Aug 23 2010
Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette
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Note: Due to a deluge of editorial cartoons over the past week or so, I’m going to, time permitting, post Part II of this weekly diary in the next few days. In addition to some of the issues covered in this edition, I’ll include more cartoons on the floods in Pakistan, the withdrawal of combat U.S. forces in Iraq, and Rupert Murdoch’s $1 million contribution to the GOP.
Aug 11 2010
As the House convenes today, Tuesday, August 10, to vote on some Senate last minute leftovers, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs shows the House members hesitating on voting for more stuff how to communicate effectively with the voters when they resume their 6 week August vacation and fundraising break.
http://thehill.com/homenews/ad…“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”
Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.
Progressives, Gibbs said, are the liberals outside of Washington “in America,” and they are grateful for what Obama has accomplished in a shattered economy with uniform Republican opposition and a short amount of time.
In the spirit of bipartisanshipthingee, I’ll quote Fox News now on what happened next:
http://www.foxnews.com/politic…Tues Aug 10
WASHINGTON — In a rare moment of bipartisanship Tuesday, the House approved $600 million to pay for more unmanned surveillance drones and about 1,500 more agents along the troubled Mexican border.
Getting tougher on border security is one of the few issues that both parties agree on in this highly charged election season. But lawmakers remain deeply divided over a more comprehensive approach to the illegal immigration problem, and it’s unclear if Congress will go beyond border-tightening efforts.
The House passed the bill by an unrecorded voice vote after brief debate.
In fact, although Pelosi was supposedly calling the House back into session during break to vote on a “jobs” bill, ( which went flying under the radar as some Senate amendment to a House Amendment to a Senate Amendment,) the HR 6080 Emergency Supplemental for Border Security for Fiscal Year 2010 was the very first thing they debated and suspended the rules and passed by voice vote today, at 10:54 am EDT. You can see the Clerk of the House’s record here, look up Aug 10, 2010, because there will be NO ROLL CALL VOTE RECORD of this. http://clerk.house.gov/floorsu…
text of bill from THOMAS here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…
Aug 10 2010
Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette
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Aug 04 2010
Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette
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Note:
Due to the unusually high number of editorial cartoons published over the past week or so (I literally have another 300+ cartoons saved), I’m going to try and post another edition of this diary by Friday, August 6th. It something I’ve never done before.
Jul 30 2010
Lafeminista’s Global Warming: Are you f***ing scared yet? highlights yet another reason for grave concern about the impacts of our using the atmosphere as a trash pit: we are killing life in the ocean as
Scientists have discovered that the phytoplankton of the oceans has declined by about 40 per cent over the past century, with much of the loss occurring since the 1950s. They believe the change is linked with rising sea temperatures and global warming.
Should we mention acidification of the oceans? Accelerating extinction rates? Ever-more disrupted weather patterns globally that, among other things, are hurting agricultural production? Stronger storms? Rising seas? ….
At a core level, if you are a parent and unconcerned about what this means for your child’s life (your own as well), well, you are living with blinders on.
Global Warming should effing scare us …
Yet, it doesn’t because it also so complex …
And, sigh, it shouldn’t have to because the solution paths are so clear …
Jul 26 2010
Technology is a double-edged sword.
It can spark the furnace, that keeps you alive in the winter.
It can spark a wild fire, that consumes all its path.
But then again, Lightning can cause the same damage —
WITHOUT the assist of human innovation.
Technology is a double-edged sword.
It can lead to increased crop production, to feed the masses;
which in turn, can lead to increased masses,
that taxes that same crop production.
Technology is a double-edged sword.
Sometimes the simplest of inventions —
can change the world;
often in ways, never imagined by the inventors.
Such innovations have been call “Disruptive Technology” —
because their impact, is SO unexpected,
and yet SO useful — that they spin off other innovations,
and industries, and businesses, and even
entirely new ‘ways of life’ …
Jul 25 2010
Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette
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Jul 23 2010
The Energy Bill has been shelved for now — another Price exacted by the Do Nothing Party.
Senate Halts Effort to Cap CO2 Emissions
Democrats Forgo Centerpiece of President Obama’s Energy Plan, as Cap-and-Trade Fails to Lure Broad Support in Congress
By Stephen Power, Wall Street Journal — July 23, 2010
Mr. Reid refused to declare the idea dead. But Thursday’s decision called into question when or whether any legislated cap on greenhouse-gas emissions would reach Mr. Obama’s desk.
Now, businesses, such as wind-turbine makers, that had bet on a greenhouse-gas provision to make alternatives to coal and oil more cost-competitive must recalculate how long it might take for that to happen.
[…] the solar industry is growing at the rate of about 40% a year in terms of electrical power installed and is likely to continue to grow, said Ron Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Corp.’s Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group in Huntington Beach, Calif.
We need some new Senators (at least 60), who actually care about Energy Independence — enough to act.
Jul 19 2010
In response to our nation's vast economic and ecological problems, Green Change has launched a campaign for a Green New Deal.
The Green New Deal is an ambitious program to create economic prosperity together with ecological sustainability.
