This bird is dying for our sins

AP Photographer Charlie Riedel
at The Boston Globe

Our desire for an endless, cheap supply of oil leads directly here.

Our abandonment of the Red Car in Los Angeles to build freeways for the benefit of Standard Oil leads to this moment.

Our refusal to design cities where effective public transportation meets most needs and you have neighborhoods where you can obtain most of what you need in a reasonable radius... leads to this disaster.

Our lack of political will to shift to renewable/sustainable energy... leads here.

Our not forcing Congress to raise the CAFE standards on mpg in vehicles over decades... leads here.

Our indifference and unawareness as a philosophy of government that believes government is bad and, when in power, proves it, has left us uninvolved as lobbyists wrote laws, regulations were defanged, and greed and corruption could proceed without interference until it all... leads here.

Our acquiescence while Dick Cheney convened an energy policy team the very membership list of which was secret... leads here.

Our not going on a general strike and shutting this nation down when Bush led us to war in Iraq with lies - so that four western companies could control almost all the oil in Iraq (oh yes, we divvied it up nicely, we did)... leads here.

We are complicit at every turn.

Which is not to say I will let BP, Transocean, and Halliburton off the hook for proceeding in haste when there were multiple warning signals and safeguards were ignored. Some BP honcho[s] ordered this affair to proceed and on his/their head[s] must lie eleven human deaths and all this devastation.

But we do not get off the hook either.

--the BB

If the oil spill started in Albuquerque

Graphics can be helpful.

You can map it over your home by going here.

h/t to Raven at Facebook

--the BB

95,000 barrels a day

Photo by Ted Jackson, The Times-Picayune

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser and La. Gov. Bobby Jindal tour through the Roseau Grasses that mark the coastline of Southeast Louisiana at Pass a Loutre at the mouth of the Mississippi River where oil has washed ashore, Wednesday, May 19, 2010.

"Everything that that blanket of oil is covering today will die," he said. "All of the bugs that the fish come in to eat, all of the critters in the marsh will die. And that marsh will die. There's no way to clean it up."

h/t to FishOutofWater at Daily Kos

WASHINGTON — The latest video footage of the leaking Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico show that oil is escaping at the rate of 95,000 barrels — 4 million gallons — a day, nearly 20 times greater than the 5,000 barrel a day estimate BP and government scientists have been citing for nearly three weeks, an engineering professor told a congressional hearing Wednesday.
--Renee Schoof at McClatchy Newspapers

h/t to Jed Lewison at Daily Kos


As we ponder the disaster in our part of the world, let us remember others.

Cyclone nears India's southeast coast
AFP - ‎10 minutes ago‎
HYDERABAD, India - A severe cyclone packing winds of 110 kilometres an hour closed in on India's southeast coast Thursday as tens of thousands of residents evacuated their homes fearing major storm damage.

Господи помилуй
Κυριε ελεησον
Seigneur, aies pitié.

-the BB

Perspective

I am vacating my apartment tomorrow as I leave for work because they don't hold them for folks who go on vacation. So I have been doing laundry, running the dishwasher, packing, and watching the tail end of the Democratic National Convention. It is past midnight, but I have done what I need to do tonight. Tomorrow I slog my way to the car with two bags, a briefcase, the girls, one bag of supplies and weather radio to go with my coworkers this weekend and one bag of non-perishable food and stuff to stay with a coworker until my return. Way too much lugging. I will have to make two trips from the carpark to the office but that's OK.

It is OK because I am well and healthy (for a sedentary old codger) and ready - after some last-minute tasks in Albuquerque - to go on a road trip with my very best friend to see people and places we love.

Also well and healthy - but you know they have to be shaken - are two dear friends.

And that's where the perspective comes in.

You see, a tree fell on Jane R's house. Even small storms can do surprising and unexpected damage. So let us remember Jane and +Maya Pavlova, who seem to be doing fine - thanks be to Godde - and yet their world just changed and their secure home breached.

Love to you two ladies!

Meanwhile, Gustav has not been kind where he has already visited.

So we hold each other in our hearts.
--the BB

Dissembler in chief-updated

Some enterprising freeway blogger

Photo via Dependable Renegade

Or perhaps it's "disassembler in chief," given how Bush has dismantled so much that had been built up over the decades to foster the common good and preserve our democracy.

Juan Cole addresses once more the bushwa that King George IV routinely shovels. He prefaces his response to the SOTU speech thus:

As usual, most of what he said in the State of the Union address was transparent lies. He praised private groups for doing charity work in Louisiana because he hasn't followed through on his own promises after Katrina. He did that phony thing of reporting the average tax "increase" if his "tax cuts" were allowed to expire. If I'm in the room with someone who made a billion dollars last year and Bush doesn't cut my taxes at all but he cuts those of the billionaire such that he saves 5% of his income, then the two of us in the room have an average tax cut of $25 million apiece. But in the real world, I get bupkus and the billionaire gets $50 million. That shell game sums up the Republican "tax cut" scam they keep running on the American middle class, which always falls for it.

Read it all here.

Center for American Progress has an article by Daniel J. Weiss looking at Bush's words on energy issues vs. reality. They also compare Bush on troop withdrawals and the sadder reality.

There are many other sites contrasting W's words with his actual record or with reality outside Bush's bubble. I especially recommend a visit to Think Progress. Just scroll down for refutation after refutation.

Let us be grateful we will not have to hear him stand before Congress and the nation and peddle bullshit again. Alas, he has many months left in which to inflict damage and disaster on the nation and the world. It will take decades to undo the damage he has already done. We should not deceive ourselves about the immensity of that task. Yet we must take it up if we love our nation and if we would seek the life of the world.

UPDATE:

Bush's false assessment of Afghanistan gets reassessed at National Security Network.
Washington, D.C.-A fact check from the National Security Network on President Bush's State of the Union comments regarding Afghanistan show the country is still in a state of disrepair. Bush claimed that:

A nation that was once a safe haven for al Qaida is now a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school, new roads and hospitals are being built, and people are looking to the future with new hope.

On each point, Bush is absolutely wrong.

Click the link for details.
h/t to Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars

See updates on post above for other analyses of Bush's "inaccuracies."

--the BB