Obama Looking for "Whose Ass To Kick" Tip: Start Looking at Your Own Appointees

For OpEdNews: Rob Kall - Writer

Yesterday, President Obama said, I don't just sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they have the best answers so I know whose ass to kick. "

Matt Drudge, of the Drudge report used this tough talk to tap the not very far beneath the surface racism of his right wing readers, with the scarey, angry black president headline, ", OBAMA GOES STREET: SEEKING 'ASS TO KICK' ."

But I'm more interested in whose asses he finds. I think he should own up to his own failures first. He should be looking, first, in the White House.

Get rid of the fat cats and the people who totally screwed up his image in handling the BP Gulf spill, so now, a majority of people think this disaster is being handled worse than Katrina. Start with asses-- I mean-- the asses of-- Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, then quickly clear out the corporate friendly asses of Robert Rubin alumni-- Geithner, Summers and Orszag. Or maybe, first off, as I've been saying, kick corpo-whore Ken Salazar's ass out of the government and watch how fast he, how all of them take lobbyist or industry jobs.

Hire Van Jones back and tell Glen Beck to go f*ck himself instead of America. Hire the strongest advocates for a healthy ecology-- Paul Hawkens, Bill McKibben, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and show some serious action by empowering people who have a history of seriously protecting the environment.

There's been a lot of talk about Obama getting some passion, some anger going in that placid heart of his. But I hope if he finds that "fire in the belly," as Robert Bly described, that he used it to stand up to those bad advisers who have helped put him in the uncomfortable place he now finds himself.

Hopefully today's super tuesday of primaries will further demonstrate to the president that he's been taking the wrong sides-- for the status quo he campaigned against (like Blanche Lincoln, banksters, big Health Care, the Oil industry) rather than for the USA's people and environment.

The American people didn't vote for a corporate friendly contortionist president who bends over double backwards to please the people they defeated. It's time for him to throw out the Clinton DLC DINOs he started his presidency with and replace them with people who will watch the backs of the american people first. It just might save OBAMA's ass.

Investment Banker: It’s Going To Get Nasty – Buy Land, Barbed Wire And Guns

A top investment banker has warned that the economic fallout of the sovereign debt crisis could get so nasty over the next five years that people would be wise to abandon the markets and instead buy land, barbed wire and guns.

With gold smashing through its all time record high this morning on the back of fears over a double dip recession, analysts are turning increasingly bearish on the markets. Anthony Fry, senior managing director at Evercore Partners, told CNBC that the bond markets could turn nasty over the next few months and said that the current problems created by the European debt crisis could be with us for at least five years.

“Look at the current situation. You have Greece, now you have Hungary and huge issues surrounding Spain and Portugal,” he said, warning of a “nightmare scenario” of hyper-stagflation, where inflation rises dramatically but asset prices deflate.

“I don’t want to scare anyone but I am considering investing in barbed wire and guns, things are not looking good and rates are heading higher,” said Fry.

RBS Chief Strategist Bob Janjuah echoed Fry’s sentiments, predicting that governments would inject at least $15 trillion dollars more qualitative easing into the system and that investors should get into gold to offset the depreciating value of fiat currencies.

“Over the next 6 months we will see private sector deflation pushing 10-year yields down to 2 percent,” he said. “This will see the policymakers mistakenly attempt to kick-start the economy and market with a global quantitative easing program worth between $10 and $15 trillion dollars.”

Janjuah pointed out that, while gold has dramatically risen in value over the last ten years, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones have both remained flat over the course of a decade.

Gold hit a record high of $1,251.85 dollars an ounce this morning as investors continued to flock to the precious metal as a hedge against economic turmoil and the very real possibility of a double dip recession.

With U.S. debt moving towards parity with GDP, members of Congress and leading financial experts are warning that the United States will be in the same dire situation as Greece within 7-10 years unless the federal government implements radical austerity measures.

The backlash to those austerity measures usually takes the form of rioting and violence, as we have seen unfold in Greece.

Top historians, social and financial analysts, along with police bodies are all predicting that Europe and America are set to experience a summer of rage, with social discontent building as a result of economic hardship.

“Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can’t smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage,” wrote historian Simon Schama in his recent Financial Times column.

AP Enterprise: Sub attack was near US-SKorea drill

WASHINGTON – On the night a torpedo-armed North Korean submarine allegedly sank a South Korean patrol ship, the U.S. and South Korea were engaged in joint anti-submarine warfare exercises just 75 miles away, military officials told The Associated Press.

The sinking of the Cheonan was the worst South Korean military disaster since the 1950-53 Korean War. It showed that even impoverished nations such as North Korea can inflict heavy casualties on far better equipped and trained forces, including those backed by U.S. military might.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said plans for more joint U.S.-South Korea anti-submarine exercises, announced after Cheonan went down, are on hold awaiting U.N. action on the incident.

That's in part, Gates said Friday while in Asia, because of concerns about instigating another rash act by the North Koreans.

Two months after the sinking, U.S. officials for the first time disclosed details of the joint naval exercise held the same day as the attack on the Cheonan. Forty-six South Korean sailors died on the warship, which was not involved in the exercise. It was on routine patrol near disputed waters.

Military officials said the drill could not have detected the North Korean sub. Officials and defense experts said a minisub would have been difficult for even a nearby ship to track in shallow coastal waters.

What surprised experts was that a 130-ton minisub, without warning, could bring down a warship nine or 10 times its size, a power mismatch called asymmetric warfare.

"To us, stealth denotes the latest technology — billions of dollars in research and development in armaments," said John Park, a Korea expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "The North Korean version of stealth is old-school diesel-battery operated subs that evade modern detection methods."

An South Korean-led investigation into the sinking concluded last month that the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to the North. The North has denied any involvement.

Western experts say there are still questions about exactly what happened that night off Baengnyeong island.

One U.S. official said the sinking may not have been an intentional attack at all, but the act of a rogue commander, an accident or an exercise gone wrong. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly.

A statement run by North Korean state media threatened war in response to any attempt to punish the North.

"Because of the South Korean war-loving, mad puppets and American invaders, the North and South relationship is being driven to a catastrophe," Choi Yong Rim, a high-ranking North Korean Party official, told a rally last week in the North Korean capital.

On Saturday, South Korea's president, Lee Myung-bak, tried to lower fears of an armed conflict. "There is absolutely no possibility of a full-scale war on the Korean peninsula," he said in Singapore.

U.S. and South Korean forces can easily monitor the movements of North Korean submarines when they operate on the surface.

Underwater, tracking submarines relies on active or passive sonar. Passive sonar uses microphones to listen for the sounds of sub operations. Active sonar emits sounds and listens for the echoes as they bounce off of submerged objects.

The Cheonan was operating its active sonar at the time, South Korean Navy officer Kim Young-kyu told The Associated Press. It wasn't clear why the ship didn't detect the sub.

After the blast, a South Korean commander dispatched a patrol boat to look for subs.

But officials said the vessel couldn't locate any, perhaps because of the weather, currents and rough conditions that chilly March night. Those factors, as well as the rocks and ledges in shallow water, can all affect the reliability of sonar, experts say.

Sonar technology has traditionally been designed to operate in deep waters and used for convoy protection rather than coastal defense.

"There's a lot of equipment that works pretty well against big submarines out in the deep ocean, but doesn't work so well against small submarines in shallow water," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.com, a military think tank. "We've got the same concern with Iran and the Persian Gulf."

North Korea is believed to have a fleet of 70 submarines, including some 50 that are small but still capable of carrying a torpedo.

The night before the Cheonan sank, two U.S. destroyers and other ships maneuvered and practiced tracking while a South Korean navy submarine played the role of target.

The U.S.-South Korean anti-sub exercise began at 10 p.m. March 25 and ended at 9 p.m. the next day, Army Col. Jane Crichton, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces in Korea, told the AP. The exercise was terminated because of the blast aboard the Cheonan.

