Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

The willow is too close to the house.

The words do not have to be perfect.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

You cannot shame the shameless.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

T R E 4 5 O N

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

You are here: Home / Hit ’em up

Hit ’em up

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No one could have predicted:

Attorney General Troy King has asked BP to cease circulating settlement agreements among south Alabamians.Alabama Attorney General Troy King said tonight that he has told representatives of BP Plc. that they should stop circulating settlement agreements among coastal Alabamians.

The agreements, King said, essentially require that people give up the right to sue in exchange for payment of up to $5,000.

Big government liberal regulations get in the way of Galtian superhero business.

When something goes wrong, no one could have predicted it.

Once it starts going wrong, nothing can be done unless you can do underwater surgery with robotic submarines, you naive fucking hippie.

Tort reform!

Countdown to the Mickey Kaus/Gregg Easterbrook about the *good news* about the oil spill.

And how come we never hear about all the oil rigs that aren’t spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico?

Let the eagle soar.

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  2. 2.

    EdTheRed

    Check this out
    You motherfuckers know what time it is
    I don’t know why I’m even on this track
    You all librulz ain’t even on my level
    I’m going to let my little lawyers
    Ride on you
    Bitch made ass Gulf Coast bitches

  3. 3.

    Svensker

    I clicked on that link, you bustard.

    Glad the AG is stopping the bribes — way to be scumbags, BP. Hopefully, they’ll get in touch with anyone who already signed one of those “contracts” and advise the strike>sucker citizen how to void it.

  4. 4.

    MikeJ

    Last night I was wondering something. Obviously the fishermen on the coast will sue BP, and they’ll win. They probably won’t get as much as they deserve, but they’ll get something.

    I love shrimp. Prices are going to go up several bucks a pound easy. Maybe more. I think shrimp loving Americans (100 million? 200 million?) should be declared a class for purpose of recovering our loses from BP. A pound a week for the next, oh, two years. $2 extra * 104 weeks * 150 million.

    Then we’ll start talking about oysters.

  6. 6.

    patrick II

    It seems like BP had more legal backup plans than shutoff valve backup plans. It is too bad they weren’t as well prepared for the original catastrophe as they are trying to be for the financial one.

  7. 7.

    wrb

    Might be the best offer they’ll get.

    NYT

    But reimbursement may be one of the largest battles to come, given that federal law sets a limit of $75 million on BP’s liability for damages, apart from the cleanup costs.

    “It’s going to be extremely tricky” to reimburse fishermen and others if economic damages tally above $75 million, said Stuart Smith, a New Orleans-based lawyer who is pushing for Congressional action to amend the law. “They may not be obligated to pay more than that unless they agree to do it.”

    And oil is the most cost-effective energy source in this, our free market.

  9. 9.

    MikeJ

    @wrb: In the Exxon case the Supremes said punitive damages couldn’t go over 10x economic damages. So figure a max of $750m punitive.

  11. 11.

    MattF

    Getting Alabamans to sign a document giving up their right to sue BP– it’s hard. It’s like doing brain surgery. In the dark. On rollerskates. While being attacked by bumper cars driven by clowns. On unicycles.

  12. 12.

    WyldPiratd

    The garbled insanity of the mock “discourse” following the quote just deflated my mood to ground zero.

    Why? The mocking insanity of DougJ snark is a spot on imitation of how our media and government function.

    Fuck it… The fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t shit. Just wait til historians examine the aftermath of the fall of the American “empire”.

  13. 13.

    frankdawg

    Oh sure – you f’in hippies are mad because BP _had_ made plans for what to do when this happened. Honestly you guys would complain if you got hung with a new rope!

    Also part of their plan I am sure:
    BP is taking some pains now to remind everyone that the platform was not _THEIR_ platform! That belonged to some other schmucks. I see lots of ‘joint-and-several’ actions keeping squadrons of lawyers busy for their entire career. Then, ultimately, it will be the tax payer left with the monetary damages and the locals whatever residual the lawyers drop while making their escape.

  16. 16.

    Jay C

    I’m surprised that the Alabama AG would even have the time to try to police BP’s quitclaim scam down along their coast; I would have thought his office would have been completely swamped with trying to sue the Federal Government over their FascistCommieNaziTyrannyOppression Health Care Reform plan to have much time for anything else….

    @patrick II:

    It seems like BP had more legal backup plans than shutoff valve backup plans

    Heh – cheaper and more cost-effective! This is NO surprise….

  17. 17.

    artem1s

    BP is taking some pains now to remind everyone that the platform was not THEIR platform! That belonged to some other schmucks.

    god, this is starting to sound like that West Wing episode when Sam tells the oil company to independently incorporate the boat and mortgage it to the hilt so there would be no profit at the end of suing it.

  18. 18.

    scudbucket

    Where’s my waiver and 5k offer? I live in Colorado … but still.

    And you bring up a good point about all the other well behaved wells. They’re like all those priests who didn’t molest anyone. It would be unfair to malign the whole institution of offshore drilling because of one bad actor.

