Of course he’s form Dallas. What an Asshat.

Jeffrey Rachlinksi, a Cornell University professor specializing in environmental law, calls the current push by Senate Democrats to lift the upper liability “largely redundant theater.”

Language already in the Oil Pollution Act, established after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, eliminates the cap if the party responsible for a spill is found to have been grossly negligent or violated federal regulations governing the construction, safety or operation of an offshore rig such as the Deepwater Horizon. The rig was destroyed seven weeks ago in an explosion that killed 11 workers.

It’s “highly unlikely that the events of April 20 did not include one or more deviations from these codes,” Rachlinski told NPR. More…

So now it falls to BP to prove they were running a rig in accordance with the letter of the law, a rig that is currently sitting on the floor of the gulf, and was actually operated by another company, all with a price-tag sufficient to  bankrupt a multinational corporation.

Oh yeah, this will be settled quickly and fairly, I’m just sure of it.

Last week, a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother Jones published this firsthand account of one reporter’s repeated attempts to gain access to clean-up operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement. The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

This is what kills me about this oil spill. No one gives a flying shit about the gulf coast, but now as it looks like it might get into the big currents out there, the rest of the country is actually paying attention.  God forbid the filth wash-up in Florida where all the retired baby-boomers will have to cancel their Cialis fueled walks on the beach, or  even worse the east coast. Lets panic now, since before it was you know, just the gulf. It’s the same thing with the offshore drilling – no way would we sully the East coast with our energy needs – oil rigs, wind farms or otherwise, we’ll just do it in the gulf, cause you know its not as pretty, not as wealthy and the hurricanes come in every year and beat the crap out of it anyhow.

Hope you guys enjoy not eating fish for the next few years.

To be clear here, I acknowledge the necessity of the offshore rigs (in our albeit screwball energy strategy), it’s just prevailing attitudes of non-concern about the environmental impacts of this that really chaps my hide. Also the idea that no one thought something this bad could ever happen? Please.  I’m sure BP has a room of guys sitting around dreaming up zombie-apocalypse- equivalent events for oil rigs, and how to either work around them or account for just enough safety to pacify those in charge.  Deep within the bowels of BP this exact scenario is in a file somewhere.

At the end of the day though, this mess belongs to everyone who drove to work this morning, myself included.

Or maybe their lives will be great.

Oh shit, they just broke into song. Goose punch us out….

The authors of the law say they meant to ban all forms of discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions like asthma, diabetes, birth defects, orthopedic problems, leukemia, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease. The goal, they say, was to provide those youngsters with access to insurance and to a full range of benefits once they are in a health plan.

To insurance companies, the language of the law is not so clear.

Insurers agree that if they provide insurance for a child, they must cover pre-existing conditions. But, they say, the law does not require them to write insurance for the child and it does not guarantee the “availability of coverage” for all until 2014.

Yup, that free market sure does take care of everybody, doesn’t it?

The full quote is, “I’ve spent 90% of my money on women and drink. The rest I squandered.”

Cheers to the end of a hellish week.

The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material—which contains carbon—stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under oxygen-free conditions, gradually release methane.

More…

Raising our premiums was not something we wanted to do,” Angela F. Braly, president of WellPoint (parent company of Blue Cross Blue Shield), said. “But we believe this was the most prudent choice, given the rising cost of care and the problems caused by many younger and healthier policyholders dropping or reducing their coverage during tough economic times. By law, premiums must be reasonable in relationship to benefits provided, which means they need to reflect the known and anticipated costs they will cover.”

More…

I love the way the frame it as if they’re just barely staying afloat. I’m guessing they also didn’t “want” to make close to $4 billion last year on the backs of these higher premiums.

Most don’t see a contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. That includes Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

“The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there’s about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was, say, in the 1970s,” he says.

Warmer water means more water vapor rises up into the air, and what goes up must come down.

“So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, D.C., for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming,” he says.

So global warming or no, please stop saying that the billions of tons of CO2 our civilization has pumped into the atmosphere is having no consequences just because it’s snowing. Your ignorance is making my head hurt.