May 1st, and millions of gallons of crude continue to pour into the ocean off the southern coast. Preliminary analysis suggests the possibility of shoddy work by Halliburton, the company that allegedly installed the three failed blowout preventers. Perhaps we should give some serious consideration to the idea of stuffing the hole with Dick Cheney.

As I write this, millions of gallons of crude oil are pouring from the ocean floor and into the rivers, inlets, beaches, and marshes of the Gulf Coast, a gift from our friends at BP and Halliburton, the company which supposedly correctly installed the triple layer of now failed blowout preventers which should have controlled the spill. Because the shutoffs are located at the bottom of the ocean in over 5,000 feet of water, where the pressure on a human would be over 2000 pounds on each and every square inch of your body, the damaged equipment has so far totally resisted any attempts to repair it. The robots appear to be, if you’ll excuse the pun, in a little over their heads.

We don’t have the slightest idea of how a spill such as this will affect the delicate ecosystems along the coast. Will the ocean fisheries be poisoned by the oil, or by the dispersants that they are now freely pouring into the sea to cover the evidence? Will wildlife be wiped out or genetically damaged by the mutagenic components of crude?  Will the marshes that protect the coast from storms be devastated? Will people lose their livelihoods? Will tourism, and the thousands of jobs that depend on it, suffer? Who is really going to pay for this? And perhaps, more importantly, how did we get here?

The answer, of course, can be found in Washington DC, where armies of lobbyists slither through the halls of Congress on thick carpets of cash. The exchange goes a little like this... “You look the other way and I’ll give you this pile of money to sell out your constituents.”   Neither side of the aisle seems immune to this exchange, as evidenced by the fact that the practice is as old as Congress, the very people who make the rules and encourage this behavior. Clearly something is broken.

There are plenty if people who will insist that this is really no big deal and point to the “miraculous” recovery of Prince William's Sound after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, which admittedly looks pretty good in pictures. If you turn over one of the shoreline stones, however,  you’ll find... oil, and little else. The actual recovery is onlya few molecules deep. There are also those will will tell you that it’s vital to burn every last drop of available oil to power the American economy, climate be damned. Few of those people will tell you that a gallon of crude pulled from American soil has just as much chance of becoming gasoline in China or India as it has of powering the car in your garage. Thanks to Congress and the lobbyists. American oil is sold on the world market and flows toward the highest bidder. Since the oil giants have basically no national allegiances, there will be no breaks for rich Americans. Our wildlife dies so that India’s TaTa Motors may live.

Perhaps we should have a national discussion about allowing people to do things to public resources when they clearly have no way of controlling the consequences of their errors. Sure, sounds great. Just put this wad of cash in your pocket and we’ll talk.

End of rant

Found this on one of the AOL pages. I've had this experience, and I imagine you have too. It's much funnier when it's not happening to you. Sorry about the long URL, but that's where it is. Just copy and paste the whole thing.

m

P.S. I think I might have had a date with the alien.

http://www.urlesque.com/2010/03/11/dont-trust-profile-pictures/?icid=main|main|dl9|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.urlesque.com%2F2010%2F03%2F11%2Fdont-trust-profile-pictures%2F

As Christmas approaches, I can’t help but think of the tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel who are stationed all over the globe, many of whom are living rough, missing their families. No sugarplums dancing in their heads, but thoughts of the next RPG, the next bullet, the next IED. I watched with great sadness the other day as President Obama announced that we were sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, a country which over the centuries has developed a well-earned reputation as the “Empire Killer”.  Lawless, backward, tribal, corrupt, and now infested with the same radical cockroaches who have been trying to hijack Islam for decades, Afghanistan has been in an almost continuous state of war for hundreds of years, and one country after another has stepped up in order to “tame” its wilds. Now it’s our turn in the barrel, and why? Oil, of course... to protect the profits of our oil companies, not to mention our war industry. Both players also happen to own a large proportion of the U.S. Congress, who have been using our money to make themselves and their friends rich since George Washington was President. Dwight D. Eisenhower, famous WWII General and 33rd President, said it way back in the 50’s as he was leaving office.... “Beware the Military Industrial Complex.”

Today we’re protecting the Oil Company properties from being taken over by radical Islam, but the task has been the same since the Red Line Agreement of 1928.

