This is...I just can't find the words
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Jesus, WTF at the Coast Guard thing.
RE Rand Paul on BP, I don't really disagree with him when I read the full quote:
BP's attitude has been moronic and arrogant, but they also have never said that they wouldn't be paying for this. Obama's rhetoric is over the top.Quote:
"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" said Paul who overwhelmingly won Tuesday's GOP Senate primary in Kentucky and is a favorite of Tea Party activists. "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticisms of businesses."
"I've heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill," Paul continued. "I think it's part of this blame game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault, instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen."
This is a situation where accidents of this scope with no apparent recovery plan are unacceptable. It's negligence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
As far as obamma's rhetoric I've not heard any of it, but he could be working a better outcome in november.
No, I've heard nothing unreasonable from Obama, and I've seen a fair amount of scapegoating from BP. Not unexpected of BP given the circumstances, but not worthy of the blowey that Paul is giving BP.
Those who were involved in the Valdez spill are saying that BP purposely created an artifically low spill count (5,000 barrels) in order to reduce their responiblity when it comes time to pay up for damages. The size and scope of the Valdez spill played a large roll in determining the financial payout.
So much for owning up and paying out. If BP honestly admitted they were dealing with a Valdez sized spill every 4 days, they would be fucked.
Everyone is pointing fingers, changing the subject, and generally worrying more about the $$$ and public opinion. It seems that their energies would be better spent getting together to cap the well,clean-up, determine what happened and how to prevent it in the future. then proceed to the grandstanding. I guess it's easier to claim that it's someone elses job to do these things,and just talk and talk and talk about what you would do if it were your job, than to actually do something meaningful.
More WTF bullshit from BP.
The EPA gave BP 24 hours, to find, and 72 to start using, a less lethal dispersant. While Corexit is EPA approved, it wasn't designed to be used in quantities like it is now. There are several other dispersants (12 so far) that are less lethal and up to nearly twice as effective.
BP's response? No. BP told the EPA that it wasn't going to follow the order. :bulb:
BP told the EPA to fuck off because BP has made investments into the company that makes Corexit. BP is, again, putting the option to reduce its financial loss over actual efforts to own up and correct this disaster.
hey everybody there's another reason to vote for the libertarian party!
No one thinks it's inappropriate for the US president to talk about putting his foot "in the throat" of an organization? Isn't that kind of rhetoric even beyond what Bush used to use for terrorists?Quote:
Originally Posted by ']['ear
Remember, I'm not saying that BP has acted in the right way. But they've also never said they were not going to pay for the cleanup — that's been clear from the start.
No, but I do think its inappropriate to say the President or his actions are Un-American. Last I checked the terrorists where not poisoning their own pond in the name of profit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Its been clear that this is what BP is saying, however using their actions I've pointed out in the last few posts. They are doing everything possible to reduce, or profit from, that responsibility. No matter the cost to environment beyond the oil, the non-transparency of their actions, or their downright lies.Quote:
Remember, I'm not saying that BP has acted in the right way. But they've also never said they were not going to pay for the cleanup — that's been clear from the start.
That whole "actions louder than words" thing.
EDIT:
Fun Bush Quotes on Terror:
Quote:
Mighty Mississippi vs. The Slick: Oil is winning
River outlets have been opened in an attempt to push back the spill
The Washington Post
By Joel Achenbach
updated 7:04 a.m. ET, Sun., May 23, 2010
GRAND ISLE, LA. - It has become an epic contest between water and oil along the Gulf Coast. Government officials have now opened wide the Mississippi River outlets — what they call the diversions — in a desperate attempt to overwhelm the massive oil slick approaching the ragged shoreline of Louisiana.
This hydraulic defense employs snowfall from Montana, floodwater from Tennessee. The mighty river drains half the country, and every creek and stream and seep from the Rockies to the Appalachians has been enlisted in the battle.
But still it appears the oil is winning.
A steady wind from the southeast is blowing the oil ashore and into coastal bays.
The forecast by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration projects a massive landfall Sunday to the west of the Mississippi River.
The heaviest patch of oil is taking dead aim at Port Fourchon, which has boomed thanks to the proliferation of deepwater drilling.
Richest waters in America
Already the slick has polluted some of the biologically richest waters in America.
Even worse damage could take place this week as oil soaks the beaches and passes through the feeble barrier islands to the inland bays, marshes and estuaries — the nurseries for shrimp, oysters crabs.
