I invite every member of DocuDharma to join us at The Stars Hollow Gazette for our coverage of the 2011 Major League Baseball Playoffs starting at 4:30 pm ET.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Friday, Sep 30, 2011 06:31 ET

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki.  No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him).  Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.  When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.  He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner.  When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.”

…

What’s most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar (“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government.  Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President’s ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki — including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry’s execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists — criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

From an authoritarian perspective, that’s the genius of America’s political culture.  It not only finds way to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process).  It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.

So there you have it.  An American Citizen murdered for ‘thought crime’ at the whim of our unconstitutional monarch.

Obama: A disaster for civil liberties

He may prove the most disastrous president in our history in terms of civil liberties.

By Jonathan Turley, The L.A. Times

September 29, 2011

Protecting individual rights and liberties – apart from the right to be tax-free – seems barely relevant to candidates or voters. One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States.

…

President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the “just following orders” defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama’s personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured.

…

Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama’s position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him. Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama’s policies on civil liberties in Congress during his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama’s policies have become secondary to his persona.

Ironically, had Obama been defeated in 2008, it is likely that an alliance for civil liberties might have coalesced and effectively fought the government’s burgeoning police powers. A Gallup poll released this week shows 49% of Americans, a record since the poll began asking this question in 2003, believe that “the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals’ rights and freedoms.” Yet the Obama administration long ago made a cynical calculation that it already had such voters in the bag and tacked to the right on this issue to show Obama was not “soft” on terror. He assumed that, yet again, civil libertarians might grumble and gripe but, come election day, they would not dare stay home.

This calculation may be wrong. Obama may have flown by the fail-safe line, especially when it comes to waterboarding. For many civil libertarians, it will be virtually impossible to vote for someone who has flagrantly ignored the Convention Against Torture or its underlying Nuremberg Principles. As Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. have admitted, waterboarding is clearly torture and has been long defined as such by both international and U.S. courts. It is not only a crime but a war crime. By blocking the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for torture, Obama violated international law and reinforced other countries in refusing investigation of their own alleged war crimes. The administration magnified the damage by blocking efforts of other countries like Spain from investigating our alleged war crimes. In this process, his administration shredded principles on the accountability of government officials and lawyers facilitating war crimes and further destroyed the credibility of the U.S. in objecting to civil liberties abuses abroad.

As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe

By NICHOLAS KULISH, The New York Times

Published: September 27, 2011

Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web.

In that sense, the protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite.

…

In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, a consensus emerged that (neo) liberal economics combined with democratic institutions represented the only path forward. That consensus, championed by scholars like Francis Fukuyama in his book “The End of History and the Last Man,” has been shaken if not broken by a seemingly endless succession of crises – the Asian financial collapse of 1997, the Internet bubble that burst in 2000, the subprime crisis of 2007-8 and the continuing European and American debt crisis – and the seeming inability of policy makers to deal with them or cushion their people from the shocks.

…

Mr. Hazare’s anticorruption campaign tapped a deep chord with the public precisely because he was not a politician. Many voters feel that Indian democracy, and in particular the major parties, the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, have become unresponsive and captive to interest groups. For almost a year, India’s news media and government auditors have exposed tawdry government scandals involving billions of dollars in graft.

…

The political left, which might seem the natural destination for the nascent movements now emerging around the globe, is compromised in the eyes of activists by the neoliberal centrism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The old left remains wedded to trade unions even as they represent a smaller and smaller share of the work force. More recently, center-left participation in bailouts for financial institutions alienated former supporters who say the money should have gone to people instead of banks.

The entrenched political players of the post-cold-war old guard are struggling. In Japan, six prime ministers have stepped down in five years, as political paralysis deepens. The two major parties in Germany, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, have seen tremendous declines in membership as the Greens have made major gains, while Chancellor Angela Merkel has watched her authority erode over unpopular bailouts.

