Author's posts
Jun 26 2010
“Well, I didn’t mean CLOSE Guantanamo!”
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“I mean, I meant it when I said it. You know?”
“But… heh. That was a campaigning thing, you know? And it worked, too! Right? Right.”
“You don’t really expect me to go all bipartisany on you and do what Lindsay Graham wants me to do, do you? DO YOU? He’s a republican! WTF do you want from me?”
“Heh. Shut the fcuk up, Helen.”
“Next question?”
…………………………
WASHINGTON – Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.
When the White House acknowledged last year that it would miss Mr. Obama’s initial January 2010 deadline for shutting the prison, it also declared that the detainees would eventually be moved to one in Illinois. But impediments to that plan have mounted in Congress, and the administration is doing little to overcome them.
“There is a lot of inertia” against closing the prison, “and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and supports the Illinois plan. He added that “the odds are that it will still be open” by the next presidential inauguration.
And Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who also supports shutting it, said the effort is “on life support and it’s unlikely to close any time soon.” He attributed the collapse to some fellow Republicans’ “demagoguery” and the administration’s poor planning and decision-making “paralysis.”
[snip]
Jun 26 2010
Is BP’s Blow Out Preventer Falling Off The Well Pipe?
After a video was released on June 13th recorded from BP’s underwater Viking Poseidon ROV 1 operating in the Gulf of Mexico near the blown out Macondo Well site showing what appeared to be oil leaks from gulf seabed cracks around BP’s well site, it seemed that it would be only a question of time before an oil saturated gulf seabed turning to wet slippery jello would no longer have the structural strength to support the weight of BP’s large steel 450 ton Blow Out Preventer (BOP) apparatus sitting on top of the well pipe projecting from that seabed.
“http://www.antemedius.com/files/images/BOP.jpg
Jun 25 2010
Orange Beach Alabama
via UK Guardian:
Delicate patterns in the sea breaking on Orange Beach, Alabama, more than 90 miles from the BP oil spill, cannot distract from the mess four to six inches deep on parts of the shore
Photographer: Dave Martin/AP
Jun 25 2010
Orange Beach Alabama – 90 Miles From BP’s Well
via UK Guardian:
Delicate patterns in the sea breaking on Orange Beach, Alabama, more than 90 miles from the BP oil spill, cannot distract from the mess four to six inches deep on parts of the shore
Photographer: Dave Martin/AP
Jun 23 2010
Oil Rain In Louisiana?
Posted to youtube June 22, 2010 by user HistoryTours
this looked exactly like what we saw yesterday under the Bay Saint Louis Miss Bridge On Our Way Out To Cat Island In The Gulf. Thick Brown Gooey Foam
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Qualification: I have no way of knowing if that video is of a current event or if it is raining in the video scenes. Although I suspect undecomposed oil is probably too heavy to evaporate, I think that strong storms (hurricanes, etc) can probably physically transport crude oil and spread it inland, and I would imagine that some of the products of chemical breakdown of oil, and reaction products between oil and corexit, the dispersant BP is using, can evaporate and produce toxic rain. Some of those reaction products I imagine might cause ‘rainbow’ slicks on streets like what is shown in the video.
Crude oil contains the powerful cancer-causing chemicals benzene, toluene, heavy metals and arsenic.
(hat tip to Washington’s Blog: Health Risks from Oil Spill: “Some of the Most Toxic Chemicals that We Know” , “Every Place Can be Ground Zero”, CDC Advises “Everyone” to Avoid Oil)
See the following links to and excerpts from Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effect (2003), a paper produced by the Committee on Oil in the Sea: Inputs, Fates, and Effects, Ocean Studies Board (OSB), the Marine Board (MB), and the Transportation Research Board (TRB)
Jun 23 2010
Gulf Oil Leak May Be Over 4 Million Gallons Per Day
Last week on June 15 the US Department of Energy announced that a group of federal and independent scientists convened by 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) had developed a new estimate for the amount of oil gushing from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico that indicated the leak could be spewing up to 2.52 million gallons of crude oil per day into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico from British Petroleum’s Macondo Well.
“This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP’s well,” said Chu, who then expanded with “As we continue to collect additional data and refine these estimates, it is important to realize that the numbers can change. In particular, the upper number is less certain – which is exactly why we have been planning for the worst case scenario at every stage and why we are continuing to focus on responding to the upper end of the estimate, plus additional contingencies.”
Estimates from both BP and from the US Government of the amount of oil gushing from the blown out wellhead on the gulf seabed have been almost continually revised upwards since the well blowout and leak began on April 20, with widespread suspicions that BP has deliberately understated the leak rate in attempts to limit liability for the company.
It now appears that Chu may have been somewhat prescient with his statement that “it is important to realize that the numbers can change”, and that the estimate of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico may need to be increased again, since an undated internal BP document (.PDF) obtained by Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) was released by Markey on Sunday June 20 showing that BP’s own internal analysis believed that a worst-case scenario, based on damage to the well bore, could result in a leak of 100,000 barrels of oil per day.
Jun 21 2010
Take It Easy
Drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don’t even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
and take it easy…
Jun 20 2010
Brown Pelicans
In case you weren’t aware of it, Brown Pelicans are not fucking brown, and they have yellow and white heads.
Jun 20 2010
Online Sex, Anyone?
A Spanish Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.
‘House’ for instance, is feminine: ‘la casa’.
‘Pencil,’ however, is masculine: ‘el lapiz’.
One of the students asked, ‘What gender is ‘computer’?’
Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether ‘computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun.
Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.
Jun 15 2010
BP Hiding Oiled Animal Carcasses Washing Up On Gulf Beaches?
On MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann Monday night, Marine toxicologist Riki Ott alleged that British Petroleum (BP) is trying to discourage or disallow public and media from seeing some of the horrific results of their oil leak by removing oiled animal carcasses from Gulf beaches.
“Turtle watch volunteers who walk the beaches consistently every morning at 6:00 a.m., they’re saying the carcasses are disappearing”
“People who walk the beaches at night, they’ve seen little baby dolphins wash up dead, flashlights, people descend out of nowhere, carcass gone in 15 minutes.
There’s reports from offshore of massive kills on the barrier islands from fishermen who have been working on the spill response…
BP’s response has been to use metal detectors to keep and prevent the people from even taking cell phones out to photograph this.”
There have been reports in the past few days of BP hiring private security contractors to keep the public and media away from oiled beaches.
This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown June 14, 2010.