The names of these places will be in the news in the days ahead: Terrebonne Bay, Timbalier Bay, Caminada Bay and Barataria Bay.
"All the diversions are wide open," Myron Fischer, director of a research lab for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in Grand Isle, said of the river. "Just trying to push."
But a prevailing current near the mouth of the Mississippi flows east to west toward Texas, and it has caught the oil. An eddy appears to be forcing it directly toward Port Fourchon and Grand Isle.
What is poised to be a major disaster for fecund ecosystems ranging from brackish marsh to deep coral reefs in the darkness of the continental slope comes on top of decades of man-made stress: The gulf coast fisheries have long been threatened by the slow-motion crisis of coastal erosion.
For at least a century, the natural landscape has been pummeled by heavy industry and human engineering projects.
With the river largely imprisoned between high levees, the natural floodwaters are no longer allowed to feed sediment to the marshes.
Louisiana vanishing
Moreover, the oil companies cut canals for pipes and drilling rigs in the marshlands. All of this made it easier for salt water to invade the brackish estuaries. The grass died. Marsh became open water. Barrier islands began to erode. Hurricanes blasted them further.
The result is that Louisiana is vanishing. The state has lost 2,300 square miles of land since the 1930s, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindalsaid this week.
"If a foreign country tried to take this land away from us, we'd fight them," he said.
Jindal has joined with Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser in a campaign to win a permit to dredge a new set of barrier islands — what Jindal calls sand booms — as the first line of defense against the oil. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not granted the permit, and Nungesser has grown increasingly exasperated.
"We can't lose this war. Because we'll never recover," Nungesser said.
The most vulnerable part of this ecosystem is the grass, the "canes," that give purchase to larval shrimp and other organisms that float in from the open gulf.
The marsh can't be cleaned, officials say. Trying to clean it will only kill the roots and push the oil into the muck, said Jeff Dauzat, an environmental scientist with the state's Department of Environmental Quality.
"If we can keep [it] out of marsh, we'll have a terrible year, but we'll rebound. But if we get a lot of the thick stuff in the marsh, it may hamper us for years," said Windell Curole, director of the South Lafourche Levee District.
Meanwhile the gulf's "dead zone" is already forming, said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
The dead zone appears every year in the deep water where fertilizer from the middle of the country flows out of the Mississippi River and incites a massive plankton bloom that depletes much of the oxygen in the water.
She said she didn't know how the oil spill will affect the dead zone.
"We're in uncharted waters," Rabalais said.
"You cannot have that much oil on the surface of the water over such a large area without affecting the organisms that live on the upper water column," she added. "It's the plankton, the fish larvae, the fish eggs, the marine mammals that live out there, the sea turtles, ocean birds."
'Like a big hurricane'
Here in Grand Isle, locals fear the destruction of what they consider a fishing paradise. Buggie Vegas, owner of Grand Isle's Bridgeside Marina, the home base of the Labor Day Redfish Rodeo, said of the oil slick: "It's like a big hurricane out there, just drifting around. Where it's going, we don't know."
To the east is the Mississippi and its long, clawlike delta that seems to point to the site where the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank.
In Plaquemines Parish, the river is hidden from sight behind the levee. The top half of a great ocean freighter, studded with smokestacks, will pass slowly on the other side of the grassy berm and suggest an unseen waterway of immense scale.
Over countless millennia, the river juked and weaved through South Louisiana and built the delta, abandoning old channels, finding new routes to the sea. Now the river is a giant canal with the sole purpose of navigation.
It has been dredged and lined with coarse stones known as riprap. The riparian zone has nothing so wild as an overhanging tree. The Father of Waters is now effectively a drain at the bottom of the country.
A few days ago an old man climbed to the top of the levee in Empire, a fishing town on Highway 23, the road that runs along the final stretch of the river before it reaches the gulf. The current looked strong, rushing south toward the spill.
"That's what's saving us — the river's up," said Lawrence "Brother" Stipelcovich.
He is 82 years old, born right here, a fisherman all his life, the grandson of Croatian immigrants. He can boast that he got the croaker industry going, the pompano industry, the mullet industry. Along the way, everything changed.
"In 1935, the oil companies came down here to Plaquemines Parish. Then we noticed the land started sinking," he said.
Three feet the land subsided, he figures. Marshland vanished before his eyes. Where his father once dug a narrow canal for boats to reach a nearby bay there is now wide-open water.