In many European countries the disappointment is twofold: in heavily indebted federal governments pulling back from social spending and in a European Union viewed as distant and undemocratic. Europeans leaders have dictated harsh austerity measures in the name of stability for the euro, the region’s common currency, rubber-stamped by captive and corrupt national politicians, protesters say.

“The biggest crisis is a crisis of legitimacy,” Ms. Solanas said. “We don’t think they are doing anything for us.”

Why Liberals Are Lame: McCarthyite Identity Politics as Cover for Bankrupt Policies

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

09/28/2011

The latest desperate strategy of Obama’s spin-meisters highlights the rot at the core of the Democratic party: the heavy handed use of identity politics as a cover for neoliberal policies that betray the very groups the party purports to represent.

…

(A)s Obama’s economic policies have failed to pull the economy out of its crisis-induced deep malaise, he has done nothing different save get more pissy and double down on his failed strategy of selling out the middle class. His recent, and no doubt desperation-induced effort to rekindle the support of his badly abused base via gestures like a millioniares’ tax, are likely to go the way of past promises of change: they will be watered down to thin gruel so as not to ruffle his moneyed backers. It is remarakbly disingenuous for Harris-Perry to contend that dissatisfaction with Obama results from racism, as opposed to (among other things) ineffective policy responses to substantial and widespread economic stress.

…

The left is obsessed with what ought to be peripheral concerns, namely, political correctness and Puritanical moralizing, because it is actually deeply divided on the things that matter, namely money and the role of the state. The Democrats have been so deeply penetrated by the neoliberal/Robert Rubin/Hamilton Project types that they aren’t that different from the right on economic issues. Both want little regulation of banking and open trade and international capital flows. Both want to “reform” Medicare and Social Security. Both are leery of a welfare state, the Republicans openly so, the Rubinite Dems with all sorts of handwringing and clever schemes to incentivize private companies that generally subsidize what they would have done regardless (note that Americans have had a mixed record in providing good social safety nets, but a big reason is our American exceptionalism means we refuse to copy successful models from abroad).

The powerful influence of moneyed interests on the Democratic party has achieved the fondest aims of the right wing extremists of the 1970s: the party of FDR is now lukewarm at best in its support of the New Deal. Most Democrats are embarrassed to be in the same room with union types. They are often afraid to say that government can play a positive role. They were loath to discuss the costs of income inequality until it became so far advanced that it is now well nigh impossible to reverse it. After all, that sort of discussion might sound like class warfare, and God forbid anyone on the mainstream left risk sound like Marx.

…

So the Democratic party (and remember, our two party system makes the Democrats the home by default for the left) pretends to be a safe haven for all sorts of out groups: women, gays, Hispanics (on their way to being the dominant group but not there yet), blacks, the poor. But this is stands in stark contradiction to its policies of selling out the middle class to banks and big corporate interests, just on a slower and stealthier basis than the right. So its desperate need to maintain its increasingly phony “be nice to the rainbow coalition” branding places a huge premium on appearances. It thus uses identity politics as a cover for policy betrayals. It can motivate various groups on narrow, specific issues, opening the way for the moneyed faction to get what it wants.

It took most people far too long to get that Obama was a phony because the presumption that a black man would be sympathetic to the fate of the downtrodden is a deeply embedded but never voiced prejudice (and this bias is exploited successfully by the right in depicting Obama as a socialist). Other elements of traditional Democratic associations played into the Obama positioning: his Administration is chock full of technocratic Harvard wonks, and the last time an Administration was so dominated by technocrats was under Kennedy, the last Democratic Administration to have a strongly positive (indeed romanticized) image. (Yes, the Clintons also liked fancy resume types, but they also placed a very high premium on loyalty, and with the result that long-standing supporters often wound up in surprisingly senior roles).

These traditional iconic symbols of liberalism – secular urban elitism, blackness, technocratic skill, micro-issue identity based political organizing groups – have been fully subverted in the service of banking interests. Obama is the ultimate, but not the only, piece of evidence that these symbols are now used simply to con the Democratic base out of their support and money.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Suckers.

