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May 4, 2010

Oil slick triples in size in three days, landfall in FL imminent

Filed under: Uncategorized — Greg in cheeseland @ 6:47 am

A preface here, to any readers on my mailing list who find this article on the bartblog before my Examiner page: I apologize for the email exchange yesterday with that right-wing douche bag, Ashford Schwall. He will no longer be a part of the mailing list, since his mama apparently failed to teach him manners or email etiquette and he pissed off half the people on my list. He’d be a good candidate for monkey mail since he’s sending out right-wing propaganda by a known disinformationist, Sorcha Faal. Feel free to send him an email at: aschwall@comcast.net.

In fact, let the monkey have it! He thinks the oil rig explosion was caused by a torpedo attack by North Korea.

Anyway, this is strictly a report…no commentary.

Excerpt:
Imagine a pipe five feet wide spewing crude oil like a fire hose at a rate of over 200,000 gallons per day from what could be the planets’ largest, high-pressure oil and gas reserve. Now consider that It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?

Even at 200,000 gallons per day, the spill may eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst US oil disaster in history in a matter of weeks. But a growing number of experts warned that the situation may already be much worse.

A confidential government report by the NOAA, however, makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. An animated graphic of the spread of the oil slick can be viewed here. (Hit the examiner link for all the links in this).

Paul Noel, a software engineer currently working for the U.S. Army at Redstone Arsenal, AL, who has expertise in the oil and gas industry, writes in Pure Energy Systems News:

I…think that the situation is getting further and further out of hand. The nature of the crude had changed, indicating that the spill was collapsing the rock structures. If it is collapsing the rock structures, the least that can be said is that the rock is fragmenting and blowing up the tube with the oil. With that going on you have a high pressure abrasive sand blaster working on the kinks in the pipe eroding it causing the very real risk of increasing the leaks.

More than that is the very real risk of causing the casing to become unstable and literally blowing it up the well bringing the hole to totally open condition. Another risk arises because according to reports the crew was cementing the exterior of the casing when this happens. As a result, the well, if this was not properly completed, could begin to blow outside the casing. Another possible scenario is a sea floor collapse. If that happens Katie bar the door.

The deposit is one I have known about since 1988. The deposit is very big. The central pressure in the deposit is 165 to 170 thousand PSI. It contains so much hydrocarbon that you simply cannot imagine it.

The oil industry has knowledge of the deposit more than they admit. The deposit is 100 miles off shore. They are drilling into the edge of the deposit to leak it down gently to be able to produce from the deposit. The deposit is so large that while I have never heard exact numbers it was described to me to be either the largest or the second largest oil deposit ever found. It is mostly a natural gas deposit. The natural gas that could be released is really way beyond the oil in quantity. It is like 10,000 times the oil in the deposit.

It is this deposit that has me reminding people of what the Shell geologist told me about the deposit. This was the quote, “Energy shortage…, Hell! We are afraid of running out of air to burn.” The deposit is very large. It covers an area off shore something like 25,000 square miles. Natural Gas and Oil is leaking out of the deposit as far inland as Central Alabama and way over into Florida and even over to Louisiana almost as far as Texas. This is a really massive deposit. Punching holes in the deposit is a really scary event as we are now seeing.

Crews continue to lay boom in what increasingly feels like a futile effort to slow down the spill, with all ideas to contain the flow failing so far.

“I’ve been in Pensacola and I am very, very concerned about this filth in the Gulf of Mexico,” Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said at a fundraiser for his U.S. Senate campaign Sunday night. “It’s not a spill, it’s a flow. Envision sort of an underground volcano of oil and it keeps spewing over 200,000 gallons every single day, if not more.”

Read more (and get links to info. and graphics) here: http://www.examiner.com/x-38220-Orlando-Independent-Examiner~y2010m5d4-Oil-slick-triples-in-size-in-three-days-landfall-in-FL-imminent

Would a Romney Extramarital Fling End His Presidential Hopes?

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 2:36 am

cartoon-romneys-romp

May 3, 2010

Thumbs up

Filed under: Uncategorized — Peregrin @ 10:02 pm

Sarah Palin
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The Drill, Baby, Drill Swill Team

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:47 am

cartoon-drill-baby

May 2, 2010

‘Shorting’ Explained

Filed under: BartCop Page,Commentary,Opinion — zelator @ 1:33 pm

Having spent a good deal of time working as a consultant for our friends on Wall St.,  I have a pretty good handle on the technical ins and outs of the trading biz.  I have seen hundreds of commentaries on stories about the latest fiasco, and many of them are of the simple nature of ‘what the hell is shorting?’, or words to that effect.

So let’s get to it.  Let’s say you just want to make money on stocks the ‘obvious’ way – by buying some shares at a lower price, then selling them at a higher price.  This is what is known as a ‘long’ position; you are holding on to them in the hopes that in the ‘long’ run they will increase in value.  Let’s also say that you don’t want to pay cash – you might borrow $10,000 from me just to purchase some stocks.   If the stock value is, say ten bucks, you can buy 1000 shares of this stock for $10,000.  So you owe me $10,000 and you are now in a ‘long position’ of 1000 shares.   

OK – let’s say the stock price goes up to twenty bucks.  Now, if you want, you can sell your 1000 shares to someone for $20,000.  You owe me $10,000, so you keep the other $10,000.  That is YOUR profit.  I could profit by charging you interest on what you owed, but that just muddies the water.  Also, someone somewhere will get a chunk of your ten G’s as a commission.  If the stock DROPS in value, you lose and you have to give me some cash to make up the difference.  Pretty straightforward.

So how do you make money in a ‘short’ position?  We know that we need to hope that the value of the stock goes down, right?  So how do we make money? 

Let’s say instead of you borrowing money from me, you borrow some stock from me that I already own.  I take 1000 of my shares in this company and let you hold onto it for a little while.  At some point in time, you have to return those shares to me, regardless of the price of the shares.  If you take them and they are worth ten dollars each, it will cost you $10,000 in stock to pay me back, and neither you nor I will have lost any money.  However, if the value of the stock drops to, say, eight dollars, it will only cost you $8000 to pay me back for $10,000 worth of stock!  You have just made $2000 in a short sell.

So how does this tie in to the Goldman Sachs investigations?  Quite simply – if you have the credit, you can get a short position not just on equities, but on any security – foreign currency, bonds, or the dreaded mortgage-backed securities.  So – if you are selling bad mortgage-back securities to little old ladies and making a profit on the commission, then reaping the rewards for your short bets against the crappy securities you sold them, you are doing approximately what Goldman Sachs is accused of doing.

Remember – money doesn’t buy you happiness.  If it did, there would be no such thing as capitalism.

The Tattlesnake — Glenn Beck’s Greased Rail Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:21 am

News Item: Glenn Beck Has Lost 1/3 of His TV Audience Since January

A Shame He’ll Miss Out on the Tar and Feathers

Unlike his semi-serious colleagues O’Reilly and Hannity, Beck was always just a babbling flash in the pan; a sideshow freak-out of raving, nearly incoherent right-wing outrage and contradictory conspiracy theories. He had to keep topping himself in craziness or risk boring his audience with deadly repetition. He’s now run out of ideas and gone with the latter, and his viewers are turning him off, so his only hope for a final ratings coup is to go out like a flaming comet with a total on-air screeching psychotic meltdown and then R&R at some luxurious mental rehab facility. But don’t fret for Beck – he’s made many more millions from his strange circus act than most legitimate clowns.

With his ratings dropping, nearly all of his A-line advertisers gone, and his goofy Prof. Irwin Corey and Howard Beal Meet Joe McCarthy routine growing stale, isn’t it high time for Uncle Rupert to show Glenn Beck the door?