  22. 22.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @frankdawg: Simply sue everyone remotely connected with building and operating the platform and claim they are jointly and severally liable. Let them all point fingers at one another.

  24. 24.

    r€nato

    @wrb:

    “It’s going to be extremely tricky” to reimburse fishermen and others if economic damages tally above $75 million, said Stuart Smith, a New Orleans-based lawyer who is pushing for Congressional action to amend the law. “They may not be obligated to pay more than that unless they agree to do it.”

    May I humbly suggest, then, an oil spill tax. Pass it right fucking now. $1000 for every gallon of oil spilled. The tax is collected, then distributed among those affected.

    Problem solved. Well, except for cleaning up the spill for generations to come.

  25. 25.

    wrb

    More jollity:

    The Ugliest.
    This spew stoppage takes longer to reach a full closure; the subsequent cleanup may take a decade. The Gulf becomes a damaged sea for a generation. The oil slick leaks beyond the western Florida coast, enters the Gulfstream and reaches the eastern coast of the United States and beyond. Use your imagination for the rest of the damage. Monetary cost is now measured in the many hundreds of billions of dollars.
    Some thoughts about markets and impacts.

    Usually, the first estimates in any crises are too low. That is true here. 1000 barrels a day is now 5000, and some estimates of spillage are trending higher. No one knows exactly. The containment and boom mechanism is subject to weather cooperation as we can see this weekend. Soon we are entering the hurricane season. The thoughts of a storm stirring up the Gulf, hampering any cleanup or remediation drilling effort and creating a huge 10,000 square mile black stew is frightening to every professional in the business.

    This will be a financial calamity for many firms, not just BP and its partners and service providers. Their liabilities are immense and must not be underestimated. The first estimate of $12.5 billion is only a starter.

    Thousands of small and independent businesses as well as larger public companies in tourism are hurt here. This is not just about the source of half the nation’s shrimp. That is already a casualty. It’s also about the bank loans for the $200,000 shrimp boat and the house the boat owner and/or his employees live in and the fact that this shock piles on a fragile financial system that is trying to recover from a three-year financial crisis. Case study, my fishing guide in the Everglades splits his time between Florida and Louisiana. His May bookings in LA have cancelled. His colleagues lost theirs and their lodge will be empty. They are busy trying to find work in the clean up. For him, his wife and eleven year old daughter, his $600 a day guide fees just went “poof”. When I asked him if he thought he had a legal claim on BP, he said he hadn’t thought about it yet but it gave him pause. As we suggested above, the $12.5 billion loss estimate is only a starter.

    Federal deficit spending will certainly rise by tens, and maybe hundreds, of billions as emergency appropriations are directed at larger and larger efforts to clean up this mess. At the same time, federal and state revenues tied to Gulf-region businesses will fall. My colleague John Mousseau will be discussing the impact on state and local government debt in a separate research commentary

    .

    We expect that the Federal Reserve will extend the timeframe that we have come to know as the “extended period” in the making of its monetary policy. We do not expect the Fed to raise interest rates at all for the rest of this year, and maybe well into next year. We expect to see the deterioration of the economic statistics for the US to reveal the onset of this oil-slick crisis in May, and the negative impact will intensify during the summer months. A “double-dip” recession probably has been made more likely by this tragedy.

    We are at the highest level of cash in our US stock accounts that we have seen in over a year and a half. We expect a market correction will present entry points at lower stock prices. We have exited the financial sectors, including the insurance ETF. We now worry about the banks that are exposed. We do not own the major oil stocks now. Some of them face enormous liability payments

  26. 26.

    Zifnab

    I can’t wait for those slackers and tree-huggers from Florida to Texas go begging to Big Daddy Government for disaster relief bailouts.

    But not me. I’m not putting up with another round of Gulf Coast Liberals leaching from the government teet. I’m going to take my beach front property and move it to Wyoming.

    If God meant for the beech to be clear of oil slick, he would have compelled the free market to protect it. This is his punishment for allowing gays to get married and illegal immigrants to enter his country.

  27. 27.

    daveNYC

    This is a black swan event.

    Black swan, black sea gull, black turtle, black freaking everything.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Unless you mean that literally, as in the swans will be covered in crude oil, it is not a black swan event. It is not an unexpected enough event to qualify.

  30. 30.

    Culture of Truth

    A contrarian who likes attention should throw up a quick blog post about how maybe the poor people of the Gulf need that $5,000 and who are you elitist snobs to tell them they shouldn’t be allowed to take it?!

  32. 32.

    r€nato

    This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. Every single morning I get to read about it worsening, and worsening, and worsening. I can only imagine what it’s going to be like for those living with it.

  33. 33.

    Jon H

    I’m waiting for someone to argue “Well, we already shit the nest, why not fill the Gulf with MORE drilling rigs?”

    At the very least, I’d expect the East and West coast states to try that, in arguing against rigs off their own coastlines.

  34. 34.

    scav

    @Zifnab: so which is it? Your oil-slicked beach will probably require a baggage fee but your oil-slicked beech might just be able to make it into the cabin on some airlines.

