"We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves"*

Ever wondered exactly how powerful the biggest corporate lobbies are? In Washington, note that Republicans support suspected terrorists' "right" to purchase guns, even while maintaining that no other part of the U.S. Constitution or the Geneva Conventions apply to them. And in Sacramento, a pesticide so cancer-causing that it's often used specifically to create cancer in rats for medical experiments was just proposed for use on the state's strawberry crop.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=62991#ixzz0nJKvP9On

*George Orwell, 1984

Maybe it IS a curse

Poor Gulf Coast. Place to be hit worst: NO LA. BP America offshore oil rig still spewing. Three - count 'em 3! fail safes built into the rig to shut down pumping, seal off flow - - FAILED. There have to be viral conspiracy theories oozing across the Web. Already worse than Exxon Valdez. Day 10 (yesterday) wind was so strong they couldn't deploy booms. Way to go La. - Day TEN?? Where the hell were the frelling booms on day 2? Seafood and aqua tourist biz - totaled.

All this coming not even a month after Obama announced opening up vast swaths of the Atlantic Coast to drilling.

I just do not believe in coincidence this vast. I might believe the Goddess reached down, except for the creatures who will die from the oil - and the remedies employed to staunch it.

Fundys who have not yet proved to the world's satisfaction that N. O. sins must be smote?
Environuts?
Real terrorists?

CNN already asking if we think Obama's response has been good, bad or indifferent. I'm pretty sure he has no authority in La. waters. OTH, where was the frelling Coast Guard? They have the necessary technology to investigate, at least. Why do we not just assume that the corporate entity at the heart of the disaster is gonna LIE their teeth off for as long as they can maintain the lie. (Just like the guy at the mine that killed 129 or so guys last month) "Two thousand gallons only." oh wait, I meant 20 thousand, no, 20 million, now it is the size of a small state. Exactly like the Cosco Busan, which fouled up SF bay a couple of months back. If we'd known the extent of the leak from the first, it could have been contained. Coast Guard and a slew of volunteers were standing by, but the corporate rats lied like rugs for three days, til visually they could no long get away with it.

The punditm say it won't affect gas prices - lots of replacement oil - Katrina's affect on oil prices related to refinery capacity. So we won't really care. . . except those who care for The Mother

Here's hoping the techno folks have some mighty microbe tucked away, just waiting for its opportunity to show the world that it can transform an oil slick into something beneficial, or at least neutral. If there was such a microbe - one that could total devour/destroy/convert crude into something non-toxic - the OPEC guys would have buried it so deep it'd be sharing "core" (of the earth) space with Edgar Rice Burroughs characters.

The Internet Will Save the World! Part . . .

"Governments across the globe are quietly asking tech companies to take down material they do not like, and to provide data about their users. Google took a welcome step toward transparency last week when it unveiled a new tool that reports on both of these kinds of requests." NY Times editorial. So frelling awesome! Should be ported to iPhone/clones any minute now.