Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY

UPDATE: As referenced by Greg, The Story of Stuff, the video and project website, which "explores the often hidden environmental and social consequences of America’s love affair with its stuff."

I'm not opposed to sustainability, but if you pine for pre-industrial times, I recommend that you read A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World.

You might also read Guns, Germs and Steel.

Also discussed, what if heavily armed black men organized against Bush?

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- No political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers.

Topics:

Local and regional: update -- FL 2010; damned if you do, damned if you don't -- Santa Rosa School District update and

Nation and international: did the spies flunk charm school?; praying for the rapture; Republi-CONs are sooooo gullible; get out of jail free for the Banksters; and oil spill fallout to date: lost compensation, should you after lying to the IRS?, did ya hear bout Big Oil's Big Daddy, Dick 'Chickenhawk' Cheney's secret energy task force, discounts for deepwater drilling, tell me -- the oil deposit now leaking would have provided how many days' worth of oil to Americans?, Obama's energy pipe dreams, is it time for N2N, RICO's to blame for "an ecological Armageddon that could literally destroy the marine and coastal environment and way of life for generation of Americans", show me the money, local delirious with opportunistic greed, is it fair?, and Escambia County want lunch and dinner with their tar balls, as well as $9.1 million, does the oil keep flowing cause we are just not angry enough or is it God's wrath for destroying his planet?, how to plug that oil well, shocking realization that bottom-line influences corporate policy, political grandstanding, and Republi-CON 'less government' hypocrisy.

(Any chance of a serious discussion regarding risk and "the difficulty of predicting disaster in complex technological systems" (read The York Times, Drilling for Certainty)? Tune-in and find out.)

But I'll discuss anything. Disclaimer: the host reserves the right to end any discussion and hang up on you.)

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events!

Praying for the Rapture

UPDATE: Alas, hope is not lost. "Rabbis for Human Rights, whose members get arrested or beaten up while protecting Palestinians, exemplifies the very best of Israel." Read The New York Times, In Israel, the Noble vs. The Ugly.

Stuff like this won't bring peace to the Middle East. Read the Washington Post, Tensions build in Palestinian neighborhood over plans to demolish 22 houses.

Why will the houses be demolished? "[T]o make room for a park that would flank a promenade of restaurants, art studios and shops." This is a clear example of the abuse of the power of eminent domain.

We'll see the Republi-con hypocrisy in full measure on this one.

P.S. For another good read on Israel's "morally repugnant" policies, read The New York Times, The Two Sides of a Barbed-Wire Fence.

Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold, on Oprah

UPDATE: "Once more putting the diss in dysfunction, Elizabeth Edwards last week promoted the paperback version of her best seller, “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities,” making her feelings of betrayal by her ex, her ex’s mistress and her ex’s sycophant perfectly clear." Read The New York Times, Kicking the Hornet’s Nest.

"Not quite Rockwell: The Edwards’s searing, sensational saga, painful to watch, continues."

Would you forgive your husband, who was running for president at the same time his mistress was "making a baby that could well be his," while you were raising young kids and battling deadly cancer? Read The New York Times, John Edwards’s Wife Speaks About His Affair and A Complicated Question, which includes the following:

"Elizabeth said when they married, the only gift she asked John for was to be faithful.

“It didn’t occur to me that at a fancy hotel in New York, where he sat with a potential donor to his antipoverty work,” Elizabeth writes in her book, “he would be targeted by a woman who would confirm that the man at the table was John Edwards and then would wait for him outside the hotel hours later when he returned from a dinner, wait with the come-on line ‘You are so hot’ and an idea that she should travel with him and make videos. And if you had asked me to wager that house we were building on whether my husband of then 28 years would have responded to a come-on line like that, I would have said no.”

She may be smart, but she doesn’t seem to know much about men."

Anyone ready to defend men? But I digress:

"Like Hillary with Monica, the feminist struck out at the girlfriend, implying that Rielle was a wacky stalker.

“We’re basically old-fashioned people,” Elizabeth told O magazine. “So this was a pretty big leap for him. Maybe it’s being so different is what was attractive.”

She’s still helping her husband hedge on Rielle’s baby, whom she refers to as “it,” telling Oprah that she has “no idea” if the baby is John’s, and adding: “It doesn’t look like my children, but I don’t have any idea.”

Asked by Oprah in a taping for Thursday’s show whether she’s still in love with her husband, she replied, “You know, that’s a complicated question.”

The really complicated question is what she hopes to gain from this book. "

I'll tell you what she hoped to gain, revenge.

Bon Appétit in the Summer Time

"The summer is young, and the backyard grill is ready for something new. Expand your cooking repertory with these ideas." Read The New York Times, 101 Fast Recipes for Grilling

How to Plug that BP Well

UPDATE III: Another from Mike, who said "[m]ost people have enough decency not to post this. Not me, though."

BP's final attempt to stop the leak....




UPDATE II: But serious, has anyone heard from Big Oil's Big Daddy, Dick 'Chickenhawk' Cheney? He must be reading the report from his secret energy task force. You know, the one that "presented a rosy picture of the offshore drilling industry."

From Mother Jones, Dick Cheney's Last Laugh:

Many of the recommendations from the task force report were adopted in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. That legislation provided $6 billion in subsidies for oil and gas development. Royalty payments for oil and gas development were waived in several regions of the US. Some companies were allowed to pay royalties with oil, rather than money—a less transparent system that was more vulnerable to abuse. The bill also provided $1.5 billion in direct payments to companies to incentivize drilling in deepwater wells, and curtailed the power of states to oversee oil and gas exploration off their coasts under the Coastal Zone Management Act.

In addition, the bill weakened environmental protections for offshore drilling, making it easier to exclude a broad range of exploration and drilling activities from analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act. This has been cited as the reason that the Deepwater Horizon site was not subjected to a thorough environmental analysis.

The task force's final report also presented a rosy picture of the offshore drilling industry. Newer oil and gas drilling methods, it said, "practically eliminate spills from offshore platforms" and "enhance worker safety, lower risk of blowouts, and provide better protection of groundwater resources." The report advocated lifting the moratorium on portions of the outer continental shelf, noting that "concerns over the potential impacts of oil spills have been a major factor behind imposition of the OCS moratoria." Bush lifted the executive moratorium in 2008, and the Democratic-controlled Congress allowed its own moratorium to expire.

UPDATE: From Mike:

BP OIL LEAKED STOPPED!

BP put a giant wedding ring over the ruptured oil pipe, and it immediately stopped putting out.

The best suggestion I've heard/seen yet:

As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap

UPDATE VIII: Spill, baby, spill!

"Right now, royalty rates for offshore leases end up promoting dangerous deep-water drilling — the deeper you drill, the less you have to pay the government in royalties. Under the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act of 1995, Congress even waived royalties on millions of barrels of oil for certain deepwater leases from 1996 to 2000. This and other royalty relief programs have deprived the Treasury of billions of dollars in revenue, while rewarding the riskiest drilling in the deepest waters. " Read The New York Times, The Good Driller Award.


UPDATE VII: Quit whining. "The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless. " Read The New York Times, Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old.

The article includes pictures of the ecological damage.

SUV driving Americans never cared about oil spills before. Where did they think the gas came from?


UPDATE VI: RICO's to blame for "an ecological Armageddon that could literally destroy the marine and coastal environment and way of life for generation of Americans." Read the Pensacola News Journal, RICO suit: BP manipulated Bush team.

To read the court documents, click here.

Sounds like the complaint is largely about the political process -- the American public voted for deregulation and they got what they voted for:

The biggest oil spill ever. The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The deadliest mine disaster in 25 years. One recall after another of toys from China, of vehicles from Toyota, of hamburgers from roach-infested processing plants. The whole Vioxx fiasco. And let's not forget the biggest climate threat since the Ice Age.

And with deregulation, there is no longer a need to export our industrial catastrophes, such as Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster.

Yet the faux populists of the Tea Party train their anger on the government while giving corporations a pass. And Obama, accused of being a socialist, has actually been a no-fault capitalist, cleaning up corporate messes without winning much in the way of new laws to prevent a recurrence.

Too many corporations have survived their misdeeds with no more than an angry hearing or two: GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Bank of America, Massey Energy. The legislative dressing-down obviously isn't sufficient deterrent. Neither is firing the CEO, because he's invariably replaced by another just like him.

Thus, the court should dismiss the complaint and remind the public, we've got the best government business interest can buy.


UPDATE V: What is the true cost of gas? Read the Washington Post, Think gas is too pricey? Think again.

Also "[a] quenchless thirst for whale oil, then petroleum, pushed man ever farther and deeper. And with great hubris, great risk." Read The New York Times, The Ahab Parallax: ‘Moby Dick’ and the Spill.


UPDATE IV: "While the gulf tragedy is the big oil story of the moment, Ecuador is still hurting from destructive drilling going back decades.” Read The New York Times, Disaster in the Amazon.

