Welcome to the U.S.A... or maybe

Welcome to the United States of Generica - We have no identity of our own anymore and our rights and laws are only applicable if they don't interfere with those of your country of origin. We are working diligently to find every loophole in The Constitution that will allow your rights to supercede those of the true citizens of the U.S. We will gladly re-write any Amendment to suit your needs. (copyright Me)

Sounds odd, doesn't it? But tell me, honestly, can you argue the validity of this statement?  I thought not.

At the base of the Statue of Liberty... on Ellis Island, where the first Immigrants were brought to the United States there is this poem:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
 
Obviously every nation on every continent took these words literally. They came, these huddled masses. They came, these wretched refuse of the teeming shores. They came, these homeless and tempest tossed. They came, these tired and these poor. They came to escape tyranny, they came to embrace everything that was America, because America was a land of the free and a land of honor. They wanted to be Americans.
 
We welcomed them with open arms because when that great Lady Liberty was first erected, the United States was a fantastic, wealthy, economically stable and growing country full of people who had great visions of making a better life for their families and for their communities. They studied and learned our language, they adapted to the lifestyle that was the "norm" in America. They proudly learned the history of the United States and tested it, and passed, and then took the oath to honor this great country and became citizens.
 
But... slowly, almost indistinguishable nuances began to surface...Some new laws were made out of  respect these new citizens. They had rights. We wanted them to have these certain inalienable rights, so to speak...
 
We opened a door. We opened Pandora's box.
 
Along with our new citizens came certain facets of the lives they left behind. They wore different clothing, some of them. They spoke different languages. They had different religions.They were brought up differently. They had a different set of values. They had a goal and that was to become American. Somewhere along the way, something changed, and changed drastically. We made allowances for certain things, and then we made more allowances that became laws for these different people. We continued to make exceptions for this one, and that one, and this group of people and this ethnicity, and that religion, and those values, and suddenly we look around and we don't have "One Nation, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all..." We have a conglomeration of hundreds of nationalities who each in turn demand that we allow them their rights as pertains to their specific race and religion and demographics.  We are indeed 'divisible' because our own government is suing one of our states because our leaders are unwilling to say "The border is closed unless you come through legally".
On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers in New York were destroyed by Islamic Terrorists who sought to tear out the heart of America. 3000 plus people, women, children, and men of different nationalities and races, died. Our Government now, for some unfathomable reason, seems to think putting up a 13 story Mosque there might be a good idea. I have to agree that the ground there should be sacred. Why we would put up a Mosque for the Islamic religion, on the soil where Islamic terrorists killed so many, is beyond anything I can understand.  Maybe I suffer from Islamaphobia...
Maybe I think it's just a flat insult to American's who toiled and worked hard to build those incredible buildings that housed headquarters for businesses worldwide.
Yes, I know. Not all Islamic people are Muslim terrorists. Not all terrorists are Muslim. It's the principle and the fact that Islamic peoples are insistent that they too deserve a place of worship - right there mere blocks from Ground Zero. Some guy is saying that it's a religious right to be able to build the mosque there. He said it isn't just about fighting a war on terror there, but about fighting an idealism about Islam. The mosque, by the way, will be funded by 'outside sources' and no one is willing to say where the money will come from... We're fighting a war that was based on terrorists who worship in mosques. Why is this even being discussed.
If you insist on having a Mosque, perhaps you would be better off not in America.
Mexican students, here illegally most likely, can take our flag and turn it upside down, and fly it below theirs on the same flag pole, IN THE UNITED STATES. So we talk about Immigration Reform and Amnesty... We don't want to make them feel unwelcome...
 
 

 
 On Cinco De Mayo American boys were sent home in California because they were wearing tee shirts depicting the American Flag. The school administrators thought that the boys were simply trying to instigate trouble by wearing the flag on a day that is considered a Mexican holiday.
 
http://www.ktvu.com/news/23470391/detail.html
 
 MORGAN HILL, Calif. -- Tensions mounted at a Bay Area high school Thursday, a day after five students whipped up emotions by wearing t-shirts depicting red, white and blue American flags on Cinco de Mayo.

A group of 50-60 Latino students walked out of classes at Morgan Hill's Live Oak High early Thursday, marching to city hall and rallying to show their support for a school official.
That unidentified assistant principal had ordered the students who wore t-shirts with American flags on Cinco de Mayo to either go home or turn the shirts inside out.
Among the demonstrators was sophomore Justina Piedra.
“We could have ignored it, but the fact that they did it to us last year -- see that is disrespect toward us,” she said of the students. “And they want to do it again and plan it out, they plan it out. They think it’s funny. It hurts us. We are just as equal as they are.”
 
