He's on a boat

So you're BP. You've recently ridden a non-oil slicked wave of recent good news. You created a $20 billion fund to help take care of people affected by the spill, making you seem barely human instead of completely reptilian. You've finally moved into a position where ships are capturing almost all of the oil spilling out of the undersea well. And as a bonus you removed the deeply unlikable Tony Hayward to a lesser role.

So after this recent wave of decent PR, what do you do? Yacht party? I think I heard yacht party.

Spokeswoman Sheila Williams said Hayward took a break from overseeing BP efforts to stem the undersea gusher in Gulf of Mexico so he could watch his boat "Bob" participate in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race. The 52-foot yacht is made by the Annapolis, Maryland-based boatbuilder Farr Yacht Design.

The annual one-day race is one of the world's largest, attracting more than 1,700 boats and 16,000 sailors as world-renown yachtsmen compete with wealthy amateurs in the 50-nautical mile course around the island.
...
"He's spending a few hours with his family at a weekend. I'm sure that everyone would understand that," Wine said Saturday. "He will be back to deal with the response. It doesn't detract from that at all."

Wine described the race as "one of the biggest sailing events in the world and he's well known to have a keen interest in it."

In his defense, this was his small yacht. The cheap one, the $700,000 one. Now I know Hayward's been pilloried up and down the Gulf Coast for this little boat race trip, but I'm not going to pile on. I mean what better way to research the oil spill than to spend some serious time bobbing and floating on the ocean, like all that oil BP spilled is. Now he understands what all the oil is up to and why. Can we really complain about that?

Plus with the strippers of the Mimosa Dancing Girls strip club suing him, the sea is the only place he can find a moment of relief. With that, the methane dead zones that may kill vast swaths of undersea life, and the fact that sea floor collapses at the leak site may prevent BP from ever capping the well, doesn't the man enjoy a little boat time? Plus *chuckling* the yacht is named "Bob"! Who names a yacht "Bob"? Oh Tony, you are humorous with your rich guy bullshit. Enjoy the boating, I think it's all you'll have left pretty soon.

Your national outrage of the day

Koman Coulibaly, a referee from Mali, costs the US a victory against Slovenia. MALI!!!! MUST YOU CONTINUE TO BE THE BANE OF OUR SPORTING EXISTENCE?!

We at the TB Sporting Bureau would wish ills upon Mali, but we're not sure they could discern this new ill from all previous and current ills. We say invade. We heard that Mali recently sought to procure significant amounts of uranium from... um... Africa? Yeah... somewhere else in Africa. Send in the tanks, Obama.

But aside from the RAMPANT UNLAWFUL SOCCER CONSPIRACY to deny America three points, there was this:

Pfft. Way to play like a man Slovenian goalkeeper Samir Handanovic. More like... Samir... No... Hands... anovic. Samir... Jazz Hands... anovic. Whatever. Eat it Slovenia, your longtime political ally Mali won't be around to bail you out next time.... not that we'll ever play you again in this World Cup.

We wuz robbed.

Headline of the day

Pope must not be subjected to vuvuzelas

Although himself an avid football fan, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, is worried that the forthcoming Papal visit could be marred by vuvuzelas.

"I have had enough of them already," says the Archbishop of Westminster. "I hope they stay in South Africa."
...
He is concerned that some people have got into the habit of using the plastic horns during the World Cup in South Africa and might not be able to resist using them when Pope Benedict XVI addresses crowds in Britain.

England, Scotland, Wales... I think you have been charged with a holy mission: subject the Pope to vuvuzelas.

I think I can be certain when I state this: God wants you to do it. No... God NEEDS you to do it.

Imagine.....

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sanct..."

"BRRRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRrrrrrRRRRR"

Do it.

Chart of the day

A chart via Keith Hennessey which shows US energy consumption and the methods by which we derive that energy. It's part of a larger article about how the oil spill is an opportunity for us to have a smarter, cleaner energy policy.

Modern America looking at a problem and acting decisively to deal with it in a progressive and sensible manner that sets us up for the future? I think the phrase is "Over the Senate's dead body."

click to embiggen

Not getting it

Rand Paul isn't in the news a lot lately. Mainly because he decided to go hide in a ditch, only pop his head out for softball interviews on Fox, and has relied on the moribund and dying Kentucky newspaper business to help repeat all of that "The Civil Rights Act is for homos" thing he was caught up in.

But because Rand is a man who never wants to pass up a good "government and media are oppressing the average rich white man" jag, he decided that the perfect opportunity to insert himself back in the national debate was the whole Joe Barton apologizes to BP situation. Naturally.

Emerging from relative silence since his rocky general election roll-out, Paul stressed that BP "should be responsible for cleaning up" the mess it created. He did not explicitly address the role that government had to play in compelling the oil giant to do that.

"Lets not convict them before we give them a chance to figure out where the problem came from," Paul said.

Asked specifically if Barton should resign, Paul confessed to having no opinion, save to offer his sympathies once more.

"I'm not really in a position to know about what they should do to him personally. I do know what it is like to be piled on," he said.

No, no Randy my dear boy, you both know what it's like to be justifiably piled on. Everyone going "Can you believe this asshole doesn't like the Civil Rights Act?" was completely justified. Everyone going "Can you believe that asshole apologized personally to BP and BP's CEO during a government hearing on the massive catastrophe they caused?" was totally justified. You weren't being persecuted, you weren't being picked on, the nation and the media just looked at two idiots going virulently against common sense and decency and decided "Hey, let's give these assholes an easy brickbat beating. They deserve it."

As to your other point: we really need to wait for the verdict to come in on this whole BP situation? Really? What do you think an investigation is going to find? An elite strike team of Greenpeace ninja hippies scubaed down to the well and placed some C4 charges and granola at the base of the thing? Some group of rogue whales decided to declare war on the land people and their floating sea fortresses? Ghost possession? Alien conspiracy? Government squelching of the freedoms creating a psychic shockwave that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon? Nah, kid, nah. I think we can close the book on this investigation.

So Rand, next time you feel the need to stand up for the rights of idiots to not get criticized for moronic things they say or mean things the President says about a company comprised of shitbags, pause, take a breath, and step outside the deluded little Ayn Rand/libertarian bubble you live in. It'll save you a lot of piling on.

Positive news? From the Gulf? Head...spinning...

OK, so the news out of the Gulf has been an unending dirge of depression and awfulness stewed in a sauce made of human tears. Drunk dolphins? Oh, the humanity.

But lest we be accused of only focusing on the negatives and only pillorying BP, let us announce that there is finally some semblance of good news: the entire BP Board of Directors and executive group has been gored to death by stray rhinos.

Wait, no. I mean we're finally getting towards that point where the oil spewing out underground is being fully collected. Sure that means there's still a shit ton of oil in the Gulf, but must you rain on everything? We're inching closer to a zero sum game. Given the way things have gone, that's a victory of almost Venezuelan election proportions.

BP captured 18,600 barrels of oil from its leaking Gulf of Mexico well yesterday, a 78 percent increase from the previous day and the most since the spill began in April.

BP increased the capture rate in the first 12 hours today, gathering a total of 12,500 barrels of oil, the company said on its website.

BP, based in London, plans to increase the recovery rate to 28,000 barrels a day next week and to 53,000 barrels a day by June 30, said U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander. Allen spoke today during a conference call with reporters.

OK sure, the cloud to that silver lining is that estimates are that 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day is leaking into the ocean and that might be a low estimate... but hey, that's still within a respectable distance of 100%. Think of it as a closest to the pin contest in golf. No one expects you to get a hole-in-one, so just put it close and hope Kevin Costner gets you the rest of the way home.

Hello NoKo

As I type this, the USA is down 2-0 at the half to Slovenia... SLOVENIA OF ALL COUNTRIES! The people from their country who emigrated here chose to live in Cleveland... isn't that enough to explain why they need to be beaten? But as I am in a World Cup mood, I wanted to put up this little story about North Korea's Cup team.

When last we left the Dealmaker and his plucky squad of future defectors, they were having China dress up its citizens as NK supporters because no one in North Korea could either afford to go to South Africa or, more importantly, be allowed by the government to go to South Africa. But his absence hasn't kept Kim Jong-Il from keeping in contact with the head coach of the NK side... through magic.

It's been suggested that North Korea leader Kim Jong-Il gave the coach advice on how to reach the World Cup. Kim Jong-Su, the general secretary of the North Korean FA, has said the 'Dear Leader' gave "in-depth guidance" on how to develop the game in the country and the coach himself has claimed he received regular tactical advice during matches, apparently using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye. Jong-Il is said to have developed the technology himself.

That's right, Kim-chee designed and intended the world's first invisible phone. It's one thing to build a quality cellular device, but to invent invisibility? That's why he's the Dear Leader. I heard he's working intently on the invisible vuvuzela.

Man, I know it's a communist dictatorship and all, but isn't it nice to live in a place where our leaders haven't had to go to extreme lengths to pretend that they're something they're not in order to nakedly grasp for popularity?


Oh... right.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.17

For those of you wondering how exactly it was that famed Baroque painter Caravaggio died or where he was buried are in luck. Italian archaeologists are 85% certain that he was buried in a Tuscany crypt... and that he died of sunstroke while in a weakened condition from the syphilis he had. Odd, that's exactly how Sean is going to die. And he thought he didn't have anything in common with the great painters.

If any of our readers have enjoyed a Gulf oyster in the last few months, I hope you enjoyed the everliving shit out of it because you might not have another one ever. In a thoroughly depressing article, Mary Tutwiler catalogues the state of the oyster industry, oyster farmers, and the oysters. Shockingly the picture isn't pretty. On the other hand, if you hate oysters, this all worked out nicely for you. Congratulations.

Over the past few decades in American society, knowing how to do something like clean a pelican was left to pelican experts, zookeepers, and the perverse coterie of freaks on Pelicanfetish.com. But now with a large percentage of them covered in oil, it's something that we all need to know. Thankfully Buzzfeed has provided us with a step by step guide to cleaning up an oily pelican; whether it's from the Gulf or just a pet pelican that got into that barrel of oil you keep out back. On the other hand this might be a setback to BP's plan to soak up all that valuable oil with all those worthless pelicans.

The one constant so far in this year's World Cup, besides people getting outraged at plastic horns, has been shockingly bad goalie gaffes. Who is at fault? The goalies? The team defense? The head coaches who put them in? No, clearly the party at fault is the girlfriends of said goalies. The UK has already taken to blaming Robert Green's ex-girlfriend for his bungled effort against the Colonies, owing to their pre-Cup breakup. Spain decided to take that extra misogynistic step forward, blaming Goaltender Iker Casillas' sideline reporter girlfriend for not only distracting him during their 1-0 loss to Switzerland, but distracting the entire team. See what happens when you let women near sports? If there's a bear attack during a game, we'll have to completely ban women from girling up serious sporting events.

Have a dog? Might you like that dog to have everlasting life? Then I give you IMMORTAL DOG!!!!!

Elected Texas idiot Joe Barton finally had to come out and apologize for his apology to BP when even the leaders of his caucus took notice on how unpopular what he said was. But he's not done apologizing, so he set up the site Joe Barton Would Like To Apologize To in order to list the various aggrieved entities like BP who deserve our sympathy.

Broken News: World Cup plagued by giant insect attacks

Foreground: Diego Forlan runs for his life after his two goals in Uruguay's 3-0 defeat of South Africa attracts the attention of a group of wasps. Background: Giant fucking wasp.

CAPE TOWN-With the World Cup under way, the country has been simultaneously enthralled by the game played at its highest level and perplexed by an annoying series of buzzing noises emanating from the stands. While networks and media outlets have tried to play this off as noise coming from South African spectators, the truth is much more gruesome.

“The giant hornets… THEY RETURN!!!!,” came the screams from the masses outside of Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, pointing to the sky. “Man the horns and attempt to scare them away!”

Yes, over the past week and a half the nation of South Africa has been under attack from giant hornets, wasps, and bees the sizes of small cars.

“We sit in the stands and try to enjoy the world’s greatest sporting event and then… the hornets came,” said one harrowed spectator in the moments after a life or death battle against the eusocial wasps during Germany’s 4-0 victory against Australia. “We tried to fight them off, but they took so many back to their nests. I saw men run through with stingers the size of claymores…. And the game was a blowout as well.”

As of today there have been nearly 20 such instances of insect attacks, with as many as three to four a day expected until the end of group stage play on the 26th. While it is unsure why the hornets, wasps, and bees are attacking, they have been content to wage their battles in the upper decks of stadiums outside of traditional camera coverage but well within the range of microphones.

Only one of the attacks has happened on the lower decks, when a bumblebee the size of a Volkswagen swooped down and carried off Argentinean striker Carlos Tevez during an offensive counter-attack during their 1-0 victory against Nigeria. He is still currently missing and feared dead.

In a World Cup that has been plagued by complaints of almost laughably lax security, experts and spectators have wondered why the nation doesn’t have better defenses against large flying insects.

South African Minister for Sport Joseph Atinge was quick to defend his nation.

“Look, we may have spent most of our budget for this event of roads and stadium construction,” he said from a crouched position, swinging his arms wildly above his head. “So we forgot one or two things. We handed out large plastic horns so that our citizens might either beat the bugs away or attempt to mimic their sounds in the hopes that they will stumble onto a buzzing sounds that will repel the stinging beasts. What else do you want?”

