"I'd like to take the CEO of BP and jam his face in that pile on the beach"

From the St. Petersburg Times:

Kevin Reed, 36, of Pensacola breaks down and weeps upon seeing the oil-defiled shores of Pensacola Beach on June 23, 2010. Reed's father taught him to swim in these waters, and Reed just taught his five year old son to swim here. "This will never be the same," he says. "I'd like to take the CEO of BP and jam his face in that pile on the beach."

Where no comment is necessary, I won't offer any.

GOP to Big Oil: Don't Worry, We'll Let You Keep Your Servant

Good news for oil companies, drillers, and Smokey Joe himself.

Talking Points Memo:

NRCC chairman Pete Sessions, whose job it is to increase GOP ranks in the House, says Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) will likely retain his post as the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee. Asked last night after a House vote if Barton may face further repercussions for apologizing to BP CEO Tony Hayward, Sessions told reporters that Barton's already paid his penance.

"I don't think that's the direction we're headed in," Sessions said. "...I believe that Joe has adequately addressed the issue."

Sessions noted numerous times that he was speaking as a member of the GOP leadership team (he is the fourth ranking Republican under Minority Leader John Boehner, Whip Eric Cantor, and Conference Chair Mike Pence ) and not as a rank and file member of the House. Boehner, Cantor and Pence organized last week's rapid response to the Barton flap, in which anonymous GOP leadership aides left the door open to further recriminations.

Because, really, who better to represent the Republican Party on the Energy and Commerce Committee -- which deals with oil companies -- than an obsequious little slaveboy to Big Oil? Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse is the GOP way, after all.

Surprise! Judge Who Blocked Offshore Drilling Moratorium is Invested in Offshore Drilling

Associated Press has a bit of bad news for people who think that we ought to hold off on offshore drilling until we at least know the rigs aren't as screwed up as Deepwater Horizon.

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects imposed after the massive Gulf oil spill.

The White House promised an immediate appeal. President Barack Obama's administration had halted approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling of 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

[...]

Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium, arguing it was arbitrarily imposed.

Feldman agreed, saying in his ruling the Interior Department assumed that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an unprecedented, sad, ugly and inhuman disaster," Feldman wrote in his decision. "What seems clear is that the federal government has been pressed by what happened on the Deepwater Horizon into an otherwise sweeping confirmation that all Gulf deepwater drilling activities put us all in a universal threat of irreparable harm." Despite all evidence that all deepwater drilling is as fucked up as Deepwater Horizon, it would be irresponsible to assume it to be true. The responsible reaction here is "Drill baby, drill!"

So who is Judge Martin Feldman? He's a Reagan appointee and great big fan of investing in the oil industry. "Feldman, 'a true blue outcome-oriented judicial activist who led the law where he wanted it to go' in Katrina litigation, definitely knows where he's going with the decision he will make in this case," reported local Louisiana Mississippi blog Slabbed. "Anyone doubting the outcome need only to look at his Financial Disclosure Report..."

And that financial report is a doozy. It's peppered with investments in energy, pipeline, and drilling companies -- including Transocean and Halliburton. And don't expect this to be an isolated incident:

ProPublica:

Since BP’s ruptured well began spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico, more than 150 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts seeking damages for the harm that the environmental disaster has dealt to the livelihood of coastal fishermen and business owners. But finding judges to hear these spill-related lawsuits against BP, Halliburton and Transocean may be a challenge. More than half of the “64 active or senior judges in key Gulf Coast districts in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida” have ties to industry, according to The Associated Press.

Some judges own stocks or bonds in the companies named in the lawsuits. Some are related to plaintiffs’ attorneys. Others even receive royalties from oil and gas companies. One judge, according to financial disclosure statements, is a member of Houston’s Petroleum Club,  an “exclusive, handsome club of, and for, men of the oil industry,” reported AP.

It appears that Judge Feldman is a member of that "exclusive, handsome club."

VP Biden is Very Unhappy with Smokey Joe Barton

Hey idiot pundits, you want more emotion from the White House in regards to the oil gusher? Here ya go:

A passionate declaration of Democratic Party principles and the role of government in public life. You can shut up now.

