Too many op-eds recently seem to be devoted to lamenting how tough it’s going to be now to get offshore drilling permitted. Virtually nothing that I’ve seen about how this catastrophe could be an opportunity to finally move ahead with alternative energy. How far are politicians willing to go to protect the profits of an industry that is as doomed as the flat Earth theory?

Senate Approves $60 Billion For War, While House Cuts $24 Billion For Unemployed Workers And State Aid

The statement perfectly sums up our priorities. How much of the $60 bill goes to Halliburton/big oil? Is the Dick Cheney still calling the shots?

HELLO! Hello, hello, hello…….
ECHO! Echo, echo, echo….

I’d also like to point out that this whole “top kill” idea could have been tried long ago but BP has seemed to be more interested in rescuing their well and recovering the oil than rescuing the environment of the Gulf. This is something else that is really, incredibly, painfully obvious while being studiously ignored by out intrepid media. Including, I’m sorry to say, our own esteemed Rachel Maddow.

Wow! No traffic this morning. I guess I’ll get started on my walk rather than carrying on a conversation with myself. laters! :-)

Mornin’, BT, pups

There’s no profit motive for BP to clean up their mess. Do a quarter-assed job, keep everybody in court for a couple generations, laugh all the way to the bank.

The decision and opinion makers have no vision. Everything falls within a very narrow frame of reference. They literally cannot think outside the box.

I’ve been busy and not around the Lake much the past week or so, and maybe I’m slow on the uptake, but watching Rachel last night with the diagram of the massive oil plumes beneath the surface of the Gulf, something popped into my consciousness. What happens to those huge underwater plumes of oil, which appear to be far larger than anything on the surface, when we have major tropical storms and hurricanes this summer. Hurricane season begins next week. Is it possible that the oil could be sucked up and deposited in wide swaths anywhere the hurricane makes landfall?

And I wonder if some of those supertankers could suck some of the oil out of those underwater plumes?

Yikes!

Got an early vet appt.

US KIA Irak: 4,400

US KIA Afghanistan: 1,086

Iraki and Afghan casualties: estimates vary to over 1.5M

US MBS 2010: 18,228 and counting

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

Don’t you know. Maddow is now one of the “chosen” ones. Once you move up the ladder and reach the heights the perks and privileges insure your former voice is co-opted.

It couldn’t be more obvious.

Sometime in the next day or so, Team Obama may have to stop saying they are on top of the situation, echoing Katrina, and actually take over responsibility. Kind of unfortunate for TO. They’d have been better off saying “you broke it, you fix it”. Not even Mr. Market thinks that Obama will send BP the bill, as can be seen by the last few day’s rising stock price.

The Top Kill 2.0, rubber junk in combination with concrete fixings, is hard to rationalize. If rocks and sand get pushed back out then how are they going to get frozen rubber chunks to sink and miraculously plug up the holes as they are pushed back out. Frozen petroleum based rubber is not very strong when cold or pliable. This must be a southern strategy because people from up north know about these kinds of issues.

The only thing worse would be if we get the military involved. If they get out their toys of mass destruction and blow something up, then the pro-oil south will have all of the proof that they were right that they can handle.

Anyone know the status of the “top-kill/junk shot?” For what it’s worth the Bill Press radio show’s guest host Peter Alexander, I think that’s his name, said things were improving. I had to stop listening because his Obama love was over the top.

I saw this on MSNBC’s twitter feed about an hour ago: “Flow of oil, gas from well in Gulf of Mexico appears to have stopped but unclear whether it can be sustained, incident commander tells ABC”

Does anyone know of any arrests in the middle of the night?

The live feed still shows “mud” flowing out of the leaks.

Just read that Obama will be doing down to Louisiana for a gander / photo op. Well, since he doesn’t have much else on his plate this weekend… (larger than usual snark)

Nothing more than starting another Korean War, that is. While Emanuel’s sucking Netanyahu off to get him to attack Iran.

If it is only mud, I guess that would be a good sign. …until we find out that drilling mud is 1000x more toxic than oil and dispersants.

Or taking some time out to lay a wreath or two.

I suppose that could be nasty if oil got sucked up and dropped like acid rain. But I’ve heard on NPR that the ocean (and Gulf) is full of oil eating bugs that clean the water quite well. I have no knowledge if this is true, but I hope it is.

There are microbes that will eat the oil. It only takes 50 or so years.

on NPR that the ocean (and Gulf) is full of oil eating bugs

OMFG, Andromeda Strain was a documentary! Who knew?