Am I missing something here? Aren't we in America? Why is this an issue? You're equal to be American... but Cinco De Mayo is not an American Holiday.
 
But this is where we've gotten ourselves now.  If we arrest a terrorist who admittedly tries to kill thousands of people here on American soil, we tiptoe cautiously around them, carefully obeying laws that were created by them, with our help, to protect THEM!!!!
To be politcally correct, each nationality has it's own set of rules and we, the welcoming safe harbor, the very ones who welcomed these trod upon wretched and homeless, and the down trodden, and the huddled masses, are now at last, at a total loss as to how we got here and we're left to wonder just where we, Americans, fit in...
 
I would like to add a small note to the bottom of Lady Liberty's poem - Closed for Repairs... Please be patient while we remodel our Constitution of the United States of America as we are now the United States of Generica... and maybe this is not a place you want to be since we are not what we were.

Oil Forecast

Does anyone else find it strange that there IS such a thing as an "Oil Forecast"? Along the gulf states, one station at least, has a forecast for oil slicks, sheens, and oil washing up to shore. WKRG... On this site you can also view the wellhead that's spewing oil, as well as other cameras from the remote operated vehicles and there is a counter at the top that tells how many gallons have polluted the waters in the Gulf Of Mexico, to date.


WKRG.com News

This should worry you... It worries me because now we have not only have a weather forecast, we now have an oil forecast... It is almost as if we can expect the eruption of this oil to be as much a part of our lives now, and in the future, as weather. There is a Hurricane Watch and warning, a tornado watch and warning, there is a severe weather watch and warning... but none of those have an actual forecast. A forecast is a prediction. We have an Oil Forecast. We have the Weather Channel. Should we soon expect to see an Oil Channel? I don't feel that I would be too far off the mark to say yes.

CNN is doing an Update on Migratory Birds in the Gulf and ways to trick them into avoiding it...

This isn't the answer and it isn't a solution but I applaud the idea and the attempt if it will save any of those birds... But I honestly don't think it will work. I want it to. I want them to find ways to scare the dolphins and sea turtles and the other sea creatures out of the Gulf... but where would they go? The water is polluted as far as the Florida Keys, and the Everglades are at immediate risk as well.

Oil Forecast: Toxic Oil and all of it's components including the Corexit Dispersant that BP is adding to the poison - Coming soon to a beach near you.

Call IGetItButSloBama, call your Senator, your Congressman, your state representatives, call God, call Buddha, call Mars, the Moon, ANYONE or ANYTHING, and beg them to move on killing this well before it manages to kill all of us.

Day 76 - 161,696,919 gallons of oil (and counting at the rate of 60,000-100,000 more per day,  making it's way towards you, and yours and indeed your very life.

Let Me Just Say...

that I am not blaming President Obama for the oil eruption down in the Gulf Of Mexico. Well, not personally, anyway. If he bought stocks in BP and if he turned his head to their lack of safety guidelines and ridiculous contingency plans, then he holds part of the blame. Personally, I think anyone holding a seat in the White House at any time in the last 12 years, is partially to blame.

Come on... Read the BP contingency plan that the Minerals Management Services read and Ok'd.

Search it on the internet. I did.

"BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one, according to an Associated Press analysis. The lengthy plans were approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well."

(Excerpt borrowed from The Associated Press)

Our government reviewed and approved... These are the people that are in charge of our country. They engage us in wars, they make foreign policies... They review ill-conceived plans to deal with spills in another part of our country and approve the deepest well ever drilled in the most eco-sensitive waters on the planet.

This MMS is part of our own Government, and I believe that President Obama appointed the man who appointed this woman Deputy Administrator of Minerals Management Service - a department that monitors drilling and digging and just about anything to do with getting coal or oil or gas out of the earth.


"In the weeks since BP's Deepwater Horizon well started spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, there's been increasing attention to the "cozy" relationship between the Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the oil industry it's supposed to regulate. How cozy? Just last summer the Obama administration tapped a BP executive to serve as a deputy administrator for land and minerals management.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last June appointed Sylvia V. Baca to the post, which did not require Senate confirmation. The appointment follows eight years at BP."

Things that make you go " Hmmm..."
Suddenly light bulbs come on and if it isn't plain, and clear, that BP had successfully planted a valuable liason into the cogs and wheels of the American government, then wipe the oil film off of your glasses.