And did you know, "[t]he oil deposit now leaking slowly into the sea would have provided about five days' worth of oil to Americans." Read The New York Times, For Five Days of Oil.

Was it worth it?


UPDATE III: ""Deregulation" is wonderful until we discover what happens when regulations aren't issued or enforced. Everyone is a capitalist until a private company blunders. Then everyone starts talking like a socialist, presuming that the government can put things right because they see it as being just as big and powerful as its Tea Party critics claim it is. " Read the Washington Post, Gulf oil spill offers a lesson in capitalism vs. socialism.

Note: regulation is not socialism.

How ya likin that laissez-faire capalism now! Not everybody does. Read the Washington Post, Time for industry to end its war on regulation.


UPDATE II: "An environmental 9/11 is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Will President Obama have the courage to ask the country to get behind a new strategy on energy?" Read The New York Times, Obama and the Oil Spill.

Or will we continue to reap 'the benefits' of our oil addiction, including environmental catastrophes and terrorism.


UPDATE: There is an old proverb, author unknown: "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." Read the Washington Post, Oil well's blowout preventer had leaks, dead battery, design flaws.

Don't ya just love that Republi-con -- less government, less regulation, and more freedom -- ideology now. The banksters, mining companies, and oil companies sure do!

"[T]he Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry — although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior’s inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” — cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees’ minds." Read The New York Times, Sex & Drugs & the Spill.

After decades of antigovernment ideology, what did you expect?

Did The Spies Flunk Charm School?

UPDATE II: These two article go a long way to explaining and understanding the mindset and stupidity of nationalist in any country. Read The New York Times, ‘Illegals’ Spy Ring Famed in Lore of Russian Spying and the Washington Post, Up to their old spy tricks again.

The 'illegals' clearly enjoyed being placed in the U.S., "content to enjoy American life" and be paid to provide information readily available in the media, including the internet. If anything, they were " more like white-collar fraudsters who convinced their Russian handlers that U.S. secrets were just around the corner."


UPDATE: Here is the criminal complaint about the Russian spy ring:
Sealed Complaint: U.S. Investigates Alleged Russian Spy Ring

"On June 28, 2010, the Justice Department announced charges against 11 people accused of living for years in the United States as part of a deep-cover program by S.V.R. — the successor agency to the Soviet-era K.G.B. The criminal complaints, filed in federal court, read like a thriller."

Actually, it sounds like a sequel to Nelson DeMille's The Charm School.

China Laughs All the Way to the Bank

UPDATE II: 'While America fights China does business.' Read the Washington Post, China's quiet power grab.


UPDATE: Americans died for Chinese businesses. Read the Washington Post, Risk-tolerant China investing heavily in Iraq as U.S. companies hold back.

While most Republi-cons are obsessed by guys in caves who pose no danger to the country in the long term, China laughs as it creates a world economy that serves China's interests. Read the Washington Post, China's $2.4 trillion grip on the global economy.

Better sign your kids/grandkids up for Chinese lessons.

Who Wins a Religious War?

"Once you decide that some group is your implacable enemy, your mind gets a little warped." It's called cognitive distortion. Read The New York Times, The Myth of Modern Jihad.

BTW, only OBL and his kind win a religious war.

Class Today (Vice Thursday) at NoBullU on WEBY

UPDATE: As discussed, "[t]he oil deposit now leaking slowly into the sea would have provided about five days' worth of oil to Americans." Read The New York Times, For Five Days of Oil.

There will be another test next week.

P.S.: These links confirm the conclusion of the article: about the Macondo Prospect and oil consumption in America.

It's a host swap!

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- No political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers.

Topics:

Local and regional: VP Bite Me visits the Gulf coast; Escambia County wants BP to give them the money (around $3.1 million for May 'expenditures'); save those tar balls, close the beaches; update -- FL 2010; damned if you do, damned if you don't -- Santa Rosa School District update and


Nation and international: did the spies flunk charm school?; more Supreme Court judicial activism; not McCrystal clear; faking it!; stupid people shouldn't be president; health care lawsuit update; and oil spill fallout to date: lost compensation, should you after lying to the IRS?, that unholy ecological alliance, is it a shakedown?, Jones Act BS, understanding the true cost of gas, tell me -- the oil deposit now leaking would have provided how many days' worth of oil to Americans?, Obama's energy pipe dreams, is it time for N2N, RICO's to blame for "an ecological Armageddon that could literally destroy the marine and coastal environment and way of life for generation of Americans", show me the money, local delirious with opportunistic greed, is it fair?, and Escambia County want lunch and dinner with their tar balls, as well as $9.1 million, does the oil keep flowing cause we are just not angry enough or is it God's wrath for destroying his planet?, how to plug that oil well, shocking realization that bottom-line influences corporate policy, political grandstanding, and Republi-CON 'less government' hypocrisy.

