Trumpeting Peace

It took three years after the Exxon Valdez spewed oil for the Pacific Herring fishery to crash.

BP's Deep Water Drilling Disaster 

Tar Logs That Rolled Onto Gulf Islands National Seashore Analyzed (click here)

Tuesday, 13 December 2011 16:57
On August 13, 2011 "tar logs" were collected by LEAN members from the shore of Ship Island off the coast of Mississippi. The tar logs, as they are being called, are brick sized globs of petroleum hydrocarbons that have been rolled into a cylindrical "log" shape by wave action. Samples of the tar logs were sent to a commercial laboratory for analysis....

EXXON VALDEZ grounded on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on 24 March 1989. About 37,000 tonnes of Alaska North Slope crude escaped into the Sound and spread widely. There was some limited dispersant spraying and an experimental in-situ burn trial during the early stages of the spill, but at-sea response concentrated on containment and recovery. 


...Lesions and elevated hydrocarbon levels were documented (click title to entry - thank you) in some adult Pacific herring from the oiled areas. Laboratory studies showed abnormalities and possible depressed immune functions in Pacific herring exposed to oil. Significant adult mortality was not observed in 1989, but this would not be unexpected given the heavy predation or scavenging by different groups of predators. Egg mortalities and larval deformities were also documented in the 1989 year class, but population level effects of the spill were never clearly established.


Prior to the spill, herring populations in the Sound were increasing as documented by record harvests in the late 1980s. However, four years after the spill a dramatic collapse of the fishery occurred, and the herring population has never rebounded. Herring populations are dominated by occasional, very strong year classes that are recruited into the overall population. The 1988 pre-spill year-class of Pacific herring was large in Prince William Sound, and as a result, the estimated peak biomass of spawning adults in 1992 was high. Despite the expectation that this large spawning event would lead to high numbers of fish, the population exhibited a density-dependent reduction in size of individuals, and in 1993 there was an unprecedented crash of the adult herring population in PWS. The overall 1993 harvest was about 14 percent of the 1992 harvest, and the 1989 year class was one of the smallest cohorts ever to return as spawning adults....

A chance to create a half a million jobs to continue to scalp billions of income from the citizens to pay for those jobs and the stock dividends.

ExxonMobile does not believe in a simple majority in passing laws in the USA and does not believe in political equity to its PROTECTIONIST POLITICS to INSURE their stock dividends.


The Senate minority who last week blocked a vote on ending Big Oil subsidies (click title to entry - thank you) received more than four times the oil and gas contributions than the 51 senators voting to end them. Exxon Mobil, the world’s most profitable corporation, has helped preserve these and other loopholes for oil and gas by building a Washington force tied intimately to conservative lawmakers, Steve Coll reports in this week’s New Yorker. The corporation relies on an algorithm to determine tiers of oil industry allies and sent 90 percent of contributions to Republicans last year....

Lightning isn't suppose to strike twice. Two catastrophic mechanical failures are two too many for me.

A Navy jet crashed Friday into apartments near Virginia Beach, Virginia, sending flames and thick black smoke into the air, a military spokesman and a witness said. At least two people were hurt, a hospital spokeswoman said.


Besides the two we know of because there were civilians involved, what else is happening with F-18s we would not be happy about?


I do believe the F-15s were reliable and it is time the military prove to the American people the F18s (ALL THE F18s) are just as reliable and capable in the nation's security inventory.


...Felissa Ezell, 71, was sitting in a folding chair outside her townhouse near the crash site Friday and recalled hearing the crash as she returned home earlier in the day.


"Oh, my God, I heard three really loud explosions, then the black smoke went up high in the sky," she said.


The same model of fighter jet, an F/A-18D, crashed in December 2008 while returning to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar after a training exercise in a San Diego neighborhood. That crash killed four members of one family and destroyed two homes.

The Marine Corps said the jet suffered a mechanical failure, but a series of bad decisions led the pilot — a student — to bypass a potentially safe landing at a coastal Navy base after his engine failed. The pilot ejected and told investigators he screamed in horror as he watched the jet plow into the neighborhood, incinerating two homes. A federal judge ordered the U.S. government to pay the family nearly $18 million in restitution.


Are there or are there not missing people? I am grateful for the pilot that obviously maintained his perspective as he dumped the jet's fuel. He saved lives. 


Beside civilian lives and property, I do not want well trained pilots' lives on the line for the sake of some flaw in the design of these jets. We have seen this before with aircraft like the Osprey and how dedicated our military is to their country. We know they will accept any adversity they are faced with, even though, that adversity is not an enemy but some design that should never have made it off the drawing board. I want answers to these incidents and I want our pilots safe. 