I heard that since oil is natural, the ocean will take care of it naturally, so nothing to worry about. /s

Where I come from the ground has arsenic, copper and mercury bleeding out of the ground during major rainstorms. Very natural.

That’s the part NPR neglected to report.

The other part is that eating the oil kills them. If there is too much oil there will not be enough naturally occuring microbes, over the long haul, to do the job. I have been wondering why microbes have not been applied directly already.

Monkeyfister owns the BP story http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/

Riki Ott‘s site is one to follow.

Live in an area that was once mined over?

Thanks for the link. I heard her interviewed, I think on the Ed Schultz Show. She’s a real authority so I don’t expect she’ll be called before Congress or the WH bipartisan whitewash, I mean investigation commission. Some things the public just doesn’t need to hear.

Fairly close to Butte Montana. The largest toxic open pit I know about. Fortunately, it was more than 40 miles away and I moved from there when I could.

Corporate capitalism, the gift that keeps on giving.

A concern I’ve heard is that these oil eating microbes will deplete the oxygen, creating huge dead zones.

Also for 50 yrears and more They take all the oxygen out of the water in the doing, leaving large swaths where only no oxygen breathers can live.and the algae blooms.

The owners went to Chile and never looked back. The poisons stewing in the pit kill whatever lands in it every once in while. The dark green copper lake derived from the pit almost certainly isn’t seeping into the local aquifer and of course the pitiful super-fund (remember when they used to do that?) has made no attempt to address the problem because it is just too big. Fortunately that’s why they invented fences.

The pit is a minor tourist attraction. Capitalism at it’s best.

A good article about oil eating microbes:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-microbes-clean-up-oil-spills

Yeah me too, why didn’t they do it immediately?

Did they want to poison us? Why would they do that? Could it be to ‘get us back’ for dosing them with uranium gas?

Uranium Bombing In Iraq Contaminates Europe
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/64938448-uranium-bombing-in-iraq-contaminates-europe

Dead zone, schmed zone, don’t you realize we need those to store all of our plastic trash? I mean that’s what’s wrong with the great Pacific Gyre, there’s too much life there. If we could just get rid of the biology, there wouldn’t really be a problem. That pesky environment is always causing us grief and losing us profit. We should just get rid of it altogether.

Your question is addressed at about 5:00,

Dylan Ratigan – Frantic search for solutions in the Gulf
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/64938448-uranium-bombing-in-iraq-contaminates-europe

What I want to know is why didn’t Obama order this done within a few days? It still isn’t happening even though it is an obvious and tried and true solution. What gives?

50 years? No big deal. If you’re operating on geologic time.

On the upside, I’m sure the oil tastes like chicken to those microbes.

Heckuva job, ORhama…

When I heard about the commission I thought “9/11″ all over again.

Remember how people were sent out without respirators? I’m seeing deadly denial of air pollution as a pattern. I don’t even call it manslaughter, I call it murder. I also think it occurred with malice of forethought.

All they would have to do is declare war on us and it would be a war crime and or terrorism. I wonder if they are ‘partners’ with FOXN?

50 years?! Them’s dime-store numbers. Now nuclear waste, THAT’s the real deal. Let’s put that and the reactors that create it in our major cities. Modern nuclear plants are SAFE. Heck, they’ve gotta be at least as safe as off-shore drilling rigs!

I think we should stop all oil drilling in the Gulf and replace the rigs with nuclear power plants. In the ocean. Talk about alternative energy sources. And bonus: The ocean glows in the dark.

Hey…I’m all about innovation. In fact, this is such a stupid idea that the White House might actually hire me to supervise the conversion.

Sorry, the White House doesn’t hire anyone who doesn’t already have a long history of being a corporate tool. Have you been on any executive boards or litigated on behalf of big energy?

Good God, Rachael Maddow has become lobotomized like the rest of the status quo “Left.”

9/11 = Top Kill
TARP = Junk Shot
Taxpayer Bailouts = Relief Wells

Elite’s created America’s reality that has them in permamnent dominance and us in permanent submission.

I think I’m just about done with Rachel Maddow. I watched the first quarter of her show last night that dealt primarily with the spill.

Not once did she raise the issue of the federal government’s response to the catastrophe, or President Obama’s name…even though Obama had just presided over his first real press conference since July, and the whole affair was almost solely about his Administration’s response to the spill in the Gulf.

She talked to emotional LA Rep Charlie Melancon, but appeared unable to root out the reason for his tearful breakdown…the fouling of Louisiana’s wetlands while the federal government appears paralyzed.

