Here we go -- 65

Press Releases
First Federal Bank of Florida, Lake City, Florida, Assumes All of the Deposits of The Bank of Bonifay, Bonifay, Florida

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 7, 2010
Media Contact:
LaJuan Williams-Young
(202) 898-3876
Email: Lwilliams-young@fdic.gov

The Bank of Bonifay, Bonifay, Florida, was closed today by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with First Federal Bank of Florida, Lake City, Florida, to assume all of the deposits of The Bank of Bonifay.

The five branches of The Bank of Bonifay will reopen on Monday as branches of First Federal Bank of Florida. Depositors of The Bank of Bonifay will automatically become depositors of First Federal Bank of Florida. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage. Customers should continue to use their existing branch until they receive notice from First Federal Bank of Florida that it has completed systems changes to allow other First Federal Bank of Florida branches to process their accounts as well.

This evening and over the weekend, depositors of The Bank of Bonifay can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.

As of March 31, 2010, The Bank of Bonifay had approximately $242.9 million in total assets and $230.2 million in total deposits. First Federal Bank of Florida did not pay the FDIC a premium for the deposits of The Bank of Bonifay. In addition, First Federal Bank of Florida will purchase approximately $78.1 million of The Bank of Bonifay's assets, consisting of cash and cash equivalents. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition.

Customers who have questions about today's transaction can call the FDIC toll-free at 1-800-517-8236. The phone number will be operational this evening until 9:00 p.m., Central Daylight Time (CDT); on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., CDT; on Sunday from noon to 6:00 p.m., CDT; and thereafter from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., CDT. Interested parties also can visit the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/bonifay.html.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $78.7 million. First Federal Bank of Florida's acquisition of all the deposits was the "least costly" resolution for the FDIC's DIF compared to all alternatives. The Bank of Bonifay is the 65th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the tenth in Florida. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Riverside National Bank of Florida, Fort Pierce, on April 16, 2010.

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young -- from 1969

Here's some music from the past. I do not give a damn what all the supposed pundits say --- we were better people back then. we had some compassion, We had hope. Damn we've gone downhill.

Ramblin' Jack Elliott

We went to see Ramblin' Jack Elliott tonight. He's 79 years old -- and still going strong. Here he is a few years ago:

More on The Massive Well Blowout -- AKA: "oil leak"

In Gulf of Mexico, Chemicals Under Scrutiny
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: May 5, 2010

With oil continuing to gush from the deep well, they have sprayed 160,000 gallons of chemical dispersant on the water’s surface and pumped an additional 6,000 gallons directly onto the leak, a mile beneath the surface.

John Curry, director of external affairs at BP, said the company was encouraged by the results so far. But some environmental groups are deeply nervous.

“I understand it’s the only thing they can do,” said Paul Orr of the group Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper. “But I think it’s vital afterwards to really monitor what’s happening with aquatic life, with oil on the sea floor and things like oyster beds.”

Even in the best cases, dispersants are applied in what might be termed a lose-lose strategy. Scientists make the calculation that it is better to have the ocean filled with low concentrations of the dispersant chemicals — which are in themselves mild to moderate poisons — than to have dense oil on the surface or washing up onshore, places where it is most likely to harm wildlife.

And while most environmentalists support the application of dispersants as a necessary evil to limit the damage, some have assailed an industry policy that guards their chemical makeup. Keeping the exact mix secret makes it harder to evaluate the risks to marine ecosystems and to know what side effects to look for as the crisis unfolds.

What is more, the main dispersants applied so far, from a product line called Corexit, had their approval rescinded in Britain a decade ago because laboratory tests found them harmful to sea life that inhabits rocky shores, like limpets, said Mark Kirby, a scientific adviser to the British government on the testing, use and approval of oil spill treatment options.

But Mr. Kirby added that the finding might have little to no relevance to the current situation, where the product is being applied in the open ocean. While Corexit failed the British government’s limpet test, it passed its offshore safety tests, Mr. Kirby said. (The dispersant had to pass both tests for British waters.)

Still, as the molecules from the 160,000 gallons of dispersant bind with the oil from Deepwater Horizon, the oil drilling rig that exploded on April 20, and fan out across the gulf, some groups are fighting for more information about the product’s composition. That amount of dispersant is greater than the entire stockpile kept by oil-producing nations like Norway.

“We flew over there and saw BP spraying all over the place,” said Frederic Hauge, head of the international environment group Bellona, based in Oslo. “We deserve to know what’s in there.”

Although the Nalco Company, which makes the Corexit dispersants, posted copies of the safety documents for two of its dispersants online Wednesday, some of the ingredients are listed as “proprietary.”

The 10-page documents go into detail about compounds that must be handled with great care in their original form, that should not touch the skin and can damage lungs. Although the documents state that the potential environmental hazard is “moderate,” they say that when used as directed at sea in the recommended amounts the potential environmental exposure is “low.”

“It’s like any other product,” said Charlie Pajor, a senior manager at the Illinois-based company: “We developed them and we’re protecting our trade secret.”

Mr. Pajor said that the company increased production over the weekend because it generally stockpiles only a small amount, Corexit products are generally used in much smaller amounts to treat far smaller spills, he added.

Mr. Pajor said he could not recall a deployment of the product comparable to the current effort.

Dispersants do not remove the oil from the ocean but instead bind with it and cause oil slicks to break up into tiny droplets that sink and can be “dispersed” by the current. They are particularly effective in treating spills in deep water and far from land, where the current can spread the particles over a large range, diluting their dangerous effects.

“You’re basically taking the oil and transferring it to other compartments where it won’t do so much damage,” said Mr. Kirby, a team leader at Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory in Britain.

Most dispersants, he said, are a mixture of four to six chemicals that in tandem cause the oil to break up. Roughly 20-odd dispersant products exist, he said, and while they have generally similar types of components, they “have proprietary recipes like Coca-Cola.”