The submarine drill was part of annual U.S.-Korea war games called Key Resolve/Foal Eagle, which are intended to keep forces ready in the event another major war erupts on the Korean Peninsula.

Key Resolve was an 11-day computer simulation started early in the month. Foal Eagle followed at midmonth and included live firing by U.S. Marines, aerial attack drills, urban combat and other training as well as the anti-submarine warfare drill.

As the exercises got under way, Army Gen. Walter Sharp, commander of U.S. forces in Korea, said it was practice for "all the threats that North Korea can throw at us."

North Korea claimed the exercises amounted to attack preparations and demanded they be canceled.

Seoul has taken the sinking of the Cheonan as a wake-up call, and vowed to review and strengthen its defenses. The U.S. is planning two major naval exercises with South Korea in the coming weeks on top of the more than dozen of various types that it holds each year.

___

Associated Press writers Jean H. Lee and Kwang-Tae Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

S Korea's Ship Sinking - Another False Flag?

This writer's May 5 article included a history of noted previous ones, accessible through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-york-car-bomb-incident-another.html.

Important ones caused the Spanish-American War, WW II, the Vietnam War, and Iraq and Afghanistan wars post-9/11 (a glaring false flag).

Besides constant Middle East tension, more now looms after North Korea was blamed for the March sinking of South Korea's Cheonan warship near the western border with the North.

At the time, New York Times writer Choe Sang-Hun headlined (March 26), "S. Korean Navy Ship Sinks in Disputed Waters," saying:

"A South Korean Navy patrol ship sank....after suffering damage to its hull....raising suspicions about the possible involvement of North Korea, whose navy has skirmished with South Korean ships in the waters off the Korean Peninsula."

Then on May 19, Sang-Hun headlined, "South Korea Publicly Blames the North for Ship's Sinking," saying:

"South Korea formally accused North Korea....of responsibility for the sinking....killing 46 sailors in one of the deadliest provocations" since the July 1953 Korean War armistice, leaving a "state of war" in place to this day. Also, longstanding economic sanctions in violation of the armistice and UN Charter's Article 39, permitting them only to restore international peace and security during war or when they're verifiably threatened.

Washington bogusly imposed them, saying:

-- "North Korea is seen as posing a threat to US national security," although for years Pyongyang sought normalization and was rebuffed;

-- "North Korea is designated by the Secretary of State as a state sponsor or supporter of international terrorism," despite no evidence to prove it;

-- "North Korea is a Marxist-Leninist state, with a Communist government," though nothing in international law prohibits it; and

-- "North Korea has been found by the State Department to have engaged in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," - true or false, America not only proliferates, it threatens their use preemptively against any nation perceived as a threat, even non-nuclear ones.

South Korea Blames Pyongyang for the Cheonan Sinking

Claiming a North Korean attack, Seoul said there's "no other plausible explanation....The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that (a) torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine," even though none was detected in the area.

Official statements from Britain, Australia, Sweden and Washington backed Seoul, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs saying on May 19:

"The United States strongly condemns (this) act of aggression. (It's) one more instance of North Korea's unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law. The attack constitutes a challenge to international peace and security and is a violation of the armistice agreement."

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said "We will take resolute counter-actions against North Korea. We should make North Korea admit to its wrongdoing through international cooperation." Obama promised full support.

South Korea investigator Yoon Duk-yong said fragments were found, consistent with North Korean torpedo specifications listed in materials it distributes to export them, and they matched a stray Pyongyang torpedo found seven years ago. He added that the Cheonan "was split apart and sunk due to a shock wave and bubble effect produced by an underwater torpedo explosion (manufactured) in the North."

Pyongyang categorically denied it, calling it a "fabrication," threatening "full-scale war." Seoul refused its offer to send inspectors to challenge the allegation, forcing its Notational Defense Commission, headed by Kim Jong-il, to threaten retaliation against any further provocations.

On June 4, AP reported that, for the first time, South Korea officially referred North Korea to the Security Council, its ambassador Park In-kook handing a letter to Mexico's Claude Heller, its current president, asking for a response to "deter any further provocations."

