Worst Case Scenarios

I try to avoid anything I can't verify with multiple sources here at the blog. Even when I can find them, if what I'm reading is out there (alarmist), I'll take my time to verify before posting it, knowing that the blogosphere will always be ahead of the MSM.

For the last month I've been tripping across information about the worst case scenario for the spew in the Gulf of Mexico - as if 60,000 barrels pouring in daily weren't bad enough - and been waiting to confirm it. There's no point to my freaking out, right?

So this weekend the MSM manages to stay roughly even with the blogosphere on the oil spew story and report on a document (that somehow got leaked) and reveal BP is worried that the gusher in the Gulf (BP hates it when you call it that) could leak or be leaking as many as 100,000 barrels a day - 4 million gallons or the equivalent of a spill the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez every 3 days. Problem is that's not the worst case scenario I've been reading about. The worst case involves the integrity of the hole itself collapsing and oil gushing into the Gulf at the rate of 150,000 barrels a day. Trust BP to low ball the figures one more time!

The emotional and psychological toll the Exxon Valdez spill took on the residents of the Alaska coastline has been chronicled in some detail, and the same things are expected to occur to Gulf residents but on a much larger scale.

I guess you'll be shocked to read that BP were told of a s safety fault weeks before the explosion.

This makes me smile, kinda'. While the right-wing media, including Limbaugh, double down on the idiocy of Barton's apology to BP and the use of words like "shakedown," to describe the $20 billion escrow account Obama got BP to fund,  Haley Barbour (Gov. R-Miss.) admits it was a smart idea.

Fossil Fuel Addiction

Oil execs get grilled by Congress and admit they're not well equipped to handle disasters.

Cue speech from the President on need for real change. We're rooting for him. Let's hope he can be as good as his word. Remember one of the reasons he's going after BP hammer and tong is it's been 21 years and Exxon still has not paid even the piddling amount (for them) they were fined. In fact before dime one was ever paid as compensation to victims of Valdez oil spill, 8,000 of the potential recipients died.


President Obama’s Oval Office Address on BP Oil Spill & Energy from The White House on Vimeo.


Cue Republicans telling Obama not to use this fossil fuel disaster as an excuse to push for legislation that tries to end dependency on fossil fuels. They're so astoundingly anti-science on the right and in some cases just so stupid, that I wonder where their credibility comes from. Oh yeah, the corporate media enables these idiots by never making any connections between what we're witnessing, for example, extreme storms and global warming. The evidence can be right in front of them and still they deny it.

One of the Republican governors (Haley Barbour of Miss.) is always alluding to oil naturally seeping into the oceans and how that isn't the end of the world and so the spill in the Gulf shouldn't be either. Well, that's 'cause it's a different animal.

Here's 15 unsettling facts about wealth and inequality in America (spoiler: the rich have been getting way richer and the poor less than nothing).

The most despicable man in the world (Glenn Beck) lies some more.