Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable?

From a Mother Jones blog: "Sharon Astyk at ScienceBlogs points the way to a seriously scary comment thread at The Oil Drum, a sounding board for, among others, many petroleum geologists and oil professionals."

Excerpts from what one of those professionals from The Oil Drum, identified only as "dougr," says:

All the actions and few tidbits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking...

To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, [the failure of Top Kill] was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to.

What does this mean?

It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it...

One of the most trustworthy sources on The Oil Drum is consulting engineer Alan Drake.

Drake, a New Orleans resident and Katrina evacuee, is very well recognized, respected within The Oil Drum, and is working directly on this problem at a high level.

Drake has repeatedly expressed concerns that Beach Polluters are again cutting corners by only drilling two relief wells. Success rates in that type of rock formation are only around 60% per well. Drilling just two means that statistically there is a one in six chance of total failure and that they'll have to restart the process two months from now, spending an additional three months before the next shot at blocking the blown out well at its base.

What happens if this gusher is really unstoppable? If the relief wells don't work? If the huge reserve they've tapped into just keeps spewing?

Over a thousand miles of vibrant, living Gulf coast reduced to a toxic wasteland for decades. Thousands of square miles of ocean habitat rendered lifeless. Thousands of miles of beautiful, pristine beaches, potentially all over the Atlantic, smeared with toxic oil.

And you thought our oil habit would merely result in global climate change!

Let's hope and pray this thing can be stopped. But regardless, it's well past time to change our ways. We need to develop alternative energy in a big way, and we need to do all we can to reduce our energy use. And we need to put pressure on our elected representatives like never before.

Rep. Joe Barton thinks it's a tragedy...

“I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion..." -- Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX).

What, Joe -- that BP despoiled our coast? That the worst environmental disaster in history in the U.S. is still getting worse by the minute? That our government let a corrupt corporation do what it wanted to in a ecologically sensitive and critical habitat???

Well, no. "...that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown...” -- referring to the $20 billion escrow account for Gulf restoration BP set up after meeting with Pres. Obama.

Gee, Joe, we never knew you were so sensitive! Video.

Humor Times: # 4 out of top 10 nationally for Best Logo Design!

The Humor Times is proud to announce that our logo/masthead was recently chosen as # 4 out of the top 10 in the country for Best Logo Design by Logo Design Works, out of Columbus, Ohio.

That puts us just behind a couple little rags you may have heard of, the New York Times & USA Today!

Logo Design Works noted that, "It’s only appropriate that a newspaper offering a comedic commentary on the news have a very different logo than its more serious counterparts. This newspaper bucks the trend by having attention grabbing red lettering in fun, curving shapes that are reminiscent of a comic book. The colorful bulls-eye image not only draws in the eye; it also adds to the friendly feeling of the logo design by adding circular shapes to the logo. This logo perfectly portrays the differences between this newspaper and its competitors."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves!

"We are very happy to have this honor. The logo was designed for us a few years ago by Bob Crabb, a fine cartoonist out of Nevada City who regularly gets published in the Grass Valley Union, and has published many comic books of his own," said Humor Times publisher James Israel.

The national attention this could bring the Humor Times is much welcomed, as we continue to transition into a national publication, available by subscription. Many Sacramento locals may think we went out of business, but we merely discontinued the free distribution of the paper, a couple years ago.

The Humor Times is now available in hard-copy or digital formats. More information can be found at www.humortimes.com, or by phone at 916-455-1217.

Wake up call: Verifiable, transparent voting systems must be the law

Alvin Greene's mysterious candidacy and win in the Democratic primary in South Carolina, and his apparent mental problems are becoming the main story, when in fact, the real story here is the obvious vote tampering.

The fact DeMint would slaughter the Democratic nominee no matter who it was, seems to be obscuring the irregularities in the Premier Election Solutions electronic voting system (a Diebold-owned company, which in turn is owned by avowed Republicans) -- people seem to be thinking it just doesn't matter. But the loser, Vic Rawl, who has challenged the results, is correct in stating this is about the system.

We're lucky, in a way, that the tampering is so obvious. It should be a huge red flag. There is plenty of evidence to warrant a thorough investigation. And that investigation should result in a conviction of officials at Diebold, and the barring of the company from any further participation in vote-counting.

Further, the fallout from this scandal needs to spark changes in the law. Citizens must demand an open, fully transparent system, with a verifiable paper trail and regular, random audits.

Diebold and other companies have a sordid history when it comes to counting votes. There have been other equally suspicious results in the past. So far, we as a society have let them slide. We do so at the peril of our own democracy.

Call for a Constitutional Convention

Let's face it, our democracy is in a shambles. With corporations buying our elected representatives' votes on every important issue, and with our Supreme Court enabling their corrupting influence at every turn, we, the people, need to do something. Congress is unable and unwilling to reform itself.

Little Rhode Island, our smallest state, is working to get the ball rolling:

Rhode Island's David Segal's Call for a Constitutional Convention

From the article:

The push for a [Constitutional] convention is not a step lightly taken. Ours is the world's oldest continuous (written) constitutional government. There is plainly something our framers got right.

Yet it is impossible for any fair minded soul, whether Democratic or Republican, to look at the current state of the American democracy and not believe that something has gone profoundly wrong. Our framers intended a Congress "dependent upon the people alone." We have evolved a Congress dependent upon campaign funders. That competing, and indeed corrupting, dependency has destroyed Congress's ability to answer its first obligation fairly. It has distracted Congress from the demands that this democracy makes upon it, and fundamentally weakened America's trust in this the most important branch of the Framers' design...

Is a body so deeply addicted to the current system capable of changing that system? Can we trust the victim of a dependency to free itself from that dependency?

More and more are coming to believe that the answer is no. That this system has so entrenched an economy of corruption -- not the corruption of bribes, but a corruption of the sole dependency our framers envisioned, upon the People -- that only outsiders can now change it. And our framers gave one kind of outsider -- state legislatures -- that power.

-- Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, on HuffingtonPost.com, June 14, 2010 10:22 AM