When used out at sea, the products create a toxic plume in the immediate area that might be dangerous for marine life there, scientists agree, but they are diluted rather quickly by currents.

Like the United States and Britain, many countries test and approve the products before they are used, determining how toxic they are when administered in low doses to marine animals like shrimp.

New products are constantly being developed to be more effective. Still, a few countries forbid their use because their long-term effects are somewhat uncertain and many require prior approval of national officials before deployment.

From Some Assembly Required

Hero: The hero of the Times Square bomb attempt was an immigrant. A Muslim. Senegalese newcomer Aliou Niasse was the first to notice the smoldering car and draw attention to it. He had no time left on his cell phone and realized his English probably wasn't up to the task, so he got a passerby to call 911. In Arizona the cops would have hauled him off to jail while the car exploded

Don't Forget

Read Paul Krugman's Blog today -- and every day. Follow link.

By the way,

in case you were wondering -- The Roman Catholic Church is STILL a criminal enterprise. It seems to exist to support the status quo, and rape little children.

Any time a world wide organization plays "musical priests", moving known child abusers from place to place (where they are not known), abuses children at "orphanages" and "workhouses" set up to "help wayward children", and ignores the fact of vile abuse of women by priests in Africa and Asia -- it is nothing more than a scam to make money, stay in power, and support those who help it.

It is a CLASSIC world wide criminal enterprise, and HAS to be BROKEN UP!

Don't let the supposed "piety" fool you. Many of these folks are evil people.

The ones who are not could do better outside the restrictions of "Holy Mother Church".

Even Fr. Bruce Ritter, who founded Covenant House -- a highly successful charity that helped runaway kids, was brought down by accusations of sexual abuse and "financial impropriety". He was never tried or convicted -- he just retired to his farmhouse in upstate N.Y.

Too much power, too many temptations, and an unwillingness to accept they are merely human will destroy the church.

Can't you see how history will treat this era -- how the corruption within the church will be seen as just another part of a corrupt society -- doing all it can to support those who are obscenely wealthy?

Isn't it time to stop this crap?

It's time for a little music

One Summer Night -- The Danleers

Pirates

By the way -- Somali pirates have seized a Russian tanker bound for China. Russian warship on the way.


Somali pirates hijack Russian China-bound oil tanker

Numerous pirate groups are holding more than 350 hostages

A Russian warship is rushing to assist an oil tanker bound for China which has been hijacked by Somali pirates.

The Marshal Shaposhnikov was heading towards the Moscow University, which was attacked 900km (560 miles) off the Somali coast, officials said.

The 23 Russian crew on board are reported to have locked themselves in the ship's radar room.

But a BBC reporter says the Russian warship is unlikely to intervene as it could put the hostages' lives at risk.

Big prize

Shots were fired at the 96,000-tonne tanker from two speedboats in the dawn attack, the ship's owner said.


The BBC's East Africa correspondent Will Ross says the oil tanker is a big prize for the pirates who, based on previous hijackings, are likely to release the cargo and crew only once a multi-million-dollar ransom has been paid.

While the international war ships have prevented some attacks in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, it is widely felt that the solution to ending piracy is on land, he says.

Over the weekend an Islamic insurgent group took control of one of the main pirate bases on the Somali coast.

The pirates had already fled and our correspondent says is not yet clear whether this was part of a wider effort by the insurgents to stamp out piracy.

For now the pirates have moved towards other bases along the coast and at sea the hijackings continue, he says.

Numerous groups of pirates are currently holding more than 350 hostages as well as about 20 ships at various bases around the country.

Go to "The Conscience of A Liberal"

Go to Paul Krugman's Blog -- The Conscience Of A Liberal and read his latest two or three entries. The last two are a must read. I must admit, I was ready to blame Obama for the inability to cap that well, for a lack of activity.

I was wrong.

Execs: 60,000 barrels is worst-case Gulf scenario

WASHINGTON – Executives from BP PLC tell members of a congressional committee that in the worst-case scenario a leaking well could spew up to 60,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The well has been leaking about 5,000 barrels a day — or 210,000 gallons — into the Gulf since an explosion April 20 on an offshore drilling rig.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., says industry officials told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the worst-case scenario is 60,000 barrels a day, or 2.5 million gallons.

He says committee members were told a more likely scenario if the leak gets worse is 40,000 barrels, or 1.7 million gallons.

In an exploration plan filed with the government in February 2009, BP said it had the capability to handle a "worst-case scenario" it described as a leak of 162,000 barrels per day from an uncontrolled blowout.


So, they claimed to be able to "handle" a "worst case scenario" of 162,000 barrels per day -- but -- just the other day, they claimed they were not prepared for anything of this magnitude. Also, they have been low-balling the POSSIBLE amount that is spewing forth, while saying this is "unprecedented".

Doesn't this smell worse and worse?

And So It Begins

3 dead as anti-austerity riots erupt in Athens
AP

ATHENS, Greece – Riots over harsh new austerity measures left three bank workers dead and engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday, as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings. Police responded with barrages of tear gas.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in a nationwide strike to protest new taxes and government spending cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations before heavily indebted Greece gets a euro110 billion ($141 billion) loan package to keep it from defaulting.

The three bank workers — a man and two women — died after demonstrators set their bank on fire along the main demonstration route in central Athens. As their colleagues sobbed in the street, five other bank workers were rescued from the balcony of the burning building.

"A demonstration is one thing and murder is quite another!" Prime Minister George Papandreou thundered in Parliament during a session to discuss the spending cuts he announced Sunday — measures even the IMF has called draconian. Lawmakers held a minute of silence for the dead — the first deaths during a protest in Greece since 1991.

"We are all concerned by Greece's economic and budgetary situation but at this time our thoughts are with the human victims in Athens," European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said in Brussels.

A senior fire department official said demonstrators prevented firefighters from reaching the burning building, costing them vital time.

"Several crucial minutes were lost," the official said, visibly upset. "If we had intervened earlier, the loss of life could have been prevented."

He asked not to be identified pending an official announcement.

In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the Greek bailout critical for all of Europe.

"Nothing less than the future of Europe, and with that the future of Germany in Europe, is at stake," Merkel told lawmakers in Berlin, urging them to quickly pass the country's share of the bailout — euro22 billion ($28 billion) over three years — by Friday. "We are at a fork in the road."

Greece faces a May 19 due date on debt it says it can't repay without the help.

In Brussels, European Union officials desperately tried to calm market fears that Greece's debt crisis was spreading to the rest of Europe, insisting it was a "unique case" combining profligacy and tampered accounts. Van Rompuy insisted the growing debt problems in Spain and Portugal had "absolutely nothing to do with the situation in Greece."

"Greece is a unique and particular case in the EU" because of its "precarious debt dynamics" and because it "has cheated with its statistics for years and years," EU Commissioner Olli Rehn said.

But Moody's Investor Services, a major ratings agency, put Portugal's bond rating on review for possible downgrade Wednesday. Spanish and Portuguese bonds and stocks slumped further on the news, reflecting fears that they may also have trouble repaying their debt and that the eurozone would have to extend even larger bailouts to them.

On the streets of Athens, demonstrators chanted "Thieves, thieves!" as they attempted to break through a riot police cordon guarding Parliament and chased ceremonial guards away from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of the building.

Tear gas drifted across the city center as rioters hurled paving stones and fire bombs at police. Firefighters extinguished blazes at least two buildings — the bank and a branch of the Finance Ministry — while protesters set up burning barricades and torched cars and a fire truck.

Police said 12 people were injured in the riots.

The marches came amid a 24-hour nationwide general strike that grounded all flights to and from Greece, shut down ports, schools and government services, and left hospitals working with emergency medical staff. The Acropolis and all other ancient sites were closed and journalists also walked off the job, suspending television and radio news broadcasts.

But media later broke the strike to report on the deaths and the protests.

Violence also broke out in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where another 20,000 people marched through the city center and some youths smashed store windows.

Union reaction over austerity measures until now had been relatively muted by Greece's volatile standards, despite several previous strikes. But anger mounted after Papandreou announced cuts in salaries and pensions for civil servants and another round of consumer tax increases.

Papandreou said he has no choice but to implement the measures if Greece was to avoid bankruptcy.

"There was only one other solution — for the country to default, taking the citizenry with it. And that would not have affected the rich, it would have affected workers and pensioners," he told Parliament on Wednesday. "That was a real possibility, however nightmarish."

Under the bailout package, Greece will receive loans over three years from the IMF and the other 15 countries who share the euro currency. The rescue aims to prevent Athens' debt troubles from becoming a wider crisis for the euro.

But the rioting underlined skepticism that the Greek government could keep up its end of the bargain, helping drive the euro below $1.29 for the first time in over a year.

Even with the bailout, many economists think Greece will eventually default on or restructure its debts because its prospects for economic growth are so poor over the next several years, hurting government revenue. Some fear the austerity measures insisted upon by the EU and IMF could make prospects for growth even worse.

Unions say low-income Greeks will suffer disproportionately from the latest austerity measures, which aim to save euro30 billion ($40 billion) — the country's current budget deficit — through 2012.

"These people are losing their rights, they are losing their future," said Yiannis Panagopoulos, head of GSEE, one of the two largest unions. "The country cannot surrender without a fight."

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned that the crisis could spread to other countries despite the rescue package's efforts to contain it.

"Everyone must remain extremely vigilant" to this risk, Strauss-Kahn said in an interview in French newspaper Le Parisien Wednesday.

"I completely understand the Greek populations' anger, its incomprehension at the size of the economic catastrophe," Strauss-Kahn said. But, he said, Greeks must also understand that without these measures "the situation would be infinitely more serious."

The draft bill of the new austerity measures is to be voted on Thursday. Papandreou's Socialists hold a comfortable majority of 160 in the 300-seat Parliament and the bill is expected to pass easily.

___

APTN crews in Athens and Associated Press writers Nicholas Paphitis in Athens, Greg Keller in Paris and Raf Casert and Emma Vandore in Brussels contributed.

They Were Just Kidding

This from "Cab Drollery" - follow link to original


Tuesday, May 04, 2010
They Were Just Kidding
Dana Milbank really surprised me with his latest column. He's not one I'd expect to indulge in schadenfreude, yet the snark in the column is filled with just that as he analyses the sudden postural shift of the "small government" Southern politicians facing the Gulf oil spill and what it means to their states and their citizens.

What is so wonderful about the column is Mr. Milbank's recitation of some facts about the states these small government bozos represent:

An analysis of data from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation by Washington Post database specialist Dan Keating found that people in states that voted Republican were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal spending. In states that voted strongly Republican, people received an average of $1.50 back from the federal government for every dollar they paid in federal taxes. In moderately Republican states, the amount was $1.19. In moderately Democratic states, people received on average of 99 cents in federal funds for each dollar they paid in taxes. In strongly Democratic states, people got back just 86 cents on the tax dollar.

If Sessions and Shelby succeed in shrinking government, their constituents in Alabama will be some of the biggest losers: They get $1.66 in federal benefits for every $1 they pay in taxes. If Louisiana's Vitter succeeds in shrinking government, his constituents will lose some of the $1.78 in federal benefits they receive for every dollar in taxes they pay. In Mississippi, it's $2.02.

That may explain why, as the oil slick hits the Gulf Coast, lawmakers from the region are willing to swallow their limited-government principles as they dangle federal aid before their constituents. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he would "make sure the federal government is poised to assist in every way necessary." His colleague Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said he is making sure "the federal government is doing all it can" -- even as he added his hope that "industry" would pay.

Those extra dollars didn't just happen, by the way. It's taken those politicians years of earmarks and pork barrel legislation to get all that money funneled to their respective states, federal money...taxpayer money.

The money that will be poured into those states over the coming months and years as a result of this man-made tragedy, however, should still be sent. That's what government is supposed to do when some of its citizens--no matter where they are located--are hit by tragedy. Even the small government bozos are having to face up to that.

Good.

And good on you, Dana Milbank.

"Beggar thy neighbor"

As I've said before -- Germany is ALWAYS Germany.

We all seem to be leading ourselves to destruction. Why do the well off ALWAYS want to punish those less well off for (in effect) doing what they were told to do? Why does doing what they suggest is "best" for all concerned -- like the Bush administration PUSHING home buying on those who really can't afford it, as a sign of the "prosperity" they built -- become "sinful" when they manipulate the economy so the poor (or soon to be poor) lose everything, and they (the rich) get it all?

When are we going to learn? When will we learn where our self interest really lies?

Anyway, this from "Naked Capitalism" - follow link for original

Greece, Germany, and the Dangers of Beggar Thy Neighbor


Investors continued their flight from risky assets as the wobbling Greek rescue looked ready to morph into a broader sovereign debt crisis, compounded by fears that a China’s expansion, once seen as inevitable and enduring, is now looking at risk of fading as the officialdom tries to dampen inflation.

But the focus on the Greece trigger is masking a bigger and more complicated set of issues. The supposedly successful rescue of the global financial system was achieved by making sure bank investors took no pain. That was a dangerous decision: it promoted moral hazard (risk capital, like shareholders and bondholder, are supposed to take losses when businesses come a cropper) and kept the incumbents in place, assuring that there would be no change in any of the firms that had driven themselves off the cliff. The rationales were many: there wasn’t enough time to wind down a dealer, the banks were too interconnected to permit any major one to fail.

But Greece is now showing how blinkered this calculus was. No one in the EU officialdom appears to have anticipated that the populace would seek to shut down the economy to protest the austerity measures; they perhaps hoped for the gentler repudiation of cheating and budget shortfalls as deflation took hold. It unwittingly reveals that in a complex, volatile situation, they focused unduly on the demands of the market and underestimated the pushback from the public at large.

The effect of the bank rescues was a massive transfer from the citizenry to financiers, the greatest looting of the public purse in history. And the perps have behaved in a singularly ungrateful fashion, paying themselves record bonuses a year after being saved from their own greed and recklessness and adding insult to injury by carrying on, all too frequently, about how talented and invaluable they are.

Greece and Germany are demonstrating, vividly, how a comparatively small number of people who aren’t willing to play by the rules of the financiers, can cause disproportionate dislocations. Now pretty much everyone who wasn’t selling the viability of a Greek rescue package was of the view that a default, most likely in the form of a restructuring, was inevitable. Reader Hubert in German put it at six months; the somewhat more cautious Wolfgang Munchau opined that Greece would not default this year, but deemed it to be certain. Simon Johnson has also repeatedly said that the austerity program demanded of Greece was unprecedented and a default was in the cards.

But the unspoken consensus was that the authorities could kick the can down the road a little while. This optimistic view has collided with two ugly realities: social unrest and rising violence in Greece, and alarm and anger in Germany over the demands that they assist Euro debtors.

The irony here is that both sets of actions are self destructive, and both are rooted in the same reflex. In each case, a social compact under strain has been pushed to its breaking point by the crisis aftermath. You can argue that the Greek arrangements were ripe for breakdown, given the country’s chronic fiscal deficits, accommodative posture towards wealthy tax evaders, and acceptance of bribery as a way of doing business. But as dysfunctional as it looks, it functioned nevertheless. And now that it is breaking down, many citizens are striking out at the parties they think have sold them out: the banks and government officials. This too has a certain logic. Many studies have found people will spend time and effort to punish cheaters, even if they wind up worse off as a result (I’m not saying the violence is effective or aimed at the right targets, merely that this kind of reaction isn’t surprising).

Although the reaction of the German citizenry looks more reasoned, it too ultimately is self destructive. Even though the Greek model was (arguably) based on corruption and the German on hard work and thrift, the German was ever bit as unsustainable precisely because it was overly export dependent. That meant it required countries that would go into debt to buy its exports. Germany and Greece are not independent phenomena; they are merely two sides of the same coin. And many Germans seem as keen to punish profligate debtors as Greeks are to punish the banks and officials they think sold them out.

Was there a better way out? Hindsight is always 20/20. The eurozone’s fracture lines were bound to be tested in a crisis, but this one has the potential to kick off a new phase of the global financial meltdown (hopefully a mere August-September 2007 version rather than a September-October 2008 variant). Had the banks and investors taken more pain, had more rescue funds gone to ordinary people rather than those at the top of the food chain, calls for austerity and shared sacrifice may well have been much better received. There was never going to be a pretty way out of this mess. But political fights are taking a decidedly parochial, combative tone at precisely the time when it would be best for everyone to take a deep breath and consider how high the stakes really are.

Oil "leak"

Oil is still leaking, bubbling up from the seabed.

Not to worry -- Rush Limpdick says it's "natural".

R.C.

Don't forget -- The Roman Catholic Church STILL sucks.

Fine "safety record" - esp. for the 21st Century

Here's another little tid-bit from Some Assembly Required:

"Profit/Loss: Every day, 16 US workers are killed by employer negligence."

Now, tell me again: Why don't we need regulation? Why don't we need OSHA? Why don't we need Unions?

Better tell me RIGHT NOW -- before you die in an "industrial accident" -- or, as our fine Gov. Perry says -- "An act of God.".

