Quark Soup

Check out this major blunder, written by Misty Edgecomb of the Bangor Daily News:

Instead, the Bush administration is promoting voluntary energy efficiency and pollution reduction programs - which EPA officials estimate will reduce emissions by 18 percent over a decade without harming the economy.

Of course, it's not emissions that will decrease 18 percent over the next decade but -- emissions as a percentage of GDP. Emissions will continue to increase.

What's so bad about this is that it's precisely this type of confusion which the Administration was hoping people would make when they shifted their emphasis from emissions to emissions intensity. Reporter Misty Edgecomb fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Don't miss these stories  Kicking Ass

Don't miss some important stories coming out of the DNC today:

• Governor Dean announced a huge investment in state parties, beginning with a half million dollars to four states as a pilot program that will go national.
• Dean called on Dennis Hastert to stop protecting the scandal-ridden Tom DeLay and to restore the power of the Ethics Committee to conduct meaningful investigations.
• Americans are growing more and more wary of Republicans, according to three different new polls. President Bush's approval ratings are dropping, and Americans strongly disapprove of the recent behavior of GOP leaders.

emissions intensity -- emissions as a percentage of GDP. Emissions will continue to increase.

What's so bad about this is that it's precisely this type of confusion which the Administration was hoping people would make when they shifted their emphasis from emissions to emissions intensity. Reporter Misty Edgecomb fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Killing Dubya's pro-pollution "Clear Skies" bill.
via Liberal Oasis: Another reminder of what Dems can accomplish when they stand together.

Hopefully, the party will do all it can to spike the ball on this first legislative victory in Dubya’s second term, and highlight which party is the defender of the public well-being, and which is the shill for irresponsible corporations.

The more we find out, the worse it gets:

According to a scientific analysis of footage from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, National Public Radio is claiming the growing ecological disaster is actually ten times worse than previously estimated, saying the rushing torrent of oil pouring into the ocean is equivalent to one Exxon-Valdez spill every four days.

That's more than 70,000 barrels a day -- when the U.S. Coast Guard had placed the figure at a seemingly modest 5,000 barrels a day.

Until this point in human history, the Exxon-Valdez disaster was just one of the worst oil spills ever, with nearly 11 million gallons of crude lost to the murky depths.

The Deepwater Horizon well has been jetting oil unabated for just short of one month at time of this writing. Already, the pollution exceeds a scale which most individual humans can fully grasp.

While government agencies continue to examine what led to the oil rig explosion that killed 11 people, environmental legal experts are already predicting that there will be criminal charges ahead for at least one of the companies involved in the oil spill.

A House energy panel looking into what might have caused the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico found yesterday that a vital piece of equipment intended to prevent such disasters had significant problems.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on Wednesday outlined issues with the blowout preventer, a tool that BP claimed was 'fail safe,' that may have prevented it from engaging. The blowout preventer, reports the Washington Post, "Had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a "useless" test version of a key component and a cutting tool that wasn't strong enough to shear through steel joints in the well pipe and stop the flow of oil."

It was also revealed during the hearing that BP knew "hours" ahead of the deadly explosion that there were problems with the oil well.

(h/t Southern Studies.)

Jaysus:

The surface area of a catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill quickly tripled in size amid growing fears among experts that the slick could become vastly more devastating than it seemed just two days ago.

Frustrated fishermen eager to help contain the spill from a ruptured underwater well had to keep their boats idle Saturday as another day of rough seas kept crews away from the slick.

President Barack Obama planned a Sunday trip to the Gulf Coast to see the damage.

As Rachel Maddow has explored, this is going to have an impact on coastal life reminiscent of Katrina -- all bad. Indeed, with no end of the pollution in sight, and the spill having reached such massive size already, it's conceivable that not only will the entire Gulf of Mexico, and all its coastal areas, be rendered lifeless and unusable for generations, but that the entire Eastern Seaboard will be awash with oil as well.

It's already looking like this will be one of the largest manmade environmental catastrophes in history. And that's saying something.

Of course, the right-wingers are trying to find some way to blame President Obama for this mess.

And while it's true that Obama's announcement last month favoring some new offshore projects is now looking woefully misbegotten, let's not forget where this disaster came from: the world of Halliburton and Dick Cheney and his secret energy talks.

Indeed, this oil spill is a clear product of Republican "small government" philosophy: the belief that you could and should "free the market" to drill anywhere at any time, and with as little regulatory oversight, including both environmental and safety standards. That's how BP talked the government into letting it drill at such great depths with as little surety that a blowout would not occur as it did, nor with any reckoning of the potential consequences of a blowout.

Consequences that are just about to hit our shores. Quite literally.