“This is reason one that South Africa should have never been awarded the World Cup,” observed international ESPN soccer analyst Tommy Smith, himself barely recovered from having a stinger ran through his shoulder.

“We wouldn’t give the Cup to Japan for years because of fears of giant, irradiated moths and lizards. So why would be ignore the clear myths and tales surrounding these giant bees? So Africa could have its first World Cup? I’m sure that is of little concession to the thousands of spectators who are now being made into honey.”

Smith is of course referring to the stories of Perdebye, the hornet shaped Goddess of Temperance. Legend has it that she swore to the tribes of the Southern tip of Africa that she would return to cast her judgment on them in times of great frivolity and merriment.

Still, the media has been reluctant to fully tell the full story of what is happening across the country. Instead they have attempted to place blame on the spectators armed with vuvuzelas as a last line of defense and chalking up the noise as a quaint but annoying custom of the nation.

“Ah, this just goes to the general ignorance Americans have towards football,” observed Gary Linaker, a TV presenter for the BBC and former England forward.

“Maybe they’re just confused and think the hornets are part of the festivities or have something to do with why the players are allowed to touch the ball with their hands. I can tell you that getting a stinger in the jugular as a bloody great wasp carries off that lovely couple for Switzerland you were talking to is neither part of football or a South African cultural tradition. Well, not yet anyway.”

Linaker looked like he was about to continue speaking, but large ominous shadows from above and a loud humming sound on the horizon caused those in the surrounding area to seek shelter and affix crudely made body armor to themselves.

In the meantime, the South African Football Association and FIFA have advised that people keep blowing on their vuvuzelas in an attempt to finally crack the sonic code that will send the insects back to their slumber. Meanwhile spokesmen for the players have announced they will start erratically firing errant shots into the upper decks during lulls in the game in an attempt to drive some of the larger bees and wasps away. Spain has already taken the early initiative in that area.

“The blood, the buzzing, the airborne abductions, the fear, the passing…,” said Minister Atinge. “Ahh, the beautiful game.”

Suddenly it all makes sense now

Via Accidental Penis

The conspiracy revealed

Now that we're two months into this oil spill thing, I think we can all be clear of one thing: it was a conspiracy. Shady forces colluding with even shadier forces to dump bazillions of barrels of oil into the gulf in order to further their goals. Yet no one wants to mention this for fear they'll be labeled an insane douchebag or as ripping off Rush Limbaugh's material. Thankfully we have North Carolina GOP congressional candidate and teabagger Bill Randall to make the case for us. Oh yeah, you knew it would be a teabagger.

"Personally, and this is purely speculative on my part and not based on any fact, but personally I feel there is a possibility that there was some sort of collusion. I don’t know how or why, but in that situation, if you have someone from a company violating a safety process and the government signing off on it, excuse me, maybe they wanted it to leak."

“But then it got beyond what was anticipated, and we had an explosion and loss of life. And, oh man, then we have panic. Is there a cover up going on? I’m not saying there necessarily is. But I think there’s enough facts on the table for people that (they) really need to do some investigative research and find out what went on with that and get a subpoena of records and everything else.”

He doesn't want to suggest there was a conspiracy or say that there's evidence of it, he just wants to suggest there was a conspiracy and say that there's evidence of it.

Well now that he's lifted the veil on this nefarious collusion, we here at These Bastards would like to offer up this suggestion of the way it all went down. We're not saying this is exactly how it went down, but this is just what we've transcribed form the tapes we have of the meeting.

Barack Obama: Listen, I've talked it over with the lizard people, the reploids, the Trilateral Commission, the Ruling Commission of the Bilderburg Group, and the Seven Jew Bankers in the bunker under Zurich... they agree: it's time to spill a shitload of oil into the ocean.

Tony Hayward: Agreed. While this would normally seem like a horrible idea that would both cripple our company financially, make us extremely unpopular, and hamper the future of offshore drilling as a whole, we thing this is a great step forward.

Obama: As do I, even though at first glance engineering a massive environmental catastrophe miles underground and starting the largest oil spill in world history would seem counterproductive to my goals and make me seem weak, this is clearly the best step forward. Because we all know what will happen if we spill an inconcievable amount of crude into the Gulf...

Both together: Profit! And power!

(both laugh maniacally)

Hayward: I'll call Halliburton, Transocean, the merpeople, and Bigfoot and we'll get this started.

Obama: I'll start counting the money and consolidating power.

