Friday, June 11, 2010

U.S. Estimates Double Oil Flow Into Gulf

HOUSTON -- With each new look by scientists, the oil spill just keeps looking worse.

New figures for the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico show the amount of oil spewing may have been up to twice as much as previously thought, according to scientists consulting with the federal government.

That could mean 42 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have already fouled the Gulf's fragile waters, affecting people who live, work and play along the coast from Louisiana to Florida -- and perhaps beyond.

It is the third -- and perhaps not the last -- time the U.S. government has had to increase its estimate of how much oil is gushing. Trying to clarify what has been a contentious and confusing issue, officials on Thursday gave a wide variety of estimates.

All the new spill estimates are worse than earlier ones -- and far more costly for BP, which has seen its stock sink since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and triggered the spill. Most of Thursday's estimates had more oil flowing in an hour than what officials once said was spilling in an entire day.

"This is a nightmare that keeps getting worse every week," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. "We're finding out more and more information about the extent of the damage. ... Clearly we can't trust BP's estimates of how much oil is coming out."

The spill was flowing at a daily rate that could possibly have been as high as 2.1 million gallons, twice the highest number the federal government had been saying, U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt, who is coordinating estimates, said Thursday. But she said possibly more credible numbers are a bit lower.

And the estimate does not take into account the cutting of the riser pipe on June 3 -- which BP said would increase the flow by about 20 percent -- and subsequent placement of a cap. No estimates were given for the amount of oil gushing from the well after the cut. Nor are there estimates since a cap was put on the pipe, which already has collected more than 3 million gallons.

The estimates are not nearly complete and different teams have come up with different numbers. A new team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute came in with even higher estimates, ranging from 1 million gallons a day to 2.1 million gallons. If the high end is true, that means nearly 107 million gallons have spilled since April 20.

Even using other numbers that federal officials and scientists call a more reasonable range would have about 63 million gallons spilling since the rig explosion. If that amount was put in gallon milk jugs, they would line up for nearly 5,500 miles. That's the distance from the spill to London, where BP is headquartered, and then continuing on to Rome.

By comparison, the worst peacetime oil spill, 1979's Ixtoc 1 in Mexico, was about 140 million gallons over 10 months. The Gulf spill hasn't yet reached two months. The Exxon Valdez, the previous worst U.S. oil spill, was just about 11 million gallons, and the new figures mean Deepwater Horizon is producing an Exxon Valdez size spill every five to 13 days.

Meanwhile, oil still was washing up on Gulf beaches. But it wasn't as bad Friday morning at Orange Beach, Ala., as it had been earlier in the week. Waves brought in a foot-long chunk of what appeared to be solid oil on the white sand. One side was flat and curved, while the other was honeycombed with bubbles and a single spot where crude oozed out. Standing near the water line, Elaine Fox picked it up without a thought.

"I'm not dead, I'm not sick," said Fox, of West Monroe, La. "I think a lot of this is nothing but media hype."

A day earlier, President Barack Obama consoled relatives of the 11 workers killed in the oil rig explosion, acknowledging their "unimaginable grief" and personally assuring the families he will stand with them.

One man who lost a son asked Obama to support efforts to update federal law limiting the amount of money the families can collect.

"He told us we weren't going to be forgotten," said Keith Jones of Baton Rouge, La. "He just wanted us to know this wasn't going to leave his mind and his heart."

Jones' 28-year-old son, Gordon, was working on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig leased by BP PLC when it exploded and then sank.

Later in the day, the White House released a letter from Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the crisis for the government, inviting BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and "any appropriate officials from BP" to meet Wednesday with senior administration officials. Allen said Obama, who has yet to speak with any BP official since the explosion more than seven weeks ago, would participate in a portion of the meeting.

As the crude continues to foul the water, Louisiana leaders are rushing to the defense of the oil-and-gas industry and pleading with Washington to immediately bring back offshore drilling. Though angry at BP over the disaster, state officials warn that the Obama administration's six-month halt to new permits for deep-sea oil drilling has sent Louisiana's most lucrative industry into a death spiral.

They contend that drilling is safe overall and the moratorium is a knee-jerk reaction. They worry that it comes at a time when another major Louisiana industry -- fishing -- has been brought to a standstill by the Gulf mess.

"Mr. President, you were looking for someone's butt to kick. You're kicking ours," Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph said Thursday.

The oil and gas industry brings in billions of dollars in revenue for Louisiana and accounting for nearly one-third of the nation's domestic crude production, and it took a heavy blow when the government imposed the moratorium.

"It's going to put us out of business," said Glenn LeCompte, owner of a Louisiana catering company that provides food to offshore rigs.

With all sorts of estimates for what's flowing from the BP well -- some even smaller than the amount collected by BP in its containment cap -- McNutt said the most credible range at the moment is between 840,000 gallons and 1.68 million gallons a day. Then she added that it was "maybe a little bit more."

But later Thursday, the Interior Department said scientists who based their calculations on video say the best estimate for oil flow before June 3 was between 1.05 million gallons a day and 1.26 million gallons a day. The department mentioned only a cubic meter per second rate from Woods Hole -- not a rate that translated into actual amounts -- and those numbers only added to the confusion on just how much oil is gushing out.

Previous estimates had put the range roughly between half a million and a million gallons a day, perhaps higher. At one point, the federal government claimed only 42,000 gallons were spilling a day and then it upped the number to 210,000 gallons.

Colonoscopy in U.S. $9,000; Costa Rica $350

Professor Mark Perry gives us this informative video report from Fox News. This patient went for medical tourism and saved money.

Some Big Lies of Science

[T]he majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.”

– Harold Pinter, Nobel Lecture (Literature), 2005

The maintenance of the hierarchical structures that control our lives depends on Pinter’s “vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed.” Therefore the main institutions that embed us into the hierarchy, such as schools, universities, and mass media and entertainment corporations, have a primary function to create and maintain this tapestry. This includes establishment scientists and all service intellectuals in charge of “interpreting” reality.

In fact, the scientists and “experts” define reality in order to bring it into conformation with the always-adapting dominant mental tapestry of the moment. They also invent and build new branches of the tapestry that serve specific power groups by providing new avenues of exploitation. These high priests are rewarded with high class status.

The Money Lie

The economists are a most significant example. It is probably not an accident that in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century the economists were the first professional analysts to be “broken in,” in a battle that defined the limits of academic freedom in universities. The academic system would from that point on impose a strict operational separation between inquiry and theorizing as acceptable and social reform as unacceptable [1].

Any academic wishing to preserve her position understood what this meant. As a side product, academics became virtuosos at nurturing a self-image of importance despite this fatal limitation on their societal relevance, with verbiage such as: The truth is our most powerful weapon, the pen is mightier than the sword, a good idea can change the world, reason will take us out of darkness, etc.

So the enterprise of economics became devoted to masking the lie about money. Bad lending practice, price fixing and monopolistic controls were the main threats to the natural justice of a free market, and occurred only as errors in a mostly self-regulating system that could be moderated via adjustments of interest rates and other “safeguards.”

Meanwhile no mainstream economic theory makes any mention of the fact that money itself is created wholesale in a fractional reserve banking system owned by secret private interests given a licence to fabricate and deliver debt that must be paid back (with interest) from the real economy, thereby continuously concentrating ownership and power over all local and regional economies.

The rest of us have to earn money rather than simply fabricate it and we never own more when we die. The middle class either pays rent or a mortgage. Wage slavery is perpetuated and degraded in stable areas and installed in its most vicious varieties in all newly conquered territories.

It is quite remarkable that the largest exploitation scam (private money creation as debt) ever enacted and applied to the entire planet does not figure in economic theories.

Economists are so busy modeling the ups and downs of profits, returns, employment figures, stock values, and the benefits of mergers for mid-level exploiters that they don’t notice their avoidance of the foundational elements. They model the construction schedule while refusing to acknowledge that the terrain is an earthquake zone with vultures circling overhead.

Meanwhile the financiers write and re-write the rules themselves and again this process does not figure in macroeconomic theories. The only human element that economists consider in their “predictive” mathematical models is low-level consumer behaviour, not high-level system manipulation. Corruption is the norm yet it does not figure. The economies, cultures and infrastructures of nations are wilfully destroyed in order to enslave via new and larger national debts for generations into the future while economists forecast alleged catastrophic consequences of defaulting on these debts…

Management tools for the bosses and smoke and mirrors for the rest of us – thank you expert economists.

The Medicine is Health Lie

We’ve all heard some MD (medical doctor) interviewed on the radio gratuitously make the bold proposal that life expectancy has increased thanks to modern medicine. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Life expectancy has increased in First World countries thanks to a historical absence of civil and territorial wars, better and more accessible food, less work and non-work accidents, and better overall living and working conditions. The single strongest indicator of personal health within and between countries is economy status, irrespective of access to medical technology and pharmaceuticals.

It’s worse than that because medicine actually has a negative impact on health. Medical errors (not counting misattributed deaths from correctly administered “treatments”) are the third leading cause of death in the US, after heart disease and cancer, and there is a large gap between this conservative underestimate in the number of medical error deaths and the fourth leading cause of death [2]. Since medicine can do little for heart disease and cancer and since medicine has only a small statistical positive impact in the area of trauma interventions, we conclude that public health would increase if all MDs simply disappeared. And think of all the time loss and stress that sick people would save…

One of the most dangerous places in society is the hospital. Medical errors include misdiagnoses, bad prescriptions, prescriptions of medications that should not be combined, unnecessary surgery, unnecessary or badly administered treatments including chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and corrective surgeries.

The lie extends to the myth that MDs anywhere near understand the human body. And this well guarded lie encourages us to put our faith in doctors, thereby opening the door to a well orchestrated profit bonanza for big pharma.

The first thing that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) volunteers need to do in order to contribute significantly in disaster zones is to “forget their medical training” and get to work on the priority tasks at hand: water, food, shelter, and disease propagation prevention; not vaccinating, or operating, or prescribing medication… Public health comes from safety, stability, social justice, and economic buying power, not MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) units and prescription drugs.

These bone heads routinely apply unproven “recommended treatments” and prescribe dangerous drugs for everything from high blood pressure from a sedentary lifestyle and bad nutrition, to apathy at school, to anxiety in public places, to post-adolescence erectile function, to non-conventional sleep patterns, and to all the side effects from the latter drugs.

In professional yet nonetheless remarkable reversals of logic, doctors prescribe drugs to remove symptoms that are risk indicators rather than address the causes of the risks, thereby only adding to the assault on the body.

It’s unbelievable the number that medicine has done on us: Just one more way to keep us stupid (ignorant about our own bodies) and artificially dependent on the control hierarchy. Economically disadvantaged people don’t die from not having access to medical “care” – They die from the life constraints and liabilities directly resulting from poverty. How many MDs have stated this obvious truth on the radio?

Environmental Science Lies

Exploitation via resource extraction, land use expropriation, and wage slavery creation and maintenance are devastating to indigenous populations and to the environment on continental scales. It is therefore vital to cover up the crimes under a veil of expert analysis and policy development diversion. A valued class of service intellectuals here is composed of the environmental scientists and consultants.

Environmental scientists naively and knowingly work hand in hand with finance-corporate shysters, mainstream media, politicians, and state and international bureaucrats to mask real problems and to create profit opportunities for select power elites. Here are notable examples of specific cases.

Freon and Ozone

Do you know of anyone who has been killed by the ozone hole?

The 1987 Montreal Protocol banning chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) is considered a textbook case where science and responsible governance lead to a landmark treaty for the benefit of the Earth and all its inhabitants. How often does that happen?

At about the time that the DuPont patent on Freon(TM), the most widely used CFC refrigerant in the world, was expiring the mainstream media picked up on otherwise arcane scientific observations and hypotheses about ozone concentration in the upper atmosphere near the poles.

There resulted an international mobilization to criminalize CFCs and DuPont developed and patented a replacement refrigerant that was promptly certified for use.

A Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded in 1995 for a laboratory demonstration that CFCs could deplete ozone in simulated atmospheric conditions. In 2007 it was shown that the latter work may have been seriously flawed by overestimating the depletion rate by an order of magnitude, thereby invalidating the proposed mechanism for CFC-driven ozone depletion [3]. Not to mention that any laboratory experiment is somewhat different from the actual upper atmosphere… Is the Nobel tainted by media and special interest lobbying?

