The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Museo_del_Prado_-_Goya_-_Caprichos_-_No._43_-_El_sueño_de_la_razon_produce_monstruos

Brooklyn, December 8, 2015

There are retribution attacks against Muslims going on right now in a couple of isolated places in America. They are isolated, and no deaths yet.

These are being goaded on, in the far right-wing media, by an extremist ideologue named Donald Trump. He is the archetype of the Ugly American abroad. But this Ugly American has a global platform to broadcast a Nativist Capitalist Egoist extremist ideology: this is fascism, American-style. In broadcasting this extremist ideology, he is implicitly involved –– other Republican legislators are *explicitly involved* –– in inciting violence against Muslims, creating a favorable sales environment (as we like to say it in advertising) for ISIS.

Christians, especially, should recognize both the wisdom and the futility in the phase, “What goes around comes around.” These are not retribution attacks against Muslims, or Muslim-Americans. Not murders of black kids and murders of cops. These are attacks and counter-attacks against Americans. We must begin to perceive the terrorism we commit upon each other. ISIS wants us to be blindly enraged extremist ideologues just like them.

We look like we’re obliging them.

Have we, as Americans, truly had such a poor education that we cannot understand this?

Donald Trump’s supporters are themselves directly supported by fear and the feeling of failure. It’s written into Trump’s slogan. They are formed of white men aggrieved, frightened into their small cultural ball, assaulted on all sides by forces of economics, religion, sexuality, gender, race, culture and violence – all projected to them in extremis, by a propaganda organ called Fox News.

When those fears, and those feelings of failure, are vectored toward minorities, toward refugees of war, toward the weak in society, violence is an inevitable consequence.

Americans do terrorism upon themselves. That is the lesson of the San Bernardino terrorists. It is the lesson of the Charleston church murderer and the Planned Parenthood killer and the college shooters and all the rest.

Donald Trump is creating an environment for terrorism to escalate. The leading candidate for the Republican nomination is willfully endangering U.S. national security and the security of innocent American civilians.

 

Talk about voting against your own self-interest.

“A National Strategic Narrative”: A guidebook for America in the 21st Century

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Here’s something you probably haven’t read.

In 2011, two members of the U.S. military, pseudonymed “Mr. Y,” wrote this analysis for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. They advocate increasing American competitiveness by adopting a progressive stance in economic, foreign and political policy. It’s doubly relevant today as it was in 2011.

View / download a PDF of A National Strategic Narrative

On Energy and Geometric Progression

The following video has been labeled “The Most Important Video You’ll Ever See.” Hyperbole? It’s just a lecture on math, given by a Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Colorado-Boulder. It explains how just a 7% annual growth in energy use equals a 100% growth in 10 years. After a few decades, you’ve got a really big number. And a tremendously enormous problem. Watch and learn, please.

[H/T Peter Hufnagel]

Double Dippin’ with MERLE HAZARD

Merle Hazard is the one and only country-music singer writing songs about the Financial Crisis. He’s been on PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; he’s been the subject of articles by The Economist, London’s Financial Times, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel. And by gum, the man can carry a tune! Here’s Merle Hazard performing “Double Dippin'”!

You Will Be Eaten By a Bear

If yer one of them huntin’ folks up there in Wyoming or Montana – y’know, Republican, an’ thinkin’ climate change is a myth – best listen up.

You will be eaten by a bear.
A grizzly bear.
A six-foot-tall, 600-pound grizzly bear.

The bears are hungry.

See, grizzlies up in Yellowstone eat the nuts of whitebark pine cones. Trouble is, there aren’t as many whitebark pines. That’s because of the beetles. There’s been a huge beetle infestation of the Yellowstone whitebark pine – 70% of the trees have been decimated. And that’s because the ground’s not freezing as much to keep the beetles at bay. And that’s because of global warming.

“Every year is now a bad year for whitebark pine,” said Louisa Wilcox with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We can expect more conflicts and we are getting it.”

The bears are comin’ down the mountain an’ eatin’ livestock.

“Right now every god-dang dead cow down in this country’s got grizzlies on them,” said Mark Bruscino, a bear specialist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in Cody. “We’ve already had a couple of reports of bears on the gut piles of hunter-killed elk. Road-killed deer have bears on them.” (Quotes via the Associated Press.)

An’ when they ain’t got no roadkill to eat, they’ll go with human carpaccio. Two people done gone an’ been killed by grizzlies so far this year, the most in a century. But those ain’t related to no whitebark pines. Ain’t the time of year yet. But it will be soon, as autumn arrives. So watch out, folks. Global warming could kill you sooner than you think.

Read more at the AP [H/T John Emerson]

The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill IS NOT OVER

According to this exclusive report on CNN, the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico about 40 miles west of Panama City, FL is a toxic sludge composed of speckled droplets of dispersed oil… moving east.


[H/T Ryan Bartek]

While the right-wing media machine diverts our attention to the “Ground Zero Mosque” and “anchor babies,” our magpie brains are forgetting about the Deep Horizon disaster. More importantly, we’re forgetting about the genesis of this disaster – the rampant deregulatory culture, the lax safety procedures – which, we might say, are features of the contemporary media culture as well, which chases sham political controversies instead of concentrating on matters of true importance.

Hacks and Flacks on Capitol Hill: You Have Been Warned

Meet Congressman Crowley, Democrat for the 7th District of New York

According to The New York Times today ––

On Dec. 10, one of the lawmakers under investigation, Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, left the Capitol during the House debate to attend a fund-raising event for him hosted by a lobbyist at her nearby Capitol Hill town house that featured financial firms, along with other donors. After collecting thousands of dollars in checks, Mr. Crowley returned to the floor of the House just in time to vote against a series of amendments that would have imposed tougher restrictions on Wall Street.

He’s just one of our national legislators under investigation by Congress to determine exactly how money flows in Washington, and how it directly influences inhibits reform. Here’s another:

Meet Rep. Tom Price, Republican from the 6th District of Georgia, member of the Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives

The right honorable Tom Price just happened to schedule a “Financial Services Luncheon” on December 10, the same day as Rep. Crowley’s fundraising event and the exact same day that the first full House vote on the financial reform bill was held. During a two-month period around the vote, he scored $23,000.

Now, old hands around D.C. like Tom DeLay might call this “business as usual in Washington.” Any sane person, however, would rather be inclined to call this bribery. No, I’m not suggesting that you members of the governmental elite will ever actually be convicted of such a crime. Just know that we know exactly what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it. You are colluding with business interests to keep yourselves employed, to the detriment of the future of the United States of America. You are the epitome of the fault Tocqueville foresaw in the American system –– to wit, that people would be more inclined to vote their immediate self-interest than have the education and wisdom to consider long-term ramifications. Crowley and Price, and all others –– we’ll be seeing you.

Read to your heart’s content at The New York Times.

Why the BP Oil Spill is Like the Mortgage Crisis

Okay, it’s like this. The main reason we’re in a Great Recession is that, back in 1999, the U.S. government compromised itself to death. Bill Clinton wanted to increase lending to minorities. The Republican-controlled Congress (swept into office by Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America”) said, “Only if you decrease regulation at the same time,” and so Phil Gramm (appointed senior economic adviser to McCain’s presidential campaign) drew up a bill that gutted Glass-Steagall, the 1933 act that prevented the Depression from happening again. President Clinton, weakened by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, didn’t have much wiggle-room in the Oval Office any more, and signed the legislation.

So, naturally, you get a huge housing boom totally based upon dodgy accounting and ludicrous credit standards which blows up in the world’s face.

You can’t make this stuff up, right?

Guess what. The BP oil spill is a result of exactly the same legislative deathmatch. The New York Times has a superb piece this morning by David S. Abraham declaring, this is a disaster that Congress voted for. In a highly balanced and nuanced argument, Abraham details how Congress really and truly has been addicted to providing the oil industry with economic incentives beyond all reason:

In a 1995 attempt to encourage more exploration, Congress agreed to reduce the cut of the proceeds the government could collect on oil and gas drilling in deep waters. Ten years later, despite higher oil prices and declarations from President George W. Bush that more incentives were not needed, a Republican-led Congress reduced royalties yet again.