Hayward: Wait, but what if some freedom loving patriot, caught up in the spirit of 1776, decides to expose this conspiracy during the election season?

Obama: Hah! It'll never happen! Our plan is too brilliant!

(both laugh uproariously)

Obama: Now let's talk about that slush fund...

This all makes so much sense. It was all so obvious. Thank God we have Bill Randall to light the way.

Tragedy

As Michele Bachmann explained to us yesterday, we are in the midst of a crisis. A large corporation is being held to account for the things it has done. The scandal! The shame of it all. But lest we dismiss her fevered rantings as some outlier in the GOP, the rest of her cohorts took to the streets to drum up support for BP and the horribly onerous conditions that they've been put in.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas ('natch) took time out of a public hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to apologize directly to the executives at BP. How sweet of the man.

BARTON:I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown
...
I apologize, I do not want to live in a country where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again in my words amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.

Yes, how dare they be forced to set aside funds to pay for cleanup and to help offset the possible irreparable harm they've caused to the marine economy of the Gulf Coast. What an outrage.

Not able to leave Bachmann and Barton out on their offshore shilling rig, Alabama Governor Haley Barbour took time out of his busy schedule of taking oil money and denying that oil spills were a problem or that the oil was even hitting his shores to dance for oil nickels.

BARBOUR:I do worry that this idea of making them make a huge escrow fund is going to make it less likely that they’ll pay for everything. They need their capital to drill wells. They need their capital to produce income.

That's right, BP setting aside $20 billion to pay for damages will somehow make it less likely that they'll pay for the damage. Actually, I'm fairly sure that it means they'll be paying $20 billion at a minimum. But no worries, the greater risk is that by setting aside this money to help everyone whose lives they've ruined, that this will make it harder for them to open more rigs and make more money. Christ, I'm tearing up here. poor BP. Why haven't we thought about their ability to make a profit curing this crisis? We're monsters!

Oh, they are making rather large profits even given the costs of the cleanup? Well... they could be making more.

In fact Barbour, Barton, and Bachmann are all just reading off a common script that has arisen in the right wing media over the past few days: namely that this is unconscionable that BP is being held responsible, it is unconscionable that they're being demonized and blamed for actions they caused, and that somehow our Muslim President Hussein Obama X is going to use this independent fund as a "slush fund" to... something something socialism ooga booga liberals. Somehow paying out claims becomes bribery and that's if the black President doesn't steal the money and stash it away with Fannie Mae and ACORN to... I don't know... build a time machine and go back and make white people the slaves, abolish freedom, and rape Ben Franklin.

Why defend a widely loathed corporate entity in the most tin earned manner possible? Because after decades of conservatives fighting for the rights of corporations to do whatever whenever with no repercussions, BP has done the unforgivable: admitted responsibility for a mistake and made some attempt to make it right. We went through an entire economic collapse without the responsible parties even so much as saying "Whoops". If this continues, other corporations might have to issues apologies, *gasp* pay to fix problems they created, and the unfettered right of business to be allowed to do anything to make a buck might be challenged. So thus the attempt at restitution and the government has to be made to seem worse than BP the giant Gulf of Oil they've created.

Funny how it always seems to work out like that.

8th time is the charm

The Daily Show on how we're all totally going to be weaned off of our foreign dependency on oil... this time for certain.

#bpcares

BP has a message for you, the small chattering masses of people that seem like ants from the big fucking office at the top of the big fucking skyscraper: BP cares about you. You personally. You specifically.

BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg: "I care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case at BP. We care about the small people."

Now stop fucking causing their stock to plummet YOU UTTER FUCKING PEASANT INGRATES! Sorry, that just slipped out.

Thankfully he used the term "small people" to let all of us know exactly who we were and didn't confuse us with "Big people' like him. Of course they care about the small people; those are the people that drive their company cars, fly their private planes, nanny their children, work their rigs, clean up the oil spill (DON'T TALK TO THEM), and have so expertly made their way of life dependent on oil. And that Gary Coleman guy was hilarious. Small people: good.

Here's a hint, BP: if a Swedish billionaire with a hyphenated name has to come out after two months of the worst ecological disaster in world history and reassure the teeming masses of people that hate him that their faceless mega-conglomerate cares about "the small people".... then it's all become pretty clear that you don't care about the small people or people in general. And we prefer to be called "the unwashed masses."

Chart of the day

Via Talking Points Memo, comes this look at the "evolving" estimates of the Gulf oil spill. Ahh, remember those naive days when we thought only 6,000 barrels were spilling out and were thinking this might only be a minor disaster? How quaint that all sounds.

