Why Pay NOAA to (expletive) LIE TO US?

Just in case you missed USA Today on this date, scientists working under a contract for Greenpeace, and from a state university in Mississippi reportedly found one hell of a lot of oil all over the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Also discovered were persistent trace amounts of toxic dispersant 50 miles from the Macondo well near Louisiana.

That's right, the dispersant that was supposed to break down quickly in the environment, posing no threat?

Chief Scientist on the Research trip finding the oil was Kevin Yeager of the University of Southern Mississippi.

Yeager, Southern Miss U, Greenpeace and company, have the right stuff whereas our officials from NOAA continue to lie to us.

Months back I told you about the science taking a powder: the NOAA administrated science black-out. We discussed how the government response team was trying to corral all science under the NOAA aegis. The agency would then begin the process of whitewashing and downplaying the affair as only droning, plodding, maddeningly foot-dragging, give-a-shit government thick-heads can do. Hell they write manuals on how to stymie serious inquiry into colossal screw-ups; especially ones the government helped create.

This latest development which I found buried in my local paper on page A-4 just shows you how bad the government is lying, has been and will continue to do so, with regard to the spill.

Last week Steve Lehman a scientist working for NOAA told the Times-Picayune "The concept of a big oil slick sinking to the bottom is kind of an anathema," he said. "We have not found anything that we would consider actionable at 5,000 feet or 5 feet."

There's a point when governmentalese, designed to confuse and misdirect, must be called what it is: a damn lie. Making the person who said it, a damn liar, along with his agency. The word "god" was stricken from the previous statement in a self-edit; merely in a nod to those who have asked for not quite so much angry cursing from me.

Too strong still? Let's take a look.

The context of the word "anathema" makes it seem Steve's indicating that there is a fallacy in thinking regarding this notion (oh, silly naive us and our notions) of oil persisting on the sea floor this very minute. This professorial word tries to imply that our childish notion - that 200 million gallons simply cannot have so soon vanished into thin air - is without merit or a basis in fact. However the definition of anathema - and it's not meant to be used with a modifying article, Steve - is something very different.

Anathema person or thing that is loathed.

The other part of his statement is parsed with legalese;"actionable" It is not a scientific term at all. What it does is, totally let BP off the hook for clean-up of any oil found on the sea floor within "5 feet of water, or 5,000." Done. Over. End of story. They don't have to clean this oil up.

Why? Because NOAA just said so. NOAA is now in charge under the response team coordination/science black-out for deeming what's actionable and what's not. Media missed this, by the way. It's huge. NOAA says no clean up of any oil found on the bottom.

Why? Because such oil deposits where ever found, have been deemed not worthy of collection, not that such deposits don't exist, aren't deadly or toxic but that they are legally in-actionable, for whatever dismissive reason of governmental not-give-a-f*ck; about you, your seafood, your ocean, or your continued survival.

No science, being responsible science, in their dim view.

There is no question that within the vast expanses of sea floor being discussed here since May 20, there hasn't been time for NOAA or ANY organization to FIND, or DISCOVER where all the oil might be, or what might the damage from such deposits might pose to the environment in the future.

Such discoveries would take years to sort out as far as impacts. Yet, we ponder the wonderfulness of NOAA yet again.

Let's flow out their logic.

NOAA: "Seventy-six percent of 200 million gallons is all gone. Bye bye."

ALL: "WTF? Are you serious? That doesn't even make sense!"

NOAA: "No no, that's not quite right. It's been handled. It's accounted for. Tiny quantities. Itty bitty tar balls."

USF: "Bullshit, here's some right over here."

Woods Hole Oceanographic: "Hey look, here's some more over here!"

NOAA: "Well is it really oil from this well? C'mon."

ALL: "Hell yes it is!"

NOAA: (pause. Nothing. Mumbling. Kind of a mewling sound like a goat chewing food and bleating at the same time)

Then Later

NOAA: "Any oil found on the bottom anywhere , and we hope you don't catch this, is AN anathema, yeah, that's it. And furthermore its inactionable. End of story, close the book, cut, print, check the gate, we're moving on."

Southern Miss U: "Hey wow, a shitload of oil over here, guys!"

NOAA: (mummed silence)

Yes, and so it will continue. As these new deposits are discovered by other agencies and universities who have taken the initiative to actually find the oil - not within the pages of Obama-drafted back room compromises and deal - but actually within the environment; BP will respond to such reports with utter Shynxian silence. The government through lying NOAA will issue bland statements of falsehood such as these.

It makes you wonder why we pay scientists, spokespeople and all their slow-moving, mush mouth staff to continue to lie straight into our faces via a tone-deaf docile media?

Rick Scott: A *Criminal You Can Count On

*never convicted of bilking millions from Medicare while CEO of Columbia Health Care. He was "out of the loop" while fraud was all around him. Yeah....sure.

Be sure to catch the Alex Sink/Rick Scott debate tonight at 7 p.m. CNN, live from University of South Florida Tampa; where they actually give a damn about real science!

Oh, be sure to check out Rick's Mom's advertisement below this post.

Have You Noticed? Nobody Mentions BP this election: nobody

What is this telling you?

Candidates don't want to offend the oil money.

Look at it objectively:the biggest single ecological disaster to hit this country since the dust bowl is caused, this time, by a single corporation and its subcontractors.

It happened because an entire industry has been deregulated to the extent our government officials actually were having sex - actual sex! not figuratively in bed with, not metaphorically "playing footsie" no, this time actually fornicating - with the businesspeople they were supposed to be regulating.

Nothing was done. No one was even fired. And certainly no one went to jail.

Plaquemines Parish Louisiana President Billy Nungesser walked out of a meeting in Tampa where BP officials discussed the bilious topic "what have we learned?"

Billy just couldn't stand the bullshit anymore. It was about to give him a damned heart attack. He could feel it coming.

A woman in the big bend area of my state found oil in a bag of oysters sold to her as clean. Oil keeps washing ashore in Louisiana. The bayou is still choked with crude. And BP is quietly disengaging from the disaster it created.

The media has gone away.

Oh, CNN did a hand-washing ten minute segment yesterday, to commemorate the six month clock-tick on it. But Jon Roberts and Kiran Chetry sloughed off recent reports with ridiculous smiles and all is well banter.

"We've moved on now. Things are better. Things getting back to normal"

Despite the fact the woman they were interviewing kept having to restate the heart of the issue: "responsible science takes years and years" to determine the actual impact. She had to keep saying it. You could see by the look on her face, she was annoyed at the fog of stupidity.

You know, the way your boss doesn't want to hear you when you ask for something important?

"Boss my kid is throwing up in class I have to go get him, now."

"Yeah, but, you'll take care of that thing, right?"

"Boss, my kid is like actually vomiting, projectile, on his fellow classmates!"

"Oh sure, he's okay, right? You'll take care of that thing first, right?"

As with the financial melt down, the liars who are responsible are likely to be the ones singing the hand-wringing refrain "what have we learned?" the loudest. They will be found all over government. Like Nungesser said, they will also be the ones talking about how their boots were on the ground, but had not one drop of oil on their own shirts.

Back to our politicians.

Everything else but the oil spill, which should be at the top of the list.

Is our system corrupt? Do politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle continue to take bribe money from BP and other big oil interests?

If you answered yes, how long do you think it's going to take for us to seriously develop an alternative energy strategy for this nation?

Does the word forever sound about right?

While you're thinking about your venal, corrupt, scumbag politicians this election cycle, taking money under the table, hand over fist, I want you to enjoy all the new faux green commercials the oil giants are coming out with to put you back to sleep.

Lots of people standing by solar panels - always the same damned array - a couple of wind turbines. Some ass-hat in glasses while a million chemical formulas float in cartoon around his head, sweet music plays in the background. A deep baritone voice sums up: "we're facing the challenges of tomorrow here today at (insert enviro-raping corp name here).

On Finance Reform, Foreclosures and Evictions

I haven't posted in a while. And I deeply apologize for that.

What I have been doing is some research on a book I have been writing when I came across an old poem dedicated to a rack renter landlord in Ireland in the 1890 time frame.

When the family and I went to Ireland in 2007 we visited an old manor home called Portumna Castle in east Galway. Inside were some paintings of the family members that ran the estate. Finding them interesting I snapped a pic of each of the portraits, really not knowing why.

I researched them this morning, I discovered I was staring into the face of one of the worst rack renters in Irish history and who perhaps had a hand in the removal of one of my ancestors from County Galway.

I give you Hubert George de Burgh, 2nd Marques, 14th Earl of Clanricarde. There he is.

The reason he's here is simple: even as we speak people are being evicted from their homes. Different from many foreclosures, these are folks whose banks are using robo-signatures and other illegal methods to speed the illegal foreclosure process.

Where in Clanricarde's day, a land agent used a battering ram against the side of the house, for renters who couldn't make the extortionate payments of their landlords; today we have robosigned documents ousting people from their upside down mortgages just when they almost get rightside up.

I think bankers, financiers and elected officials need to tread very carefully around the boiling kettle of public distaste all of this mess has engendered within the American public. While corporate media has many of us like lemmings following the party of the tea, the people who have been and are being boosted from their homes ILLEGALLY are waking up to who is really at fault for all this - bankers and Wall Street thugs - and to the fact that much of this was done in a DELIBERATE EFFORT which is on-going TO DESTROY THE MIDDLE CLASS.

We have to combine what has happened with the outrage of the oil spill to understand THAT ALL OF THIS IS INTENTIONAL and some of the very same people claiming to be outraged at an alleged scheme for a communist take-over and being paid under the table to ship even the bad jobs to China.

This poem from the past could just as easily be a warning from our future.

