Finally, some good news

After three months, billions of dollars spent on PR campaigns (with a little on oil cleanup as well), unprecedented media blackouts, and a couple of charred whales, BP has finally gotten around to capping that gushing plume of black death that was turning, whoops... TURNED, the Gulf into an open oil pit. Commence mild celebrations that things from this point forward can no longer get much worse.

BP said on Friday the early test results on its recently capped undersea well were heartening and there were no signs of fresh oil leaks, as the stricken well in the Gulf of Mexico held tight overnight and into the morning.

Kent Wells, a senior vice president at BP, told reporters on a conference call that the pressure inside the well had built up steadily, as engineers had hoped it would, and that engineers would continue to perform different analyses and scour video feeds from cameras to look for any underground leaks.
...
The oil stopped flowing from the well around 2:25 p.m. Thursday when the last of several valves was closed on a cap that the company installed at the top of the well last week, Mr. Wells said. Earlier in the week, Mr. Wells said that the longer the test continued, the better, because it would indicate that the pressure inside the well was holding and that the well bore was intact. On Friday morning, the live video feeds from nearly a mile undersea showed no burbling geyser of oil and gas — only cloudy blue waters and white specks floating across the screen.

Well done. What's the old saying? If you give a Brit 90 days and billions of dollars, he'll eventually be able to do something that would have seemed like the obvious solution months ago? I might be paraphrasing.

Though really, at this point, I wouldn't put it past BP to have rigged up a dummy site underwater and a fake feed showing no oil flowing. Then while everyone celebrates, they cancel their P.O. box, pack everything up, and move their offices five miles down the road. By the time we realize we've been had and that they faked us out yet again, they're gone and we don't know where to find BP or how to get in contact with them. You see, we'd never think to look five miles down the road.

So things are looking up for the oil soaked cuddly wuddly animals of the Gulf. Oh, and all those human creatures, what with their shattered lives, ruined homes, and crippled economy. Hey, we can all start giggling when people say "tar balls" again! It's not such a dire and serious situation anymore! TAR BALLS! Tee-hee-hee.

Anyone want to rain on this parade? President Sunshine?

In Washington, President Obama hailed the development but cautioned against concluding that the corner had been turned, noting that it was still possible for there to be complications that “could be even more catastrophic” than the original leak.

Christ, can't we get 15 minutes into a celebration without President Bring-down bringing us all down? This is literally the only thing that will get done in this country from now until the election, then after the election where Republicans win enough to keep filibustering everything or win outright and Democrats start filibustering everything, and on until the 2012 elections when we elect Sarah Palin and the Mayans hit the self-destruct button.

Give us this small victory, Barry. There's no more oil coming out. Plus, in 10,000 years all that oil will finally be cleaned up. Well, 10,000 years given a few massive technological leaps in our oil gathering and cleaning up technology. See, I'm feeling optimistic again.

You wouldn't like Barry when he's angry

Much of the anger directed at President Obama over this whole massive oil catastrophe has been over his perceived lack of tangible, screaming, shaking his fist at the sky anger. Because apparently they expected Obama's calm, measured... almost comatose behavior in the face of nearly any obstacle or event would somehow now change. But that's what we, as a country, have decided to get mad at the President over. You know, instead of that thing where he continued the policy of dangerous deference and hiring industry cronies to look after the industry they were meant to me regulating.

But now you may be getting your wish: competent regulation of the oil industry MAD OBAMA! Yes, the man has practically shown a tangible emotion. And that emotion is rage! Sure it's deeply buried under what almost seems like a medicated calm, but it's there. Obama is pissed.

"I was down there a month ago before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf," Obama told NBC's Matt Lauer. "I was meeting with fishermen in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be."I talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers -- so I know whose ass to kick," the president said.

After that he dramatically put his sunglasses on, took the lit cigarette from his mouth, said something about the oil being as black as BP CEO Tony Hayward's heart, flicked the cigarette into the pool of oil that Hayward was standing in, and then laughed as the flames engulfed his tortured screams. Then as the President walked away slowly he cocked his shotgun and said he was coming for the CEO's of Transocean and Halliburton.

