As everyone knows by now, oil has stopped gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. "Integrity" tests are underway (It's hard to imagine anything called "integrity" associated with BP.) But, finally, it's stopped. Just in time, too, apparently.
Even as BP works to (finally) cap the leaking well in the Gulf Coast, there is new polling data out of Gallup that shows the American public has begun to turns its gaze away from the oil spill.
Asked to name the most important problem facing the country, just seven percent of respondents in the July Gallup poll said "natural disaster response/relief" -- a major drop off from the 18 percent who said the same in June. (In Gallup's May poll, just one percent named "natural disaster response" as the most important problem in the country.)
"Americans' reduced likelihood to see the spill as the top problem could reflect the reality that the spill is no longer 'new' news or perhaps that Americans are becoming more confident that they spill will be fixed," wrote Gallup poll director Frank Newport in a memo detailing the results.
Just wait until the BP apologists in the GOP circle the wagons to support their good friend. Of course such a ban would be devastating for BP but shouldn't Congress finally force the issue of accountability? Seven years is a long time to ban a company from operating offshore but the problems of this oil leak will continue for much longer than that.
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Is it really too late to set up a carnival-like dunk tank filled with BP oil and have Tony Hayward sitting inside? It would surely generate some money along the coast and even though it may not make up for the ruined lives, it might cheer up a few people. BP does it again.
Biologists say oil has smeared at least 300-400 pelicans and hundreds of terns in the largest seabird nesting area along the Louisiana coast - marking a sharp and sudden escalation in wildlife harmed by BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The finding underscores that official tallies of birds impacted by the spill could be significantly underestimating the scope of damage.
The government counts only oiled birds collected for rehabilitation or found dead, for use as evidence in the spill investigation. Oiled birds in the many nesting areas that dot the Gulf coast typically are left in place and not counted in official tallies.
Researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said Wednesday that they had spotted the oiled pelicans on Raccoon Island over the past several days. The spit of land lines the Gulf outside the state's coastal marshes. An estimated 10,000 birds nest on the island in Terrebonne Parish.
The House Ways & Means Committee held a hearing today on the importance of Social Security as the program turns 75 years old. Every Democrat save one was there. Guess who couldn't bother to show up? Republicans. Only two did.
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BP is a class act all around. When they're not destroying the global environment, they're strong-arming governments to release terrorists found guilty of murdering innocent civilians. And to think these executives are supposed to be part of respectable society. Even worse, our governments let them call the shots so often including in the Gulf of Mexico. Senator Schumer deserves credit for asking BP to immediately back away from their $900 million Libyan investment.
The oil giant BP faced a new furor on Thursday as it confirmed that it had lobbied the British government to conclude a prisoner-transfer agreement that the Libyan government wanted to secure the release of the only person ever convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing over Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
The admission came after American legislators, grappling with the controversy over the company’s disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, called for an investigation into BP’s actions in the case of the freed man, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi.
The former Libyan intelligence agent was released and allowed to return to Libya last August after doctors advised the Scottish government that he was likely to die within three months of advanced prostate cancer. But nearly a year later, he remains alive, and free, in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
What could possibly go wrong with such a plan besides an infamous moment in history like this. What is with so many countries around the world blaming poor foreigners when times are tough? This latest policy in China is sick.
The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.
It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.
So far, gates have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent residents 10 to one.
Thanks to Digby for putting this rant from Dylan Ratigan on our to-do lists. If you haven't seen it, take a minute and watch.
It's not one of those canned Rick Santelli–type ravings — though Ratigan, despite his CNBC background, is a nice inverse–Santelli politically. This is even better.
Ratigan brings on a talking points pro — Rep. Kevin Brady from Texas' 8th Congressional District (if you click that link, note the proximity to Louisiana and the Gulf). Why Brady came on is anyone's guess, but if his job was to carry John Boehner's water, he did it. Dylan really lays into him though.
Apropos of Ratigan's point — that the bankers are draining the economy of money, not creating it — the dots to this post by Chris in Paris connect themselves.
One thing to note — watch how robotic the Republican is, how on-message. But it's not just discipline — the message is actually a well-aimed gun, nicely calibrated to achieve its effect. Brady makes no sense whatsoever; but he knows he doesn't have to. He knows which piece of the lizard brain he triggers in the weekend BBQ crowd.
And even though the logic of the message is crap, he speaks his crap with confidence, a smile, and head held high. (In my mind, he went golfing afterward, and they bought him drinks.)
Those of you who are planners — the Pattons among us — time to be thinking seriously. We can start with the next four elections, as a group. Contests in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 each present special problems. If this were a board game, how would you play it?
There are three pieces on the board — Money-enabled Republicans, Money-neutered Dems, and us. We're not without resources, methods, or candidates. How does the Progressive Patton get his tanks to Berlin? I'm certain there's a way.
David Dayen at FDL has written an excellent crystallization of the problem many Democrats have with the Obama presidency.
[T]o the extent that the “liberal left” is upset at the President, it’s because they are seeing a great opportunity slip away in real time. The only one that told the base that they could change America from the bottom up and bring forth a transformative new era of leadership is Barack Obama. If he didn’t want one, he shouldn’t have said anything. I guess you don’t get elected by opining on “contemporary political realities,” but these roadblocks went up in a flash, from practically the moment after the election. The people who worked for Obama, who knocked on doors and made phone calls and all the rest, got the door slammed in their face on Day One. And now, the people who did the slamming want to know why those guys are so angry all the time.
More than being “shut out” or “dissed,” because I really don’t care, the anger springs from the loss of a political moment. Nobody had a bigger challenge coming into office than Barack Obama but nobody had a bigger opportunity. And liberals like myself are generally peeved that the opportunity has been squandered. Yes, squandered: I know I’m supposed to talk about all the accomplishments and victories and how things would have been much worse if, say, McCain-Palin won. That’s a given and it’s not good enough. That’s not an expression of “immaturity” (man do I hate VanDeHarris), but an honest assessment of the situation.
Obama isn't the kid who promised to get an A and only got a B-. He's the kid who was fully capable of getting an A, but settled for a B-, because he was afraid to try for more. That's not behavior you praise. Especially when the kid is actually an adult, and running the most powerful country in the world.
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A billboard in Mason City, Iowa, paid for by the Teabaggers. The party of Rand Paul, GOP Senate candidate in Kentucky. Will the Republicans renounce the ad and the Tea Party? Will Rand Paul, the most visible candidate of the Tea Party renounce his own party's outrageous comments about our President? Or does Rand Paul agree that Obama is like Hitler and Lenin?
I do have to laugh at the billboard's tagline: Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naive. That could be the Republican party slogan.
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The Vatican seems more concerned about ordaining women as it does about child rape. Bishops still aren't required to report sex crimes to the authorities:
The Vatican issued a new set of norms Thursday to respond to the worldwide clerical abuse scandal, cracking down on priests who rape and molest minors and the mentally disabled.
The norms extend from 10 to 20 years the statute of limitations on priestly abuse and also codify for the first time that possessing or distributing child pornography is a canonical crime.
But the document made no mention of the need for bishops to report abuse to police and doesn't include any ''one-strike and you're out'' policy as demanded by some victims' groups.
The document also listed the attempted ordination of a woman as a ''grave crime'' to be handled by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, just as sex abuse is. Critics have complained that including both in the same document implied equating them.
The leaders of the Catholic Church just don't get it. They've been coddling, abetting and enabling child rapists for decades. Yet, they still don't seem to grasp that, in the real world, child rape is a crime and offenders should be in jail.
And, the advocates for victims aren't impressed:
But Barbara Dorris of the Survivors' Network for Those Abused by Priests, a leading group representing victims of clerical sex abuse, said the new guidelines ''can be summed up in three words: missing the boat.
''They deal with one small procedure at the very tail end of the problem: defrocking pedophile priests,'' she said.
But, the Vatican isn't going to stand for women becoming priests. Hell, no. They'll really fight that.
So who will the Republicans blame for this? It's asking too much for them to accept that this is a result of their poor policies. Their friends in the financial industry have either walked away with cash in their pockets or they continue to live a very exclusive lifestyle on the backs of everyone else. LA Times:
The number of U.S. homes taken back by banks through foreclosure hit a record high in the second quarter, even as lenders delayed more homes from entering the process through short sales and loan modification efforts, according to data to be released Thursday.
This growing supply of lender-owned properties could set back the nation's housing recovery but probably won't sink it completely if the nation's employment situation doesn't deteriorate further and the economy begins to pick up steam, experts said. Sales of homes have faltered nationally in recent months with the expiration of government tax incentives for buyers.
U.S. bank repossessions increased 38% in the second quarter from the same period a year earlier for a record total of 269,952, according to Irvine research firm RealtyTrac. That was also a jump of 5% from the previous quarter. If that pace continues through the year, the number of homes taken by banks is likely to top 1 million by the end of 2010, said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac senior vice president.
The President is heading to Holland, Michigan today. He's going to give a speech at Compact Power, a company that makes new advanced batteries. Obama is there because the factory got funding from the "advanced battery and electric vehicle awards" in the stimulus.
The Senate will vote today to end the filibuster of the Wall Street reform bill. The 60 votes include Scott Brown, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Ben Nelson is apparently on board, but Russ Feingold is voting no.
Early this morning, Argentina's Senate passed the bill legalizing same-sex marriage. The country's President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has promised to sign the new law, which already passed in the Lower House. The Catholic Church (with help from the Mormons) led the opposition. But, in heavily Catholic Argentina, the Catholic Church doesn't control elected officials (would that we could say the same thing in the U.S.) And, imagine a country where the President isn't afraid to support full marriage equality for all citizens. What a concept.
That she has to start selling off property doesn't bother me at all though it's of particular interest to see how deep this recession is hitting. She was burning through a lot of her cash reserves for years but had probably also assumed, like others, that the real estate boom could carry her through tough times. She's not hurting financially but it's certainly interesting to see how much more widespread the crisis has been. Just wait until the Conservative programs kick in and then it will really get ugly.
The Queen has been forced to sell one of her country estates, raising almost £1m in cash and heightening concerns over the scale of the financial crisis sweeping her investments and crumbling palaces.
Hadley Hall, a 16th-century listed farmhouse set in 50 acres of Cheshire countryside, was last night auctioned off by the Duchy of Lancaster; the Queen's national property portfolio which provides the monarch with a private income.
The royal sale comes on the eve of the publication of the Duchy's accounts which next week will reveal the extent of the damage done to her private wealth by combined effects of the recession and the credit crunch.
Separate accounts published by the Palace this month showed how the Queen's reserve of public cash, saved to pay her rising staff bills and fund her role as head of state, had fallen from £35m to £1m in the past 10 years, forcing her to go cap in hand to the Treasury for an increase to the Civil List.
Tobacco giant Philip Morris has been forced to admit that child workers as young as 10 have been subjected to long hours working on tobacco farms with which it has contracts in the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan.
According to a report by Human Rights Watch, migrant workers at the farms, mostly from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, were subjected to conditions that often amounted to forced labour, as employers contracted by tobacco farms that sold their produce to Philip Morris International had their passports confiscated and were often made to do additional work for no pay. The company, which sources tobacco from Kazakhstan for cigarette brands sold in Russia and other former Soviet states, said it was taking "immediate action" to stop the abuses.
In many cases families were expected to pay back unrealistic debts to intermediaries who had arranged for their journeys to Kazakhstan, in schemes that bear all the hallmarks of people trafficking. The report also documented 72 cases of children working on the farms.
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