I am Karan from Olympia, WA.
Almost every other name used here is a pseodonym pseudonim pseudonymn alias.
The rest of it is true - mostly - and all of it is my own.
Don't even think about taking any of it, unless of course, you want to pay me.
Random Wisdom: I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. - Thomas Jefferson
The counter says that 2846338 have been flummelized, but I personally think it's all a big lie.
Because there is nothing more I can add, read this from Joel Connelly:
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Big Oil’s new gusher—in U.S. Senate
By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
“...As oil gushes out of the Deepwater Horizon, and undersea plumes spread across the Gulf of Mexico, allies of Big Oil plan a crude maneuver Thursday on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska and Jim Imhofe, R-Oklahoma, will ask the Senate to approve a resolution that prohibits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from developing rules that regulate emissions from large polluters such as refineries and power plants.
The resolution would gut EPA’s authority and rescind recently adopted rules that require increased fuel efficiency on cars and light trucks manufactured over model years 2012 to 2016.
“The resolution would ignore and override scientific findings and allow big oil companies, big refineries and others to continue to pollute without any oversight or consequence,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote Monday.
“It would also gut EPA’s authority in the clean cars program, a program that would help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and cut down on air pollution,” Jackson added in HuffingtonPost.
Big Oil is boss of senators from oil and automobile states. It’s been that way since Sen. Robert Kerr, D-Oklahoma, ruled the Senate Finance Committee and enhanced finances of the Kerr McGhee Corp. a half-century ago.
Murkowski and Imhofe already have blocked legislation that would boost oil companies’ liability when a spill kills thousands of birds and wrecks the livelihoods of thousands of people.
(The current liability cap is $75 million. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and others are seeking to raise it to $10 billion.)
Murkowski has called on such Democratic collaborators as Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, to give a veneer of bipartisanship to Big Oil’s gambit to block reductions in greenhouse gas pollution.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll, earlier this week, found that more than 70 percent of Americans believe the Gulf of Mexico spill qualifies as a full-fledged disaster.
Big Oil strumpets think otherwise.
“This is not an environmental disaster,” Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, told Alaska Public Radio. “Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries and will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilled from ships, and no natural catastrophe.”
Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Mississippi, a longtime Washington, D.C., lobbyist, excused deepwater drilling with the words:
“In the last 50 years, with- the four states that allow off shore drilling on the Gulf, more than 30,000 wells have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the first time in that 30,000 we have ever had anything happen."”
As he spoke, a second Gulf rig was found to be leaking. Of course, Barbour conveniently ignores the massive oil spill from a Mexican drilling rig just a few years ago.”
Big Oil has not only fouled the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and Prince William Sound, and leaked thousands of gallons of crude (courtesy of corroded BP pipes) onto the tundra of the North Slope.
It has also fouled our politics, thwarting efforts to break this country of its addiction to oil—the fixes delivered from places like Iran and Venezuela—and cut back on emissions that are warming the planet.
President Barck Obama is trying to show Americans that he’s damned mad, resorting to salty language on the Today Show and declaring he would have fired BP boss Tony Hayward if Hayward worked for him.
He ought to define a new national strategy using famous words of John F. Kennedy: Don’t get mad, get even.
Twist arms to block the Murkowski amendment. Get behind Murray and other legislators trying to raise Big Oil’s liability limit. And speak truth to the power of Big Oil:
It’s time—NOW—to move out from the dark muck and corruption of the carbon economy, and into the sunlight of a new energy future.
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Contact your senators now and tell them to block this travesty of self-interest!!
I watched Barack Obama deliver his get going speech this morning and I thought geeze that guy is presidential. I’m trying very hard not to just adore the guy. I’m wizened enough to know that, particularly in politics, you rarely get what you see put before you...and I’m trying to sit back and just watch him prove to me that I was right about him (or not in my less optimistic moments).
But then...but then the truth of it is that I’m really just like an 8 year old on Christmas Eve. I know that Santa ain’t real, but a small part of my wee brain thinks, what if it is true...what if Santa comes down the chimney and I see him standing there with gifts galore? I know that Barack Obama is a politician and a very savvy player but what if on Inauguration Day the sky parts and the sun shines and he undoes all the damage the cowboy has brought upon us and the rest of the world. What if?
In keeping with this moment of hopeful optimism, enjoy this song by Michael Franti & Spearhead:
Obama Song mp3.
(Thanks to Judy).
Finally - the drought is over!
Thanks to John at Thudfactor - a very cool widget courtesy of MSNBC:
And in WAshington:
Today our local (?) paper, The Olympian, finally published candidate endorsements.
(Good luck following that link...it’s much like following a maze to discover that Obama
gets the editorial nod). The endorsements led to me to ponder other newspaper’s
endorsements, not only for the 2008 general election, but the 2004.
You just know I googled it don’t you?
Here’s what I found from InfoChimps:
- be sure to click on the image so you can see the cool interactiveness at InfoChimps.
This map (also available in a bar graph), reveals the endorsement histories of most of the nation’s
leading newspapers. It is very interesting, especially when comparing those who went with the
cowboy in 2004 and those who back Obama this year.
The most schizo papers in the country seem to be those who went Kerry in 2004 and then McCain in 2008
- Corpus Christi Caller Times from Corpus Christi, TX (which went W in 2004 and democrat in 1996);
the Daily Press in Newport News, VA; the Jackson Sun in Jackson, TN (who ironically went with Carter
both in 1992 and 1996); the Cape Coral Daily Breeze in Cape Coral, FL and the Bradenton Herald in
Bradenton, FL. Minds boggle.
I guess there must have been some editorial board changes over the years. Hooray for evolution!
Just thought you’d be interested.