When we pushed Saddam out of Kuwait (why did we do that again? Oh, yeah, I remember.) we moved thousands of U.S troops into Saudi Arabia, which we used as a staging area. The forces of radical Islam there, many of which occupy high offices within the Saudi monarchy, saw the presence of American “infidels” on their sacred land as an affront to their God, so even though we were keeping Saddam at bay, our presence was actually destabilizing the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia, which has more oil than almost any other place in the world, is the big giant oil company cash station of the Middle East, and must be mollified at all costs. What to do, what to do. Oh, I know.... DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!!

As soon as Saddam was out of power, thanks to the brilliant work of our military, who are the best in the world at kicking ass and taking names, our troops were immediately withdrawn from Saudi soil, assuring that the oil giants would remain in control. They also returned control of Iraqi oil into "friendly" hands. Crisis averted.

Our military, of course, is in a bind. Our soldiers understand the need to protect America from foreign invaders, and are proud to fight and die to keep us safe, but must also dutifully wade into whatever hellhole the politicians send them and make the best of it, regardless of how boneheaded or ill-conceived or unwise the action. Take that hill? Yes, Sir.... I’ll need 30,000 men. Many of our soldiers even sign up to return to these cesspools because they can see that they can help momentarily alleviate the suffering they see in the streets, even knowing that a lot of it is born in boardrooms thousands of miles away. It’s sickening to think of how much American blood has been spilled protecting the photo-ops of our politicians. Shame. And now President Obama has fallen into the same hole. So much for change.

Recently there has been much talk about why we can’t have an energy policy that would create a hydrogen economy, which would not only transform our slow economy but radically reduce our need to fight wars. Hydrogen is an almost perfect way to store electricity.... use electricity to split water (using clean wind and solar). Store the Hydrogen. When you need electricity, for instance, to drive to work, feed the Hydrogen to a fuel cell in your car. You get back your electricity and your water. No pollution whatsoever. 

How much would a national hydrogen infrastructure cost? Estimates are astronomical, as high as a trillion dollars. Couldn’t possibly afford that. OK, let’s be pessimistic and say that it costs TWO trillion. Hmmm.... how much have we spent blowing up sand dunes in the Middle East just in the last eight years? Ummm... about a trillion dollars. ( but that all went to our soldiers and their families, right? Hell no!) And how many taxpayer dollars did we just throw at the banks and Wall Street so that the fat cats didn’t have to give up their private jets? Oh, yeah, about a trillion dollars. And who, in both cases, approved this colossal waste of cash and human resources? Is this starting to make a picture?

Lately we’ve been treated to a stupendous amount of adolescent braying by the defenders of the status quo who insist that we have to drill baby drill and rip that coal out of the ground because the American people have to have cheap energy and won’t stand for anything less. Cheap energy? What are the lives of  hundreds of thousands of wounded, maimed, and dead soldiers worth? How about the trillions spent on cancer, asthma, heart disease and other illnesses, and the millions of hours of lost work and wages because of poisoned air and water? How about the almost incalculable costs of global climate change? Lost species? None of those costs show up at the pump or on your electric bill, do they? The truth is that the worst offenders are masters of shifting costs and blame away from themselves so that we won’t notice that they’re killing us with their “cheap” energy. The prime directives of the corporate structure are to grow and profit... damn the pollution, damn the illness, damn the suffering, damn the torpedoes... full speed ahead. The people that run them can easily become slaves to the machine. If left unsupervised with only these two rules to guide them these organizations can become cancers on the societies that host them. The idea of the Free Market, that miraculous mechanism which automatically adjusts to produce the highest outcome, would be brilliant if it actually existed. In fact, markets and policies are constantly manipulated in the dance of power brokers. The Free Market exists only as a theoretical construct, and depends on a whole raft of mostly human characteristics like honesty and a moral compass.... all things that are typically outside of the two-rule corporate universe. So ultimately we are left with this... If Exxon owned the Sun we would have an energy policy. Until then the powers that be will continue to use Congress and the rest of the politicos to block and stall and de-fund anything that looks like a change until the last drop of oil and the last lump of coal have been burned.

I am completely aware that almost no one on earth could possibly give a shit less what I think about anything, but, for those of you who have been steadfast in your desire to not dwell on any of this, I beg you to put down your maps of which waitresses Tiger has been fucking in your area and start paying attention, if only for a few minutes. The children are depending on us. Maybe if we start paying attention now they won’t have to spend their Christmases missing their families when they grow up.

End of rant.

Cupcake- I'm sorry to see that you've left the building. I miss your posts. I hope you find whatever it is that you're looking for before your puppy finishes eating your furniture. (I still have baby needle-teeth embedded in my chair legs from my Irish Wolfhound.)