NOAA, that wonderful government division, that showed us incorrect oil maps, lied about there being plumes of oil in the water, now gives us this laugher:  

Only about 26 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak is still in the water or onshore, and most of it is diluted and breaking down rapidly, officials say.

NYT

Uh, sure.

Right.

26 % you say?

Poof. All gone.

If this isn’t proof that the American government is controlled by corporations, I don’t know what is.

To sum up, the government has collaborated with BP to hire public relations firms, been caught setting booms w/o skimmers, has kept reporters away from the gulf, been repeatedly caught lying about the size of the spill, the oil plumes, the reason for the use of toxic dispersant, and now claims that the seafood is clean based on ‘experts’ who literally smell it, and based on the smell, pronouce it safe. See here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

And now NOAA says 74% is just gone, although, the exact release number presumably is unknown (“unknown/unknown”) , we now know that more or less 74% of that unknown number is just gone.

This has been determined totally  scientifically, by real experts complete with oil diving rods, combing a map of the gulf painstakingly & by smell, I presume.  Drawn on a napkin.

Thank you, BP US government for fixing the gulf so rapidly.

I commode you.

Uh, commend you.  

Holy Sh*t.  

Air travel must be the sacred  f’ing cow to rule them all.

What the hell is wrong with US persons, that they just don’t care about anything?

Or care to fight about anything?

Until daddy takes the TV away, I guess.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07…

115,000 in NYS alone.

The lawsuit accuses the British energy giant of violating the U.S. Endangered Species Act and terms of its lease with the federal government for the deep-sea drilling rig that exploded on April 20, unleashing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The suit says rare turtles protected under the Endangered Species Act are being inadvertently burned to death when spill containment crews corral large patches of oil on the surface of the Gulf and set the petroleum ablaze to dispose of it.

Those deaths, the suit says, amount to illegal “takings” of endangered turtles. A check of federal records has found no indication that BP ever applied for special government permits that would allow for “incidental takes” of protected species under such circumstances, according to the lawsuit.

Among the creatures most at risk from the incineration of oil at sea are the endangered Kemp’s ridley turtle, the smallest known sea turtles in the world and among the rarest.

Private boat captains chartered for wildlife rescue missions in the Gulf said in affidavits filed with the lawsuits that many young sea turtles have tended to congregate among oil blobs floating in the water, apparently unable to distinguish between the oil and mats of seaweed that provide natural shelter on the surface of the Gulf.

The turtles are then presumably swept up and unable to escape when shrimp boats contracted for cleanup operations are used to drag fire-resistant booms to encircle the floating oil before it is set ablaze.

From http://af.reuters.com/article/…

The suit was brought by:

the Animal Legal Defense Fund  http://www.aldf.org/

the Animal Welfare Institute, http://www.awionline.org/

the Center for Biological Diversity  http://www.biologicaldiversity…

Turtle Island Restoration Network. http://www.seaturtles.org/

More info at the above websites.

On firing McChrystal Obama said there would be no change in policy:

U.S. President Barack Obama says the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will remain the same despite his decision to replace the top general leading the war effort.

Al Jezera

Today, though, his ‘shiny new’ general, Petraeus, promises the US Senate that in fact there will be to changes to policy:

WASHINGTON – Gen. David H. Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that he would take a new look at the rules governing the use of heavy firepower in the Afghan war, which have cut down on United States airstrikes and civilian casualties but have been bitterly criticized by American forces who say they have made the fight more dangerous.

Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

General Petraeus said he would look anew at the rules of engagement in Afghanistan.

Calling the protection of his troops a “moral imperative,” General Petraeus signalled in his Senate confirmation hearing to take command in Afghanistan what could be his first significant shift in policy since President Obama last week fired the top commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

Sure, Mr Obama, why worry about more of this:

I guess McChrystal didn’t kill quite enough kids for our Senators.  

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center say there is an 80 percent chance that an area of disturbed weather between Honduras and Grand Cayman that developed into a tropical depression today will become the first named storm of the season. Then if it forms, it could wobble into the Gulf.

“That could be a real problem if a hurricane goes to the west of where most of the oil is,” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said. “All of the siphoning operation that is going on now … would have to stop for five days before the hurricane and five days after the hurricane.

“At 60,000 barrels a day, that’s a whole lot of additional oil in the Gulf.”

Nelson said he is worried about the effects any tropical system could have on oil already blackening some Panhandle beaches.

“If a hurricane takes it across the beach and into the wetlands and inlands, that’s going to be adding all the more insult to injury that we have already,” the senator said.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/20…

And here we go.   From now to October.

Hopefully this first one will lose strength at the Yucatan Peninsula.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06…

And more hidden dead animal bodies by BP:

As the oil spill (gusher) reaches towards higher and higher estimates of it’s size (today’s ‘new’  estimate: 35,000-60,000 barrels per day) the American president reaches for more rhetoric, in hopes that will work.  A bunch of passing the buck, a very small amount of promising things that obviously should have been done yesterday, some religious mumbo jumbo, and nothing else.

Yesterday, he said this:

“in the end, I am confident that we’re going to be able to leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before.”

Says he.

How?

By hiding the problem with dispersants?  And hoping the resultant cancers and liver disease don’t get noticed until he’s out of office?

That is a “ridiculous statement, and worrying,” said Susan Shaw, the director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute. “Obviously he has no idea of the consequences, or doesn’t want to.”

(speaking of Obama’s statement) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Today, he offers this:

So I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party – as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels. Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development – and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.

Uh, right. “ideas from either party”

Either party.

These parties have no ideas.

You have no ideas, Mr Obama, yet you promise to “look at”  ideas from the two parties.

The fact is, this is Obama’s third chance to do something positive for alternative energy: the stimulus, the bailouts, and now his BP spill.  And each time he’s failed to deliver anything; less than Jimmy Carter delivered in 1975 in fact.

From Waxman’s letter to Hayward of today (June 14th) :

We are looking forward to your testimony before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on Thursday, June 17,2010, about the causes of the blowout of the Macondo well and the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. As you prepare for this testimony, we want to share with you some of the results of the Committee’s investigation and advise you of issues you should be prepared to address.

The Committee’s investigation is raising serious questions about the decisions made by BP in the days and hours before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. On April 15, five days before the explosion, BP’s drilling engineer called Macondo a “nightmare well.” In spite of the well’s difficulties, BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure.

In several instances, these decisions appear to violate industry guidelines and were made despite warnings from BP’s own personnel and its contractors. In effect, it appears that BP repeatedly chose risky procedures in order to reduce costs and save time and made minimal efforts to contain the added risk.

The whole thing is a blast at BP :

http://online.wsj.com/public/r…  

From The Oil Drum

http://www.theoildrum.com/node…

Huge and very bad if true.

Oil and gas are leaking from the seabed surrounding the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC. Nelson, one of the most informed and diligent Congressmen on the BP gulf oil spill issue, has received reports of leaks in the well, located in the Mississippi Canyon sector. This is potentially huge and devastating news.

If Nelson is correct in that assertion, and he is smart enough to not make such assertions lightly, so I think they must be taken at face value, it means the well casing and well bore are compromised and the gig is up on containment pending a completely effective attempt to seal the well from the bottom via successful “relief wells”. In fact, I have confirmed with Senator Nelson’s office that they are fully aware of the breaking news and significance of what the Senator said to Andrea Mitchell.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake….