"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly"
With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932 – July 4, 2010
The US workforce shrank by 652,000 in June, one of the sharpest contractions ever. The rate of hourly earnings fell 0.1pc. Wages are flirting with deflation.
“Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing,” he said.
California is tightening faster than Greece. State workers have seen a 14pc fall in earnings this year due to forced furloughs. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting pay for 200,000 state workers to the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to cover his $19bn (£15bn) deficit.
Can Illinois be far behind? The state has a deficit of $12bn and is $5bn in arrears to schools, nursing homes, child care centres, and prisons. “It is getting worse every single day,” said state comptroller Daniel Hynes. “We are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. That is obscene.”
Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high.
Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP.
Rush Limbaugh: America has become ‘Obamaville’ – June 30, 2010 ‘The only difference is Obama is doing this on purpose. Hoover wasn’t’
At the height of the Great Depression in the 1930s, many Americans fighting for survival ended up living in crudely built shantytowns known as “Hoovervilles,” in humiliating honor of President Herbert Hoover, who many blamed for the economic distress.
Now in 2010, radio giant Rush Limbaugh is declaring the United States has become one giant “Obamaville,” thanks directly to the policies of President Barack Obama.
“The whole country is Obamaville,” Limbaugh said on his program today. “Obama is Herbert Hoover. You know they used to call those unemployment camps Hoovervilles. Well, now we’re going to see Obamavilles springing up all across the nation.”
“Hoover was trying to fix things. Obama’s not. The only difference is Obama is doing this on purpose. Hoover wasn’t.”
Analyst: Obama has U.S. economy in ‘death spiral’ – July 4, 2010 ‘Simple math’ confirms unemployment won’t be solved by government hiring
A new analysis of the U.S. economy shows that since 2007, the private sector has lost 10.5 million jobs while the public sector has added 720,000 jobs, creating a “death spiral” for the nation’s economy.
The study comes from The Free Enterprise Nation, a nonpartisan national membership/advocacy organization for individuals and businesses that make up the private sector.
The analysis was done using statistics about employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The recession of the last two years exacerbated the larger problem that already was in place, it revealed.
“Over the 10-year period between March 2000 and March 2010, the private sector lost over three million jobs, while the public sector gained nearly two million jobs,” the analysis concludes.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is repeating a pattern that appeared just before markets fell during the Great Depression, Daryl Guppy, CEO at Guppytraders.com, told CNBC Monday.
“Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it…there was a head and shoulders pattern that developed before the Depression in 1929, then with the recovery in 1930 we had another head and shoulders pattern that preceded a fall in the market, and in the current Dow situation we see an exact repeat of that environment,” Guppy said.
The Dow retreated 457.33 points, or 4.5 percent last week, to close at 9,686 Friday. Guppy said a Dow fall below 9,800 confirmed the head and shoulders pattern.
A flag floats off the coastline, just one day after American’s celebrated Independence Day / AFP
I want to be clear that I do not know with absolute certainty what is really happening in the Gulf region but one thing that is – we have a media and government failing to disclose to us the full facts regarding the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Some rumors they are debunking to avoid panic but the evidence clearly shows otherwise. That includes information the EPA and NOAA are putting out. Their number one job is to keep people safe but through secrecy and crony corporatism they are making making matters worse for Gulf coast residents and the entire United States. Plus on top of it we have an administration with an ideological agenda. I can only surmise that there is a lot more to this that we do not know, something larger at work that will affect us all. Where is President Obama in all of this? Still missing in action.
In my attempt to provide sound information based on my research of what is taking place, it’s up to us to take what is being put out very carefully as these are assumptions being made from a variety of sources. What is true is that more troubling news arises by the week. These are not reports from just anyone but those with expert knowledge — geologists, environmentalists, marine biologists, toxicologists (and even victims). My posts regarding the spill is not to create fear or panic but to warn those living along the Gulf region to take precautions and use some common-sense. If that means not swimming in the ocean water or temporarily making alternate living arrangements out of the region then that is a choice one needs to make on their own.
I do not know where this goes from here but we must start treating this oil spill as a catastrophe not just any spill. The internet can be full of misinformation but we have to try our best to rely on citizen reports and independent sources to help us get the best accurate information out to the public. Our eyes need to be wide open and not just believe what anyone says. Of course if the facts do hold out to be true and something dangerous is indeed looming ahead, mass hysteria would break out which is another whole disaster in itself. For those who have understanding in Bible Prophecy and who are following the signs know that the spill along with the Middle East situation and worsening economic climate is the perfect storm. These are times when we need to press in to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in prayer.
Message from Merle Savage: General Foreman during the Exxon Valdez oil spill clean-up in Anchorage in 1989
Gulf Coast Cleanup: Caution Urged
Dear Gulf Coast residents,
The continuing health problems of people involved in cleanup of the Exxon Valdez spill present urgent lessons for the Gulf cleanup crews.
My name is Merle Savage, a female general foreman during the Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) beach cleanup in 1989. I am one of the 11,000+ cleanup workers from the Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS), who is suffering from health issues from that toxic cleanup, without compensation from Exxon.
Dr. Riki Ott visited me in 2007 to explain about the toxic spraying on the beaches. She also informed me that Exxon’s medical records and the reports that surfaced in litigation by sick workers in 1994, had been sealed from the public, making it impossible to hold Exxon responsible for their actions.
Exxon developed the toxic spraying; OSHA, the Coast Guard, and the state of Alaska authorized the procedure. Beach crews breathed in crude oil that splashed off the rocks and into the air — the toxic exposure turned into chronic breathing conditions and central nervous system problems, neurological impairment, chronic respiratory disease, leukemia, lymphoma, brain tumors, liver damage, and blood disease.
