Daily Topics - Friday June 18th, 2010
By shawnt56
Hour One: "Brunch With Bernie" Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spends the hour with Thom discussing the issues and answering listener questions www.sanders.senate.gov
Hours Two and Three: "Anything Goes on Townhall Friday!"
Comments
#2
Open Letter to the President
Dear Mr. President,
You said on June 16, 2010, speaking of, in all probability, the greatest environmental disaster in US history, the current Gulf of Mexico oil gusher:
“Because there has never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. That’s why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge.”
Mr. President, how could this “accident waiting to happen” ever have been allowed to happen? Does the road to the so-called doomsday machine have any detours, provisos, back-ups, fail-safes; or are we all doomed? And, it’s going to be difficult to eat oil, drink oil and be merry before we die.
And to the point of this website (www.pahrumplife.org) against an encroaching unwanted for-profit private prison, as far as we know Mr. President, this great experiment you are allowing here in the high DESERT of Nevada has never been done before either. This experiment in the name of big bucks for some, is about to contaminate our and all local living things’ land, air and ultimately the precious aquifer in Pahrump, with millions of gallons of locally “ill handled of record” effluent spray now proposed to be laden with prison anti-depressant, anti-psychotic drugs and hormones.
I have tried writing to you and to Senator Reid and a host of other offices, agencies and in general people in charge, to no avail. The desert is too brand-new and specialized a game for screwing around with the precious water.
Please have someone or, better yet, have your own eyes take a look at the following URL presenting the piece “Pahrump, Erstwhile Tourist Town?” which discusses the specialized conditions of desert aquifer waters, and will lead you to more URLs concerning the special concerns about our desert aquifer coupled with the outrageous building of a water-usurping and contaminating expanding for-profit prison without the diluting effects of big waters which studies prove are also not effective enough to prevent deleterious effects to the environment.
What the Nevada Public Utilities Commission does with respect to water is not so much a matter of their being bound by law as it is a matter, despite their alleged own better judgment, of their wont to be bound by the absence of law. So the people and life in general have lost and will lose “big time” again if this untried experiment is allowed with risks similar to the foreseeable risks that could be seen and were seen before the “Great Gulf of Mexico Disaster”.
Here’s the URL: http://www.pahrumplife.org/2009_07_01_archive.html
And this: http://pahrumplife.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/we-are-the-experiment1.pdf
#3
Well that explains a lot.
TransOcean started in Alabama as "The Offshore Company", but got it's present name when it acquired the Norweigian company "Transocean ASA" in 1996 - which started out as a Whaling company.
#4
..and that's no fluke! ;D
#5
OMFG!!! Who the heck does Feingold think he is?!?!? Demanding actual reform being in legislation being sold to folk as reform. How communistical . . .
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/wall-street-reform-backers-seek-feingolds-support.php
#6
When did Bernie jump on the war wagon?
He (along with our Oregon senator Jeff Merkley) voted for Obama's most recent escalation in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Are there no more anti-war progressives left?
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm...
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may272010/obama-money.php
#8
White wash of OR White House on torture?
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/holder_cia_torture_review_almost_done.php#more
#9
@Hans Michael, re:#6 -
I know we're quite used to associating the term "supplemental appropriation" with war funding, but that's not what the bill you linked to was about.
From http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR04899:@@@D&summ2=m& -
H.R.4899
Title: Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2010
Disaster Relief and Summer Jobs Act of 2010 - Makes emergency supplemental appropriations for FY2010 to: (1) the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for disaster relief, including to the DHS Office of the Inspector General for disaster-related audits and investigations; and (2) the Department of Labor for the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) for training and employment services for activities under the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, to be available for grants to states for youth activities.
#10
I kinda' have to disagree with Thom's Ice Pick analogy. Oil isn't the life blood of the earth, its the toxic remains of past life. To me its more like a cancer that is metastasizing, or an infection that is spreading. Anyway, it won't harm Earth, it'll just damage the thin web of life that covers its surface (which we're part of).
Either way, doom and gloom, just hard for me to equate Oil to Blood.
N
#11
yeah, I think water is the life blood of Earth. and the 21st century, (if we're still here and capable of writing) will be known as the century of the water wars.
