People like Chris Le Boy were concerned that President Obama wasn't taking charge in the Louisiana oil spill. I still have my doubts. They are still forbidding certain people from being on beaches taking pictures, and they are discouraging the media from showing photographs of dead or dying animals. Now I hear they got a "No fly" zone established in the Gulf as though British Petroleum could shoot down air craft that is in "their space" The way I see it the whole situation is still completely out of control. Now they are saying they didn't just blow up the well with conventional explosives because they wanted to come back later and get the oil. In like manner the reason why they been inviting other tankers to syphen off the surface oil is that they are still greedy and if they can't have it nobody can. They are deathly afraid some other corporation might try to reuse their oil. Likewise, it would seem why they used so much 2-butyl ethanol on the oil slick, that is now the size of West Virginia, is that they wanted to render the oil useless to keep the price up. They have their own tankers they could off-load to China or wherever and come and get the oil, but they don't like the economic effect that glut of oil on the market would cause. But the President has addressed none of these issues. Every now and then I hear someone, someone mutter something about "criminality" but you haven't heard very much. You know if they were serious about something (like say trackking down James Earl Ray they would release a few big names out to the media and let the public know that these are the guys they are after. In terms of their latest move to capture the oil it was sabotaged when a saw got stuck, and rather than have another go at it, they decided to use a much cruder method so that the pipe would not have a smooth cut to cap. Hurricane season is upon us. Hurricane Agatha has already struck a few days ago in the southeast Pacific in Guatemala resulting in many deaths. Fortunately the Gulf of Mexico requires more time to get going. Apparently BP had stated that it is their hope that all these dead animals and birds will just get swept away in the first hurricane of the season and so, "Out of sight - out of mind".
Unemployment is now at 9.7% so we are are back to where we were a couple of months ago. We are coming up on the one year anniversary of the "bottom" of this recession and what do we have to show for it? Not much. The stock market is still very unimpressive. I can only repeat again that in 1982 and 1983 the markets took off like gang busters and nobody had to second guess themselves. Fortunately for the President, this oil crisis has driven economic news from the headlines.
In terms of this baseball pitcher who was denied a perfect game because of a bad umpire call, I guess it's one of those things I just don't get. It would be as if you decided not to sue a surgeon even if he admitted he screwed up the opporation or worse yet- he was exhonorated by a judge over his own protests. It would be like a piece of evidence illegally used to convicted a man for first degree murder and now the man is scheduled to die next week. And the people who used the evidence openly admit it was wrong to have used this illegal evidence. But that some higher up who decides these things says the man must be executed anyhow. I guess there are certain people, such as baseball umpires and Catholic priests, whom you just can't touch because finding a bad one would cause so much damage to the reputation of their profession, it is better to live with a misscarriage of justice. People say "Well now we're going to have instant replay". This is a bullshit, cowardly, kick the can down the road approach to the situation. It won't fly.
You've heard that Al and Tipper Gore have broken up after forty years. Anybody guessing would have thought the Clintons,Bill and Hillary would break up first. But there appear - just in the case of my own parents - Cosmic Forces keeping that marriage together that are beyond human uinderstanding. In other news it would seem that Betty White is this week's winner of the Grandpa Simpson "Sole Survivor" award. Betty White is now the last surviving Golden Girl, since Rue Mc Clanahan passed away at age 76. That means when she was on the series she was younger than I am now. I'm not sure how I feel about that one. In personal news this cough is still hanging on line a London fog. as it is for many people around here in this very late season virus attack. I've asked for cough medicine for it several times but have seldom gotten any at all and none that was specifically prescribed for me. Also the next two months or so for me is littered with a number of unpleasant anniversaries falling hard upon one another, which I won't depress you people with now- - though as they come around I might mention them individually.
As you know a North Korean submarine attacked a South Korean vessle, and they are saying that South Korea "staged the whole thing". What a novel concept! War between North and South Korea. Why don't the Palistinians decide they are going to wipe North Korea from the face of the earth and do us all a favor? Of course some Hammas people decided to run an Israeli blockage of Gaza offering humanitarian ade. And their ship was boarded by Israel and attacked. They say it isn't fair because Hammas fought back. Hammas was of course democraticly elected. Do you remember how proud people like George Bush were of free elections being carried out in the middle east? But then Israel cancled a meeting with Obama scheduled for the next day. What did Obama do? Why is he picked out for social reebuff? That is unless Israel somehow feels guilty for what they did. At least in Israel such things can be discussed in a democratic process. I hope Israel would use that process to reshape their foreign policy. And while they are at it they can modify their position on West Bank Israeli settlements, too.
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