Rachel Maddow is able to provide details of the most arcane machinations of the loony nutbag members of “The Family”…but doesn’t seem able the discuss the elephant in the room. Shame on her.

Quite agree, Margaret. BP even talked about this methodology early on, but I’m sure they’d say that they tried a sequence of “tricks” due to something or other sciency blah blah. I feel, as you do, that BP’s main goal was to try to figure out a way to syphon the oil to enhance their profits. Eff the environment; who cares about that?

The fact that BHO has been stunningly AWOL thru most of this is a “tell” for me. Yeah, yeah, BHO got up on his hind legs a coupla times and burped out some crap about BP being “responsible” or whatever. but where’s the POTUS been? Absent.

And then little Piyush “Bobby” Jindal… suddenly now he’s channeling his inner Kenneth Purcell stamping his tiny feet and shaking his tiny fist and demanding that “big govt” come bail him and LA out (don’t go look at that YoutTube of Piyush claiming he hates big govt; he only hates it until the next disaster, when he wants the US taxpayer to bail him out). Where’s little Piyush been all this time? It takes him THIS long to come out of the woodwork and, you know, SAY something?

Meh… bunch of lazy craven villans on the take. BP has taken care of itself with the willing collusion of the cast of usual suspects in the guise of our elected politicians.

Been there, seen that, got my picture taken standing in one of the ginormous tires, visited the copper museum, had to help dad take down the tent camper the next morning in a windstorm, fled the KOA with sagebrush rolling everywhere.

What’s wrong with the way we relate with nature? It’s the idea that the earth isn’t alive, it’s just god-forsaken dirt which we have the god-given right to fuck with until Doomsday, which, at the rate we’re raping Mother Earth, could be any day now.

Instead of trying to find the magic mythical line, on the one side of which is dead stuff, and on our side is Life, wouldn’t it be more parsimonious to assume it’s all alive, to be treated with the commensurate respect, even love? We live in the womb of the earth, but we act like we live in a run-down rental, trashing it more and more everyday, laughing at whoever has to pay our bills, then wondering why we live in a rundown environment and cursing the landlord.

News flash: the earth is the common mother of us all. As we treat Her, so we treat ourselves. We’ve already given Her a fever. We may already be in Her waste stream, to be shat out for our prideful ways.

Also: alan1tx, you heard it on NPR, and believed it enough to repeat it?! Whoa, dude.

Quite agree with you; RM has been co-opted. RM is by far a better journalist than most, but she is clearly not doing her job well in this regard.

That said, I do give her props for her working shining a light on the C Street “Family” gang. My biological family has been sucked into that Cult, and it’s been very helpful and insightful to have a light shone on that criminal gang. They’ve infiltrated a lot of churches, esp on the east coast, and it’s my contention that they’re ripping off parishoners while also manipulating them in various ways. So I have t give RM her due on that story.

Clearly she’s under orders from her GE bosses to give BHO a pass at this point. Too bad.

Rachel Maddow has now been elevated to be one of the “chosen” people. After reaching the heights the perks and privileges of fame and fortune guarantees that one’s voice will perpetuate that current status quo from which they benefit.

There could be no more ideal of a time (under such horrid circumstances) for BHO to push forward with a really dynamic platform of changing our dependence on fossil fuels. And remember this isn’t just about driving cars and trucks; it’s about food production, amongst other industries.

Citizens would be very open to considering making lifestyle changes and open to considering different methods of transportation, etc.

Yet what do we see our POTUS do? Consign us to every more increasing dependency on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. This is just criminal in my mind, esp bc BHO ran on a platform of developing alternatives to energy use, development of green technologies, etc.

For shame and disgusting. Plus was anyone else as turned off as I was watching him at his presser yesterday telling us over and over that hes’ “in charge” and the “leader.” Hey, dude: if you REALLY are in charge and “leading,” you don’t have to TELL people that… they get it. Don’t think you’re in charge at all, Barackstar. Think you’re taking the orders from your corporate masters at BP. Thanks for nothinng.

I think a lot of problem stems from the “christianist” mythology that man (eg, males) are “next to God,” and God gave MEN (eg males) “dominion” over the earth. Hence, whatever men, esp, — but these days, ok, the wimmin folks can, too — DO TO the earth is all part of “God’s plan.”

That’s very simplified, but that’s a big part of why there is this cosmic disconnect to the earth as a living entity that should be treated with respect.

Then there is the apocalypse crowd who believe the chosen will be raptured out of here, so who gives a fack about the environment? Nothing is more important than ME because “God smiles on me.”