That’s what they call the people at the bottom end of a failed Ponzi Scheme and this, unlike Social Security is in fact a Ponzi Scheme.  You see, Social Security pays out 85% of it’s benefits (15% haircut) after 35 years if nothing is done like, oh… say raising the income cap.

Greek Bonds start at a 50% haircut and spiral rapidly to kitty litter.

Road Map to Prepackaged, Orderly Default That Keeps Greece in Euro: View

By the Editors, Bloomberg News

Sep 27, 2011 8:00 PM ET

European leaders swear a Greek default isn’t in the cards. Their parliaments debate whether to bolster an inadequate rescue facility. The International Monetary Fund sends delegates to Athens to make sure it deserves its next tiny tranche of bailout aid. German Chancellor Angela Merkel regularly declares fealty to the euro.

They’re all in denial. Almost no one believes Greece is solvent, not with an economy — and tax receipts — shrinking and debt ballooning to 180 percent of gross domestic product, a burden that no amount of belt-tightening will make bearable. The question now is whether Europe can arrange a controlled and orderly default, or will allow a Greek bankruptcy that is chaotic and destructive to the global economy.

…

Expelling Greece from the euro would cause more economic, political and social chaos than the world can bear. The possibilities range from runs on European banks to violent rioting in the streets of Athens — or even civil war. True, leaving the euro would allow Greece to do something it can’t do now — devalue its currency — to be more competitive. But it would also paralyze a drachma-tized economy. One big reason is that companies with euro debts would be hard-pressed to pay them back with a deeply devalued drachma, and would face bankruptcy.

Exiting would also be more expensive than staying. Willem Buiter, the chief economist at Citigroup, says a euro exit would mean a 100 percent write-off of Greek bonds, while staying would mean writing down their value by 60 percent to 80 percent. Greek bonds now trade at discounts of 40 percent to 65 percent of face value.

Without a growth plan, the EU faces financial Waterloo

The latest eurozone rescue scheme may save Greece for now, but it fails on a basic rule of classical economics

Simon Jenkins, The Guardian

27 September 2011

A bad-tempered weekend at the IMF in Washington has reportedly led to a ghost of a plan that makes sense. It involves halving Greece’s debts to German and French banks, repeating the 21% “haircut” default of last July. This in turn will hurt the banks more than they might stand, so the second part of the plan props them with urgent subsidies. In a third part, some 2 trillion euros would be tipped into the European central bank, somehow to “firewall” the sovereign debts of Portugal and Ireland and perhaps even Italy and Spain.

This plan is first aid at the scene of the accident. But when all bad options have failed, desperate men turn to worse ones. The summer’s stress tests, bail-outs, Greek promises and quantitative easings are dead in the water. Europe’s weaker governments have gone on spending and borrowing, and banks lending. Greece’s chief paymaster, Germany, is fed up and Greece is on the brink of bankruptcy. Its workers will soon not get paid and its government might fall – an echo of Weimar.

…

The plan currently in circulation makes short-term sense. But it is a rescue plan, not a growth plan. The frightening realisation is that, at a time of recession, the economic conversation is back to the 1930s, as if Keynes had never preached the woes of austerity. In the past three years, 20 million people have lost their jobs worldwide. This staggering waste of human resources is entirely due to human error, to the political mismanagement of economies, which makes Ed Balls’ boasting in his conference speech on Monday the more inexcusable.

The western economy is in the grip of a textbook liquidity squeeze. There is cash everywhere. British companies alone have some £700bn on deposit, which they are unable or unwilling to invest for lack of demand. The Bank of England has printed some £200bn of quantitative easing, mendaciously claiming it will “kick-start the economy”. It has merely added to the pile, and is proposing to add more. It cannot explain where the money has gone, or show one constructive idea as to how to boost demand to mop up this lake of liquidity. The bank is back in the dark ages, starving today to inflate tomorrow.