On May 23, Japan Today released poll numbers showing more of their readers think America, not North Korea, sunk the ship: 48 - 46%, and at one point Washington lead by 10 points.

Appearing on Democracy Now on May 27, Korean expert Bruce Cumings discussed similar past incidents, including in 1999 when "a North Korean ship went down with 30 sailors lost and maybe 70 wounded." Then last November, another "North Korean ship went down in flames. We don't know how many people died in that. This is no man's land....off the west coast of Korea that both North and South claim. We have no idea what" happened to the Cheonan, but whatever did "is being blown way out of proportion."

Aggression or a False Flag?

The incident begs the question as to what Pyongyang could possibly gain from an attack, especially since for years it's wanted a formal end to the Korean War, a lasting peace, and normalization with America and Seoul, despite decades of betrayal and snubs by successive US administrations, Obama no different than his predecessors.

Writer Stephen Gowans calls the North a "product of its history," from Japan's colonization through "its daily struggle with the United States to survive." Like other nations, it rejects domination, wants its economic and political sovereignty recognized, and normalization with its neighbors and the West. Washington has other aims, its customary imperial ones, needing enemies that would have to be invented if they didn't exist. In Asia, it's North Korea like Saddam was in the Middle East and the Soviets were during the Cold War. As a result, it's been vilified, isolated, and called a regional threat, again after a very suspicious incident, unlikely that Pyongyang caused. So who then?

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen suspects a false flag, manufactured to blame the North. So does Beijing after Kim Jong Il's hurried visit to explain as well as Seoul's unconvincing, contradictory story. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also expressed doubts about South Korea's account, and wants independent verification of the evidence.

Stephen Gowans also is suspicious, saying the sinking had "all the markings of another Gulf of Tonkin incident (by) the aggressor....accus(ing) the intended victim of an unprovoked attack to justify a policy of aggression under the pretext of self-defense."

Key perhaps was to pressure now former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatayoma "to reverse course on moving the US Marine Corp base off Okinawa," Japan's southern-most, poorest prefecture, home for thousands of US troops.

Since WW II, America has maintained 88 bases in Japan, 37 on Okinawa, a tiny sliver of land about the size of a large US city. Understandably, Okinawans are furious, and with good reason. Their choicest real estate was stolen. They've practically been pushed into the sea, and for decades US forces have committed thousands of robberies, rapes, homicides, assaults, and other abuses they'd never get away with at home.

On Okinawa, they're subject to "administrative discipline" under US jurisdiction, not Japan's, the result of America's Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) Article 17 (on criminal justice) stating:

"The custody of an accused member of the United States armed forces or the civilian component (shall) remain with the United States until he is charged."

In other words, it shields US felons from prosecution under Japanese law, whisks them out of the country to avoid it, and creates an intolerable situation for Okinawans or wherever US forces are stationed. The Pentagon is in charge, not the host country. Imagine how that would go down in America if, say, China or Russia had bases here. Okinawans have no choice but to protest as 100,000 did in late April, to no avail.

After the Cheonan's sinking, Hatoyama agreed to change course, clearly Washington's aim that has everything to gain from stoking tensions, even more conflict, to gain popular support for diffusing a threat by a self-proclaimed nuclear power that threatens only self-defense if attacked.

Madsen said the incident occurred near Baengnyeong Island opposite North Korea, "heavily militarized and within artillery fire range....across a narrow channel."

"The Cheonan, an ASW corvette, was decked out with state-of-the-art sonar, (and) was operating in waters with extensive hydrophone sonar arrays and acoustic underwater sensors." Yet it detected no evidence of a submarine, mini-sub or torpedo in the area. Everything was quiet at the time.

However, Baengnyeong "hosts a joint US-South Korea military intelligence base," US Navy SEALS, and four US ships were in the area for a joint exercise. Further, the suspect torpedo's "metallic and chemical fingerprints" were German, not North Korean as claimed. Germany sells no torpedos to Pyongyang. It does to Israel and the Pentagon.

