being Liberal and when a Liberal Out-Conservatives the Conservatives.

Read it with one of THOSE (far more accurate) titles in mind, and enjoy.  The moral: Industrialism, Unilateralism and Conservatism SUCKS, and people really need to start LISTENING to environmentalists.

This was very distrubing....

Driving into work this morning, I head this story on NPR.  I found it very disturbing; a sign of just how far this country has devolved.  I'm not sure if I should hope Mister Obama is aware of what's going on or not.  It's a sad state of affairs to be sure.


First of all... Why the fuck are BP employees calling the shots here?! Why are they standing side by side with our coast guard and police force? Are you fucking kidding me?! This is NOT what's meant by "civilian control of the military!" This has been going for some time now, and it grows ever more disturbing as time goes on. Welcome to 1984, folks. If you ever wanted to see the freedom of the press utterly destroyed, well HERE YOU GO. It’s just like George Carlin once predicted: When fascism finally comes to this country, it won’t be wearing jack-boots, it will be wearing Nike’s.

A few points, that highlight the absolute absurdity of this, from the transcript:

"You are not allowed, as a police officer, to rummage through the notebooks and photographs — not published — of newspapers," Engelberg said. "That's not how we do it in this country."

Well said, Mister Engelberg. Have you contacted the ACLU yet?

"We have more than 40,000 people working on this response," [BP spokesman Scott Dean] said. "We're working around the clock to make this situation right. And we very much want that story to be told."

Yeah – they sure do: THEIR VERSION of the story. How else does he explain away the fact that the press has been HINDERED by HIS OWN company from telling the story?! This man is not only a whore, he’s a cheap whore, and doesn’t even try to hide the fact.

The flap in Texas City over the police stop of the Pro Publica photographer involves practices initiated in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. FBI Special Agent Shauna Dunlap, of the agency's Houston field office, said that such stops have become common around sensitive sites like refineries and nuclear power plants.

"People don't think about it, but there are people out there who want to do us harm, and it's our obligation to protect our territory and these critical infrastructures that are targets," Dunlap said

Riiight… I’m sure an already demolished oil well, 5000 feet below sea level, is a really high level target on Al-Quaeda’s hit list.

...adding that the oil company had also been threatened by what she said were environmental terrorists.

"There is a heightened security around those facilities, especially with BP," Dunlap said.

Oh, I get it. It’s environmental terrorism, they're worried about. Because, yeah, again, they’d accomplish SO MUCH by screwing up the cleanup effort, after the rig had burned down, sunk, and spilled X-Million barrels of oil into the gulf. Yeah, that’s when they "eco-terrorists" would SPRING INTO ACTION.

Is our FBI really this stupid, or are they just blatantly insulting our intelligence? If "eco-terrorism" was involved AT ALL, it would have been at the BEGINNING, when the rig was still WORKING. Now, it was already shown that the initial fire was entirely the result of BP’s own negligence.  That’s been clearly established.  And that’s was the only possible oppotunity for “eco-terrorism.” Destroy the RIG. (Something that is completely without precedent, I might add!)  Not showing up three months later and sabotaging the CLEANUP. That doesn’t make any damned sense at all!

This situation is now nothing more than corporatism using out irrational fear of terrorism to PREVENT the real story from being told here. (Behold your LIBERAL MEDIA!) And the only really terrifying thing going on here, is just how much this FOREIGN (not even US-based!) corporate entity can manipulate our gov’t into doing its bidding, even getting them to violate the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

No only should BP’s heads roll over this (and as far as I’m concerned, that BP Corporate Whore Scott Dean should be boiled in crude-oil as an example to other professioanl liars) but there needs to be some serious investigations into the gov’t actions here; Not in dealing with the spill itself, as the right have hypocritically called for, I’ll stand by my earlier judgment that President Obama is doing exactly what he should be in terms of the cleanup, (althought how would I know otherwise, seeing as how the press has been largely shut out?!) but of the way the Coast Guard, FBI and Police have denied press access, intimidated the press, rifled though their private property without warrant or propbable cause and have conspired with BP to keep the Public minimally informed at best, and misinformed at worst. Heads should roll over that.

Hey right-wingers? THIS is what “big government” or "big borther" REALLY looks like: Corporate interests being protected over public ones. 