(Any chance of a serious discussion regarding risk and "the difficulty of predicting disaster in complex technological systems" (read The York Times, Drilling for Certainty)? Tune-in and find out.)

And a cure for gonorrhea lectim

But I'll discuss anything. Disclaimer: the host reserves the right to end any discussion and hang up on you.)

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events!

Hope For Daydreamers

"Researchers have been analyzing daydreaming, and they’ve found those stray thoughts to be remarkably common — and often quite useful." Read The New York Times, Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind.

Daydreaming has also be a popular theme of literature.

The Third Depression?

There was the Long Depression, then the Great Depression, and the 2008 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics argues that we are now in the early stages of a third depression because of a failure of policy. Read The New York Times, The Third Depression.

Our Afghanistan Strategy is Not McCrystal Clear

UPDATE III: "What exactly was McChrystal fired for? A closer read of Rolling Stone's article shows bad judgment. But insubordination?" Read The New York Times, Media Decoder: McChrystal’s Quality Time With Rolling Stone: Impertinent? Check. Insubordinate? Maybe Not.


UPDATE II: For an interesting take on the changing role of the media, especially as it relates to the McCrystal story in Rolling Stone, read The New York Times, The Culture of Exposure, which concludes that "the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important. "

As my Mama always said, watch who you kvetch with.


UPDATE: "Although McChrystal is a fine soldier who rendered especially distinguished service in Iraq, there is no reason to ascribe to him either egomania or insubordination. He did, however, emphatically disqualify himself from further military service and particularly from service in Afghanistan. There the military's purely military tasks are secondary to the political and social tasks for which the military is ill-suited, and for which McChrystal is garishly so. " Read the Washington Post, McChrystal had to go.

Gen. McCrystal's impertinent comments renew attention on that other war. For more read:

Washington Post, A flawed strategy and a failed war in Afghanistan;

The New York Times, Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban;

Washington Post, U.S. indirectly paying Afghan warlords as part of security contract;

Washington Post, The wound McChrystal opened;

The New York Times, General Faces Unease Among His Own Troops, Too; and

The New York Times, What’s Second Prize?.

McCrystal is the one who wanted the 'surge' in Afganistan, so Obama should have left him in charge. Now if things look as bleak next year, Republi-cons will blame failure on the change of commanders.

Stupid People Shouldn't Be President

You've got too little brains and too much money if you are famous and pay $540 for a private late might massage in your hotel room. Read the Washington Post, National Enquirer says it decided not to pay for Gore sex story interview.

Now you know why I call' em Naive-ocrats.

Jones Act BS

So many lies, so little truth. Read The Maritime Executive, The Facts about the Jones Act and the Gulf Oil Spill and Deep-Sea News, The Jones Act and the Oil Spill…Not What You Think.

A Cure for Gonorrhea Lectim

From a friend:

This is very important!! We need to stop the spread of this disease Gonorrhea Lectim. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior involving putting your cranium up your rectum.

Many victims contracted it in 2008...but now most people, after having been infected for the past 1-2 years, are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is. It's sad because Gonorrhea Lectim is easily cured with Votemout. You take the first dose in 2010 and the second dose in 2012 and simply don't engage in such behavior again.

Please pass this important message onto all those bright folk you really care about.

Which Political Party Favors Big Business?

UPDATE II: From the Washington Post:



"Representative Joe Barton has a crush on the oil industry of a size that’s seldom been equaled outside of 'High School Musical.'" Read The New York Times, Wishing Will Make It So.

Of course, Joe Barton wasn't the only Republi-con who came to the defense of BP. Read the Washington Post, A GOP chorus of Joe Bartons on the BP oil spill.


UPDATE: Has Obama "radicalized parts of the conservative movement, giving life to conspiracy theories long buried and strains of thinking similar to those espoused by the John Birch Society and other right-wing groups in the 1950s and '60s" in the short run? And if so, will extremism be his salvation. in the long run? Read the Washington Post, How Obama changed the right.

