Animals In Peril - Hard To View.

As the Gulf of Mexico oil spill continues to extend, concern is growing for the wildlife that stand in its path, especially since many of the coastal animals are currently in their reproductive seasons.

Today Huffinton Post has some Photos of the animals that have been and are being effected by the spill.  The images are hard to view, but we must know and see what is going on.

It is heart-breaking!!!

Too Bad BP Doesn't Spend As Much Time On Cleaning Up As Covering Up!

In an article at Mother Jones they report:

BP's got a mole working on its cleanup team. The company might be able to keep the press from getting to oiled-up Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, but as long as people have cell phones, it's going to have a hell of a time keeping Elmer's Island from getting to the press.


Late Wednesday night I talked to a spill worker involved in the efforts to clean up South Louisiana's barrier islands. Let's call him Elmer, because we spoke under condition of strict anonymity. Though he hasn't signed one of the BP contracts that bars workers from communicating with reporters, he has been told "500 times" that if he talks, he's fired. He certainly didn't contact me because his politics are similar to mine. "George Bush was too liberal for me," he explained. But: "I like the media. The country couldn't run without it, and it's important to have media from both the left and right."

He also called because on Tuesday BP told me (again) that I couldn't go to Elmer's Island with a producer from PBS's Need to Know because the road to it "needed more gravel." This was a lie: "Everyone else," Elmer said, "is driving on that road"—about 20 cars and vans going up and down a day, and the re-graveling had happened the day before we arrived. Since BP was making my job so much harder, Elmer wanted to make it a little easier.

BP's got good reason for wanting to keep insiders like Elmer away from reporters. Elmer says that last Thursday, when the Coast Guard was announcing that the top kill seemed to be working, the cleanup supervisors on Grand Isle had already been informed it was a failure—which, of course, was not publicly announced until several days later.

And as more and more oil continues to deluge Louisiana shores, the cleanup efforts are slowing down. Workers have spent inordinate amounts of time sitting around waiting to be utilized, a frustration echoed by other workers who talked to friends of mine who were on a day trip to the beach. The workers are also upset because last Friday, many of them weren't paid as scheduled. According to Elmer, the mostly white foremen (whom he welcomed me to picture as stereotypical gristly union-boss types) told their mostly black subordinates that they didn't want to hear any bitching about it and that if they had a problem they could go home. Such unpleasant work in such an unpleasant environment and for such low pay (as little as $10 an hour) is, not surprisingly, leading to superhigh attrition. Last week, there were 110 workers on Elmer's Island. Right now, there are only 60 cleaning up the 1,700-acre home to fish, shrimp, and crab nurseries. (I called ES&H, the subcontractor running the cleanup show, for comment, but it only has one person who talks to the media, and that person was not available today.)

Elmer's Island was already in bad shape when I was there two weeks ago, but the fire chief of nearby Grand Isle told me yesterday that a massive slick of concentrated oil had been seen just offshore. This morning, Elmer emailed me an update about the forbidden island. "I thought you might be interested to know," he wrote, "there's a LOT more oil out on the beach now."

David Vitter - You Get What You Pay For - He Should Know.

What happens when you're a small government, pro-business conservative and your state gets pummeled by one of the worst man made disasters ever – not five years after getting pummeled by one of the worst natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina)? If you're Louisiana Senator David Vitter, you double down on offshore drilling and push for a liability cap for BP.

You know Vitter - he is one of the infamous clients of “DC Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey.  At the time Vitter held a press conference, his wife by his side, where he admitted to “a very serious sin,” though he didn't detail the sin.

When her husband, Louisiana Senator David Vitter found himself in the midst of a prostitution scandal, Wendy Vitter, a former prosecutor who once criticized Hillary Clinton for choosing to stay with Bill, stood in support of her husband as he issued public apologies.