April 23: 200 barrels per day. April 24: 1000 barrels per day. April 28: 5000 barrels per day. May 27: 12,000-19,000 barrels per day. June 10: 20,000-40,000 barrels per day. June 15: 35,000-60,000 barrels per day.

Picture of the day

Via the Big Picture blog, the oil spill, it's effect on animals, and the cleanup.

"Can you believe this shit, Merv?" "No, Phil, I can't. I'm a fucking pelican."

"NO, YOU LOOK INTO THE CAMERA AND SAY 'IT'S A LIVING'!"

"So fresh and so clean clean! Right?" "I don't get the reference, Phil. Again: I'm a fucking pelican."

Nice to see you back from vacation, Michele

Last night, during the President's insubstantial, maddeningly vague, afraid to take a serious position on energy legislation, wet fart of a speech he did offer up one concrete idea: BP sets aside billions to a third party who can quickly and competently deal with paying out claims to those disaffected people of the Gulf who inexplicably still fucking love offshore drilling.

To most people this sounded like a smart idea. BP isn't a claims handling service, so let some entity that is properly equipped to do so handle that task and let BP get back to what it does best: blocking media access to oil spill areas and not fixing an undersea geyser of oil. But to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, this is a clear sign of one thing and one thing only: the icy black hand of Stalin.

"The president just called for creating a fund that would be administered by outsiders, which would be more of a redistribution-of-wealth fund," said Bachmann. "And now it appears like we'll be looking at one more gateway for more government control, more money to government.
...
"But if I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there -- 'We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced.' And they shouldn't be. They shouldn't have to be fleeced and make chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest.

That's right, a third party entity paying out legitimate claims to the thousands upon thousands of people BP fucked over is just a Trojan horse for teh socialisms and teh government control! Tea baggers unite! And as an added bonus she offers a warning to BP not to let them get pushed around by big bad government and all those assholes who think they're entitled not to starve just because BP took away their means of making a living.

Nicely done Michele, way to look out for the little guy. It's heartening to know that even in the midst of a serious environmental and corporate malfeasance crisis, you've bravely hewed to socialist conspiracy theories and the idea that BP is in danger of being the victim here. Those lazy peasants and their complaints about the oil killing all the shrimp. Don't they know BP has dividends to pay out? Stay classy.

Craig Johnson is my new favorite NY State Senator

Bill Simmons, when not serving as the irritating inspiration for KSK's Tommy from Quinzee character, was taking to the Twittertubes to ask his audience "What would be the worst celebrity sex tape of all time?"

After coming up with his own suggestion of William Hung and Helen Thomas and declaring it UNTAWPPABLE... NO ONE DENIES THIS!, NY State Sen. Craig Johnson took to his Twitter feed to offer up his own suggestion.

@sportsguy33 Susan Boyle and Abe Vigoda.

Blood curdling. Nicely played, Senator. Your years on the Inflicting Mental Anguish on the Populace Sub-Committee have served you well.

God is to blame

Indignant Bible thumper and fierce advocate for "the family" and "family values" Mark Souder (R-IN) was caught a few weeks back carrying on affairs with someone who was not his wife or the Lord. He resigned. It was a tremendous shock to everyone. I mean a moralizing blowhard being hoisted on his own petard and being revealed as a gross hypocrite? Hardly ever happens. Especially not to right wing religious fundamentalists. Actually, it was kind of shocking that he wasn't a closeted gay guy like about 90% of the others.

Not content to slink off in shame and not embarrass himself in public any further, Souder decided he needed to let everyone have another go around and mocking him.

"I prayed multiple times a day, sang hymns with emotion and tears, felt each time that it wouldn't happen again, read the Bible every morning. . . . So how in the world did I have a 'torrid' (which is an accurate word) many-year affair?"

Is it because you seemingly expected an invisible bearded man in the sky to get up off his golden throne, teleport down to earth, and zip your pants up for you? That you sang songs about Hos-an-na in the high-est instead of focusing on not fucking another person or dealing with emotional or marital problems you were having? That you never realized that prayer is easily defeated by bare breasts?

No, clearly God is to blame here. He failed to stop you after you clearly said His magic words and sang His magic songs. Maybe He did hear your cries, it's just that in the immortal words of Frank Zappa: Jesus Thinks You're A Jerk. Maybe you were confusing Yahweh by yelling "Oh God! Oh God!" during the various affairs.