Where have the government’s Tory monetarists gone? Where are their graphs of M1, M2 and M3 and their equations of the velocity of cash in circulation? The liquidity squeeze is nothing to do with George Osborne’s public sector cuts, which are mild, but with the laws of classical economics. In a recession, you do not save, you spend. Why is Osborne building a cash mountain? If nothing is done to ease the constipation in the British economy, when the rest of Europe recovers it will grow and Britain will merely stumble into stagflation.

In the face of this what is Peter Orzag’s recommmendation (you remember, he was Barack Obama’s Citigroup Budget Director)?

Peter Orszag’s Bid to Get Politicians Out of Policy

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Tuesday September 27, 2011 12:22 pm

Peter Orszag caused a bit of a stir with his call for an enlightened technocracy, and, literally, “less democracy.”

…

The very serious technocrats have been wrong about everything in their own right, from the OECD to the ECB to the Fed and on down the line. This is a dodge, an attempt to get elites off the hook for their complete failure to guide the economy by saying that they’re being stymied by “democracy.”

Does Economics Still Progress?

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

September 27, 2011, 4:03 pm

I’ve never liked the notion of talking about economic “science” – it’s much too raw and imperfect a discipline to be paired casually with things like chemistry or biology, and in general when someone talks about economics as a science I immediately suspect that I’m hearing someone who doesn’t know that models are only models. Still, when I was younger I firmly believed that economics was a field that progressed over time, that every generation knew more than the generation before.

The question now is whether that’s still true. In 1971 it was clear that economists knew a lot that they hadn’t known in 1931. Is that clear when we compare 2011 with 1971? I think you can actually make the case that in important ways the profession knew more in 1971 than it does now.

…

What I’d add to that is that at this point it seems to me that many economists aren’t even trying to get at the truth. When I look at a lot of what prominent economists have been writing in response to the ongoing economic crisis, I see no sign of intellectual discomfort, no sense that a disaster their models made no allowance for is troubling them; I see only blithe invention of stories to rationalize the disaster in a way that supports their side of the partisan divide.

Brilliant!

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Rewarding Good Rhetoric

by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”), Hullabaloo

9/26/2011 07:30:00 AM

Obviously, the so-called “Obama Wars” in the blogosphere are more complicated than this: the President could surely take a stronger negotiating position so that the final compromise position with Republicans to avert disaster would have a decidedly more left-leaning skew. Certainly, the President could always have been doing much more with executive decisions, bypassing the Legislature to achieve more progressive results. The President’s rhetoric over the last couple of years could no doubt have been far more forceful. And it would be easier to give the President the benefit of the doubt were there not ample evidence that he actually believes conservative claims that Social Security and Medicare require cutting in order for the nation to solve its deficit problems. Changing all of these things would have helped dramatically, and the criticism the President has received from progressives on these fronts has been more than valid.

…

Progressives are rightly furious with the President over what he has done–and perhaps more importantly, what he has not done over the past two years.

But the reality is that from now until November 2012, the President is not going to be able to accomplish much of anything in the legislative arena. The Republicans simply won’t allow him to claim any sort of legislative victory, no matter how small.

…

Is that a political ploy to win back the progressive base? Probably. But what of it? First of all, rhetoric matters. When the President speaks, the people listen. And if the President is telling the progressive story in an aggressive way, that itself constitutes action in its own way.

…

(G)iven that for better or worse Mr. Obama will be the Democratic standardbearer in 2012, a progressive activist seeking to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior would be wise to praise this newfound aggressive rhetoric as not only a good first step, but truly the only real step possible at this point given the political dynamic at work.

Of course, once election season is over, there has to be follow through.

…

But for now and for the next year, rhetoric will be 90% of what we have to judge this President on. It’s fairly impossible to tell whether Mr. Obama has had a real change of heart regarding his negotiating strategy with Republicans or not.

…

It’s important that this change of pace in his rhetoric be rewarded. We have little else to go on at this point, and little other leverage to use.