It gets better. It turns out that the Dupont replacement refrigerant is, not surprisingly, not as inert as was Freon. As a result it corrodes refrigerator cycle components at a much faster rate. Where home refrigerators and freezers lasted forever, they now burn out in eight years or so. This has caused catastrophic increases in major appliance contributions to land fill sites across North America; spurred on by the green propaganda for obscenely efficient electrical consumptions of the new appliances under closed door (zero use) conditions.

In addition, we have been frenzied into avoiding the sun, the UV index keeps our fear of cancer and our dependence on the medical establishment alive, and a new sun block industry a la vampire protection league has been spawned. And of course star university chemists are looking for that perfect sun block molecule that can be patented by big pharma. And as soon as it is, I predict a surge in media interviews with skin cancer experts…

Acid Rain on the Boreal Forest

In the seventies it was acid rain. Thousands of scientists from around the world (Northern Hemisphere) studied this “most pressing environmental problem on the planet.” The boreal forest is the largest ecosystem on Earth and its millions of lakes were reportedly being killed by acid from the sky.

Coal burning plants spewed out sulphides into the atmosphere causing the rain to be acidic. The acid rain was postulated to acidify the soils and lakes in the boreal forest but the acidification was virtually impossible to detect. Pristine lakes in the hearts of national parks had to be studied for decades in attempts to detect a statistically significant acidification.

Meanwhile the lakes and their watersheds were being destroyed by the cottage industry, agriculture, forestry, mining, over fishing and tourism. None of the local and regional destruction was studied or exposed. Instead, scientists turned their gaze to distant coal burning plants, atmospheric distribution, and postulated chemical reactions occurring in rain droplets. One study found that the spawning in aquarium of one fish species was extremely sensitive to acidity (pH). Long treatises about cation charge balance and transport were written and attention was diverted away from the destruction on the ground towards a sanitized problem of atmospheric chemistry that was the result of industrialization and progress rather than being caused by identifiable exploiters.

As a physicist and Earth scientist turned environmental scientist, I personally read virtually every single scientific paper written about acid rain and could not find an example of a demonstrated negative impact on lakes or forests from acid rain. In my opinion, contrary to the repeated claims of the scientist authors, the research on acid rain demonstrates that acid rain could not possibly have been the problem.

This model of elite-forces-coordinated exploiter whitewashing was to play itself out on an even grander scale only decades later with global warming.

Global Warming as a Threat to Humankind

In 2005 and 2006, several years before the November 2009 Climategate scandal burst the media bubble that buoyed public opinion towards acceptance of carbon credits, cap and trade, and the associated trillion dollar finance bonanza that may still come to pass, I exposed the global warming cooptation scam in an essay that Alexander Cockburn writing in The Nation called “one of the best essays on greenhouse myth-making from a left perspective” [4][5][6].

My essay prompted David F. Noble to research the question and write The Corporate Climate Coup to expose how the media embrace followed the finance sector’s realization of the unprecedented potential for revenues that going green could represent [7].

Introductory paragraphs from Global Warming: Truth or Dare? are as follows [4]:

“I also advance that there are strong societal, institutional, and psychological motivations for having constructed and for continuing to maintain the myth of a global warming dominant threat (global warming myth, for short). I describe these motivations in terms of the workings of the scientific profession and of the global corporate and finance network and its government shadows.”

“I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized.”

Other passages read this way [4]:

“Environmental scientists and government agencies get funding to study and monitor problems that do not threaten corporate and financial interests. It is therefore no surprise that they would attack continental-scale devastation from resource extraction via the CO2 back door. The main drawback with this strategy is that you cannot control a hungry monster by asking it not to shit as much.”

“Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middleclass. Nobody else cares about global warming. Exploited factory workers in the Third World don’t care about global warming. Depleted uranium genetically mutilated children in Iraq don’t care about global warming. Devastated aboriginal populations the world over also can’t relate to global warming, except maybe as representing the only solidarity that we might volunteer.”

“It’s not about limited resources. [“The amount of money spent on pet food in the US and Europe each year equals the additional amount needed to provide basic food and health care for all the people in poor countries, with a sizeable amount left over.” (UN Human Development Report, 1999)] It’s about exploitation, oppression, racism, power, and greed. Economic, human, and animal justice brings economic sustainability which in turn is always based on renewable practices. Recognizing the basic rights of native people automatically moderates resource extraction and preserves natural habitats. Not permitting imperialist wars and interventions automatically quenches nation-scale exploitation. True democratic control over monetary policy goes a long way in removing debt-based extortion. Etc.”

And there is a thorough critique of the science as band wagon trumpeting and interested self-deception [4]. Climategate only confirms what should be obvious to any practicing scientist: That science is a mafia when it’s not simply a sleeping pill.

Conclusion

It just goes on and on. What is not a lie?

Look at the recent H1N1 scam – another textbook example. It’s farcical how far these circuses go: Antiseptic gels in every doorway at the blink of an eye; high school students getting high from drinking the alcohol in the gels; out datedness of the viral strain before the pre-paid vaccine can be mass produced; unproven effectiveness; no requirement to prove effectiveness; government guarantees to corporate manufacturers against client lawsuits; university safety officers teaching students how to cough; etc.

Pure madness. Has something triggered our genetically ingrained First World stupidity reflex? Is this part of our march towards fascism [8]?

Here is another one. Educators promote the lie that we learn because we are taught. This lie of education is squarely denounced by radical educators [9][10].

University professors design curricula as though the students actually learn every element that is delivered whereas the truth is that students don’t learn the delivered material and everyone only learns what they learn. One could dramatically change the order in which courses are delivered and it would make no measurable difference in how much students learn. Students deliver nonsense and professors don’t care. Obedience and indoctrination are all that matter so the only required skill is bluffing. Students know this and those that don’t don’t know what they know, don’t know themselves [8][9][10].

Pick any expert opinion or dominant paradigm: It’s part of a racket.

We can’t know the truth because the truth is brutal.

Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He was trained as a physicist and practiced physics, Earth sciences, and environmental science, areas in which he was funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See www.academicfreedom.ca]

Notes

[1] “No Ivory Tower – book” by Ellen W. Schrecker.
[2] Radio interview with Dr. Barbara Starfield: CHUO 89.1 FM, Ottawa; January 21, 2010.
[3] Nature 449, 382-383 (2007).
[4] “Global Warming: Truth or Dare? – essay” by Denis G. Rancourt.
[5] “Questioning Climate Politics – Denis Rancourt says the ‘global warming myth’ is part of the problem”; April 11, 2007, interview in The Dominion.
[6] Climate Guy blog.
[7] “The Corporate Climate Coup – essay” by David F. Noble.
[8] “Canadian Education as an Impetus towards Fascism – essay” by Denis G. Rancourt.
[9] “Pedagogy of the Oppressed – book” by Paulo Freire.
[10] “The Ignorant Schoolmaster – book” by Jacques Rancière.

Gulf Oil Spill Sea Floor Collapse and Seabed Leaks May Prevent BP From Capping Well.

BP Gulf oil spill crater


Over Two weeks after it was widely reported by those watching the BP live oil leak cam that a series of explosions may have Gulf of Mexico sea floor to collapse the Government is now investigating those reports.

I first reported here that a series of those explosion of oil and debris continued and caused topkill to fail although there was no immediate mention of the event in the media, until now.

Last night on Countdown Keith Olberman said their is now evidence that an underground blowout may be happening causing oil to seep out of BP’s leaking well through in various places on the ocean floor.

Could this be one of many possible leaks on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico?
Possible Seafloor Gas Leak

Olbermann reported that BP discovered during the topkill procedure that the well was broken beneath the subsurface and that the mud being shot into the well was making it out of the sides of the casing and leaking into the rock surrounding the well.

Rob Cavner, an oil industry expert, called directly on BP to be transparent about the explosions that caused top-kill to fail and address the reports of the massive subsurface leaks on the internet that have been by the underground blowout.

Keith Olberman Addresses Seafloor Leaks Calling The Situation Worse Than Doomsday

The Wall Street Journal also reported that BP concluded that its “top-kill” attempt may have failed due to a blown disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor which may have allowed drilling mud to escape from the well into the rock formation outside of the wellbore.

Senator Bill Nelson has also reported, which has now been confirmed by multiple sources, that the well casing itself may have been pierced telling MSNBC that this indicates the “problem could be just enormous”.

How enormous? Well as Keith Olberman says “What’s worse than doomsday? This is it.”

These reports of the new leaks in the well casing are in addition to well casing blowout that an an internal White House investigation fingers for causing the leaking oil rig to explode in the first place.

These new leaks we are now facing, if confirmed, would mean that there is oil gushing up in multiple disparate places on the Gulf sea floor

Oil could begin leaking from any crack or crevice in the surrounding sea floor and the entire area could be leaking like a sponge.


Is there two leaks in this video? Notice the main leak and what appears to be a second leak coming from the sea floor on the right.

During the top kill oil and mud shoots from under the BOP indicating there could be a separate leak coming from the seafloor


Even if a relief well will work it could take until Christmas

The ultimate solution that BP has been touting almost since the disaster began has been “relief wells.”

But these additional leak indicate that the relief well that BP is counting on to cap the Gulf oil spill won’t be the final solution to stop the leaking oil well.

Company CEO Tony Hayward has repeatedly told the public that the strategy is a sure thing.

However Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor and oil industry expert, says that these leaks in the well casing may cause problems with BP’s plan to cap the oil leak using a relief well .

Bloomberg also reports, additional leaks aside, that the normal hiccups involved in a worse case scenario of the relief well could mean that BP may not be able to cap the the leak until Christmas.

In fact last year’s Montara oil leak in the Timor Sea took 5 passes before the relief well actually hit the leaking well casing.

To make matters worse the BP Gulf oil spill relief wells are further complicated by a much higher leak rate, are being dug twice the distance under the seafloor, face hurricanes, dense rock and other problems.

As I have already reported, experts have also warned that if the relief well blows an additional 240,000 barrels of oil per day could begin spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

How likely is it that the relief well might blow?

We can’t be sure but nola.com reports that a relief well exploded just last year destroying a second well and destroying another rig which further set back the relief well operations.

Matt Simons says short of blowing the well with an explosive this may leak for years

The picture that prominent oil industry insider Matt Simmons paints is even worse.

Matt Simmons believes that the well casing may have been destroyed when the oil rig exploded and says that oil is leaking from the seafloor up to 7 miles away because of the explosion.

Simmons was an energy adviser to President George W. Bush, is an adviser to the Oil Depletion Analysis Center, and is a member of the National Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations.

On May 27th, Simmons addressed this issue on MSNBC:

On May 26th, Simmons referred to this again on a second appearance on MSNBC warning this could last for years:

Matt Simmons referred to it again on Bloomberg on May 28th:

Matt Simmons reiterated those statements again on MSNBC yesterday:

Matt Simons Again on MSNBC saying there is a second whole and BP will not be a publicly traded company by the end of summer.



Even if the oil well is capped in accordance to BP’s August time frame the results will still be catastrophic.

Take for example NOAA current 72 hour forecast for the area of uncertainty which contains the “hundreds of thousands of smaller spills” that the BP Gulf oil spill has split up into.

Consider the Current BP Gulf oil spill 72 Hour Uncertainty Trajectory 6/08/2010.
BP Gulf oil spill 72 Hour Uncertainty Trajectory 6/08/2010

Here is the BP Gulf Oil Spill over Pittsburgh, PA.
Gulf Oil Spill Over Pittsburgh PA

The BP Gulf Oil Spill over Sacramento, California.
Gulf Oil Spill Over Sacramento California

The BP Gulf Oil Spill over Great Britain.
Gulf Oil Spill Over Great Britain

The BP Gulf Oil Spill over Paris France.
Gulf Oil Spill Over Paris France

The BP Gulf Oil Spill Over Rome, Italy.
BP Gulf Oil Spill Over Rome Italy

Compare your city or country to the size of the BP Gulf oil spill.

Further reading about the well casing blowout:

Diagram of the 16″ rupture burst disks that may have blown and caused topkill to fail according the the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

PDF Presentation of possible oil well casing blowout scenarios.

Global Warming Science: A Cross Examination

A cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics has concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fails to stand up to scrutiny.

The cross-examination, carried out by Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, found that “on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”

Professor Johnson, who expressed surprise that the case for global warming was so weak, systematically examined the claims made in IPCC publications and other similar work by leading climate establishment scientists and compared them with what is found in the peer-edited climate science literature. He found that the climate establishment does not follow the scientific method. Instead, it “seems overall to comprise an effort to marshal evidence in favor of a predetermined policy preference.”

