... Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen called the bid to shut down a wellhead spewing at least 210,000 gallons of oil a day from nearly a mile beneath the ocean surface "one of the most complex things we've every done."
He went on to say that, in a worst-case scenario, the well could vent 4.2 million gallons of oil into the Gulf daily. Currently, a crumpled "riser" pipe is preventing the full flow of oil – like a kinked garden hose – though reports suggest it is gradually deteriorating.
Four million gallons a day for ninety days would be equal to roughly 45 Exxon Valdez spills.
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BP, the company that owned the Louisiana oil rig that exploded last week, spent years battling federal regulators over how many layers of safeguards would be needed to prevent a deepwater well from this type of accident.
But according to aides to Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has followed offshore drilling issues for years, the industry aggressively lobbied against an additional layer of protection known as an "acoustic system," saying it was too costly. In a March 2003 report, the agency reversed course, and said that layer of protection was no longer needed.
"There was a big debate under the Bush administration whether or not to require additional oil drilling safeguards but [federal regulators] decided not to require any additional mandatory safeguards, believing the industry would be motivated to do it themselves," Carl Pope, Chairman of the Sierra Club told ABC News.
Is anyone else noticing a trend here? Decades of onlsaught by Republicans (and many Democrats, as well) and business friendly interests have led to the complete inability or unwillingness of government to regulate our food safety, our water, our financial markets, our mines, and now, tragically, our offshore drilling programs. And in every case, defanging the regulators has led to expensive disasters. All so a select few can make more and more money.
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The orange Rahm Emanuel
Charlie Crust will win the old fashioned way: by rescuing all Florida voters from car crashes
Why is Charlie Crist no longer welcome in the Republican Party? Because, when confronted by a common Waffle House employee pinned in a car crash, Crist failed to laugh at the man's predicament or throw a dollar bill at him, "for health care." Instead, Crist comforted the man and offered him water. Why doesn't Charlie Crist know that working-class people are just supposed to die in the street while lower-middle-class white people laugh and hold up signs about socialism? MORE »
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If BP didn't already deserve to be put out of business for negligence in not having a "Plan B", here's an example of just how scummy this company, which the Supreme Court thinks is exactly the same as a person, really is.
Remind me again why anyone is planning to vote for Republicans this fall. After all, these are the people who wanted to see complete deregulation of the oil industry: Drill here drill now.
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My family and I are thankful that the jury thoroughly and carefully weighed the evidence and issued a just verdict. Besides the obvious invasion of privacy and security concerns surrounding this issue, many of us are concerned about the integrity of our country's political elections. America's elections depend upon fair competition. Violating the law, or simply invading someone's privacy for political gain, has long been repugnant to Americans' sense of fair play. As Watergate taught us, we rightfully reject illegally breaking into candidates' private communications for political intrigue in an attempt to derail an election.
So this dumb kid's prank is going to get him 20 years in the pokey for guessing your secret (and b that I mean the second email account you used to circumvent the transparency laws in Alaska) email password ("Wasilla"), and you are comparing it to Watergate? You are unbelievable, lady.
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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Mexico's bloody drug wars saw a new spasm of killings late Saturday into Sunday, with 25 people fatally shot in the northern state of Chihuahua bordering the United States.
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High school principal calls Facebook page wishing Obama dead 'funny'
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Ian Welsh: fiscal sustainability and solutions
1) Social Security, at current rates, is not expected to run short of money before 2037.
2)The simplest way to "fix" Social Security, if you're worried about a "problem" 27 years in the future, is simply to remove the contribution limit. End of problem. Period. Social Security is not in crisis.
3) The reason politicians want to "fix" Social Security is to increase the SS surplus, so they can use it for other things.
4) Medicare has more serious issues. However the simplest way to fix healthcare in the US is to move single payer, which would reduce healthcare per person by one-third. It has worked for every other country in the history of the world that has done it. It will work for the US. Since we've admitted now that everyone deserves health care, and since it's cheaper, and better, why not use the next round of healthcare to fix Medicare by fixing health care?
The unspoken entitlement is the US military. The US spends about half the entire world's military budget. There is, actually, no one in the world who can invade or seriously threaten the US in any fashion. (Is Canada going to invade? Mexico?) You can easily slash the military budget in half and still be so far ahead of any possible combination of enemies that it isn't even close.
And yes, taxes are going to need to go up. Here's a simple fix—tax all income over 5 million at 90%. It won't hurt the economy (the best economy in America's history was back when marginal tax rates were this high in the 50's and 60's). It will mean that the rich, who got almost the entire bailout and whose irresponsibility threw the US into its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression will pay for it.
Oh, and change the estate tax to tax 80% of all inheritances over 5 million, too. Remember, dead people don't need money and 5 million tax free for choosing your parents right is enough of a head start.
There are plenty of other ways to raise money and cut costs. For example, you can put a tax on buying and selling derivatives or you can slap on a carbon tax or you can reform corporate taxes so corporations making billions don't pay no taxes.
Finally, the bottom line is this. The US owes its money in dollars. The US can print money. The US is not going to run out of money(pdf). There may be some inflation but anyone who tries to tell you that the US won't have enough money to pay SS or Medicare is simply lying to you.
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And now it's a federal case The FBI has joined the manhunt for the person or persons who parked a Nissan Pathfinder that was loaded with incendiary materials in Times Square last night, and law enforcement are reviewing the video evidence that was obtained by private security cameras around the area.
And what they saw on the video has Glenn Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's heads exploding Surveilance tapes show a white male who appears to be in his 40s around the car-bomb-that-wasn't...Isn't that the "angry white male" demographic that comprises the bulk of the tea partiers that they say aren't inclined toward violence?
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Telling us to tighten our belts while they get rich. Hypocrites!
![[Bernard Vallat, the World Organisation for Animal Health's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster." (photo by Flickr user Steve Punter)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/fearsforcrops_beecatastrophe.jpg "fearsforcrops_beecatastrophe.jpg")
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