Wrong!  And here is why-

For Voters to Believe Obama’s Second Term Will Bring About Change, He Needs to Acknowledge What Needs to Change in Himself

Arianna Huffington, The Huffigton Post

Posted: 9/18/11 11:29 PM ET

We’ve now seen the ways in which the president went about trying to effect that change over the last three years. So while his ideas about the changes the system needs in his second term are welcome and necessary, there is another kind of change he needs to talk about if the change he proposes is to be believed. He needs to make clear the changes he intends to make in himself, in the way he governs, and in the way he approaches the big, systemic changes he claims to want to see.

…

Obama has continued to make eloquent speeches about the need for change — but it’s the between-the-speeches-about-change part that needs some change of its own. Because, at this point, it’s abundantly clear that the system isn’t going to change unless Obama’s method of bringing about change changes first.

It won’t be easy. The closer we get to the 2012 election, the more voters tend to dismiss all rhetoric as mere electioneering. So given this rhetorical depreciation — an election speech loses half its value the second you drive it off the lot — this time it’s going to take more than Obama trumpeting change as the goal. This time we need to hear more about exactly how he intends to change the ways he intends to bring about change. This requires acknowledging that change is not just needed in the country, but in himself.

…

(T)he president’s problem going forward is explaining the shift: If you’ve been taking one approach and then you abruptly change without acknowledging why, or even that you did, or what lessons were learned that caused you to make the change, it just doesn’t ring true.

Of course, acknowledging mistakes and course-correcting are the hardest things for a leader to do. But in order for voters to believe that things will be different in the president’s second term, there has to be some recognition of what didn’t work in the first. Otherwise, any future talk of change will be like hearing a song without the music. And the more often words of change are used without real change happening, the more devalued they will become.

Arianna on what Obama needs to do

By John Aravosis, Americablog

9/22/2011 12:45:00 PM

I’m posting this because this is exactly what I’ve been telling people the past few days. I want to believe that the President’s shift towards being a fighter and not a lover is real. And he’s made some good moves and should be lauded for it. But I’m not sure whether it’s entirely real because it doesn’t quite make sense. What changed? How do you one day wake up and become a different person? I think it’s possible to change, but I think it usually takes some kind of personal epiphany, brought on by seriously bad circumstances, and I guess I’d like to know more about what that epiphany was, in order to believe that it’s real. That’s why Arianna’s words above hit a chord for me.

Obama making big push to win back minorities and other core Democratic voters

By John Aravosis, Americablog

9/25/2011 08:00:00 AM

A lot of us predicted this two years ago, and really more than two years ago. We warned that core constituencies were getting seriously ticked off, and that the President’s desire for comity was making him look, well, like a wimp (we just didn’t use the word because it wasn’t polite).  And in response, we were called “bedwetters,” and more generally belittled by senior presidential aides.

I’m glad the President appears to be changing direction these past few weeks.  But if it’s only based on the current polls, and the fear of not being re-elected, then how do we know we won’t be back to where started (the phrases “f’g retards,” “professional left,” and “Internet left fringe” come to mind) the day after Barack Obama is re-elected? That’s a core concern the campaign, and the White House, need to address.

We want to see an epiphany, not just a temporary tactical correction that will end on November 7, 2012, regardless of who wins.

Obama’s small financial donors not showing interest this time

By Chris in Paris, Americablog

9/25/2011 05:55:00 PM

Sounds like quite a few people who expected “change” and aren’t seeing it. The “professional left” is possibly a bit larger than the White House team imagined. So now that the Wall Street people who donated heavily to Obama in 2008 think that he’s a socialist, the youth vote is disillusioned and the small donors feel that he gives in too easily, will this finally make a difference? The recent tone sounds like an improvement but at this point, most want more than just a few days of tough talk.

