The Wikileaks Doomsday Machine.

"Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has circulated across the internet an encrypted 'poison pill' cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay."

***

The locally owned BP gas station pleads for your love...

... via the door of the ladies' john:

"The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected..."

Oh, no!

The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone... [The] few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf....

The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps. Though none of the seeps is anywhere near the size of the Deepwater Horizon leak, they do mean that the gulf is swarming with bacteria that can eat oil.

Storms also helped, along with evaporation.

Oh, no! Ron Johnson wants to move the BP oil spill to Lake Michigan!

The graphic in this new Russ Feingold ad had us guffawing.

"You may ask yourself: How much oil is in there anyway?"

Letting the days go by... crude oil flowing in the Gulf...

(Via Paddy O.)

Deep...

... seep.

***

(This post stirs memories of The Me Blog?)

ADDED: I've screwed up the first link twice. Insert joke about being like BP.

"Ann -- For weeks, Republicans have been tripping over each other as they rush to defend BP."

Emails Brad Woodhouse, the Communications Director, the Democratic National Committee

They've apologized to the oil giant, accused the President of a shakedown, and called for deregulation of the oil and gas industry. It's as if they've forgotten that they have a responsibility to the people of the Gulf who've seen their lives and livelihoods upended by this tragedy.

We've put together a site to help get the story out and show in a very pointed way exactly how Republicans are standing with BP. Will you check it out and share it with five friends?

Sure. I'll share it with 1,000 friends. Because I like to do things in a very pointed way.

While the site we've created is a parody, this isn't a laughing matter....

Don't worry. I've looked at the site, and I'm not laughing.

Getting mad and protesting at your local BP gas station.

Around here, we've had some laughs — when we pass a BP gas station — talking about going in and acting all outraged about the big oil spill and giving whoever happens to work there a hard time, but now I see people really are protesting.

"I understand people are angry and upset, and they have a right to be. But they're taking their anger at the wrong people.... If they want to have a protest at the park or somewhere else, super. But to come to my station to do it, and tell people not to buy my products or come inside my stores, to bash my business without even knowing us is hurtful."

New Orleans federal judge rules against Obama on the deepwater drilling moratorium.

Details:

... Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, La., claims the government arbitrarily imposed the moratorium without any proof that the operations posed a threat. Hornbeck says the moratorium could cost Louisiana thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in lost wages.

During Monday's hearing, [Judge] Feldman asked a government lawyer why the Interior Department decided to suspend deepwater drilling after the rig explosion when it didn't bar oil tankers from Alaskan waters after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 or take similar actions in the wake of other industrial accidents....

ADDED: Here's the opinion in PDF. Conclusion:

This Court is persuaded that the public interest weighs in favor of granting a preliminary injunction. While a suspension of activities directed after a rational interpretation of the evidence could outweigh the impact on the plaintiffs and the public, here, the Court has found the plaintiffs would likely succeed in showing that the agency’s decision was arbitrary and capricious. An invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths of over 500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country.

What's the difference between a negotiated settlement and a shakedown?

Reihan Salam says it was a shakedown (but I'm not so sure):

The most despised multinational working in the United States agreed to pay $20 billion over four years into a fund defined to benefit Gulf residents impacted by the spill. Some have characterized this as a shrewd decision on the part of BP CEO Tony Hayward to contain the damage to BP’s reputation. Yet BP has received no assurances on future legal liability and it remains, quite appropriately, on the hook for environmental damages. The Justice Department has already threatened to prosecute BP, and a refusal to play ball on BP’s part would almost certainly have led to an even more aggressive campaign of public vilification, at the very least.

To maintain an orderly society, we should at least try to contain and manage our desire for vengeance. On closer inspection, this doesn’t look like much of a negotiation. Rather, it looks like what one would colloquially refer to as a “shakedown,” in which a stronger party, ignoring the conventions of a good-faith negotiation, all but forces a weaker party to bend to its will. But now that Rep. Joe Barton has, in fact, called the White House agreement a shakedown, he has, despite backtracking and apologizing, taken the political heat off of the president. Somewhere, Rahm Emanuel is smiling.

Where, exactly, was the bad faith?  BP is extremely well-represented by legal counsel and could have kept negotiating and, if it wanted, it could have stood on its legal rights and let everything be resolved in the courts. It took this deal — and do we know the real dimensions of the deal? — because that seemed to be in its best interest.

But I don't think there's anything really wrong with using the word "shakedown." It's strong rhetoric, and basically metaphorical.

shakedown

1730, "impromptu bed made upon loose straw," from shake + down. Fig. verbal sense of "blackmail, extort" is attested from 1872, noun meaning "a thorough search" is from 1914; both probably from the notion of measuring corn. The verbal phrase to shake down "cause to totter and fall" is recorded from c.1400.

We encounter this colorful, figurative language all the time in political discourse. For example, Obama's BP speech last Tuesday was full of military language. He called the disaster a "siege" and talked about a "battle plan." Big ... deal. And by the way, "a big fucking deal" — as Biden would say — is not literally fucking. It's the way we talk. And most of the time, like just then, it seems silly even to point it out. So I'm unmoved by the back-and-forth over the word "shakedown." It's more politics. I'm coolly unmoved... though I do think it was lame of Barton to use it and then not defend it.

What matters is whether Obama did a good job of pursuing American interests and whether, in the process of of pursuing American interests, he abused his power. Since BP could have rejected Obama's proposal and fought through the legal process, I don't see what's supposed to be the abuse of power. Salam doesn't say he thinks Obama will manipulate the federal and state courts, so what is the problem? More worrisome is the possibility that Obama's deal was too good for BP. It took the deal, and we should wonder why. Is this one of those things — like the health care reform — where we will find out what it is when it goes into operation?

The clock on the mantle ticks, Teddy Roosevelt is a faded image of military readiness, the VP bows his head in (pseudo?) prayer...

... and the grim ladies in coral and turquoise look to their leader, Barack Obama...


(Enlarge.)

... who seems to be making a very precise point. Look at his hands:



And let's get a closer look at those BP executives (BP CEO Tony Hayward, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP General Counsel Rupert Bondy):



Svanberg, especially, seems capable of overmatching the President's determination.

But, of course, they are all posing. Including the usually lethargic Janet Napolitano — at the right, turned from the camera, dressed in electric blue — who seems roused for action. Not as roused as Teddy Roosevelt and his horse... and think about how difficult it would have been for a horse to pose for a painting like that. It's all phony of course, all the way down to TR and the horse he rode in on.

"The NYT is totally on this important urban trend story."

The Catio. That's from The Corner, but it made me wonder what's going on at Stuff White People Like these days. SWPL used to be all over stories like this. Now, it doesn't even manage a post a month. And yet the NYT still comes up with those style articles that were once mocked so skillfully there under the heading "White People in the News."

Here's one from April 2009 about people doing yoga with their dogs. Like the new "catio" article, it had a cutesy, pet-related coined word: Doga. The best part of these old "News" posts, was the list at the end of "Stuff Mentioned in the Article"

#53 Dogs
#15 Yoga
#26 Manhattan (now Brooklyn too!)
Portland, Oregon (Book)
#11 Asian Girls
#92 Book Deals
#101 Being Offended

Each item links to an old post that added an item to the master list of stuff white people like (or refers to the SWPL book). I guess we could do that ourselves for the catio article, but I can't help but feel that SWPL has been the victim of its own success. It can't be bothered, even when powerfully baited. I can't be bothered with it either. Plus, I can't put up with actually reading an article about city folk who encase their tiny balconies in wire fencing so the cat won't jump over the railing. If it were sickening hipsteresque, it might be fun, but that's just pathetic to put yourself in a cat cage.

The newest SWPL piece, from a couple weeks ago, is on the timely topic of the World Cup, which I've noticed the NYT is featuring right at the top of its front webpage these days. I thought Americans didn't care, but SWPL was never about white people or white Americans generally. It's about the subcategory of folk who read the NYT. Anyway:

[B]efore you start planning out long watching sessions with white people you should be aware of exactly why white people get so excited about the World Cup. Though you may be waiting on baited breath for your favorite sport on a global scale, white people like the World Cup because it allows them to pretend they are European for a few weeks....

By the way, the expression is "waiting with" — not "on" — "bated" — not "baited" — "breath," and if this guy knows so much about what white people like, he ought to know we like proper spelling, proper use of prepositions, and knowledge of idiomatic expressions. I do anyway.

Geoffrey Taylor, in his little poem Cruel, Clever Cat, 1933, used the confusion over the word to good comic effect:

Sally, having swallowed cheese
Directs down holes the scented breeze
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.

Cats! They're heartless killers. Of mice and, now, an unobscured view from the balcony.

The BP oil spill — as coffee and comedy.

Obama's "Pet Goat."

The Anchoress:

We’ve just spent years listening to ungenerous, miserable people excoriate President Bush for calmly taking 7 minutes, after learning of the attacks of 9/11, to allow his Secret Service to do their thing and to–with a great deal of composure–take his leave from a classroom without managing to scare the children or give an impression of fear that would be put before the nation and the world.