Of course once the public got a good whiff of this dirty garbage, the White House started cleaning up and suddenly Ms Baca was resigning... But why? Nothing that she did caused the oil well to explode or to sink. I'm pretty sure that she was politely asked to consider resigning so that she wouldn't have to be fired which would surely have created a bit of scandal between her and her chief employer...

What she did NOT do was her duties, her job, what she was paid and appointed to do... which included, but was not limited to, pointing out grevious negligence, potential problems, nor did she employ astute and conscientious monitoring of current and future drillings in the Gulf and anywhere else in America or the waters that surround her. Gross negligence and dereliction of her duty.
1. Willful neglect, as of duty or principle.

She was hired to review and investigate the claims and promises, and the contracts that agencies wishing to potentially devastate our precious habitats submitted. In essence she blindly turned her eye away from the pages of BP's plans for dealing with oil spills in the Gulf that promised to protect Seals, Walruses, and Otters (Polar Bears, Penguins...)Red flags should have been flaring up and slapping her in the face.

Having worked for BP for 8 years, she had surely seen this before. Why she didn't call attention to the executives at BP that their "plan" wasn't designed to work in the Gulf, we may never know. But our own Federal Government ALSO reviewed and approved of those plans and gave BP the go ahead to drill the well last year.
Our President and his elected read  and missed crucial issues such as : "Among the glaring errors in the report: A professor is listed in BP's 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.

The plan lists cold-water marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as "sensitive biological resources." None of those animals live anywhere near the Gulf.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j5wrBdUcklmSa7eViGBpO0t8g1xQD9G82F6O0

Someone said that they felt like the only technology that BP was capable of seriously using was the Xerox machine. They copied spill contingency plans from Exxon Valdez in the Alaskan oil spill.

So is President Obama guilty, or liable, for the BP disaster? Should we place any of the blame on him? Did he do his job and check her background? Did the red flags fail to fly or did he just not see them?
This is just classic Fox in the henhouse...and having someone hold open the door and roll out the red carpet for him/her to trot in on.

It doesn't matter now. The damage is done. All that is left to do now is watch the oil fill the Gulf, spread around the tip of Florida, and pollute the Atlantic coast from North to South. Have you ever been to the Everglades? The Everglades are the home of hundreds of unique species of plants and animals, including 67 threatened or endangered species. A mere 10 percent of the former wading birds that once inhabited the Everglades still exist today.

You might want to head on down there while it's still that magical, living, wildlife habitat that it is... It may not be there long.

The Bad News Is...

that there isn't any good news.
April 20th, 2010 began the end. It was the day that Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling rig owned by BP, exploded, and then, on the 22nd, it subsequently sank. In 5000 feet of water, mind you. Deeper than man can go. So deep that the water is ice cold and it's pitch black.



From Wikipedia: -Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore oil drilling rig. Built in 2001 in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries, she was commissioned by R&B Falcon, which later became part of Transocean, registered in Majuro, Marshall Islands, and leased to BP plc until 2013.

In September 2009, the rig drilled the deepest oil well in history at a vertical depth of 35,050 ft (10,683 m) and measured depth of 35,055 ft (10,685 m) in the Tiber field at Keathley Canyon block 102, approximately 250 miles (400 km) southeast of Houston, in 4,132 feet (1,259 m) of water.
On April 20, 2010, when drilling at the Macondo Prospect, an explosion on the rig caused by a blowout killed eleven crewmen and ignited a fireball whose flames were visible from 35 miles (56 km) away. The resulting fire could not be extinguished and, on April 22, 2010, Deepwater Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing at the sea floor and causing the largest offshore oil spill in United States history.-

Technically it isn't a spill. If you really needed to call it something, call it an eruption. It spews and gushes and spouts out oil day in and day out and without cessation.  Sadly, the efforts of BP have failed to diminish the oil eruption. The Top Cap didn't work; a 100-ton steel-and-concrete box to cover a deepwater oil well gushing toxic crude into the Gulf of Mexico was aborted Saturday after ice crystals encased it. BP offered this " It didn't work". Ya think?

They tried the Top Kill then... Pumping thousands of barrels of drilling mud down into the riser pipe, hoping that it would clog up the tears in the bent pipe and stop the leak. Nothing happened... So they decided to add the Junk Shot. Junk is comprised of shredded rubber, golf balls, other miscellaneous 'junk' that would clog the holes... But nothing worked.

