Fact-esque

Our Magic Media

In the Old Days before the WaPo decided to become an upscale Washington Times and Rupert Murdoch single-handedly LCD'd the MSM, there were major oil spills, too. They caused lots of trouble and cost lots of money to clean up and many homes and businesses were ruined because the press didn't use its powers correctly.

The Last Independence Day: Welcome to the Corporate States of America

For those of you keeping track, it was last year. This year the truth has become all too painfully obvious. Joel Pett, political cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, sums it up neatly.

We are locked down, locked into a system which, wherever we look, gives rights and money to the rich, the powerful, and the corporate - often the same group - and at the same time takes them away from us. And it doesn't seem to matter to anyone that this only makes things worse and worse. Believing that giving the rich control of the society will lead to economic prosperity for everyone is now dogma for the religion of $$$, also known as Molochianism. Like the Catholic notion of the Virgin Birth, there's no evidence whatever that it was or even could be true and plenty of evidence that it isn't but we've decided to take it on faith anyway. Because the rich told us to.

Under the (Gulf) Radar: Controlling the Spin & Growing the Problem

In the midst of the hand-wringing, the confusion, the anger, and the destruction of BeePee's "we brought it on ourselves with greed and stupidity but you're going to pay for it, not us" environmental catastrophe, Jim Hightower points out that a couple of minor, though collateral, issues have been, I guess you could say, overlooked.

BP's $20B Escrow Acct: the Katrina Gambit & GOP's Apology to BP (Updated)

BP's oil spill, after some actual measurements have been made as opposed to weeks of reports of BP execs' "gut feeling" that it was only 3-5000 bbls/day, is now known to be more like 80.000 bbls/day and may reach 120K bbls/day before it's diverted to a new pipe.

(NOTE: There is now no talk whatever about "stopping" the spill - capping or otherwise plugging the well. All anybody talks about is "capturing" as much of the oil as they can. BP's early lame efforts to cap are now being used as proof that the well can't be plugged and the company's only choice is to grab as much of it as possible.

And sell it.)

BP, after some arm-twisting by an embarrassed Obama, agreed to "voluntarily" create an escrow account of $20B to cover the cost of damage by the spill.

Obama and the Gulf

I have to thank Open Salon's Jacob Freeze for a timely reminder that Obama's lack of reaction to the disastrous Gulf oil spill and his willingness to accept BP's less-than-stellar efforts to cap the well are nothing new. This is from a 2008 campaign speech that most people ignored:

In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic.

Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself - by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.

Jacob made just a few little changes and the difference is less startling than revelatory.

Is BP Dicking Around Because They're Trying to Save the Well?

The latest of BP's ideas to stop the flow of oil, the so-called "top kill", has failed and the next one is a last-ditch cap containment system that virtually nobody is sure will work.

BP has abandoned its most recent "top kill" effort to contain its runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, a company official announced Saturday evening.

"After three full days, we have been unable to overcome the flow," said the company's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles at a news conference in Robert, La. ". . . This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, or the fact that we haven't succeeded so far."

"So engineers and experts have explored a variety of alternatives to stop the leak now," President Barack Obama said in a statement Saturday evening. "They had hoped that the top kill approach attempted this week would halt the flow of oil and gas currently escaping from the seafloor. But while we initially received optimistic reports about the procedure, it is now clear that it has not worked."

I was looking at that "variety of alternatives" and something struck me about it: in none of them is the integrity of the well threatened.

Media Quiz: Which Mainstream News Org Is In the Tank to BP?

Sometimes the dfference between a real news organization and an increasingly pretend news organization is so clear you don't even have to read the stories themselves to know which one is deep in the corporate tank. Here are two headlines that illustrate the point nicely, both of them lead stories of the hour for their respective papers.

Jobless Claims Rise As GOP Blocks Jobs Bill; Oil Spill Continues While BP Fiddles

I mean, what can you say at this point? How does one explain such suicidal behavior? Unemployment claims "unexpectedly" rise by more than the 3 previous months combined -

The number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week by the largest amount in three months. The surge is evidence of how volatile the job market remains, even as the economy grows.

Applications for unemployment benefits rose to 471,000 last week, up by 25,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the first increase in five weeks and the biggest jump since a gain of 40,000 in February.

- and Republicans react by promising to kill the jobs bill?

"Is there a moratorium on off shore drilling or not?"

I'd like to be able to work up some enthusiasm for President Obama, I really would, but every time I turn around he seems to be supporting yet another bad Bush policy, often - as in this case - in direct opposition to his own statements. Even recent statements. And the statements of Admin officials. Remember this from just a couple of weeks ago after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded?

Barack Obama...vow[ed] that his administration would launch a "relentless response effort" to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf.

Just yesterday Interior sec Ken Salazar announced that he "was temporarily halting offshore drilling" on Obama's orders.

Yeah. Sure.

The New GOP Has a Lot of Ideas, It's Just That They're All Bad

There's a meme going around the left side of the blogosphere that has spread so far it sometimes even makes the corporate-conservative MSM, and that is that the GOP concentrates on kill-all obstructionism because it's completely barren intellectually and doesn't have any ideas to offer in place of the ones the Dems are pushing.

It's an attractive meme but it's totally wrong. The GOoPers have plenty of ideas. The only problem with selling them is that they're hopelessly bad ideas.