After watching President Obama take six weeks to process the terrible news he was given–pressing forward with golf, vacations, parties and fund-raisers in order to not scare the nation–even if that it meant he seemed a little disengaged from the BP Oil disaster, I never want to hear another sneering, idiotic My Pet Goat joke, again.

IN THE COMMENTS: Fred4Pres said: "My Pet Pelican."

ADDED:

Are we keeping a constant eye on the BP oil leak?

I don't normally watch the news on TV, but today, we were sitting at the bar and eating cheeseburgers for lunch at The Old Fashioned and there was a big HDTV right in front of us. CNN. Sound off. Closed captioning on. Virtually the entire time, the screen was taken up with that live video feed from bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Oil endlessly spewing. High definition TV, and the very low definition bottom-of-the-sea cam. Okay, already. I get it.

When you're on line, you set your own speed. By comparison, news TV is ridiculous. Are there people monitoring the oil leak all day, day after day, for 45 days? Of course, the leak is a huge problem, but it's not as if you're learning anything more by keeping an eye on it.

The more you watch, the more you start to feel that it's a vision of everything going wrong everywhere. I'm a little worried that this is the mental image of the Obama administration millions of people are going to have. Pollution, waste, corruption... despair!

"Top kill" stops the BP leak!

Great news at last. I hope it's true.

The nuclear option... in the Gulf of Mexico.

Quite aside from that madness — it is madness, isn't it? — how can President Obama go on and on waiting and blaming BP?

There’s no doubt. The responsibility to run the effort to stanch the oil flow lies with the White House. It was pretty clear on May 14 and is clearer now: Move over, BP.

Here are some pictures of the big BP oil spill the size of Maryland, and it looks...

... like nothing. Which is pretty terrible, because people are going to get tired of it. And maybe people will get tired of all the many things we're asked to feel so bad about that we can't see.

"OBAMA TOP RECIPIENT OF BP CA$H OVER PAST 20 YEARS"...

... screams Drudge. But go to the link:

BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals.

On top of that, the oil giant has spent millions each year on lobbying — including $15.9 million last year alone — as it has tried to influence energy policy.

During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years....

Eh. What's $77,051 to Obama? According to his spokesperson, he didn't take any money from corporate PACs when he was running for President. That actually makes the $77,051 more significant. He got it in earlier stages of his political career and, as they say, "Early money is like yeast, because it helps to raise the dough." Still... I find it hard to believe that $77,051, even adjusted for earliness, means anything to Obama.

Who was that woman sitting in front row center who would not look at Tiger Woods as he made his apology?

Oh! He hugged her. It was his mother!

I'm waiting for the full transcript, because I'm in the mood to pick it apart, especially the material about Buddhism, which, he said, is the religion he was raised in, which teaches not to pursue desire, and which he drifted away from. Indeed! So he wants to get back to Buddhism — he said, as his mother looked down into her folded hands in her lap and then off to the side. He wants to return to Buddhism, but he's going back to therapy. Why not to a Buddhist retreat, if Buddhism is the answer? Or was he just throwing things at us that he thought might work to make us love him again? Buddhism, therapy, leave my children alone...

Deep down, what does he really believe? If I were writing a fictionalized version of his story, I'd have him believe that he is the greatest golfer of all time and that this grand stature authorizes him to do what fits his fabulous mind and body. People get to see the manifestation of that mind and body on the golf course and in those idealized advertisements, but outside of that he must do what has worked, and that means having the anchor of a beautiful family and the whole range of intense sexuality that belongs to him — because he is what he is. Now, he's been called to account by conventional minds and all those people who make money through him — the PGA, the sports networks, advertisers — and they are dragging him down to their mundane morality with no concern for what it took to build the superior mind and body that is Tiger Woods. He is cornered and contemptuous, but he must abase himself for these little people and act as though he agrees. The outrage!

IN THE COMMENTS: dbp quotes the linked CNN article — "'I know I have bitterly disappointed all of you,' said the golfer, dressed in a blue button-down shirt and a blazer" — and says:

Can we take a closer look at his shirt? The resolution of the video was not high enough for me to detect button holes on Mr. Woods collar, but I could easily see that it wasn't buttoned down . What does this mean? He wears a button down shirt but leaves it flapping in the breeze — maybe his emotions are making him miss details. I think he should stay off the links for a while more.

Either that, or the reporter was mistaken about the type of shirt.

What does it mean? It means you can't trust CNN to report even the plain facts that are visible on screen to us here at home.

UPDATE: I go through the transcript here.