yankie doodle dandy

Cringing in the closet like a three year old gripped in wait of repudiation for the cookie jar op, such is the state of character that we are to find in those who would call the themselves the masters of the universe.

"Kenneth Starr, 66, was ordered held without bail on charges of wire fraud, investment adviser fraud and money laundering after a prosecutor said Starr hid behind coats in a closet at his home [Upper East side] when agents came to arrest him, forcing them to yank him out by the collar."

C'mon g-men! We know ya got it. youtube that shit! We wanna see those ratfuckers as they truly are.

The Rand Corporation

yawl gotta go read Corey Robin's discourse on Ayn Rand. Awesome shit. Always knew she had to be somekina fucked up. Here's the proof.

I remember a high school geek friend who was some sorta Ayn Rand/libertarian wacko. He used to say some of the most amazing things. Like, don't help old people, and cripples should die off -- failed experiments -- why are we wasting resources on wheelchairs? Just raged against such injustice: that not just taxpayers, but anyone, should ever pay for a wheelchair for anyone. Ever. They were an affront the proper order of things, these wheel chairs. And helping old people. He was eighteen. How does that happen? you wonder.

So, ya. Hard core, social Darwinist shit. In fuckin' high school. How do you get so fucked up that early? Apparently, by reading Atlas Shrugged at an impressionable age. I once wondered whether pot might be involved, but if you ever met this guy, you would know that external dope is not required in order for Ayn Rand to grab a simple mind and make it hers. He was such a stiff ass. Snarled at beer like it was a gulf oil tar ball, back when there were no gulf oil tar balls. So, apparently, the dope is self-contained.

And a toxic brew they doth make, those simple minds and rand. If you saw this guy in a year book these days, you'd all go, "oh yeah, serial killer. Big time."

So, Ayn Rand spawns serial killers. You read that here. 'cause I'm the greatest thinker of the 21st cenchry.

_________________________
N.B. Just beware this "Rand" character, a guy who wants himself called after that fucked-up feh-nazi Hollywood twat. The Civil Rights Act is just the tip of the libertarian iceberg, baby!

further along the housing ... trouble

Still readin' along about ol' Ch'caga 'n 'bama, one thing pops out that casts me athought. They're regaling us with tales of Chicago housing history, and Robert Taylor Homes comes up, of course.

In the middle of the 20th century, Chicago built some of the nation's largest public housing developments, culminating in Robert Taylor Homes: 4,415 apartments in 28 high-rise buildings stretching for 2 miles along an interstate highway.

The force behind the Robert Taylor Homes project is entirely overlooked in the story, because the story is about tearin' into Obama, which is fine. But because of that, some might develop the notion that RTH, and public housing in general, was some ruthless plot against the poor and black. This is entirely understandable in our own time. And given the ultimate fate of RTH, it may indeed look that way. But it would be wrong.

In fact, Robert Taylor Homes, and many other similar projects around the country, were largely the product of America's mid-century fawning and thrall for all things Euro-suave/Bauhausian, and especially for Le Courbusier's Radiant City, which, in other, future contexts, would come to be another shit can alley. Sorta rhymes.

Yanks ate that shit up. They got themselves "Mies" buildings in freaking Baltimore, for fuck sakes. They gutted their inner neighbourhoods, tore up historic blocks, knocked down City Beautiful. There was a mad, nation-wide, entirely inexplicable rush to implement LeCourbusier's Radiant City. Mid-twentieth century, America was deep mad lusty for euro-whatever. Giant buildings, of course, are the biggest whatever around.

Check out this charmer. That's ol Grampa Mies in front. And that other fuckin' thing, that thing is his glorious creation, the thing for which Mies' vision blew away the once gorgeous Rennert Hotel. That black monolith; that is called The Charles Center. Known to some locals as the Upchuck Center. Gripers. I mean, you can see how homey it is.


It must be me, not understanding where the "radiant" part of this is.

Though they would ultimately fail, rather than blighted traps, these gargantuan public housing projects were initially conceived of as the solution to mankind's living problem. This would be the way that future humanity would live. I'm sure you can see the appeal. Picket fences? Lawns? Fuck That Shit!

Le Courbusier's La Ville Radieuse, 1935.



Robert Taylor Homes, 1962.


Le Courbesier's La Ville Radieuse, 1935.



Robert Taylor Homes, 1962.


This was it! The future! And, indeed, there it was. Of course, the real world implementation was obviously less euro-space-swank than the conception, if not outright Sovietesque, but still, the future was now. Or then. Whenever it was, it would prove disastrous.

Nonetheless, the fashioning of urban American cities stands as a remarkable achievement, however much blight the idea would eventually produce. Certainly, it stands starkly in contrast to our own feckless time: less than thirty years from pen to brick, and, one must indubitably add, done with grand and good intentions, whatever the grubby tactics and glowing egotism (which is starting to sound like the shit we heard about Iraq, so I'd better stop). I can't even imagine such a thing in today's American political scene: the very thought of massive public housing projects built to the specs of the Giants of Twentieth Century Architecture. Shit! Who wouldn't want to move in? *

Except, people didn't like living in these monstrosities. Still don't, for the most part. Certainly, in the right environment, big huge boxes suffice as personal quarter, while the surrounding city that compels such quarter itself furnishes the living space. New York, Tokyo serve archetype. But if the surrounding living space is unaccommodating at the human scale, as it obviously is in all of these images, the project is doomed. That was the ultimate problem. Le Courbusier, and most "modern," self-indulgent, egghead architects failed, and still fail, to grasp the human scale. With their narcissism running high, awarding silly buildings for being weird, the human scale was not a factor in the grand, ultimately pointless, "visions" the purveyors of architectural culture had foist upon land and human in the building rush to the Radiant City.

People seem not to be comfortable in beehives. Unless there's a really good bagel shop right down stairs.


*The US cannot and will not do such things today. What they will do, however, is spend thirty years of considerable investment taking out Iraq and Iran.

ether island

Ol' Peg Noonan is bitchin' 'bout 'bama. No surprise there. Who isn't? I also think Peg may be responsible for those odd people who spell no one, noone, like that's a fuckin' word.

Fuck. Is this really what it is going to be like from now on and forever? Some corporate toady winds up in the White House some way or another, fuck knows if it's democracy -- praw bab ly not -- and then everyone starts bitchin' about what a corporate toady that goddam president is, or was, or will be, and oh, fuckin' woe is America! What have we become?! Like the fuckin' hacked and jacked elections weren't much of the problem. Boo hoo fuckin' hoo. Geesuz aitch key-riiste, wake up. That ain't gonna happen. Shite, these idiots are still clinging to the ravaged cum-stained thread of idealized American democracy, that quaint notion that voting is an effective forum for political expression.

Peeeg, it will come back to you ...

After a nonsense lead-off, she does a good job hackin' 'im on the BP spill. But as sure as shit ain't Shinola, the hammer goes off in weird directions.

Americans would never think an international petroleum company based in London would worry as much about American shores and wildlife as, say, Americans would. They were never going to blame only BP, or trust it.

Amazing, isn't it? Her grasp of the non-existent ether. I marvel, really.

But, ya gotta wonder: where the fuck has this woman been? It is not supposed to matter whether it is an "international petroleum company" or an "American" company doing whatever harm it is they are doing, or intending to do, to land, sea, and air. And, indeed, it does not appear to have mattered to most. Most just plain out hate the muthurrFuckers. The nation has laws that must be obeyed! Okay, maybe not. Nonetheless, "Americans ... were never going to blame only BP." Perhaps the "only" can save her, but still, fu ... What?!

Ya gotta wonder, does ol' Peg not look at any news not approved by BP? Does she get out much? Americans most fucking assuredly are fucking blaming fucking BP. But not only fucking BP.
"Americans" appear to be plenty pissed at BP. Some are even demanding that BP be nationalized and sold for parts (as we did here).

Peg, dear. You need to get out more.

la même chose

You've no doubt heard this by now:

the White House authorized a massive expansion of clandestine military and intelligence operations worldwide, sanctioning activities in more than a dozen countries and giving the military's combatant commanders significant new authority to conduct unconventional warfare.

Ahh, Plus ça change!

More than any other single establishment candidate, Barack Obama has rendered presidential campaign rhetoric, and more generally, high-flying talk of principles, as something to be entirely disregarded by any voting public. Barack Obama, more than any other single president in the history of the United States, has proved the lie upon which the American political system is founded. Barack Obama, the adult, has lived the slithering life of an ambitious, selfish, self-serving politician. It is now glaring. If the BP Gulf oil disaster hasn't convinced you of this, then the orders for a world-wide assassination bureau ought to.

Change? Sorry, they don't give change.

the housing ... trouble

Well, we now get glimpse into the inner workings of Obama's mindset vis-a-vis public policy. Surely, many supporters were puzzled, yet again, when the White House quietly loosed news that they wanted to privatize all public housing. In America.

Well, we can see why. Because Obama's earlier experiment in privatizing public housing worked out grandly back in 'caga.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Bad, right? Obama apparently loves it!

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

A short while ago, I called Barack Obama a "shyster lawyer." People asked, "how can you say that?" seemingly mortified. Apparently, they didn't get it the first time, so here comes round two:

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted

And now he wants to deliver this same wondrous service to the rest of the country. Meanwhile, progressives, "liberals," a few Democrats, and some MoveOn.orgasmers claim to be blindsided. geezuzaitchkey-riist! how many fuckin' sides do these people have?

And the rest of 'em. Well, 'bout all I hear is, Ah, the free fucking market! Those private ... thingies! Woo hoo! BP should run public housing! I hear their name all the time. They must be doing something right!

the harkening past, present and/or future

What fuckin' year is it? And who the fuck is president?

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.

BO MMS BFF

Readin' on 'bout that miserable MMS, all the new shit comin' out in yet another IG report. Saw a rather weird bit; "acting inspector general," Mary Kendallin, tells us, get this:

"we discovered that the individuals involved in the fraternizing and gift exchange — both government and industry — have often known one another since childhood."

How freaking, fuckin' weird is that? This can't be normal. Okay, maybe back in the day, in something like Little Shitcake on the Prairie, where and when, yeah, y'all grew up in a dusty little shithole of "town," or near one, and no one ever moved anywhere, forever, and generations of families all live in, not just the same town, but the same goddam house! Well, at least until that show got canceled. Succumbed to poor ratings is the general understanding.

But I digress, which is pretty much the whole endeavour here, so there ya go. As advertised.

Now, what I wanna know is, is this weird shit known to people? That this Louisiana MMS agency, which managed to give bloom to "a variety of violations of federal regulations and ethics rules," appears to serve as a childhood friendship continuity vector? Do little kids who pledge BFF know about the MMS? Is that why they think they can pull it off? What is their fiendish friendship plan? To continue their "childhood," to become just "hood," friendship through the generous friendship climate provided by the Minerals Management Service of the United States Department of the Interior, and the petroleum industry, and hence embark on parallel career paths of petroleum engineering and mineral resource wonkery?

So, yes, the MMS must be dismantled. If for no other reason than to prevent childhood friendships from turning into meth-fueled orgies funded at taxpayer expense. Please, at least stop that!

the rain comes falling from the sky ...

Beyond the human intelligence that the CIA relies on to identify targets, Pakistani agents are sometimes present at U.S. bases, and are increasingly involved in target selection and strike coordination, current and former U.S. officials said.

Great. I can hear it in the catbird seat: yeah, take out that muthufucka! take him out! I hate that guy!

Of course, they wouldn't be so crude as to actually say it like that.

the endless election continues apace ...

Did you know that Americans are having an election? It never stops, really. The governing principle of which appears to be, more elections, more democracy. Simple enough.

Sometimes, ya gotta love the trivial. Rand Paul is fighting for a seat in Kentucky, gettin' all wound up and paranoid. Libertarian. You know. Anyway, Paul claims, get this, to have received

“a tip over the weekend that some of our volunteer activities have been infiltrated by (national) Democratic operatives planning to cause problems."

Sir! The Democrats are quite engaged in poisoning their own elections, I'll have you know.

conflicts of interest

Paul had questioned whether Grayson, who is his opponent in the Republican primary, should recuse himself from official duties overseeing the election but the state Executive Branch Ethics Commission ruled unanimously in March that there was no conflict of interest.

The man running the election is running in the election. But there is no conflict of interest. This is in Kentucky, mind you. In a land of Deep Woods OFF! incest, conflict of interest arguments don't hold up well. And by which one can see why the idea of evolution is not sitting well, either.

from Offensive to very offensive

Readin' on there ol' ICoS's report on "lessons learned" from the Pentagon publicity stunt loudly and widely broadcast as Operation Moshtarak -- oh, so marvelously native sounding!

I'll spare you the think tanky verbiage and fill it all in with one word: Failure. Or, if you do care to read 29 fuckin' pages of drab, militarese discourse on that failure, you can do that here. And, they appear to have learned nothing.

Bottom line the dumbasses in Washington require study to figure out: people don't like being invaded and occupied. You can feel the astonishment, even in the pallid prose of an ICoS report.

Alarmingly, 67% did not support a strong NATO-ISAF presence in their province and 71% stated they wanted the NATO forces to leave.

Refund! Refund! Those blighted, ungrateful bastards.

And perfectly in keeping with what ungrateful bastards who don't know freedom's glory would do, droves of Afghans are fleeing the freedom agenda of General Stanley McChrystal. In the short term, the Marjah offensive has been wasted as,

Taliban fighters have found a way to resume their insurgency, three months after thousands of troops invaded this Taliban stronghold in the opening foray of a campaign to take control of southern Afghanistan. Militants have been infiltrating back into the area and the prospect of months of more fighting is undermining public morale, residents and officials said.

So, the offensive as designed, produced the expected though largely unconsidered outcome: a standoff with civilians fleeing the area. The design, of course, was a slice a pie for American and British public consumption, with all the goodies on the pointy end, the crust of the lingering stalemate doomed to the refuse of hindsight. Who fails to recall the days of front page coverage of the looming, massive operation, the largest since the invasion, we were told repeatedly, as though what a great and grand thing this would be, this massive military operation? Operation Moshtarak was the most trumped up military-media construct seen since the orchestration of the invasion of Iraq . Marjah was to be, as we would learn in due course, the gimme, an easy op that would convince the American public that victory in Afghanistan was at hand. Ha, ha, ha! An easy tap-in, that Marjah.

But, it didn't turn out that way. At all. Dozens of families daily fleeing the grinding stalemate fighting. Taliban are moving back in, as other emerge, once hiding as local farmers -- well, not so much hiding as doing what they would be doing if they weren't the local insurgency fighting an invading force! And now McChrystal wants to double down on this sterling effort in Kandahar.

The media swarm in the lead up to Operation Moshtarak was proof of establishment pudding. By which it would seem unlikely that due attention will be paid to the actual outcome of the much touted operation. No matter the death, the mayhem, the uproot, the constant grinding fear that thousands are subject to, the American public had to be convinced that the effort in Afghanistan was a positive force that happened to have on hand a "government in a box," ready to roll out at a moment's notice.

Turns out, nobody has ever heard of this amazing new device. And the other easy part? That didn't happen either.

Elena "Alito" Kagan

This Kagan bag is looking like the turd in the punch bowl now. Forget all the yammering about her record or lack of. More recent history suffices. It is obvious that Kagan is formed from the liberal version of Alito: government power and corporate interests rule. First evidence is her abominable position in the Siegelman case and now, now she has just stood up publicly for the blighted experimentation being conducted by Monsanto.

... the Pentagon today announced plans to ...

Imagine this amazing headline and lede:

CNORAMCOM plans multiple bases in North America

The Chinese government has announced plans for a small headquarters and five regional military bases in North America. The five regions will roughly be northwest, midwest, atlantic, south, and high north, with the headquarters planned for the suburbs of Chicago.

"Given what we've seen transpire in the United States of late, China is rightly concerned about stability in the region," said President Hu Jintao after the announcement.

"CHINA NORTH AMERICA COMMAND will be there primarily in a training and peacekeeping role, but reserves the right to respond appropriately to any perceived threat, either to NORAMCOM or vested Chinese interests."

That would be weird, right?

Well, that is exactly what the Pentagon has plans for on the continent of Africa. And it is all either ignored or treated as perfectly proper. There is no question that AFRICOM be doling out US taxpayer (and Chinese) largess in order to establish a robust military presence across the continent. No, no, no, this all perfectly normal stuff, the stuff this Pentagon does with nary a peep.

Really quite amazing how docile the world has become to military occupation. Of course, it's greased along by western financed conflicts spotting the continent.

Will they ever just leave people alone?

dot gov goes to ground

Somethin' funny popped up on the tubes tonight. Readin' long 'bout that damnable BP, Halliburton, et al; ol' Cheney's necrotic intestine wrapped around everything. And now that the "cesspool of corruption" that we officially know as the MMS is all in the news, and that Interior Department's IG report is gettin' grabbed all over again, it appears that, well, it can no longer get grabbed from the gubmint's website. Will Galston assures me that it must be "read to be believed." Well, I never did read it when it came out, preferring to osmotically absorb the lurid details through various outrage agents.

Well, seemed like a good time to take a read then. Apparently, many others have thought this too. Took a grab, got this:

Unable to connect

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.doioig.gov.

Busy? or being "upgraded"?

to smile and smile and be a villain

That Halliburton well cap problem? Yeah, BP!

"the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews who therefore poured in too small a cement cap for the additional pressure caused by the extra depth"

Like I said, bring these fuckers down! BP is a hazard to every life and limb it comes near.

To know and to do

Turns out that the gubmint conducted an oil spill scenario back in 2002, the report of which recommended all kinds of things that everyone then proceeded to ignore. Turns out, the gubmint is pretty good at these kinds of exercises. Because everything the exercise found to be problematic are exactly those things that are problematic in the Gulf today. Great. We can predict calamity! And then do nothing about it.

A threat, by any other name, would smell as sweet.

Readin' on about how the liberal Obama is carrying on his pred's policy and that that ol' ever-lovin' CIA can shoot at a "wider range of target," including unidentified threat agents who have been determined to be so by the CIA's "pattern of life" analysis. Something tells me that an agency that sees conspiracies in people breathing ain't gonna come out too gentile most of the time on the whole pattern of life thing. They may, however, be considerably more adept than appears the US military.

Top of it all, there's been a whole shit load of unidentified targets that have already been blasted to bits by CIA and JSOC drones. We otherwise know these wide ranging targets as civilians. How the nü targeting regime would fundamentally change anything is a tad mysterious. Indeed, this will likely make things worse, if it hasn't already. A wider range of target translates simply as a wider swath of death, and certainly not one that is any more accurate.

But ya gotta laugh at shit like this:

But some analysts said permitting the CIA to kill people whose names were unknown created a serious risk of killing innocent people.

So, what have they been doing until now? Is it now worse that the CIA will kill innocent civilians without pointing to a name on a list?

... the other, he wants to buy you rockets

The man who "named his son after the man who was head of the OSS during WWII," Erik Prince is making all the liberal outrage headlines these days. This means, of course, that Prince is, and will continue to be, entirely ignored. Those liberals, always so angry. We can't have that on the airwaves.

Our man Scahill has dug the deep dirt and managed to get a secret recording of a speech Erik the half-a-bee gave at the University of Michigan, January 14. Shit loads of public officials at a public university, and Erik Prince can demand, and have that demand met, to shut down any reporting of his speech, largely funded by the taxpayer across several revenue vectors.

Of course Prince says some shit. Woo, what a shocker. Given what we've already heard about this freakin' murderous cowboy, his speech is rather mild stuff. But gotta give Scahill da bones here. What a move! We need more Jeremy Scahills.

Scahill is so pissed, it's near palpable. He's virtually seething. I'm afraid Scahill will long run out of seethe before Blackwater is brought to heel. Because that won't happen. Blackwater and the rest of their ilk have cemented their position within the military-security complex with bipartisan support. As much as the good man's work has done to expose these rogue mercenary agents, Scahill knows this.

Which is perhaps why he seethes so.

slam dunk by a shyster lawyer

Readin' on 'bout that fuckin' pathetic health care bill. Geesus aitch key rhiste, what a fuck up.

As expected, Obama's blithe or naïve and listless healthcare bill is about to bite him and his wastrel effort at health reform right on the ass. Unfortunately, his thoughtless disregard for common sense regarding health care -- that companies would jump to dump employer provided heath care if given the chance -- will cost the country dearly.

This is what the ostensibly liberal health care bill hath wrought: unprecedented forced purchase of a private product by law, easily imagined increasing medical bankruptcies, untold hundreds of billions of dollars in easily foreseen consequences.

That companies would choose to expunge health care responsibilities from their ledgers and bureaucracies and simply pay a fine is plain. Who wouldn't want to unload the toilsome burden of dealing with the fucking health insurance industry? What the policy vector of AT&T, Verizon, Deere, Caterpillar, demonstrate, is that American business wants to be unleashed from the shackles of the health insurance industry. No other industrial nation imposes this onerous cost on their own businesses.