The 79-page document, which effectively eviscerates the case for man-made global warming, can be found here.

GLOBAL WARMING ADVOCACY SCIENCE: A CROSS EXAMINATION
By Jason Scott Johnston
Robert G. Fuller, Jr. Professor and Director,
Program on Law, Environment and Economy
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Abstract
Legal scholarship has come to accept as true the various pronouncements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientists who have been active in the movement for greenhouse gas (ghg) emission reductions to combat global warming. The only criticism that legal scholars have had of the story told by this group of activist scientists – what may be called the climate establishment – is that it is too conservative in not paying enough attention to possible catastrophic harm from potentially very high temperature increases.
This paper departs from such faith in the climate establishment by comparing the picture of climate science presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other global warming scientist advocates with the peer-edited scientific literature on climate change. A review of the peer-edited literature reveals a systematic tendency of the climate establishment to engage in a variety of stylized rhetorical techniques that seem to oversell what is actually known about climate change while concealing fundamental uncertainties and open questions regarding many of the key processes involved in climate change.
Fundamental open questions include not only the size but the direction of feedback effects that are responsible for the bulk of the temperature increase predicted to result from atmospheric greenhouse gas increases: while climate models all presume that such feedback effects are on balance strongly positive, more and more peer-edited scientific papers seem to suggest that feedback effects may be small or even negative. The cross-examination conducted in this paper reveals many additional areas where the peer-edited literature seems to conflict with the picture painted by establishment climate science, ranging from the magnitude of 20th century surface temperature increases and their relation to past temperatures; the possibility that inherent variability in the earth’s non-linear climate system, and not increases in CO2, may explain observed late 20th century warming; the ability of climate models to actually explain past temperatures; and, finally, substantial doubt about the
methodological validity of models used to make highly publicized predictions of global warming impacts such as species loss.
Insofar as establishment climate science has glossed over and minimized such fundamental questions and uncertainties in climate science, it has created widespread misimpressions that have serious consequences for optimal policy design. Such misimpressions uniformly tend to support the case for rapid and costly decarbonization of the American economy, yet they characterize the work of even the most rigorous legal scholars. A more balanced and nuanced view of the existing state of climate science supports much more gradual and easily reversible policies regarding greenhouse gas emission reduction, and also urges a redirection in public funding of climate science away from the continued subsidization of refinements of computer models and toward increased spending on the development of standardized observational datasets against which existing climate models can be tested.

Portugal Approves Tax Increases, Other Deficit-Cutting Measures

LISBON (Dow Jones)--Portugal's parliament voted late Wednesday to approve a package of measures intended to slash the country's budget deficit.

The minority government of Prime Minister Jose Socrates passed the proposal with the support of the biggest opposition party, the Social Democrats, and with other opposition parties voting against it.

Portugal had a budget deficit equal to 9.4% of gross domestic product in 2009, and in April the government approved a plan to cut that to 8.3% of GDP this year and to 2.8% of GDP in 2013.

But as the Greek-centered financial crisis started to spread to other fiscally frail European Union countries like Spain and Portugal, the Portuguese government agreed to accelerate its deficit-cutting efforts.

It says the new measures will cut its deficit this year to 7.3% of GDP.

Value-added tax will rise 1 percentage point across all categories, to 6% for necessities, 13% for restaurants and 21% for most other goods and services.

Workers earning up to a certain level will pay a special 1% tax on their wages, and those earning more than that amount will pay 1.5%. Companies with profits of more than EUR2 million will pay an extra 2.5% tax on their profits.

Government ministers and other top state employees will have their salaries reduced by 5% starting this year. All the new measures will last until the end of 2011.

 

-By Jeffrey T. Lewis, contributing to Dow Jones Newswires; +34 91 395 8120; djmadrid@dowjones.com

Ax May Fall on Mortgage Interest Deduction

The Hill, Ax May Fall on Tax Break for Mortgages:

The popular tax break for mortgage interest, once considered untouchable, is falling under the scrutiny of policymakers and economic experts seeking ways to close huge deficits.

Although Congress last year rejected the White House’s proposed cut to the amount wealthier taxpayers can deduct for home mortgage interest payments, the administration included it again in its 2010 budget — saying it could save $208 billion over the next decade.

And now that sentiment has turned against all the federal red ink — and cost-cutting is in vogue — Democrats on President Barack Obama’s financial commission are considering the wisdom of permanent tax breaks such as the mortgage deduction and corporate deferral. Calling them “tax entitlements,” senior Democratic lawmakers have argued they should be on the table for reform just like traditional entitlement programs Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. ...

Although the backers of the mortgage interest tax break defend it as a key incentive for people to own rather than rent their homes, some say that’s not so. A Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center study found that the mortgage interest tax break costs more than $100 billion annually but does little to encourage the middle class and less wealthy to buy homes. “I’m not sure that we need to subsidize homeownership at all through the tax system,” said Eric Toder, the study’s lead author.

Time for law abiding American citizens to stop paying taxes, start a new government? 10 of 13

David Degraw has written an outstanding comprehensive explanation of what’s really happening in the US economy. He’s given me permission to reprint it here. I also recommend his site "For Our Economy" for citizen grass-roots activism for economic justice.

