Obama Meets with BP Executives

Obama: Hello. My name is Barack Obama. You killed the Gulf of Mexico. Prepare to die.

BP: Hi Mr. President. We'll try to pay for the clean up-

Obama: Hello!! My name is Barack Obama! You killed the Gulf of Mexico. Prepare to die!

BP: Naturally we'll meet our legal obligations-

Obama: Hello!! My name is Barack Obama!! You killed the Gulf of Mexico!! Prepare to die!!

BP: we'll try to make restitition to the people affected-

Obama: Hello!! My name is Barack Obama!! You killed the Gulf of Mexico!! Prepare to die!!

BP: Will please you stop saying that?!?

Obama: Offer me anything I want!

BP: yes billions, free oil, an apology, anything... just don't kill us!!

Obama: I want the Gulf Coast back you son-of-a-bitch!

All Was Well!

Wall Street Journal:

In the minutes after a cascade of gas explosions crippled the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, confusion reigned on the drilling platform. Flames were spreading rapidly, power was out, and terrified workers were leaping into the dark, oil-coated sea. Capt. Curt Kuchta, the vessel's commander, huddled on the bridge with about 10 other managers and crew members.

Andrea Fleytas, a 23-year-old worker who helped operate the rig's sophisticated navigation machinery, suddenly noticed a glaring oversight: No one had issued a distress signal to the outside world, she recalls in an interview. Ms. Fleytas grabbed the radio and began calling over a signal monitored by the Coast Guard and other vessels.

"Mayday, Mayday. This is Deepwater Horizon. We have an uncontrollable fire."

When Capt. Kuchta realized what she had done, he reprimanded her, she says.

"I didn't give you authority to do that," he said, according to Ms. Fleytas, who says she responded: "I'm sorry."

Swim Club

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Northeast Philadelphia synagogue that bought a swim club accused of racial discrimination last year says it plans to use the property for recreation for its 2,000-plus members. The Congregation Beth Solomon bought the Valley Club property in Huntingdon Valley for $1.46 million at a bankruptcy auction on Thursday. The club filed for bankruptcy in November following discrimination lawsuits.

FOX FORCE FIVE!

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has hand-picked a team of five scientists “extraordinarily intelligent” scientists from around the country with reputations for creative problem solving.

Members of the Chu team are credited with accomplishments including designing the first hydrogen bomb, inventing techniques for mining on Mars and finding a way to precisely position biomedical needles.

Chu selected one scientist with experience operating on Mars, George Cooper, and Alexander Slocum, who holds more than five dozen patents for devices
related to biotechnology, robotics and computer science.

“He has a lot of creative ideas. One in 10 are really brilliant ideas, but nine are dumb,” said MIT professor Wai K. Cheng, a colleague in Slocum’s department. “You can’t miss that one that is brilliant.”

The team is rounded out by Tom Hunter, 64, President of Sandia Laboratories, which conducts research for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, and which houses all alien technology retrieved by the U.S. military.

“We’re using some, uh, innovative-type technology that Sandia labs has,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said today in an interview on CNN.

Clearly Obama has authorized use of our secret alien technology to build a wormhole.

You go, nerds!

Palin Fact Check

Phillip Elliott, Associated Press:

Palin said Obama is "the most pro-abortion president ever to occupy the White House" and asserted that the health care law
would fund abortions.

In fact, Obama's health care law would not allow federal dollars to pay for elective abortions. Catholic hospitals and organizations of Catholic nuns backed the measure. U.S. Catholic bishops and major anti-abortion groups opposed it, arguing that federal dollars could end up paying for abortions.

Good for Phil

Ex-Mexican Governor Laundered With Lehman, U.S. Says

May 10 (Bloomberg) -- A former Mexican governor was scheduled to appear in federal court today in New York today to face federal drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges, using a Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. account.

Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, the former governor of the state of Quintana Roo, was charged in two indictments, one that accused him of conspiring to import “hundreds of tons” of cocaine into the U.S. and a second alleging he laundered almost $19 million through accounts at Lehman Brothers, said Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman for the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

How charming.

Snark Alert

May 10 (Telegraph) -- Raquel Welch, the actress, has blamed the Pill for the decline of the institution of marriage. Miss Welch said the widespread use of oral contraceptives had led to a breakdown in norms of sexual morality and fuelled the growth of rampant promiscuity among the young. She said that the situation has grown so grave that "these days nobody seems able to keep it in their pants or honour a commitment". While it carried some benefits, the enduring legacy of the Pill, she argued, has been social anarchy.

Miss Welch found fame in the 1966 movie One Million Years BC and was voted by readers of Playboy magazine as the "most desired female of the 1970s".

She said that in spite of her own three failed marriages she still believed that marriage is the "cornerstone of civilisation, an essential institution that stabilises society, provides a sanctuary for children and saves us from anarchy".

Nobody's Fault

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- James “Jimmy” Cayne, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Bear Stearns Cos., will blame market forces and loss of confidence in his firm for its collapse in 2008, according to a person who has reviewed his testimony before a U.S. investigative panel. “The market’s loss of confidence, even though it was unjustified and irrational, became a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Cayne said in written testimony

Alan Schwartz, who succeeded Cayne as CEO and negotiated Bear Stearns’s fire sale to JPMorgan will blame the fall on rumors. “We did not foresee the extent to which housing prices had been driven to unsustainable levels,” Schwartz will say.

Cayne, who loved to play bridge, pulled away from hands-on management roles, spending more time away from his office even while Bear Stearns was running into trouble. When the firm ran out of money in March 2008 and faced a bank run from its hedge-fund clients and short-term creditors, Cayne was at a bridge tournament in Detroit. He couldn’t fly back to New York in time to take part in talks to sell the firm to JPMorgan under
government pressure.

No worries.

Digby & Stuart Zechman Tonight

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OUR MEDIA NOT THEIRS
THIS WEEK: DIGBY & STUART ZECHMAN

DIGBY
An American political blogger and founder of Hullabaloo, digby has contributed to Campaign For America's Future's blog The Big Con, Salon Magazine, Huffington Post, Eschaton, Crooks anhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifd Liars and Firedoglake.



STUART "Centrism IS an ideology" ZECHMAN - is a frequent commenter at TIME Magazine's political blog "Swampland" and co-founder with Jay Ackroyd of the blog "Political Lagoon." He brings the perspectives of entrepreneur and technologist to a New Liberal analysis of policy and politics.

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210,000 Gallons Per Day

The most recent estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank days later, is gushing as much as 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf each day. Concern is mounting that the flow may soon grow to several times that amount.

TV ALERT

Fab Tourre and Lloyd Blankfein will appear before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on April 27.

BAG OF PUS

Goldman Sachs' London units will be formally investigated by Britain's financial regulator after U.S. authorities sued the bank for fraud. Financial-market regulators in France and Germany are reviewing the lawsuit filed against Goldman Sachs last week by the SEC.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on the FSA, which he created in 1997, to investigate Goldman Sachs two days ago, accusing employees of the bank of "moral bankruptcy."

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said today that regulators need to take urgent steps and that the charges against Goldman Sachs had "huge ramifications." Darling, who described the securities Goldman sold as "a bag of pus," said the government would look at changing the law if necessary.

COOPER UNION PART DEUX

President Barack Obama plans to travel to New York City April 22 for a speech to push his legislation for financial overhaul, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

The remarks at Cooper Union comes “almost one year after the administration first laid out a detailed plan for holding Wall Street accountable and protecting consumers,” Gibbs said in an e-mailed statement.

Obama will talk about “what is at stake if we do not move forward with changing the rules of the road,” Gibbs said, as the Senate prepares to debate legislation that’s drawn Republican opposition.

THIS WEEK IN GOD

Beirut (AP) -- A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon Friday. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes."

