Please help to spread the word that we need to contact our State Representatives to make them aware that HB 2929 will be brought to the floor of the House TODAY for a final vote before being sent to the Governor’s office. We need our legislators to know of our interest in this bill and its passing the House. This is our chance to make a mark in Indian education for our children and grandchildren to meet their needs more effectively by engaging the collaborative energies of this state body to guide the process of dialogue, deliberation, and discussion of how to serve our native students of the state of Oklahoma! Together we can make this happen in the best interest of our people. Aho! Mvto!Society to Preserve Indigenous Rights & Indigenous Traditions
May 22, 2010 archive
May 22 2010
Action: “Oklahoma Advisory Council on Indian Education Act”
May 22 2010
Sen. Sanders tells the ugly truth “We’re an Oligarchy and I think it’s getting worse”
THE Question – Is America a Democracy or an Oligarchy?
Sen. Sanders: “Right now, what ends up happening, is Big Money interests, whether in fact it is in oil and energy, whether it’s in prescription drugs . . .”
Dylan Ratigan: “BP”
Sen. Sanders: “Whether it is in banking, these guys have huge amounts of money, and the situation gets worse with the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and anyone who stands up to the big money interests can expect a huge amount of 30 second ads against them. That’s the reality. Are we a Democracy, or are we an Oligarchy where the very powerful special interests exert enormous influence over our Government?”
Ratigan: “What’s your answer to that question?”
Sen. Sanders: “I think we’re an Oligarchy and I think it’s getting worse.”
Much more, plus video and transcript below the fold.
May 22 2010
Dispersants: How the US and BP “Hides The Body”
The dispersants are a massive experiment , and most likely a huge crime has been committed on the environment, in order to cover up the oil spill–which was at least an accident.
The Coast Guard and EPA allowing their use is a criminal act. And the use of even the worst one still goes on despite media reports to the contrary.
BP Still Using Dirty Dispersant in the Gulf
– By Kate Sheppard| Sat May. 22, 2010 10:35 AM PDT
BP is continuing to use a toxic oil dispersant in the Gulf, despite the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency directed the company to find a less-dangerous chemical to use on the spill. The company said yesterday that it could not identify a better alternative.The EPA has a list of other approved dispersants that could be used in the Gulf, many of which are less toxic than Corexit. BP has already dumped at least 670,000 gallons of Corexit at the spill site.
Will the EPA force BP to switch dispersants? That remains unclear. On Friday, EPA spokesperson Adora Andy indicated to ABC News that the agency has not outright barred BP from using their brand of choice. “It’s not that Corexit is banned,” she said. “It’s not that they have to stop using it because they’re using it right now. But it’s just that they need to switch over.”
May 22 2010
The Loop, Gulf Stream: where will the oil go?
Beyond Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi. Where’s the oil now, and where is it gonna go?
Here’s a graphic of where it is now from US Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/n…
And, a satellite image, with loop stream superimposed (from the 17th)
http://deepseanews.com/wp-cont…
It kind of looks like some of it at least is starting to spin around and around in the central gulf.
That’s just surface oil though, and due to the dispersants, we don’t know what depth it’s all at. Speeds, and potential directions are quite different depending on depths:
Fourth, measurements of near-surface current as high as 4 knots [2 m/s] have been recorded in eddies recently detached from the Loop Current. Available data do not indicate that the maximum possible speed in the Loop Current is any less than that figure. Current profiles associated with both the Loop Current and its eddies are highly sheared. These high surface speeds drop to about 1 knot [0.5 m/s] at 650 ft [200 m] and 1/2 knot [0.25 m/s] at 130 ft [400 m] depth. Features with lower surface speeds also have lower speeds at depth.
Current predictions are that the loop may swing further west than normal, threatening the Keys either less, or just a bit later on, and the Dry Tortugas perhaps more. The Coast Guard claims that tar balls that have washed up in the Keys are not from Deepwater Horizon. You can judge their credibility for yourself.
At some point, though, it hits the Gulf Stream:
The Stream may well act as a barrier keeping the oil on the US side, not so much towards Cuba or the Bahamas. Seems like that’s what’s happening in this huge image (hat tip to Wolverine6)
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa…
As for now the oil is clearly affecting south west FL, the keys and dry tortugas, and then south FL east. It may be that when it hits the fast, deep, warmer, water of the Stream, it’ll tend to drive it North or back towards Florida.
May 22 2010
This Week In Health and Fitness
Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Cancer survivors might want to try yoga to sleep better and have more energy, according to a new study that will be presented at a meeting in early June.
“Physicians and oncologists are often uncomfortable advising patients who want to use therapies that are complementary to standard cancer therapy,” Dr. Douglas Blayney, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said in an interview.
“Here we have a studied intervention, one that has been subjected to clinical trials and, lo and behold, it seems to be beneficial,” added Blayney, who was not involved in the new research.