White House Attacks Barton in Email to Supporters

The White House is making hay with Rep. Joe Barton's apology to BP for the "shakedown" that the $20 billion dollar escrow account negotiated by the White House and BP execs. Here's the email blast being sent out:

Organizing for America
XXXX --

When BP CEO Tony Hayward testified before Congress this morning, many expected to hear him apologize for the disaster his company has caused. Instead, GOP Congressman Joe Barton was the one saying he was sorry -- to BP.

In his opening statement, Barton, the top Republican on the committee overseeing the oil spill and its aftermath, delivered a personal apology to the oil giant. He said the $20 billion fund that President Obama directed BP to establish to provide relief to the victims of the oil disaster was a "tragedy in the first proportion."

Other Republicans are echoing his call. Sen. John Cornyn said he "shares" Barton's concern. Rep. Michele Bachmann said that BP shouldn't agree to be "fleeced." Rush Limbaugh called it a "bailout." The Republican Study Committee, with its 114 members in the House, called it a "shakedown."

Let's be clear. This fund is a major victory for the people of the Gulf. It's a key step toward making them whole again. BP has a responsibility to those whose lives and livelihoods have been devastated by the disaster. And BP oil executives don't deserve an apology -- the people of the Gulf do.

Stand with us to show that the American people support holding BP accountable -- and we won't apologize for doing so.

We support holding BP accountable. And we won't apologize for doing so. Add your name.

Rep. Barton and Republicans like him don't understand that the real tragedy is what's happening to the people in the Gulf Coast. They're the ones who deserve his apology -- not BP.

But big oil knows exactly who its allies are. And if Republicans win control of the House, Rep. Barton could be chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- overseeing regulation of the oil and gas industry.

Notably, companies like Halliburton -- the folks responsible for cementing the Deepwater Horizon rig -- are directing their political committees to deliver thousands of dollars to GOP candidates this cycle. Barton himself has received more than $100,000 from the oil and gas industry this election cycle.

Barton should apologize to the people of the Gulf and he should step down as the highest-ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Adding your name to our open letter is one of the best ways you can show him and other Republicans that they weren't elected to defend big oil.

Sign the open letter today:

http://my.barackobama.com/NoApologies

Thanks,

David Plouffe

Barton really stepped in it and Democrats are probably not going to let it go any time soon. The GOP is trying to distance themselves from the comment, but they're going to have a little trouble on that front.

More on this tomorrow.

On Dick Cheney, the Newly-Invisible Man

There was a fun exchange on ABC's This Week between Steny Hoyer and John Boehner. The subject was the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the Bush administration's love for deregulation.

HOYER: ...The psychology of neglect in terms of regulatory oversight that was pursued in the Bush administration, which led to the banking failure, insurance prices going way up, and oil companies thinking they could do whatever they wanted because the "drill, baby, drill" crowd, all they wanted them to do was to drill. So I think John's right. I think the regularly psychology of the last administration was not appropriate, and there was mistakes made in this administration, as well.

BOEHNER: How long are you going to blame the Bush administration?...

I thought that question tied in well with this video from MNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, where Kate Sheppard discusses a piece she wrote for Mother Jones:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When will we stop blaming the Bush administration? About the same time that their idiotic decisions stop having catastrophic consequences. In other words, not for a long, long time, Rep. Boehner. Get used to it.

Oil May Be All Over the Place, But People are Still Dumb

What's a little oil in the water when it's a nice day for swimming?

(h/t Huffington Post)

George Will's Punditry Fail

One of the things that infuriate me to no end is smug, mocking certainty in people who are obviously wrong. You see it all over the net, in comment threads and on twitter, in blog posts and Sarah Palin's Facebook page; people being ridiculed for being right. "Haha! You really think Barack HUSSEIN Obama's a citizen? You libtard!" or "My grandpa's no monkey, you evolution-believing moonbat!" It's one thing to be ignorant and proud of it, it's another to jam everyone's face in your ignorance and mock them for not sharing it.

So you can see why I had a problem with George Will on ABC's This Week:

Steve Benen points out the problem:

As the columnist sees it, the president said the government could solve problems. And since it hasn't yet solved this problem, the disaster "just strikes at the narrative of competence."