  36. 36.

    ksmiami

    but but but poor Sarah Palin. Will no one think of her slogan making talents? /snark

  37. 37.

    r€nato

    I wonder if Pat Robertson will have the good sense to keep his mouth shut this time around.

  38. 38.

    someguy

    I think what we really need is for Republicans to dig up the corpse of Terry Schiavo and then get a holistic healer to tell us what her decomposed brain is telling us to do.

    I’m thinkin’ tax cuts.

  40. 40.

    Jon H

    @r€nato: “I wonder if Pat Robertson will have the good sense to keep his mouth shut this time around.”

    Obvs that drilling rig must have been “the gay one”.

  42. 42.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    I’m just glad not to be managing the email servers, etc. on which the internal documents of BP and Transocean discussing the planning history of this rig are stored. ‘Cause I’m guessing that the mean time before failure of those systems should be occurring right about…

    …now.

    It would be a real shame if somebody were to slap a subpoena on them before the irrecoverable data losses happened.

  43. 43.

    PanAmerican

    GREEN BALLOONS! GREEN BALLOONS! GREEN BALLOONS!

    Hi, I’m Troy King. You may remember me from such nuisance lawsuits as Real America vs. Kenyan Usurper Death Panels……

    My favorite was Gene Taylor (D-dumfuckistan). It’s not THAT bad. From 1000ft it looked like chocolate milk.

    Honest to fuck.

  44. 44.

    Corner Stone

    What seems evident to me is that the FSM clearly enjoys pantsing the Republicans. *
    Jindal mocks volcano monitoring – we get volcanoes blowing shit up.
    Palin mocks environmental concerns with her ghastly slogan of “Drill, baby, drill” – we get this epic disaster.
    Please, for the love of whatever’s left, let’s hope they don’t mock maintenance schedules for our nuclear bomber fleet.

    *She can be a wrathful and merciless bitch of a deity.

  45. 45.

    KDP

    Anyone noticed how many of these recent natural disasters (tornados, floods, oil slicks) are occurring in the deeply Republican South?

    Wasn’t there a story last spring about a right-wing prayer circle to strike down Democrats that boomeranged onto some right-wing hero? I remember some C-Span caller being very upset about that.

    http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2009-12-24/story/c_span_caller_says_waycross_tea_party_members_are_praying_for_senators

    Hmmm, the Hand of God at work? Too bad so many innocents will suffer over this.

  46. 46.

    Mike in NC

    And how come we never hear about all the oil rigs that aren’t spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico?

    Surely we can all agree that BP is Taxed Enough Already, right?

  47. 47.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Corner Stone:

    Please, for the love of whatever’s left, let’s hope they don’t mock maintenance schedules for our nuclear bomber fleet.

    Nah, their next gambit will be mocking the K/T extinction event as a myth and asteroid detection astronomy as a liberal-scientific-complex boondoogle…

  48. 48.

    scav

    @South of I-10: yoikes! even a weapons-grade wimp might consider using legal teams as rubble to plug that hole and maybe, even, to sop up the mess that washes ashore. they might be too greasy, practically speaking though. if so, maybe we could keep them in reserve and use them to start back-fires as necessary.

  49. 49.

    South of I-10

    @scav: I’d have to read it again, but I am pretty sure you become responsible for the entire clean-up if you sign it.

  51. 51.

    Mark S.

    $75 million? God I hate our Congress. You throw a couple million at those whores and you can literally save tens of billions.

  52. 52.

    El Cid

    IF THEY’D JUST STOP ALL DA SPENDIN’ AND CUT THE TAXES THE OIL’D CLEAN ITSELF UP

  53. 53.

    wrb

    I am pretty sure you become responsible for the entire clean-up if you sign it

    And for the emotional suffering of BP executives and their lawyers- and of their families.

  54. 54.

    eric

    Now, I wonder if a class could get an injunctive order requiring super fast clean up by BP and when BP cannot meet the schedule, they get sanctions that go to the plaintiffs wholly apart from subsequent damages.

    eric

  55. 55.

    jwb

    @El Cid: See, if you cut government spending, then you can’t monitor the spill. You can’t monitor the spill, the spill doesn’t exist. The spill is therefore clearly the fault of the government monitoring. So all we need to do is get rid of the government monitoring and the spill goes away. Plus we get a tax cut. And unicorns. QED.

  56. 56.

    Culture of Truth

    I’m waiting for someone to argue “Well, we already shit the nest, why not fill the Gulf with MORE drilling rigs?”

    From my blog:

    Alexander: the GOP are the real environmentalists – which means we have to keep drilling in the Gulf

    Gregory: are you serious?

    Alexander: sure it’s already covered in oil so now is the perfect time

  58. 58.

    scudbucket

    @Corner Stone: What seems evident to me is that the FSM clearly enjoys pantsing the Republicans. *

    FSM, karma, odds. With as much counterintuitive, demonstrably false, up is down bullshit as they spew, they can’t help but look like jackasses at least twice a day, directly inverting the broken clock analogy.