Regarding the title of Americans starting a new government, I remind readers of the Declaration of Independence; our core American principles of government. The below links document that US political “leadership” is not even close to following our constitutional limitations and therefore are “leading” unlawfully. Americans with an oath to defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, should choose to either honor their oath or admit allegiance to the current fascist imposter of the greatness this nation is on paper and in our ideals.
Another excellent summary is economist James Galbraith’s recent expert testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee of what will become “emperor has no clothes” obvious: the US economy is a rigged casino. Here is my best pitch to explain and document the fraud. Here is my best explanation of the obvious solutions. Here are my comprehensive resources to understand the US oligarchy in all its unlawful infamy in unlawful wars, war lies, torture and indefinite detention (including against Americans), and our controlled economic demolition.
I’ll present David’s documentation and analysis in 13 segments; each with his introduction. Use the “previous” and “next” buttons under the title to navigate to the different segments. Please share broadly with the understanding that all our economic problems really exist on paper only. They are propagandized and managed frauds; solved almost instantly by an economic structure designed for the public good rather than designed for an oligarchy. I stake my professional reputation on the factual reality of these statements and prove their objective existence in the data in the above links.
I appreciate David Degraw’s leadership to research and communicate the facts, and help us all embrace the terrible truth of US fascism that We the People must expose and end in order to unleash humanity and build a brighter future for all of us.
Look and verify for yourself. Res ipsa loquitur.
Is It Time for Law Abiding American Citizens to Stop Paying Their Taxes and Start a New Government?
By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report
The evidence is now overwhelming. The United States government has facilitated the theft of trillions of dollars of national wealth and 99% of the US population no longer has political representation.
Now that I have your attention, I want to make it clear to you that I am being rational and serious when I ask this question: Is it time for law abiding American citizens to stop paying their taxes and start a new government?
Before you roll your eyes and dismiss me as some “extremist,” let me explain the situation to those who are unfamiliar with my past reports. In my report on the Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States, I lay out the case proving that our economy and tax system has become an organized criminal operation. I defy anyone who spends time researching and analyzing the facts and overwhelming evidence to support this claim to prove otherwise. I invite anyone who thinks I’m wrong to a debate on national television. I’m talking to you, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and President Obama!
I torturously spend 60 plus hours a week researching this and the torrent of devastating news and evidence is mounting by the minute. The staggering level of theft continues unabated. As I am watching this unfold, I am horrified thinking about the severe consequences that have only just begun to reap their toll. Our nation is being raped and pillaged. Our future is going up in flames and our government isn’t even making the slightest effort to put out the fire. In fact, they are purposely pouring gasoline all over it.
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that… the machine will be prevented from working at all.” – Mario Savio
So let me take a deep breath and back up for a minute… and explain the urgent gravity of our current crisis.
X: Ponzi Nation: Welcome to America, Sucker
And when it comes to the Ponzi US economy, the last people in are American taxpayers, you and I. As Andy Kroll correctly put it in his Tom’s Dispatch report, “Ponzi Nation: Welcome to America, Sucker.”
“Ours is now a Ponzi nation. There is a new mood in the land. Just how it will play out is unknown, but a sense of having been conned is still spreading — as if not just surprising numbers of investors, but the whole country had experienced the last days of a giant Ponzi scheme. With it goes a feeling that what we’ve been living through, even in “the best of times,” wasn’t an American dream, but pure nightmare. Welcome to America, sucker.”
Knowing now how the market has been rigged to loot taxpayers and honest investors, let’s view these recent news items:
“States and companies have started investing very differently when it comes to the billions of dollars they are safeguarding for workers’ retirement…. states and other bodies of government are seeking higher returns for their pension funds, to make up for ground lost in the last couple of years and to pay all the benefits promised to present and future retirees. Higher returns come with more risk…. public pension funds are trying a wide range of investments: commodity futures, junk bonds, foreign stocks, deeply discounted mortgage-backed securities and margin investing. And some states that previously shunned hedge funds are trying them now.”
“The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their promises to future generations of retirees.
The upheaval on Wall Street has deluged public pension systems with losses that government officials and consultants increasingly say are insurmountable unless pension managers fundamentally rethink how they pay out benefits or make money or both….
After losing about $1 trillion in the markets, state and local governments are facing a devil’s choice: Either slash retirement benefits or pursue high-return investments that come with high risk.”
“Over 140 U.S. lenders folded in 2009 alone. To remedy the financial void left in their wake, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation wants public pension funds, which safeguard the retirement funds of millions, to buy in part or in whole the banks that couldn’t manage to keep their depositors’ funds…
Bloomberg News notes that pension funds in Oregon, New Jersey, California and New York may participate. The wire service also reported that firms being targeted for the plan control over $2 trillion in retirement funds.”
“Perhaps the biggest enemy is your 401(k) plan manager. Wolman and Colamosca say investors are making a huge mistake letting employers, Corporate America, Wall Street and politicians do your thinking for you. Why? Because they’re your enemy, they created and they control the 401(k) for their benefit, not yours. The fact is, 401(k) managers get rich off naïve investors.
How bad is it? A recent Forbes article, ‘Retirement Rip-Off,’ lambasted the industry. Using data from Dr. Mundell’s Center for Retirement Research at Boston College: ‘Even as 401(k) balances grow in size and importance, fees remain high and poorly disclosed.’ There are $2.9 trillion savings in 401(k)-type accounts. Fees on these 401(k)’s are estimated to exceed those of traditional pension funds by 1%. That means 401(k) savers are paying $29 billion in excess fees to the fund industry. And in a Bloomberg Markets report, retirement planning consultant Stephen Butler says, ‘Hidden fees of 1% can reduce a workers 401(k) returns by 15% over 30 years.’”
"What it all boils down to is that, in order to pay full benefits this year, Social Security will have to come up with an extra $29 billion to supplement the inadequate payroll tax revenue. Where will that money come from? It will have to come from increased taxes or from borrowed money. 'Wait a minute!' some readers will say. Hasn’t Social Security been receiving surplus revenue ever since the 1983 payroll tax hike? Isn’t there supposed to be approximately $2.5 trillion in the Social Security trust fund? The answer to both questions is yes. But there is a problem. Every dollar of that surplus Social Security revenue has already been spent by the government. Much of it went to fund wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The rest has been spent on other government programs.
The American people were not supposed to find out about the great Social Security scam for another six years, and the government was hoping to continue to receive surplus money from the Social Security contributions of working Americans for at least that long. But the inevitable day of reckoning has come, six years sooner than anybody expected, because of the severe recession. And the government of the United States has been caught with its hand still in the empty Social Security cookie jar.
For more than a decade, I have been trying to expose the Social Security scam just like Harry Markopolos was trying to expose the Bernie Madoff scam. But nobody would listen…. If there was any doubt remaining, with regard to whether or not the trust fund contains any real assets, that doubt should have been removed by the following words in the 2009 Social Security Trustees Report:
‘Neither the redemption of trust fund bonds, nor interest paid on those bonds, provides any new net income to the Treasury, which must finance redemptions and interest payments through some combination of increased taxation, reductions in other government spending, or additional borrowing from the public.’
There is nothing ambiguous about the above words.”
“It’s not coming. It’s here, being incrementally rolled out, including painful structural adjustments - some legislated, others unavoidable like the possibility suggested in Jonathan Laing’s March 15 Bloomberg.com article, titled “The $2 Trillion Hole” in public-employee retirement plans….
Washington may impose higher taxes and devalue the dollar, but mostly expect benefit cuts, the idea being to end core ones including Medicare, Social Security, eventually Medicaid, plus others millions rely on but won’t get if tough measures are enacted. Expect them. Some are here. Others are coming through the same structural adjustments imposed on developing countries and just as painful and destructive….
Overall, the effects are devastating, including growing poverty, inequality, the destruction of the middle class and unions, hunger, homelessness, environmental harm, and police state measures to quell dissent - the essence of tyranny showing up in America and arriving at a fast clip.”
The IMF “Structural Adjustment Programs” (SAPs) that have devastated countries worldwide (correctly referenced above by Stephen Lendman) are the very programs that have been launched upon us, as I described in my report on the Economic Elite. We are already seeing the effects of this hostile takeover. I won’t recount all the horrific societal and economic statistics that I have reported on in detail in my report, “Casualties of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage,” but the economic attack on the United States has already resulted in the US having the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world, with a stunning 50 million citizens now living in poverty. It has also given us the highest inequality of wealth in our nation’s history. Step aside Robber Barons! America now has a much more powerful and depraved criminal class. Vi Ransel recently described the bailout-coup-structural-adjustment-program like this:
“This is the result of a deliberate strategy, one Washington has executed many, many times, though usually in ‘Third’ World nations, by using ‘Free’ Trade Agreements (FTAs) and its front groups, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. Purchased politicians plunge their countries into unsustainable debt. Under Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), national industries are sold to transnational corporations and privatized. Social programs are cut to the bone or eliminated altogether. Interest rates are ratcheted up and the economy collapses on itself like the World Trade Center while banks and corporate buzzards fight each other to pick the carcass clean.”
On a personal level, we have all been feeling the increased stress and early tightening effects on our own financial situations already. However, on the state and federal levels, we are just beginning to see the utter devastation that lies ahead of us.