He's worried, though not for himself, because his time is limited.
"It's not me that's going to suffer for it," he said. "It's the younger generation that's going to suffer for it."
The marsh can't be cleaned
Oil is biodegradable.
You mean "corporation". It's fine and dandy to put out hits on private citizens, but Heavens forbid the president dear speak out against someone trying to earn a buck in this topsy-turvy world :( :( :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
In the same sense that cyanide is biodegradable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
Top Kill was delayed. If you guessed it was because the oil line is still erupting in new locations, you win a cookie :up:
and yet the GOP has blocked, for the 2nd time, raising the financial responsibility cap of disasters like this from 75 million to 10 billion. :down:
holy shit at 1:10
:cry:
And it has the chemical dispersant too. That's got to be toxic by itself.
"Nobody seems to be in charge"
Go go USA #1!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...Tabs%3DarticleQuote:
Crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and washing ashore in Louisiana is exposing how ill-prepared the U.S. has been to respond to a major offshore oil spill.
In the fight to limit environmental damage from the month-old spill—which is on track to rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in size—BP PLC executives, government officials, and scientists are learning as they go, even though the industry has been drilling in the Gulf for decades and has 77 rigs operating there, according to ODS-Petrodata, a research firm.
The Environmental Protection Agency says it is still assessing the ecological effect of the 600,000 gallons of chemicals that BP has sprayed into the Gulf to break up the oil so far. As of Sunday, the agency and BP were locked in a standoff over whether to continue using the same chemical dispersant.
Some scientists researching the spill don't have the right instruments to measure the spill or to study its impact. Maps that federal officials are using to identify priority areas to protect from spreading oil are outdated. And the Coast Guard says the country lacks enough plastic piping, or "boom," to keep the incoming oil away from the coast.
"The national system did not contemplate you would have to do all that at once," Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen told a Senate committee last week, referring to laying boom across a coastline as big as the Gulf's.
Sunday, on CNN's "State of the Nation," Mr. Allen likened the effort to address the Gulf oil spill to fighting a multifront war, as officials work to respond to oil coming ashore in southern Louisiana, tar balls in Alabama and Mississippi and the still-leaking well. He said BP had the means to cap the spill and that "our responsibility is to conduct proper oversight to make sure they do that."
But Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar said at a news conference in Houston Sunday that the U.S. would "push BP out of the way" if it didn't stop the leak and adequately clean up.
Mr. Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will visit Louisiana on Monday to inspect the response to the BP oil spill.
BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward told his staff, in an email Friday, that he was frustrated by the company's failure to stop the leak and warned an attempt to do so as early as Tuesday could fail. Mr. Hayward said that BP's plan to cap the well using heavy drilling fluids, a process known as "top kill," would be "another first for this technology at these water depths and so, we cannot take its success for granted."
And a BP spokesman said Sunday that the amount of oil BP now is siphoning from the leak has declined to 1,360 barrels a day, compared with 5,000 barrels BP said it had been collecting last week, as more of the oil evades the insertion pipe.
The White House insists it is doing everything possible to fight the spill, which began with an explosion April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon rig as it was drilling a subsea well for BP.
On CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed media critics who have said the spill would become the Obama administration's Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans in 2005. In the case of Katrina, Mr. Gibbs said, the federal government didn't response in the beginning. With the BP incident, "we were there immediately. We have been there ever since," he said.
Yet, signs that the spill is overwhelming the U.S. environmental infrastructure can be seen in the dispute between BP and the EPA over the chemicals BP is using to break up the oil slick.
BP has been spraying unprecedented quantities of Corexit 9500, which the EPA approved for use on oil spills although EPA tests show it is more toxic to certain sea life than some other dispersants the agency has also approved. BP has been spraying the chemicals on the Gulf's surface and in smaller amounts directly at the well on the sea floor, a tactic never before tried at these depths and approved on May 15.
Then, last Thursday, amid mounting questions in the media and on Capitol Hill, the EPA changed course. It told BP to switch to less-toxic dispersants by Sunday night. But, according to a letter from BP that the EPA released over the weekend, the oil company wants to keep using Corexit. BP says alternatives raise other environmental questions and are not available in sufficient volume for this spill.
The EPA said Sunday that it would "continue to review and discuss the science" through the Sunday-night deadline and then decide what to do.