  59. 59.

    stickler

    They were offering $5000, without any fixed liability yet? Holy crap, BP must be shitting its pants with fear. Which means the real worst case scenario is much worse than even the pessimists’ worst case. ‘Cause we all know that BP isn’t as ignorant about the reality here as they let on. “Hoocoodanode” doesn’t fly in the board room, and Big Oil isn’t in the habit of handing out walking-around money unless they think they really, really have to.

    Yikes. Buy shrimp futures.

  61. 61.

    Citizen_X

    @wrb: I don’t think it has sunk in with most people just how huge and destructive this is going to end up being. This non-natural disaster passed Exxon Valdez levels a long time ago. This is a Chernobyl-scale event. In both cases, we’ve got a fuckup that wreaks havoc at a continental (or oceanic in this case, or even fucking up two oceans) scale.

    You can call this the oil industry’s Chernobyl. You can call this capitalism’s Chernobyl. That is the only other environmental disaster that is even remotely comparable in scope*.

    *Although AGW will, unfortunately, eventually dwarf both.

  62. 62.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    Finally, noted Marine Biologist and Land Shark expert Rush Limbaugh weighs in.

    “The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there. It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.”

    Puts the oink! into Capitalist Pig.

  63. 63.

    El Cid

    O/T: Mexico’s right wing President urges Mexican citizens to stay away from Arizona.

    Calderón advises Mexicans against travel to Arizona
    __
    Bonn – Mexican President Felipe Calderón advised Mexicans to avoid travel to Arizona, in protest of the controversial anti-immigrant law recently passed in that U.S. state. The Mexican Senate also recommended cancellation of purchases from Arizona.
    __
    Felipe Calderón informed reporters in Bonn, Germany, AP reports, where he is participating in a climate conference, that Mexico has issued a travel alert to “our fellow citizens to be aware of the scope of legislation SB 1070 and avoid suffering harassment or discriminatory treatment” in Arizona.
    “We stress the need to act safely, and omit as much as possible any unnecessary trips to that state,” Calderon said, as reported in Mexico by the Presidential Office…
    __
    …Furthermore, the Mexican Senate announced on Friday a plan of action to protest over the next 90 days against the controversial legislation and asked the federal and state governments to cancel all purchases from Arizona.

  64. 64.

    Digital Amish

    Countdown to the Mickey Kaus/Gregg Easterbrook about the good news about the oil spill.

    Well hurricane season is upon us. With any luck a cat 4 or 5 will come along, suck all that crude up into a low pressure system, dump it from the Gulf Coast up through and Ohio valley and …. WOHOO! FREE OIL FOR ALL!!!

    Provided of course that the courts don’t decide that BP retains the rights.

  66. 66.

    Midnight Marauder

    @r€nato:

    May I humbly suggest, then, an oil spill tax. Pass it right fucking now. $1000 for every gallon of oil spilled. The tax is collected, then distributed among those affected.
    __
    Problem solved. Well, except for cleaning up the spill for generations to come.

    Well, these guys are trying to make something like that happen as we speak:

    A trio of Democratic Senators are introducing legislation on Monday that would dramatically raise the amount of money that oil companies like BP would have to pay in economic damages in an event of a spill.
    __
    Authored by New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, and co-signed by fellow Garden Stater Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, the (craftily-titled) “Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act” would raise the economic damages liability cap for offshore oil spills from $75 million to $10 billion.
    __[…]
    “We’re glad that the costs for the oil clean up will be covered, but that’s little consolation to the small businesses, fisheries and local governments that will be left to clean up the economic devastation that somebody else caused,” Menendez said in a statement. “We can’t let the burden fall to the taxpayers – we should ensure that those who cause the damage are fully responsible. There is no such thing as a ‘Too Big to Spill’ oil well.”

  67. 67.

    The Moar You Know

    @Culture of Truth: I’d just like to tell you that I am a great admirer of your work.

    You should link to your blog in your handle (use the “website”) field. It is genius.

  68. 68.

    Brandon

    I’ve got 2 points.

    1. Is there any wonder why Alabama is so poor now that we know they’ve got such anti-Big Business government officials?

    2. Wouldn’t now be a good time for Obama to show the teatards that he’s serious about cutting spending by refusing to provide any money for this catastrophy until it gets a CBO score showing that it reduces the defecit or they money if offset by cuts or tax increases?

    How much you wanna bet Bunning and Cornyn won’t be so willing to shut down the Senate with a one man filibuster to stop these payments to real ‘Muricans?

    Also, since there was no problem with this when Bush was Preznit, why should Obama worry his sweet little mind about these people who didn’t vote for him?

  69. 69.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    My apologies if this is all old news, but this link to a newsvine discussion seems to me like one of the better in-depth (no pun intended) presentations for a general audience on the structure of the rig, at least that I’ve come across. Found by way of solanic, h/t Yves Smith. Be sure to follow the link entitled “Schematic of a new leak as of April 28th” at the bottom of the 2nd (solanic) article.

  71. 71.

    slippy

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck: I want Rush to get his lard ass down to the New Orleans area and prove this to us by drinking from the sea. He can just open his mouth and keep swallowing until he proves us all wrong.