Ask Joe Barton, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Read the Washington Post, Apparently blood isn't thicker than oil and The New York Times, Republican Backpedals From Apology to BP.

His apology to BP said it all.

Hence forth it will be know as The Apology that Saved Obama:

Class Today (Vice Thursday) at NoBullU on WEBY

It's a host swap!

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- No political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers.

Topics:

Local and regional: PHS graduation fiasco, was it God's retribution; Rick's Rants (let high school students fix the leak (he is delirious); Escambia County wants BP to give them the money (around $3.1 million for May 'expenditures'); save those tar balls, close the beaches; update -- FL 2010; update -- damned if you do, damned if you don't; and


Nation and international: faking it!; health care lawsuit update; and oil spill fallout to date: that unholy ecological alliance, is it a shakedown?, understanding the true cost of gas, tell me -- the oil deposit now leaking would have provided how many days' worth of oil to Americans?, Obama's energy pipe dreams, is it time for N2N, RICO's to blame for "an ecological Armageddon that could literally destroy the marine and coastal environment and way of life for generation of Americans", show me the money, local delirious with opportunistic greed, is it fair?, and Escambia County want lunch and dinner with their tar balls, as well as $9.1 million, does the oil keep flowing cause we are just not angry enough or is it God's wrath for destroying his planet?, how to plug that oil well, shocking realization that bottom-line influences corporate policy, political grandstanding, and Republi-CON 'less government' hypocrisy.

(Any chance of a serious discussion regarding risk and "the difficulty of predicting disaster in complex technological systems" (read The York Times, Drilling for Certainty)? Tune-in and find out.)

But I'll discuss anything. Disclaimer: the host reserves the right to end any discussion and hang up on you.)

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events!

State Republi-Con Fiscal Conservative Hypocrisy

UPDATE III: For a little Florida Republi-Con fiscal conservative bankruptcy, read the Washington Post, US Senate candidate Rubio faces Fla. foreclosure.


UPDATE II: Soon it may be those wild and criminal Republi-cons. (Is criminal Republi-cons a tautology?) Read The Hill, Federal authorities launch criminal probe into Florida GOP. and the Washington Post, Feds launch probes of Florida GOP, Rubio's credit card use.

The report says:

"Rubio billed the party for more than $100,000 during the two years he served as House speaker, according to credit card statements obtained by the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald. The charges included repairs to the family minivan, grocery bills, plane tickets for his wife and purchases from retailers ranging from a wine store near his home to Apple's online store. Rubio also charged the party for dozens of meals during the annual lawmaking session in Tallahassee, even though he received taxpayer subsidies for his meals.

Rubio said the billings all related to party business — the minivan, for example, was damaged by a valet at a political function — and that he repaid the party for about $16,000 in personal expenses."

Crist's decision to run as an Independent might be a wise move.


UPDATE: Those wild and crazy Florida Republi-cons.

The "St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald, offer the latest behind-the-scenes look at extravagant and freewheeling spending by the party touting fiscal restraint."

On one trip to England, the party spent $40,000 at a London hotel, and nearly $20,000 in plane tickets for indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom and family.

Over 2½ years, a 25-year-old junior Sansom staffer, who was given a party American Express card, spent nearly $1.3 million. Thousands were spent "on jewelry, sporting goods and in one case $15,000 for what's listed as a monthlong stay at a posh Miami Beach hotel." The Florida Republi-cons spent "$650,000 in lodging, $60,000 in airfare — mostly commercial airlines — and $66,000 for charter planes."

Read the Northwest Florida Daily News, Sansom staffer rang up $1.3 million on credit card.

First Ray Sansom, a NW Florida Republi-con who was this term's Florida House Speaker until he was forced out and who finally resigned office on the eve of an ethics hearing. (He still faces criminal charges in connection with his budget dealings).

Now a "top Republican selected Tuesday as the future speaker of the Florida House can't get his own financial house in order." Read the St. Petersburg Times, His finances are a mess, but he's set to lead state House.

And most of our local elected officials oppose consolidating government, which would save money but, of course, result in fewer elected offices.

Let's not forget our very own local Republi-con fiscal conservative hypocrite.

Now you know why they are Republi-Cons!

Sub Today at NoBullU on WEBY

UPDATE: As Mike discussed, Brent Burns is mad as HELL about the Gulf Oil Disaster. Watch his song which expresses his contempt for BP and their greed.

Usually on Thursdays you can listen to me, the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

But I can't make it today. I'll be back next week to deprogram you. Until then, have a laugh.