Anyway, He clearly let you down, Mark. Expect a handwritten apology letter to appear in a torilla in Juarez sometime over the summer.

Your government at work

It's been a long held contention of this blog that the US Senate is where all things good and intelligent go to be made stupid and awful, slowly strangled in an abandoned alley by a cackling horde of willfully negligent septuagenarian bastards. And that's our opinion on a positive day. This can largely be seen in nearly any and all debate on matters of national importance, but is almost always most clearly seen during debates and bills dealing with the attempted economic recovery.

I mean unemployment is only at 10% and it's looking like we're going to enter an entire lost decade of growth.... so who needs to treat any of this with any amount of seriousness? The Senate GOP can keep trying to pull the country down on top of itself with procedural stalling and Senate Democrats can actually be the first group of people in history to die of a thousand self-inflicted paper cuts.

Oh sure, the House has it's moments of horrid futility and stupidity explosions -like, say, when they're attempting to cut growth by $50 billion and cost this country 300,000 jobs in a myopic, ineffective, back-patting, meaningless snit about the deficit- but the Senate really takes the cake when combining large scale inaction and ineffectiveness with small scale fuck yous so petty that they should be delivered by 13 year old girls in text message form. Take the jobs bill the Senate is currently half-assing:

Senate Democrats are exploring whether to eliminate an extra $25 a week in unemployment benefits, part of the economic stimulus legislation passed in 2009, as a way to cut costs and attract Republican votes for a stalled package of tax breaks, tax increases on the affluent and safety-net spending.

Top officials said that change would save billions of dollars over the next six months and could lead to approval of an overall extension of jobless pay by making the legislative package easier to swallow for lawmakers worried about deficit spending.

Now they're just chintzing a couple of bucks out of people so that they can better pass a collection of half-measures that fails to fully address the actual problems this country is experiencing. And they actually want you to believe that knocking $25 bucks out of unemployment benefits is going to make people opposed to actions that might help an actual person, flip head over heels about the prospects of extending the entire program for another couple of months. But hey, I'm sure the deficit hawks and the Blue Dogs will feel good about the minuscule impact they had on the deficit when we're in year ten of a recession. I'm sure taking $25 bucks from the unemployed in the worst economic crisis since the Depression will get those people back on their feet and the economy back in shape in no time.

At least the Roll Down the Window of Your Bentley and Spit At Poor People In the Street Act is stalled in committee.

Picture of the day

Via the Bad Astronomy blog and NASA's HubbleSite, comes a look at a mysterious black spot on Jupiter that has healed itself up. The oddness? That to create that spot there would have had to have been AN EXPLOSION THE SIZE OF SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSANDS NUCLEAR BOMBS!!!! KA-BOOM!!! NO one is really sure how it all happened though. Did an asteroid or comet hit it that we didn't see? Are the Jupitarians going through some sort of massive civil war? Did we launch a couple hundred thousand nukes at Jupiter just for shits and giggles?

OK, it was probably an asteroid, but if we didn't see it coming beforehand and aren't totally sure what happened... what's that bode for humanity, Earth, and any possible asteroid that comes hurtling at us? BRUCE WILLIS CAN'T SAVE US IN REAL LIFE! But there we are: space based fiery sky death could even be more sudden and unexpected than we previously thought. Sweet dreams! Just kidding, we'll definitely have killed ourselves off before any space rock gets a chance. Sweet dreams!

Click to embiggen.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.15

Star Wars political cartoons... is that something you might be interested in?

How little have our elected betters learned from our horrific financial apocalypse? Almost nothing. The latest example is the Herculean struggle Al Franken is currently going through to get the Senate to maybe consider the fact that the financial sector getting to choose the agency which rates its products creates rather a large conflict of interest. On the side of randomizing the selection process: people who are smart. On the side of keeping things as is and trusting our financial betters won't game a shoddy system: a probable filibuster proof majority of Senators. Remember to put on your surprised faces when our next financial collapse comes.

Comically oil executives took to the Hill today to explain all the ways in which they were not like BP in their offshore drilling practices. The main differences? Uhhh.... they aren't named BP and none of them has a drilling rig named Deepwater Horizon. One candid moment was when the executives basically admitted they had no way to handle massive offshore spills. Oh really? I think we've noticed that lo these past two months.

People have started to call bullshit and nakedly manipulative bullshit on the timing and PR strategy behind the whole "Afghanistan has trillions in resources! We'll all be rich... RICH!!" story from yesterday. C'mon. How are we supposed to feel good about this war or as if we're getting something out of it if they don't trump up old shit the Soviets were trumping up in 1985... when they we in the midst of an unproductive slog in Afghanistan? Just keep telling yourself "Just a few more years of fighting... then we'll all be rich."