My web site, http://silenceinthesound.com, is devoted to searching for EVOS cleanup workers who were exposed to the toxic spraying, and are suffering from the same illnesses that I have. There is an on going Longshoreman’s claim for workers with medical problems from the oil cleanup. Our summer employment turned into a death sentence for many — and a life of unending medical conditions for the rest of Exxon’s Collateral Damaged.
Sincerely,
Merle Savage
Now in touch with Merle directly and she responded with this comment:
Crude oil continues to invade the Gulf; while BP, the US Government, and other official agencies monitoring the toxic crude, continues to FIDDLE. I call that the “Dance of Deliberate Deception”. No one will come forward with the intestinal fortitude, and declare the obvious – that crude oil is toxic to our health. I have been told that a medical study cannot be conducted until after 6 months of exposure. WHAT? There have been 21 years since the exposure of the crude oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska. So we have to wait until after 6 months of workers, in the Gulf, breathing in the crude oil fumes, before a study can be conducted? That leads me to believe that the government is holding up the rug, while BP sweeps known reports under that same rug, and the other agencies conduct the “Dance of Deliberate Deception” on top of that rug.
Toxic Crude Oil In The Gulf A message about the health hazards of cleaning up the toxic crude oil spill in the Gulf.
Worker Health and Safety During the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Cleanup in Alaska in 1989
Exxon Valdez oil risks spur warning for gulf cleanup crews
They called it the “Valdez crud,” but it was more than a cough and diarrhea.
“We thought it was a flu that was going around and every body kept getting it,” said Merle Savage, who was general foreman of the cleanup crews of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
Instead, the stuff that was making cleanup workers sick was a toxic cocktail of oil droplets in mist they inhaled from spraying the shoreline with hot water and chemicals that were used to disperse the spill’s massive black wave.
Merle Savage was an “outdoors person” who found joy in the big things Mother Nature had to offer. She climbed Alaska’s mountains and hiked the Grand Canyon. But then the big spill hit, and there would be no more climbing, no more hiking, and very little joy.
BP’s Other Toxic Legacy: ‘Decades of Misery’ for Gulf Health
As a cleanup worker in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez disaster, Savage says she breathed crude- and dispersant-laced mist for weeks. (This photograph speaks for itself.) She was healthy for age fifty — she looked healthy — but soon experienced crippling health problems that have lasted for two decades: coughing spells, violent diarrhea, pneumonia, obstructed blood vessels. Her liver cirrhosis onset baffled doctors.
“We were all coughing and vomiting for months,” says Savage, who had no prior history of drinking or smoking and did not wear a respirator during the cleanup. “We thought it was the flu. Exxon told us crude oil was non-toxic and we believed them.”
She has limited legal recourse — a court sealed Exxon’s medical records until 2023, she says — but now, twenty-one years later, her primary concern is not herself. Savage’s “quest,” and that of several environmental activists and locals taking a hard look at the aftershocks of the 2010 disaster, has become protecting the health of her modern counterparts in the Gulf of Mexico, who have been exposed to a variation of the same dispersant — and even more toxic oil. Because she doesn’t want any of them to live her waking nightmare, and no one wants the BP spill to become for local volunteers and fisherman what 9/11 became for workers at the World Trade Center.
The Trouble with Suing BP
A hundred cleanup workers in Louisiana and Alabama have reported chest pains, skin-and-eye irritation, nose bleeds, stomach problems, nausea, and cognitive disruption, which medical experts believe is just the beginning. Last week a group of Louisiana fishermen sued BP and dispersant manufacturer Nalco over toxicity concerns. For the thousands who have already been exposed, it could already be too late.
“The average age of a person working in Valdez was fifty-one and they’re mostly dead now,” says Arlen Braud, the attorney representing the Louisiana plaintiffs. “One of my clients had severe migraines and respiratory problems after traveling near the dispersants. It’s so arrogant: a UK company using a chemical banned in the UK for endangering the food chain.” According to Braud, BP is “telling workers ‘you can’t have lawyers and talk to us,’” possibly because “lawyers might warn people about the health effects ten years down the road.”
BP claims that air quality is acceptable and respirators are unnecessary (based on decades-old OSHA standards that its director decries as “outrageously out of date”), and Nalco defends its product as “a safe, effective, and critical tool in mitigating additional damage in the Gulf,” despite conflicting messages from the EPA.
But Louisiana residents with their hands both literally and figuratively in the oil remain deeply skeptical of BP’s response.
“The only people getting sick are the ones cleaning up the spill,” says Jim Gossen, CEO of Louisiana Foods-Global Seafood Source, who owns a beach house in Grand Isle. “My friend’s brother-in-law was sick for days; he said dispersants were sprayed ten miles from their shrimp boat. The deckhand threw up blood in the hospital — they must have had dispersants in their blood — but I can’t imagine BP would admit it.”
Wilma Subra, a Louisiana chemist who regularly meets with federal officials about the spill, testified before a congressional committee that workers have been forced to handle crude oil with their bare hands, and “[t]hose fishermen who attempted to wear respirators while working were threatened to be fired by BP due to the workers using respirators.” (BP insists that it provides respirators and hazmat gear upon request.)
Hello, my name is Merle Savage, and I was General Foreman, during the Exxon Valdez oil spill clean-up in Anchorage in 1989. I am just like a lot of the workers. There were approximately 11,000 workers who cleaned the beaches, and all of them, just like me, have respiratory problems and other illnesses that come from the toxic crude which is etoxic.
The reason why I am here today is to let people know, because no one is telling people in the Gulf region that the crude oil is toxic, and the people are going out there and cleaning, and they’re becoming sick just like we were many years ago: twenty-one years and they were not able to do any reports that would show that the crude oil is toxic.
So I’m asking President Obama to come forward and indicate that he’s going to do something about it. He needs to protect his people, and no one is doing it. They need respirators and no one is giving it to them, and no one is even telling them. I’ve been trying for two months to let people know about it.
If there’s any doubt about it, go to my website, http://silenceinthesound.com/. There are pictures there that show the crude oil mist that we workers had to work in and breathe, which caused our health to deteriorate. My immune system is collapsed. I had angioplasty and I have rheumatoid arthritis that I’m taking shots for twice a month. It’s a very bad health issue that’s going on. Fortunately for me, I’m still alive. A lot of my friends have passed away with the same symptoms that I have.
Again, I would like to ask President Obama to do something. You’re the only one that can. So step up. Step up, and do something, and order BP to give the workers respirators. Stand up and say, Yes, it’s toxic. You know it is. We see the warning signs when we get gas at the gas station and that’s refined oil. Once again. My name is Merle Savage, and I would appreciate it if you would pass this message on. Anyone who’s listening, just pass it on.
Thank you.
Exxon Valdez Survivor To Gulf Residents –
AU 60 Minutes BP Oil Spill Video, 13 June 2010, Removed by BP Demand
PART 1:
PART 2:
TILT: The illness afflicting workers exposed to BP’s oil disaster?
Workers cleaning up the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico have reported suffering from flu-like symptoms that may be the consequence of exposure to chemicals in the oil as well as the petroleum-derived solvent being used to disperse the spill.
The illness — marked by headaches, fatigue, upset stomach, and problems with memory and concentration — has been dubbed toxicant-induced loss of tolerance, or TILT. People suffering from TILT lose the ability to tolerate exposures to household chemical products, medication or even food, Dr. Claudia Miller of the University of Texas Health Science Center told WOAI TV:
“Things like diesel fuel, exposure to fragrances, cleaning agents that never bothered them before suddenly bother them,” adds Dr. Miller.
BP OIL DISASTER! DR. RIKI OTT TALKS ABOUT DISPERSANT AND WHAT BP IS HIDING! – July 04, 2010 Dr. Riki Ott talks to Project Gulf Impact about the AWFUL health risks that Corexit and the oil spill impose on the mass population.
You think the dispersant isn’t harmful? – July 01, 2010
BP OIL SPILL DISASTER! BLACK BEACHES IN PENSACOLA! – July 04, 2010
Poison Spreads: Gulf air turns toxic after oil spill ‘relief effort’ – July 1, 2010
Oil Spills Raise Ocean’s Arsenic Level, Create ‘Toxic Time Bomb’
July 2 (Bloomberg) — Oil spills like the one in the Gulf of Mexico interfere with the ocean’s natural filtration system, allowing arsenic levels to build up and threaten the long-term health of marine plants and animals, researchers found.
Minerals on the ocean floor attract arsenic found in seawater, latching onto the poison and burying it under layers of sand, silt and sediment, according to a new study released today by scientists from Imperial College London. The study was published today in the journal Water Research.
Arsenic is also found in oil. Leaks from underground reservoirs, spills and wastewater from rigs all increase levels of the chemical in the ocean and threaten the marine ecosystem as well as the food chain, the researchers said.
“The real danger lies in arsenic’s ability to accumulate, which means that each subsequent spill raises the levels of this pollutant in seawater,” said Mark Sephton, a professor at Imperial’s department of earth science and engineering. “Our study is a timely reminder that oil spills could create a toxic ticking time bomb, which could threaten the fabric of the marine ecosystem in the future.”
They said the arsenic then gets “magnified” up the food chain, as fish eat small amounts of the deadly poison and may eventually impact humans, researchers said.
More bad news for BP as arsenic levels rise in seawater around the Gulf of Mexico
BELEAGUERED energy giant BP was hit with further bad news this morning as it emerged dangerous arsenic levels have been found in seawater around the Gulf of Mexico.
British scientists warned that the oil spill is increasing the level of arsenic in the ocean, and could further add to the devastating impact on the already sensitive environment.
BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig has been spilling between 3,681,500 litres and 911,454,000 litres of oil into the sea per day since it exploded on 22 April.
The spill is already being labeled as America’s worst environmental disaster and has turned into a economic and PR nightmare for the British company.
The clean-up operation which has already cost, $US3.12 billion (A3.7 billion) is expected to rise even further efforts have been hampered by technical setbacks to cap the leak and Hurricane Alex.
BP Gulf Oil Spill Disaster, An Impossible Well to Cap? – July 3, 2010
By Joshua S. Burnett
[...]
That being said there are some rather severe long-term economic implications across all of the Gulf States. Fishing and tourism industries should expect a severe decline for years; recovery will have to be built from the ground up over the course of what looks like the next several decades before pre-spill strength is achieved. Because of the fact that these are driving industries across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, the rest of the industries in these states should expect to see an economic downturn ripple effect. The impacts will of course be lessened but they will be no less significant. There is a possibility (though how probable remains to be seen) that certain crops could be damaged by any oil-infused rain; even if they remain effectively safe for human consumption they may not remain so legally (it is possible the FDA will forbid any crops from “contaminated” areas to be sold); farmers should be prepared for the possibility that this negative impact may occur. Consumers should be prepared for across the board food price increases this summer; this will especially be true the longer the Mississippi River is impacted as a shipping lane.
The concern still exists that capping the well may be a long way off. The problem BP is facing is not that the pressures in the well are so high that it is impossible to be capped (as I originally thought) but rather that the casing is most likely broken. This causes oil and gas to vector out around the well casing whenever it is shut off, further damaging the wellhead’s attachments to the sea floor. According to Matthew Simmons, energy advisor to George W. Bush and founder of the Ocean Energy Institute an intact casing is necessary for the relief wells to work. If the casing is busted what we’re looking at is trying to seal an increasingly porous and leaking ocean floor, not a wellhead. This makes the case fundamentally different from and incomparable to cases such as the Ixtoc oil well (in addition to being in 5,000 feet of water as verses 160 feet with the Ixtoc). If such indeed proves to be the case more drastic measures may be necessary, such as attempting to collapse the floor around the leak using explosives. This brings up an entire host of issues and I sincerely hope we won’t have to cross that bridge.
Methane’s hidden impact in Gulf oil spill Large quantities of methane released by BP’s oil blowout aren’t fouling beaches like the Gulf oil spill is, but could endanger a key link in the undersea food chain. (read article)
VIDEO BELOW: The first part is a collection of clips put together of the oil and toxic waters washing up on shore. The second half is on the extreme side of what could happen, ie. tsunami. From my research – only if a platonic shift such as an earthquake would then possibly lead to some other natural event, ie. underwater volcano – this of which is highly unlikely but not out of possibility. However, the toxic gases and toxic crude oil mixed in with Corexit should be of significant concern. Hurricanes in the Gulf could pick up oil and deposit it 300 miles inland from the coast. This could poison the vegetation and freshwater sources, resulting in large scale evacuations and massive refugee needs.
Gulf Air Toxic – BP Oil Spill Truth – Beyond Repair – Fissures and Fractures Leaking
BP Oil Disaster WORST CASE SCENARIO w/ Kindra Arnesen, BP Community Liaison – July 02, 2010
VIDEO BELOW — I cannot verify with accuracy but I feel I should pass it along. There are issues I have with Jeff Rense as he is out there with some conspiracies but Lindsay Williams seems to have some valid concerns.
URGENT – BP SPILL – 10s Of Millions Being Allowed To Breath Deadly Air!! – July 03, 2010
Lindsay Williams brings us his latest update via the Jeff Rense radio show. Williams discusses the possibility and the dangers attached to using a nuclear device to try and seal the hole. If the nuclear device was to fail we may have oil leaking/gushing into the gulf for up to 30 years. And with the EPA not reporting the air quality since the end of May, there is the potential for 10s of millions to be breathing in deadly toxins. And for those out there that attack me for this info, let me just remind you that out of all the workers that were part of the clean up crew working on the Exxon Valdez are not alive today.
BP Oil Spill Global Catastrophe Reaches Epic Proportions
By: T. Anthony Michael
Dr. Tom Termotto writes: As BP Oil Spill Lets the Genie Out Of The Bottle
[...]
It doesn’t take much understanding or knowledge to apprehend the enormity and gravity of the potential consequences of such a standard operating principle in the oil and gas exploration and drilling business. Especially when you’re drilling 5000 feet underwater, and between 22,000 and 32,000 feet (they won’t tell us how deep) through the Earth’s crust and mantle. When you throw in the likes of Transocean and Halliburton into the mix, it’s not a matter of what, or if, or when, the greatest disaster of all time is going to happen. IT’S A MATTER OF JUST HOW CATASTROPHIC IT WILL BE FOR THE ENTIRE PLANET!
FEMA Says Gulf Coast Disaster Could Cost Trillions
Despite President Obama’s declaration that life in the Gulf Coast will return to normal, knowledgeable insiders and experts are saying it is possible that the Gulf oil disaster will create a dead zone. If that were to happen, it would cause the displacement and evacuation of several cities and towns within range of the disaster. The final cost for addressing the disaster could run into the trillions of dollars. See the following article from OilPrice.com for more on this.
Bad news concerning the Gulf oil disaster continues to come from WMR’s federal government sources in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers . Emergency planners are dealing with a prospective “dead zone” within a 200 mile radius from the Deepwater Horizon disaster datum in the Gulf.
A looming environmental and population displacement disaster is brewing in the Gulf. The oil dispersant used by BP, Corexit 9500, is seen by FEMA sources as mixing with evaporated water from the Gulf and absorbed by rain clouds producing toxic precipitation that threatens to continue killing marine and land animals, plant life, and humans within a 200-mile radius of the Deepwater Horizon disaster site in the Gulf.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is in its third month with no end in sight. Here’s where things stand now in the Gulf of Mexico.
How much oil is still gushing?
No one knows exactly how much oil is escaping BP’s oil collection system (series of pipes drawing oil from leak to surface ships) and entering Gulf waters. Government estimates peg the leak at 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day, which translates to between 1.5 million and 2.5 million gallons.
Of that, BP is now collecting upward of 20,000 barrels per day. On June 29, the company recovered 25,220 barrels, bringing the total collected since the beginning of the spill to 508,700 barrels.
Where is the oil?
Gulf oil spill could be headed to Miami and Florida Keys, new government data suggests – Daily News
Florida’s panhandle may not be the only part of the Sunshine State to get a visit from the massive oil spill floating in the Gulf of Mexico.
Miami and the Florida Keys might be in store for tar balls and oily shores, according to new data released by the government.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates the areas have a 61%-80% chance of getting hit with oil.
There’s no exact timetable for the oil’s arrival. If the spill reaches the Loop Current, NOAA says it could take 8-12 days before it reaches south Florida.
If there is a silver lining, it’s that any oil that reaches the current and heads toward South Florida will likely degrade and break apart during the journey. NOAA says their estimate does not mean oil will necessary come ashore.
Gulf oil spill likely to reach Florida Keys, Miami, report says – Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington and New Orleans —
Hundreds of skimming boats prepared Friday to return to calmer gulf waters in the wake of Hurricane Alex and resume cleanup of the massive BP oil spill, which scientists now predict is likely to reach the Florida Keys and Miami in the months ahead.
Using computer simulations based on 15 years of wind and ocean current data, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report Friday showing a 61% to 80% chance of the oil spill reaching within 20 miles of the coasts of the Florida Keys, Fort Lauderdale and Miami, mostly likely in the form of weathered tar balls.
E.P.A. Lags on Setting Some Air Standards, Report Finds
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency is 10 years behind schedule in setting guidelines for a host of toxic air pollutants, according to a report from the agency’s inspector general.
The report, which was released last week, found that the agency had failed to develop emissions standards, due in 2000, for some sources of hazardous air pollutants. These included smaller sites often located in urban areas, like dry cleaners and gas stations, but also some chemical manufacturers.
The inspector general also found that the agency had not met targets outlined in a 1999 planning document, the Integrated Urban Air Toxics Strategy, including tracking urban dwellers’ risk of developing health problems from exposure to pollutants.
NEW ORLEANS – The latest hopes are riding on a massive new skimmer to clean oil from near the spewing well in the Gulf of Mexico, while a local Louisiana parish’s plan to block the slick has been rejected by federal officials.
A 48-hour test of the Taiwanese vessel dubbed “A Whale” began Saturday and was to continue through Sunday.
TMT Shipping created what is billed as the world’s largest oil skimmer by converting an oil tanker after the April 20 explosion sent millions of gallons of crude spilling into the Gulf.
Oil Disaster: The Rig That Blew Up was never going to win any awards for its less-than-imaginative title, and true to Five’s form, this hastily cobbled together documentary about one of the planet’s worst ever ecological disasters was less than brilliant.
If you tuned in expecting an in-depth assessment of the ecological impact of the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, or a look at the subsequent political fallout and President Obama’s Brit-bashing in the weeks following, you’d have been seriously disappointed.
For this is Five, a channel which sticks Ice Road Truckers on at primetime and seems to be courting a target audience of blokes who get their kicks watching massive bits of machinery been driven around by Americans with handlebar moustaches. It takes all sorts.
Oil Disaster focussed primarily on those first few nights after the BP-owned rig suffered a massive blowout with 126 people on board, and the efforts of the emergency services and specialists who worked tirelessly in an effort save those on board and vainly fought to prevent the thing from collapsing into the ocean.
The narration in particular was rather ham-fisted. “Chris leaves his room – walking into a deep sea rigger’s worst nightmare” boomed the voiceover at one point, somewhat stating the obvious. The dedication and the bravery of the experts who fought to prevent the disaster was beyond doubt – but they’d have been better served by a film which didn’t so obviously salivate at the prospect of showing some big American trucks and huge slabs of lifting equipment.
The timescales involved presumably meant the makers of this documentary had to turn the whole thing round pretty quickly, and by god it showed. The last few minutes were frankly bizarre, with the whole environmental catastrophe and hapless BP boss Tony Hayward’s grilling by US senators shoehorned into the tiny bit of space they had before the credits rolled. Such a tragic incident surely merits better.
Documentary exploring what really happened in the first 36 hours of the biggest environmental disaster in US history – the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Featuring exclusive access and footage, the film follows the salvage team called in to save the burning oil rig Deepwater Horizon, and unravels the desperate story of the men tasked with preventing a catastrophe. (Runtime: 44:44)
This weekend we celebrate the birth of our nation.
July 2, 1776 was the original signing of the Declaration of Independence declaring independence from the British Crown. July 4, 1776 Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence proclaiming a new United States of America from Great Britain and its king.
Happy Birthday America! Have a great Independence Day!
President Reagan’s Address to the Nation on Independence Day – 7/4/86
Independence Forever: Why America Celebrates the Fourth of July
The Fourth of July is a great opportunity to renew our dedication to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in what Thomas Jefferson called “the declaratory charter of our rights.”
As a practical matter, the Declaration of Independence publicly announced to the world the unanimous decision of the American colonies to declare themselves free and independent states, absolved from any allegiance to Great Britain. But its greater meaning-then as well as now-is as a statement of the conditions of legitimate political authority and the proper ends of government, and its proclamation of a new ground of political rule in the sovereignty of the people. “If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence,” wrote the great historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, “it would have been worthwhile.”
Although Congress had appointed a distinguished committee-including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston-the Declaration of Independence is chiefly the work of Thomas Jefferson. By his own account, Jefferson was neither aiming at originality nor taking from any particular writings but was expressing the “harmonizing sentiments of the day,” as expressed in conversation, letters, essays, or “the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.” Jefferson intended the Declaration to be “an expression of the American mind,” and wrote so as to “place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”
The structure of the Declaration of Independence is that of a common law legal document. The ringing phrases of the document’s famous second paragraph are a powerful synthesis of American constitutional and republican government theories. All men have a right to liberty only in so far as they are by nature equal, which is to say none are naturally superior, and deserve to rule, or inferior, and deserve to be ruled. Because men are endowed with these rights, the rights are unalienable, which means that they cannot be given up or taken away. And because individuals equally possess these rights, governments derive their just powers from the consent of those governed. The purpose of government is to secure these fundamental rights and, although prudence tells us that governments should not be changed for trivial reasons, the people retain the right to alter or abolish government when it becomes destructive of these ends.
The remainder of the document is a bill of indictment accusing King George III of some 30 offenses, some constitutional, some legal, and some matters of policy. The combined charges against the king were intended to demonstrate a history of repeated injuries, all having the object of establishing “an absolute tyranny” over America. Although the colonists were “disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable,” the time had come to end the relationship: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”
One charge that Jefferson had included, but Congress removed, was that the king had “waged cruel war against human nature” by introducing slavery and allowing the slave trade into the American colonies. A few delegates were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery violated the “most sacred rights of life and liberty,” and the passage was dropped for the sake of unanimity. Thus was foreshadowed the central debate of the American Civil War, which Abraham Lincoln saw as a test to determine whether a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” could long endure.
The Declaration of Independence and the liberties recognized in it are grounded in a higher law to which all human laws are answerable. This higher law can be understood to derive from reason-the truths of the Declaration are held to be “self-evident”-but also revelation. There are four references to God in the document: to “the laws of nature and nature’s God”; to all men being “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”; to “the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions”; and to “the protection of Divine Providence.” The first term suggests a deity that is knowable by human reason, but the others-God as creator, as judge, and as providence-are more biblical, and add a theological context to the document. “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God?” Jefferson asked in his Notes on the State of Virginia.
The true significance of the Declaration lies in its trans-historical meaning. Its appeal was not to any conventional law or political contract but to the equal rights possessed by all men and “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and nature’s God” entitled them. What is revolutionary about the Declaration of Independence is not that a particular group of Americans declared their independence under particular circumstances but that they did so by appealing to-and promising to base their particular government on-a universal standard of justice. It is in this sense that Abraham Lincoln praised “the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.”
The ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence speak to all those who strive for liberty and seek to vindicate the principles of self-government. But it was an aged John Adams who, when he was asked to prepare a statement on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, delivered two words that still convey our great hope every Fourth of July: “Independence Forever.”
Using quotes from our Founding Fathers, this video leaves no debate that our country was founded on Christian principles, and even on Christ Himself.
1776 – A Tribute to American Independence
‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ (Steffe-Howe)
Happy Birthday America (Independence Day)
Happy 4th of July!
United States Armed Forces Tribute (Armed Forces Medley)
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Red Skelton In The Pledge Of Allegiance Video
MARINE STUNS A TEA PARTY WITH THE FOURTH VERSE OF THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER
This weekend we celebrate the birth of our nation.
July 2, 1776 was the original signing of the Declaration of Independence declaring independence from the British Crown. July 4, 1776 Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence proclaiming a new United States of America from Great Britain and its king.
Have a safe and happy Independence Day weekend! God bless the United States of America!
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Understanding the Declaration of Independence – 9 Key Concepts Everyone Should Know
Independence Forever: Why America Celebrates the Fourth of July
The Fourth of July is a great opportunity to renew our dedication to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in what Thomas Jefferson called “the declaratory charter of our rights.”
As a practical matter, the Declaration of Independence publicly announced to the world the unanimous decision of the American colonies to declare themselves free and independent states, absolved from any allegiance to Great Britain. But its greater meaning-then as well as now-is as a statement of the conditions of legitimate political authority and the proper ends of government, and its proclamation of a new ground of political rule in the sovereignty of the people. “If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence,” wrote the great historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, “it would have been worthwhile.”
Although Congress had appointed a distinguished committee-including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston-the Declaration of Independence is chiefly the work of Thomas Jefferson. By his own account, Jefferson was neither aiming at originality nor taking from any particular writings but was expressing the “harmonizing sentiments of the day,” as expressed in conversation, letters, essays, or “the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.” Jefferson intended the Declaration to be “an expression of the American mind,” and wrote so as to “place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”
The structure of the Declaration of Independence is that of a common law legal document. The ringing phrases of the document’s famous second paragraph are a powerful synthesis of American constitutional and republican government theories. All men have a right to liberty only in so far as they are by nature equal, which is to say none are naturally superior, and deserve to rule, or inferior, and deserve to be ruled. Because men are endowed with these rights, the rights are unalienable, which means that they cannot be given up or taken away. And because individuals equally possess these rights, governments derive their just powers from the consent of those governed. The purpose of government is to secure these fundamental rights and, although prudence tells us that governments should not be changed for trivial reasons, the people retain the right to alter or abolish government when it becomes destructive of these ends.
The remainder of the document is a bill of indictment accusing King George III of some 30 offenses, some constitutional, some legal, and some matters of policy. The combined charges against the king were intended to demonstrate a history of repeated injuries, all having the object of establishing “an absolute tyranny” over America. Although the colonists were “disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable,” the time had come to end the relationship: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”
One charge that Jefferson had included, but Congress removed, was that the king had “waged cruel war against human nature” by introducing slavery and allowing the slave trade into the American colonies. A few delegates were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery violated the “most sacred rights of life and liberty,” and the passage was dropped for the sake of unanimity. Thus was foreshadowed the central debate of the American Civil War, which Abraham Lincoln saw as a test to determine whether a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” could long endure.
The Declaration of Independence and the liberties recognized in it are grounded in a higher law to which all human laws are answerable. This higher law can be understood to derive from reason-the truths of the Declaration are held to be “self-evident”-but also revelation. There are four references to God in the document: to “the laws of nature and nature’s God”; to all men being “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”; to “the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions”; and to “the protection of Divine Providence.” The first term suggests a deity that is knowable by human reason, but the others-God as creator, as judge, and as providence-are more biblical, and add a theological context to the document. “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God?” Jefferson asked in his Notes on the State of Virginia.