Wha ... why. .. what?? It makes no sense, of course, as all the best scams do.

If you really want to understand why American business off-shored and outsourced, it was not because of regulation, it was not because of the dollar, nor labour costs; it was primarily because of the undue burden imposed upon American business to provide health care insurance. One true source of off-shoring was simply the uncompetitive burden of health insurance -- at first hardly noticeable, now crushing. Blame America's ridiculously clinging to the private health insurance scam.

Which pretty much means that you can blame the health insurance industry, a venal, deadly leech clamped onto the body politic from the inside, like that fuckin' gross scorpion-bug thing that went in Chekov's ear in the Wrath of Khan. Yeah, that ugly fucking alien armoured bug thing that makes you squirm and cringe at the sight of it and what it is doing? That fuckin' thing? That's the health insurance industry.

The proper course was and is single payer. Obama's appease 'em all junk bill now stands to backlash against his wishful thinking. Did he ever intend to actually stand up for any real improvement? Evidence would suggest otherwise. It was the deal that counted, and not much more.

I cannot figure out who these people are who think Obama is a liberal. Well, Fox, of course, and the rest of the jag-offs, but he has supporters, apparently, who think this. If the AT&T, et al story plays and spreads, well, Obama has just tapped a twofer: dumped employer health care, funnel those hundreds of billions in penalties straight to the private insurance companies through the Exchanges.

The first one is fine. The second? Mostly assuredly not. And where on earth is the "liberal" part of this?

The Madness

Readin' along Rick Rozoff way, stumbled upon a small detail amidst the litany of global military domination, a detail that touched off a nerve. It is a detail within the massively ridiculous "plan" that serves to show just how massively ridiculous it truly is.

"UAE has ordered the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, designed to destroy nuclear missiles in the exoatmosphere."

The United fucking sandfly Emirates wants to be able to destroy nuclear ballistic missiles in the exoatmosphere. What vision.

BP BOSFD

BP is one of those ongoing wrongdoings of which one is simultaneously both aware, and completely ignorant, never really having grasped the thread: if you had heard of a major oil disaster in the last ten years, BP was the likely, lurking culprit.

You've heard all the stories, but have long forgotten. And then a compendium of BP's years-long, willful cheating on regulatory requirements and safety rules comes along, and wham! wow! WTF? Still drilling? Shit, why ain't the pricks in prison?

BP and their negligent co-conspirators have unleashed a lethal hell on the Gulf coast. BP. Beyond Petroleum. Oh, sorry. beyond petroleum. That's humble, with a big ol' AITCH.

Having previously indicted oil companies as "a bunch of stupid fucking dipshits," behold a grand legacy of these particular, limey muthafuckin' SFDs:

• March 23, 2005: Explosion, BP's refinery, Texas City, Texas. 15 workers killed. Cutting the costs for safety and maintenance blamed.
• July 2005, BP's deep sea $1 billion Gulf prject, Thunder Horse, listed 20 degrees. Design and engineering are blamed.
• March 2006, 267,000 gallons of crude oil leaked out of a BP-maintained 34-inch feeder pipe to the TransAlaska Pipeline System
• Aug. 8, 2006, a "catastrophic pipeline split" ruptures in the TransAlaska pipeline. "Severe corrosion" is found, caused by "BP's cost-cutting and poor maintenance of the pipelines."
• April 2010, Deepwater Horizon blows and burns. Negligence, ignored safety precautions, substandard construction on well head (Halliburton).

So, doesn't one wonder, just how much do you have to lethally fuck up, and have been shown to have lethally fucked up, before enough is enough? Nationalize 'em, and sell 'em fer parts. Tell Brits to fuck off. Make it known that BP is considered a threat to national security, has been for too long now. This monstrous looming Gulf disaster is beyond toleration. Take those fuckers down.

The Inevitable Conspiracy

Readin' along on a little Adam Smith this eve, ran into a passage that suddenly struck me askew of the usual angle.

Of course, Smith was imminently suspicious of business interests, basically wishing that "People of the same trade" ought not to meet together. Ever. Because, as Smith asserts, "the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Adam Smith, precrime precog.