Were you wondering who was cheering for North Korea today during their 2-1 defeat at the hands of Brazil? It certainly wasn't any North Koreans. No, the Chinese government flew in supporters specifically for the purpose of cheering for Kim Jong-Il's future waterslide park invitees/torture victims (depending on how the tournament goes). Commies stick together. Maybe China can fly in some soccer supporters to the US after our team invariably is eliminated before the semis and we lose interest in the sport for another 4 years.

Media Matters has gone to the trouble of picking out choice excerpts from Glenn Beck's new fiction thriller/Randian teabagging circle jerk... The Overton Window. Amongst the gems; "rule number one is, don't tease the panther", various meandering/awful sections of prose, bizarre asides about the flat tax and Bill Clinton, examples where Glenn doesn't seem to remember things his own characters have done, and a Star Wars reference so hackneyed it would make Kevin Smith cringe. Essentially it's a less funny version of his "serious" non-fiction books. Anyway, it doesn't compare to the liberal writing brilliance of Who Blog In Darkness.

In closing, your daily "Oh shit, we're fucked" oil flow estimate is 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day. Up from the 20,000 to 40,000 from last week. It doesn't really matter; at this point it's like having third degree burns over 100% of your body and complaining about the sniffles.

Chart of the day

Via liberal rag the New York Times, comes this interactive graphic about the oil spill. Included are time lapse representations of the size, volume, and area of the oil spill, landfall areas and boom setups, diagrams of how efforts to stop the leak (HAH!) would go, and all kinds of wildlife that won't exist anymore.

It's quite well put together.

Video of the day

With the recent.... let's call it arglebargle and fooferaw surrounding Israel over that whole "shooting humanitarians, strangling media access, and then blaming the victims" thing, they're not all that popular. Well, more unpopular than usual. So of course one's mind wanders to the most obvious problem arising from these newly (not really) ratcheted up tensions: what of Israel's tourism industry.

So of course Israel could use some good PR to boost the flagging tourist trade that might not want to be caught up in that war we all know is coming or come sailing in on a cruise ship and get their head kicked in by a special forces SWAT team repelling from helicopters. And since Israel's only PR strategy seems to be throat punching anyone who makes eye contact with them, the responsibility to drive international travelers to the Holy Land falls to Peru. Yes Peru.

In the prologue the Delfín, who likes to begin his socially-conscious music videos with similar scenes, is shown relaxing in his living room, watching the news. In this case, the faces on the screen express their doubts about Israel as a tourist destination. “There could be bombs in the street,” one woman says. “It scares me.” The Delfín springs to his feet in outrage at this distortion: “This cannot be!” he cries, and the Andean disco/huayno beat kicks in. “Israel, Israel,” the singers chant in the chorus,

How pretty Israel is!
Israel, Israel
In your lands one day I’ll dance.

Behold:


I swear to God, despite all the footage of scuba divers, llamas, windmills, creepy old women in catsuits, and the countryside of Peru, that video is about Israel.

Anyway, makes me want to visit Jerusalem... or drop peyote in Lima. Either or.

Good news eneryone

So what's the first thing you want to hear about a new BP strategy to collect all that oil that's everywhere there used to be water? Is it this?

BP's latest plan to capture the oil gushing from the runaway Deepwater Horizon well poses significant safety risks for "several hundred people" working aboard the ships that will process the corralled crude, the oil giant has told the Coast Guard.

Hmmm. Continue.

With so many vessels working in a relatively small area, Suttles wrote that there's a risk of a "major surface accident." Video of the site Sunday showed more than a dozen vessels on the scene; a jet of burning natural gas perhaps 200 feet long shot from one.

Ahh. Massive oil, oil fumes, ships, people, and fire collected in a small area. And, given BP's normal level of safety, combined with the surely cut rate level of safety that will be required of a hastily thrown together plan, as well as the fact that there's no properly tested or designed equipment to try this new plan, or that there's all the junk and garbage BP threw down the pipe floating around that could clog up this equipment, there's a larger than usual risk of explosion, death, and the Gulf turning into a oil and dead animal soaked inferno.

Eh. Is that actually going to make this situation even marginally worse? No. Onward with the dangerous plan. I hope everything doesn't explode. Though, given the planet's luck throughout this whole incident I'm expecting that this will somehow set the atmosphere on fire or accelerate global warming to the point where the ice caps are melted fully by August.