They decided to use the LMRP cap... Lower Marine Riser Package Cap. Fancy name for a roof apparatus that they lowered over the gushing oil. They pump methanol down into the upward flowing oil so that ice crystals are prevented from forming. There is a pipe attached to this and oil is blown upwards to waiting ships who collect it, and flare off the gases and then take the oil away to be either processed or burned. I'm betting that the oil is being processed. BP isn't in this business for their health.

Of course, all of this has been done after hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil began making it's way to shore. BP said it was only going to be about 1000 barrels a day. Then they had a moment of clarity and said it was closer to 5000 barrels a day. After some serious questioning and some influence by the powers that be, as well as some studies independent of BP's influence, it was discovered that approximately 60,000 to perhaps 100,000 barrels are leaking into the Gulf Of Mexico daily.
BP is liable for each and every gallon; fined a sum of $4000.00 a gallon, in addition to being responsible for every dime it takes to clean the mess up. Sadly, my limited imagination cannot conceive of how this could ever truly be cleaned up. BP promises to put things right, to fix it all, to make it good, to return it to the way it was before the oil began suffocating the marshes, the birds, the shrimp, the oysters, the dolphins, the sharks, the crabs, the fish, the sea turtles...

"In fact, oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico just keeps getting worse and worse. The slick is getting bigger every day. The environmental havoc from this oil spill is just beginning. It threatens destruction to wetlands and sea life as well as the livelihoods of fishermen and the health of clean-up workers. Apart, dead turtles are seen washed ashore as well. In other words, a colossal damage has already been caused to wildlife and animals."

These images are all over the internet.

I can't look at these without crying - literally sobbing. This hurts my heart and reminds me of how fragile our wildlife truly is.

It's 70+ days now. The broken well in the Gulf has spewed over 100,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf. There are 42. something gallons in a barrel. Just for your information.

So I have made considerable effort to feed the wild birds in my neighborhood. I make sure that they have a source of good drinking water. I fill the little shallow bowls and saucers with water so they can bathe if they want. I find myself thinking, irrationally I admit, that somehow they might be able to get the message to the birds in the Gulf that not all humans are callous and uncaring... and that at least one of them wants to apologize to all of them for the greed and stupidity of others.

Well, why not? Someone apologized to BP because we insisted that they pay to clean up this mess...

Joe Barton of Texas, a major recipient of oil and gas industry campaign contributions, apologized to Hayward for BP having been pressured by the White House into setting up a $20 billion escrow account for spill damages.

Personally I liked the comment from Representative Ahn "Joseph" Cao (R-La.),

"In the Asian culture, we do things differently," Cao said. "During the Samurai days, we'd just give you the knife and ask you to commit hara-kiri," the congressman added, describing the traditional Japanese practice of suicide by disembowelment.

This was directed to one of BP's top officials.

Tony Heyward says; "I just want my life back". I guess those 11 men who died in the explosion, and their wives and families, could say the same thing. So could the fishermen, the oystermen, the shrimpers and crabbers, and tour boats and fishing tour operators.

Meanwhile in Washington, D.C....

Instead of focusing on the possible degradation of life in the Gulf that will spread like cancer to the entire world...  our President believes that we should focus on Immigration Reform.

We should be "proud that our borders have more boots on the ground than they ever have..."

He is - an idiot. He is above all else, sadly, a politician and his TRUE color is not black, it is not white, but is in fact, a dull gray of disconnection, and an inability to see beyond the teleprompter, and the doors of his perfect world and life inside the Whitehouse...

His little girls want to know " Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?"

He has to tell them no. Perhaps he can ease their worried little minds by telling them how many boots we have on the border and how much more secure we are since he posted signs 80 miles inside the state of Arizona warning Americans about the dangers and possibilities of meeting up with drug smugglers, gun smugglers, illegal immigrants... Yes, Mr. Obama, that sounds comforting.

It will soon be migration season for millions of birds. The oil is moving into areas where Dolphins come to breed and birth their young... They're mammals you know. They breath air. Of course if that air hole in top of their head gets clogged by oil... Their babies suckle just like other warm blooded animals do, too. If their teats are covered in oil, well...

Maybe he can ease their worries by telling them how they can live without shrimp and oysters, and dolphins and sea turtles...

Focus, Obama. Put the politician inside of you on the back burner. You'll save more votes by saving the ocean than by reforming illegal immigration. You may still have time to save the lives of your daughters and grandchildren.

Plug the damn hole!