Then you have the usual assortment of villanous greed heads who cannot see beyond the nose on their faces, and all they care about is money and power for themselves alone. These crooks are the ones running the show, but they use the religious myths to manipulate some portion of the population into believing it’s all part of “God’s plan.”

If you try to use logic, it doesn’t work, but there’s not much logic involved here. It’s all myths and bright shiney objects.

What a great reply, onitgoes, thanks. I totally agree: it’s a dick thing. Dicking with Mother Earth is Industrial Man’s idea of the Good Life. You don’t have to be a Freudian to see that.

It’s the curse of the ghost of B.F. Skinner. Psy ops and propaganda are what happen when gear heads reduce the world of wisdom in our myths to “tools” in the “war on terror” tool box. Propagandists reduce words to mere quantum energy packets, to be fired at target audiences from high-powered pulpits and high-energy microphones, with the malicious intention of changing the target’s behavior irregardless of its internal state of being.

I want to caution against dismissing the power of myths, though. There’s a very good reason why the power of myth and comparative mythology has been weaponized. That’s just another way of saying, the power of the symbols, images, and narratives that carry our dreams, terrors, and aspirations. We don’t like to admit it, but the human psyche is just as amenable to manipulation by myths and shiny objects as any other earthly psyche.

We have control panels on our psyches, so to speak, with icons aplenty, and spinmeisters and propagandists of all types are busily pushing our buttons as if we were no more than voting-machines and appetites on just two legs, oh so easily jacked.

What is a myth, anyway? A metaphor, a vessel for carrying people through the grave and constant challenges of being human, through the changing stages of life, and on into death with dignity and grace. We’re living by one right now: the myth of the cosmos as nothing more than a Newtonian mechanism.

We’ve taken Newton’s reduction, of organisms to mechanisms, as a given. If the cosmos is a machine, to be ever and always dominated and controlled by outside forces, mainly kinetic leverage, then so, too, are we.

We need to revise and/or revivify a genuine, healthy, life-sustaining myth of being a human American. The myth of American Exceptionalism is killing Mother Earth. That’s the fundamental change I’m trying to be.

Where’s Dr. Morpheus, and his funny little pills, when we need him? Lurking here at FDL, I suspect ;-}

Drop her, and take control of your acid reflux.

There is a diary here that may answer some of your questions.

Sea Brat: Oil Spill Remedy that BP Is Trying to Deny

Recently a toxicologist/ chemist tested my Petro Clean product for the Gulf Spill. He took a slop tank full of water, added minnows and then the crude oil. The fish were killing off… then he hit it with Petro Clean with microbes, enzymes and the kill stopped and the fish began to recover. Testing will be public soon! EPA is doing more test currently to verify these findings (this week) in order to counter BP’s assessment.

BP relaize my product rocked. Beyond anything Nalco could come up with without stealing my formula. So they tried to cover it up. Because BP MUST buy Corexit only….

Top Kill, Junk Shot, Keep Out really means STFU, you peasants.

Forget it. BP was DOA when this thing blew. And so are we.

It’s all lies, everything they say is a lie.
Over at NOLA, I read where “Oil Slick Tony” is now saying, uh, let’s see, how bout Sunday, yeah, Sunday, that’s the ticket.
By Sunday night BP will know if the latest PR stunt
keeps the peasants at bay long enough for Obama to enjoy his holiday weekend.

I mean Jeeeeesus H Christ.
This guy’s forte’ is in shamlessly yanking our chains.

Today’s audacity of hope is sponsored by Benito Barack. Literally bringing energy to our shores.

At the risk of mentioning the wrong thing, it may be that we should have people looking for a better dispersant. If I were a chemist or biotech person working on something like that, though, I’d want an assurance from the government that the necessary regulations and bans had gone into place to assure that such a solution wouldn’t produce a new round of complacency.

But it might be a good time to find a solution now.

Lots of folks asking about the MIA tankers that could suck up the oil.

Speculator types like the boys in our Goldman Treasury have been delusionally waiting for the economy to pick up and world demand for oil to increase, driving up the price. So they been holding back hundreds of filled tankers jparked all over the world just and waiting for the green light.
The main reason the status quo has made sure we don’t have any choice other than a carbon based energy source is to make themselves filthy rich.

Having said that, if Obama and his merry prankster weren’t corrupt beyond redemption he could have made a few phone calls and ordered a few tankers on the move ages ago.

I suppose their inability to figure out how to offset any potential losses by Wall St. speculators on to US taxpayers stopped them in their tracks.

Top kill/Junk shot failed as part of the riser blew off -

at least that is what is moving through the net.