New Media and Politics

Another day of our coverage of the BP Valdez, beginning with reports that the currents in the Gulf are now moving the oil slick in the direction of the Florida Keys. Think Progress reports, as I've said numerous times on my radio program, as this moves around Florida, the next or another critical area would be the Florida Keys and the coral reefs we have down there. Once it works its way up the East Coast and potentially crossing the Atlantic, it could be far-reaching. You'll find more at on this at Climate Progress.

All of this is unprecedented of course and a lot of what will come to pass is unpredictable, but you can be sure the consequences will not be pretty.

We've slammed the people at BP repeatedly for being heartless and gutless but Transocean proves they're not alone as they beef up their PR team. They're the only party that's been compensated to date and have actually made a profit from this tragedy.

The Obama administration will face tough questions, as well they should, but are proving to be unlike the previous administration by openly admitting to their culpability in the disaster. On Monday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said government failures "certainly" include the Obama administration, which took office in January 2009. There will be an independent commision created to figure out all that went wrong leading to millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf.

The Republicans counter-offer for holding BP to account a complete joke as they propose liability be capped at at $150 million.And when BP says they are siphoning away 20% of the oil that would otherwise end up in the Gulf, they are referring to their repeatedly discredited number of 5,000 barrels per day spewing into those waters. That is their stopgap measure is drawinng 20% of 5,000 barrels. Estimates by those more credible range from 25,000 to 80,000 barrels per day - meaning of course that BP's "fix" is more likely containing somewhere between 1/25th to 1/80th of the spew.

Liars and criminals.

Like grains of sand through the hourglass...

Science news that relates to AGW (anthropogenic climate change), Lake Tanganyika, the second oldest and the second-deepest lake in the world showing unprecedented warming ...which has affected its unique ecosystem that relies upon the natural conveyance of nutrients from the depths to jumpstart the food chain upon which the fish survive. A reminder that there's little chance this is some vagary or natural variation like others that have occurred throughout geologic time. You also might want to know that climate change was the cause of a mass extinction 50,000 years ago.

What me worry? Shell offers reassurances on drilling in Arctic Ocean.

One day soon a Wind Energy gold rush will ensue. Until then it'll move in fits and starts no doubt but one thing is clear, Europe is ahead of the US on this.

I've never understood the US's desire to impose "crippling sanctions" against Iran for their uranium enrichment program which Iran claims is for peaceful purposes. Despite claims to the contrary this has never been disproven. Iran does not seem to have the capacity to bring uranium up to weapons grade capacity which is 90% and higher. They don't even seem to be able to bring it up to a 20% grade, which is used for medical isotopes as well as fuel rods, and so yesterday they struck a deal for 3rd party enrichment with Turkey and Brazil. This however has not stopped the US from forging ahead with the 4th round of sanctions against the regime and this time they say they have both China and Russia on board.

.My real question is why do the Cold War rules of MAD (mutually assured destruction) not apply here? With one enormous caveat: the destruction would not be mutual if Iran used a nuclear weapon against the US or an ally - it would be Iran's and Iran's alone. That would make it suicidal and highly unlikely.

Attack in Afghanistan kills 6 NATO troops, 5 Americans 1 Canadian. Antiwar.com (a very reliable source) says that this attack likely signals the informal start of summer violence in Afghanistan, which is always dramatically higher than the rest of the year.

To close out for now, Rush Limbaugh is creepy and quite possibly insane, while Glenn Beck is creepier and most definitely mad.