Let's Use the Correct Terminology

This is a leak.



This is a gusher.

Even if it is on the ocean floor under 1 mile of seawater, it is still a gusher, not a leak!

Not only are they most likely under-estimating the flow rate, they are using the wrong terminology.

Obama Tells GOP NO!

This is a great clip. We need more like it.

Question of the Day

Why is the Bible filed in the non -fiction section of the library?

Maine GOP Throws Children Under the Bus

The GOP platform in Maine has been written by the Tea Party. It is something that all Maine republicans are supposed to run on. This should be very interesting. You can read the platform here (link to download pdf file).

Most of it is standard GOP/Tea Party rhetoric. But, there are a couple of interesting provisions, one dealing with the fetus and one dealing with children. It seems that Maine is more interested in the unborn than the born.

First of all, they say:
"We recognize the sanctity of life, which includes the unborn."

OK, they are against abortion. Standard stuff. But then they go on to say:

"Reject the UN Treaty on Rights of the Child."

Wait a minute!

The UN Treaty on Rights of the Child deals with the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of children. Among other things, it prohibits the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography.

One could say, and of course I never would, that the Maine GOP/Tea Party is in favor of the sale of children.

One could say, and of course I never would, that the Maine GOP/Tea Party is in favor of child prostitution.

One could say, and of course I never would, that the Maine GOP/Tea Party is in favor of child pornography.

The other interesting aspect of this whole thing is that only two countries in the whole world have not ratified this Convention. Want to guess who they are?

Somalia

and

The United States!

What's up with that?


UPDATE

This just in: Maine GOP Vandalizes 8th Grade Classroom

Not only did they adopt a Tea Bag platform, they met in a public school classroom and "went through eighth-grade teacher Paul Clifford’s items, opened sealed boxes, stole a prized poster, and vandalized the room with Republican slogans."

Way to go GOP. That's showing lots of "class"!

Un-Funny Funnies

Do Corporations Lie To Save Money?

Here is what happens when they do.



Read this article by Greg Palast from Truthout.org. Here are some excerpts:

"To contain a spill, the main thing you need is a lot of rubber, long skirts of it called a "boom." Quickly surround a spill, leak or burst, then pump it out into skimmers, or disperse it, sink it or burn it. Simple."

"...BP has figured out a very low-cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates."

EXXON VALDEZ SPILL

" I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon's name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was ... British Petroleum (BP).""Before the Exxon Valdez grounding, BP's Alyeska group claimed it had these full-time, oil spill response crews. Alyeska had hired Alaskan natives, trained them to drop from helicopters into the freezing water and set booms in case of emergency. Alyeska also certified in writing that a containment barge with equipment was within five hours sailing of any point in the Prince William Sound. Alyeska also told the state and federal government it had plenty of boom and equipment cached on Bligh Island.

But it was all a lie. On that March night in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound, the BP group had, in fact, not a lick of boom there. And Alyeska had fired the natives who had manned the full-time response teams, replacing them with phantom crews, lists of untrained employees with no idea how to control a spill. And that containment barge at the ready was, in fact, laid up in a drydock in Cordova, locked under ice, 12 hours away."

DEEPWATER HORIZON SPILL

"Where was BP's containment barge and response crew? Why was the containment boom laid so damn late, too late and too little? Why is it that the US Navy is hauling in 12 miles of rubber boom and fielding seven skimmers, instead of BP?"

"...the spill response crews were told they weren't needed because the company had already sealed the well. Like everything else from BP mouthpieces, it was a lie."

WHY DID IT HAPPEN?

"Americans want government off our backs ... that is, until a folding crib crushes the skull of our baby, Toyota accelerators speed us to our death, banks blow our savings on gambling sprees and crude oil smothers the Mississippi.

Then, suddenly, it's, "Where was hell was the government? Why didn't the government do something to stop it?"

"It was only last month that BP, lobbying for new deepwater drilling, testified to Congress that additional equipment and inspection wasn't needed."

"...one of the platform workers has informed him that the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews, who, therefore, poured in too small a cement cap for the additional pressure caused by the extra depth. So, it blew."

TRUTH?

"BP says its worker is lying. Someone's lying here, man on the platform or the company that has practiced prevarication from Alaska to Louisiana. "

What Does History Tell Us?

Rachel Maddow revisits the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Is this what the Gulf Coast has to look forward to?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

h/t to TomCat at Politics Plus

What Do You Want To Bet?

BP's CEO said the oil company would pay all necessary and appropriate clean up costs associated with the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

What do you want to bet that "all necessary and appropriate clean up costs" means their maximum liability of $75 million dollars only as per the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

Want to guess who is going to pay for the rest?

Looks like more corporate "privatize profits, socialize losses". The banks got theirs. Now it is time for the oil companies. Who's next?

Skytruth

The LA Times, today, has an article about Skytruth. Skytruth is a small nonprofit group that has been monitoring the oil spill. They were the first to point out that the spill was much bigger than the initial 1000 barrels estimate given by BP and the government. That sent BP and the government scrambling to come up with the 5000 barrel estimate.

As stated in the LA Times article, "Saturday, the group updated its analysis to estimate that the slick contained more than 11.1 million gallons of oil, which would make it the largest oil spill in American history. John Amos, the group's president, also revised the estimate of the rate of oil leaking to 25,000 barrels a day, saying it was a "rock bottom" figure."

25,000 barrels per day is 1,050,000 gallons per day. That's right, over 1 MILLION GALLONS PER DAY!

That's 25 times the initial estimate, and there is no end in sight.

With all the resources that a large international corporation, British Petroleum, and with all the resources of the federal government, why does it take a " tiny nonprofit group with one paid staffer in a one-room office in a small West Virginia town" to figure out how much oil is leaking?

What Happened To The Volcano?

Well, the oil spill, or should I say oil leak, in the Gulf has certainly knocked the Iceland volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, off the front pages. Before we leave it, however, I would like to use it to point out more extreme mis-information out there about volcanoes and global climate change.

I spent last weekend visiting relatives in the mid-West. We were out driving around and the topic of the Iceland volcano came up. One relative blurted out,

"You know, that volcano has spewed out more carbon dioxide than is produced by all the cars in the US in 10 years. So much for our impact on global warming. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Now, I knew he was full of crap, but (1) did not have my facts with me, and (2) did not want to really get into a climate change discussion at that time. Where did he get that "information"? He listens to "shock-jock" radio, so it probably came from there. Such thoughts may have originated from Ian Plimer who has written that volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined.

Let's look at some numbers.

The volcano is emitting about 150,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per day. That's 0.15 million metric tons per day.

When flights were cancelled in Europe, there was actually a net DECREASE in the carbon dioxide emissions. Airline carbon dioxide is more than twice the volcano carbon dioxide.

The effects of Eyjafjallajokull are quite small compared to other volcanoes. Mt. Pinatubo (much bigger eruption) in the Philippines emitted 42 million tons of carbon dioxide in 1991. The Iceland volcano will have to erupt for 280 days to equal that amount. That may happen. 42 million is a large number by itself. How does it compare to those cars?

Cars in the US emit about 1,600 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in one year. Hey, 1,600 million is much larger than 42 million. Way bigger. In ten years US cars emit 16,000 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Wow! 16,000 million is way way bigger than 42 million. What do you know?

And what about all the other human activity? Well, in 2006 we contributed 29,195 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. That's a really big big number, makes Eyjafjallajokull seem somewhat insignificant.