The United States continues to lead the world in defense spending, according to a new report released Thursday by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a U.S.-based non-partisan research organization.
In fact, the U.S. outspends Russia, the next highest spender, by more than 800 percent.
Soooo… Now what?
After indicating on Thursday that the top-kill effort was working, then pausing the operation, then resuming it and indicating that it is going as planned on Friday, BP now says that the amount of oil spewing from the well hasn't changed, and there is not guarantee that the procedure is actually working."I don't think the amount of oil coming out has changed," BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said on Saturday. "Just by watching it, we don't believe it's changed."
So we're back to trying to put a hat on the damned thing that will allow BP to salvage the well? There is absolutely no reason for a public that's tired of being treated like mushrooms... kept in the dark and fed a daily ration of bullshit... to believe this will be any more successful than your last three efforts. So, what happens if this latest scheme doesn't work?
He estimated that the procedure would take about four days to complete, but if it also fails, it could be several months before BP can finish drilling two relief wells to intersect the runaway well so concrete can be poured into it.
Oh, is that all? What does that mean to the rest of us then?
As much as 73 million more gallons of oil could contaminate the Gulf of Mexico if the flow continues unabated until August _ the soonest that officials estimate the relief wells can be drilled _ poisoning wildlife, destroying fragile marshlands, closing more fishing grounds and depriving fisherman, resort workers and many others of their livelihoods.
In other words, a minimum of two more months of the same crap that's been going on for 6 weeks already right?
So you people really had nothing... not one god damned thing... ready to deal with this situation that you yourselves were creating when you went into the deep water drilling business? You're just stumbling around in the fricking dark trying one hit or miss scheme after another hoping that something will work? Hell, I could do that.
And what about all the other wells in the Gulf? It's my understanding that there are over 3500 of the damned things out there, many of them drilled by companies with exactly the same regard for the rest of the world exhibited by BP.
How many of them are sitting out there like ticking time bombs just waiting to become major catastrophes themselves? Does our government even know? Probably not. They obviously haven't provided any oversight or exercised any form of control over the companies involved. They really don't seem to know much at all about anything that's been going on in the Gulf, or anywhere else where private corporations are sucking the resources out of our public lands.
I had been advocating just blowing this sucker up... now I would favor stuffing all the oil company execs and the entire MMS into the damned thing to slow the flow. And THEN blowing it up. If someone hasn't suggested that yet, consider this a proposal.
In years to come, I predict there will be a lot of scholarly books on the groupthink that took place in the run-up to this disaster, much like the Tompkins books on the Challenger disaster.
In other news, bin Laden states he is professionally envious of BP.
All aircraft operations are prohibited except those flights authorized by ATC, routine flights supporting offshore oil operations; federal, State, local and military flight operations supporting oil spill recovery and reconstitution efforts; and air medical and law enforcement operations.
We just had the 1,000 US death in the Afghanistan war, which is also our longest running war, ever.
So sad. Let's not forget that our long weekend is to remember our heroes — whoever they happen to be — and to remember those who have gone before us.
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If you're ever lucky enough to be in Afghanistan, Gunnery Sgt. Benjamin Lepping's left butt cheek has a special surprise… the soldier said. "I decided, 'What could be better than getting a tattoo of the hottest cougar in the Republican Party?'"
And all this time I just thought Mooselini was a butt-head.
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The start of the cougar season
Happy Memorial Day to Sarah Palin and the troops! (same thing)
Money well spent? - Dims pass a $60 BILLION war bill.
Deficit reduction 1 - Dims cut $24 BILLION in healthcare extensions for the unemployed.
Deficit reduction 2 - Dims cut $23 BILLION payout to preserve 100,000 teachers's jobs.
And that is our lesson today about priorities, and how to balance the budget GOP-style, which means on the backs of the poor. Besides, why do we need to educate the cannon fodder?
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Liveblogging Obama On The Gulf Coast, Talking About… Let's See… Oil Spill?
Now that crude has begun to wash upon the shores and wetlands of Republican red states, any superficial bumper sticker griping about socialism has been temporarily forgotten.
That's the bitch about building a party platform around specious, shallow platitudes. They might be effective in terms of rallying the easily-led, low information base, but as soon as practicality steps in, all sloganeering is dropped in lieu of confronting and dealing with reality. Subsequently, these alleged free market state's rights small government anti-regulation southern conservative cardboard standee Republicans continue to demand federal help and socialized taxpayer money. The Republicans are demanding redistributed wealth from Pennsylvania and Vermont and Illinois and New York and Massachusetts with all of its socialist bleeding heart tree-hugging environmental wacko liberals.
However hypocritical the Republicans might be on this, they're ultimately correct. The federal government has a responsibility to protect our economy, our natural resources and our lives from the destruction that's often wrought by irresponsible corporations. Thanks, Republicans, for finally catching up.
Infamous singing Senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, is fed up with people pretending to be heroes (He's looking at you, Richard Blumenthal), and so he is attempting to make a change to the 2005 Stolen Honor Act, which criminalized false claims of military service. Hatch says:
My amendment would add to this existing statute, making false statements regarding participation in combat operations. It appears to me that individuals make these false claims in order to obtain honorariums, employment, elected office or other positions of authority.
If convicted of this misdemeanor offense, the perpetrator could face 6 months in jail and/or a fine. This is the same penalty for falsely obtaining and wearing awards or medals.
To which I can only reply:
Wikipedia entry on Chimpy McStagger
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Contractors shipped useless gun parts to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan ... and still got paid.
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Why Sarah Palin talks like a child.
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DADT disrespects all soldiers - as does the GOP
Tim D'Annunzio
Candidate for Congress
Dear Mr. D'Annunzio,
I'm glad to see you're trouncing your opponent in the Republican primary. Now it's time to finish him off for good. Capitalize on your greatest strength. Force him to campaign against your Christian beliefs.
As far as I know, he's been silent about your claim that you found Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. Make him address it by doing an ad about it. Even better, employ the Ark as the centerpiece of your immigration strategy. Say you're going to use it like God used it against the Philistines and send all the immigrants packing with a severe case of hemorrhoids in their secret parts.
Do something with your pyramid smashing Greenland prediction too. I know that's a bit harder to do. No Mexican Muslims there, but I think they have Eskimos. They're brown. They're probably Muslim. Do an ad about how you're addressing the Eskimo Muslim terrorism threat by asking God to crush Greenland with a 1000 mile tall pyramid. I bet Sarah Palin would help you out with that.
I know it's a gamble. God might not smite Greenland before the primary, But when he does, you'll be able to write your own ticket. How does "President D'Annunzio" sound to you?
Heterosexually yours,
Gen. JC Christian, patriot
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BP bets on Top Kill. This piece describes the procedure and the potential problems. This dKos analysis speculates that some of the pressure testing has already been done.
Meanwhile, Congress has found out that all was not well at the well before the explosion. Nice that the NY Times is finally reporting on the timeline to the explosion even though 60 Minutes reported this over a week ago.
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Oil disaster hearings: BP was under economic pressure to finish job
Chris Granger / The Times-PicayuneMembers of the Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation team, from left, are: Lt. Robert Butts, USCG; Ross Wheatley, USCG; Capt. Hung Nguyen, USCG; David Dykes, MMS; Jason Mathews, MMS; and John McCarroll, MMS.
It's always about money, whether it's health care reform, our children's education, the incentive for the GOP to avoid smiling at President Obama, and now the lives of 11 crew members, and the prevention of Big Oil disasters:
A member of the federal panel investigating why the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 presented evidence Wednesday that BP had wanted to use the rig to drill another well by early March and would have overspent by about $22 million by the time of the accident.
Jason Mathews of the Minerals Management Service said BP applied to use the Deepwater Horizon rig to drill in another oil field on March 8, 43 days before the rig workers, in a rush to finish months of work in the oil field known as Mississippi Canyon 252, removed heavy drilling mud that could have held down explosive natural gas.
Based on earlier testimony that a typical well costs a lease-holder like BP $500,000 a day, Mathews asserted that the company had already overspent by $21 million to $22 million. [...]
It's the first time anyone has tried to quantify the economic pressures that may have led BP to do things like remove the drilling mud before placing a final cement plug or send a subcontractor's team home without performing the most definitive test of the well-cementing job.
Eleven lives were lost. Eleven families are mourning. An exponential number of friends, extended families are, too. But that doesn't matter, so long as BP can recapture some of that oil gush while avoiding an accurate gallon count.
Poor BP and Co. are probably in a tizzy now, what with not having factored in criminal lawyer fees.
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Social Consevative Hate.
They actually make it up as they go. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association:
So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn't the Germans, didn't the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Browshirts, were male homosexuals.
These people have no shame and their hatred knows no bounds. There is no need to rebuke trash of this sort except to point out that homosexuals were sent to concentration camps along with Jews and gypsies.
Allow me to state again that the biggest threat facing the United States is not radical Islamic terrorism. It's the hateful, lying, ignorant scum from within who quote scripture and carry a copy of the Constitution in their pockets – both of which they know not a fucking thing.
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The Gulf Disaster - Where is Captain Kirk?
The pressure is mounting on the Obama administration to get this thing fixed.
Five weeks after the beginning of an oil spill in the Gulf Coast, President Obama is poised to announce strengthened, new inspections of offshore drilling on Thursday — a heightened response that his critics say comes too late and with too little force.
Although Obama has responded to the disaster from the start, he has chosen his words carefully in criticizing BP, the oil firm in charge of the site. On Tuesday night, he said at a fundraiser in California that the government needs to "revisit how these oil companies are operating."
Obama will hold a news conference — a rarity so far in his administration — at the White House on Thursday morning to discuss the spill, officials said.
This is a tough one for the President. His opponents have been relentless in trying to lay the blame his way. Actually, the criticism is coming from all quarters. James Carville…
"The President of the United States could've come down here, he could've been involved with the families of these 11 people" who died on the rig after an explosion, Carville said on ABC's Good Morning America. "He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now. He could be with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard…doing something about these regulations. These people are crying, they're begging for something down here, and it just looks like he's not involved in this."
"Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving! We're about to die down here!"
There is a crisis at hand and it is unsure what more the President can do. The best scientific minds in the country are trying to devise a means to plug the leak. That said, perception is everything in politics. Obama needs to gear up the emotion machine and look more concerned than he has. This is one time when his Mr. Spock-like cool and reasoned approach is not allaying the anger and emotion being felt out there.
Look tough. Be tough. And send a clear message that BP and whoever else is responsible for this disaster will get what they deserve. As someone noted, there are times when Mr. Spock is not enough. What people need now is to know that their anger is not only justified but that that White House feels exactly the same way…and that requires Obama to display the raw emotion of Captain Kirk.
President Obama playing basketball with Russian kids during Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Bush playing the guitar during Katrina.
Here's a list of things that could be done by the White House regarding this horror.
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To be fair to BofA and Citi, it's a mistake that could have happened to anyone who had massive teams of lawyers and accountants. Gosh, some people are such nitpickers. Funny how those two banks were among the hardest hit during the crisis but that was surely a simple coincidence. It could have happened to anyone and was surely an accident since intentional hiding of debt would be a violation of SEC rules. CNBC:
Bank of America and Citigroup incorrectly accounted for billions of dollars in debt over the past three years, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal
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Alternet: How Do You Feel About Obama Siding with the Vatican Instead of About a Hundred Thousand U.S. Victims of Pedophile Priests?
I'm slammed on my day job, so invite others to write how it makes you feel to have the President of the United States side with The Vatican instead of hundreds of thousands of crime victims of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church. It was the U.S. Solicitor General, joined by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Justice Department who filed briefs in favor of The Vatican Friday May 21st, in the lawsuit from Oregon that Jeff Anderson and other plaintiff attorneys are trying to take all the way to the Pope.
Do you agree that the .17 square miles of real estate that is the Vatican is a sovereign nation? That a mall sized pile of cement populated by leaders of a religion, who go out from that nation all over the globe propagating their message, is a sovereign nation?
Like Italy and Germany?
Am I getting this right?
The Office of the U.S. Solicitor General who wrote the amicus brief is headed by Obama's Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Hearings confirming Kagan onto the Court are scheduled for June in D.C.
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Is there a Sarah Palin vileness/absurdity threshold?
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BP: Bringing people together.
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The Many Faces of Bubba Jindal – Small Government advocate and noted volcano expert, boy exorcist and LA governor, Bubba Jindal wants Big Government to do something about BP polluting his shoreline. Other GOPers think he is hurting the oil industry.
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Eel checks out oil gusher.
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Running government like a business.
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Stimulus-critic Rick Perry only able to balance his state's budget because of stimulus.
"I am a hypocrite!"
And speaking of the President of Texas, he's writing a new book! It's called Fed Up, and it teaches you how to hate the federal government like a Texan does (i.e., while wearing spurs). A rep from Perry's publisher says that "when [Perry] speaks, millions listen," so this book could inspire a new civil rights movement or even cause a world war between Texas and "the Beltway," depending on how "fed up" people end up getting.