Oh no, he wasn't done yet. Barry then talked about how he would have fired Hayward after he made all those idiotic statements about "wanting his life back" and how the oil spill was small... when compared to the entirety of the water contained in the world's oceans. Obama then knocked BP's corner cutting safety measures and how he hasn't talked to Hayward because he's not interested in the CEO's cheap words... he's interested in action.

So there we are, the President is maaaaaaaaaad. It only took several weeks, but now he's using curse words on the TV. Soooooo... I guess everything is fixed now? No? But the news said he needed to get mad. Maybe he has to say "fuck" to Katie Couric, slug a Saudi sheik in the jaw, and go desecrate the grave of Edwin Drake. Then we'll be on the right track.

Energy is no longer an issue. As you were.

MIT Chemistry Professor Dan Nocera believes that, thanks to a new process that employs the sun to split the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water, personalized solar energy will soon be ubiquitous.

Dan Nocera: Personalized Energy from PopTech on Vimeo.

Broken News: Katrina Never Happened

NEW ORLEANS—For many citizens in this once hurricane-ravaged city, the events of the past couple of days remain simply unbelievable. Virtually overnight, all levees have been competently rebuilt, the lower 9th ward and surrounding areas restored to pristine condition, millions of residents back in undamaged homes, and local businesses up and running at full capacity.

“I don’t want to jinx it,” a giddy Mayor Ray Nagin announced to the assembled press who had gathered at city hall when they all realized what was occurring. “But I think that the Saints winning the Super Bowl caused a sort of temporal rift. HURRICANE KATRINA NEVER HAPPENED!”

“Just like all the media and sports press have essentially been claiming. WHO DAT?!” the mayor jubilantly exclaimed.

In a comprehensive list released to the media, Nagin detailed all the policies, programs, relief and reconstruction efforts that were going to be canceled immediately because of the magical circumstances stemming from this sporting victory.

These include such programs as efforts to rebuild and restore the lower 9th and the 80% of building in Orleans parish that sustained severe water damage, attempts to rebuild a fortify the levee system, efforts to encourage growth after nearly half the city population left, efforts to revamp and rejuvenate the education, cultural, law enforcement, and local governance systems, as well as addressing widespread poverty, health, employment and other urban issues, or any other efforts to address the weak tax base, business community, and economy that are all now completely fixed.

In addition, David Simon announced the cancellation of his upcoming New Orleans HBO series Treme saying “I guess there no longer exists an overarching tableau of decay and rebirth that I can use as a backdrop to critique the fading American empire and its self-destructive institutions.”

Added a clearly dejected Simon, "I guess we'll always have Cleveland."

While nearly everyone is pleased to see New Orleans magically overcome the greatest natural disaster in American history through otherworldly means in conjunction with the outcome of a sporting championship, most are just confused as to how this occurred.

While certain sporting events have come to be seen as triggers for important historical events, most notably the 1935 Detroit victory in the World Series ushering in the New Deal and the 1968 formation on the Cincinnati Bengals being retroactively blamed for the My Lai Massacre, there has yet to have been a sporting victory or loss that has seemingly traveled back through time to change past events.

“I don’t claim to understand it, I’m just glad it happened,” a victorious Mayor Nagin yelled from a parade float led by a jazz brass ensemble playing “When the Saints Go Marching In”.

On the other hand some in the media seemingly did foresee such a chain of events, peppering their coverage of the Saints with references to how their good season was part of the complete rebirth of New Orleans and that an arbitrary victory in a football game could possibly signal that the city was back and A-OK.

“Yeah, when I first heard all of that I was a little incredulous,” observed Saints QB and Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees. “I mean I do a ton of charity work around this city and I failed to see just how us winning one game would retroactively fix the deplorable state that the city was in... at the time.”

“I remember being asked by Katie Couric if I had saved New Orleans,” Brees recounted, highlighted a pre-game interview with the CBS anchor that beggared belief. “I just thought to myself ‘Listen you dippy bitch, how the hell is a high octane passing attack and intensive film study going to fix the very real socio-economic problems that I tirelessly work to help fix?’”

“But here we are," he shrugged. “Everything was fixed. Because of a football game.”

In a statement he released to the press Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning, who threw a game changing interception for a touchdown and who himself grew up in New Orleans while his father played quarterback for the Saints, noting that he was “glad to do his part to revive his hometown”, feeling that the complete and total rejuvenation of most of Southern Louisiana was a much better result than what would have happened for Indianapolis had the Colts won: half-price burgers at participating Steak’n’Shakes in the greater metro area.

“Whatever,” Mayor Nagin was heard to yell while reveling in parade festivities on Bourbon Street. “I’m just glad that no one ever has to worry about New Orleans ever again or concern themselves with the status of this city. We won a football game! It’s all golden baby.”

In a related story, the nation of Haiti petitioned several top NFL franchises to legally relocate their headquarters to Port-au-Prince for the upcoming season in the hopes that a Super Bowl victory could not only fix the damage done in the recent earthquake, but provide the country with a mulligan for most of the past 200 years.

Good morning, all our problems are solved

It's a shame, two years ago and this woman would have been a prime candidate for a cabinet position.

Everything in Iran is fixed now

Don't worry. Those mourning rallies, new protest rallies, investigations into deaths resulting from a military attack on Tehran University are all unnecessary. Why? Because the people who helped rig the election are totally going to look into complaints about vote rigging.

Iran's rulers today offered a fresh concession to opposition protesters angry at the official results of presidential elections by inviting candidates to present their allegations of vote-rigging at a formal session.

The powerful guardian council has convened an extraordinary session for Saturday and invited the three candidates who were, according to official results, defeated by the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The council announced on Tuesday that it would re-examine disputed ballot boxes. Its move came as tens of thousands of protesters began to amass on the streets of Tehran for a sixth day of demonstrations.

Whew! Crisis over. Mousavi will just forward a link from Nate Silver, point out some of the more glaring electoral impossibilities, the fact that several laws of the space-time continuum seemed to be broken during the first "counting" of the vote, and then I'm sure the Guardian Council will see the error of their ways, respond sanely, and will either have a re-election or actually go and count the votes they didn't count last time. Then all the protesters will simply go home, say thanks for restoring their "democracy", and completely trust the results. Those who rigged the election will totally see the error of their ways, vow never to do it again, and commit themselves to a full and fair legal accounting of their crimes. This completely sounds like a situation where evidence is important, reason reigns, and cooler heads prevail.

Or, you know, everyone gets arrested, sham trials, heavier police crackdowns, and Ahmadinejad continues to walk around and act like he can't believe everyone thinks there's anything unusual going on in his country. One of those two. Either way, I'm sure this is the end of it. The fox agreed to look into the henhouse incident. Crisis over.

Hey, remember that war we had going on?

Everything is OK now. In Iraq, where there's allegedly still a full scale war going on, we were able to strike a blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq by capturing their top man during a wave of bombings that killed 70+.

Iraqi forces said today that they had arrested one of the most wanted al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq, even as his suicide bombers killed more than 70 people in attacks in and around Baghdad.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, was held in the capital after a tip-off, said Major General Qasim Atta, Baghdad’s security spokesman.

The Islamic State of Iraq is a shadowy, al-Qaeda-linked, Islamist umbrella group that in 2006 declared an independent caliphate in mainly Sunni West Baghdad, as well as in areas to the north and west. Modeled on the Taliban in Afghanistan, it murdered and intimidated anyone who did not adhere to its strict Islamist rulings.

See, not another meaningless #2, a real #1 this time. Obama is producing results. Though as a precaution it should be noted that they have announced his capture or killing numerous times in the past and some agencies even doubt his existence. Surely the alleged capture of one of the leaders of a small faction of terrorists that groups in unconnected cells and were only a small part of the insurgency, will make things all right. I mean make things even closer to the paradise that Iraq already is after the surge fixed everything.

I'm kind of surprised this news even made it into the media mainstream. I guess everyone didn't get the memo that America had forgotten about Iraq and that it wasn't important anyway because we're pulling out soon to throw some money at Afghanistan. Did they not see the big ceremonial "washing of hands" we had had for this whole Iraq war experience? They still want to contest this? We still have to pay attention? Bah.