It’s madness, of course – especially when

at the same time that Congress called for new drilling incentives, it also gutted oversight. From 2002 to 2008, legislators approved budgets reducing regulatory staffing levels by more than 15 percent… A 2004 Coast Guard study found that its “oil spill response personnel did not appear to have even a basic knowledge of the equipment required to support salvage or spill clean-up operations.”

When Bobby Jindal calls for more offshore drilling in order to help pay for coastal damage inflicted by offshore oil-and-gas operations (yeah, you read that right), then we have truly entered a land of the comedic insane, where the Mad Hatter starts writing Catch-22 contracts. The astounding thing is that, at base, it’s an exquisitely simple recipe for disaster: radically lower the barriers to enter the market, while radically de-regulating (by which we mean: knocking down the laws and rules that govern participation in this country’s economy) and what you get are toxic assets. That’s what we call a house, these days: a toxic asset, destroying the person who possesses it (for D&D fans, that’s kind of like a poisoned amulet, except with lots of bricks and mortar and wiring and plumbing).

But we should  be calling the oil spill a toxic asset too. The definition’s more apt; no metaphors needed here. It’s a natural resource that’s killing our economy and destroying the ecosystems of our oceans. It’s a substance that, for decades now, has powered our economy; now it’s bringing the Gulf to a standstill. It’s the toxic asset, our home mortgage that’s underwater. The rich will probably walk away from it, their dirty souls skimming the tops of the oily waves in that Gulf between them and us.

The Crises of Capitalism – the smartest video you’ll watch this year.

David Harvey, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, gives the world’s most pithy and complete explanation of the cumulative financial crises over the last 80 years to show us what’s happened. It’s an 11-minute showstopper of a lecture, and it is the only coherent 360-degree view of the crisis I’ve ever seen. I can’t emphasize how brilliant this is. Harvey is having an open online course reading Book I of Marx’s Capital. Watch this, and it’ll all make sense. Plus, it’s cartoony!

[H/T 3QuarksDaily]

Could Relief Come Sooner?

If you listen to the media storm at the moment, a lot of people are debating whether or not these relief wells will finally shut down the gushing oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Tomorrow is the fourth of July, so I wanted to impart you with a little bit of optimism to share around the grill. For weeks, the progress of both relief wells have been ahead of schedule, and the first well is only hundreds of feet from it’s target. It isn’t a certainty, but in this case the technology BP is using to stop the well is actually a technology they heavily invest in, drilling. If there is one thing they have progressed in the last 30 years, it’s the ability to make big holes.

And now BP has been letting it slip that they may reach the beast and stop it sometime in July. Jordan Burke and Jessica Resnick-Ault write for Bloomberg Businessweek

The target date for intercepting the leaking well and pumping in mud and cement to permanently seal it is still mid- August, U.S. National Incident Commander Thad Allen said today on a conference call with reporters. The well is within 600 feet (182 meters) of intercepting the leak, he said.
“They are ahead of schedule at this point,” Allen said. “I am reluctant to tell you that it will happen before the middle of August because I think that everything associated with this spill and response recovery suggests that we should under- promise and over-deliver.”
BP diverted 25,150 barrels of oil from the leaking well to surface vessels yesterday. The Macondo well is estimated to be spewing 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day, according to a government-led panel of scientists. The well started leaking after an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, causing the drilling rig to sink and killing 11 crew members.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc analysts David Cline and Barry MacCarthy said the first relief well may be completed between July 7 and July 12, according to a note to clients yesterday. Pritchard Capital Partners LLC analysts Brian Uhlmer, Anuj Sharma and William Conroy said in a June 29 note that the well would be intercepted between July 7 and July 9.

From the British Pen

A lot of folk have been trying to convince me that pension funds are dividing Americans from their friends across the pond. I think a lot of it is media driven, a common phrase I don’t use very often. Maybe I should.

If you ask me, you shouldn’t gamble with retirement. If your savings are investing, that isn’t the same as a savings account. Risk is risk. Anyhow, have fun reading the Guardian,

In the 59 days since the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, Hayward has been transformed into one of the most hated men in the US, and the ferocity of the encounter between him and the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce was much-anticipated. As one committee member noted: “The anger at BP is at fever pitch. It’s almost palpable.”

The committee has been conducting an aggressive inquiry into the gusher, and called Hayward in to answer specific charges of suspected safety lapses and shortcuts in the design plan of the well in the days before the explosion on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon rig.