Other red flags further arouse suspicions, including the "presence of the USNS Salvor," a Navy salvage ship, earlier involved "in mine laying activities." Former Japan Times editor Yoichi Shimatsu reported them at lower depths, able to explode with enough force to sink the Cheonan. He also said Pyongyang has no underwater vessels stealthy enough to slip past Byeongnyeong Island's advanced sonar and audio detectors.

Navy SEALS may have attached "horizontally fired anti-submarine mines on the sea floor of the channel (or perhaps) a magnetic mine to the Cheonan, as part of a covert program aimed at influencing public opinion," stoking tensions enough to get Japan and South Korea to want our forces in the region - Washington's aim by whatever means, including perhaps sinking an ally's ship and killing 46 members of its crew, a minor externality to tighten its imperial grip, even at the risk of all out war.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

The Cover-up: BP's Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega-Disaster

WMR has been informed by sources in the US Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the Obama White House and British Petroleum (BP), which pumped $71,000 into Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign -- more than John McCain or Hillary Clinton, are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP's liability for damage caused by what can be called a "mega-disaster."

Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, are working with BP's chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. However, WMR's federal and Gulf state sources are reporting the disaster has the real potential cost of at least $1 trillion. Critics of the deal being worked out between Obama and Hayward point out that $10 billion is a mere drop in the bucket for a trillion dollar disaster but also note that BP, if its assets were nationalized, could fetch almost a trillion dollars for compensation purposes. There is talk in some government circles, including FEMA, of the need to nationalize BP in order to compensate those who will ultimately be affected by the worst oil disaster in the history of the world.

Plans by BP to sink a 4-story containment dome over the oil gushing from a gaping chasm one kilometer below the surface of the Gulf, where the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and killed 11 workers on April 20, and reports that one of the leaks has been contained is pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources. Sources within these agencies say the White House has been resisting releasing any "damaging information" about the oil disaster. They add that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf.

Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a "national security issue." Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano's actual reasoning for invoking national security was to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines.

From the Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Coast Guard, and Gulf state environmental protection agencies, the message is the same: "we've never dealt with anything like this before."

The Obama administration also conspired with BP to fudge the extent of the oil leak, according to our federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day was gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day.

However, WMR has been informed that submersibles that are monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of what is a "volcanic-like" eruption of oil. Moreover, when the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick -- which is larger than that being reported by the media -- it was turned down. However, National Geographic managed to obtain the satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site.

There is other satellite imagery being withheld by the Obama administration that shows what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to our sources.

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The Corps and Engineers and FEMA are quietly critical of the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only recently, has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70 vessels to the affected area. WMR has also learned that inspections of off-shore rigs' shut-off valves by the Minerals Management Service during the Bush administration were merely rubber-stamp operations, resulting from criminal collusion between Halliburton and the Interior Department's service, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves.

The impact of the disaster became known to the Corps of Engineers and FEMA even before the White House began to take the magnitude of the impending catastrophe seriously. The first casualty of the disaster is the seafood industy, with not just fishermen, oystermen, crabbers, and shrimpers losing their jobs, but all those involved in the restaurant industry, from truckers to waitresses, facing lay-offs.

The invasion of crude oil into estuaries like the oyster-rich Apalachicola Bay in Florida spell disaster for the seafood industry. However, the biggest threat is to Florida's Everglades, which federal and state experts fear will be turned into a "dead zone" if the oil continues to gush forth from the Gulf chasm. There are also expectations that the oil slick will be caught up in the Gulf stream off the eastern seaboard of the United States, fouling beaches and estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay, and ultimately target the rich fishing grounds of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.

WMR has also learned that 36 urban areas on the Gulf of Mexico are expecting to be confronted with a major disaster from the oil volcano in the next few days. Although protective water surface boons are being laid to protect such sensitive areas as Alabama's Dauphin Island, the mouth of the Mississippi River, and Florida's Apalachicola Bay, Florida, there is only 16 miles of boons available for the protection of 2,276 miles of tidal shoreline in the state of Florida.