The Chesapeake Bay area is one of the most beautiful places in the country, and the inability of officials to control upstream pollution is a sad tale:

Government administrators in charge of an almost $6 billion cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay tried to conceal for years that their effort was failing -- even issuing reports overstating their progress -- to preserve the flow of federal and state money to the project, former officials say.

The cleanup, which had its 25th anniversary this month, seems doomed to miss its second official deadline for achieving major reductions in pollution by 2010.

The goal of rescuing North America's largest estuary was formally entrusted in 1983 to a group of federal, state and local authorities under the loose guidance of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The task: controlling runoff from 4.8 million acres of farmland, installing upgrades at more than 400 sewage plants and managing the catch of more than 11,000 licensed watermen.

But the agencies charged with the cleanup have never mustered enough legal muscle or political will to overcome opposition from the agricultural and fishing industries and other interests.

Instead of strengthening their tactics, though, they tried to make the cleanup effort look less hopeless than it was.

In the typical Orwellian fashion that would cause him to name a rollback on pollution standards the "Clean Skies" Initiative and a failing educational system that reduces funding to the schools that need it the most "No Child Left Behind," George Bush has nominated Hans Von Spakovsky to oversee fair elections at the FEC.

Donna Brazile, former campaign manager to Al Gore, says about Von Spakovsky in Roll Call (subs. req.d):

"Who is Hans von Spakovsky?" It's a fair question, especially if you're not familiar with the new barriers that have been imposed on our electoral system, making it harder for certain Americans to register and vote. Von Spakovsky has been referred to by leaders in the civil rights community as one of the "chief architects" behind efforts to suppress and dilute the voting rights of minorities in this country. If Senators care about the right of all citizens to participate in our electoral process, they ought to attend the hearing and ask this nominee to answer some of the allegations.

Continue reading »

William K. Wolfrum: War On Drugs means pot farmers are flying high...

The Satirical Political Report: The ultimate War on Christmas--Santa sent to Guantanamo!

Balloon Juice: Bush is giving the finger to all but the most delusional cultists and last-gasp shills

Facing South: The Environmental Pollution Agency is easing the reporting requirements for toxic polluters

Whiskey Bar: Total War

NPR Check: NPR owes us all an apology for its deadly lack of journalism leading up to the current horrors in Iraq. But instead of an apologizing, NPR seems determined to push on with more lousy reporting 

ON "THIS Week" yesterday, George Will gave us all a science lesson on the topic of global warming. Katrina and Fareed disagree.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (vid David Edwards)

or, Ten of the Most Damaging Winger Books of All Time

the opinion mill

Good morning, class. Yesterday we talked about the list of dangerous books compiled by the little orcs at Human Events Online, which asked you to believe that Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" and Rachel Carson's early warning about the dangers of runaway pollution deserved to be ranked with "Mein Kampf" and Chairman Mao's little red book. (It also expected you to believe that Phyllis Schlafly devotes evenings to getting her brain around Comte's "The Course of Positive Philosophy," but that's another diatribe.)

As promised, here is The Opinion Mill's own bibliography of blight, compiled with an eye to acknowledging those books that have done the most damage. Some, in fact, are still warping impressionable young minds. Where is the outrage? What will we tell the children? Read on...

via Mykeru

I don't even have to comment on this video clip, in Windows Media Video format courtesy of the Randi Rhodes show, of Pat Robertson critiquing his own performance and receiving helpful advice during a break on the Larry King show. It explains so much about how the religious right, the right wing, and their bullshit, prepackaged media enablers works, where questions exist only as the prelude to an unrelated monologue and "balance" means acceptable bias.

this video clip

Of course, folks like Pat are just doing God's work, none of this is politically motivated, oh no sir. Except that you can get bounced from your wingnut fundy church for not supporting George W. Bush, the Iraq war, the anti-gay agenda and, of course, Gunship Jesus.

Incidentally, you will notice that the same wingnuts overly concerned about "balance" (read: elimination of views opposite theirs) aren't exactly lining up to reestablish the Fairness Doctrine.

canary in the u.s. financial coal mine

skippy the bush kangaroo

now go ahead and try to tell me this administration isn't in bed with big bidness...

the dupont co. and the environmental protection agency have tentatively agreed to a multimillion dollar settlement of charges that the company failed to report health and pollution risks from a chemical used to make teflon and other nonstick and stain-resistant products.

although both sides declined to release details friday, dupont set aside $15 million to cover penalty costs in the case, the company disclosed.

dupont's potential liability had been estimated at more than $300 million when the complaint first surfaced. epa officials ruled out a push for the maximum penalty last year. - delawareonlineGunship Jesus.
Incidentally, you will notice that the same wingnuts overly concerned about "balance" (read: elimination of views opposite theirs) aren't exactly lining up to reestablish the Fairness Doctrine.