But Hayward, who had been carefully coached by legal and media teams and was testifying under oath, failed to satisfy.

“The committee is extremely frustrated with your lack of candour,” Bart Stupak, who is leading the investigation told him. “You are the CEO. You have a PhD. We hope you have more candour in your responses.”

The reprimand was just a taste of the rancour towards Hayward. He was told by angry committee members that BP had a history of cavalier disregard for environmental rules and workers’ safety.

Hayward’s claims to have ushered in a new regime of safety after taking over as chief executive of the company in 2007 were plainly ridiculed.

“When I heard of the explosion in the Gulf, the name that immediately popped into my mind was BP,” said Stupak.

read more.

Holy Crap That’s a Lot of Money: 34 Billion in Fines

The Guardian reports quite a heavy bill for BP, and this may really set a buzz for the President’s fist Oval office speech tomorrow.

BP is facing a bill of up to $34bn from the Gulf of Mexico disaster after US senators demanded the oil company deposited $20bn into a ring-fenced account to meet escalating compensation costs.

The sum dwarfs many analysts’ previous estimates, shared by BP, that put the cost of the clean-up effort and payment of damages to affected communities, such as fishermen, closer to a total of $5bn.

Shares in BP nose-dived by more than 9% today as investors took fright at the demand by the 54 Democratic senators, who represent a majority in the US upper house. The company is now worth almost half what it was before the accident of just under two months ago.

BP already faces up to $14bn in civil penalties, payable under US environmental law, assuming the leak is plugged in August. These punitive damages are directly linked to the size of the spill – already estimated at being up to eight times worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 – with BP liable for up to $4,300 for each barrel-worth spilt.

Senate leaders insisted the $20bn ring-fenced account should be exclusively for “payment of economic damages and clean-up costs” and should not be seen as a cap on BP’s other legal liabilities. With punitive damages pending too, the theoretical total of $34bn is equivalent to more than half the corporation tax paid by all British companies last year.

Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, and other directors of the company, will meet Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday prepared to offer concessions in the hope of taking the sting out of mounting political attacks on the company.

BP will be in “listening mode”, willing to cut its next dividend, worth about $2.5bn, possibly paying the cash into the clean-up fund. It will also reiterate its commitment to paying all legitimate claims arising from the disaster. But the company does not believe that the demand by the senators to stump up $20bn is justified.

read the rest at the Guardian

Louisiana May Be due For Bigger Spill: Aging Infrastructure Will Strike Again

An upcoming report intends to warn the Gulf Coast of a looming disaster that may dwarf the current BP gusher. 31,000 miles of under sea pipes move over a billion dollars of oil a day around the Gulf of Mexico, and much of it is crumbling apart. This new study suggests under water currents from a hurricane could be enough force to wreak havoc on an aging infrastructure that is being dug out of the ocean floor by the passage of time.

Based on unique measurements taken directly under a powerful hurricane, the new study’s calculations are the first to show that hurricanes propel underwater currents with enough oomph to dig up the seabed, potentially creating underwater mudslides and damaging pipes or other equipment resting on the bottom.

At least 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) of pipelines reportedly snake across the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico. Damage to these pipelines can be difficult to detect if it causes only smaller leaks, rather than a catastrophic break, the researchers say. Repairing underwater pipes can cost more than fixing the offshore oil drilling platforms themselves, making it all the more important to prevent damage to pipelines in the first place.

The researchers, at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi, got an unprecedented view of a hurricane when Hurricane Ivan, a category-4 storm, crossed the Gulf of Mexico in 2004. The eye of the storm passed over a network of sensors on the ocean floor, put in place to monitor currents along the continental shelf in the Gulf.

The research team found that strong currents along the sea floor pushed and pulled on the seabed, scouring its surface. “Usually you only see this in very shallow water, where waves break on the beach, stirring up sand,” says David Wang, co-author of the study. “In hurricanes, the much bigger waves can stir up the seafloor all the way down to 90 meters [300 feet].”

