Tony Hayward -- The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP speaks faster than his brain works. But then again, in my experience, BP gives way more lip service to safety than they do money. It is no surprise that they lead the industry in safety violations by a wide margin.

Here is a compilation of Hayward's gaffes.



As Brian Merchant at AlterNet says:

"What do you call someone who callously says injurious things, has an inability to empathize with people, and who's narcissistic? Usually, you call him an asshole."

Why BP Does Not Want You To Know How Big The Gusher Is

No! It is not because of the oily pelican trying to fly away in the above picture.

It is all about the money and what BP may face in terms of fines for spilling all this oil.

Here is the civil penalty for spilling oil:

"The basic amount, the law is $ 1,100 per barrel spilled. But the penalty may increase to $ 4,300 per barrel as a federal court rules of the spill is the result of gross negligence."


The basic cost $1000 per barrel. Maximum cost is $4300 per barrel if it is determined that the spill resulted from gross negligence.

So, let do some math.

The spill will not be stopped until August. The spill started in May. May thru August is 4 month or about 120 days.

BP original "estimate" was 5000 barrels per day. So, 5000 bbl/day x 120 days x $1000 = $600 million dollars.

But wait, they are talking now about the gusher being 100,000 barrels per day according to a government panel tasked with determining the size of the spill.

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND barrels of oil per day at the minimum fine will be 12 BILLION dollars.

But wait, it get better. What is there is gross neglegence? The maximum fine becomes 51.6 BILLION dollars.

So what's at stake? The difference between 600 million and 51.6 billion dollars. Let me put that on the same basis.

$600 million
$51,600 million

Which would you rather pay -- $600 or $51,600 putting it in terms we can understand.

Do you still wonder why BP does not want anyone to know how much oil is leaking or how it happened?

Of course at BP's current profit rate of over $5 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2010, they can pay the $51.6 billion dollar fine is a little over 2.5 years.

Don't you wish you could pay off your mortgage that quick?

Jerry Brown 2010

Jerry (I like that name!) Brown comes out swinging for the California governor's race. The republicans spent over $100 million dollars running against each other. Given California's huge budget problems, such spending may not sit well with the voters.

Watch Brown's campaign ad.

A Critter's Crap Exclusive

Well, not really. I stole it from Keith Olbermann. Here is the wedding video of Elton John singing at Rush Limbaugh's fourth wedding.

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

Understanding The Problem

Tony Hayward, BP CEO, said,

"In this accident, based on what we understand so far, seven layers of protection were breached."

He doesn't understand the problem. The problem is not how many layers of protection they had. The problem is that they had no viable plan in place if a blowout happened.

A four month wait while a relief well is drilled is not a viable plan.

Who Would Have Guessed?

George W. Bush, International War Criminal

From Thom Hartmann

George W. Bush, international war criminal, admits torture

George W. Bush's very casual comment on Wednesday that he had tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and would do it again, has some former military and intelligence officials concerned that the former president doesn't realize the gravity of what he is admitting. Retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years, says Waterboarding is, "unequivocably torture." He added, "As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War. Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life." According to most reports, Khalid Sheik Mohammed had been highly cooperative and provided excellent intelligence initially, but then clammed up when they began waterboarding him to try to force him to say that there was an association between 9-11 and Saddam Hussein. Additionally, the Bush/Cheney/Bybee/Yoo policy of torturing prisoners of war has placed as-yet-unborn future generations of American soldiers who may be taken prisoner at great risk, as other nations will point to our having used torture to justify their own use of it against our soldiers. Torture historically has been used only for a single purpose - to get people to say what the torturers want them to say, regardless of whether its true or not. This is why the communist dictatorship of China announced earlier in the week that they will no longer criminally prosecute people based on confessions obtained by torture, because so many of the confessions are false. China gets it, the military gets it, but George W. Bush is still clueless. And still an international war criminal.

-Thom

BP's Ad Campaign

BP is spending about $50 MILLION dollars on an ad campaign designed to rehabilitate their image.

$50,000,000

That's a lot of money.

It is very possible that they could have prevented this "accident", by installing a $0.5 MILLION dollar valve.

Let see. BP could have bought 100 (ONE HUNDRED) valves for what they are spending on rehabilitating their IMAGE. Not the ocean, not the beaches, not the lives of people living in the region. NO! They are spending it on their IMAGE.

Well, I guess we know where BP's priorities lie.

BP's Legacy

Thanks to ThinkProgress for these pictures.


Get use to it. As more and more oil comes ashore, we are going to see more and more pictures like this. BP is trying to hide them, but they won't succeed. Too much wildlife is dying for them to prevent everyone from knowing. And remember, just a small fraction of the dead even reach the shore.

Too bad every dead animal can't be shipped to BP corporate headquarters.

BP Prophetic Advertisement

From here.

This is an ad from 1999. Little did they know how true that would be!