#12
Re: last caller w/Senator Sanders - "I just wanna be an American and drive my Jeep!"
So I guess that guy's definition of "American" is "selfish bastard who doesn't give half a tinker's damn about anything other than his own wants".
You, sir, are PRECISELY why the rest of the world hates Americans! Sadly, I'm willing to bet this week's paycheck that you're somehow PROUD of that fact.
#13
Regarding Unemployment Benefits:
http://worldnewsvine.com/2010/06/h-r-4213-gop-burns-unemployment-extensions-medicare-and-more/
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/dcblog/2010/06/unemployment_benefits_in_jeopa.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5497362/senate_makes_changes_to_bill_that_would.html
#14
@maxnels, re:#10 - I agree - oil and blood are not eqivalent. Blood, however, seems to be a large portion of the currency that we use to acquire oil.
#15
@Maxrot: Calm down. Your Soma is on the way. :)
It's likely that the earth would survive humans, but metastasis is a good analogy for our global situation in general.
Our model is the model of cancer: uncontrolled growth. And like a cancer, that growth takes enough resources that the organism cannot survive.
#16
There is an equation for oil and blood. I'm not going to mess around with the math, but it's pretty clear that the blood of our military, the blood of innocents at the hands of military and police, the blood of life that suffers the side effects of those struggles equal some quantity of oil.
#17
@mstaggerlee, I'm also betting willing to bet that that xenophobic mental troglodyte also has anti-abortion bumpersticker pasted all over his 2 miles to the gallon V-16 Jeep. Just strikes me as the type of guy who doesn't want his choices limited but is more than willing to limit others.
@gene, please double maybe even quadruple that Soma order, or maybe I should just give up turn on TV and watch People At Walmart reality show. peopleofwalmart.com (don't look harry, just go back to looking at the Republican't fatheads I sent out to you). Go to that site, and you too will see how the rest of the world sees us, I'm telling you that site is just filled with stanch unemployed Republican voters. If you're not laughing; your crying for your country.
Amazing how willfully ignorant we have become. :-(
(yeah, definitely quadruple that Soma order)
N
#18
Gene, I believe the formula you're looking for is: any amount of Oil = infinite amount of someone else's blood.
N
#19
I would like to share with you another experience. It is a recent experience. My wife shared this experience with me. She meets with women who have graduated from a girl’s Catholic high school. My wife and her friends met in Livonia, Michigan at Newburgh Road and Six Mille Road. There is a Big Boy Restaurant. Fourteen women were at the restaurant. One of the women shared with my wife her experience. Two months before her husband died, her son and two grandchildren moved in to live with her. Her son had to move in because he lost his job. His wife died of cancer. The reason for him losing his job had to do that he took too much time off to care for his dying wife. In addition to losing his job he lost his health insurance and his home on foreclosure. This experience is occurring in a country that has wanted an amendment to make Christianity the nation’s religion. Passage of this amendment would have been blasphemy.
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness and a person is guilty of an eternal sin. Blasphemy is showing contempt or lack of reverence for God. Since Jesus is the Son of God, a person who is showing contempt and lack of reverence for Jesus, commits an eternal sin and never has forgiveness. Irreverence to God damns a person’s soul.
I, personally, want to share with you another experience. Our youngest son had a classmate at the University of Michigan who went on to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. In a few years after the completion of graduate work his friend lost all his hair. Losing hair can be from genes and possibly from pressure, stress, and worry. His friend was so concerned with the loss of his hair that for several years he let the hairs from just inside his ears grow to a length where he could cover his bald head. Since I am balding, I am considering letting my ear hairs grow to a length where I can also cover my balding head.
#20
Kewl!!! The bumper music before the Victoria Jones segment was Michael Franti & Spearhead's "Yell Fire", which I suggested in the "Bumper" blog!
#21
@Gene, re: #16 - Isn't that what I said in #14?
#22
Gerald: I was able to grow my eyebrows long and comb them back to cover the top of my head, and I grew my nose hairs for a moustache, but I can't get my ear hairs to grow more than an inch or so. What am I doing wrong?
#23
@mstaggerlee re: #21: Great minds think alike! :)
We were writing simultaneously.