As is now custom, I’ll try to include the more interesting and pertinent articles that will help the community awareness of their health and bodies. This essay will not be posted anywhere else due to constraints on my time. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvement and ask questions, I’ll answer as best I can. NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Severe depression within the first year of a traumatic brain injury is common but treatment is not, Washington state researchers report.
May 22 2010
Saturday I-Ching
Due to popular demand (ok, one person mentioned it), I once again inquired of the I-Ching to give a message to Docudharmaniacs near and far.
And lo! Three changes were received in Hexagram 48, The Well. Those changes transformed the hexagram to number 33, Retreat.
Contemplating The Well in and of itself helps to shed the conditioning of our age of Mad Modernity and brings us back to the root of our existence.
So much has changed since the dawn of history, but the shape of the well has not changed.
So much has been put forth as philosophy, a veritable mountain of ways of looking at our existence, but the roots of what we need as human beings has not changed at all.
And whether we are good or wicked, intelligent or unintelligent, nice or mean, existence is the same for everyone, it holds no favorites and all can partake of the water of the well with the same right as anyone else.
See below for my completely subjective interpretation of the changes received today.
May 22 2010
Census Kid Cometh
The census kid came today. He seemed nervous. Wonder if people were giving him shit all day. He was just a 20 something and I wonder what he thought of me, a guy old enough to be his father.
I don’t answer race questions anymore.
Just like that with solid conviction.
I was kind of surprised he didn’t press for answers to the other questions.
May 22 2010
Beneath the Oil: Deepwater Horizon
From Gale Mead:
CASUALTIES OF THE GULF OF MEXICO DISASTER: Beneath the Surface
Videography and song by Gale Mead www.galemead.comLead guitar: Eric McFadden. Tenor Sax: Federico Martinez.
Carpets of crinoids – cousins of the sea-star – stretched their long limbs languidly into the current for morsels of planktonic food. Colorful tropical fish drifted among gracefully spiraling wire corals. Somber-faced grouper hovered warily while jacks and sharks cruised by, curious about the submersibles lights. Fifty miles south of Mississippi, I was the first human ever to lay eyes on the teeming, thriving, dazzling undersea metropolis that was Salt Dome Mountain. As rich and diverse as Texas Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary to the west, or Floridas coral reefs to the south, but a little deeper, and totally unexplored.
It was July 29, 2002, and I was a submersible pilot with the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, a joint project of National Geographic and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, led by my mother, Dr. Sylvia Earle. Fishermen and oilmen have long known the Gulf of Mexico by what they could extract from it with their nets and their drilling rigs. We were there to study it from the inside out.
Salt Dome Mountain is an unexpectedly shallow seamount rising from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico to within 200 feet of the surface. Its just south of the Mississippi coast, just north of where a raging gusher of oil now spews death and destruction with no end in sight. And no beginning in sight either, as the vast majority of this catastrophe is occurring underwater, beyond the reach of television news cameras. The video below is a compilation of images from my dive eight years ago, posted with permission from Sustainable Seas Expeditions. You can find more videos of the undersea life near the blowout by using Google Ocean.
It remains to be seen when or even whether the raging torrent of oil can be stopped, but even in the best case scenario, the damage already done far exceeds what most of us can yet get our minds around. May it at least not pass unnoticed. And may we at long last consider that the consequences of our actions should be weighed before, and not after, the damage is done.
May 22 2010
Oil slick moves into Carribean Sea
The story the US government and BP are not telling. Oil slick hits Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
May 22 2010
Swingin’ Saturday Open Thread
hot.
ah. a commission. fabulous. and more hearings.
In many ways, the frenzy resembles last year’s multiple congressional inquiries into the causes of the 2008 financial meltdown or the taxpayer bailouts for GM and Chrysler. Or this year’s hearings on Toyota, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers.
“It’s about evenly divided between stagecraft and statecraft. They have a job to do. They’re showing constituents they `get it’ in a year when many voters think they don’t,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist and the author of books on political “feeding frenzies.”
“A lot of it is just for show. You rake the bank executives or the BP bosses over the coals. And everybody gets outraged and feels better.”
May 22 2010
Morning Migraine: BiPartisanship Commission Member Named to BiPartisanship BP Oil Spill Study
Saturday May 21, 2010 One month and one day past the destruction of the drilling rig of the Deepwater Horizon, with BP unable to stop the oil blowout destroying the Gulf, President Obama’s anonymous source announced he will appoint former Senator Bob Graham (D, FL) and former EPA head William K Reilly to a commission to study the cause of the spill, federal oversight, and the potential risks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
William K Reilly was administrator at the EPA under the first George Bush administration, George H W “Poppy” Bush, the one who invaded the Middle East the First Time and went to war against Iraq the First Time, which was called the …… Gulf War.
The commission, modeled on ones which investigated the Challenger shuttle explosion and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, will not include any federal officials, administration officials said this week.