Yet another Oil Spill...

I heard about yet another oil-spill related, ongoing travesty on NPR this morning. This one is in Peru, in the Amazon Rain Forrest, and has been going on for the past 30 years. Here is a transcript of the program. As with the 50 year travesty going on in the Niger Delta, I urge every one to read this story as well.

I’ll say it again: THIS INSANITY NEEDS TO END.

My favorite part of the whole debacle might be the response of Peru’s President, Alan Garcia:

When indigenous communities began to take a stand against big companies operating in their territory, President Alan Garcia wrote an editorial criticizing their position. He used the fable "The Dog and the Manger" to make his point.

In the story, a dog falls asleep in a manger and wakes up to bark at the cows who want to eat the hay — even though the dog himself can't eat the stuff. The moral of the story is: Don't begrudge others something you can't enjoy yourself. In the editorial, the hay was Peru's natural riches, and the president compared the spiteful dog to Peru's indigenous people.

Apparently the conservatives in Peru are no less whores to industry than the conservatives here are. The flaw in this idiot’s analogy would be that the problem is not that the "cows" want to "eat the hay"... It's that they want to shit in the manger!

Now THERE’S an analogy you won’t see on the mainstream media!

NYT Article on the Oil Spill... and NOT the one in the Gulf!

Some great comments from y'all in the oil spill piece.  I want to thank everyone for taking the time to read and comment on it. 

The NYT ran a piece about the oil contamination that's been going on in the Niger Delta for about tha last 50 years now.  Unbelieveable. I urge everyone to read that.  And remeber the term, "externalization of cost" the next time someone tells you how "cheap" oil is as an energy sorce: It's cheap because these companies never have to pay to clean up after themselves afterwards.

This insanity needs to end.  Electric Cars, Solar, wind... I favor Nuclear myself, in the near-term anyway.  But the "burning shit" model (oil, coal) of generating power needs to end.

More on (Moron) the Oil Spill...

Eric Bohlert of MMFA had a great piece today, comparing today's coverage of Obama in the Gulf spill, to the coverage of President Bush ('41) following the Exxon Valdez spill.  I'd like to vent a little more about that.

I’m getting a little bit tired of the criticism being leveled at Obama over this spill. Not because I think he’s been perfect, or because I think he above criticism, but because the criticism has largely been completely lacking in any substance at all. More and more, for both sides, I’m hearing pundits whine about the tone he’s taking, the priority he’s giving it, whether or not he should have called for prayer… basically BULLSHIT. Not one person, that I’ve heard, has come out and said, “He should have done [this]” or “He should be DOING [this].” Well, there’s one: Gov. Bobby Jindal and his damned sand burms. But in that case the Army Corps of Engineers deemed the plan to be an ineffective waste of a scarce resource they’d need to deal with the disaster later on. Now… I had no idea that SAND was so fucking precious, but I’m not about to argue with the Army Corps of Engineers, and Governor Jindal is certainly in no position to. (The day I start asking lawmakers for engineering judgments, I’ll start asking engineers for legal advice!)


And don’t get me wrong: Chris Mathews and Keith Olbermann and both entitled to their opinions and are paid to give them. If nothing else, their comments show that MSNBC is hardly just the liberal version of Fox. Remember: They were willing to criticize the President here, just as they were willing to criticize the Democrats during the health care debate. Despite their unwillingness to adopt the Right’s love of the far Right and blind hatred of Obama and the Democrats, they’ve shown themselves to be more objective politically than Fox has ever done.

But I’m still sick of this “His TONE wasn’t stern enough.” WTF?! Is there some tone of voice he can use to plug the hole? Do really think that him ranting and raving (and threatening?!) like a lunatic would somehow “motivate” BP to get its act together? That’s nonsense! BP is TRYING. It’s not that I like BP, right now I hate them, but there’s no doubt in my mind that THEY’RE DOING ALL THEY CAN at this point! Yes: Obviously they could have done more last month, last year, 5 years ago and 10 years ago. But they’re not sitting on some magic cure all at the moment! They simply do not have the technology to deal with this, because it DOESN’T EXSIST. They’re already running around, Apollo-13 style, trying to make the cap for [this] fit onto the pipe for [that] using [this stuff.] They’re not going to make up for 30 years of the industry’s use of inadequate technology in a week just because Obama found the right tone. And his tone is all they got, because there is nothing more, that I’m aware, that Obama can actually DO here. The coast guard was mobilized on day one. The National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers has been involved from day 1. If there’s something OBAMA is supposed to be doing, WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?! (And if you say “sand burms” I’m going to punch you, and the refer you to an earlier piece I wrote, with a lot of capitalized expletives in it.)