Emergency preparations in dealing with the expanding oil menace are now being made for cities and towns from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater, Sarasota-Bradenton, Naples, and Key West. Some 36 FEMA-funded contracts between cities, towns, and counties and emergency workers are due to be invoked within days, if not hours, according to WMR's FEMA sources.

There are plans to evacuate people with respiratory problems, especially those among the retired senior population along the west coast of Florida, before officials begin burning surface oil as it begins to near the coastline.

There is another major threat looming for inland towns and cities. With hurricane season in effect, there is a potential for ocean oil to be picked up by hurricane-driven rains and dropped into fresh water lakes and rivers, far from the ocean, thus adding to the pollution of water supplies and eco-systems.

Poll: Criminaly prosecution of BP for oil spill

Almost two-thirds of Americans agree "strongly" or "somewhat" that the federal government should pursue criminal charges against BP and other companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.

The poll, conducted Thursday through Sunday, found that 73 percent of the country feels that the nation's greatest oil spill is a "disaster" with an additional 25 percent ranking it a "serious problem."

"Public complaints against BP are twofold: Most give poor ratings to its reaction to the massive spill, and most blame the company and its drilling partners for taking unnecessary risks that could have caused the spill," the poll reported.

The call for a criminal investigation did produce some partisan divide.

Seventy-four percent of Democrats favored a criminal investigation along with 67 percent of independent voters surveyed. Republicans were divided, with 50 percent favoring pursuit of criminal charges, with 44 percent opposed.

The few dissenting voices on severity of the spill have come from the right side of the political spectrum.

"This is not an environmental disaster: Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries and will continue to do it," Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said last week.

Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul, in an interview last month, blasted the Obama Administration for its rhetoric about putting a "boot heel" to the throat of BP. "Maybe sometimes accidents happen," Paul added.

There is deep public dissatisfaction with handling of the Deepwater Horizon platform explosion and subsequent spill, according to the WashPost. A multimillion dollar BP advertising campaign has failed to put a dent in it.

Eighty-one percent of those polled gave BP low marks for its response to the spill. But 69 percent of those polled - including 56 percent of Democrats - said the government has done a "not so good" or "poor" job of handling the spill. Only 28 percent gave the feds positive marks.

The poll was conducted June 3 to June 6, with a random national sample of 1,004 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

Scientists study wind-farm risks to birds

GOLDENDALE, Klickitat County — Biologist Orah Zamora spends her days walking around wind turbines in search of dead birds and bats. Most of her surveys turn up nothing, but every once in a while she finds a carcass that may have been felled by a whirring blade.

"It's like a crime scene, and you try to figure out what happened. Sometimes, it's really obvious because you see a slice mark," Zamora says.

Zamora's monitoring at the Windy Flats project is part of a larger series of surveys to assess how the wind-power boom is impacting birds that must now share air space with the towering turbines.

The surveys, which are financed by the wind industry, indicate that wind power is a relatively minor hazard to birds. But some scientists say it is still too soon to discount the risks posed by the rush to develop Northwest wind power. They are particularly concerned with the plight of hawks, eagles and other raptors, which are large, long-lived birds at the top of the food chain.

One survey at Big Horn Wind Farm in Klickitat County estimated that more than 30 raptors were killed during an initial year of operations — more than seven times the number forecast in a pre-construction study. The dead raptors included kestrels, red-tailed hawks, short-eared owls and a ferruginous hawk, which Washington state lists as a threatened species.

"It's just too early to say what this all means," said K. Shawn Smallwood, a California ecologist who has published numerous scientific articles on wind farms and raptor deaths. "The science is just not there yet."

There also is uncertainty about how raptors react to wind-power development, which often carves up foraging grounds with miles of new roads. Some say more studies are needed to determine if some species shy away from these areas or eventually abandon nests near the wind farms.

"Some of these projects are going up in undeveloped areas that were kind of havens for these species," said James Watson, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who has spent 40 years studying raptors. "These turbines are occupying some of the flight space that is their bread and butter."

Bird-mortality rates

Zamora works for West Inc., an ecological field-study company that has become a major contractor for the wind-power industry. The company's surveys of turbine operations, which typically last a year or more, do miss some dead birds that get quickly picked apart by ravens, vultures or coyotes. Statisticians try to account for such removals in coming up with the final survey estimates that have been released for about a dozen Northwest wind farms.

Based on that information, the wind-power turbines currently operating in Oregon and Washington kill more than 6,500 birds and more than 3,000 bats annually.

In an era of climate change and a massive oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, wind-power advocates say these deaths are an acceptable trade-off for development of a renewable energy source.

They note that house cats and other man-made hazards cause tens of millions of bird deaths each year.

Bird mortality "at wind farms, compared to other human-related causes of bird mortality, is biologically and statistically insignificant," wrote Mike Sagrillo, a consultant who writes for American Wind Energy Association.

But Altamont Pass in California, where an earlier generation of wind turbines constructed during the 1980s were densely packed into a key raptor area, offers a notorious example of wind power's toll on birds.

These Altamont wind farms have consistently killed more raptors per megawatt of power than anywhere else in the nation. Despite efforts to modify these wind farms, surveys indicate the Altamont wind farms still kill more than 1,600 hawks, eagles and other raptors annually, according to Smallwood.

The Altamont experience raised concerns among bird biologists as wind power spread to the Northwest in the late 1990s. In one of the first major projects, Florida Power & Light proposed extending Stateline wind-farm turbines into the bird-rich Wallula Gap saddle, just above McNary National Wildlife Refuge on the Columbia River.

"We told them that we need to think about this — and so do you," recalls Mike Denny, a biologist who serves on the board of the Blue Mountain Audubon Society.

After initially brushing aside those objections, Denny said that Florida Power & Light eventually agreed to negotiations that kept the turbines out of the area and made other siting concessions to reduce the impacts on birds. "I really think they did their best," Denny said.

Considering birds' needs

In recent years, some of the biggest Northwest concerns about raptors and wind-power development have been in the plateau country of Klickitat County, whose farm fields and grazing lands offer a buffet of chukars, rabbits and other prey to birds that nest in the nearby Columbia River Gorge.

When raptors spot prey, powerful hunting instincts take over, and the birds may dive to the ground without paying much heed to rotating — and potentially lethal — blades. Or, they may hover in the air currents, searching for prey, and then drift into the turbines.

In Klickitat County, a new generation of bigger turbines can produce more than twice the electricity of the older models at Altamont. These projects typically have far fewer turbines spaced farther apart, helping reduce the bird toll.

Wind-power developers, after consultations with state biologists, also have agreed to relocate some turbines away from canyon edges frequented by raptors, and avoid installing them in some areas used by raptors or near their nets.

"We take the questions and concerns of wildlife impacts very seriously," said Jan Johnson, a spokeswoman for Iberdrola Renewables, which owns the Big Horn Wind Farm and which invested in conserving 455 acres of wildlife habitat on the south side of the Big Horn site, a larger conservation easement than the state required.

Still, as the industry expands in the years ahead, the raptor death toll will continue to rise. Just how much is in dispute.

One effort to estimate that industry's cumulative death toll was undertaken by West in a study paid for by the Klickitat County Planning Department.

If the industry doubled in size, that study estimated the turbines would kill 516 raptors each year in the Columbia River plateau region of Oregon and Washington. Even at those rates, the study concluded such a toll would not appear to have significant impacts on any species. But ecologist Smallwood thinks the study significantly underestimates the raptor death toll. It's difficult to determine whether these deaths would harm individual species because there aren't good estimates of the total population for most Northwest raptor species, he said.

"We can't say what [death toll] is biologically significant," he said.

Greg Johnson, a biologist who co-authored the West study, conceded that the surveys used to estimate raptor populations have large margins of error. But he said it's better to use those estimates then to "shrug our shoulders and say we don't know."