What in heavens name is WRONG with us Americans? Don't we even know where our self-interest lies?

Bangkok

Protesters remain entrenched in downtown Bangkok
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May 4, 11:22 PM (ET)

By RAVI NESSMAN

BANGKOK (AP) - Anti-government demonstrators remained entrenched on Bangkok's streets Wednesday after agreeing in principle with the prime minister's plan to end Thailand's deadly political crisis but saying they would await details before dismantling barricades.

Pressure has been growing from both sides to end the eight-week-old stalemate, which has paralyzed an upscale shopping-and-hotel district in the heart of Bangkok, decimated the lucrative tourism industry and drained the energies of the central government. Clashes between protesters and soldiers and other violence have cost 27 lives and left almost 1,000 people hurt.

While an immediate end to the crisis was not expected, many called on all sides to use Wednesday's celebration of Coronation Day to further national reconciliation.

Thousands of Thais flocked to the Grand Palace to pay tribute to King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the highly revered monarch and world's longest reigning monarch who was crowned 60 years ago. The 82-year-old king, who has been hospitalized since September, was expected to attend the palace ceremonies.

The so-called Red Shirts also held a ceremony, featuring the blessings of Buddhist monks, inside their barricaded "occupation zone."

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who had previously demanded that the protesters leave the streets before a compromise could be reached, on Monday presented a plan for rescuing Thailand from the political morass in which it has been trapped since a 2006 military coup deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on corruption allegations.

The plan includes an offer of new elections on Nov. 14 - about a year before Abhisit's term would end - if the Red Shirts stop their protests.

Veera Musikapong, a Red Shirt leader, said after meeting with colleagues Tuesday that they "unanimously welcomed the reconciliation process" but did not commit themselves to abandoning their street demonstration.

"We're staying, but if an agreement could be reached easily and can stand, then I think we will leave soon," Weng Tojirakarn, another protest leader, told The Associated Press.

The Red Shirt demonstrators - consisting of supporters of Thaksin and others who believe the coup was a blow to democracy - accuse Abhisit of taking power illegitimately through back-room deals and military pressure on legislators. The protesters have been camped in Bangkok's streets since mid-March, demanding Abhisit dissolve Parliament and call new elections.

Abhisit said his five-point plan takes into account the protesters' main grievances. It includes respect for the monarchy, reforms to resolve economic injustice, free but responsible media to be overseen by an independent watchdog agency, independent investigations of violent incidents connected with the protests, and amendment of the constitution to be more fair to all political parties.

The Red Shirts have called on the government to clarify some details. There was no immediate response from the government.

The timing of the dissolution has been a crucial issue, and the Red Shirts rejected Abhisit's earlier offer to dissolve Parliament by the end of the year. Abhisit has said he wants enough time in office to pass a national budget for next year. But both sides also want to be in control when a key reshuffle of top military posts occurs in September so they can influence the outcome.

Some of the Red Shirts' influential backers have signaled their support for the proposal, suggesting the standoff could end by Wednesday, a royal holiday.

Thaksin said in a phone call to reporters that Coronation Day should mark a positive new beginning and the end of fighting among Thais.

"If there is going to be a good beginning for reconciliation, that's a good thing. But everyone must not try to take petty political advantages," he said from exile abroad, where he is avoiding a two-year prison sentence for corruption.

Chavalit Yongchaiyuth, chairman of the opposition Pheu Thai party allied with Thaksin, praised the prime minister's plan. Speaking before the Red Shirt leaders responded to the proposal, he said he believed the protest would end Wednesday and "all sides will cooperate to bring the country back to peace."

A previous attempt last month at resolving the conflict through two days of televised talks between Abhisit and Red Shirt leaders was unsuccessful. In the past two weeks, private talks have been held, while government security forces have kept up pressure on the demonstrators with a show of strength in downtown Bangkok.

At the same time, the Red Shirts suffered a publicity debacle last week when a large group of them barged into a hospital next to their protest camp to search for soldiers they believed were hiding there. Public revulsion at the action was fanned by pro-government media.

The Red Shirts said Tuesday they want the government to cease blocking their media. The government has tried to stop a Red Shirt satellite TV station from broadcasting and blocked scores of websites seen as sympathetic to the protesters.

They also called on the government to cease linking them to an alleged violent anti-monarchy movement. Accusations of disloyalty to the king are political poison in Thailand.

The Red Shirts' response to Abhisit's plan "is a positive sign," said Viengrat Nethipo, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

"Abhisit was trying to find an exit for both sides even though neither gets everything they want," she said. "There are no winners or losers."

Greece - General Strike

I guess I won't be summering in The Greek Isles. Perhaps simmering, if it's not a full boil.


General strike hits indebted Greece over new cuts
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May 5, 2:51 AM (ET)

By DEREK GATOPOULOS

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Flights to and from Greece were grounded, trains and ferries suspended their routes and public services were paralyzed Wednesday as angry Greek workers went on strike to protest harsh new spending cuts aimed at saving their country from bankruptcy.

The 24-hour general strike shut down schools and customs offices and left hospitals working with emergency medical staff. The Acropolis and all other ancient sites were closed, while journalists also walked off the job, suspending television and radio news broadcasts.

Two protest marches were planned for central Athens - the first major demonstrations since the new measures were announced Sunday. With such marches often turning violent in Greece, more than 1,500 police were to be deployed to monitor them.

Public and private sector unions concede that the cash-strapped government was forced to slash spending, including cutting salaries and pensions for civil servants, and increase consumer taxes, to secure a vital euro110 billion ($144 billion) three-year loan package from European partners and the International Monetary Fund.

But they say low-income Greeks will suffer disproportionately from the measures, which aim to save euro30 billion ($40 billion) - the country's current budget deficit - through 2012.

"There are other things the (government) can do, before taking money from a retiree who earns euro500 ($660) a month," said Spyros Papaspyros, leader of the ADEDY civil servants' union.

Almost every big protest this year has been marred by violent clashes between protesters and police. Two months ago, rioters even chased ceremonial guards away from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside the parliament.

Discontent has intensified, as civil servants and pensioners face deep income cuts and consumer taxes have been increased again.

"People are very angry, and many outside Athens don't realize what has happened," said retired civil servant Spyros Antonopoulos, 78. "When they get their next check, they'll come to Athens with their children and grandchildren to protest.

"The way things are going, I won't buy any new clothes - I'll keep taking my trousers back to the tailor to get them patched up. ... I'll wear them inside out if I have to."

Despite the strike, the draft bill of the new austerity measures were to be discussed at committee level in Parliament Wednesday afternoon, and are to be voted on Thursday. Prime Minister George Papandreou's Socialists hold a comfortable majority of 160 in the 300-seat Parliament, and with a simple majority of 151 votes needed, the bill is expected to be passed easily.

Late Tuesday, main opposition leader Antonis Samaras said his conservative New Democracy party would vote against the bill because it disagreed with the government's handling of the crisis.

Papandreou had been hoping to bring opposition leaders on board, insisting that the measures were essential if the country is to survive. But opposition parties have harshly criticized his handling of the crisis, and Samaras' move to vote against the legislation was more a symbolic gesture.

"In any case, the government does not need our vote to have the law approved," he admitted, adding that his party would respect the Socialists' commitments to the EU and IMF if elected to power.

New Democracy is trailing the Socialists by 10 percentage points in opinion polls, after suffering a crushing defeat by the same margin in national elections in October. Papandreou has blamed New Democracy for the crisis, saying they mishandled the country's finances in their five years in power, and fudged statistics to show a much lower budget deficit

Drilling, Disaster, Denial - by Paul Krugman

A must read -- follow link to original


Drilling, Disaster, Denial


By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 2, 2010

It took futuristic technology to achieve one of the worst ecological disasters on record. Without such technology, after all, BP couldn’t have drilled the Deepwater Horizon well in the first place. Yet for those who remember their environmental history, the catastrophe in the gulf has a strangely old-fashioned feel, reminiscent of the events that led to the first Earth Day, four decades ago.

And maybe, just maybe, the disaster will help reverse environmentalism’s long political slide — a slide largely caused by our very success in alleviating highly visible pollution. If so, there may be a small silver lining to a very dark cloud.

Environmentalism began as a response to pollution that everyone could see. The spill in the gulf recalls the 1969 blowout that coated the beaches of Santa Barbara in oil. But 1969 was also the year the Cuyahoga River, which flows through Cleveland, caught fire. Meanwhile, Lake Erie was widely declared “dead,” its waters contaminated by algal blooms. And major U.S. cities — especially, but by no means only, Los Angeles — were often cloaked in thick, acrid smog.

It wasn’t that hard, under the circumstances, to mobilize political support for action. The Environmental Protection Agency was founded, the Clean Water Act was enacted, and America began making headway against its most visible environmental problems. Air quality improved: smog alerts in Los Angeles, which used to have more than 100 a year, have become rare. Rivers stopped burning, and some became swimmable again. And Lake Erie has come back to life, in part thanks to a ban on laundry detergents containing phosphates.

Yet there was a downside to this success story.

For one thing, as visible pollution has diminished, so has public concern over environmental issues. According to a recent Gallup survey, “Americans are now less worried about a series of environmental problems than at any time in the past 20 years.”

This decline in concern would be fine if visible pollution were all that mattered — but it isn’t, of course. In particular, greenhouse gases pose a greater threat than smog or burning rivers ever did. But it’s hard to get the public focused on a form of pollution that’s invisible, and whose effects unfold over decades rather than days.

Nor was a loss of public interest the only negative consequence of the decline in visible pollution. As the photogenic crises of the 1960s and 1970s faded from memory, conservatives began pushing back against environmental regulation.

Much of the pushback took the form of demands that environmental restrictions be weakened. But there was also an attempt to construct a narrative in which advocates of strong environmental protection were either extremists — “eco-Nazis,” according to Rush Limbaugh — or effete liberal snobs trying to impose their aesthetic preferences on ordinary Americans. (I’m sorry to say that the long effort to block construction of a wind farm off Cape Cod — which may finally be over thanks to the Obama administration — played right into that caricature.)

And let’s admit it: by and large, the anti-environmentalists have been winning the argument, at least as far as public opinion is concerned.

Then came the gulf disaster. Suddenly, environmental destruction was photogenic again.

For the most part, anti-environmentalists have been silent about the catastrophe. True, Mr. Limbaugh — arguably the Republican Party’s de facto leader — promptly suggested that environmentalists might have blown up the rig to head off further offshore drilling. But that remark probably reflected desperation: Mr. Limbaugh knows that his narrative has just taken a big hit.

For the gulf blowout is a pointed reminder that the environment won’t take care of itself, that unless carefully watched and regulated, modern technology and industry can all too easily inflict horrific damage on the planet.

Will America take heed? It depends a lot on leadership. In particular, President Obama needs to seize the moment; he needs to take on the “Drill, baby, drill” crowd, telling America that courting irreversible environmental disaster for the sake of a few barrels of oil, an amount that will hardly affect our dependence on imports, is a terrible bargain.

It’s true that Mr. Obama isn’t as well positioned to make this a teachable moment as he should be: just a month ago he announced a plan to open much of the Atlantic coast to oil exploration, a move that shocked many of his supporters and makes it hard for him to claim the moral high ground now.

But he needs to get beyond that. The catastrophe in the gulf offers an opportunity, a chance to recapture some of the spirit of the original Earth Day. And if that happens, some good may yet come of this ecological nightmare.

