It sounds like quite a lot of the leaked oil has found its way to the bottom and is not going anywhere. Not surprisingly, dead fish and shrimp are being found under the layer of oil. NPR:
The Research Vessel Oceanus sailed on Aug. 21 on a mission to figure out what happened to the more than 4 million barrels of oil that gushed into the water. Onboard, Samantha Joye, a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, says she suddenly has a pretty good idea about where a lot of it ended up. It's showing up in samples of the seafloor, between the well site and the coast.
"I've collected literally hundreds of sediment cores from the Gulf of Mexico, including around this area. And I've never seen anything like this," she said in an interview via satellite phone from the boat.
Joye describes seeing layers of oily material — in some places more than 2 inches thick — covering the bottom of the seafloor.
"It's very fluffy and porous. And there are little tar balls in there you can see that look like microscopic cauliflower heads," she says.
One is that Ratigan correctly sees the relationship between the "mosque"–Quran-burning controversy and the economic crisis — namely, that the first obscures the second.
Another is that the segment provides a good instance of where Ratigan's head is at. (I personally think he's under-appreciated, or at least under-quoted, which may just mean he's under-watched by his natural audience. Here's Ratigan, for example, on Obama and BP.)
And finally, there's our friend, Matt Bai. The blinking before he gets his first opportunity to speak alerted me to his discomfort, and if I'm not over-reading him, his "Hello, Arianna" sounded wary. I've got Mr. Bai as a stealth conservative activist, so I was watching for the classic double move:
Make sure you seem reasonable, no matter what comes out of your mouth.
Push the Movement obfuscation, whether it makes sense or not.
With that in mind, you might pause the clip at 3:40, after Matt answers Dylan's first question. He sounds like he's making sense.
Now think of the context of the segment — the economic crisis — and the question Mai was asked, and try to anticipate what Arianna's will say to him. (Hint: The question was "What is your perception of the president's understanding and attunement to what is actually troubling the country?")
The rest is magic, even the Freudian slip in Matt's first response to Ariana's reply.
Note also the interchange that pivots around Matt's "What's new?" at about 6:12. That part goes on a while and is worth your attention as well. (I also really liked the way Arianna ended the segment. I've heard similar stories, and they're both touching and right on.)
The bottom line is that while Matt makes reasonable statements, he consistently refuses to engage either Arianna or Dylan on their main point — that the Big Boys are taking the "small people" to the cleaners. His job is to shine a light on those spinning political hubcaps, and distract from the fact that there's an actual something happening — and that you can be on the right side of it, or the wrong side.
Neither Arianna nor Dylan take the bait. "It's not about the hubcaps, Matt," they seem to be saying. "Look, the car just killed someone."
Nice segment. Mr. Bai stays on our list (thanks, sir, for the confirmation). And Mr. Ratigan goes on our other list — people who need more listening to. "Predatory economy" indeed.
GP
(By the way, I couldn't find a reference in the google for Ratigan's "six major industries that control the government" but I'll keep looking. It would be interesting to hear more on this.)
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Too bad Palin failed to recognize that she cut and run on the job plus accepted massive federal government handouts for Alaska. It's easy to balance a budget when your waist deep in handouts from states that pay more into the system. Shouldn't that money count if someone like Palin who rails against government spending wants to have this discussion?
On Friday afternoon, Palin hit back at Schwarzenegger and took aim the economic distress plaguing his state.
"Arnold should have landed," Palin tweeted. "I could have explained our multi-billion dollar state surplus & US energy security efforts. What's he been up to?"
Schwarzenegger's state has been drowning in debt and budget deficits for years. Alaska has a relatively healthy economy that is heavily reliant upon oil revenue and received federal stimulus dollars.
This is stunning news about Rupert Murdoch's News of the World newspaper. British politicians failed to call the newspaper's CEO because they feared their lives would be turned upside down with more attacks. It really does make you wonder about the power of Murdoch's media empire in the UK as well as the US. The Guardian:
A cross-party committee of MPs abandoned plans to force the News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, to testify last year after they were warned that their private lives would be investigated, a former member alleged last night.
Adam Price, a former Plaid Cymru MP, told Channel 4 News that a group of committee members shied away from the "nuclear option" of issuing a warrant for Brooks to attend after a senior Tory warned that News International would "go for us".
Adrian Sanders, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee, said that the Tory chairman of the committee, John Whittingdale, had issued the warning. "The chairman himself had made some sort of allusion towards what could happen were we to go down this route. But there was no surprise in that because it was sort of, 'Well, yeh, we knew that from that beginning'."
Actually some shocking studies that I'd never heard of, from CBO at that (i.e., truly independent), about how tax cuts do NOT help stimulate the economy. Then why did we give away 35% of the already-too-small-by-half stimulus bill to the Republicans in the form of tax cuts?
But economic research suggests that tax cuts, though difficult for politicians to resist in election season, have limited ability to bolster the flagging economy because they are essentially a supply-side remedy for a problem caused by lack of demand.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this year analyzed the short-term effects of 11 policy options and found that extending the tax cuts would be the least effective way to spur the economy and reduce unemployment. The report added that tax cuts for high earners would have the smallest “bang for the buck,” because wealthy Americans were more likely to save their money than spend it.
That wordy headline says it all. Beneath the summary, these details:
1. The CIA officer is the guy who is accused of revving an electric drill and brandishing a handgun "near the head of an imprisoned terror suspect."
2. The location is a "secret CIA prison in Poland in late 2002 and early 2003, according to several former intelligence officials and a review by the CIA's inspector general."
3. The investigation is the seemingly endless one being performed by DOJ special prosecutor John Durham, many of whose torture investigations seem endless. Scott Horton (my emphasis):
So what has become of those whose involvement in torture was so troubling that even a government inspector general recommended a criminal investigation? While investigations proceed apace overseas, Special Prosecutor John Durham is apparently still considering whether the facts warrant a real one in the United States. Durham has now spent more than a year trying to make this “threshold” determination, something that prosecutors frequently do in an afternoon. In the meantime, the Obama Administration’s position seems to be that the accused should be rewarded for their dubious services with lucrative training contracts.
While the reward aspect is interesting (and has the effect of strengthening the ties to the "reservation" should the ex-officer ever be tempted to go off it), Horton advises us that the real action is the ties to Poland:
The desire to conceal the identities of the CIA agents has more to do with the fact that they face prosecution–not in the United States, but in Poland, on whose soil the crimes were committed. Indeed, the Polish National Prosecutor’s office would very much like to know the exact identity and whereabouts of “Albert,” his supervisor “Mike,” and other CIA personnel involved. The CIA black site where the torture incidents occurred is located at Stare Kiejkuty, in northeastern Poland[.]
Drip, drip, drip. At some point, one of these cracks in the torture wall becomes a full-on break. Obama's DOJ seems now fully involved in the cover-up, even as likelihood of foreign prosecution increases.
I have a feeling that the first break will bring down the whole dam. Or to switch metaphors, this could go from zero to 60 in a nanosecond. Stay tuned; I sure will.
This has to be one of the best pop tunes ever made. I read today that this was a favorite of Brian Wilson and he wrote "Don't Worry Baby" in response to the song.
Now that I've been back in France for a few weeks, I'd adjusted to the 35 degree (F) temperature change and have pretty much shaken my summer cold. In theory it's due to warm up so I may be able to slip in a few hours on the bike. What's nice about this time of the year is that there is a lot of really tasty fruit in the market including yellow plums. They haven't been this good in a few years. I've also been playing around with roasting peaches to serve as a side dish with dinner and wow, they're excellent as a side with duck. So easy yet sooooo good.
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It's an interesting idea though it does sound complicated in practice. British universities are much, much less expensive compared to the US but even still, is it fair to ask a humanities or art student to pay the same tuition as a banker? In the US where an undergraduate education can easily be $20,000 - $50,000 per year it may make even more sense but again, how would this be possible to implement?
The Tory minister told an audience of university vice-chancellors that the government believed graduates who go on to lucrative jobs should pay more. A report earlier this week suggested that Lord Browne, who is looking at university finance, will reject a graduate tax in favour of letting universities raise tuition fees to £7,000. That could prove divisive for the coalition government, as 55 Liberal Democrat MPs have signed a pledge to vote against an increase in fees.
Willetts said: "I do believe it is better for the younger generation to have the chance of going to university – and then pay for that out of the higher earnings they achieve later on – rather than experiencing poorer quality HE or being deprived of the opportunity altogether. This has to make sense for young people."
In remarks made after the speech at Cranfield University, Willetts said the government was considering a graduate "contribution" rather than a tax, because of fears that the latter could encourage potential high-fliers to study abroad.
When I look at the criminally expensive tuition in the US, it does make me wonder how anyone can afford it these days. I laugh now thinking of how I used to sweat it out each quarter when I had to write a check for $400, which climbed to $800 over the course of four years. I worked 40 hour weeks plus went to school full time and managed to afford it but those numbers sound like rounding errors today.
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Naturally the free-loading SOBs would much prefer having free handouts. What poor excuses for capitalists. As long as this ridiculous nonsense is tolerated and encouraged by the political class, it should be expected.
The American Bankers Association said on Friday it opposes requiring financial institutions to build up their reserves when the economy is going strong so that they can better handle eventual downturns.
The proposal for a "counter-cyclical buffer," being considered this week by banking regulators from 27 countries, duplicates existing regulatory powers, the ABA said.
The proposal would be difficult to implement, could lead to unintended consequences, and could "impose significant and unwarranted increases in the cost and permanent constraints on the supply of credit that would be a detriment to the broader economy," the group said.
Yes, because bailing out an entire industry that only has less than ten profitable banks in the country is easy. Is it asking too much for Washington to tell the bankers to go Cheney themselves?
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