I continue to be mystified by this. Blaming the president is unfair, Will conceded, because the president is doing all he can under impossible circumstances. But blaming the president is worthwhile, Will added in the next breath, because we now know government officials can't quickly shut down a gushing oil leak a mile below sea level.

If we were to take Will's point to the next step -- the federal government lacks the wherewithal to fix every problem, so some tasks should be left in the hands of private enterprise and the states -- I suppose the lesson is we should have BP and Louisiana state agencies solve the problem.

That ought to work, right?

The alternative to "big government" is big business -- the private sector. How can George Will possibly walk away from this thinking the lesson to be learned is that the private sector is more competent than government? At every step, BP has done the wrong thing. I don't know about you, but I'm still waiting for the Invisible Hand of the Market to jam its Divine Finger into that leak and solve this whole thing. It may be that at no point in my life has the argument that private industry corners the market on innovation and solutions been so thoroughly shown to be absolute horseshit.

I often find myself wondering how in the hell George Will ever got a reputation as a brainiac -- and never more than now.

Griper Blade: The Other Side of the Story

Let's take a look at the economic situation. Never mind the naysayers, the gloom-and-doomers, the glass-half-empty types, some of us are doing just fine. If you look hard enough and long enough, you can find good, simple, hard-working Americans who are managing to get along. Good people, with good, honest values, who know the value of a dollar because they've got a boatload of them:

Associated Press:

Riding record oil prices in the third quarter, Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted the biggest quarterly profit ever for a U.S. company: $14.83 billion, or about $112,000 a minute.

The results, amounting to $2.86 a share, beat the Irving, Texas, company's previous record and shattered analysts' average expectation of $2.38 a share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

Consumer groups and politicians saw reason for anger in those numbers.

"Our economy is suffering from many factors, but one of them is the price of oil and our nation's dependence on it," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Markey said that "investments in renewable energy continue to lag with the world's most profitable company, and as an industry as a whole."

"Consumers got credit card debt and empty wallets, while Exxon got double-digit billions," says Judy Dugan of Consumer Watchdog. "Citizens deserve to be mad. They should demand that government get back in the business of protecting them from corporate greed."

Those simple country folk with their good ol' fashioned common sense and small town values continue to make more money than any company in history, quarter after quarter, year after year. Yay for them!...

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Oil Spills Result of Hurrican Ike

clipped from news.yahoo.com Hurricane Ike's winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. In the days before and after the deadly storm, companies and residents reported at least 448 releases of oil, gasoline and dozens of other substances into the air and water and onto the ground in Louisiana and Texas. The hardest hit places were industrial centers near Houston and Port Arthur, Texas, as well as oil production facilities off Louisiana's coast, according to the AP's analysis.

"We are dealing with a multitude of different types of pollution here ... everything from diesel in the water to gasoline to things like household chemicals," said Larry Chambers, a petty officer with the U.S. Coast Guard Command Center in Pasadena, Texas.

Still, this can't possibly be happening, since John McCain says, "As for offshore drilling, it's safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston. Yet for reasons that become less convincing with every rise in the price of foreign oil, the federal government discourages offshore production."

Seems like a half million gallons of crude qualifies as "significant spillage," John.

Big Oil Spends Big Lobbying $

clipped from money.cnn.com As angry voters spark a barrage of energy bills in Congress, the oil industry is spending record amounts of money protecting its interests. In what may be surprising to some, the most recent figures from the Center for Responsive Politics show that the oil industry gives a relatively small sum to individual political campaigns - it's 16th on a list of top 50 industries. But when it comes to lobbying - and spending money that goes toward researching, writing and convincing lawmakers to vote its way - the industry ranks fifth. If the spending continues at the current pace, the industry is set to break last year's $83 million record. "In the minds of most people, you rarely spend money to get nothing done," said Massie Riesch, communications director for CRP. "But in government, people often spend vast sums of money to make sure nothing happens at all."

In related news, this Congress has passed more BS resolutions than actual laws. Mission accomplished.

