June, 2010 archive
Vigil 1
Some pictures from yesterday’s vigil marking the 50th day of BP’s wild well.
It was a quiet and respectful gathering.
Flyover:
Stray Thought 2
Those who consider wind farms to be unsightly have likely never seen an oilfield.
Spill Here, Spill Now, Ripples Dept. 0
BP’s wild well drowning economy as well as living beings. From Bloomberg:
Tourism is taking a hit, too, with only one-fifth of the usual number of people attending the annual sandcastle contest last weekend, Grover Robinson, chairman of the Escambia County Commission, said at a Monday press briefing. The county includes Pensacola, located about 200 miles east of New Orleans.
Much more at the link.
Lost Causes 0
I actually qualify for one of these by history, though I suspect the only test to get one is the famous checkbook test.
Got a checkbook? Pass the test.
Wouldn’t want one.
Some lost causes deserve to remain lost.
QOTD 0
Paul Gauguin, from the Quotemaster:
We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.
Get your own quotes here.
Happy 75th, Blue Ridge Parkway 0
By the way, the Parkway was a WPA project, one of those make-work projects with no lasting value from the last Great Republican Depression.
My elementary school was also a WPA project; it is now long worn out and closed, but only after teaching generations of students to read, write, and cipher.
I mention this simply to point out that government can do and has done good and useful and sometimes even beautiful things of lasting value which do not include blowing people up, despite what Republicans say.
Follow the first link for a link to a cybertour of the Parkway.
Spill Here, Spill Now, Missed Messages Dept. 1
The Philadelphia Inquirer looks at coverage of BP’s wild well and concludes that, taken all together, news media have done a pretty good job of covering events since the blowout (of course, this does not mean that every news organization has done a good job).
Then it asks
Yes, the media are doing fine now – but where were they when the mistakes were being made?
Roger Cohn, editor of the online eco-magazine Yale Environment 360, says, “One big lapse was to accept this notion that technology of deepwater drilling had been so improved over the years and was now safe. The industry said so, President Obama believed and accepted it, so the media very uncritically accepted it without any evidence.”
Emotions are the fuel of politics, so it should not surprise that, in this ferocious off-year election, the two major parties are battling to take charge of the narrative. Each announcement, each appearance, is a photo-op, a chance to attract votes.
The author then fails to point out that
- almost everyone, not just President Obama, believed that the “technology of deepwater drilling had been so improved over the years and was now safe,” except possibly for a few “enviro-not-so-whackos,”
- that Republicans were and, God help me, are still agitating for drilling here, there, and everywhere,
- that, when President Obama approved some offshore exploration for oil, it was considered to a political concession to–wait for it–Republicans to help smooth passage of Climate Change legislation and that those same Republicans complained that he did not go far enough.
This is all part of the before that the author concedes was not well reported, but which then drops out of the narrative completely. Yet, knowing the before helps us understand the after.
The story then degenerates into a bunch of drivel on current political manoeuvering.
To try to make this all about Obama is to try to make an arson fire all about the fire department and ignore the arsonists.
I’m just back from the vigil to mark the 50th day of BP’s wild well. I’ll post some pictures tomorrow.
Stephen Colbert to Obama: How To Be Angry (Updated) 0
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Oil’s Well That Never Ends | ||||
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Addendum:
The Rude One speaks (warning: language at the link):
Could BP (or everyone else) stop pretending like there is any way to “make this right.”
(snip)
There’s uncorrectable wrongs in this life. Make it better? Maybe. Right? You’re delusional.
That’s the beginning and the end. For the middle, follow the link (once again, warning: language).
Plus Ca Change 0
Steve Hallock in the Philadelphia Inquirer points out that, in the eyes of some, the presence of brown people has long presaged the end of the Republic:
It continued: “For the most part they were and are agricultural workers: ‘following the fruit,’ as the saying is in California: picking cotton; harvesting wheat; gathering perishable crops from one ocean to the other. … They include many migrants who permanently leave their homes in search of better opportunities elsewhere, as the ‘Okies’ and ‘Arkies’ went to California during the Thirties.”
The editorial is from a 1950 edition of the New York Times. It is now 60 years since its publication. It’s also 109 years since the federal government first studied the migrant-worker situation and declared it a problem, 94 years since the Industrial Relations Commission published a report on the plight of migrant workers (many of them immigrants),
and 60 years since President Harry Truman appointed another commission to study the situation.
“Largest National Response Ever” 2
Unlike John Cole, I don’t claim to be an Obot. I certainly do not agree with everything that Mr. Obama does. When I vote for someone, I do not expect him or her to be a clone of me and to do only deeds of which I approve (that seems to separate me from some of my fellow lefties).
I have my doctrine, but I have found that being doctrinaire seldom facilitates progress.
Mr. Obama is a good and decent man who gets more things right than he gets wrong. And, frankly, I prefer calm thoughtfulness over silly cosplay.
(If you don’t know what “cosplay” is, giggle it.)
QOTD 0
Mark Twain:
Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
When the Government Went Crazy 0
Thoreau caps it off.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
It is generally not a good idea to threaten elected officials. Tea bagger armchair revolutionaries are starting to realize this:
Tull 0
A local newspaper columnist had a couple of columns on “religious predators.” I cannot find them on line (the local rag does not place all its content on line).
They reminded me of this.
Call of the Wild 0
When I was growing up, the deer had pretty much disappeared (now they’re back big time).
Now it’s reportedly cougars, and not the television actress kind. Wildlife folks are skeptical:
“The chances of there being a mountain lion that is a wild animal on the Eastern Shore of Virginia is extremely low,” she said. “Even in the whole state of Virginia, I don’t believe there are enough sightings.”
A wild cat would have to come from the woodsy north. “The chances are pretty slim for them to get here without being seen or getting hit by a car if they are wild animals,” Rice said, suggesting instead a pet released locally.
Cougars are both solitary and nocturnal for the most part and feed on white-tail deer.
Females have ranges of several square miles, but the male’s home-range is much larger, which could account for reports of sightings in Melfa and Wachapreague and other parts of Accomack, too.
Spill Here, Spill Now, Shhhhhhhh 0
On the Media looks at coverage of the wild well and claims that BP was trying to throttle reporting. From the website:
A handful of media outlets have reported that their reporters were denied access while trying to cover the oil spill in the Gulf, leaving some journalists worried that BP is deciding where they can and can’t go. Times-Picayune photojournalist Ted Jackson recounts his access problems while Lieutenant Commander Chris O’Neil of the US Coast Guard explains that BP is definitely not calling the shots.
A nugget from the transcript:
BOB GARFIELD (from On the Media–ed.): Just the suggestion that BP is making decisions about the movements of journalists caused an outcry, and by midweek the Coast Guard had stepped in to clarify its media policy and to reiterate that BP is definitely not making the rules.
But by that point, a few journalists had already been running in circles, including Times-Picayune photojournalist Ted Jackson, trying to do a routine flyover. Jackson had hired a seaplane to get aerial shots of the spill.
TED JACKSON (news photographer–ed.): Typically, you call the FAA and request permission to get below the temporary flight restriction, and the flight restriction that day was 3,000 feet, which is way too high to make a picture. So we requested to be able to fly lower than that, and the authority asked who was on the flight. And he said, I have the Times-Picayune photographer. And the answer was immediately, no then, you cannot have this exemption.
The seaplane company owner asked him, can I get your name so I can put your name in the file of people who were denying this request? He told him his name, and he said that he was a BP contractor hired to handle aviation requests. And that was just very disturbing to think that I was being denied access from a BP representative.
Follow the link to listen or read the transcript or listen here: