June 2010 archive

What must they think of us?

The sacking of US commander General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, received an immense amount of media coverage last week. The narrative basically focused on the disrespectful ways McChrystal talked about the Obama Administration.

Unfortunately the news media never got around to asking what the Afghanistan people thought of McChrystal being sacked. It turns out that their take on the event wasn’t just different, it didn’t even resemble the story that the American media was selling us.

 Head of Press TV’s office in Kabul, Mohammad Ruhi, says US commander General Stanley McChrystal was sacked for acknowledging NATO’s connection with the executed leader of the Pakistan-based Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi.

Whoa! That certainly changes things.

The Pictures Continue to Defy

words.

This image is of the Gulf Islands National Seashore in Mississippi

This high-resolution image shows Petit Bois Island (top right) and the eastern end of Horn Island (top left) on June 26. In general, oil-covered waters are silvery and cleaner waters are blue-gray.



NASA Earth Observatory

Hope From a Dumpster

Fifty five years of accumulating suburban junk is alot.  More amazing is how the family is embracing our forced move to a far more rural, less expensive place.

Open Waltz

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News at Noon

From Reuters

Ex-AIG’s Cassano defends no-losses proclamation

By Steve Eder and Kim Dixon

June 30, 2010

(Reuters) – The former head of the American International Group unit that precipitated a $182 billion bailout pledge from taxpayers stood by a 2007 proclamation that the insurer would not lose even a dollar on a portfolio of securities that included subprime mortgages.

Joseph Cassano, the much-maligned ex-chief of AIG’s Financial Products division, told a congressionally appointed commission on Wednesday that he truly believed what he told an earnings call with analysts and investors.

“I meant exactly what I said in August 2007,” Cassano said, according to prepared testimony for the hearing held by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

And In Other News…

It appears that possibly Tony Hayward of BP has been keeping late nights surveying Colorado for drilling sites, or perhaps Nancy Pelosi or Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh or maybe some Orange RecLister has moved to Colorado?

Western Slope woman blames vampire for car crash

FRUITA, Colo. – If a Western Slope woman is to be believed, vampires may be lurking in Colorado’s Grand Valley.

The woman claims she spotted a vampire in the middle of a dirt road near Fruita, Colo. Sunday night. She told Colorado State Troopers she was startled by the undead being, threw her SUV into reverse, and crashed into a canal.

She was not injured.

State Troopers say the woman’s husband arrived at the scene and took her home. The vampire, which was not seen by anyone else, apparently let her get away.

Troopers do not suspect drugs or alcohol to be factors in the crash.

Assrocket was right!

 

Remember helplessly white-knuckling the back seat during the Bush years?

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It seemed that every value we held dear was being trashed to the point where we wondered what life itself meant.  Those were the days, my friends.  Those were the days.

Perhaps, we all should have heeded Assrocket’s appraisal of Bush, who to his mind was:

A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

Dharma is the support of the earth.

Born of compassion and kindness.

It patiently holds the thread

Of creation together.

Understand this and become a person of Truth.

–Sri Guru Nanak Dev,  Hymn 16, Japji Sahib

Phenomena V: Truth


At the Nub

Truth

Stripped

of pretense

scraped down

to the nub

bathed in

the acid

of reality

Truth

is coated by

no varnish

No twisting

spinning

bending

stretching

can alter it

Truth is inviolate

but there are many

pretenders

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–March 12, 2008

Late Night Karaoke

OPEN THREAD

WTF? Two Drill Pipes in BP’s BOP, Nobody Admitting It

For weeks now, I’ve seen the same discussion over and over again at the Oil Drum.  Somebody looks at the picture of the sawed off riser pipe with what looks to be 2 drill pipes stuck inside of it, when they were trimming the bent over riser off the Blow Out Preventer, before they put the LMRP Oil Sucking Cap on it,  and they ask,

what is that second pipe inside the riser ?”

And the answer is, “oh, that can’t be a second drill pipe, it must have been crushed when they cut the riser off with the pipe shear.  It’s a figure eight, it’s not two pipes, it’s one pipe, crushed.”

“But it looks like 2 pipes. the diameter looks too big for one pipe. ”

“yes, but it’s one. it’s crimped. ”

Guess what.


http://www.latimes.com/news/na…

The gushing BP oil well is a mystery still unfolding, and late last month, a team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist: Their sophisticated imaging equipment detected not one but two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well’s blowout preventer on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

BP officials said it was impossible. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which drilled the well, used a single pipe, connected in segments, to bore 13,000 feet below the ocean floor. But when workers cut into the wreckage to install a containment cap this month, sure enough, they found two pipes.

Fancy that !  Bp Tony Deepwotter Spinmeister Hayward never mentioned this before, did he ?

The Transfer Wealth in the Funniest of Ways

In the latest dust-up for career fanboy of economics, one Paul Krugman, he got wrongly called out for advocating for a housing bubble in 2002:

Dubya’s Double Dip?

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 2, 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08…


The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn’t a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

Krugman is a stenographer of which way the wind is blowing, he does not make the wind blow.

Does the GOBP even know, What a Social Contract Means?

It seems that Party who likes to apologize to Corporations  — for Our Oceans, getting in the way of, their Profitsis at it again!

Not only are they blaming the Victims of the Bush Great Recession, for not taking one of those non-existent Jobs (there is only 1 job to had for each 6 people that need one) —

The Leader of the GOBP Party is now telling American to brace for the Raising of the Retirement Age — his rationale: It’s the only way we’ll be able to pay for the Afghanistan War!

Jeesh!  Don’t they know that the Unemployed, have PAID FOR Unemployment Insurance,  just for times like these?

Don’t they know that American Workers have PAID FOR FICA Taxes, just so that we can retire with a meager shred of Dignity?  

Don’t they know that these are Social Contracts, that OUR Govt has MADE WITH US — in a effort to carry out the ideal “that all are created equal” —

that none should be cast aside, without hope, without opportunity, without a social safety net…

NO of course Not … the Party of No Way, has some very different type of Contracts in mind …

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