Some scientists fault the federal government for not having investigated dispersants more fully earlier. Knowledge of dispersants' environmental effect is limited because the government "had virtually no money to put into that research," Nancy Kinner, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire, said at a congressional hearing last week.
Although thousands of people are working to fight the spill, basic questions about its environmental impact remain. One is how much oil is spewing into the gulf. Scientists' estimates vary widely—from some 5,000 barrels a day to more than 50,000 barrels a day. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief, Jane Lubchenco, said last week that efforts to measure the leak have been delayed in part because they would require sending more robots to the ocean floor. That would increase the chance that the robots might impede eachother's work and lead to an accident, she said. Federal officials say 16 robots already are working in the vicinity of the leaking well to try to plug it.A government team spent the weekend crunching reams of existing data—from video footage and pressure readings to overhead imagery—to try to come up with a more accurate estimate by early this week.
Equally unclear is how the leaking oil is affecting undersea life. Earlier this month, a research vessel sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration produced water samples from the Gulf that researchers said suggested oil was collecting in a plume deep below the water's surface. But scientists analyzing the samples say they are of limited value because they were taken with equipment not designed for oil. The researchers on the ship took the samples using bottles designed to test for substances that dissolve in water—but oil doesn't, said Edward Overton, an emeritus professor of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University who is analyzing some of the samples. The oil stuck to many of the research bottles, he said, potentially skewing lab results."This is not a very satisfactory way to do it," Mr. Overton said of the water-sampling method. "Unfortunately, it's all that we've got out there right now."
Additional research ships are heading out to study the water.
Onshore, authorities are responding to the spill with more than a decade-old maps that assess the environmental sensitivity of U.S. coastal areas—maps that spill responders use to prioritize areas they want to protect from oil. NOAA said last week that it would cost $11 million to update the environmental-sensitivity maps—money NOAA hasn't had.
(Wow, read the comments. WSJ sure has changed....)
How did WSJ change? The article is a factual piece with no opinion/analysis being offered...
The article was fine. I meant the comment posts....
It has changed tho, it's now a news source with a business section instead of a business journal with a news section.
And you're basing this on one article? Interesting.
:coffee: Small tangent in parentheses, that's all. Now how about that oil?Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Boston's famous Big Picture gets up to speed with the oil spill hitting land.
Do we have a rage emoticon yet?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews
If only we had more regulations.
Or enforced the ones we have... :(
Creating new regulations is a great way to enforce old ones.
No it isn't. :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Hey, would you mind laying out your personal position on off shore drilling? What do you think the policy should be going forward, what should change given this accident, and so on?
Those pictures.....:eek:
I think the government should enforce its own regulations instead of pretending that new ones are a solution. Meanwhile, it should make BP pay not only the cleanup costs, but also punitive damages for negligence, and fire and put on trial all employees who forged the documents.Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeKhan
Yeah, kind of blows wide open BP's stance last week that the spill impact would remain very modest.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
BP's mile long tube is also failing. Sucking up at about 30% its best 24 hour rate so far.
I can't wait till the independent flow figures come out next week. Think I'll wait till then before I ask Dread if he still trusts BP.
Questions on specifics:Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
How about the rig operator and Haliburton? With the puntative damages, I mean. If there was negligence all around, should they all be held responsible or just BP because they were the umbrella company contracting those other guys and therefore ultimately responsible?
As far as going forward, you do you think the current regulatory structure for off shore drilling is enough? In other words, had everyone been doing what they were supposed to be doing, would the accident not have happened? And if it did happen anyway, say by other means, what about the inability to plug this leak? Is that a result of something BP/subs didn't do? Or have we all just found out the hard way that nobody knows how to stop leaks like these?
Do a study to investigate the degree of culpability for all actors involved. Then divide the fine based on those numbers (i.e. if Haliburton is 10% responsible, they pay 10% of the fine).Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeKhan
From what I've read, if all the required measures were in place, this wouldn't have happened, so I see no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. BP has to be punished to the full extent of the law, however, to scare other companies into compliance.
Quote:
(CNN) -- Coming back this weekend after a stay in Europe, I had that distinct sensation -- last felt when Lehman Brothers capsized, setting off the Great Recession -- that we once again find ourselves at the mercy of events and people just beyond our control.
Here at home, one hears that by Wednesday dawn, we will know whether BP's latest big try to stop the oil spill will work. If it does, we can begin to feel that we are moving in the right direction, but if it doesn't -- well, no one is quite sure what Plan D looks like. Is this really where we have come: that the fate of our precious coastlines and the waters off our coasts are in the hands of a single foreign-based company?
A month ago, it looked like the White House was on top of this problem, as Cabinet officers scurried here and there, the Coast Guard and others swung into action, there were talks with BP, and the president paid a personal visit. But increasingly, it has become apparent that the federal government may be present but is not in charge.
It keeps saying that BP bears ultimate responsibility. It is keeping the press away. No wonder James Carville, Chris Matthews and Donna Brazile exploded late last week. They are right on a basic point: Ultimately it is not the responsibility of BP or any other company to protect American interests but the responsibility of the federal government. Some Obama supporters have argued that the 1990 Oil Pollution Act limits the president's capacity to take action. Others disagree. Either way, in an emergency, laws can be changed.
Although this disaster is not an existential threat, it could be argued that if the U.S. government had fought World War II in the same way it has fought the oil spill, we might well be speaking German now. Faced with a growing danger to our well-being, a WWII-type government would at minimum have:
• Brought in the CEOs of all the major oil companies and charged them with the duty of an all-hands collaborative effort to stop the spill and help ward off the damage.
• Brought in the best minds in the country, from universities and technology, for emergency efforts to find solutions.
• Moved quickly to mobilize the National Guard and other military forces, if necessary, ensuring that they received the resources needed to protect our beaches.
• Made a clear call to citizen volunteers to help where necessary.
• Given Cabinet officers an ultimatum: Get this under control in the next 30 days, or else.
There will be ample time after this disaster for finger-pointing and blame-laying. The key now is to get this spill under control before it does far more damage.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post had it exactly right Monday morning when it argued that with the European crisis spreading now beyond Greece, "the knife-edge psychology currently governing global markets has put the future of the U.S. economic recovery in the hands of politicians in an assortment of European capitals."
Across Europe, one finds people stunned at the rapidity with which this crisis has grown, threatening not only their weak economies but also their dreams of a European utopia with people living a honeyed existence. All that could go smash now. Indeed, it is ironic that Europe may now be forced to give up its strong welfare state even as the U.S. is moving toward it. But the immediate point is that the U.S. finds itself too much at the mercy of whether European politicians and publics now make the right moves.
It may take a while, but Americans are going to start feeling a lot happier about our country when we once again believe we have strong control of own destiny. Leadership, anyone?
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Gergen.
You know you're in a shit position when insane conservatives like "Drill Baby Drill!" Palin, who slept with a BP employee for 18 years, tries to give herself some distance by attacking the President's oil connections.
Or when you're stock is at a 52 week low.
Or when your directors get sued by your investors over the costs of cleaning up after your company.
These must be fun days for BP, sadly I appear to have misplaced my sympathy.
I doubt that $10 billion will even cover this one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
:haha: @ David Gergen attacking Obama about the oil spill. Yo, Dave! Your boss was in office at the end of the energy crisis, and failed to do jack shit about it! If we were now sitting on 30 years of aggressive energy research, we wouldn't be engaging in shortsighted idiocy like tapping massive aquifers of toxic chemicals under the ocean, right of our coasts.
The criticism of Obama's lack of leadership on this may be valid, though given the fact the the right is attacking him as being "anti-corporate" because of his current wimpy actions, I suspect that any action would be damned, particularly Gergen's plan. But Gergen's pals have blocked alternative energy at every step for 30 years. If Obama must be criticized on this, that's fine. But NOT from the likes of Gergen. The hypocrisy is enough to make me puke.
If the President talks about putting his foot on the throat of anyone, I think it's over the line. I'm talking about appropriate rhetoric in a democracy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
Because calling everyone in the world who doesn't bend to US politics a terrorist is so much better?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
And was Bush not criticized for that? So then were is the criticism of Obama for his rhetoric?
so now you remember Bush didn't display your proper sense of rhetoric? Guess thats a step in the right direction.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
I'm just pointing out that you have been rather odd in what you consider offensive, extreme, or improper. From getting upset about not understanding Kick-Ass, to be confused about Inglourious Basterds being a gore-fest, to a president, thats famous for his speeches, using words you think are to strong. You're not exactly a middle-of-the-road unbiased observer, so don't act surprised when the only people you agree with are the nutjobs that freaked out when Obama went for the fancy mustard.
