The future is now.   Got some crazy, yellow Gasden snake flag flying neighbors, who are arming themselves for the 2nd Coming ? Is your Congressman or Senator a birther, or just an exuberant alien exporter?

How would you like the Tea Party or the uber right wing of the CIA telling Homeland Security where to deploy these next ?

With Nixon, it was the  National Guard.

With Obama, during an election year, one day after sacking his Afghan general,  it’s the   Drones.

Oh, fvucking Hallelujah – maybe.

Another one who’s going to get his life back from what the London School of Economics taught him. https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Of course, the announcement was made Annonrahmously so they can then poll furiously to see if this pre election maneuver stokes the proper response from the 50% of the electorate which doesn’t know who he is nor what he does.

WASHINGTON – White House Budget Director Peter Orszag plans to resign, a Democratic official said Monday night, positioning him to be the first high-profile member of President Barack Obama’s team to depart the administration.

Orszag is expected to leave in the coming months. The exact timing is not known.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

The New York Times Blog claims he is out of there by July and is getting married in September.

Keyboard Spew Alert:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes…

Mr. Orszag argued inside the White House that his successor should be in place to put the next budget together from the start.

In recent months, Mr. Orszag, 41, espoused deficit reduction strategies in administration debates against those who pressed for more stimulus spending and tax cuts to keep the economy from slipping back into recession. He will leave before the bipartisan debt-reduction commission that Mr. Obama formed earlier this year – and which Mr. Orszag championed – is due to report its recommendations by Dec. 1.

A longtime scholar of health policy economics, Mr. Orszag also helped devise and sell the president’s signature initiative overhauling the health insurance system. He privately has told associates that having worked on two budgets, a stimulus plan and the health care law, it is time to leave while he is ahead.

From Reuters, we receive hints that we aren’t going to get much of a policy change,  

http://www.reuters.com/article…

Potential successors include Laura Tyson, an economist of the University of California at Berkeley, and Gene Sperling, counselor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Both are former White House economic advisers who served in President Bill Clinton’s administration.  

Another candidate is Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Orszag announced in a speech earlier this month that government agencies were being asked to plan for 5 percent cuts in an array of domestic programs.

Thurs June 17th-  Congressional Mop and Sponge Show with BP Tony Hayward

Anyone notice this admission early on, after the beginning with the protestor standing up, her face smeared with black ink, and yelling at him  ?

http://abcnews.go.com/Business…

Later identified as Diane Wilson, the co-founder of the activist group Code Pink , she shouted “I think you need to be charged with a crime, you need to go to jail.”

Hayward, who restarted his statement after Wilson was carted away by police, apologized to those hurt by the spill but added that it was “simply too early to say what caused the incident.”  

“There is still extensive work to do. A full answer must await the outcome of multiple investigations” by both BP and the government, he said.

Hayward said that, in the meantime, BP is concentrating on cleanup efforts and on stopping the flow of oil by drilling two relief wells. The company, he said, also has deployed equipment that has allowed BP to collect 20,000 barrels of oil per day. BP expects to increase its collection to between 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day by mid-July, he said.

80,000 barrels a day  

 That is   3,360,000  or 3.36 million gallons a day leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon’s blown out well.  

The Democratic Party holds the majority in the Senate, but increasing forgets why it exists, as it continues to enact the disaster capitalism scenario of a major party which screws over it constituents.

Today (Wed) the Senate voted against extending expired unemployment benefits, with 11 useless Democrats voting with the Republicans to increase human misery.   Oh, and Plantation Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who just squeaked by in a Democratic primary because of her No Public Option health care stance ?   She couldn’t be bothered to vote at all.  http://www.senate.gov/legislat…      Senate Vote #190 motion to agree with House amend. to Senate amend.  American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act of 2010

At least people like Senator “He’s with us on everything but the war” Lieberman don’t pretend anymore.  He was a NO.  So were:

Nelson NB           cornhusker strikes again

Webb VA            

McCaskill MO

Bayh IN               lame duck still can poop on your lawn

Begich AL

Feingold WI    

Kohl  WI

Landrieu  LA    isn’t she incredible

Menendez  NJ

Nelson FL      the other Nelson. on the Gulf.

Pryor AR

I’ve been checking on Linda Leavitt’s twitter account http://twitter.com/ WhoDat35 for news of the effects of the ongoing BP oil spill, and I suggest you bookmark this-  she’s a tireless lover of all things Louisiana coastal, and the locals have been tweeting her some great links.

The oil has started to wash up quite a bit more on the sugar sands of Alabama-  I knew Alabama had Gulf of Mexico coastline, but I didn’t realize that they had such beautiful sand beaches until this oil spill.   Many concerned people are contacting Leavitt in astonishment that the oiled beaches have not been officially closed yet to beachgoers, and not only are people sunbathing,  that they’ve seen children actually swimming in this stuff.

A month ago, in Louisiana, Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputies were blocking reporters and bloggers from seeing the oil washed up on Elmer’s Island, at BP’s request.  But the tourist beaches were still open.

Mac McClelland and John Hazlett end up kayaking into the spill area to see it 524/2010/

http://motherjones.com/environ…

At the turn to Elmer’s Island Road, a deputy flags us down. Can’t go to Elmer’s; he’s just “doing what they told me to do.” We continue on to Grand Isle beach, where toddlers splash in the surf. Only after I’ve stepped in a blob of crude do I realize that the sheen on the waves and the blackness covering a little blue heron from the neck down is oil.

The next day, cops drive up and down Grand Isle beach explicitly telling tourists it is still open, just stay out of the water. There are pools of oil on the beach; dolphins crest just offshore. A fifty-something couple, Southern Louisianians, tell me this kind of thing happened all the time when they were kids; they swam in rubber suits when it got bad, and it was no big deal. They just hope this doesn’t mean we’ll stop drilling.

The blockade to Elmer’s is now four cop cars strong. As we pull up, deputies start bawling us out; all media need to go to the Grand Isle community center, where a “BP Information Center” sign now hangs out front. nside, a couple of Times-Picayune reporters circle BP representative Barbara Martin, who tells them that if they want passage to Elmer they have to get it from another BP flack, Irvin Lipp; Grand Isle beach is closed too, she adds. When we inform the Times-Pic reporters otherwise, she asks Dr. Hazlett if he’s a reporter; he says,  “No.” She says, “Good.”

Where the tourist beache aren’t, the access is harder to come by-  see the June 11 kayak visit they made to Grande Terre, http://motherjones.com/rights-… ,  where BP’s contracted clean up crews were using some sort of cross between a paper towel and a sham wow, dozens of them laid across the sand, to blot up millions of gallons of oil from the beaches “where the oil stretched as far as we could see in deep, dark pools.”  

A cell phone video taken by a bystander through a chain link fence may have changed the impetus of the investigation of the Border Patrol shooting death of 15 year old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka Monday, on the border between El Paso Texas and Cuidad Juarez Mexico.

Attorney General Eric Holder today called the shooting of the teenager “extremely regrettable.”  The FBI is now investigating the death.

And away go troubles, down the drain !

Taking Crisis Management to a new level of Blasé Faire, the Supervisor at the Washington, DC Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) finds a mysterious baggie of white powder labeled “Anthrax”  in the Exhibition Hall this past weekend.

What does he do with it ?    He flushes it down the restroom toilet !!!

http://thehill.com/homenews/ho…

About an hour later, Capitol Police were notified. The hazardous devices unit found no traces of harmful biological components, such as anthrax spores, during an inspection Saturday that covered the restroom, the route the supervisor allegedly took there and the area where the bag was found.

Capitol Police are investigating Saturday’s incident by reviewing video footage and interviewing employees involved in the incident to try and discover who might have left the bag with the white powder, the officer said.

It remained unclear why the operational supervisor allegedly decided to flush the bag’s contents down the toilet. But visitor assistants with the CVC said there is pressure to keep tours going at all times and that by notifying Capitol Police, it would interrupt the day’s traffic flow.

An hour later ?  

I’m listening to the Primary election results on television and watching on the internet.  Here are the current leads or projected winners for some of the races nationwide.   The polls closed in CA an hour ago.   HuffPo also has a header banner up with this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

First, the biggest suck disappointment of the evening-  Democrat Senate Plantation Blanche over Bill Halter in Arkansas ,   52 to 48%.  

Blanche Lincoln (D, “there isn’t going to be a public option” Walmart, Koch Oil, Arkansas)

Bill Halter

There’s been a lawsuit filed over the closing of polling places, but Halter has conceded.

A wikileaks source has been arrested in Iraq.

I would urge you to read the entire story link at Wired.com, because with anything military related, there is their version, and the spin, what really happened,  and the truth usually gets lost somewhere.  The suspect, Spc Bradley Manning, was arrested 12 days ago May 26, but it’s been kept under wraps.

In addition to the video “Collateral Murder,”  which was released world wide in April, showing the murder of the Reuters journalist and photographer, and the wounding of children in a nearby vehicle,  by American helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007, which was diaried here,

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

More about the life and deaths of Reuters’ Namir Noor Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh and their surviving families, here,

http://collateralmurder.com/en…

The wikileaks homepage is here:  http://wikileaks.org/

This 22 year old Army intelligence Spc also allegedly got ahold of 260,000 classified US diplomatic cables.  Which he boasted about to an “ex”  (ex? once a, always a ….. )  hacker named Adrian Lamo.

“Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed,” Manning wrote. “It’s open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It’s beautiful, and horrifying.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlev…

Because it is Saturday Night and we all needed a humor piece-  

There is a blog that was published 2 hours ago uhm, ….  somewhere else. It is called “About that third leak”    It was wreckomended.

It uses pics and video from a breathless ABC news report and tells us:

But we have not seen them installing a valve and closing it on, from the video above appears to be the very worst leak?.

No video has been released of the third leak valve installation operation therefore no-one can trust, but verify, that they have dealt with this effectively.

Geebus H. Cricket on a Swamp Canoe.

I’ll start close to the source of the oil and methane gas coming out – the wellhead, with the BOP and riser pipe, and work my way out.  

This is the first leak.  It is coming out of the bent over riser pipe and the drill pipe inside of that, at the wellhead above the Blow Out Protector.   Hold up your thumb.  That’s one. 1.

6/1/2010 The Plume Coming off the bent riser pipe near the BOP top. & Sawing machine working on pipe.

This is the second leak.  They capped it first.  Hold up your index finger. That’s two. 2.

Drill pipe leak

Look familiar ?  Back atcha.

re: The broken off piece of drill pipe. This was inside the riser pipe but sticking out further. It was near the top of the water originally.  Know why it’s bigger on the end ?  That’s a joint where pieces join together. It came apart there.   They used different sizes of pipe in the well.

This is the “third leak.”  It’s at the middle of the riser pipe. Technically, it’s the 2nd in line going from the well out the pipe.   It was the end that was attached, then broke loose, from the Transocean oil drilling rig floating above the surface on the Gulf waters. It’s 5000 feet long, and it folded as it bent over and landed on the ocean floor. Where it folded, it has kinked, broken, and leaked. There is one pipe inside the other, and both were leaking, which meant the cement failed on the well casing bore hole.  It has the “sippy tube” collection device in it here.  Hold up your pinkie.   That’s three. 3.

Endpipe, riser + drill, sippy tube

Here is a drawing that shows how the bent over riser pipe with the drill pipe inside of it looks on the ocean floor.  Leak 1 on at the top of the BOP.  Leak 2 where the pipes bent on the seafloor, and they used a sippy tube to experiment with collecting the oil, but it says “tophat.”   Leak 3 is the very end, or beginning, of the pipe, where they capped it.  The end farthest from the well has the smallest leak.  It is not a government or BP conspiracy.  It’s hydraulics.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…  The science of liquids.

Graphic of the bent pipes from the well laying on the sea bed.

On Tues, June 1st,  they started sawing on the bent over pipes coming out of the top of the Blow Out Protector on top of the well head on the seafloor.

They used one of these

Rotary Pipe Saw

And then they used one of these

Diamond Rotary Pipe Saw Machine and Clamp On Bracket  

And when that didn’t work, they went to THIS.  

Mother of All Pipe Shears

Eventually, they sawed, crimped, and nipped all the pipes off the Blow Out Protector, leaving a single big riser pipe stub coming out of the top, which looks like a tree stump painted white. (The smaller drill pipe coming from the well is inside this. Both pipes are leaking. ) The rough edges of the riser were ground down with another polishing tool.     Then later last week, they lowered a collection cap “Lower Marine Riser Package” over it, after they fitted it with a rubber gasket.

Here’s stumpy getting his edge polished 6/3/2010

LMRP CAP -illustration by BP

LMRP BOP CAP #4  webcam voyage to the bottom.

Yes, it leaks.

BOP CAP #4,  IN SITU  Saturday June 5, 2010

Hold up your thumb.  

In the shape of an “L” on your forehead.  “Lost”

There is only one leak now. 1.  The other 2 leaks were in the pipe pieces they cut off.

See how easy that is ?

And this is how we knew the leak was releasing a lot of oil, BEFORE May the 12th.  

Government satellite of the Louisiana Mississippi Delta, picture April 29, 2010. This was published by NOAA/NASA on the internet and subsequently picked up by Louisiana State University ES Lab and republished on their website, with permission to republish.  

The size of the area may be estimated.  There are formulas which can be used to calculate how much oil spreads out how far.  On the internet.  What you see is like looking down on top of a funnel cloud here, only one dimension.   There is more.

They knew. In April.  There is no way the Commander in Chief the President did not know this was going to be a large spill a few hours after the flaming, smoking hulk of Deepwater Horizon toppled into the sea.  It looked like a monster Tiki torch.  Once it stopped burning, the oil and gas was not coming to the top anymore, but in the water.  BP knew. The rig survivors knew.  The MMS knew, they had the plans for the well on file, which would indicate how much it was going to produce per day, by its design. The Coast Guard knew. The blogs knew.

Did they want to admit the potential, right off ?  Of course not.

The MSM was, of course, reluctant to admit that everything was going to go to slow motion hell.

There is a ship called the Enterprise, with a pipe going down to that LMRP BOP CAP,  attempting to process the oil they manage to bring to the surface. It can process 15,000 barrels a day of oil maximum.  This might be half of what is coming up out of the well.  It might not be.  The #4 CAP won’t capture all the released oil/gas.  Without a way to shut it off precisely, totally, and quickly at the bottom, in case of emergency,  the oil gathering ship above doesn’t have a way to safely emergency disconnect in case of a sudden gusher of violent gas, aka a bubble or “kick,” which did in the first well drilling rig.  So it’s a sloppy connection, by design.

Nobody is happy about this, but who wants to see the Enterprise go up in a fireball.

The well bore hole is thought to be badly damaged because the cement liner failed. (thanks, Halliburton, you b*stards.)   Without an intact borehole, this thing could get very dicey suddenly.  This is why they are not attempting to put another Blow Out Protector on top. You can shut it off at the top for a while, but you want to be able to then PLUG it much farther down before the BOP shoots off like a cork.  

Some of the plume you are seeing in the picture is methane gas coming out of liquid solution and expanding rapidly.  It is getting flared off at the surface ship, what doesn’t turn into methane hydrates at the bottom of the Gulf because of the extreme pressure and cold temperatures.  Methane is not going to wash ashore onto the Gulf, and a lot of the crap coming from this well is methane. That is the good news.

I am not trying to minimize the severity and danger and ecologic catastrophe of the situation, I have been one of the ones trying to push the alarm button from the beginning.  I have lots more screen captures of that webcam, and thank Heavens that Rep. Markey got after them to show us something.

But can we dispense with the crazy rumors about some “third leak” now ?  

Repeat. Some of the plume is methane.  Methane isn’t going to wash ashore.

Don’t worry about the plume size coming from some jackwipe ABC video. This is the same channel that gave us the “Path to 9/11” and Mickey Mouse.  See how there is a dispersant wand at the supposed giant, mysterious “third leak?”   WTF, as they are only applying dispersant at the wellhead near the BOP.  That’s where the biggest plumes have been.   What utter tripe.   Worry about the volume of oil, the pressure, and the rate of flow.  Worry about the visible sheen of oil now covering about a third of the Gulf. Or the oil patches that have been documented or will be.  Worry about protecting the cleanup workers from toxins.  Worry about the wildlife and plants and fish and birds. Worry about the deteriorating well bore.  Worry that the government and BP in collusion,  jointly lowballed the initial amount of the leak by a huge factor to the public.  Worry that anybody believes that ABC couldn’t find somebody to explain this to them, and that they are busy spinning an alternate CT storyline already.  I saw the old “industry expert” peddling this “Government is still hiding a Secret Leak” routine on cable television.  One blogger said, paraphrased,  “he used to be a real industry expert. Something has happened with age. I hope there is someone to look after his affairs now.”

Facepalm.  

_______________

photos taken as screenshots off of live webcam feed as provided by BP to the American people because of Rep. Markey, and definition and color bumped by me.  some photos by NASA and NOAA, LSU/ESL, or from the Unified Command US government website which had the BP graphics.  UC JIC also has a good twitter feed which leads to other links. http://twitter.com/oil_spill_2010

Oil Drum is the recommended blog to continue to find explanations as to what may be going on, along with satellite photos from NRL Monterey, NASA, and NOAA.  http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/nex…