The true significance of the Declaration lies in its trans-historical meaning. Its appeal was not to any conventional law or political contract but to the equal rights possessed by all men and “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and nature’s God” entitled them. What is revolutionary about the Declaration of Independence is not that a particular group of Americans declared their independence under particular circumstances but that they did so by appealing to-and promising to base their particular government on-a universal standard of justice. It is in this sense that Abraham Lincoln praised “the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.”
The ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence speak to all those who strive for liberty and seek to vindicate the principles of self-government. But it was an aged John Adams who, when he was asked to prepare a statement on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, delivered two words that still convey our great hope every Fourth of July: “Independence Forever.”
Summer solstice: it’s a stormy time for the Sun – June 21, 2010 Last night marked the summer solstice – the longest day of the year, and the period when the Sun reaches its northernmost latitude and highest point in the sky at noon. For me and my fellow solar physicists, the summer solstice offers an excellent opportunity to study our solar system’s fiery star. (read article)
What’s wrong with the sun?
SUNSPOTS come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.
[...]
The stakes have never been higher. Groups of sunspots forewarn of gigantic solar storms that can unleash a billion times more energy than an atomic bomb. Fears that these giant solar eruptions could create havoc on Earth, and disputes over the sun’s role in climate change, are adding urgency to these studies. When NASA and the European Space Agency launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory almost 15 years ago, “understanding the solar cycle was not one of its scientific objectives”, says Bernhard Fleck, the mission’s project scientist. “Now it is one of the key questions.”
“The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity,” said Richard Fisher, head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, in the report released just days ago.
NASA: Cosmic ’superstorm’ more crippling than 20 Katrinas A new government forecast warns a coming possible solar storm could eliminate – at least temporarily across large swaths of the world – power grids, air travel and communications, including those operating financial services and emergency systems, as well as GPS functions and even cell phones. (read article)
The new forecast suggests solar storms could be at its peak activity in 2012 or 2013.
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Astonishing new pictures from NASA that could help unlock the secrets of the sun — 10 times clearer than high definition TV — show giant flares and clouds of ionized gas erupting from the star.
Electronic Armageddon? Congress Worries That Solar Flares Could Spell Disaster Solar storms occur when sunspots on our star erupt and spew out flumes of charged particles that can damage power systems. The sun’s activity typically follows an 11-year cycle, and it looks to be coming out of a slump and gearing up for an active period. (read article)
Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause devastation
National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.
Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.
Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.
“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.
“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”
On Sept. 2, 1859, an incredible storm of charged particles sent by the sun slammed into Earth’s atmosphere, overpowered it, and caused havoc on the ground. Telegraph wires, the high-tech stuff of the time, suddenly shorted out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. Colorful aurora, normally visible only in polar regions, were seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii.
Earth’s magnetic field normally protects the surface of the planet from some storms. In 1859, the planet’s defenses were totally overwhelmed. Over the past decade, similar but less powerful storms have likewise busted through, giving scientists insight into what will eventually happen again.
Jellyfish-like star spotted in the sky – June 22, 2010 The jellyfish-like object depicted is a sphere of stellar innards, blown out from a humongous star as it ages. The star is one of the most massive stellar residents of our Milky Way galaxy. (read article)
First, let me make clear that I would take any legal immigrant who values the freedom of our great country over any complacent American born fool who clearly has no idea of what it means to be an American. I have tremendous respect for those who have sacrificed to come to our country the legal way. Do not take for granted the many gifts our great nation offers us. For which they come from God not of man. God bless the USA!
“A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation” — Ronald Reagan
Fox News Poll: Secure the Border First
A majority of American voters think the federal government should secure the country’s borders first, before Congress works on new immigration legislation.
The Obama administration wants comprehensive immigration overhaul to come first, while Republican leaders are pushing for improved border security as the top priority. A Fox News poll released Friday asked American voters what should happen first: 59 percent think the government should secure the border first, while 30 percent think the priority should be new legislation.
[...]
Just over half of voters — 52 percent — favor Arizona’s new immigration law. That’s almost twice as many as the 27 percent who oppose it. Another 21 percent have no opinion.
Arizona’s Closed Federal Parkland is a No-Man’s Land
BUENOS AIRES NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Arizona – The number of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers crossing through this magnificent national parkland in southern Arizona has “decreased significantly” in the last four years, park officials say.
But there’s a dark cloud to this silver lining: To make it happen, the refuge had to close a sliver of this slice of heaven to the quarter-billion American taxpayers who own it — essentially creating a no-man’s-land on which only drug smugglers, gun-runners, human traffickers and the Border Patrol agents who track them down dare to tread.
And with rival Mexican drug gangs gunning each other down less than 50 miles away, the chance that the closed portion of the wildlife refuge will reopen in the foreseeable future appears to be between slim and none. For the time being, officials say, a small portion of this public land will be closed to the public.
Arizona law’s foes are using the real immigration scare tactics
By George Will – Sunday, May 2, 2010
“Physician, heal yourself,” said the founder of the church in which Roger Mahony is a cardinal. He is the Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, and he should heed the founder’s admonition before accusing Arizonans of intemperateness. He says that Arizona’s new law pertaining to illegal immigration involves “reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation.”
“Our highest priority today,” he says, “is to bring calm and reasoning to discussions about our immigrant brothers and sisters.” His idea of calm reasoning is to call Arizona’s law for coping with illegal immigration “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law.” He also says that it is “dreadful,” “abhorrent” and a “tragedy” and that its assumption is that “immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder and consume public resources.”
The problem of illegal immigration is inflaming Mahony, who strongly implies, as advocates for illegal immigrants often do, that any law intended to reduce such illegality is “anti-immigrant.” The implication is: Because most Americans believe such illegality should be reduced, most Americans are against immigrants. This slur is slain by abundant facts — polling data that show Americans simultaneously committed to controlling the nation’s southern border and to welcoming legal immigration.
Obama says politics to blame for immigration delay
WASHINGTON – Hoping to breathe new life into the stalled immigration effort, President Barack Obama on Thursday blamed the delay on recalcitrant Republicans whom he said had given in to the “pressures of partisanship and election-year politics.”
Republicans responded that Obama’s first step going forward must be to secure the border.
In his first immigration speech, Obama took Republicans to task, in particular 11 GOP senators who had backed attempts during the previous Republican administration to tighten the immigration system. He did not call out anyone by name.
Obama: U.S. Borders Cannot Be Secured With Fences and Border Patrols
(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama said today that U.S. borders cannot be secured with fences and border patrols. “It won’t work,” he said.
Obama made the statement in a speech at American University in Washington, D.C. in which he called on Congress to enact a “comprehensive immigration reform” law that would include a “pathway for legal status” for illegal immigrants—or what critics call amnesty.
Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.
They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.
Wachovia, Wells Fargo caught funding Mexican Drug Cartels – Bank of America also implicated
Brewer to Obama: Warning Signs Are Not Enough
President Obama speaking regarding our borders
Ariz. Cops Expect Scrutiny of Immigration Law
Laura Ingraham Interviews Ali Noorani On Immigration Reform – 07/01/10
Drug Gang Enforcer Admits Ordering U.S. Consulate Worker’s Killing, Mexico Says
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A top drug gang enforcer says he ordered the killing of a U.S. consulate worker because she helped provide visas to a rival gang in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, federal police said Friday.
Jesus Ernesto Chavez, whose arrest was announced on Friday, leads a band of hit men for a street gang tied to the Juarez cartel, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of anti-narcotics for the Federal Police.
(Reuters) – Contracts for pending sales of previously owned homes plunged a record 30 percent in May, far more than expected, after a popular tax credit expired at the end of the prior month, a survey from the National Association of Realtors showed on Thursday.
Evidence mounts that recovery is hitting the skids
WASHINGTON – The economic rebound is stalling.
A raft of weak new reports Thursday provided the strongest evidence yet that the recovery is slowing and added to concerns that the nation could be on its way back into recession.
Most notable was a rise in the number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time. The four-week average for jobless claims now stands at its highest point since March.
The bleak indicators come just after Congress adjourned for the holiday weekend without extending jobless benefits, and a day ahead of a report expected to show only modest improvement in the national job market.
On top of that, the housing market appears to be slumping again, and the Dow Jones industrials closed down for the sixth trading day in a row. Add in slower growth in China and the Europe debt crisis, and economists are scaling back their forecasts for the U.S.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks began the third quarter with another loss after reports on jobs, housing and manufacturing raised investors’ economic worries.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 42 points Thursday for its sixth straight loss, although it ended well off its lows ahead of the government’s June jobs report. The report is critical because a rebound in jobs is needed for the economy to recover. The numbers are due before the start of trading Friday.
FORTUNE — The long decline of the savings rate in the United States has been widely discussed, yet every revisit of the data brings new cause for alarm. Hedgeye recently provided its clients a chart showing savings as a percentage of GDP. In the 1970s and 1980s savings were in the 5 – 7% range. In the decades since, personal savings have declined to the 1 – 3% range.
Many pundits suggest the decline in savings is a non-issue, while others, more on the extreme, believe that it one of the primary economic issues currently facing the United States. While the implications can be debated, the fact remains that the savings rate has declined dramatically over the past few decades and is among the lowest of any modern nation state.
Jobless Claims in U.S. Increased Last Week to 472,000
July 1 (Bloomberg) — More Americans unexpectedly applied for jobless benefits last week, a sign the labor market recovery may be slowing.
Initial jobless claims increased by 13,000 to 472,000 in the week ended June 26, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance rose, while those getting emergency benefits dropped after Congress failed to act on extending the legislation.
The jump in applications raises the risk that the turmoil in financial markets brought on by the European debt crisis is leading to additional cutbacks in staff. The Labor Department tomorrow may report the U.S. lost jobs in June for the first month this year, reflecting a drop in temporary federal workers who helped to conduct the decennial census.
“The labor market is not generating employment for anyone, even for people who have been out a long time,” said Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities USA Inc. in New York, who forecast claims at 470,000. “What we’re seeing in the backup of claims is not a particularly healthy story, showing we can’t generate upside momentum in the labor market.”
The U.S. economy created a modest 83,000 private sector jobs in June, adding to concern that the economic recovery is tepid at best and highlighting the political danger to President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats heading into a tightly contested midterm election cycle in which control of the House and perhaps the Senate are at stake.
The unemployment rate ticked down slightly from 9.7 percent to 9.5 percent.
The Labor Department this morning reported an overall decline of 125,000 non-farm payroll employment but the number was dragged down by a 225,000 decline in temporary Census jobs. The underlying private sector jobs created represent an increase from the 41,000 positions generated in May but a significant drop from the peak recovery job creation figure of 218,000 new jobs in April.