Obama Wins Nuke Deal

Obama Wins Backing for Nuclear Security Goal as Summit Ends

President Barack Obama won commitments from 46 nations to lock down nuclear material and keep it out of the hands of terrorists. The next test will be how far global leaders will go to carry out their pledges. “The summit represents a major step to overcome complacency about this threat,” said Bunn, an associate professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who has advised on U.S. nuclear controls. “There’s a lot of work yet to be done, but this does represent major progress.”

The presidents, prime ministers and other representatives from around the world convened by Obama endorsed the U.S. president’s timeline for securing nuclear material within four years. Obama said he set the goal because the world’s biggest security threat is the potential for al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups to acquire the materials to develop a nuclear weapon through theft or illicit sales. “We have seized the opportunity,” Obama said yesterday during a news conference at the conclusion of the summit. “The American people will be safer and the world will be more secure.”

Virtually Speaking

Join Adam Lambert (clammyc) and Chris Kendrick (CSKendrick) at "Virtually Speaking Sundays: A Reality-Based Counterpoint to the Sunday Morning Talking Heads."

go to blogtalkradio or Second Life

Polish President Killed En Route to Katyn Memorial

Relations between Poland and Russia have been tense in part because of a perceived reluctance by Vladimir Putin to acknowledge and apologize for the Katyn forest massacre. But this week the President of Poland flew to Russia to participate in a ceremony to commemorate the event. I don't imagine the death of the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski, his wife and other high-ranking officials in a plane crash in Russia will help relations very much.

America: Blowing Things Ups to Sell Artificial Cheese

Texas Stadium, the former home of the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys, will be blasted into oblivion by 2,715 pounds of explosives Sunday in a public spectacle infused with fan nostalgia and some novel marketing.

Kraft Foods Inc. paid $75,000 to sponsor the demolition in as part of a campaign to introduce its “Cheddar Explosion” macaroni and cheese. An 11-year-old boy who won a Kraft essay contest will trigger the explosive charge, taking down 4 million pounds of concrete, 2 million pounds of steel and a banner reading “Demolicious.”

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine sent the city a letter in March saying it would donate $75,000 if Irving dropped Kraft and hung a banner from the stadium warning about obesity and the dangers of “fatty, cholesterol-laden products.”

Face it, this is a fun, but weird, nation.

ORWELL ALERT

Airline Passenger Conversations to Be Monitored Under EU Project

April 4 (Telegraph) -- Airline passengers could have their conversations and movements monitored under a European Union project aimed at tackling terrorism. Brussels is funding research at Reading University aimed at detecting suspicious behaviour on board aircraft. It uses a combination of cameras, microphones, explosives detectors and a
sophisticated computer system which would give a pilot early warning of any danger.

Oh, it's "sophisticated." Ok, then.

AND THE DEVIL CAUSES CAVITIES

MADISONVILLE, TEX. -- As vendors sold yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flags nearby, Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy assured a gathering of Tea Party activists one recent evening that President Obama was going to keep his hands off the schools in the Lone Star State.

There would be no bid for Obama's Race to the Top grant program, no endorsement of new math and English standards that Obama backs. And the state school board, under McLeroy's prodding, would continue its push to adopt social studies standards that set Texas apart from other states because, among other changes, they recast sections on the American Revolution to put more emphasis on Christianity and less on the writings of Thomas Jefferson.

"Our children will now study some of the unintended consequences of the Great Society, such as the destruction of the black family," said McLeroy, a compact, enthusiastic dentist who keeps a copy of the Constitution in his breast pocket. "Our students will be taught that this country was founded on biblical principles."

Texas's rejection of federal education initiatives is good politics, analysts say, especially in a primary season in which Gov. Rick Perry (R) fought off a challenger by shifting rightward.

"You get a lot of issues that the other states are facing but not talking about because they want to be eligible for Race to the Top" money, said Sandy Kress, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and one of the authors of the No Child Left Behind Act.