More here: http://wonkette.com/415637/rick-perry-is-so-fed-up-hes-writing-a-bible-about-it#more-415637
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This is the kind of psycho fucker who would never have made it to induction before Bush broke our military The Army is investigating a Ft. Wainwright soldier (Track Palin, was our first thought, too, but it wasn't him) for posting a video to his Facebook page where he taunts Iraqi children as "future gay terrorists." The children - who are so young they have never known peace - smile and nod and give the soldier a "thumbs-up" sign. Until the older of the two realizes they are being mocked and tells the younger child to put his hand down.
And speaking of psycho fuckers: Conklin Dairy Farms video shows dairy cows being violently abused.
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Gas: It's America's crack!
TUCSON, Ariz. - The Obama administration plans to announce Tuesday that it will send as many as 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to improve border security, an Arizona congresswoman said.
Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords also said in a statement released Tuesday that President Barack Obama will request $500 million in funding for border security.
Oy.
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This is adorable.
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As an Atheist I feel like I should be able to have an opinion as to what God is punishing us for that is based on our cultural perspective and belief system.
So, speaking in behalf of the Atheist community, the oil spill in the Gulf is because God is punishing us for not having a working shutoff valve at the oil well head.
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"I tend to think she wishes she'd never heard my name. I have become her legacy. Mary Beth Loose Cannon is now looking for a job. She blew her last job busting me. Karma is so sweet! She's looking for a work while Cheech and I start our second multi-million dollar tour thanks to the publicity she created for us! Thank you Mary Beth - may you find peace and happiness in your search for your soul." Tommy Chong, gloating that Mary Beth Buchanan, the anti-science, religiously-insane slut who put him in prison for nine months for selling harmless plastic pipes, lost her primary by getting only 33% of the vote Link
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Oil soaked birds of a feather.
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I guess god wrote the Magna Carta too?
Idiots.
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Wisco: The ultimate failure of wedge issue politics.
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Louisiana beach
More grim photos are here.
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WAR FOREVER
Dan Froomkin reported this yesterday:
Members of Congress with any inclination to balk at President Obama's massive emergency war-funding request have found their case strengthened by two recent reports that question many of the administration's key premises and assumptions.
The reports from the Congressional Research Service and Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction raise concerns ranging from the existential to the procedural.
Just for starters, there's the lack of an exit strategy, signs of a slipping timeframe for troop drawdowns and the mixed results thus far of the troop "surge." ...
In his December announcement, Obama declared that the troop surge would enable the U.S. to "seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan." He said troops would then start coming home in July 2011.
But ... the Congressional Research Service report raises serious doubts about Obama's promised timeframe....
There isn't going to be a drawdown anytime soon. I never believed there would be -- when the president announced his plan and the most reasonable-sounding analysts expressed severe doubts about accomplishing all of his goals in the timeframe, I assumed Obama knew he'd be able to take an incomplete if the efforts fell short and no one would try to stop him -- letting at least one of our wars drag on endlessly is the only thing he's doing as president that isn't being attacked by the right. And that's exactly where we seem to be headed.
Lefties could put millions of bodies in the streets demanding an end to this war and it would accomplish no more than it did in the Bush years with regard to Iraq. Our GOP/Fox News overlords would finally have a visible hippie enemy to punch. If Obama had any thought of withdrawal, the right's theatrical howls of outrage would drag him to the right. Nothing would change.
You know what it would take to finally end this war? America has to elect a Republican president -- and we have to engage in no anti-war protests whatsoever. Just play possum -- then it will be fine to pull out (our president is a Republican, after all, so pulling out won't be considered treason), and there won't seem to be anything to be gained by staying in (no hippies in the streets to punch, so no potential for domestic political gain). It's a bleak prospect, but it may be the only hope we have. (Or, of course, our entire economy could collapse, which might force the issue.)
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Your oil dispersant is on its way
And it looks like this.
Water Displacement, Formula Number 40.President Obama went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a rare meeting with Senate Republicans, but the 75-minute session yielded little progress on hot-button topics and left some senators with bruised feelings.
"He needs to take a Valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans," Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.) told reporters. "He's pretty thin-skinned."
Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.) described the meeting as "testy," and Sen. John Thune (S.D.) called it a "lively discussion." Others questioned whether the "symbolism" of Obama's approach matched the actions of his Democratic congressional allies.
The small droplets of dispersed oil are "capable of passing right into the flesh of fish and birds." "It's absolutely disgusting," Cousteau described. "I think this has got to be one of the most horrible things I've ever seen underwater." Watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lBQkNgY3bY&feature=player_embedded
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Lazy Snowbilly Grifter
Palin bombs at trade show; could her speech scam be finished?
Pakistan has teabaggers, too.