Ivan’s waves on the surface created powerful currents that dug up the seafloor. Acoustic measurements using sound waves showed that these currents lofted a lot of sediments, which clouded the water up to 25 meters (82 feet) above the seafloor. The team’s seafloor sensors tracking the pressure underwater experienced a big increase, as well. This showed that the ground was washed away beneath the sensors, causing them to sink into a lower, higher-pressure zone.

read more at Science Daily

LET THIS BE A LESSON.

The Huffington Post is now claiming that BP – whose stock has fallen to a 14-year low – is now worth less than the total value of its assets. The article is completely skimpy on the details of the headline, of course, but it’s possible that “the company might be forced to suspend dividends, end up in bankruptcy and find itself overwhelmed by the cleanup costs, penalties, damage claims and lawsuits generated by the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.”

SO LET THIS BE A LESSON to be written in every textbook, and every case study, presented in the Business Schools of the world: if you adopt a cavalier attitude to the environment, if you narrowly and ruthlessly pursue profit with insouciant disregard for safety, IT COULD END YOU.

YOUTUBE: BP is Looking For Friends

BP is agressively searching for friends and subscribers on YouTube and they are sparing no expense. All day their video adds have plagued my monitor, so I took a moment to see how their newest upload is fairing with the public. You really have to marvel at the PR challenges in this Internet age, and notice just how easy Exxon had it when the spilled a tanker load off the coast of Alaska. Can an energy company survive  online criticism as well as Paris Hilton? I would say yes, but this ongoing predicament is like a thousand unflattering club photos every day.

Pretty soon people will hate BP so much they will demand it gets a reality television show. Dancing with the Pelicans with CEO Hayward and Doug Suttles as judges. Now you the audience at home has a vote, and I suggest you make it. Click the picture before feedback is disabled.

Offshore Oil Back in Business, With a Few New Rules

Looks like somebody read Gov. Bobby Jindal’s letter. President Obama is soon to announce the new rules for moderate depth off shore drilling as early as this week, lifting the freeze on coastal exploration. You may recall a spokesperson for BP this weekend called the halt on exploration sensible, but hoped for a quick prognosis and reform in order for the industry to plan for the future. The White House didn’t miss a beat. Let’s hope when it comes to the bigger depths they include a mandatory relief well to accompany production as they do in some parts of Canada. Response Coordinator Admiral Thad Allen suggested that was a good idea just yesterday.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration, facing rising anger on the Gulf Coast over the loss of jobs and income from a drilling moratorium, said Monday that it would move quickly to release new safety requirements that would allow the reopening of offshore oil and gas exploration in shallow waters.

Gulf Coast residents, political leaders and industry officials said delays in releasing the new rules, along with the administration’s six-month halt on deepwater drilling—both issued amid public pressure—threatened thousands of jobs.

Well-owner BP PLC, meanwhile, faces penalties “in the many billions of dollars,” for the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster that has been spewing an estimated minimum 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf, said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. The costs of the spill will “greatly exceed” the amount BP could recoup by selling any of the captured oil on the market, he said Monday.

read more at WSJ

Trying to Save Their Skins: BP Attempts to Quarantine Risk

BP is to hive off its Gulf of Mexico oil spill operation to a separate in-house business to be run by an American in a bid to isolate the “toxic” side of the company and dilute some of the anti-British feeling aimed at chief executive Tony Hayward, the company said today.

The surprise announcement was made during a teleconference with City and Wall Street analysts in which Hayward attempted to shrug off the personal criticism saying words “could not break his bones”.

BP has faced mounting anger in the US over the accident on 20 April when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up and sank with the loss of 11 oil workers’ lives.

The Macondo well continues to spew out oil although a containment cap was placed on top of the leak today. Hayward said it would take a further 48 hours to know whether it was successful.

Responsibility for the leaking well and the clean-up strategy will placed in the hands of Bob Dudley, one of the company’s most able directors.

Dudley, a US citizen, has been looking for a suitable role in the company since he was thrown out of Moscow in a battle with the Russian shareholders of the TNK-BP joint venture in the middle of 2008.

Hayward said the clean-up business would be run separately by Dudley with his own staff but the finances and budget would come from the main BP group. The BP chief executive said the purpose of the split was to allow Dudley to concentrate on the Gulf problem while he and other directors were not distracted from keeping the main business on track.

read more at the Guardian.