| Overnight News Digest June 17, 2010 |
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| The Overnight News Digest is a regular feature on Daily Kos consisting of current news articles and other stories of interest presented each night around 11:00pm Central Time. Each editor scours the internet each night and presents their selections. Our thanks to Magnifico for initiating the Overnight News and to Neon Vincent our current il capo di tutti capi. |
"The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic," said James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States.
"In future, cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception" in these regions, Overland told IPS.
High pressure in the Arctic and lower than normal pressure across the temperate Atlantic brought cold and snowy weather to the east coast of the U.S. and western Europe. 
The title says it all. This is our silver bullet, if we can figure out how to use it.
As an alternative to the current food-fight, I'd like to try to offer something constructive. Here's an idea that I haven't yet seen or heard discussed. Being overseas, I rely on podcasts for my media fix, so I'm usually half a day behind the flux. I was listening to last night's Rachel Maddow show on the way home today, and I had an epiphany while listening to her brilliant, but ultimately fruitless, revision of Obama's oval office address.
The thing we need to unite the folks who feel as Rachel and I do, is unified, good, consistent messaging. I'm not a genius at messaging, but I'm certain we could get a lot of mileage out of one simple, familiar message, repeated ad infinitum: "Deepwater Horizon changed everything." Follow me after the break if you're willing to be convinced.
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They walk alike...
An agonizing four-day wait came to a tragic end early Saturday morning when rescue workers failed to find any survivors in an underground mine after a huge explosion earlier this week.
The news at the Upper Big Branch mine about 30 miles south of Charleston brought the death toll to 29 in the country’s worst mine disaster in four decades.
American Coast Guard officials have called off the three-day search for 11 workers missing since an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the coast of Louisiana.
The Coast Guard says it will resume the search if any ships in the area see anything, but the workers' chances of survival had seemed slim well before Friday afternoon's announcement.
They talk alike...
"If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e. - build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever) you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that coal pays the bills." -- Don Blankenship, 2005
"We had too many people who were working to save the world. We sort of lost track of the fact that our primary purpose in life was to create value for our shareholders." -- Tony Hayward, 2009
It can blow your mind...
Four Massey mines had injury rates more than twice the national rate last year. ... Together last year, the 10 Massey mines with above-average injury rates received 2,400 safety citations.
BP's safety violations far outstrip its fellow oil companies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, in the last three years, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas have accounted for 97 percent of the "egregious, willful" violations handed out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
When cousins, are two of a kind!
Right-wing media have whined that Obama is "scrambling after week-old spill" and that Obama visited the Gulf BP disaster too late. They have the audacity to try to compare Obama's response to some imaginary Republican who would have been "absolutely pilloried in the press" if a Republican administration had "gone eight days without serious action."
Really? We don't have to imagine. I checked some press articles from 1989, and Papa Bush apparently did not show up in Alaska when Exxon Valdez happened because he was either too busy or believed a site visit would be a "political downer." Moreover, how has Papa Bush been "pilloried in the press" for not providing compensation claims to the people in over 20 years?
Beautiful, mesmerizing, nauseating. As oily waves crash upon hundreds of miles of beaches, perhaps a poem can be written about the death of the Gulf. I'm not that poet. If the Gulf must die, I want its death to mark the end of an era.
Terra Preta do Indio means "Indian Black Earth" in Portuguese (in Brazil Indian is a term frequently used where in the US we would say Native American) and is a remnant of indigenous agricultural practices of the Amazon region. They are often also referred to as Amazonian Dark Earths(ADE). It is generally a highly fertile and dark soil that is prized by Amazonian farmers whereas most native upland soils of the Amazon are highly weathered, nutrient poor red or yellow clays and easily exhausted by even brief bouts of agriculture.
ADE are a somewhat magical combination of charred vegetable remains, bones and pottery shards. I say magical b/c nobody has been able to figure EXACTLY what made them this way or how to reproduce them effectively.
Follow me over the jump to find out how these ADE could save humanity from itself...
No surprise here, on the heels of President Obama's Tuesday night speech, the coal industry front group -- American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity -- released a statement saying they agree with his call for a clean energy future:
"The president also renewed his call for bolder action to create a clean energy future. We share the President's commitment, and recognize the steps we take as a nation must balance America's environmental, economic, and energy goals."
As we said in a post a few weeks ago, the coal industry is working harder to convince you that to address our oil problem we should mine and burn more coal.
This is good. We need to attack and attack Republicans on this.
Statement by the Press Secretary on Congressman Joe Barton's Apology to BP
"What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction. Congressman Barton may think that a fund to compensate these Americans is a 'tragedy', but most Americans know that the real tragedy is what the men and women of the Gulf Coast are going through right now. Members from both parties should repudiate his comments."
For many weeks I've been wondering where the passion is from Kossacks, from the President, and from myself is with regard to pushing for a comprehensive climate bill to be passed this year. The intensity around this issue stands in stark contrast to the energy around healthcare reform. I, and many Kossacks, followed intently the twists and turns of the healthcare debate, and many of us made many angry and supportive phone calls when different congressional players suggested different avenues of going about (or squashing) HCR. Also, there were huge and violent debates about the issue (remember last summer?), and as usual, lots of lies from industry and conservatives.
Below the fold I have listed a few guesses as to why things are quieter on the climate bill side of things, and why that's not necessarily a bad thing. I've also detailed the reasons why we will pass a damned climate bill this year!
GULF SHORES, Ala. — Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.
Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena.
Fish and other wildlife seem to be fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast in a trend that some researchers see as a potentially troubling sign.
The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.
"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire?
I decided that under the current circumstances, providing some distraction would not be unwarranted...and I have a bit of an update to pass along.
Tonight will be another meeting of the West Orange Zoning Board...concerning the desire of Seton Hall Prep and the Archdiocese of Newark to turn McClellan Old-Growth Forest into sports fields and parking lots.
For those who haven't been following, that is General-in-Chief of the Union Army George Brinton McClellan, who was fired by President Lincoln
If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.
--Abraham Lincoln
...and subsequently ran against Lincoln for president as an anti-war Democrat in 1864. McClellan was also governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881.
AP reports:
GULF SHORES, Ala. - Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.
Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange - and troubling - phenomena.
Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.
This is an updated, reposted diary that I think is important to repost so people know what they can do to help. I know there has been some problems with the volunteer efforts but there are a lot of organizations contributing to this cleanup who could use our help. If I have broken any rules by reposting please let me know and I will delete. Please keep our mothership afloat here.
We are all feeling the pain of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf coast. We have seen the images of animals struggling for life and heard the stories of fishermen and members of coastal communities talking about how the spill has changed their lives forever. If you're like me you have also felt completely helpless.
The wonderful thing is there are lots of things we can do to help. Many organizations are asking for donations, volunteers and wish lists of things they need. We don't need to feel helpless, we can help.
This is our chance to show the stuff the great community of DKOS is made of. This is our chance to help. Please see the various ways you can help below the jump.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul said Monday that Washington lawmakers are showing no consideration for future generations with deficit spending that is passing an "enormous burden of debt" on to America's children and grandchildren.
The article continues:
"I acknowledge that the system is broken, and if we just keep borrowing, we could destroy the entire system," Paul said. "Then, there would be no Social Security, no Medicare and no government because we will be drowning in the sea of debt or destroy the currency in the process."
Conservative politicians have long been invoking a tremendous concern for future generations while railing against deficit spending. But, the phrase “drowning in the sea” got me thinking: Does Dr. Paul’s concern for future generations extends to topics like climate change?
This is part of the huge disaster in the Gulf, the human costs of the clean up and the lack of protective gear. And they are dealing with horrible working conditions due to heat and humidity.
Many are coming down with mysterious illnesses as well which as been idtenfied as TILT.
For a few days now, we've been hearing and reading about Gulf cleanup workers and people living close to the Gulf coming down with strange 'flu-like' symptoms. The true diagnosis was difficult, because flu symptoms are common in the illness that's actually overcoming these workers - now patients. It's called TILT, short for Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance.
This is a poster supporting the US Merchant Marine in World War II. That was when we were a serious people.
These are the actual stakes, as the Gulf of Mexico gusher shows us, life and death.