By “Brigid”, reply to Hubert George de Burgh-Canning 2^nd Marques and 14^th Earl of Clanricarde

Portumna County Galway, Ireland

Circa 1890

So you say we are cunning, ungrateful

Our cabin doors kept on the latch

Show nothing but squalor within them

While money we’ve hid in the thatch

That we smile in the face of “his honor”

And blessings invoke on his track

While we mutter a curse as he leaves us

And shake the clenched fist at his back

But you don’t give a hint, my Lord Marquis

That we dared not to own those few pounds

Or show signs of comfort around us

For fear of your sharp scented hounds

For fear of your spies and informers

On the watch to report to their lords

If their serfs had coin in their pockets

Or a decent meal on the boards

And you hint not , at times not long vanished

When ye chased us to woods and the caves

Where we wailed over the corpse of our freedom

A poor stricken nation of slaves

We are cunning, aye we needed cunning

When our lives were scarce held as right

And plundered unarmed and unlettered

T’was our last weapon left for the fight

It was men such as you taught us cunning

As up these old tales we must rip

When for Limerick’s trust they repaid us

With pitch-cap and gallows and whip

When we dared not stand upright and fearless

As men should on their own native sod

Nor dared the faith of their fathers

Save in secret to worship our god

Can it be your Lordship in College

Never heard a text all should know

Coming straight from the lips of our savior

Men should only reap as they sow?

Why the words of our poor hunted teachers

That ever kept school by the hedge

Could tell that if fathers eat sour things

Their children’s teeth will be on edge

And when savage things scattered the cockle

Through our lands years early to late

Till it choked the wheat of good feeling

You must now reap a harvest of hate

Then your Lordship says “nothing would please them”

Though you take but the corn and the wine

And leave us with freehanded bounty

The husks in the trough with the swine.

Oh specimen peer of our rulers

Great the anger with which you give breath

But no doubt we are very ungrateful

For rack rents, evictions and death

For fevered ones homeless at Christmas

Cast out by the snowy ditch side

While my lord draws his ermine around him

And scoffs at their rags in his pride

Ah my lords, up to this it was your day

Our bent necks were held in your thrall

For you were soft ease and rich plenty

For us were the labor and gall

But today we feel life in our members

Good blood each vein flows apace

Tis not the clenched fist to your back now

But sturdy demand to your face

Cling not to your old rules they are broken

Old customs have rotted away

Ireland must be at length for the Irish

No more in strange lands shall you squander

What this land our labor has sown

As of old fell the horse and the rider

You are now overthrown

*Hubert George was an absentee landlord who scarcely set foot in his Irish estate, using a number of land agents to evict 243 tenant farmers, and their families, between 1890 and 1893, for as little as 5 pounds sterling owed in arrears. He was condemned by fellow members of the English Parliament for his cruelty to his tenants.

Keep on them!

Keep up the pressure on your elected officials to get to the bottom of this oil spill.

Now is not the time for complacency and forgetfulness.

If we don't keep fighting, they win. They will do this again. Our efforts are working. How else would that commission have come out so strong concerning the government's weak response.

Keep it up!

Obama's Three-Card Monty on Oil Comes to Light

This just in: the Obama White House has been completely full of shit with regard to the spill and the extent of its damage, all along the garden path they have been leading us down.
Obama gets no more apologies from me, no more excuses. His presidency is two years old. This is a colossal up-fuck, that your president is running from like a scared child who has been caught lying to everyone!
Lies. Falsehoods. Misrepresentations. Downplaying. Applying pressure on those uncovering the truth. All but telling responsible scientists to "STFU already."
This, from your, my, (quote signs here) Environmental President.
This was confirmed earlier this week in a report by a congressional commission chaired by former Florida governor and state senator Bob Graham.
A couple of months back I pointed out the absurdity of our continued use of BP as a government contractor in light of everything happening. Many of us still boycott the oil giant, but, our government seems not to give a shit as to our wishes and continues to use them in spite of our own laws. Obama, it must now be said, is well on-board with this incestuous relationship between BP and the government.
In August I wrote a post about the Bogus "Oil Budget" document put out by NOAA that said 76 percent of the oil had gone bye-bye. The video has mysterious been removed from YouTube. It was testimony of a government official from NOAA challenging his own boss's ridiculous conclusions in her white-paper.
Now the chickens come home to roost. However this in itself is a half-truth covering over a deeper lie. It's a small hit taken by the Obama administration. While on the one hand unfavorable news comes out relative to the administration's handling of the event, it still can be explained away as accidental, as reliance on the good faith of the oil company providing the information, and the ineptitude of NOAA. Again we get "oops" as a answer to all this.
I'm tired of "oops." "Ooops" is no longer a viable excuse. "Ooops" is not an option.
It's bad faith. It stinks to hell. It's corruption at the highest levels of this country. It's cover-up. It's a willful lie.
And we will never get to the bottom of it, because the republicans have shut off subpoena power.