We are building a coalition of candidates, individuals and organizations to support the Green New Deal – starting today.
Join the Green New Deal Coalition now.
Here are the ten policies you endorse by joining the Green New Deal Coalition:
1) Cut military spending at least 70%;
2) Create millions of green union jobs through massive public investment in renewable energy, mass transit and conservation;
3) Set ambitious, science-based greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and enact a revenue-neutral carbon tax to meet them;
4) Establish single-payer “Medicare for all” health care;
5) Provide tuition-free public higher education;
6) Change trade agreements to improve labor, environmental, consumer, health and safety standards;
7) End counterproductive prohibition policies and legalize marijuana;
8) Enact tough limits on credit interest and lending rates, progressive tax reform and strict financial regulation;
9) Amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate personhood; and
10) Pass sweeping electoral, campaign finance and anti-corruption reforms.
Will you help us turn these ideas into reality?
Sign up for the Green New Deal Coalition now.
The first step is to agree on these ten priorities. The next step is to push for specific policies to make them happen.
We need your help. Share your ideas about a Green New Deal on the Green Change network.
Jul 18 2010
ClimateGate Advocates — just got their work cut out for them …
Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia
July 16, 2010
Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia, says a new report from the National Research Council. Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.
Who is the National Academies?
ABOUT:
The National Academies perform an unparalleled public service by bringing together committees of experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor. These experts serve pro bono to address critical national issues and give advice to the federal government and the public.
Four organizations comprise the Academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.
Jul 17 2010
The Further Adventures of Macondo, the Misbehaving Well.
Oh, Macondo, you were supposed to save us, and now look what you’ve done!
Can you hear the drums, Fernando ? I remember long ago another starry night like this
In the firelight Fernando, You were humming to yourself and softly strumming your guitar
I could hear the distant drums , and the sound of bugle calls were coming from afar
They were closer now, Fernando, every hour every minute, seemed to last eternally. I was so afraid Fernando, We were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die
and I’m not afraid to say, the roar of guns and cannons almost made me cry
There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, they were shining there for you and me, For Liberty, tho we never thought that we could lose, there’s no regret, if I had to do the same again, I would my friend, Fernando
Friday: The First Family puts on their color coordinated summer outfits in muggy DC, and marches dutifully to the helicopter for the obligatory New England Summer vacation in Maine. They will be staying at the Holiday Inn in Bar Harbor on Mt Desert Island, which was last visited by a President while in office 100 years ago, when William Howard Taft showed up.
Enjoying a stroll today at Acadia National Park in Maine, Properly Attired for the Neighborhood.
A small earthquake hit Washington DC, this morning. The 3.6 magnitude rattler was the largest recorded within 30 miles of the nation’s capitol since 1974. There were no reports of damage from the 2.0 aftershocklette.
Matt Simpson’s Prediction Comes True at Last.
The House of Congress adjourned the day before, and scheduled its next meeting for lunchtime on Monday, July 19, 2010. The Senate also adjourned at 6:33 pm Thursday, and vowed to return next Monday afternoon, whereby they will take up the Jobs Bill. Or the Energy Bill. Or something.
Gov Manchin of West Virginia will have appointed a new Senator by then to fill the seat left vacant by the loss of Senator Byrd.
And thereby complete the Entire Remaining Agenda of the First Term of the Obama Administration in 12 Days. Yes, By God, West Virginia.
Almost heaven. Life is old there. Older than the seas, Younger than the mountains, Blowin’ like a breeze. Take me home. To the place. I belong.
Or at least get the polling numbers up.
(sssppst, those polling numbers…. didja fire the old one yet ? )
Home. If home foreclosures continue at the current rate this year, in 2010 there will have been a million homes lost to the banks, more than the 900,000 homes lost to foreclosure in 2009. The usual amount is about 100,000 homes a year, before the mortgaging/bank financial meltdown started. 7.5 million homeowners are in some sort of payment problem. The 3.2 million jobless people who had their unemployment benefits expire because of lack of Senate action so far this month become the targets of the self righteous, who ignore the higher “unofficial” unemployment rates of 15 to 20% in places like Republican Tea Partier’s Wally Herger’s district in the rural north of California, and tell them to get off the couch, stop eating chips and sodas, and learn to live on subsistence income. Because the system shouldn’t reward the lazy nor punish those who succeed. It is 107ºF degrees in Redding this afternoon, this Friday. Not using air conditioning is the new patriotic.
It was the 87th day since the pierced earth in block 252 of the Macondo prospect in Mississippi Canyon, nearly a mile under the sea, had bled out all the ancient dead liquified souls that it had held for eons, and covered it, shifted it back and forth by wind, strangled it in its carbon and sulfur stench, and mired its living things in tar and fed the swimming things the liquid toxins. People of the coastal Gulf waters watched with cynical eyes as the British Petroleum company and the government told them that first they had shut it off, and then they would wait and see, and then maybe they would turn it back on, after all.
Pressure readings after 24 hours were about 6,700 pounds per square inch and rising slowly, Allen said, below the 7,500 psi that would clearly show the well was not leaking. He said pressure continued to rise between 2 and 10 psi per hour. He said a seismic probe of the surrounding sea floor found no sign of a leak in the ground, one of the major concerns because oil erupting into the surroundings would be harder to contain and could weaken the well before it is plugged for good. The news came at the dinner hour on Friday, just as it always does.
The slow deflation of optimism continued.
All the miracles of modern technology, 4 billion dollars and 3 months later, and still couldn’t get it up.
Said from the start if pressure didn’t rise to 5- 6K PSI, no well integrity & 7,500 + PSI, we would absolutely have integrity.
-Kent WellsBP_ America
Official BP
http://twitter.com/BP_America/…
Maybe there is a blockage in the well. “The pipe integrity’s still there, It’s just getting around obstacles,” said one geology professor at Columbia.
A few hours earlier, another one at the University of Houston named Don Van Nieuwenhuise had tried to say that the well had merely lost power over the time it has been leaking. But in another source he says
“There’s a couple of weak points at 9,000 feet, and one at 17,000 feet, that they might be particularly interested in looking at watching in the seismic. ”
http://www.neurosoftware.ro/fi…
Another telegenic oil wonk, Rob Cavner, of Houston, put it thus:
“they are just sitting there circulating on the bottom at 17,840 (feet). Just sitting there. Wells claims they are doing that for “safety reasons” during the well integrity test. What ? …. what the hell are they doing ? They now have an ability to capture all the oil and stop this massive pollution of the Gulf, as well as measure it. We have great weather to get the relief well completed. We already know without the “well integrity test” that they have severe damage to the BOP and other surface equipment and casing. If that were not true, it wouldn’t have blown out in the first place.”
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“As soon as they do capture all the flow, then a real, measurable number will be in front of the public, and that’s the last thing BP wants, since that number will then be used to extrapolate environmental damage, hence per barrel fines that will likely run to the tens of billions anyway.”
So just call Dickie’s cardiologist, would you ?
But for those who need help before a heart is available, or for whom a transplant is too risky, we have a gizmo called the left ventricular assist device, a $200,000 item. The LVAD is a cumbersome almost-artificial heart that requires the recipient to wear heavy batteries, a shoulder sling with various parts, tubes going through the chest and into the heart and abdomen, and other substantial inconveniences. It helps push a portion of the heart’s blood forward, doing the work the failing ventricle no longer can accomplish. Once used only to stabilize people awaiting heart transplant, it now is referred to, not ironically, as a “destination therapy”-the exact intervention that you want, not the half-assed loaner you are stuck with till the real McCoy arrives.
Six years ago, the doctor and medical historian Howard Markel, writing in The Atlantic, assembled seven fancy cardiologists and discussed Anonymous Patient C’s medical history with them; all were surprised that he was still puttering along, and even more surprised to then be informed that he was at the time their vice president. Stated most simply, he should have died long, long ago. Most people with his heart, his weight and sedentary habits, his history of cigarette smoking and who knows what else already have heard the bell toll. But not Cheney-pointing out that, though useful to define national trends, population-based statistics are completely useless for predicting the fate of an individual. The extremely unlikely happens every day, all of the time: Just as it’s the rare person who wins the lottery, or is struck by lightning, or rolls snake eyes 50 times in a row, so too does a bad guy with a worse heart beat all the odds to stay alive.
So too does a destructive national energy policy, with a bad deepwater oil well, beat all the odds to stay alive.
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Saturday Dawning:
Break out the champaign for brunch, darlings!
BP announces at its only press briefing of the day that :
http://www.theoildrum.com/node…[13:39] “You’ll see bubbles on the 36″ casing”
[13:39] “This is quite normal. First piece of pipe put in down to 500′. Build well on top of that”
[13:39] “There are 6 or 8 valves around this piece of pipe, it’s quite caution. But we’ll go take a sample and make sure it’s not gas from deeper down in the riser”
[13:40] ahh
[13:40] “Could be nitrogen or biodegrading methane”
[13:40] “As the well cools down, that’s probably what caused those bubbles”
Next technical update will be tomorrow (July 18) at 7:30 am CT. Any other updates btwn now & then will be announced.
about 2 hours ago via web http://twitter.com/BP_America/…At this point, there is no evidence that we don’t have well integrity. -Kent Wells
about 2 hours ago via web http://twitter.com/BP_America/…The longer integrity test goes, the more confident we get & the test will end when it is the right time to make that decision. -Kent Wells
about 2 hours ago via web http://twitter.com/BP_America/…Continuing to progress with long-term containment options as planned. -Kent Wells
about 2 hours ago via web http://twitter.com/BP_America/…Bubbles you see on the 36″ casing on one of ROV cameras is normal. Being cautious, going down to double check & get a sample. -Kent Wells
about 2 hours ago via web http://twitter.com/BP_America/…Well integrity test continues, with pressure currently at 6,745 PSI, building at approx 2 PSI per hr. -Kent Wells
about 3 hours ago via web http://twitter.com/BP_America/…Every 6 hrs we’re going to look at the info & keep making decisions at that point on what to do going forward. -Kent Wells
about 16 hours ago via web http://twitter.com/BP_America/…
