###
###
It seems that the company that has destroyed a portion of the U.S.' economy has most of it's employees here in the U.S. but wants to avoid paying for the services it uses (those services paid for by actually living, breathing American human beings) by saying it's a Swiss company.
Transocean, Ltd, the company that operates the Deepwater Horizon oil rig which recently exploded in the gulf, is the "world's biggest offshore drilling contractor." The Ap reports today that Transocean, after moving its headquarters from the U.S. to Zug, Switzerland, two years ago, paid a paltry 16 percent on its corporate income last year, less than half of the current American corporate income tax rate of 35 percent.
...only a dozen of Transocean's employees are physically located in Zug — more than 1,300 are based in Houston, Texas. - think progress
Where is the "tea bagger" ourtrage over this anti-Americanism?
###
###
Uber-D'oh
Who could have guessed that campaigning on taking away voters' voting rights wouldn't catch fire with voters?
Politicians are funny folks, right and left. And a lot of Republicans have been happy to get behind pretty much anything the Tea Partiers have run up the flag pole. But it turns out that maybe campaigning on taking away people's right to vote for their senators wasn't such a hot idea. And now a few Republicans -- like Steve Stivers in Ohio and among others -- are now trying to backtrack as fast as they can.
###
Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
"There's a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water," said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. "There's a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column."
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. "If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months," she said Saturday. "That is alarming."
BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.
"The answer is no to that," a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. "We're not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It's not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort."
Meanwhile, Evita Mooselini still says "Drill, baby drill"
Because in Sarah Palin's world, if you pray really really really really really hard, the baby Jesus will make the oil magically disappear.
###
If you want to get an idea of just how big the deepwater horizon oil spill is, use this tool to see what it would look like if it was covering your city.
###
Before guns were invented, lives were lost.###
Well could we please get the f**k out, then?
'Nobody is Winning,' Admits McChrystal
The weakness of the Kabul government is hindering attempts by US and Nato forces to gain much ground from the insurgents
###
###
Drill, baby, drill! Then cap! And come back for the oil later when it is more expensive!
You do understand that's what BP was doing, right?
You do grasp, don't you, that BP wasn't drilling up a bunch of oil so it could generously pump it immediately into the American domestic marketplace, causing our gasoline prices to decrease and alleviating our economic dependence on our swarthy adversaries overseas. That's not what was actually happening when they sprung this leak in the Gulf, you do know that, right?
That they'd actually discovered some oil, and they were in the process of capping the well so that they could come back later and easily start pulling the Texas Tea out of the ground when prices were higher. You know that, right?
That there's a gooey nasty mess of epic proportions in our waters because another corporation was trying to gouge you yet again? Get it?
"Drill Baby Drill" was bullshit during the summer of 2008 and it's bullshit now. K?
###
I'm so old I remember when she called Obama a 'charismatic guy with a teleprompter.'
###
On corporate personhood: If BP were a person it would be a career criminal, a pathological liar and an international serial killer with a rap sheet several times the size of the Chicago Yellow Pages.
###
###
Just read the comments at NOLA.com, and you'll see how seething mad the people are down there:
Corporations being regarded as people by our laws and courts seems to be back firing a bit. If you operate a hot dog stand and sell contaminated hot dogs that get people sick you are out of business and get sued. If you operate an oil drilling operation and cause an eco-disaster you collect insurance money for you losses, you have limited liability and the profits keep rolling in. We need some fundamental change.
Yet the last I checked, Mary Landrieu was still going to bat for the oil companies. It's not bad enough that her position is wrongheaded, she's doubling down and taking the politically stupid one, as well.
I really do not understand blue dogs.
###
The good war
###
If you got all blubbery over Christian the Lion, take a gander at this.
###
In a move that's being heavily criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Bushbama administration is planning to ask Congress to delay terror suspects' probable cause hearings as a way to allow interrogators additional time for questioning before the individual is informed of their rights or shown to a judge.
###
Is it any wonder that President Obama didn't pursue Bush Administration officials for war crimes?
###
As oil continues to gush into the Gulf, Mississippi offers $75 gas cards to tourists who come to the region.
###
So you thought that BP and Transocean sucked
And of course they do. But thanks to this Op-ed piece by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship from Truthout, we get a smidgen of keener insight into just how thoroughly those two companies suck...
###
Frank Rich: A Heaven-Sent Rent Boy
