Posts filed under ‘Technology’
One-Ton Tarball
What does a one-ton tarball look like? Like this monster:
One-ton tarball captured by crew of the Sailfish in Perdido Pass, FL on June 11.
Imagine more of these things floating out there in the Gulf. It’s horrifying.
Bobby Jindal Prays for the Gulf but Rejects Obama’s Help
This is the craziness of the right: Louisiana Oil Spill Day of Prayer: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has declared Sunday, June 27, a statewide day of prayer for the Gulf.
But hey. Wait a minute. The guy hasn’t called in the thousands of National Guard troops made available by President Obama who could help with the clean-up.
So yeah, let’s pander to the wingers and the Tea Partiers and the religious right instead of doing everything possible to tackle the problem.
Anything to make Obama look like he’s a failure, right? Even if fishermen and hoteliers and others in your state go under.
They call that compassionate conservatism.
Way to go Bobby.
Join Hands Across the Sand
Hands Across the Sand will rally across the globe tomorrow to show their opposition to near and off-shore drilling in the waters of the world.
See you there in Boulder.
Oh, btw, you won’t hear a peep about this on the “liberal media” tomorrow night.
Why Aren’t National Guard Troops Swarming the Gulf?
We hear it all the time — why hasn’t the Federal government deployed National Guard troops to the Gulf? Well, as a matter of fact, it has. It has made 17,500 troops available — “free of charge” — to the Gulf states. Problem is, the responsibility for deploying them belongs to the governors of those states, and they’re sitting on their hands (another way to make Obama look bad (and of course our shitty “liberal media” goes along with the charade).)
According to National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, the responsibility for the delay rests directly with the Gulf governors: “It’s pretty much up to the governors, and how they want to deploy the National Guard,” Allen said in response to a question from Rolling Stone during a press conference on June 23. The governors, he said, have to pre-clear the work they’re assigning to the National Guard with the federal response team, but this is a formality. “We have not turned down any requests thus far,” said Allen.
UPDATE: Oops, pardon me. I forgot. Gulf coast governors are activating the National Guard: To Block the Media.
The Truth Hurts
This from wanna be president, Sarah Palin:
The “lamesteam media” wouldn’t be sucking anyone in Sarah, they’d be telling the truth: Republican Joe Barton Apologizes to BP for US Making Them Pay for Damages.
Mourning the Death of the Gulf
If you do nothing more today, please watch this loving, gorgeous – yet tragic and heartbreaking — video Denise Redmour composed: A Farewell to the Gulf. It both celebrates and mourns what is happening to our south.
The pictures and the music combine to make a lovely tribute to the life that is dying there. Hard to watch — it literally brought tears to my eyes — but it’s also an in-your-face slap at what BP has wrought, hour-by-hour, day-by-day. It’s a must-see in terms of coming to terms with the loss we all feel:
Suicide in the Gulf
My brother, Eric, committed suicide in 1988 so this news hit me right in the gut: Despondent Boat Captain Hired by BP for Gulf Cleanup Commits Suicide:
“I hate to say it, but I’m surprised something like this hasn’t already happened.” This, tragically, was the death by suicide of a charter boat captain hired by BP to take part in oil leak cleanup or protection efforts in the gulf.
The quote comes from Jason Bell, who worked for William Allen “Rookie” Kruse, 55, for three years as a deckhand and pilot. Kruse put a bullet through his head this morning [June 23, 2001] at a marina in Fort Morgan, Alabama. His boat was about to launch today and he was reportedly upset with the oil leak, the cleanup efforts and loss of income, and wondering how he would be paid for taking part in the Vessel of Opportunity program.
The local coroner ruled that the gunshot was self-inflicted. Kruse was found right on the captain’s bridge. He had no known health problems.
“He had just let his deckhands off the boat and sent them to get something,” Baldwin County Deputy Coroner Rod Steade told the local newspaper, the Press-Register. “He was going to meet them at the fuel dock. They heard a pop and when the boat didn’t come around, they went back and found him.”
The newspaper related that Baldwin County Coroner Stan Vinson “said witnesses told investigators that Kruse had been upset about the loss of business caused by the closing of fishing grounds and public perceptions of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”
The despair in the Gulf is unimaginable.
Oh. And when it comes to paying damages, how will the government and BP decide how much William Allen “Rookie” Kruse’s life was worth? Will they consider that his family will suffer until they too die because of the pain of his loss?
BP Doesn’t Want You to See This
BP doesn’t want you to see these images and neither does the corporate media. If they did, we’d see them all day and all night and all the time in between. Kinda like the Natalee Holloway story.
Judge Martin Feldman — Owned by the the Oil Industry
The oil companies who sued the Obama administration over its 6-month oil moratorium (and won today) couldn’t have had a better friend on the bench than the man who decided the case, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman:
The federal judge whooverturned Barack Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium appears to own stock in numerous companies involved in the offshore oil industry—including Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to BP prior to its April 20 explosion in the Gulf of Mexico—according to 2008 financial disclosure reports.
U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman issued a preliminary injunction today barring the enforcement of Barack Obama’s proposed six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, arguing that the ban is too broad.
According to Feldman’s 2008 financial disclosure form, posted online by Judicial Watch [pdf], the judge owned stock in Transocean as well as five other companies that are either directly or indirectly involved in the offshore drilling business.
It’s not surprising that Feldman, who is a judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, has invested in the offshore drilling business—an AP investigation found earlier this month that more than half the federal judges in the districts affected by the BP spill have financial ties to the oil and gas industry.
Feldman should have recusing himself. He never should have heard (much less decided) this case. He’s too tainted to be impartial, and he knew it and knows it today. This case illustrates just how far our judicial system has fallen. Thirty years ago, this would have been an outrage.
Oh, and by the way, Feldman was appointed to the bench by none other than Ronnie Reagan.
Louisiana Police Working for BP
Why hasn’t this kind of behavior — which we’ve been hearing about for weeks — been brought under control? It’s absolutely outrageous:
Everyone knows by now that BP is still blocking press access to oil-spill sites even though they’re not supposed to anymore. I’ve been blathering about it for weeks, and it’s been all of three days since four contractors wouldn’t let me through the Pointe Aux Chenes marina outside Montegut, Louisiana. And though as of June 16 the federal government was saying helicopters could fly reporters as low as 1,500 feet around spill sites, on June 17 I was on a helicopter that was prohibited from flying below 3,000 feet (and whose pilot flipped silent birds at the “military guys” coming over the radio and hassling him about being in the area at all). But Louisiana state police pulling over a video camera-wielding private citizen because the head of BP security wanted to ask him some questions is a whole other level of alarming.
Here’s the key exchange:
Wheelan: ”Am I violating any laws or anything like that?”
Officer: ”Um…not particularly. BP doesn’t want people filming.”
Wheelan: ”Well, I’m not on their property so BP doesn’t have anything to say about what I do right now.”
Officer: ”Let me explain: BP doesn’t want any filming. So all I can really do is strongly suggest that you not film anything right now. If that makes any sense.”
Not really! Shortly thereafter, Wheelan got in his car and drove away but was soon was pulled over.
It was the same cop, but this time he had company: Kenneth Thomas, whose badge, Wheelan told me, read “Chief BP Security.” The cop stood by as Thomas interrogated Wheelan for 20 minutes, asking him who he worked with, who he answered to, what he was doing, why he was down here in Louisiana. He phoned Wheelan’s information in to someone. Wheelan says Thomas confiscated his Audubon volunteer badge (he’d recently attended an official Audubon/BP bird-helper volunteer training) and then wouldn’t give it back, which sounds like something only a bully in a bad movie would do. Eventually, Thomas let Wheelan go.
How Many Animals Have Died in the Gulf?
I heard a report today on my local radio station about how BP has cordoned off some small islands in the Gulf where hundreds of dead birds and turtles have reportedly been found. They don’t want any pictures documenting how the wildlife is suffering. Not only that, larger animals like dolphins likely sink to the sea floor when they die. So, who knows if we’ll ever know what’s going on down there but here’s a site — FYI — that’s trying to keep track: DailyDeadBirds.com.
For the record, I took a screenshot of today’s tally to compare and contrast as time goes by.
(It’s so sad, isn’t it, that there’s a site anywhere on the web titled, “Daily Dead Birds?”)
Oil Owns Republicans (and Some Democrats)
Watch this…drill here, drill now!
BP’s Pelicans v. God’s Pelicans
BP’s pelicans:
Pelicans as God and Mother Nature intended them to be:
I want my 2-year-old friend to know Mother Nature’s pelicans, not BP’s.
A Hole in the World
Here’s a must see, featuring the wonderful Naomi Klein. Also note the accompanying article: Gulf Oil Spill: A Hole in the World.
Naomi Klein visited the Gulf coast with a film-crew from Fault Lines, a documentary programme hosted by Avi Lewis on al-Jazeera English Television. She was a consultant on the film.
Oil Spews Out of the Gulf — Tony Hayward Goes Yachting
Even though Tony Hayward has been taken off the front line as the face of BP, he’s still the CEO. And yes, while we all need time to rest and recharge, it is just me and my “small people” mentality or does it seem just a tad unseemly that Tony boy attended a yacht race today? Specifically, the very humble-sounding J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race:
In what one environmentalist described as “yet another public relations disaster” for embattled energy giant BP, CEO Tony Hayward took time off Saturday to attend a glitzy yacht race around England’s Isle of Wight.
Have You Seen This Picture?
At first, intriguing and beautiful, then horrifying:
Oil in the water off the coast of Alabama.
BP Providing Hookers for Clean-Up Workers
BP may not want its clean-up workers to wear protective clothing or respirators (wouldn’t look good), but you can’t say they are neglecting them altogether. In “More Dirty Details From My BP Mole,” Mac McClelland reports that,
Oh, wait. Not nothing: “They’ve brought in prostitutes.” No one knows who the “they” that brought in the pack of hookers is, but the gals have definitely arrived, and you can buy time with one for $200. It only took someone a whole month even to figure out that it would be lucrative to sell sex to guys earning 44 hours of overtime a week and living in camps and converted 18-wheelers.
So thoughtful of them.
Now We Know Why Joe Barton (R-TX) Feels Sorry for BP
Ah yes. Now we know why Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) felt the need to apologize to BP because President Obama is making the poor thing pay for the clean-up: Top Corporate Donor to Barton is Partner of BP on Deepwater Horizon.
Tony Hayward Plays Dumb
The gist of BP CEO Tony Hayward’s testimony before congress today is this: “I don’t recall.” I can’t count how many times he said that.
UPDATE: Just heard on Countdown that he said “I don’t know” or “I can’t recall,” 77 times.
Republicans Feeling Sorry for BP
My God. Republicans are up on Capitol Hill today in a hearing with Tony – I want my life back – Hayward and they’re apologizing to poor little ol’ BP because President Obama is making them pay for the mess they’ve made. This from Rep. Joe Barton of Texas:
I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Barton said in his opening statement. “I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown in this case a $20 billion dollar shakedown.
Hey, I thought they were the party of personal responsibility. Oh, that’s right. That only applies to the small people, not to corporations.
Sarah Palin’s Plan for Cleaning up the Gulf
Remember when Sarah Palin said President Obama should give her a call for advice on dealing with the Gulf oil gusher? Well, she was on Bill O’Reilly’s show last night and he asked her point-blank (beginning below at about 4:36) how she would do it:
O’Reilly: “How do we stop it?”
Palin: “What the federal government should have done was accepted the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans who have had solutions that they wanted presented. They can’t even get a phone call returned Bill. The Dutch and the Norwegian (sic). They are known, um, for dikes and for cleaning up water, for dealing with spills.”
So, there you have it. (So glad she’s not in charge!)
Obama’s CYA Speech
Just watched Obama “oil speech.”
Who is this guy? Where does he stand other than to CYA?
By the End of The Month, the Majority of the Oil Will Be Stopped
I’m listening to the evening “news” on ABC and they’re reporting that one of the things President Obama will say tonight in his “oil address” is that “by the end of the month, the majority of oil spewing from the well will be stopped.”
Who the hell is Obama listening to? Man, the guy is SO drinking the corporate Kool Aid.
Let’s take bets. Who thinks that’ll happen?
I bet $5 it won’t be stopped until at the very, very earliest, mid-July and I’m being stupidly generous with that prediction. I’m thinkin’ more like October or hey, maybe never. Maybe it needs to run its course, release a whole bunch of pressure, and then the seabed collapses, we have a tsunami and life as we know it comes to an end.
BP Oil Flow at 60,000 Barrels Per Day?
Talk about outrage overload:
Based on updated information and scientific assessments, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and Chair of the National Incident Command’s Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG) Dr. Marcia McNutt (Director of the U.S. Geological Survey) today announced an improved estimate of how much oil is flowing from the leaking BP well.
Secretary Chu, Secretary Salazar, and Dr. McNutt convened a group of federal and independent scientists on Monday to discuss new analyses and data points obtained over the weekend to produce updated flow rate estimates. Working together, U.S. government and independent scientists estimate that the most likely flow rate of oil today is between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. The improved estimate is based on more and better data that is now available and that helps increase the scientific confidence in the accuracy of the estimate.
[...]
Overall, the leak containment strategy that BP was required to develop projects containment capacity expanding to 40,000-53,000 barrels per day by the end of June and 60,000-80,000 barrels per day by mid-July.
Don’t forget, there are 42 U.S. gallons in a barrel. So, that would be 2,520,000 gallons per day if the rate is 60,000 barrels per day.
This blows me away. I need to go outside and sit down for a minute and try to calm down.
Louisianans Not Happy With Obama’s Hand’s Off Approach
This from Public Policy Polling:
Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama’s handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else- a majority of voters there think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill.
50% of voters in the state, even including 31% of Democrats, give Bush higher marks on that question compared to 35% who pick Obama.
Overall only 32% of Louisianans approve of how Obama has handled the spill to 62% who disapprove. 34% of those polled say they approved of how Bush dealt with Katrina to 58% who disapproved.
BP’s Tony Hayward Made $36.5 Million Last Year
Info gleaned during today’s congressional hearings with the oil executives:
“Death Clouds” in the Gulf Air
Wow, it’s amazing what the 24/7 cable “news” channels have so much to report (yeah, right — the same three stories over and over again) that they haven’t talked about this — the air quality along the Gulf coast. Sure, we hear about the smell of oil and how awful it is but what about the details?
MARYLEE ORR of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network: We don’t want to be alarmists but we want to be realistic.
REPORTER: For several weeks now the Environmental Protection Agency has been tracking what’s in the air by using a mobile truck and seven monitoring stations located mainly in St. Bernard and Plaqueman’s parishes. They are looking for evidence of several compounds, including Hydrogen Sulfide and volatile organic compounds or VOC’s, like Benzene which is commonly known as swamp gas. A normal level ranges between five to ten parts per billion.
This is what they found at the Venice station:
MARYLEE ORR: I think what they’re saying (the EPA) is that it’s an okay exposure for a short amount of time, and we’re saying we have a concern about that sort of exposure for any amount of time.
Later, a chemist at a lab in New Iberia says the numbers “give her pause:”
WILMA SUBRA: They’re there at a little over the numbers that you would expect to start getting those health impacts and so that, it’s of concern that the people understand what is there and understand that if they start getting the health impacts that they should take precautions to move out of the area.
Here’s the video.
