Science

This time of the year one of my daily reads is the National Hurricane Center's website. It's just part of being a weather junky. Today I was presented with this:

That's a tropical depression forming way out in the Atlantic and has a 60% chance of developing into a Cyclone over the next 48 hours. The system is moving west by northwest and is expected to move more northwest in a day or so. That's going to get awfully close to the Gulf, and if it keeps forming could mean a hurricane heading right to the oil disaster. Isn't that some great news? I'm also sure BP would love that, as it would give them an excuse for not stopping the leak.

It looks like the U.K. has a "to big to fail" problem also, except this time it's in the oil industry:

In that atmosphere, the stream of condemnations from Washington has stirred a protective backlash, even in this closest of American allies. Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, said Thursday that he was worried about “anti-British rhetoric” and “name-calling” from American politicians.

“When you consider the huge exposure of British pension funds to BP, it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the airwaves,” Mr. Johnson told BBC radio’s Today program.

First off, I haven't heard any 'anti-British rhetoric". Anti-BP yes, but not against the country as a whole. I'm sorry, but it's not our fault that you put all your eggs in one basket. If your conservative government don't like it, then start using your taxpayer dollars to help out BP.

And then there's this:

A new ABC poll has rated the government response to the oil spill worse than the response to Katrina:

A month and a half after the spill began, 69 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll rate the federal response negatively. That compares with a 62 negative rating for the response to Katrina two weeks after the August 2005 hurricane.

That's really not a shock given the media's attempt to paint the spill as "Obama's Katrina". But unlike Katrina, there have been other roadblocks in the way of the response that the media hardly mentions.

The first of these roadblocks is a provision in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that essentially ties the hands of th government when it comes to the response. Instead the oil company is responsible for the response. Here is how Thad Allen described the law to Mike Wallace:

ALLEN: Well, this started out as a search and rescue case. We had the explosion. We had the extraordinary tragic loss of 11 lives. And for 48 hours we were involved in search and rescue when the drill sunk. We mobilized every asset as if it were a catastrophic response.

After the Exxon Valdez, Congress passed legislation called the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and the way we respond by designating B.P. as a responsible party and having them have contractors available to do the response is the structure that was mandated by Congress after the Exxon Valdez.

In about 10 minutes the White House will hold a joint press briefing with Robert Gibbs and Thad Allen, in what is probably the start of a much more out front White House when it comes to the spill:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs's briefing, which normally comes in the afternoon, takes place at 10 a.m., and will be conducted by Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander in charge of the response to the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Following that we have this:

The briefing is happening early to make way for a Facebook video chat with energy czar Carol Browner, who has become one of the go-to oil spill people at the White House in the past week.

President Obama also plans to hold a full meeting of his Cabinet -- not a common event during his first year and a half in office -- to discuss what the administration is doing to stop the leak and to clean up the coastlines of several states.

Are we finally getting the Obama response that so many have been demanding? We'll see today.

There has been a lot of talk about President Obama needing to get angry over the oil spill. Finally, when reading this post by Greg Sargent, I got really thinking about it. Here's what Greg said:

Sorry Mr. President, your latest display of anger about the Gulf spill, in a new interview with Larry King, just won't cut it:

"I am furious at this entire situation," he said. "Somebody didn't think through the consequences of their actions and it is imperiling not just a handful of people. This is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years."

Has BP felt his anger?

"They have felt the anger," he said.

Nope, it's not good enough for you to say you're furious, Mr. President. Kick something. Smash a camera with your bare hands. Vulcan Death Grip rhetoric just won't do.

One of the big selling points of candidate Obama was what a cool customer he was. He didn't have to go out there and yell and scream. He could control his anger.

I have no doubt that the President is furious over this spill. Who wouldn't be? But what would a visibly angry Obama really accomplish? Will it get BP shaking in their boots and saying; "OK - we really have to stop the leak now. Go ahead and do the real plan we had all along." I highly doubt it.

Right after health care reform passed, we started hearing teabaggers and Republicans shouting for repeal. Now it looks like that might not be happening so much:

Anxious backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are starting to see a flicker of hope.

While polls show Americans remain sharply divided over the Democrats' landmark legislation, they aren't clamoring for its repeal.

Instead, the public seems willing to listen to candidates who would give the overhaul a chance and fix or improve it as needed. That's the signal from some surveys and a congressional race in a bellwether Pennsylvania district.

It's a pragmatic, somewhat counterintuitive outlook.

That could be a break for Democrats in the fall elections, since Republicans are campaigning hard for repeal of the health care law.

"Though most Americans still do not favor the law, they tend to be leaning toward candidates who would give it a chance and make some changes, rather than those who would repeal it and start over again," said Robert Blendon, a Harvard public health school professor who follows opinion trends on health care.

I believe the big problem is that Americans realize our current system is really fubared. The only hope they have right now is with the current bill, flawed as it may be. Republicans aren't putting forth any plans to deal with soaring costs. They are playing right into the old "party of no" meme, and that is going to hurt them.

As I’ve said countless times before; our nation is falling way behind in the world of internet communications. The latest international rankings now has the U.S. in 26th place when it comes to internet speed:

When South Koreans tested their wired broadband connections over the past 30 days, they found an average downstream speed of 34.14M bps (bits per second), according to the Net Index, which was introduced on Tuesday by Ookla, the creator of Speedtest. That was several times the worldwide average of 7.67M bps and 100 times as fast as the 340K bps downstream speed in Sudan, the lowest average out of 152 ranked countries.

Latvia (24.29M bps), the Republic of Moldova (21.37M bps), Japan (20.29M bps) and Sweden (19.78M bps) rounded out the top five countries for downstream broadband. The U.S. was ranked 26th in the world, with an average downstream speed of 10.16M bps. Upstream rankings were similar, with South Korea leading at 18.04M bps and the U.S. in 27th place with 2.21M bps. The world average was 2.10M bps.

This also doesn’t count penetration and price. The U.S. has some of the highest cost internet and still has large portions of the country without access to broadband. It’s really hard for us to compete in a 21st century economy with 20th century technology. If we don’t wake up soon, it will be too late and too costly to recover.

BP has begun the “top kill” process of pumping drilling mud into the blow out preventer 5,000 feet below the sea. BP is saying this has a 60-70% chance of working, while President Obama is cautioning that there are no guarantees. At this stage of the game, I am not optimistic at all. So much of this depends on the condition of the blow out preventer, which is already faulty. If it wasn’t then we wouldn’t be in his mess.

Here’s a live feed from PBS you can check it out on.