May 25, 2010 archive

Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen — Barack Obama is about to fulfill yet another campaign promise!

(Pregnant pause, whilst heralds blow trumpets and Obamatons fall over themselves in rapture)

White House Green Lights Repeal (of DADT)

Let the minstrels sing.  Let church bells be rung throughout the land!

In the letter, Orszag wrote that “ideally” the Pentagon’s review of implementation would be completed before Congress takes legislative action, but adds, “the Administration understands that Congress has chosen to move forward with legislation now…”

Wait….wait  Is that an actually an admission that the Obama administration never wanted, nor intended, to repeal DADT this year?  That Barack Obama always intended to break his solemn word to the honorably serving GLBT soldiers and the rest of GLBT America?

But, never fear, Obama will keep his promise.

The language would not include a automatic nondiscrimination policy but rather will return authority of the regulations for open service by gays and lesbians to the Pentagon.

Ok, in the words of Margaret Cho, “That’s not what I meant!”.  You mean, returning control of how and why gay people are drummed out of military to the very organization that has been witch hunting gays for 40 years?!

BP Hard To Pin Down On Oil Spill Claims

NPR, Morning Edition – May 24, 2010

Yuki Noguchi

BP has repeatedly said it would pay all legitimate claims resulting from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but such promises raise a crucial question: What exactly does “legitimate claim” mean?

[…]

BP has declined to define the term or provide examples.

BP American President Lamar McKay remained steadfastly vague during a Senate hearing this month. Despite prodding from Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell, McKay would not veer off of his message: We’re going to pay all legitimate claims.

A BP spokesman declined to discuss the company’s definition of “legitimate.” In an e-mail, the spokesman said BP hired a firm called ESIS to assess all oil spill claims. As of last week, it had received nearly 16,000 claims. The spokesman said BP has in some cases paid some claims within 48 hours of receiving supporting documentation.

What exactly does “legitimate claim” mean?   Good Question.

I’m going to hazard a few predictions here. I hope I’m wrong. If I am you can crucify me later.

Neither BP nor anyone else has any workable idea how to stop the leak. If they did it would have been stopped by now.

The leak will continue to flow into the ocean for the foreseeable future, until the reservoir pressure drops to lower than the pressure of the weight of the ocean pressing down on it. At some point perhaps the seabed will collapse into an emptying reservoir and there will be seabed earthquakes. And maybe tsunamis.

BP will not be “shoved aside”. The government will not take over the management of the disaster response. Neither BP nor any of its management will face any substantive sanctions or criminal charges for this. Nor will BP be “debarred” from government contracts by the EPA.

For a very simple and obvious reason.

The government has the largest military in the world to supply and operate, and the government has two military occupations in progress to run.

BP has been one of the biggest suppliers of fuel to the Pentagon in recent years, with much of its oil going to U.S. military operations in the Mideast. (It sold $2.2 billion in oil to the Pentagon last year, making it No. 1 among all the oil companies in sales to the military, according to the latest figures from the Defense Energy Support Center.)

The government is going to do everything they can possibly do to keep BP alive and healthy, to keep their largest supplier of fuel to the military operating profitably and supplying that fuel.

Ken Salazar spouting his “”We will keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done” line to the media is PR to keep the peasants from burning down the castle, and is probably the only way he has of avoiding being made the scapegoat and saving himself.

Sorry about the Gulf of Mexico, folks. It’s being sacrificed for the (heave) greater good.

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

1 Pressure mounts on BP ahead of ‘top kill’

by Stephane Jourdain, AFP

25 mins ago