But they HAVE to make this BAD for Obama. The oil lobby cannot afford for this to be “Obama’s 9/11” (for energy policy) so it’s got to be “Obama’s Katrina.” And they’ll find any way to MAKE IT that. Yeah… I’m finding the analogies to be getting a bit moronic as well. You know what this is? It’s Obama’s GULF OIL SPILL. That’s it. It’s not 9/11 (sorry, Mr. president) it’s not Katrina (sorry pundits) and most ironically of all, consider the source, it’s certainly not “Obama’s Iran Hostage Crisis.”

That last one came from Rush Limbaugh, IIRC, presumably because constantly calling it “Obama’s Katrina” keeps reminding people of BUSH’s Katrina. So… better to find a Democrat’s debacle to compare it to. I think it’s telling that they had to go back over THIRTY YEARS to FIND one, but even so they couldn’t have picked a worse example. Because the LAST THING the pro-oil conservatives really want here would be for a well respected newscaster, today’s “Walter Kronkite” (though I’m not really sure who that would even BE) to be counting the days, and reminding people, on a nightly basis, what a huge disaster this is. Not that is would make much of a difference, I think most people have a pretty shrewd idea anyway, but “today marks the umpti-fifth day since the oil started flowing into the Gulf” would NOT help their cause any.

I’ll judge Obama’s "performance" on this based on the legislation that comes out of it. If he can get up to start to leave the path were on, and start to embrace clean energy and sustainable behavior? Then he’ll get top marks from me, regardless of the tone he uses.

My Note to BP Pensioners: Go pound oily sand!

Speaking of Britain, there was rather a lot of criticism of the Obama administration for calling on BP to suspend it’s dividend payments until the damages related it’s oil spill are paid for. Now… I’m not completely heartless on this issue. I break with the mainstream liberal voice when it comes to taxing dividends for the very same reason that this criticism was being leveled: The broadest beneficiaries of those dividend payments are pension finds, and retires who actually depend on that income. (Well, that and it’s double taxation, but I don’t feel like giving the moon-bats here a lesson in basic Accounting right now, so we’ll go with “sympathy for old people” for the time being.) The rhetoric of the British Pensioners has been largely along the lines of “Hey America, don’t fuck with my retirement income! You want the oil? You PAY FOR it!”

Hey, British Pensioners? GO POUND OIL SATURADTED SAND!

First of all: We DO pay for it. BP has never been in the business of giving oil away for free to anyone. If they don’t charge enough to cover the cost of contingency plans? Not really OUR problem. I’ll get to the phenomenon of “externalization of costs” in a moment, but I’d have no problem with a MODEST gas tax increase (nothing like the nonsense they have in Europe however) which, considering how much gas we burn, would go a long way to getting more research done, and getting these kinds of things cleaned up. The cost is ultimately borne by the consumer anyway (again, see “externalization of costs”) so whether it’s in the form of a tax, or a price hike which the company would pretty much pocket ANYWAY, I’m all for it. And right now, so are most Americans. One Republican vote in the Senate is all that stands between our newly lubricated shoreline and the beginning of real energy reform.

Second of all: While I sympathize with your loss of income, you must also realize that it is TEMPORARY. That may not be the case for much of the fishing industry in the gulf. Businesses has been destroyed, people have lost everything, and that's before you even factor in the long-term ecological damage, the cost to repair the coasts and the long term economic effects that moving away from Gulf Oil Drilling. Long story short? Our problems are more expensive than yours, and have been CAUSED by a BRITISH company, operated in violation of both what would be the required safety protocols in Europe, and what is accepted industry practice over here. As it is our Government is pursuing a case of Criminal Negligence against BP, its case bolstered by BP’s own internal documents and BP company insiders. I’ve heard more than one legal expert describe the criminal case against BP as a “slam dunk.” So before you open your gobs, consider for a moment what you’d be calling for if an AMERICAN firm had violated your industry standards, fouled your beaches and destroyed your coastal industries, all in pursuit of greater profits for themselves and their shareholders. Somehow I don’t think the plight of the average AMERICAN pensioner would be very high on your list of priorities. And rightly so. NOW STIFLE!

Oh yeah: EXTERNALIZATION OF COST. This is the phenomenon that allows many of these companies to make claims like “oil produces the cheapest energy on a per volume basis” and things like that. There are two reasons why this statement is “true.” (Notice the “quotes?”) ONE is that they make arbitrary assumptions about the pay-off period for solar energy. Now I’m not sure what a given “volume” of solar energy (sunshine) looks like, but I do know that it is not a fuel being consumed. (Next time you here this, challenge one of thes efools to show you what a gallon of sunshine looks like!)  Which means, on a usage basis: It’s FREE. So the only way they can assume a “cost” on a per unit of energy generated basis, would be to amortize the manufacturing cost of a solar panel over its life. And what do they assume for its life? Well, whatever they need to to make oil sound cheaper, of course! The other reason is the “externalization of cost.” This is the fact that they do not include in the cost of their products, the costs associated with disasters, pollution, clean-up, global warming and other environmental impacts. The costs, unless the company is exceedingly generous in volunteering to take on, are largely paid by SOMEONE ELSE. And that’s how they want to keep it. If they can keep those costs EXTERNALIZED (off their books, and thus out of the business case) they not only can keep raking in record profits, but also make the case that OIL IS CHEAPER. Pollition CONTROL sosts the company. POLLUTION usually costs everybody else.  The same goes for coal, and just about every other industry that pollutes: As long as someone else cleans up the mess? Their business case is sound. And for the past 30 years, the three Republican administrations and the Republican Congress which dominated the lone Democratic one (until now) has been more than happy to ignore the problem and support this practice. 

I hope Obama has the courage to do otherwise. I’ll pay the tax, and to hell with any whiny pensioners. I’ve got a word of advice for you lot: DIVERSIFICATION.

The Oil Rig

I want to re-post here a comment that I left on Media Matters today regarding the media's meme that this will be Obama's "Katrina." (The line in italics comes from  DellDolly's post RE Bush's handloing of Katrina:

But they didn't do all that they should have done until after the damage was done.


You're being generous. They didn't do ANYTHING AT ALL until a few days AFTER the damage was done. And even THEN they didn't do all they should have, let alone could have.

Katrina served as the trigger for the public's loss of faith in Bush. It was the point at which it was no longer sacrilidge to openly quetsion the Iraq War, and it was at that point that the image of Bush as our fearless, stoic, post-9/11 leader begans to crumble. And as it also kicked of the ridiculously high gas prices that started the ball rolling on the recession (which came early in Michigan, where I live) it also led to the dismantling of the myth that these clown could run the economy any better as well.

This will undoubtedly NOT be Obama's finest hour, especially coming a week or so after expandging offshore drilling! But the response thus far and the continued support that will undoubtedly come, has put and will continue to put Bush's Katrina responce to shame. This WILL have a net positive effect on Obama's approval rating in a regionof the country that is otherwose, arguably the most hostile. Could he win LA, MS or AL against a drill-baby-drill Republican in 2012? It's possible. We'll see...

But in the meantime, I dare the Republicans to try and block ANY of the aid and services he sends to the region.

This is not Obama's "Katirna." It's closer (not quite there, but closer) to Obama's "9/11." 

Now, she did go on to point out that I was exageratting in saying that he did NOTHING, and I AM, but not by a whole lot.

I bring this up, becuase there will likely be a lot of discussion in the near future regarding chanegs in energy and environmental policy.  That's the silver lining in all of this: that there may finally be some serious political will on the part of the public to, at a minimum, impose some serious and stringent (and long overdue) regulations on the oil industry.  Now... I'm not celebrating this disater: Make no mistake, it IS a disaster.  And it's sad that it typically takes a disaster to change public opinion.  It's equally sad that our commitment to that change tends to fade over time.  But if this causes Obama to back track some of that expanded drilling? AND get serious about alternative energy?  Maybe for the next few months this short-term disaster will repriortize our thinking so that our short-sighted greed won't continue to trump our long-term interests so easily.