When our pilots are safe, the people are safe. I don't want excuses, I want answers.


I hope all the injured will be well again soon without impairment.

Navy jet crashes into Virginia apartments, 3 unaccounted for

By Matthew Ward

VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia
Sat Apr 7, 2012 12:27am EDT

(Reuters) - A U.S. Navy F/A-18D fighter crashed into an apartment complex in Virginia soon after takeoff on Friday, sending fireballs into the sky, damaging six buildings and injuring at least seven people.

No deaths have been reported, but three residents of the Mayfair Mews complex for the elderly were unaccounted for, authorities said.

"We have physically been in every structure, and we have 95 percent completed the search and rescue," Virginia Beach Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Tim Riley said....

The deception begins. Paramount to ALEC and the NRA winning the Zimmerman case is the prevention of him being branded for life.

Well, it is a little to late for that 
and no journalist had anything to 
do with it. George Zimmerman 
did it to himself when he decided.

THAT WAS HE DECIDED.


When he decided to take the law 
into his own hands empowered by 
a law that should never have received 
the support of "legislators for sale."


Zimmerman is always going to be 'the man' that shot an innocent young black man 
after he was stalked. Zimmerman branded Trayvon Martin as a killer and criminal 
and acted on absolutely nothing but his own self righteous idea of justice.


Zimmerman not only decided to brand Trayvon Martin as a criminal worthy of a gun shot, 
but,after Zimmerman shot him, he walked away in cold blood and did nothing for a man 
now dying in his own pool of blood. Zimmerman never gave it a second thought after the 
deed was handily taken care of by his 9mm he so fondly carried.


George Zimmerman was judge and jury to an innocent young black man and he is dead now,
for absolutely no reason at all. 


George Zimmerman can run a PR campaign from now until doomsday, have a battery of
attorneys that OJ would envy and he'll never be anything than what he is, a cold blooded 
killed of an unarmed innocent man struggling to save his own life. A 17 year old man intent 
on being home before night time. I can only imagine the thoughts running through Trayvon 
Martin's mind before the deadly bullet penetrated his heart.


George Zimmerman walked away from Trayvon. Never thought for one minute to attempt 
to save his life. Trayvon Martin was dead and George Zimmerman was grateful and proud 
he was. George Zimmerman branded Trayvon 'a criminal better off dead.' 


The best plea for Zimmerman at this point is PARANOID and maybe he'll be ushered off as 
insane for the sake of his public image. But, ALEC and the NRA don't want Zimmerman to be
viewed as insane, but, as a hero entitled to killing anyone he suspected as 'an element' in 
the neighborhood.


And let's not forget the mishandling of the body for three days as if the Trayvon's identity didn't matter. 
Trayvon after all was a criminal unworthy of love and a devoted family intent on raising their son 
to a life of success and prosperity. 


George Zimmerman was the victim after all because he was a hero that stopped a dangerous
unarmed, black man.


April 6, 2012, 7:05 PM

NBC Fires Producer of Misleading Zimmerman Tape (click title to entry - thank you)

By BRIAN STELTER

NBC News has fired a producer who was involved in the production of a misleading segment about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida.

The person was fired on Thursday, according to two people with direct knowledge of the disciplinary action who declined to be identified discussing internal company matters. They also declined to name the fired producer. A spokeswoman for NBC News declined to comment.

The action came in the wake of an internal investigation by NBC News into the production of the segment, which strung together audio clips in such a way that made George Zimmerman’s shooting of Mr. Martin sound racially motivated. Ever since the Feb. 26 shooting, there has been a continuing debate about whether race was a factor in the incident.

The segment in question was shown on the “Today” show on March 27. It included audio of Mr. Zimmerman saying, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”...

Mr. Uhrig is self-righteous, ruthless, inflammatory and could not care less a young man lost his life due to his vigilante client.

Attorney Hal Uhrig who is representing George Zimmerman, the gunman in the Trayvon Martin case.


There is a profound fault in Mr. Uhrig's defense of his client. He states poor Mr. Zimmerman was a victim to a young man threatened with his life while being stalked by a vigilante. 


Mr. Uhrig conveniently forgets Trayvon Martin was pursued by Zimmerman. THAT COUNTS !


Mr. Uhrig would have everyone believe this 17 year old man while eating Skittles, drinking Arizona Iced Tea, talking to his girlfriend while making it to his Father's residence as night time approached was a ruthless killer himself. Unarmed and confronted with a man determined to stop him from proceeding on his way is actually a huge threat to Poor, Old Mr. Zimmerman.


