Video clip of the day

Via Hot Air...

Actually, when we thought about it, what better represents the intellectual heft of the left than profanely repetitive abuse of the King's English employed by children, chronologically speaking and otherwise, a Keffiyeh (seriously, would it have killed these guys to leave out the international signal for anti-semetic, anti-capitalist, terrorist-coddling one-stop shopping than that goofy scarf?), some misrepresentation of the facts, joking about STDs and uh, yeah, profanely repetitive abuse of the King's English?

They're really, really cheezed off about the Gulf and BP. Here them roar (extreme NSFWoH warning):

Oil Spill Charity "F-Bomb-A-Thon" from UnF--kTheGulf.com on Vimeo.

Plunk down 13 bucks, feel smug about yourself and look like an ass. Again, perfect.

And because it's all about stretching your creative limits and improving your messaging, the makers of the video are planning another one which will feature... you got it, little kids dropping the F-bomb.

“We have another video in production right now. It uses the f-bomb and yup, little kids too. People should not be offended by using a crude word to help clean up this crude oil spill. What’s offensive is entire communities, economies and ecosystems destroyed. People need to get their priorities straight. Bring on the backlash. More attention is better for the cause. We’re using a bad word to do some good.”

We now feel as though we have actually lost I.Q. points for having watched that video. Our bad.

When 99% effectiveness isn't good enough

Current federal EPA standards dictate that any oil separating device must be good for 15 parts per million. As a practical example, if you have a fishing vessel or merchant ship, you will be generating oily waste in your engine room as a result of running your machinery plant. The oily waste that collects in the bilges of the ship can be processed by an oily water separator and the effluent discharged overboard (50 miles from shore) as long as it meets that 15 ppm standard.

How to quantify 15 ppm? You'll have to trust us on the math with this one but picture a 55 gallon drum. Now picture dropping a half-teaspoon of oil into that 55 gallon drum of water. That's approximately 15 ppm.

So, why do we bring this up? It is because the federal government is treating this 15 ppm standard as sacred and because of bureaucratic inflexibility it is unnecessarily hindering the spill clean-up effort.

After making a brief stop in Norfolk for refueling, U.S. Coast Guard inspections and an all-out publicity blitz intended to drum up public support, a giant tanker billed as the world's largest oil skimming vessel set sail Friday for the Gulf of Mexico where it hopes to assist in the oil-cleanup effort.

The Taiwanese-owned, Liberian-flagged ship dubbed the "A Whale" stands 10 stories high, stretches 1,115 feet in length and has a nearly 200-foot beam. It displaces more water than an aircraft carrier.

Built in South Korea as a supertanker for transporting oil and iron ore, the six-month-old vessel was refitted in the wake of the BP oil spill with 12, 16-foot-long intake vents on the sides of its bow designed to skim oil off surface waters

The vessel's billionaire owner, Nobu Su, the CEO of Taiwanese shipping company TMT Group, said the ship would float across the Gulf "like a lawn mower cutting the grass," ingesting up to 500,000 barrels of oil-contaminated water a day.

But a number of hurdles stand in his way. TMT officials said the company does not yet have government approval to assist in the cleanup or a contract with BP to perform the work.

And do you want to know why they haven't received government approval. Because the vessel's oil separating ability does not meet the 15 ppm standard?

TMT also paid to fly in Edward Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University, to get a look at the massive skimmer.

Overton blasted BP and the federal government for a lack of effort and coordination in their dual oil-spill response and made a plea to the government to allow the A Whale to join the cleanup operation.

"We need this ship. We need this help," Overton said. "That oil is already contaminating our shoreline. We've got to get the ship out there and see if it works. There's only one way to find out: Get the damn thing in the gulf and we'll see."

(italics, ours)

Mr. Overton doesn't understand how things work with the Obama regime. You pass legislation willy-nilly to find out what's in it. However, in the face of a slow-motion environmental disaster, every single "i" must be dotted and every single "t" must be crossed before any effective action can be taken.

Obama's Gulf oil spill is becoming replete with these stories of oil containment/capturing/processing items that just aren't quite good enough for the federal government's liking.

Go on over to Left Coast Rebel, here, where KOOK has another heart-warming story of actor Kevin Costner and his brother who have developed a centrifugal separator that has been denied usage in the clean-up effort because they too just don't measure up.

Team Obama: When 99% effective just won't do.

Competence

Day 70:

The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The State Department said in a statement Tuesday that the U.S. is working out the particulars of the help that's been accepted.

The identities of all 12 countries and international organizations were not immediately announced. One country was cited in the State Department statement -- Japan, which is providing two high-speed skimmers and fire containment boom.

More than 30 countries and international organizations have offered to help with the spill. The State Department hasn't indicated why some offers have been accepted and others have not.

Competence


H/T: Drudge

Misplaced priorities

We think we've been pretty good about containing ourselves, not piling on and going Katrina on Obama over the Gulf spill disaster, don't you? The administration and the federal government can't be expected to to plug the damn hole! - and with respect to the clean-up effort, any slow start out of the blocks and conflicting direction given to BP and state and local officials speaks as much to the layers and inertia inherent to a highly bureaucratized entity like the federal government than it does to whether a Republican or Democrat is in office.

However... the President is making things awfully hard on himself. His recent "whose ass to kick" comment has to be about the most shameless bit of pandering we have heard in quite some time. It's obvious the criticism regarding his emotional detachment has been internalized by the administration and by the president himself and the rolling out of his passion offensive sounds downright Bushian and, unfortunately, because he is the anti-Bush, totally unconvincing. Nothing is as wince-inducing as a public figure trying to be somebody they are not. Regardless, America is still left to wonder just how it is that kicking some body's ass is going to aid in the spill clean-up effort.

Ditto for the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department and his peoples' efforts to bring criminal charges against BP, the same BP that was going to be bestowed a safety award by the Obama administration. Everyone can agree that the responsible people need to be held accountable but reasonable people can agree that these efforts by Justice is putting the cart before the horse.

This is criminal prosecution as fishing expedition — scouring the federal code to find anything that might possibly work to provide criminal penalties. That’s counterproductive to the number-one priority, which must be stopping and containing the oil spill. Announcing criminal investigations to score political points or stave off political damage is an abuse of one of the most awesome powers of the state, the power to deprive an individual of his or her personal liberty.

We're sure that BP will be that much more diligent in their efforts and that much more cooperative with the federal government in containing this spill with the threat of criminal prosecution hanging over their head. Works every time. When the top priority and focus of our leaders should be containing and cleaning up the oil spill, we instead get the CinC going locker room slang to desperately try to demonstrate his alpha dog status and the Justice Department turned hanging party.

We're in the best of hands.

Leaking away

Peggy Noonan writing in today's Wall St. Journal:

The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy. It's not good to have a president in this position—weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support—less than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of "the indispensable nation" be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen.
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But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.

Yep.

Believe it. We take no pleasure in a weakened American Presidency. It's bad for us, not good for our allies and only incentivizes the ill behavior of the globe's bad actors.

Here's what we are trying to wrap our brain around, however: The hyper-power he has exerted here domestically is in stark contrast to the apologetic and submissive weakness he has exhibited abroad. But when we really did need it here domestically - when we needed the laser-like focus his administration displayed in the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcy cramdowns and the brute "by any means necessary" force employed by his people with respect to healthcare legislation no one wanted, the President in most respects voted "present".

The one cause everyone could get behind, the one thing everyone knew we had to do something about and where sins of commission would certainly be forgiven over those of omission, our federal government, headed by the Commander-in-Chief, phoned it in.

After just yesterday, where we weren't willing to go "Katrina" on the President are we changing our minds? We certainly did not want to jump on the bandwagon initially and were willing to give the President and the administration the benefit of the doubt. More facts are coming out, however, and they are leaving many, as yet, unanswered questions and none of them seem to be favoring the President.


The problem with a "recovery" of the Obama presidency, as Noonan alludes, is his standing legislative legacy. Should the top kill prove to be 100% effective, we will wake up tomorrow and we will still be stuck with ObamaCare which has actually been growing in unpopularity since its passage. And should a biblical miracle occur tomorrow where the spill simply evaporates into thin air sparing the Gulf Coast from an ecological disaster, we will still be facing a 10% unemployment rate and a still-struggling economy because his administration chose to expend political capital and precious time on unpopular legislation rather than figuring out how best to just stay the hell out of the way to allow the economy to unwind and then rev back up as quickly as possible.

These are issues that have counted most heavily against his polling numbers and they aren't going away.

The reality of the situation now is, we will wake up tomorrow with a 10% unemployment rate, a crappy economy, pending nanny-state legislation with higher taxes and anti-growth consequences and still the very real possibility of an evolving, years-long ecological and economic meltdown in the Gulf.

All that and they get paid for it, too?

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Quote of the day

Just sayin'...

“I don’t know why the question isn’t asked by the mainstream media and by others if there’s any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration.”

She continued: “If there’s any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico — now, if this was President Bush or if this were a Republican in office who hadn’t received as much support even as President Obama has from BP and other oil companies, you know the mainstream media would be all over his case in terms of asking questions why the administration didn’t get in there, didn’t get in there and make sure that the regulatory agencies were doing what they were doing with the oversight to make sure that things like this don’t happen.”

More here from Left Coast Rebel and the slow-motion disaster that is ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico and the media's reaction to it.



Addendum #1: Uh-oh. The narrative turns.

Framed in post-WWII suburban blight

The past couple of evenings have provided some spectacular sunsets here in San Diego courtesy the mid-late summer monsoon flow up from the Gulf of Mexico… we refer to it as “the Grapefruit Express”.

The Sun actually burned off some pretty oppressive humidity earlier today. These pictures are from Sunday and Monday evening.

(Click on images to enlarge)