…

This issue is what really has stood out for me in the last few weeks of travel in the US. Friends and family who were among the most supportive of Obama in 2008 are disgusted with the constant crumbling on issue after issue. It hardly sounded like it was a casual concern, but instead, very deeply rooted with voters. Reading this NY Times piece, it sounds like it’s a very serious problem that needs to be addressed.

And of course, as TheMomCat pointed out previously, Obama isn’t even able to give up his progressive bashing rhetoric for a whole solid week.

So the question on the table is- do you want to vote for a Conservative Republican?

Or a Conservative Republican who’s also an opportunistic liar?

Harry Truman gave us the answer to that-

Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

BP Gulf Drilling Plan Criticized by Environmentalists, Lawmakers

By Katarzyna Klimasinska and Brian Swint, Bloomberg News

Sep 26, 2011 8:43 AM ET

BP was “ultimately responsible” for the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 and started the leak, though rigowner Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton Co (HAL), which provided cement, share some of the blame, a U.S. report said Sept. 14. The 212-page document issued by the Interior Department and Coast Guard said BP managers were distracted by cost overruns and personal conflicts.

…

Gulf of Mexico oil is more than twice as profitable as production from the rest of BP’s portfolio, yielding about $60 in profit to the company when oil prices are $100 a barrel. In 2010, the Gulf of Mexico accounted for 28 percent of the company’s cash flow and just 10 percent of production, according to research by Citigroup Inc. analyst Alastair Syme.

…

BP’s Dudley said July 26 that BP is eager to “get back to work” in the Gulf, working closely with regulators, and that the pace of BP’s return depends on getting approvals for new wells. He said the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Management says BP won’t be held to a higher standard than its peers in its applications.

What could possibly go wrong?

Study shows dispersants BP used in oil spill may cause cancer

Kimberly Blair, Pensacola News Journal

12:00 AM, Sep. 26, 2011  

The report indicates that the 1.8 million gallons of oil dispersants – including Corexit 9500 and 9527 – sprayed on or dumped into the Gulf of Mexico after the spill could contain cancer-causing agents, endocrine-disrupting chemicals and hazardous toxins.

And the chemicals mixed with the sweet Louisiana crude that flowed into the Gulf for 87 days from the Deepwater Horizon oil well may have created a brew that is more harmful to marine life, humans and the environment than the oil.

Gulf oil spill could cause lasting damage to fish populations, study finds

By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post

Published: September 26

Fish living in Gulf of Mexico marshes exposed to last year’s oil spill have undergone cellular changes that could lead to developmental and reproductive problems, a group of researchers reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

…

“Their biology is telling us that they’ve been a), exposed to these chemicals and b), affected by them in negative ways,” said Andrew Whitehead, an associate professor of biology at LSU and the paper’s lead author. “Very low-level exposures can cause these toxic effects.”

…

Whitehead said the results show that just because fish from the gulf have passed federal inspections, it does not mean these species are unaffected by the spill.

“You can have a fish that’s safe to eat but is still not healthy,” he said, adding that as sediment containing hydrocarbons is dredged up by storms, it could expose species over time. “The sediments are going to act as this long-term reservoir of oil, of potential exposure.”

Docs show US gov’t bias to Keystone XL during environmental study

by Lynn Herrmann

Sep 26, 2011

Washington – New documents reveal the US State Department was “doing favors” for TransCanada during a government review of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and sheds light on a White House bias in favor of the pipeline.

…

Among the initial batch of 34 documents (pdf) released, all originating from the Office of the Secretary, are concerns over State Department “bias” and Clinton’s comment herself before the required environmental review had been completed in which she stated she was “inclined” toward project approval.

…

Other documents reveal State Department officials helped TransCanada by “providing information about State’s internal thinking and by coaching TransCanada on what to say” in response to the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), Friends of the Earth notes.

In another email correspondence (pdf) from December 6, 2009, Elliott offered to have TransCanada lobby the Canadian government on behalf of the State Department, with Elliott stating “TransCanada executives spend a great deal of time with Ottawa government officials” and added “TransCanada can be an asset for the state department and I hope you might see us as such.”