    ASS-hole that he is.

  73. 73.

    gnomedad

    I gritted my teeth and checked out what Rush is saying, and the closest I could come to a summary before my eyes started hurting is that Obama should have had it torched right away but now it’s too late. Does anyone know whether that was ever a real option?

  74. 74.

    scav

    @South of I-10: I’m beginning to worry about the hidden responsibilities they may have suckered me into accepting from merely having read the stupid thing.

  76. 76.

    jwb

    @Brandon: What they should do is use this as an excuse to add a substantial tax on all oil, something that will raise gas well above $4 a gallon as a starting point. I fear, however, that we’d learn that people would much prefer a dead Gulf to having to pay the actual social cost of oil.

  77. 77.

    wrb

    @flukebucket:

    The acoustic switch isn’t a complicated idea. Submarines communicate via acoustic pulses. Whales don’t like ’em. The switch is a way to communicate with the blow out preventer when the normal, probably fiber, links aren’t working.

    Since the switch only activates the same BOP that the subs couldn’t activate manually some argue that it wouldn’t have made any difference in this case.

    However, it took hours for the subs to get there and an acoustic switch could have been used immediately.

    If the damage the caused the BOP to become inoperable occurred in the interim, an acoustic switch might have saved the day.

  78. 78.

    wrb

    I wonder if it wouldn’t be achievable if made a direct trade-off. Income taxes go down by the exact amount collected through oil taxes.

  80. 80.

    catclub

    @flukebucket:
    The ‘acoustic switch’ is controlled by an message that is sent
    acoustically rather than by wire.
    How the switch itself is powered – by battery or spring –
    I do not know.

    In one of the earlier threads, a poster showed concern that acoustic systems make large mammals unhappy.
    This is completely unrelated to that. Pings required to signal the switch are short, relatively low energy
    signals.

  81. 81.

    Americanadian

    @eric: Why would you short them? They’re about to become much more valuable, since there will be much fewer of them on the market. Probably some hedge fund managers are way ahead of us on this one though, as there’s nothing more American than turning a buck where there’s a buck to be turned, disasters be damned.

  82. 82.

    flukebucket

    So an acoustic switch is just a wireless way to close the valve. Seems to me that wireless would be the first choice and a standard feature. Beats the hell out of monkeying around with submarines.

  84. 84.

    AnotherBruce

    It’s time to start treating corporations like persons and sentence some of them to death.

  85. 85.

    AhabTRuler

    Flukebucket: It wouldn’t have hurt to have another method for attempting to close the BOP, but acoustic signals don’t propagate in water in an entirely predictable way, so it’s not a guarantee.

    It only duplicates the function of various other switching sytems that failed, it doesn’t add functionality to the BOP.

  87. 87.

    Stooleo

    Can anybody name a major corporation that has been sued out of existence for this sort of a disaster? I can’t think of one. BP should be in the process of liquidating itself and handing the money over for cleanup.

  88. 88.

    stevie314159

    Can someone explain to me why we can’t fire a nuclear-tipped torpedo down the oil hole and seal up the breach like they would do in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea?

  90. 90.

    Jon H

    @gnomedad: “I gritted my teeth and checked out what Rush is saying, and the closest I could come to a summary before my eyes started hurting is that Obama should have had it torched right away but now it’s too late. Does anyone know whether that was ever a real option?”

    I think it depends on how much the oil has mixed with the seawater and emulsified. My impression is that relatively fresh oil will burn, but after it’s had time to mix, it won’t.

  91. 91.

    malraux

    @Americanadian: The big problem is that real gulf shrimp are already pretty rare. Most shrimp are imported from abroad.

    I had a clapper once. Can’t say it was all that reliable.

  92. 92.

    AhabTRuler

    Jon : Plus, you can’t just flick a bic and roll out. An uncontrolled oil fire wouldn’t be much of an improvment, especially for the other rigs out there.

  94. 94.

    Michael

    Can someone explain to me why we can’t fire a nuclear-tipped torpedo down the oil hole and seal up the breach like they would do in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea?

    I’m hoping that’s snark, but after spending a day cruising the net, I fear it isn’t.

    Basically, we have no torpedoes, nuclear or otherwise, designed to work in water a mile deep.

  95. 95.

    Gravenstone

    @Jay C:

    Heh – cheaper and more cost-effective! This is NO surprise

    Actually, no. It would only have taken 100 people to accept terms to match the cost of the non-installed acoustic switch. Sort of helps put into perspective just how (relatively) cheap the fucking thing was, now doesn’t it?

  96. 96.

    PanAmerican

    @stevie314159:

    The problem here is you need a Bruckheimer solution: Bruce Willis as the hard bitten deep driller, Tom Cruise his cocksure partner and their wacky crew of characters. But first Willis has to reconcile with his best diver and ex son-in-law, Cuba Gooding Jr. Who in turn would get back together with his wife and son before saving the planet while dying on cue. USA! USA!

  97. 97.

    catclub

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck:

    did you know they also run PIPES to shore? So yes they can do it.