But it's Vitter's early support of a liability cap – he introduced legislation that he promoted in last weekend's weekly GOP radio address – that's landing the son of a Chevron petroleum engineer in trouble. Local and national Democrats have been pounding Vitter for seeking to limit the amount of legal damages BP would be responsible for to the last four quarters of profit. “Unlike Republicans, Democrats are not going to protect BP – and given their track record, we are certainly not going to rely on BP's word as the only thing ensuring that taxpayers are not left on the hook to pay for the disaster they caused,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement.

Why would anyone trust this man?  Looks like the girls that Vitter spends his time and money on have taught him well. The man's become a whore.

Count Me Surprised - Al and Tipper Gore, married 40 years, to separate.

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years of marriage that included a White House run when their sunny relationship offered a counterpoint to President Bill Clinton's philandering.


According to an e-mail circulated among the couple's associates on Tuesday, the Gores said it was "a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."

Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider confirmed the statement came from the Gores, but declined to comment further.

The Gores were telling friends they "grew apart" after 40 years of marriage and there was no affair involved, according to two longtime close associates and family friends, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was a personal matter.

The associates said the Gores, over time, had carved out separate lives, with the former vice president on the road frequently. One of the associates said: "Their lives had gotten more and more separated."

Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George W. Bush. He has since campaigned worldwide to draw attention to climate change, which in 2007 led to a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

The Gores, who were married on May 19, 1970, at the National Cathedral in Washington, crafted an image as a happily married couple during his eight-year stint as vice president in the 1990s and a presidential candidate in 2000. The couple famously exchanged a long kiss during the 2000 Democratic presidential convention.

Priorities

The top earning hedge funders got over $18 billion from their hedge funds in 2009. That works out to be a tad under a million an hour each. Elsewhere, 150,000 teachers will lose their jobs this year – largely because of the things these financial geniuses did to our economy. Under the financial reform legislation these poor hedgies will have to pay as much as 15% of their earnings in taxes. The teachers may be eligible for unemployment benefits.

How Do You Know A Politician Lies? They Open Their Mouths!

I know, bad joke.  But it seems all too true.  Now comes the story of Rep. Mark Kirk's (R-Il.).  Mr. Kirk's new claim to fame is his false claim that he was named the Navy Intelligence Officer of the Year in the late 1990's which was made at a committee hearing.  Thanks to the long arm of C-SPAN we can reach back and bring it up as if it happened yesterday.


What is striking about Rep. Kirk's assertion in the video is that it appears scripted and thought out, which belies Kirk's recent defense that the false claim on his website -- that was only removed last week after a Washington Post investigation -- regarding the award was little more than an administrative oversight.

Unfortunately Mr. Kirk is not alone in his "mis-speaking."  Other notables From (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/) include:
 

• Wes Cooley.  Cooley (R-OR) was elected to Congress as part of the 1994 GOP landslide, but only served one term. Why? A few reasons, actually, but the one that ultimately harmed him the most was the whopper he told about his supposed service in the Korean War. Cooley claimed he was unable to prove his service because, as a member of the Army Special Forces, his missions were secret, and that all records of his service had been destroyed in a fire. Oh yeah. He also claimed that his direct report--Sergeant Major Clifford Poppy had been killed--a claim to which the still-living Poppy responded "Tell him he's a liar. Tell him Sergeant Poppy said that."
• Bruce Faulkner Caputo.  When they fall, they fall hard...and fast. Caputo (R) hoped to unseat Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1982 midterms, but withdrew in March of that year after a run-in with then-Moynihan aide Tim Russert. The future Meet the Press host discovered that Caputo had claimed to have been drafted into, and served in, the Army during the Vietnam war. The reality? Caputo escaped the draft by working for the Pentagon as a civilian analyst.
• Dick Blumenthal.  This one needs no introduction. Blumenthal (D)--Connecticut's Attorney General and Democratic nominee for Senate--has, at least a handful of times, claimed to have served "in" Vietnam. More accurately--and, in fact, the way Blumenthal himself usually describes it--he was a reservist who served during Vietnam, but never overseas. His chief rival, Republican, and professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon, dug up the claim, and fed it to the New York Times, which turned the indiscretions into a potentially major issue for a candidate who would otherwise sail to election.

And I save for last one which will surely stir the fires of hate from neo-conservatives.

Ronald Reagan - Ronaldus Magnus. The most beloved man in all of conservatism repeatedly confused (or "confused") scenes from his acting career with heroic battlefield moments...that he never participated in or witnessed. Reagan, for instance, is reported to have boasted to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal of photographing concentration camps at the end of World War II. He even told Shamir he'd helped liberate Auschwitz. In his autobiography he wrote "by the time I got out of the Army Air Corps all I wanted to do--in common with several million other veterans--was to rest up, make love to my wife." But as Michael Schaller wrote in his book Reckoning with Reagan, "This obscured the fact that unlike most of the "several million other veterans," Reagan had left neither home nor wife while in military service."

America's Muslim Patriots

I would bet that the title "America's Muslim Patriots" strikes fear in the hearts of many Americans.  I don't believe that is because Americans hate or are afraid of people of others cultures and religions, but because many Americans have become programed to distrust all and anything Muslim.

Today in http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ Jessica Corry has an interesting article about American Muslim Patriots which is well worth a read.  From her article, Ms. Corry says:

I first met Aliya and Rehan Hasan as our then four-year-old daughters gorged themselves on cake at a mutual friend's birthday party. We swapped perspectives on kindergarten curriculum and summer camps. We quickly realized we had a lot in common, including a strong libertarian Republican ideology. We exchanged numbers to get the kids together for a future play date.

Perfectly nice people, I remember thinking. And very smart. She's a doctor and he's a lawyer. Their ethnicity or religion wasn't a topic of conversation, nor was my family's. As I write this today, however, all I can think about is both characteristics. As Muslims and ethnic Pakistanis, they are the enemy to some within our political party.

I also have known and worked with a number of very accomplished Muslims and what always struck me (apart from how kind and generous they were) was how much they were just like anyone else.  They shared the same hope and desire for their families and, despite a difference in religious background, were just as American as apple pie as my family.  But being "Muslim" in America does, rightly or wrongly, cause many to take pause.  The article continues:

Rehan's title as chairman of Colorado's American Civil Liberties Union might prove controversial enough amongst social conservatives to ban him eternally from the GOP's inner-circles. Add Muslim to the mix and he's treated with a warm greeting typically reserved for the taxman.

It's unfortunate. As a co-founder of Muslims for America, Rehan believes in a strong America more than almost any other politico I've met. He voted for Bush twice and gave other courageous Muslims a platform for their condemnation of radical Islam. He recently helped organize an anti-terrorism rally at the state Capitol in Denver. He also speaks on occasion to Republican groups. One of the inevitable first questions he faces is this: Are you Muslim first or American first? It's a question a Christian speaker could answer either way. For Rehan and his family, however, any reference to God's law could quickly become a potential land mine.

I know many Christians would would say of course their Christianity comes first, and no one would blink an eye.  How would you respond to a Muslim who said the same?

It is not hard to understand why people react that way - part of it is a basic human nature to be wary of that which is different from us.  So recognizing that, we must do more to overcome such a stereotype.  The article continues:

While 9-11 forced Americans to look at the world--and their place in it--in a whole new way, it should have also taught us a very important lesson that too many among us seem determined to ignore. The best way to fight radical Muslim terrorism is through cultivating Muslim leaders to counter fanaticism. By shutting the door to honorable, hard working people simply because of their ethnicity or religion, we're in some ways just as ignorant as the cultures who shroud women in burkas.

 
Just food for thought.  We can all do better at getting along.  As Jessica says "the world is a dangerous place. It is made more dangerous by ignorance."