Mr. Uhrig is a police officer turned lawyer whom primarily has defended police. A remarkable reputation certainly, unquestionably he would never take a case other than one worthy of his superior morals. Yet, he comes out with words of nonsense such as 'Shaken Baby Syndrome.' Liar. Mr. Uhrig is a liar. No different than his client.


For Mr. Uhrig to come forward to defend Zimmerman so ALEC and the NRA are above reproach while being completely and blantantly insensitive to the loss of a wonderful son to both his parents is an insult to the deceased and the community that is burdened with finding justice out of the outrageous actions of his client. Where does Uhrig ever get the right to defame an innocent 17 year old black man in order to talk complete nonsense? Amazing. 


So good of the moral Mr. Uhrig to show up when the money was right for his services. 

Reuters

7:33 p.m. CDT, April 6, 2012


SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - "Shaken Baby Syndrome" (click title to entry - thank you) was cited on Friday in the defense of George Zimmerman, the Sanford, Florida, man who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, in a case that has sparked a widespread public outcry.


Hal Uhrig, a lawyer and former Gainesville, Florida, police officer who recently joined Zimmerman's defense team, cited in a TV interview, "We're familiar with the shaken baby syndrome."...

I find some comfort in the 8.2 unemployment rate.

It did increase, it did decrease.


And while the argument is mostly correct there are those that have simply dropped off the statistics, there is a reality there is no recidivism of the employed returning to unemployment rolls.


There is a strong message in that. The economy we are growing is sustainable. The lack of return of the employed to unemployment is a testament to that. It would appear at first glance, over the last year there is a continued growth of at the very least 100,000 per month. That is not FANTASTIC, but, start ups are not overnight sensations if they are to be sustainable. I believe there is confidence in our economy that is cautious enough to invest prudently in proven ventures. It is a good thing. Better than 2010. And certainly more hopeful than any year previous since 2008. I am skeptical of the 'bubble and burst' economy we had previous to this administration. The aim of President Obama was to defeat the idea 'bubble and burst' was the best the USA can do in a sustainable and growing economy.


We keep at it and this 'it,' won't betray us.

The "Black Friday Effect." An teaching moment.

There is an interesting interactive at the New York Times. (click title to entry - thank you). The last time the job rate was approximately 121,000 was October 2011.


An interesting phenomena happened after Thanksgiving 2011. Business found they could extend that consumerism into months going forward. The "Black Friday Effect" has been an advertising agenda in most industries, except, cars. The car industry is pushing fuel economy with innovative energy choices as they should.


But, in retailing there has a been a string of successes in extending the "Black Friday Effect" over months and not days. I believe the job increases in the following months from October 2011 is due to this new marketing method. It also includes small retailers in a way that has worked well for them, too.

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON, April 6 (Reuters) (click here) - A sluggish U.S. economy added jobs at far slower pace than expected in March, keeping the door open for the Federal Reserve to provide further monetary support, even as the unemployment rate fell to a three-year low of 8.2 percent.

Employers added 120,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, the smallest increase since October and way below the lowest estimate in a Reuters survey. Economists had expected an increase of 203,000 and the jobless rate to hold at 8.3 percent.

The retail sector shed jobs for the second straight month, pulling down job growth in the massive service sector. Manufacturing jobs picked up a little but hours worked slipped....

The good news is, and this is looking at that New York Times interactive, there is an ever stabilzing economy with job grown at least 100,000 per month over a year even with retail upticks.


President Obama promised when jobs were created they would be sustainable and that is true in markets where permanent employees are hired over temporary employees.


I don't believe we are slowing down in sustainable jobs. Even China is coming to the USA to find qualified labor in industry of alternative energies.


China's investors are learning 'impoverishing the worker' is bad for business and have sought to improve the opportunities for workers globally. Basically, this is a strong indication that China is not interested in isolating and monopolizing manufacturing while their market places around the world wallow with indifference to their products.


...ENN’s project highlights (click here) the growing clout of Chinese capital in this country. Chinese investment in the U.S. jumped to 66 deals worth $4.5 billion in 2011, up from just 11 deals worth $146 million in 2003, according to the Rhodium Group, a New York-based firm that researches trade with China. While it is rising quickly, that total is still far lower than countries such as Switzerland, whose $42 billion infusion makes it the top foreign investor, according to a July report from the U.S. Commerce Department....

Welcoming investment capital to the USA when it creates jobs and a more vibrant economy is a good thing. It is the vitality of the market place every global company needs to seek out and capture. It is not wrong to invest in China and India, but, it is dangerous and completely stupid to maintain the global economy can survive on subsistence wages. There is no growth within that paradigm and only implosion as the resources to customers of merchandise shrinks.

The CEOs that sought out cheap labor didn't do themselves any favors in the long view. It caused more damage to the vitality of any economy than it ever did any good.

What has been a magnificent approach of this administration came in focusing on sincerely small business and the growth of Main Street. With an entire generation without a future there was a moral issue facing the USA that was not being solved by Wall Street. As a country we need to continue to invest in our generation of unemployed and allow their growth to be nurtured at every turn to empower them to build their tomorrows.


Go get 'em, Harry !!!!

The GOP has a long way to go to achieve equity on women.

It begins with apologies for vicious attacks on high profile women.

...Chelsea Clinton spoke last week about Limbaugh’s comments while on a panel about women involved in politics. The former first daughter made the comments while defending Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke who had been ridiculed last month by Limbaugh as a “slut” and a “prostitute” for testifying before Congress in support of a government mandate requiring health insurance to cover contraception.

“She and I actually have something in common,” Chelsea Clinton said.  “We’ve both have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh.”

“She was 30. I was 13,” she added.

When her dad, former President Bill Clinton, was in the White House and Limbaugh was on television as well as radio, the conservative commentator had this to say about the teenage girl living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. back in 1993:

“Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?” Limbaugh said on his television show before showing an image of the young Clinton.

“Thankfully I had grown up in public life and knew that having thick skin was a survival skill,” Chelsea Clinton said after recounting the incident. “I do also believe if you have the right type of enemies you’re doing something correct.”

Her mother today had tough words for Limbaugh without mentioning his name.

“I think we need to call people out when they go over the line,” Secretary Clinton told MSNBC.  “They’re entitled to their opinion, but no one is entitled to engage in that kind of, you know, verbal assault.”

Limbaugh did not mention either Clintons’ remarks on his show today nor did he return ABC News’ request for comment....

I doubt Walmart in China would get away with a coup against the Constitution.

FOX Rushes To Defend ALEC After Coca-Cola Cuts Ties With Group (click title to entry - thank you)

April 05, 2012 5:25 pm ET 

by Marcus Feldman

Coca-Cola, one of its corporate sponsors, has cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) after advocacy group Color of Change had called for a boycott of Coca-Cola due to its ties with ALEC. And Fox hasn't wasted much time coming to ALEC's defense.

Now, I know for a fact, Russia wouldn't put up with it for two seconds, which may very well explain why Walmart is not sincerely welcome there.

By Maria Kiselyova

MOSCOW

Thu Apr 5, 2012 9:09am EDT

(Reuters) - Retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) (click here) has let caution thwart its ambitions in Russia, and will find profits harder to come by if it delays getting a foothold in the vast market catering to 140 million people.

Fearful of getting hamstrung by Russia's complicated and time-consuming bureaucracy, the world number one retailer has been outmaneuvered by its European peers - Auchan AUCH.UL and Metro (MEOG.DE) have become the third and fourth biggest food retailers in the $300 billion-plus market....

Proposed Walmart grocery draws crowd to Hayward meeting (click here)

By Eric Kurhi
The Daily Review

Posted:   04/05/2012 09:44:11 PM PDT

Updated:   04/05/2012 09:47:07 PM PDT

HAYWARD -- A crowd at City Hall was about equally divided Thursday night between supporters of a proposed Walmart grocery at a former Circuit City site and those who do not want the retailer moving in.

The Planning Commission was slated to vote on whether existing permits apply to a 34,000-square-foot Walmart Neighborhood Grocery, and whether further environmental review is needed. They had not reached a vote by late into the evening.

While the main issue before planners was whether the store qualified as a "regional or sub-regional" retailer -- which would mean existing permits are valid -- speakers during public comment talked about topics ranging from crime and blight at the current vacant site, the need for a grocery in the area, and the value of higher-paying union jobs at other grocery outlets....

A vicious agenda

6:16 PM, Apr. 5, 2012

 

...The work of ALEC (click here) goes far beyond “pro-business” legislation like right-to-work laws and efforts to break public employees’ unions. Other model legislation that the group has advanced include bills targeting illegal immigrants and those that would limit voter participation by requiring photo identification cards.

A report on National Public Radio yesterday noted that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was once a proud ALEC member. In remarks to the organization in 2009, he said: “Not only does [ALEC] bring like-minded legislators together, but the private sector engagement and partnership in ALEC is really what I think makes it the organization that it is.”...

If the GOP wants to compare their attacks on women to that of caterpillars, that is fine.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus (left) and a caterpillar (right). Reuters


If the GOP wants to alienate every person in the USA because they are obstructionists and cause hardship for those they decide they can dominate either socially or financially of both, that is fine, but, don't expect the victimized to vote in favor of the deniers.

In a statement widely taken as a metaphor, (click title to entry - thank you) the chairman of the Republican National Committee on Thursday said his party is no more trying to hurt the nation's females than it is larval butterflies and moths.

"If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we'd have problems with caterpillars," Reince Priebus told Bloomberg Television. "It's a fiction."

But the war on caterpillars and other innocent insects, it turns out, is not a fiction at all.

Under the guise of aiding the agriculture industry, Republicans and their allies in Washington have been waging a long-running campaign to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from limiting bug-killing pesticides. Last year, GOP Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas authored a letter, signed by several others in his party, calling on Democrats to "address the continued regulatory overreach by the Environmental Protection Agency that is a growing concern of farmers, ranchers, foresters and agribusinesses throughout the nation" by bringing up their bill to ease pesticide regulations. This obvious attempt to run roughshod over the rights of many-legged herbivores everywhere was laughably justified as a matter of "public health as we enter mosquito season."

In a similar gesture of outrageous insensitivity to the feelings of Creepy-Crawly-Americans, some conservatives also want to get the controversial insecticide DDT unbanned by the EPA. The free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute runs a website, RachelWasWrong.org, devoted to beating the drum for bringing back DDT, whose banning it terms the "dangerous legacy" of Rachel Carson'sSilent Spring. But for the liberals and their "tree-hugging political correctness," one NewsMax commentator wrote, bedbugs -- largely voiceless in this whole debate -- might be eradicated.

Republicans may claim that they have no anti-caterpillar agenda -- that they're just trying to protect people and plants from being bitten, that they're merely the victims of a liberal media that sympathizes with the radical bugs'-rights lobby. But the truth is clear, and it's nothing new: Republicans just don't care about caterpillars.

Need any more proof?  Tom DeLay, the onetime leader of the GOP House majority, began his career as an exterminator.

Jerry Smith is attempting to remove President Obama's RIGHT TO FREE SPEACH!!!!

...On Monday, when asked about predictions that the Supreme Court might strike down the health care law, President Barack Obama used terms normally invoked by conservatives to attack decisions they don't like.

"For years, what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint - that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example," said President Obama.

He said it would be unprecedented to overturn a law passed by a majority of Congress....


To get this right, one has to realize President Obama was FIRST answering a question he was asked. Then Jerry Smith decided he needed to silence the President and his Justice Department.


Jerry Smith has not right to attempt to silence the President while the Right Wing strict constructionists have done nothing BUT run at the mouth.

Bush makes mischief on "activist judges" (click here)

By U.S. News Staff

June 12, 2006 

When President Bush rails against "activist judges" these days in support of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, the word mischief-maker comes to mind.

The president is fully aware that the issue has no chance of clearing Congress, let alone winning approval of three fourths of the states. Even zealous Republicans in the Senate agree.

His motives are transparent. First, he wants to demonstrate to social conservatives in the GOP that he is with them and not a lame duck. And with November elections loooming, he wants to fortify the Republican base and dare Democrats to vote against an issue easy to demagogue.

The dominant theme of the president's recent speech was that judges were guilty of "legislating" from the bench on this issue. It is a favorite line of his in naming judges who are strict constructionists of the Constitution–as he sees it.

One wonders what Bush, if he were president at the time, would have said about judges in 1954 when the high court, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, voted 9 to 0 to end segregation in public schools. Bush was only 8 at the time....

When the Right Wing complains about judges it is just a matter of political rhetoric, but, when a Democratic President has a legitimate reason to speak to an audience about his point of view, it is called on the carpet...
...by the REAL Activist Judges, isn't that right Jerry!?!?!?

McCain Criticizes ‘Activist Judges’ (click here)

May 6, 2008 1:48pm

ABC News’ Bret Hovell reports: During a speech designed to reach out to conservative voters on the issue of judicial responsibility, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain took Democratic candidate Barack Obama to task for not voting for the confirmation of John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

During a speech at Wake Forest University, McCain said Sen. Obama, D-Ill., "likes to talk up his background…as someone who can work across the aisle to get things done. But when Judge Roberts was nominated, it seemed to bring out more the lecturer in Senator Obama than it did the guy who can get things done. He went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee," McCain said.

"Apparently, nobody quite fits the bill for an elite group of activist judges, lawyers, and law professors who think they know wisdom when they see it — and they see it only in each other," McCain said of Obama and the Democrats who voted against Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito....

CITIZENS' UNITED, JERRY!

CITIZENS UNITED, BUBBA!!!