“Let’s put Beck’s ratings into context. Yes, in the world of cable news, his numbers are impressive, and virtually any host would be happy to have them. But look how far Glenn Beck has fallen recently. In late January and into February, the program was averaging 3 million viewers each week. And late last year, the show spent month after month flirting with that figure. Today, the viewership is trending around 2 million (Last week it was exactly 2.01 million viewers.) — which means that in a span of just three months, Glenn Beck has lost nearly one-third of its television audience.” […]
“Corporate America (aka the beloved free marketplace) wants nothing to do with Beck. … Today, there are less than a handful of nationally recognized advertisers who appear willing to purchase air time on Glenn Beck. Think about the deep, deep discounts Fox News likely has to offer the remaining advertisers in order to get them to come aboard. (And the show is supposed to be a hit.) Now add to that equation the fact that Glenn Beck has lost 1/3 of its audience since January, and you can see where this is heading for Fox News.
“How soft are Beck’s current ratings? He’s now posting the type of numbers that his show used to get when he was on vacation and somebody less famous stood in for him, like when he took a few days off in late March and his show averaged 1.9 million viewers. Beck’s been back from his March vacation for weeks now, but his ratings are roughly the same as when he wasn’t even there.”
– Eric Boehlert, “Glenn Beck Has Lost 1/3 of Its TV Audience Since January,” Media Matters, April 20, 2010.

Prediction: Beck will be off of Fox News before 2011.

$500K device may have prevented oil spill

Filed under: Uncategorized — Greg in cheeseland @ 1:55 am

A special note to regular bartcop readers: My thanks go out to Mike Malloy for having Mike Papatonio on his show on Friday. I would not have heard about “the story behind the story” had it not been for that. If you do not get Malloy’s show (9-12pm EST) in your area, get a podcast subscription…it’s as good as bartcop radio!

Excerpt:
Yes, that’s correct…a device that costs one half million dollars may have prevented what is on track to become the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The device is called an acoustic trigger (aka. acoustic switch, actuator). It is a remote-controlled device deployed off oil rigs that sends acoustic impulses through the water, triggering an underwater valve or explosives to shut down the well even if the rig is catastrophically damaged or abandoned.

All offshore rigs have one main switch to shut off the flow of oil by closing a valve located on the ocean floor. There is also supposed to be a backup called a “dead man,” that will shut down the well in the event of a catastrophe on the rig.

Apparently neither of these devices worked on the Deepwater Horizon rig operated by British Petroleum (BP). The crew members who would have been closest to the shutoff switch are among those missing and presumed dead. If the rig was equipped with an acoustic trigger, it would have been a last resort option and could have been activated from a remote location.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Norway and Brazil require these devices in all offshore drilling operations. While they are not required with rigs offshore the U.K., BP elects to deploy them there. BP chose not to equip oil rigs off the coast of the U.S. with acoustic triggers because U.S. regulations enacted in 2003 do not require companies to do so.

A Pensacola attorney, Mike Papantonio, whose firm filed a class-action lawsuit three days ago against BP on behalf of Gulf fishermen had this to say on MSNBC’s The Ed show:

BP didn’t want to spend the money for a system – a fail safe system, used all over the world…[that could have prevented this]. We’re talking about a company that makes forty billion a year that wouldn’t invest five hundred thousand dollars…It is the most unreported part of this story

Now that you’ve lost a $560,000 oil rig, are spending $6 million a day in cleanup efforts, have lost billions in the drop of your stock on the NYSE, have infuriated the citizens of four gulf coast states…how’s that business model working out for you, BP?

Read more here (including video of interview with Papantonio): http://www.examiner.com/x-38220-Orlando-Independent-Examiner~y2010m5d2-500K-device-may-have-prevented-oil-spill

May 1, 2010

Lost in Juarez: Everything America touches turns to death?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — Jane Stillwater @ 5:27 pm

Every day when I open my inbox, I get at least one press release from various American armed forces in Iraq, letting me know that some insurgent there has just been killed or some AQI group has just been captured. Even now, over seven years after the Iraq occupation began, our troops are still out hunting and capturing insurgents and rebel groups there — and the bombings are still going on. Does that mean that Iraq is still unstable? What else am I supposed to think? That constant stream of e-mails seals the deal.

Then we have Afghanistan, the world’s most productive narco-state by far, source of most of the heroin on the market today. Heroin is deadly. Worldwide, how many addicts have died from overdoses or AIDS or violence resulting from their use of heroin that has been supplied by American-occupied Afghanistan? One million? Two million? I can’t even begin to guess.

Palestine is another killing field that America finances. “Why are you always running off at the mouth about Palestine,” I’m always asked. Why? Because Israel and Palestine would have worked out all their problems in a manner acceptable to both sides decades ago if America hasn’t kept pouring gasoline on the fire in the form of weapons, weapons, weapons and more weapons.

And let’s not forget to mention Pakistan, America’s good ally which is now yet another killing field. And then there’s Columbia, home of Latin America’s longest-running bloody war on farmers and trade unionists, bought and paid for by America the beautiful.

“I would really like to go back and embed in Iraq,” I keep telling my son Joe and my daughter Ashley, “but, frankly, I’m just not up to it physically — the flight there is just too long for me. 20 hours in the air? Followed by days and days of jet-lag? Forget it. And I’d like to embed in Afghanistan too. And also go and report on the brutal siege of Gaza as well. I’d like to be everywhere in the world that the action is. I want to be able to see for myself — up front and personal — all of the places where America’s treasury and America’s future are all being pounded down into a bunch of bloody rat-holes.”

I want to go where the blood flows, to bear witness and to send messages back to America that all this warfare and bloodshed and killing is not necessary, is a waste of time and money, does NOT make us safer, goes against every religion we believe in — and doesn’t even make sense.

But I’m getting less and less willing to face all the hassle of interminable plane rides across the globe and wearisome jet-lag that lingers for weeks.

“Hey, no problem,” replied my friend Larry, who lives in Texas. “No need to travel to the other side of the world to see American violence and American weapon sales and American bloodshed in action. You can always just go down to Juarez.”

Ah. So now there’s also Juarez, bloody Juarez, to consider — where people die as violently on the streets of Juarez as they die on the streets of Kandahar or Baghdad.

According to one CNN report, “Tim Crockett, head of the security firm Pioneer Consulting and security adviser for CNN, described Ciudad Juarez as ‘probably more dangerous for journalists than the Middle East’.” Probably more dangerous for journalists than even the Middle East? Yikes!

Remember back in 2007 when I embedded in Iraq and the Army told me that if I left the fortified Green Zone area and walked across the 14th of July Bridge into Baghdad itself, I’d most likely be dead within five minutes? Well, according to several articles that Larry just e-mailed me, there’s almost exactly the same situation happening in Juarez right now. Juarez is a war zone. Juarez is a failed-narco-state. Juarez has insurgents, a military build-up of American weapons, American occupation advisers who run a surrogate war from DC and terrified citizens who keep turning up dead.

“But the beautiful thing about Juarez, Jane,” continued Larry, “is that Juarez is only five miles from Texas. You could hop a plane in the morning, fly to El Paso without getting jet-lag, be inside a war zone in time for lunch — and be getting your head blown off by dinnertime.” Plus it wouldn’t be too hard on my poor knees — and I wouldn’t be required to bring a flak jacket either. Sign me up!

PS: Here’s a headline from a Los Angeles Times article that Larry sent me on the subject, just in case you think I might be exaggerating: “Mexico under siege, the drug war at our doorstep.”

The Times then goes on to state that 45,000 troops have been deployed so far and that 10,031 people have been killed. “That’s more than the U.S. fatalities in the Iraq war.” http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/

And here are some more articles from Larry:

From the Overseas Security Advisory Council: The U.S. State Department has issued a warning about Juarez. “Mexican cartels battling for control of drug trafficking routes cause widespread disruption in the city and state.”

https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=113317

From Current News: Gunmen murdered 19 people this weekend, including two U.S. citizens associated with the American consulate. http://current.com/news/92323550_in-juarez-mexico-gunmen-murdered-19-people-this-past-weekend-including-2-us-citizens.htm

And here the Huffington Post seems to be hinting that America is losing the drug war in Juarez as well. Shades of Afghanistan! I wonder how many drug addicts in the U.S. have died from drugs illegally imported by the Juarez cartels?

“Sinaloa takes over Cuidad Juarez: After a two-year battle that has killed more than 5,000 people, Mexico’s most powerful kingpin now controls the coveted trafficking routes through Ciudad Juarez. That conclusion by U.S. intelligence adds to evidence that Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel is winning Mexico’s drug war…. [The] Sinaloa cartel has edged out the rival Juarez gang for control over trafficking routes through Ciudad Juarez, ground zero in the drug war. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/sinaloa-takes-over-ciudad-juarez_n_531378.html

****

Please vote for me so that I can get a scholarship to the Netroots Nation convention in Las Vegas this July! Vote here: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/810-jane-stillwater

Gov. Jan Brewer: Putting the AZ in Crazy

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:00 am

cartoon-az-in-crazy

Cap and trade scandal facts

Filed under: Uncategorized — Greg in cheeseland @ 1:10 am

The right wing blogosphere is alight like a burning oil rig in the gulf with the Beckian cap and trade scandal, soon to be tied in with the Limbot’s theory that the oil spill in the gulf was a result of a terrorist attack, staged or allowed to happen. The alleged motive is a socialist redistribution of wealth planned years ago in Kenya by Mao Hussein Obama. I wrote this just to piss off the right-wingers…

beckfoil

Excerpt:
Forget that what will be the largest oil spill in U.S. history will foul the coastlines of four states, including the nicest beaches in Florida on the panhandle. Never mind a record-breaking defense budget, two ongoing wars, a continuation of torture and illegal detention policies. Arming ICBMs with conventional warheads that could trigger a nuclear war if launched – no problem. Even possible criminal charges against Goldman Sachs, and an economy that is not rebounding for working-class Americans is no match for the… “cap and trade scandal.”

According to ace investigative journalist Glenn Beck and the populist heroes that work behind the scenes at Fox News, the American people are about to fall prey to a government called “Crime, Inc.” that will systematically redistribute wealth through a cap and trade tax.

The latest census bureau data from 2007 shows that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans hold 42.7% of the financial wealth in the nation and the next 19 percent hold 50.3%, leaving the bottom 80 percent of Americans holding a mere 7% of financial wealth in the nation. So, even though millionaires like Glenn Beck may have the most to lose and most Americans may gain from such a diabolical scheme (if that were true), he must be looking out for the common good like other Fox News hosts do on a daily basis.

According to Brian Frederick writing for Media Matters, this is how Glenn Beck claims it will go down:

Cap and trade is really just a “scam” and “redistribution of wealth.” In order to perpetrate this scam, the Joyce Foundation, an environmental organization whose board used to include Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett, steered grants toward developing the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Investors in the CCX included Al Gore, Fannie and Freddie and some Goldman Sachs partners.

Meanwhile, “really bad dude” Franklin Raines, former chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae, helped secure a technological patent for what Beck never really explains, but it has to do with the cap-and-trade exchange system. Raines serves on the board of the Enterprise Community Partners, so according to Beck, he asked Enterprise to ask the Joyce Foundation for cash for a new group: the Emerald Cities Collaborative (“Green-Fair-Democratic”).

And of course, since it’s the Emerald Cities, Beck says, there must be a “wizard.” The wizard? Joel Rogers, a professor who heads the Center on Wisconsin Strategy. He’s directly shaping President Obama’s thinking.

So there you have it. The grandest of Beckian conspiracy theories. One University of Wisconsin (my alma mater, by the way) professor and activist is the “wizard” behind an elaborate system to redistribute wealth, and there are multiple organizations and corporations in on it, including the Obamian People’s Army of Chicago economics. Apparently Mao Tse-Tung was disguised as Milton Friedman all those years at the University of Chicago.

Conservative bloggers, arm chair pundits, and the faithful followers of Glenn Beck are screaming for more mainstream media coverage of this horrendous atrocity and are baffled as to why the corporate media will not pay attention to this breaking story.

Perhaps that’s because there are bigger stories orchestrated by the powers that be to distract the media from this scandal. Next thing we know, there will be a staged terrorist attack on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to put forth this radical agenda. (Oh, that’s right, Rush Limbaugh already is on that one). Perhaps because big media (excluding, of course, Fox News) is part of a grand conspiracy by the liberal elite, progressives, environmentalists, bankers, energy companies, and the Kenyan Obama administration to rob middle America of all their remaining wealth. Perhaps because one needs a tinfoil hat to truly understand the connection between Michael Ayers, Michael Moore and cupcakes.

beckcupcakes

Or…perhaps because there is absolutely no basis in fact for the allegations.

Read (lots) more here: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-38220-Orlando-Independent-Examiner~y2010m5d1-Cap-and-trade-scandal-facts

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