    Of course the cables that are run between continents expect to have many paying customers and lots of business.
    I think the business case for laying fiber to every wellhead might be a little less robust.

    Or were you going to suggest only laying fiber to the ones that are going to have blowouts? Since those are the only ones you really need.

  99. 99.

    Origuy

    @Stooleo:
    After the Bhopal disaster, Union Carbide was bought out by Dow, but it still exists as a subsidiary. That’s the closest I can think of.

  101. 101.

    stuckinred

    From another mensa member:

    Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) suggested over the weekend that people shouldn’t be “scared” about the Gulf Coast oil spill and in justifying his claim compared the massive slick to “chocolate milk.”

    On Saturday, Taylor flew over the oil spill in a Coast Guard plane and at first glance declared that the site was “not as bad” as he expected it to be.

  102. 102.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    @catclub:

    Or were you going to suggest only laying fiber to the ones that are going to have blowouts?

    Just these of course. duh. When the final bill comes due for this disaster, whatever BP is worth will likely be a drop in the bucket. And the taxpayer will no doubt get stuck paying for most it. Like they always do when big bidness screws the pooch. My guess is when folks along the coast see their beaches turn black and Florida goes bankrupt from a dead tourist industry, the will to find a few extra bucks to make mostly sure this doesn’t happen again, will be evident. Whether all of part of it comes from the public or private sector. Since they are not going to cease drilling deep oil wells, lest Americans won’t be able to drive around all day in their SUV’s, like it’s their god given right.

  103. 103.

    Svensker

    @Jon H:

    “I gritted my teeth and checked out what Rush is saying, and the closest I could come to a summary before my eyes started hurting is that Obama should have had it torched right away but now it’s too late. Does anyone know whether that was ever a real option?”

    As usual, Rush is a fool as well as an ass. They burned some of the oil, but it didn’t work very well and burning more wouldn’t have been very effective under the circumstances, according to this article.

  104. 104.

    jwb

    @PanAmerican: Yes, I’m sure Hollywood is already hard at work solving our problem, and we’ll soon see Bruce Willis saving the Gulf on the silver screen even as the real Gulf dies a slow death.

  106. 106.

    kay

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck:

    My guess is when folks along the coast see their beaches turn black and Florida goes bankrupt from a dead tourist industry, the will to find a few extra bucks to make mostly sure this doesn’t happen again, will be evident. Whether all of part of it comes from the public or private sector. Since they are not going to cease drilling deep oil wells, lest Americans won’t be able to drive around all day in their SUV’s, like it’s their god given right.

    The coast tourism industry is oil-dependent though. How many of those tourists are in the water in a boat with an engine? They need a SUV or a truck to pull the boat to the water.
    I was thinking that commercial fishing and drilling for oil in the same water might not be a great mix for a regional economy, but then you start to realize tourism probably grinds to a halt without cheap gasoline, so there goes Number Three on the revenue list.

  107. 107.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    @kay: Oil companies have been making out like bandits for years now, something like 40 billion collectively per year, at least when Bush was president, so I reckon they can pony up a few bucks for the BTA, whatever that turns out to be, to not destroy the ocean and it’s beaches and estuaries like what is happening. It seems likely that the GC fishing industry is dead as Franco for at least a decade, and if they don’t get the thing shut off fairly soon the Gulf Stream will carry the black blob all up and the east coast as well. Because sooner or later the crimped pipe will fall away and it’s wide open the spicket,

    Cheap gasoline will not be a factor for tourists who go to FL mainly for it’s white sandy bleaches that will now turn gooey black for the foreseeable future. They just won’t bother. It is almost impossible to overstate this looming disaster. The only real hope is to drill adjacent wells and pump concrete into the same oil deposit hopefully to seal the thing. But that will take 90 days and their is no guarantee it will work for a well this deep.

  108. 108.

    Bulworth

    Are the teabaggers out protesting the government forcing itself down everyone’s throat by trying to contain the damage from the oil spill?

  109. 109.

    stevie314159

    @Michael:

    No that’s not snark.

    Snark would be “Why can’t we train dolphins to do emergency spot welding of oil pipes?”

    See the difference?

  110. 110.

    Surly Duff

    @KDP:

    Yes, I notice that hurricanes and tornadoes often occur in the South. Just like I notice how the flat Midwest often has flooding. And how the dry Western states have problems with wildfires. And don’t get me started on how those people who live on fault lines typically deal with earthquakes.

    Don’t be an jackass.

  111. 111.

    catclub

    My understanding is that the reason the Exxon Valdez was so bad was because it dumped a very large amount of oil in
    a relatively confined area – Prince William Sound – and the
    oil spill immediately came ashore. That does not appear to be the case here. The Gulf of Mexico is pretty big. If the spill sits on the surface for long enough, much of the volatile fraction evaporates and the non-volatile fraction sinks – distillation!. When it happens this way, the damage to wildlife and wetlands is substantially reduced.

    Dispersion – via the Gulf Stream – which I find hard to believe, could actually mitigate the damage – the ocean is really big.

  112. 112.

    wrb

    @stevie314159:

    No that’s not snark

    Then

    Because it might just blow the thing wide open

    Because the underwater nuclear testing in the south seas produced ecological disasters perhaps even worse than this.

    “Radioactive cauldrons” was a description used more than once.

  113. 113.

    Chuck

    I want to recreate the end of Quantum of Solace with Rush and his “all natural” oil.

    “I bet you make it 20 miles before you think about drinking that”

  114. 114.

    chrome agnomen

    quite you whining libtards. think how much worse it would be to look at a bunch of ugly wind turbines offshore.

  115. 115.

    catclub

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck: #108
    “It is almost impossible to overstate this looming disaster.”
    But it is worth a shot?

    By some measures over a million people died as a result of the Iraq invasion. GWB grabbed onto ‘over 30 thousand civilian casualties’.

    The 2004 tsunami killed over 200,000 people and devastated
    various island countries.

    Where do you place this one? 500 times worse than those?
    A billion?

    How about some perspective here?

  116. 116.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    @catclub: What are you, self appointed smart ass of the day?. This is an environmental disaster primarily and an economic one. The items you list there is no comparison to and I didn’t make one. They are all separate disasters in their own way. Now piss off wanker.

  117. 117.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    And in 30 days, Hurricane season begins and I don’t know of any examples of a Hurricane, Typhoon or whatever passing over a large oil slick in the water, especially close to land. With the extreme evaporation and condensation around a tropical storm eyewall, would it pick up petroleum molecules and deposit them inland with rain fall?

  119. 119.

    catclub

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck:
    Self appointed smartass seems preferable to self appointed dumbass/chicken little.

    If you want the job of claiming that the helicopters aren’t laughing over this, take it.

  120. 120.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    @catclub:

    My understanding is that the reason the Exxon Valdez was so bad was because it dumped a very large amount of oil in
    a relatively confined area – Prince William Sound – and the
    oil spill immediately came ashore. That does not appear to be the case here. The Gulf of Mexico is pretty big. If the spill sits on the surface for long enough, much of the volatile fraction evaporates and the non-volatile fraction sinks – distillation!. When it happens this way, the damage to wildlife and wetlands is substantially reduced.

    Dispersion – via the Gulf Stream – which I find hard to believe, could actually mitigate the damage – the ocean is really big

    Dumbass? you mean like this comment, probably one of the dumbest ever made on BJ. “the ocean is really big” lol, sounds like you’re channeling Rushbo here. The Gulf Stream is a river of water that flows adjacent to the American coastline all the way around Fl and up the east coast. The only “dispersion” will occur along it’s path northward, and when on shore winds blow it will blow the oil onshore.

    Prince William sound released a pittance of oil compared to what we are likely to end up with here, and PWS shoreline was rock and cleanable, whereas the Gulf is largely marshy estuaries that are highly sensitive and the oil will settle into the sands and toxify it for decades.

    You talk like this event is over. It is not. And with really no good ideas to stop the flow, that will increase largely when the crimped pipe falls away. It is not even remotely comparable to the Exxon Valdez disaster that was enclosed and limited by that enclosure. Right now it is only a few miles offshore of MS and AL, and only because southerly winds have died down.

    You are an idiot that does not have a clue what he/she is talking about

  121. 121.

    joe from Lowell

    Thanks you for posting that John Ashcroft performance.

    It really helps put this oil thing into the proper perspective.

    Cripes, what a disaster.

  122. 122.

    Kyle

    @Surly Duff:

    The difference is that when earthquakes strike California, most of us explain it in terms of fault lines and plate tectonics, not “Jeebus hates Hollywood”.

    The South is where the Wolverines-for-Jesus crowd pompously proclaims that disasters are a sign that God hates the same people they do, so demanding they come up with a ‘reason’ (horrific word for them) why they get hit time and time again may just chisel off the top couple inches of concrete from their skulls.

  123. 123.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    I get worked up about this prolly cause my education and experience has been in Ecology. We Reformed Druids take it personal when Earth Mother has been violated like she has with this clusterfuck stupid mankind shit.

  124. 124.

    stickler

    @Stooleo: Well, the closest analogue might be the end of the East India Company, which was wound down by Parliament after their incompetence sparked the massive Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, whereby the British were damn near run out of India entirely. They had to kill a bunch of Indians to reconquer the subcontinent.

    But of course, even then, the Honourable Company’s investors were compensated.

  125. 125.

    Raven

    Send all the pro-drilling cheerleaders to the Gulf (led by Palin), and tell them: “Mop, baby, mop!”

    They’ve gotten all the pay, now they can start doing the hard manual labor to earn it.

  126. 126.

    Ruckus

    @Mark S.:
    Someone once asked me how much it would take to bribe me as an official at a motorsports event. I told him he didn’t have enough. I was telling him in a roundabout way that I could not be bought. He was offended that I disparaged his net worth, not that I would or would not take a bribe.

    So obviously I am not fit to be a republican, let alone in congress.

  129. 129.

    Zuzu's Petals

    @wrb:

    Well except that they evidently tried to activate the emergency disconnect sequence from the bridge before they even left the rig, to no avail. From what I understand, there was no power to be found, which it seems should have activated the deadman switch.

  130. 130.

    Zuzu's Petals

    I guess I’m a little confused by the article cited in the post. It talks about settlements with citizens who would agree not to sue, then talks about the waivers with the fishermen BP was hiring for cleanup.

    According to the contract linked @42, the fishermen would have agreed not to sue BP for damages associated with their work on the spill, but it wouldn’t prevent them from suing for business losses they suffered because of the spill.

    So does anyone have a link with a pdf/more info about the general no-sue settlement? Just curious.

  131. 131.

    wrb

    @Zuzu’s Petals:

    That assumes knowledge of exactly how the communication with the BOP was impaired. It requires a binary solution- either it was cut entirely or was entirely intact.

    It is not hard to imagine scenarios under which the disconnect connection was compromised (if actually employed- a guy who just ran might not admit it, there is some liability involved) but the deadman wasn’t activated until the platform broke free of the pipe.

    Or sometime sooner, some hours or tens of minutes into the rig burning, but long after the acoustic switch could have been employed.

  133. 133.

    wrb

    @Zuzu’s Petals:
    There has been some conflation between two different documents.

    In the one cited BP asks those it hires (put out of work and desperate due to BP’s screw up) to hold it harmless form the consequences of cleaning up BP’s toxic mess and to agree not to speak of the experience.

    In the other case BP offered to pay people up $5,000 for a pretty much complete release from liability.

    Preying on desperate people, looks like.

  134. 134.

    Zuzu's Petals

    @wrb:

    Actually the deadman wasn’t activated at all. Rather than requiring communication with the BOP, it activates automatically when the power connection to the rig is lost, shears off the drill string, and seals the well.

    There were several people on the bridge. I’m pretty sure the fact that the power was out was attested to by other people elsewhere on the rig, but I suppose we’ll find out sooner or later.

    There are several steps at which the BOP can be activated from the drill floor and the control shed (at least), before and after a blowout. Yet it wasn’t.

    I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been nice to have a remote device and it sure wouldn’t hurt to require them in the future. (Let me be clear, I have a loved one whose life literally depends on the rigorous implementation of safety standards. The more the better as far as I’m concerned.) I just think the people who shout that IT COULD HAVE SAVED THE RIG! don’t always understand the issue.

  135. 135.

    wrb

    @Zuzu’s Petals:

    I just think the people who shout that IT COULD HAVE SAVED THE RIG! don’t always understand the issue.

    I think they are right, based on what we know. Not “would” but “could”.

    The explosion could have compromised the communication between the rig and the BOP. However the deadman might not have been triggered until later.

    The acoustic switch could have been activated immediately, before the rig started to sink and move around, torquing the pipe.

    The fact that it wasn’t operable by the time the subs got there doesn’t seem conclusive. Things could have happened during the lost time.

  137. 137.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @stevie314159:

    Can someone explain to me why we can’t fire a nuclear-tipped torpedo down the oil hole and seal up the breach like they would do in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea?

    Can someone explain to me why we can’t fire a nuclear tipped cruise missile into BP headquarters and wipe the bastards out like Luke Skywalker did to the Death Star in Star Wars?

  138. 138.

    Zuzu's Petals

    @wrb:

    I think it’s a “could” with little or no evidence to support it. Just my opinion.

    First, as I said, the deadman should have engaged immediately upon the loss of power. It didn’t.

    Second, the rig did not sink until a day and a half after the event. The ROVs were on the scene within hours.

    The BOP is protected by a small house located on the seabed, and inspection showed the exterior of the unit – particularly the accumulator bottles which are activated by either the rig switch or a remote switch – was intact. So was the pipe connection, from what I understand.

    But sure, there are any number of redundant systems which in theory, unsupported by evidence, COULD have helped. But I tend to go with the opinion of people with a lot more expertise than you or me (like the professional mariners at this forum) who think it’s pretty much a false issue.

    My guess is that when all the data has been analyzed, it will be found that the BOP blew with the blowout. ‘Till then it’s speculation on both sides…though I don’t think all are equally supported.

  139. 139.

    Zuzu's Petals

    @wrb:

    Interesting, thanks.

    The first part sounds like a typical hold-harmless and indemnification provision found in paid volunteer contracts.

    The second part, requiring confidentiality…whew, not sure what that’s all about.

  140. 140.

    earthside

    There should be no limit to BPs liability here; there is no such thing as Too Big to Be Accountable. They had no right to destroy that whole ecosystem. If the switch would not necessarily have saved the day even if it had been installed, then there needed to be more risk assessment and engineering and backup systems. But the fact that not even that was required is telling.

  141. 141.

    TenguPhule

    Can someone explain to me why we can’t fire a nuclear tipped cruise missile into BP headquarters and wipe the bastards out like Luke Skywalker did to the Death Star in Star Wars?

    Because we need to stuff the GOP and their fluffers in there to make it more efficient first!

    *Badump-crash!* Thank You, I’ll be here all night.

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