#25
@Gerald - Get real, man!!! The only thing less cool than a comb-over is an EAR-HAIR comb-over!
Shave yer head, buy a rug, or just go with the "Costanza". DO NOT COMB-OVER!
#26
http://www.hooponopono.org/ -- Emoto advises we use this updated Hawaiian problem solving process to collectively cleanse our gulf waters
#27
July 30, 2010 the 45th birthday of MEDICARE --
Can we call July 30, 2010 MEDICARE FOR ALL Day?
#28
@radlof - always liked Franken - he provided my intro to progressive radio. He's progressive, brilliant, witty, AND he's a Deadhead! What more could one want from a Senator?
#29
War should touch everyone.
We're fighting 3 wars right now, 2 in the middle east, and one at home. Not unlike what went on in Greece from 430-400 B.C. The war between Athens, a democracy, and Sparta, an oligarchy, went on for 30 years. After 30 years of Reaganomics, the oligarchy is poised to take over once again. If you don't have the whitehouse phone number 202-456-1111 on your cell phone and call it once a month, then you are part of the crowd watching the train wreck in progress when you could be pounding spikes to keep this thing from derailing. Small people, it's that simple. make a call today or your kids will have to scrounge for necessities tomorrow.
#30
re: hooponopo - from http://www.hooponopono.org/i-am-the-i.htm
"I" draw my bow of rainbows across the waters,
Rainbows on the water - isn't that generally the result of OIL in the water?
#31
Say you are a healthy wage earner --
your employer is required to take a portion of your wages --
which goes to the government in taxes --
to provide public health insurance for your community --
healthcare for those too sick to work, too old, too young --
P-PACA mandates your employer to take another portion of your wages --
to buy private healthcare insurance for you + your family --
why can't you pay a bit more in taxes? --
and provide yourself + your family with public health insurance? --
why can't you get the same public health insurance that you give to your community?
#32
When Noam Chomsky spoke at Fermilab a few years back, one of the questions regarded the dangers of the black box voting machines. Dr. Peter Limon expressed a real concern. Chomsky essentially said to ignore the e-voting issue. If the people are concerned and motivated, stealing an election will be the least of the problems that illigitimate politicians will face.
Interesting, but I kind of like having an actual, provable record of the people's intent.
#33
I just now spoke with you about public unions, and was not able to complete my thought before I was accused of using a Republican talking point. Actually, what I was trying to say is that because many of the public unions have pensions that are ultimately guaranteed by the taxpayer (when pension investments tank) UNTIL we have a more progressive tax rate, the costs of these pensions will fall on those who will least be able to afford them. And there is also some abuse, especially by those higher up in the food chain. Recently, we had a vote here in Arizona to increase the sales tax by 1% to support police, firefighters and teachers. I voted for this, although I fear it is a regressive tax. I am a progressive, but I do not want to create a three-tiered society: the oligarchy, the public sector middle class and the rest of us. Until unions are able to bring in members of the private sector and stop the offshoring of jobs, I am afraid this is what will happen.
#34
Because the Democrats by and large refuse to discuss electronic voting and Republicans won't because it benefits them 100% of the time, we only have one option: hack into the voting machines ourselves. Find a weak Democrat and hack into the system and make that Democrat win by 15,000 more votes than there are registered voters. And do it again and again until you have Republicans outraged and demanding accountability and a system to count the votes.
And I am normally a rule-follower not a rule-breaker.
#35
It's amazing that so many people are apathetic about politics. But, who cares?
#36
Look who is cashing BP’s checks:
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/enviros-push-bp-10-dump-campaign-cash
#37
#34 great idea!
#38
@Jeanie, I'm don't think the machines are hooked into the internet. Also its likely that the programs that run them are predefined to switch certain percentages of votes, so that even if they were hooked into the internet, you wouldn't need a cracker modifying them in real time (too easy to see and too risky).
I would like to see the machines banned, as well as a more unified voting system implemented.
N
#39
We can't get rid of the machines! Paper is too complicated!
#40
Maxrot, then how do the votes get switched if, as Thom said, the companies who made them probably don't do it themselves? Didn't Bev Harris show how easily they could be hacked into?
#41
I was able to switch 600 votes with my garage door opener!
#42
Regarding what Gene Savoy said above about Noam Chomsky said, and the general unwillingness of Dems to go into the electronic voting issue, there could be one more reason: they don't really understand it. They don't really understand how easily it is to hack into, I mean. I remember with the Y2K issue, many legislators couldn't wrap their heads around why it could have been a huge issue that could have affected an enormous amount of our lives. Not to say they aren't smart people, but it is too technological for some.
#43
Certainly Noam Chomsky is technologically literate. Could be his kinda sorta anarchist views (which I largely share) which may object in principle to voting. I think there's truth in the anarchist slogan: If voting could change anything they'd make it illegal.
#44
@Jeanie: When the crowds show up with their pitchforks and torches the politicians will race to the front of the line and pretend they were leading all along. (I stole this from a good source.)
Secrecy; control of information and therefore a means to control people, is the first sign that the politicians are NOT doing any work for people who don't give them a ton of gold.
#45
Give them their weight in horse manure.
#46
@Jeanie, well that's if as Thom said the companies don't do it. Personally when the companies that provide the machines are ran by conservatives, and they refuse to let the code to be seen, I tend to believe the rotten smell I detect is coming from the decaying corpse I see.
Cracking any machine is possible, there is not now or ever has been a computer that people couldn't hack into, in several different ways. Proving you can do it, doesn't prove that's how it was done. I doubt seriously that only conservative crackers exist, and they're only switching progressive votes. All evidence I've come across points to the makers and machine tenders.
N
#47
not to mention the chicken tenders.
#48
Regarding the FDL video: Sorry this is so late...PC froze as I tried to login toward the end of the show... I am not a petroleum geologist, but am a Ph.D. metamorphic petrologist [geologist] and fairly familiar with drilling etc., though not in great detail.
The FDL video clearly is of the sea floor, *not* the deck of a drill rig. The behavior of the plumes clearly are underwater, and the Poseidon is one of the submersibles from which you can access the ongoing feeds; you also can see various bits of debris [and/or organisms(?)] floating by. Have you ever seen a rock surface? Outside of jointed [fractured] surfaces, they tend not to be perfectly smooth.
However, I do not know you can state just what you are seeing in the video; they appear to be plumes including oil, but the lighting is not great and at least some of the material seemingly might have been stirred up by the submersible. Also, remember there *are* natural hydrocarbon seeps...think La Brea Tar Pits [or Jed Clampett]. That said, I would not be able to characterize what those typically might look like.
Jim in New Haven
#49
I'm not saying I know oil is leaking thru the seabed, I don't trust the msm main-stream media to tell me the truth, and almost all the sources about this topic are from non msm media.
#50
@harry ashburn, I have to remember the eyebrows. I have seen some men who who have used their nose hairs for a moustache. The nose hairs will probably grow faster. Harry, ear hairs will take several years to be ready on a bald head.
@mstaggerlee, ear hairs will give a person a hippie look. Your remedy is quicker and less hassle but there are men who want their own hair covering their body.
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Democrats Get Your Spine…
Why do the Democrats have an inferior psychological self esteem and hold the Republicans superior with a perceived greater worth and contribution to our society and world? What comes to mind is an older British Empire where ‘the sun never sets on the Union Jack’ and how their self conceived superiority over the native tribes ruled the world a 100 years. Why is it that an American flag on someone’s dress means “I am a Republican American, patriot of our cause” and not “I am in love with freedom for all around the world”.
What the current middle east war, world depression and oil well disaster, have to be a symbol of for all Democrats is that the Republicans and the corporate cause they represent are completely self serving and completely incapable of self determined rule of our country and planet. What greater and more noble cause do the Democrats have than to oversee and regulate the activities of this ruthless cancer who is eating the very body of laws created for the equality of all. The laws of this country are a product of 4000 years of evolution. What greater Right do the Democrats have to wave their American Flag and to Uphold Their Ideals and Their Cause than the lives and suffering of 40 centuries of LOWER CLASS LABOR that created the United Stated of America? I have elected Democrats to be my Champion….BE IT, BE IT FOR ALL HUMANITY!
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