Offshore Energy That Doesn't Require Drilling

clipped from www.mcclatchydc.com Picture 400 super-size windmills spinning in a steady, stiff ocean breeze miles off the coasts of California, New England, the mid-Atlantic, Washington state, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. Even as Congress is embroiled in a sharp debate over whether to allow increased offshore oil and gas drilling, others are seriously working to develop a green source of energy along the outer continental shelf. The winds blowing 15 miles or even farther off the U.S. coasts potentially could produce 900,000 megawatts of electricity, or roughly the same amount as nearly all the nation's existing power sources combined, according to Department of Energy estimates. "This is a slam dunk," said George Hart, chief technical officer at the Ocean Energy Institute, a Maine-based research center. "None of this is high-tech. It can be done."

I had no idea that there was that much energy blowing around out there. 900,000 megawatts is a freakin' huge amount of generating capacity.

Griper Blade: Healing the Emotionally Damaged Oil Market

It's amazing how economics works these days. It used to be a matter of supply and demand. Too many consumers, not enough product -- prices go up. Too much product, not enough consumers -- prices go down. That's the short-course on how retail pricing used to work. Simplified, but true enough.

But we live in a much more complex world now. A world where pretending to do something about prices effects those prices. You don't need to actually do anything that will have any results. In fact, the efforts don't even have to have any hope of a result. You just shake the medicine rattle, say the magic words, perform the appropriate theatrics and ritual, and prices drop.

So it was that Republicans staging a pointless pretend session of Congress dropped oil prices. Armed with nothing but access to the floor, unable to actually introduce or pass legislation, unable to vote or negotiate compromises, completely without any real power at all, House Republicans managed to bring down oil prices through pure force of positive energy. In the new economics, wishing makes it so...

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Griper Blade: McSellout

Take a presidential candidate, add a pinch of pandering, a dash of corruption, a whole lot of money, and you've got McCain

I've been writing about John McCain a lot lately, but let's face it, John McCain's not talking about John McCain and someone has to. Lately, when the media talks about John McCain, it's to repeat some attack McCain's made on Barack Obama. Lately, with the help of a media more concerned with sensationalism than substance, McCain has been able to be a serious candidate for president who doesn't seem to stand for a whole lot.

One of the worst aspects of this whole thing is that no one's looking at the fact that McCain doesn't stand for a whole lot. Mr. Leadership generally leads by following. His opinions go where the votes are or the money is. McCain is a candidate openly for sale.

An example; in June, John McCain opposed a Constitutional amendment to make same sex marriage illegal. He didn't support marriage equality, but he took what would've once been the default Republican opinion on issues like this and said it was up to the states to decide.

But, as I said, that was once the default. That was before Bush's 2004 campaign that highlighted the Homosexual Menaces' Threat to America. McCain was behind the times; the new default was to panic over same sex marriage, foretell the destruction of the family and, with it, the end of America. Under Bush, the GOP has become the party of fear and if your reaction to an issue isn't to try to get everyone to wet their pants over it, then you aren't a real Republican.

So John McCain made a trip to see the Apostles of Republican Jesus, that they might impart their wisdom upon him and anoint him a True Republican. And, lo, so it was done...

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Griper Blade: Corporate Commies

This is how bad the economy is. Once again, Exxon sets the record for profit this quarter -- $11.7 billion. More than any company has ever earned in history. This is bad news for the oil giant, since they didn't do as well as predicted. So, despite making just giant wheelbarrows full of cash, Exxon closed 3% down on the news. Boy, talk about an undervalued stock -- no one's losing money here.

One reason that Exxon didn't do as well as expected is a decrease in production. And that's why we've got to drill, drill, drill. Got to pump up that production. We need oil... Dear Sweet Jesus, we need oil!

But that urgency isn't really reflected in oil companies' spending practices. While we're told that corporations like Exxon are desperate for oil, they sure as hell aren't acting like it.

Associated Press:

The companies insist they’re trying to find new oil that might help bring down gas prices, but the money they spend on exploration is nothing compared with what they spend on stock buybacks and dividends.

It’s good news for shareholders, including mutual funds and retirement plans for millions of Americans, but no help to drivers already making drastic cutbacks to offset the high cost of fuel.

The five biggest international oil companies plowed about 55 percent of the cash they made from their businesses into stock buybacks and dividends last year, up from 30 percent in 2000 and just 1 percent in 1993, according to Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

The percentage they spend to find new deposits of fossil fuels has remained flat for years, in the mid-single digits.

It strikes me that spending less than 10% on oil exploration doesn't do a lot to increase production.

But that's OK. Oil companies don't need to find oil, they know where some is -- where they're not allowed to drill. The reason they can't find oil anywhere other than offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is because they haven't actually been looking...

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Hard to Reach Oil a Significant Climate Risk

clipped from www.enn.com Exploitation of North America’s shale and tar-sand oil reserves could increase atmospheric CO2 levels by up to 15%, a new report from WWF-UK and the major UK financial group Co-Operative Financial Services (CFS) has warned. Extraction of the projected 1,115 billion barrels of recoverable oil from unconventional fuel sources such as Alberta’s oil sands and Colorado’s oil shale, which involve much more energy intensive procedures for extraction than traditional oil reserves, would significantly increase global risks of dangerous climate change, the report said. "Most oil companies have hardly begun to factor in the externalities that are currently imposed on the environment." These externalities include mass deforestation, such as Alberta’s Boreal forests, which lie above 140,000 square kilometres of oil sands, and are now crisscrossed with seismic lines and open-cast mines.

We seem to be reaching the point of diminishing returns. As oil gets hard to find, oil drilling becomes more energy-expensive.

Neocon May Finally Get Iraq's Oil

clipped from rawstory.com A neoconservative architect of President Bush's Iraq occupation could be preparing to personally reap the spoils of war, the Wall Street Journal reported. Documents suggest that Richard Perle, top aide to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has been in talks with government officials and its Washington envoy, and Turkish AG Group International, over a plan to drill for oil near the Kurdish city of Erbil. Perle is also in talks with the oil-rich nation of Kazakhstan, whose ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been involved in a US oil bribery investigation. The State Department recently said that it was investigating deals brokered between the Kurds and other American energy companies, such as Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, "infuriating" the Iraqi government, which called such deals "illegal attempts" to circumvent Baghdad's authority as the Iraqi government works to pass a national oil law. Documents suggest, however, that the State Department did not object to such deals.

The rich get richer, the poor get deader.

McCain Drilling Reversal a $ Bonanza

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling. Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May. "The timing was significant," said David Donnelly, the national campaigns director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan campaign finance reform group that conducted the analysis of McCain's oil industry contributions. "This is a case study of how a candidate can change a policy position in the interest of raising money."

McCain's "straight talk" is apparently for sale. According to the report, "Oil and gas executives have not traditionally been a major source of campaign money for McCain. A breakdown of giving by the Center for Responsive Politics shows the industry falls 12th on a list of top donors, well behind securities firms, lawyers, banks, and real estate and health professionals."

Now they dump big bucks into his campaign. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Big Oil Spends $ on Shareholders, not Exploration

clipped from www.courant.com The five biggest international oil companies plowed about 55 percent of the cash they made from their businesses into stock buybacks and dividends last year, up from 30 percent in 2000 and just 1 percent in 1993, according to Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. The percentage they spend to find new deposits of fossil fuels has remained flat for years, in the mid-single digits. In the first three months of this year, Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest publicly traded oil company, shelled out $8.8 billion on stock buybacks alone, compared with $5.5 billion on exploration and other capital projects. ConocoPhillips has already told investors that its stock buybacks for April to June of this year will come to about $2.5 billion — nine times what it spent on exploration. "If you're not spending your money finding and developing new oil, then there's no new oil," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University

If the price of oil is really a supply-and-demand problem, as the Bush admin. asserts, then Big Oil isn't doing much to increase the supply.

New McCain Ad: Gas Prices Obama's Fault

clipped from www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com I occasionally think about something Time’s Joe Klein wrote in April about McCain’s style. Klein predicted that McCain would avoid a cheap and pathetic style of campaigning, because he knows better. McCain, Klein said, “sees the tawdry ceremonies of politics — the spin and hucksterism — as unworthy.” If he doesn’t, “McCain will have to live with the knowledge that in the most important business of his life, he chose expediency over honor.” For McCain, it appears the equation is simple. If abandoning honor and honesty will give him the presidency, then so be it. The truth, McCain has concluded, is for losers. To anyone who cares about reality, the ad doesn’t make a lick of sense. McCain has to hope, desperately, that we’re all idiots.

Carpetbagger's Steve Benen nails it dead center, as he so often does. All I can add is "Amen,: