My Plug Idea #2 for the BP Oil Spill

May 27, 2010May 27, 2010 by Editor | 1 Comment

Another idea for plugging the hole in the Gulf in a relatively short time.

The drawings are of course not done to scale. They are conceptual.

I suspect that BP engineers are totally focused on using the existing blowout prevention machine that is not working as the main part of their fix. Consequently, their thinking is running along the lines of what the machine’s capacities and weaknesses are. This may prevent them from thinking ‘outside the blowout preventer,’ so to speak. There should be some engineers spending their time thinking of the problem as if there were no blowout preventer at all. Just an open pipe in a hole with lots of pressure spewing out hot oil and gas. How would you plug that?

I might plug it with a huge concrete and steel cap weight that had a perforated pipe extending from beneath it. The weight and its extending perforated pipe would be slowly lowered over the gusher hole. The perforated pipe would slide inside the gushing well pipe until the huge cap weight above was sitting on the ocean floor. Then cement could be pumped from the surface down a long pipe which would connect to the giant cap weight and its perforated pipe now sitting inside the well pipe. The cement would push down this pipe extension and out through the perforations to plug up the well pipe.

I wonder if this idea holds any merit at all. Perhaps the best part of the idea is for engineers to consider options outside of the blowout preventer.

Obama Has Ignored His Basic Responsibility to Protect the United States

May 26, 2010June 7, 2010 by Editor

President Barack Obama has failed to uphold the primary duty of the President of the United States, which is to protect it from physical harm. This president has inexplicably ignored his responsibilities and has turned over a planetary mega-disaster to the foreign oil company that caused the disaster. The total reliance upon a company that has proven itself incapable of planning for problems with underwater oil wells is an abdication of responsibility, a total loss of control and a political nightmare that will effectively end the Obama presidency. If you are a Democrat, as I am, you had better watch the video below. When James Carville, one of the great Democrats and political strategists of the 20th century screams at you this way, with this much anger and this much disbelief, you are a lame-duck president. Doesn’t matter how well you smile. Watch:

Carville is on the money. Obama should have immediately recognized that this hole in the Gulf is a very bad Chernobyl-level disaster that is going to wipe out the southern coast of the United States and possibly kill most life in the Gulf of Mexico. He should have set up an emergency command center in Louisiana at which he was present and he should have put the military at the site of the disaster so that they could use cameras and submarines to keep an eye on what British Petroleum was doing at the well head. There is no reason to believe what BP is telling the U.S. government. There is no reason to believe that they are actually trying a ‘top-kill’ procedure. There is no visual evidence of this and the U.S. military would be able to verify or refute the company’s claims.

The BP oil spill is a Chernobyl-level disaster. It is ongoing and will kill enormous stretches of coastline and turn large portions of the Gulf into dead zones. It will also kill human beings. BP is putting people out into poisonous waters without any Hazmat breathing gear. Those people are starting to get sick already. The poisons can destroy brain tissue and apparently damage lungs.

Fisherman hired to help clean up are getting sick from chemicals at oil spill:

President Obama has failed to put sufficient resources along the coasts to help with cleanup. Instead, he maneuvers politically by sending 1,200 National Guard troops to help ‘protect’ the border in Arizona when everyone knows that those troops cannot do anything at all but stand around and drink coffee. It is not legal for them to arrest anyone crossing the border and they are not authorized to do so. But they could certainly help down in Louisiana with oil.

Obama has decided to visit the area on Friday. So he can have a look. Why doesn’t he put his head into the thick sloppy goop that will be surrounding his boat. When he comes up he’ll be a well-oiled president machine.

This is a very weak president. He does not have the ability to move quickly – in real time – during an extended crisis. It is appalling that he has not been able to overcome his inertia over the course of an entire month of unfolding disaster. If I were an enemy of the United States, I would be paying very close attention to what is going on here and make my move right about now. Like North Korea.

What we find out later about this oil spill will make today’s anger seem mild. Never again will I be misled by a politician who paints himself as a hero to the people. Never. We were all so excited about having a woman candidate in the primaries and a black candidate in the presidential election. But those things really aren’t important enough. We feel proud for electing the nation’s first black president but look what it got us. It got us a corporate middle manager who gives billions to Wall Street friends, turns healthcare reform into a windfall for the insurance companies, continues two useless and expensive wars, continues to hold people in prisons without charges, and cannot figure out how to take control during a horrendous man-made disaster.

My Plug Idea for the BP Oil Spill

May 24, 2010May 25, 2010 by Editor | 1 Comment

Plug the hole with a big… you know… plug. There are no ideas coming out of the U.S. government or its bosses at British Petroleum, so why not offer some of our own. I’m pretty good at offering lots of dumb ideas while trying to find a single good one. So here’s my latest dumb idea.

To modify my idea in the film slightly, I would guess that instead of dropping the plug from chains, you would set the thing down on short legs at the ocean floor and then, when it was aligned with the hole, blow the legs out from under it to drop it into the hole.

I wonder if there are lots of ideas like this for solving the disaster in the Gulf. I’d be very curious to see what other people are coming up with.

Update:

After posting my doomsday hole plug idea last night, Scot Monette wrote me a note to point me to this video for his oil spill cleanup product, Petronet. It’s a biodegradable cellulose fiber made from ground up garbage. It’s environmentally friendly and it absorbs huge amounts of oil. When a country gets into a situation where it can only elect intellectual midgets to the highest federal offices (yes, I’m referring to our dimwitted President), you need people like this who are thinking on their feet and use their ingenuity to actually make things that help. Look at this video and ask yourself why the Coast Guard is not on the phone with Mr. Monette at this very moment:

BP and U.S. are Hiding Something in Gulf

May 17, 2010May 17, 2010 by Editor

That’s a 21-inch pipe blowing oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s 5,000 feet underwater and it’s a doomsday hole. There’s something very strange about the information coming out of the Gulf oil spill. It’s minimal. Some scientists who have technology for precisely measuring the rate of flow from the pipe are being turned away from the spill area by BP and the United States government. BP didn’t even want the video to get released because they didn’t want anyone to know how much oil was leaking. They are still saying that knowing how much oil is coming out is irrelevant. Really? Some experts are trying to warn people that over 75 million gallons of oil have already poured into the Gulf waters. 75 million. That’s almost seven times the Exxon Valdez spill already.

Obama and FCC Give Full Remote Control of Your TV Hardware to Corporations

May 8, 2010May 8, 2010 by Editor

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Federal Communications Commission have given media corporations the legal power to remotely disable functions and outputs in your television, DVD players, and content receivers. This decision means that when you buy equipment it will have a shut-off and control mechanism built into it allowing Warner Brothers or Disney to flip a switch that will turn off various parts of your equipment so that you cannot do certain things with what you are watching. A lot of equipment currently sitting in American households already has this circuitry built in and now it can be activated by the entertainment companies. The Obama administration is going after more than television equipment though. It’s putting this control stuff into computers and operating systems.

This is a new form of fascism. Corporate fascism. When the government allows total control of what the population is allowed to do with its own media equipment and content you have in place all the machinery of totalitarian control of expression, both artistic and journalistic.

Smash your TV and throw it over the fence onto the White House lawn. Better yet, open Obama’s mouth up wide and shove your TV down his throat. I’ve had just about enough of this corporate-owned jerk in the White House who is more concerned about finding his cigarettes than saving the Gulf of Mexico from an outrageous act of ‘accidental’ terrorism by British Petroleum. Obama should have a swim in the new Gulf. The man who vowed to stop all the secret torture and military clown tribunals and needless wars has inflicted more grotesque harm in these areas than his monkey-brained predecessor. Obama’s teeth drip baby blood. He’s a human predator drone. And now he’s disabling our televisions sets.

No media company is going to shut off part of my television, I can tell you that now. I don’t give a damn what President O says. He’s done in 2012. It doesn’t matter who runs against this nitwit in 2012. I’m voting for them. I’m too angry to give a crap anymore. Let’s give Hillary a shot.

See, you don’t need a tea party to be angry about a guy who steals for Wall Street. You can do it all by yourself.

Arizona State Government Starts Terror Campaign Against Non-Whites

April 30, 2010April 30, 2010 by Editor | 16 Comments

Cancel your trip to the Grand Canyon. In fact, if you’re in Arizona right now, get the hell out as quickly as you can. The state of Arizona has passed a measure, signed into law by its governor, Jan Brewer, that requires police to determine the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally. All immigrants will be required to carry their proof of legal immigration on their person at all times. This means that a police officer standing on a street corner drinking a cup of coffee can spot a person across the street and decide, based on anything the officer chooses (skin tone, for example) that the person might be an illegal immigrant. The officer can then walk across the street, say he suspects the person of ‘loitering,’ and demand proof of their legal status in the United States. If that person cannot produce the paperwork, the officer can arrest them. The loitering thing is key because the Arizona law supposedly requires that the police be investigating some possible infraction before they can ask for proof of legal immigration. But a cop can find almost any reason to suspect almost anyone of some minor infraction like ‘loitering.’ I loiter all the time.

Arizona, by enacting such a law, has aligned itself with similar laws in Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, and the post-slavery American South which used ‘vagrancy’ laws to arrest black people who could not prove that they were employed. Apparently, the majority of residents in Arizona approve of the new law. By definition, Arizona becomes Bigot Land. One of the most important protections offered by a free democracy is the protection against unreasonable search and seizure. No police officer anywhere in the United States can simply demand that a person produce papers proving their legal status. But they can in Arizona as soon as this law goes into effect sometime in the next few months.

Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu says:

I am saddened today at the prospect of a young Hispanic immigrant in Arizona going to the grocery store and forgetting to bring her passport and immigration documents with her. I cannot be dispassionate about the fact that the very act of her being in the grocery store will soon be a crime in the state she lives in. Or that, should a policeman hear her accent and form a “reasonable suspicion” that she is an illegal immigrant, she can — and will — be taken into custody until someone sorts it out, while her children are at home waiting for their dinner.