Oil Spill Citizen Report Map

Click this link .... http://oilspill.labucketbrigade.org/

Only a fraction of those in need file for bankruptcy

Bankruptcy filings are nearing the record 2 million of 2005, when a new law took effect that was aimed at curbing abuse of the system. Filings could reach 1.7 million this year, says law professor Robert Lawless, but few experts believe that debtors are now gaming the system.

Instead, concern exists about a growing number of Americans who need bankruptcy protection but cannot get any benefit from it or simply cannot afford to file. As their financial problems worsen, that hurts everyone because it can hinder the economic turnaround.

"It's shocking that we are back to the 2005 level," says Katherine Porter, associate professor of law at the University of Iowa. "And the filing rate doesn't even begin to count the depth of the financial pain."

Bankruptcy laws changed in 2005 because filings skyrocketed and credit card companies and banks wanted to weed out deadbeat borrowers. The law made it harder — more expensive and more restrictive — for individuals to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which erases most debts.

Instead of seeking protection from bankruptcy, a number of debt-laden Americans have gone into a "shadow economy," or informal bankruptcy, according to some experts.

CONSIDERING BANKRUPTCY? Things you need to know

The signs are there: Student loan defaults and home foreclosures are rising, and bank card loan defaults have increased from 7.7% in March to 9.1% in April, according to S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Indices. But during the same two months, bankruptcy filings fell by 4%.

Bankruptcy is supposed to provide a fresh start to people who are in serious financial distress. But only a fraction are filing, Porter says.

'My future is gone'

Carmen Gardiner, 25, a 2007 graduate of Louisiana State University, is weighed down by her private student loans. Her debt is now about $80,000, and her monthly payments are more than $600. Gardiner's undergraduate degree is in psychology. She lives with her husband, who is still in college, and earns $13 an hour at a call center in Atlanta. They have a 6-month-old daughter.

She hasn't defaulted on her student loan. But she doesn't see much hope. Bankruptcy would not discharge her debt.

"I'm completely sour about the whole idea of going to college," she says. "My future is gone before I have a chance to make one. But if I could discharge this using bankruptcy, it would be better than winning the lottery."

There is little information about unregulated private student loan debt. But during an investor meeting, Sallie Mae, the USA's largest private student lender, recently projected that 40% of $6 billion in subprime private student loans will default, according to Student Lending Analytics, an independent research company. That means 360,000 to 540,000 borrowers are likely to default on their loans, SLA said.

The only way that people with private student loans can get help in bankruptcy is if they can prove undue hardship. And to do that they have to go through a separate trial, which is an extra cost, involves witnesses, legal assistance and extra expertise, says Deanne Loonin, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. It is a huge barrier.

But in April, both the Senate and House introduced legislation to allow for private student loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy. Before the bankruptcy law changed in 2005, only government-issued-or-guaranteed student loans were protected during bankruptcy.

"The high interest rates on private student loans have made them incredibly profitable for loan companies and saddled students with crushing debt," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who first introduced this legislation in June 2007.

Filers pay now or pay later

Only a fraction of those in serious financial distress are filing for bankruptcy, Porter says. In January, she and Ronald Mann, a professor of law at Columbia University, released a paper, "Saving up for Bankruptcy," that probed why that is happening.

For starters, it's simply expensive to file. Attorney and filing fees have risen, and under the new law additional forms, paperwork and attorney liability have added to the cost, Porter says. In the first two years after the law changed, the attorney fees for filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy rose from $712 to $1,078, according to a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. And the filing fees increased from $209 to $299.

Many debtors have no choice but to delay filing for bankruptcy. Some wait until they receive a tax refund, and others cash out their retirement savings to pay for a lawyer.

But postponing filing is not good for debtors. It's similar to delaying going to the doctor, because you'll just end up with more problems, says Lawless, professor of law at University of Illinois.

The system is not just more costly, it is more complex. It requires pre-bankruptcy credit counseling. It requires six months of income information and two years of tax returns. And if the debtor holds off filing, a lawyer has to continue to gather new information.

"The paper chase gets greater, and then the fee goes up," says William Brewer, a bankruptcy lawyer in Raleigh, N.C.

Hanging onto their homes

Another reason: Many Americans who are trying to save their homes do not file for bankruptcy. Under the bankruptcy law, filers can protect their summer home and yacht, but they can't protect their primary residence, says John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a non-profit organization.

That wasn't such a big issue when home values were rising. But during the recession, many homeowners are seeing values plummeting and their mortgage payments rising.

Home foreclosure filings have outstripped bankruptcy filings, Porter says. And foreclosure shows no sign of slowing down. In the first quarter of the year, foreclosure filings were 16% higher than the same quarter in 2009, according to RealtyTrac. And March was the highest month since RealtyTrac began issuing reports.

Cordell Brooks, 47, who lives in Temple Hills, Md., may soon lose his home to foreclosure. During the recession he was laid off from his job as a graphics designer. Since then, he has worked as a substitute teacher and now is a contractor with Prince George's County Housing.

"I've gone from earning $40 an hour to $17.50," he says.

Brooks, who has owned his home since 1989, applied for a federal program known as Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) but was turned down. He has few options. He doesn't want to file for bankruptcy. But even if he did, it wouldn't help him save his home.

"Bankruptcy is not very useful at solving this particular type of financial distress," Porter says.

Homeowners who applied for loan modifications could have been turned down if they also have filed for bankruptcy. But as of this month, a debtor who requests loan modification cannot be discriminated against because they have filed for bankruptcy, says John Rao, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, which specializes in consumer credit and bankruptcy issues. And that will help homeowners who are also overwhelmed by other debt.

Is it time for a change?

When the bankruptcy law changed in 2005, barriers were erected to prevent abuse. But it seems that many honest Americans who are in financial crisis are now running into obstacles. That raises questions about what can be done to prevent debtors from falling through the cracks.

Congress is considering legislation to help college graduates weighed down by private student loan debt. If passed, the legislation could roll back the bankruptcy law so that private student loans can be discharged.

The Treasury Department has agreed to revise the federal mortgage modification program so that people can't be turned down for HAMP just because they have filed for bankruptcy. But some say that this is just a Band-Aid. And now few homeowners are getting permanent mortgage modification.

The 2005 bankruptcy reform did not change mortgage debt. "Debt secured by a principal residence has not been dischargeable since 1978," says Philip Corwin, an outside bankruptcy counsel for the American Bankers Association.

Recent efforts to introduce legislation to allow bankruptcy judges to modify home mortgages have failed. "If Congress had had the wisdom to pass that three years ago we would have forced all the parties to the table to work out reasonable solutions," Taylor says.

The financial industry says that the bankruptcy law is not causing the shadow economy. People can still file for it, and if they can't afford the fees at least the court filing fees can be waived, says Scott Talbott, senior vice president of the Financial Services Roundtable. And people with student loans who have undue hardship are able to get financial relief.

But undue hardship is extremely hard and costly to navigate, says Lauren Asher, associate director of Project on Student Debt. There is no definition in the bankruptcy code of undue hardship, and the court decisions on it have been harsh, Corwin says.

Free legal services have been cut back during the recession and are not available for many debtors. It would help to roll back some of the changes that have increased legal paperwork and risk of personal liability, Lawless says.

The bankruptcy problems are not likely to go away anytime soon. If Gardiner's career is stymied because she can't afford to go on to graduate school and is burdened with student loan debt, doors may be closed to her.

"Not going on with her career and being stuck in a low-wage job hurts everyone and drags down the economy," Porter says. "It is not surprising that the bankruptcy code is not a fit for the problems of today. The 2005 amendment was a move in the wrong direction, and I think it's time to think about redesigning bankruptcy."

Smoke Screens & Snake Oil

I think there's a striking smiliarity between the BP OIl plumes and the 'Smoke Monster' from the "Lost" tv series, here's a couple of pics, decide for yourself!









BP Oil Plume









Smoke Monster from LOST




Ok, so what do you think?...let's hear your take on this observation? Personally I just (jokingly) think, it's the smoke monster who's now out of work lookin for a job..a purpose just like the rest of us...maybe we should offer him unemployment, now...wait! Florida doesn't have any funds left for that!...Ugh, what to do?!

But, Seriously SHAME on our government for greenlighting the drilling without proper geological survey....they could have avoided this, but do they care??...NO! it's all about the MONEY!! Now BP stands for "Big Polluter" and get this, the government gave them till FRIDAY to find a plan-B to clean it up, yeah...and then what??...they've pretty much screwed the entire gulf Ecology for ours and our and our children's lifetimes!

I know...put ALL the BP execs, Government officials who were responsible for this mess out in the Gulf with buckets and make them keep scooping it out by hand until every last 'chemically dispersed' drop of it is GONE!

Hey if you live in Central Florida on the Gulf side (Tampa bay area) better drop by my survival site and pick up some water storage containers I have large ones that hold 275 gallons of fresh drinking water, cause the water you're used to drinking is about to go away and your lights are about to go out too when the power plants can't get water to cool themselves off, so be sure to get an emergency solar generator, or a DIY solar power kit so you aren't sitting in the dark for a long time till this is fixed!

Power and Water Problems Loom for Florida as Oil Threat Lurks Off Shore

White House Allowed BP to Keep Video of Gushing Pipe from Public for Three Weeks

The White House allowed BP to hide its video feed of a gushing oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico from the public for three weeks, all the while that same video played live in the White House Situation Room, ABC reports.

This startling revelation comes just as Obama prepares to get really angry in public about the spill – just in time to cover up his administration’s collusion with BP to hide the true extent of the massive disaster in the Gulf.

Brian Ross and John Soloman of the Center for Public Integrity discussed ABC’s quest to obtain the video of the oil pipe and revealed that the White House consented to the release of a 30 second clip of the pipe.

"At the end of the day, the White House finally acquiesced to the 30 second piece because they understood the political and media pressure," said CPI’s John Soloman. "Why not sooner? It’s been going on for three weeks. People have seen this internally within government almost every day. Why can’t the American people see it?"

The release of even the 30 second video clip showing the oil spewing uninhibited into the ocean immediately led outside observers to conclude the disaster was far worse than the 210,000 gallon estimate of the NOAA and Coast Guard. One scientist predicted to NPR that the rate is more in the range of almost 3 million gallons a day based on an analysis of the video released by BP.

The revelation that the White House and BP kept the true extent of the oil disaster from the public coincides nicely with last night’s news that Obama plans to get "angry" in front of the White House press corps tomorrow about BP’s role in the disaster and its clean up. Don’t be fooled, though. The evidence is mounting that the White House is working in concert with industry to hide the truth about the extent and cause of the spill.