BP’s oil is still out there, right?

Of course it is, but the government and their pals at BP want you to think its all gone. From Naomi Kleins piece up at The Nation:

For the scientists aboard the WeatherBird II, the recasting of the Deepwater Horizon spill as a good-news story about a disaster averted has not been easy to watch. Over the past seven months, they, along with a small group of similarly focused oceanographers from other universities, have logged dozens of weeks at sea in cramped research vessels, carefully measuring and monitoring the spill’s impact on the delicate and little-understood ecology of the deep ocean. And these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented. Among their most striking findings are graveyards of recently deceased coral, oiled crab larvae, evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities, and a mysterious brown liquid coating large swaths of the ocean floor, snuffing out life underneath. All are worrying signs that the toxins that invaded these waters are not finished wreaking havoc and could, in the months and years to come, lead to consequences as severe as commercial fishery collapses and even species extinction.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the most outspoken scientists doing this research come from Florida and Georgia, coastal states that have so far managed to avoid offshore drilling. Their universities are far less beholden to Big Oil than, say, Louisiana State University, which has received tens of millions from the oil giants. Again and again these scientists have used their independence to correct the official record about how much oil is actually out there, and what it is doing under the waves.

One of the most prominent scientists on the BP beat is David Hollander, a marine geochemist at the University of South Florida. Hollander’s team was among the first to discover the underwater plumes in May and the first to trace the oil definitively to BP’s well. In August, amid the claims that the oil had magically disappeared, Hollander and his colleagues came back from a cruise with samples proving that oil was still out there and still toxic to many marine organisms, just invisible to the human eye. This research, combined with his willingness to bluntly contradict federal agencies, has made Hollander something of a media darling. When he is not at sea, there is a good chance he is in front of a TV camera. In early December, he agreed to combine the two, allowing me and filmmaker Jacqueline Soohen to tag along on a research expedition in the northern Gulf of Mexico, east of the wellhead.

Ah, don’t you just love the smell of corporate bullshit in the morning?

Oil Spill Commission drops the ball…again.

ProPublica has this to say on the cough…new report about who fucked up and why regarding the Deepwater Horizon oil hemorrhagic nightmare that is still ongoing in many respects. It seems the new commission is a lot like an old commission that reviewed the BP refinery blast that killed 15 of their employees in 2005 and which I blogged about here and here. From ProPublica:

It turns out the report—at least the language dedicated to the disaster’s most prominent miscreant, BP—echoes both public and private analysis done after a series of BP accidents, small and large, over the last decade. It also reaches strikingly similar overall conclusions. These likenesses indicate that BP’s most significant cultural deficiency is not necessarily its now well-documented lax oversight of safety, anemic risk planning and poor communication, but the corporation’s institutional inability to learn from its mistakes.

BP considers fines just a cost of doing business. They will never clean up their act ,unless and until, some of their head honcho’s are charged with criminal counts… like for instance…murder or at the very least willful homicide.

Check out the ProPublica writeup. It’s guaranteed to piss you the hell off if you are someone that cares about human life and the environment, or someone that despises greed.

Sen Jim DeMint protects BP – Our A$$hole of the month.

Senator Jim DeMint objected twice to giving subpoena power to the Congressional commission that is investigating the BP/Transocean/Halliburton Deepwater Horizon gulf oil gusher.

This ‘objection’ by the rightwing extremists/corporate ass kissers known as the GOP is totally unconscionable…unless he/they are in bed with the oil industry, which seems obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together and and iq higher than that of a dandelion. Watch Tweety ask Bryan Dorgan about this horseshit below:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

They can not even put these assholes at BP/Transocean/Halliburtion under oath from what I gather.

This commission has no teeth and we can thank Jim DeMint and the GOP for that.

Doesn’t it make you wonder who in the blue hell supports these worthless bags of batshit? Is it people that make over 250k a year and don’t give a shit about what happened to the environment in the gulf, not to mention all the jobs associated with that region?

It makes me physically ill m’dear reader…I ain’t shitting ya..it does. And it should do the same to you if you care one iota about the horror that happened in the gulf of Mexico because BP plain did not give a shit and spent as little as possible to drill that rig through the floor of the ocean so they could suck up even more oil and make more money.

TX AG busts Obama’s chops on new drilling moratorium

Evidently these oil-lovin’ fuckers just can not buy a friggin clue. From Jurist:

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) on Wednesday filed a legal challenge [complaint, PDF] to the Obama administration’s new offshore drilling moratorium, claiming it violates federal law. The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, argues that the moratorium was created in violation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which requires the US Department of the Interior to “cooperate with the relevant departments and agencies of the Federal Government and of the affected states.” The act, which affects all decisions relating to the “exploration, development, and production of minerals in the Outer Continental Shelf,” also says states are entitled to an opportunity to participate in the process. Abbott said that the federal government ignored his state throughout the process:

    Under federal law, affected states are guaranteed the right to participate in offshore drilling-related policy decisions, but the Obama Administration did not bother to communicate, coordinate or cooperate with Texas. Worse, the Secretary of the Interior failed to consider the economic consequences of his decision, which will cost the Texas economy millions of dollars – and threatens far too many hard-working Texans’ jobs.

In addition to requesting the moratorium to be reversed, the complaint also requests that no future moratoriums be allowed unless Texas is given a reasonable opportunity to participate in the process and “due consideration is given to economic, social, and environmental values of the renewable and nonrenewable resources contained in the [Outer Continental Shelf].”

Last month, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued a new six-month drilling moratorium, citing new evidence regarding safety concerns after the BP oil spill. Unlike the previously ordered moratorium, which a federal judge blocked in June, this one is not based on the depths at which drilling occurs. Instead, the moratorium affects drilling with specific technologies, although the applicable technologies are most often used during deepwater drilling and will not affect shallow water drilling operations. The new plan, the government says, offers more specifics on the types of drilling that will and will not be blocked. More than 200 million gallons of oil leaked from a broken pipe in BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, surpassing the Exxon Valdez oil spill as the worst in US history.

Yes, it’s costing jobs….no one denies that fact. But unless and until the Oil Industry spends money to figure out what technology must be developed to insure we never get another gusher like the Deepwater Horizon, our country/government can not allow these greedy fuckers to continue ocean drilling. It’s as fucking simple as that. The technology and the whole ball of wax that is deep ocean drilling must be examined with a friggin fine tooth comb…our ecosystem can not take any more of their fuckery…their, being the Oil Industry, who btw, hasn’t spent a fucking dime on safety technology or cleanup technology in mutha fucking decades people.

Nor are human lives trade-able in exchange for profits….that above all else folks..BP has caused the loss of life too many fucking times (both on rigs and on land)…and the Oil Industry can thank those worthless fucks for the moratorium.

It’s leaking its seeping..it ain’t working folks!

Just a short note…that I knew this shit was gonna happen. Mostly because the corporate media has covered BP’s ass when it comes to the possibility of an ocean floor leak and of course the whole horrific mess that will kill off the environment for decades and the toxic chemicals they spray from the sky on all living things. From the WaPo writeup:

 A seep would be a serious setback if it indicated oil or gas escaping from the capped well and burbling up through the seafloor.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen released a letter Sunday night that he had written to BP, noting a “detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head.”

He gave permission to keep the well shut but said BP must keep him abreast of any potential problems at the well and prepare to release oil if a serious leak appears. “When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours,” Allen wrote. 

Wonder if their fucking stock will dive again with this ‘setback’. Mutha Fuckas..