No, DAMN IT, No!!

Actress Lynn Redgrave has died at age 67
AP…

HILLEL ITALIE, Associated Press Writers Hillel Italie, Associated Press Writers – 24 mins ago

NEW YORK – Lynn Redgrave, an introspective and independent player in her family's acting dynasty who became a 1960s sensation as the unconventional title character of "Georgy Girl" and later dramatized her troubled past in such one-woman stage performances as "Shakespeare for My Father" and "Nightingale," has died. She was 67.

Her publicist Rick Miramontez, speaking on behalf of her children, said Redgrave died peacefully Sunday night at her home in Kent, Conn. Children Ben, Pema and Annabel were with her, as were close friends.

"Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven year journey with breast cancer," Redgrave's children said in a statement Monday. "She lived, loved and worked harder than ever before. The endless memories she created as a mother, grandmother, writer, actor and friend will sustain us for the rest of our lives. Our entire family asks for privacy through this difficult time."

Redgrave was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2002, had a mastectomy in January 2003 and underwent chemotherapy.

Her death comes a year after her niece Natasha Richardson died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident and just a month after the death of her older brother, Corin Redgrave.

The youngest child of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lynn Redgrave never quite managed the acclaim - or notoriety - of elder sibling Vanessa Redgrave, but received Oscar nominations for "Georgy Girl" and "Gods and Monsters," and Tony nominations for "Mrs. Warren's Profession," "Shakespeare for My Father" and "The Constant Wife." In recent years, she also made appearances on TV in "Ugly Betty," "Law & Order" and "Desperate Housewives."

"Vanessa was the one expected to be the great actress," Lynn Redgrave told The Associated Press in 1999. "It was always, 'Corin's the brain, Vanessa the shining star, oh, and then there's Lynn.'"

In theater, the ruby-haired Redgrave often displayed a sunny, sweet and open personality, much like her ebullient offstage personality. It worked well in such shows as "Black Comedy" - her Broadway debut in 1972 - and again two years later in "My Fat Friend," a comedy about an overweight young woman who sheds pounds to find romance.

Redgrave's play "Nightingale" at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2009 was the last time she appeared on stage.

"She was adored by audiences, and although she embarked on a medical treatment as previews began, she never missed a show and gave magnificent performances eight times a week," said Lynne Meadow, artistic director of MTC.

"We admired her strength, her talent, her courage and her enormous good heart. There wasn't a stage hand, a press rep, a box office person who didn't worship Lynn. She was true theatre royalty."

Tall and blue-eyed like her sister, she was as open about her personal life as Vanessa has been about politics. In plays and in interviews, Lynn Redgrave confided about her family, her marriage and her health. She acknowledged that she suffered from bulimia and served as a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers. With daughter Annabel Clark, she released a 2004 book about her fight with cancer, "Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery From Breast Cancer."

Redgrave was born in London in 1943 and despite self-doubts pursued the family trade. She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, and was not yet 20 when she debuted professionally on stage in a London production of "A Midsummer's Night Dream." Like her siblings, she appeared in plays and in films, working under Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier as a member of the National Theater and under director/brother-in-law Tony Richardson in the 1963 screen hit "Tom Jones."

"Before I was born, my father was a movie star and a stage star," the actress told the AP in 1993. "I was raised in a household where we didn't see our parents in the morning. We lived in the nursery. Our nanny made our breakfast, and I was dressed up to go downstairs to have tea with my parents, if they were there."

True fame caught her with "Georgy Girl," billed as "the wildest thing to hit the world since the miniskirt." The 1966 film starred Redgrave as the plain, childlike Londoner pursued by her father's middle-aged boss, played by James Mason.

Dismissed by critic Pauline Kael as a false testament to free thinking, the movie was branded "cool" by moviegoers on both side of the Atlantic and received several Academy Award nominations, including one for Redgrave and one for the popular title song performed by the Australian group The Seekers.

"All the films I've been in - and I haven't been in that many attention-getting films - no one expected anything of, least of all me," Redgrave said in an AP interview in 1999.

"Georgy Girl" didn't lead to lasting commercial success, but did anticipate a long-running theme: Redgrave's weight. She weighed 180 pounds while making the film, leading New York Times critic Michael Stern to complain that Redgrave "cannot be quite as homely as she makes herself in this film.

"Slimmed down, cosseted in a couture salon, and given more of the brittle, sophisticated lines she tosses off with such abandon here, she could become a comedienne every bit as good as the late Kay Kendall," he wrote.

Films such as "The Happy Hooker" and "Every Little Crook and Nanny" were remembered less than Redgrave's decision to advocate for Weight Watchers. She even referenced "Georgy Girl" in one commercial, showing a clip and saying, "This was me when I made the movie, because this is the way I used to eat."

At age 50, Redgrave was ready to tell her story in full. As she wrote in the foreword to "Shakespeare for My Father," she was out of work and set off on a "journey that began almost as an act of desperation," writing a play out of her "passionately emotional desire" to better understand her father, who had died in 1985.

In the 1993 AP interview, Redgrave remembered her father as a fearless stage performer yet a shy, tormented man who had great difficulty talking to his youngest daughter.

"I didn't really know him," Redgrave said. "I lived in his house. I was in awe of him and I adored him, and I was terrified of him and I hated him and I loved him, all in one go."

Redgrave credited the play, which interspersed readings from Shakespeare with family memories, with bringing her closer to her relatives and reviving her film career. She played the supportive wife of pianist David Helfgott in "Shine" and received an Oscar nomination as the loyal housekeeper for filmmaker James Whale in "Gods and Monsters." She also appeared in "Peter Pan," "Kinsey" and "Confessions of a Shopaholic."

On stage, she looked at her mother's side of the family in "The Mandrake Root" and "Rachel and Juliet."

"Nightingale" touched upon her health, the life of her grandmother (Beatrice Kempson) and the end of her 32-year marriage to actor-director John Clark, who had disclosed that he had fathered a child with the future wife of their son Benjamin. She sat at a desk and worked from a script, but it didn't affect what the AP called "her touching, beautifully realized performance," the AP wrote last year.

Lynn Redgrave is survived by six grandchildren, her sister Vanessa, and four nieces and nephews.

A private funeral with be held later this week.

This Week In Holy Crimes -- From Joe.My.God.

This Week In Holy Crimes

Over the last seven days...

Ohio: Pastor James A. Blaine charged with embezzling more than $100K from his church.
California: Pastor Jeffrey Allen Waisner sentenced to three years in prison for sex with a 14 year-old girl.
Texas: Pastor Jerod Rost charged with felony assault on a 13 year-old boy over a football argument between the boy and Rost's son.
Washington: Pastor Michael Louis Anthony charged with child rape for affair with 15 year-old girl.
New Jersey: Rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim confesses on tape to multimillion dollar money laundering scheme.
Maryland: Pastor Jerry Bartley charged with 70 felony counts for molesting a six year-old girl. Bartley was already accused of molesting a 13 year-old boy.
Utah: Pastor William J. Blanscet sentenced to three months in jail for exposing himself over webcam to an undercover officer he thought was an underage girl.
Kentucky: Pastor Daniel Gabbard sentenced to 20 years in prison for DUI homicide.
Italy: Father Ruggero Conti on trial for molesting seven boys. Conti's bishop has admitted that he knew of the accusations years ago but did nothing.
Latvia: Vicar Agris Levalds charged with molesting numerous orphan boys, some of whom are mentally challenged.
Brazil: Father Jose Afonso charged with molesting eight altar boys.

The Opposite of HOPE

More on our "oil spill" -- it's not really a "spill", it's an undersea un-contained, uncontrolled gusher.

Best case: Another week of unabated oil geyser
By CAIN BURDEAU, RAY HENRY
Associated Press Writers, Associated Press Writers
updated 1 hour, 43 minutes ago

VENICE, La. - Federal officials shut down fishing from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle on Sunday because of the uncontrolled gusher spewing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and the environmental disaster is still expected to take at least a week to cut off.

Even that toxic scenario may be too rosy because it depends on a low-tech strategy that has never been attempted before in deep water.

The plan: to lower 74-ton, concrete-and-metal boxes into the gulf to capture the oil and siphon it to a barge waiting at the surface. Whether that will work for a leak 5,000 feet below the surface is anyone's guess; the method has previously worked only in shallower waters.

If it doesn't, and efforts to activate a shutoff mechanism called a blowout preventer continue to prove fruitless, the oil probably will keep gushing for months until a second well can be dug to cut off the first. Oil giant BP PLC's latest plan will take six to eight days because welders have to assemble the boxes.

President Barack Obama toured the region Sunday, deflecting criticism that his administration was too slow to respond and did too little to stave off the catastrophe.

Satellite images indicate the rust-hued slick tripled in size in just two days, suggesting the oil could be pouring out faster than before. Wildlife including sea turtles have been found dead on the shore but it is too soon whether the spill, caused by an April 20 oil rig explosion, was to blame.

Even if the well is shut off in a week, fishermen and wildlife officials wonder how long it will take for the gulf to recover. Some compare it to the hurricane Louisiana is still recovering from after nearly five years.

"It's like a slow version of Katrina," Venice charter boat captain Bob Kenney said. "My kids will be talking about the effect of this when they're my age."

More than 6,800 square miles of federal fishing areas, from the mouth of the Mississippi to Florida's Pensacola Bay were closed for at least 10 days on Sunday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco says government scientists are taking samples from the waters near the spill to determine whether there is any danger.

Fishermen still were out working, however: They have been dropping miles of inflatable, oil-capturing boom around the region's fragile wetlands and prime fishing areas. Bad weather, however, was thwarting much of the work; Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said 80 percent of the booms laid down off his state over the previous three days had broken down. He said boom along other coasts is breaking down also.

The Coast Guard and BP have said it's nearly impossible to know exactly how much oil has gushed since the blast, though it has been roughly estimated to be at least 200,000 gallons a day.

At that rate, it would eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill — which dumped 11 million gallons off the Alaska coast — as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history in a matter of weeks.

"None of us have ever had experience at this level before. It ain't good," said Bob Love, coastal and nongame resources administrator with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. "The longer it goes, the more fish and wildlife impacts there will be."

Even if the oil stays mostly offshore, the consequences could be dire for sea turtles, dolphins and other deepwater marine life — and microscopic plankton and tiny creatures that are a staple of larger animals' diets.

Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., said at least 20 dead sea turtles were found on the state's beaches. He said it's too soon to say whether oil contamination killed them but that it is unusual to have them turning up across such a wide stretch of coast, spanning nearly 30 miles.

None of the turtles have oil on them, but Solangi said they could have ingested oily fish or breathed in oil on the surface. Necropsies will be performed Monday.

The situation could become even more grave if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and flows to the beaches of Florida — and potentially whips around the state's southern tip and up the Eastern Seaboard. Tourist-magnet beaches and countless wildlife could be ruined.

Obama has halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster. On Sunday he called the spill a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster," and made clear that he was not accepting blame.

"BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill," he said, rain dripping from his face in Venice, a Gulf Coast community serving as a staging area for the response.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said any comparison between the ruptured BP oil well and Katrina was "a total mischaracterization" and that the government has taken an "all hands on deck" approach.

Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser met with Obama Sunday in Venice and said the president's "let's-get-it-done approach was overwhelming." He said he hopes that the president pressures BP to approve funding for a plan to have fishermen start laying oil-sopping booms very soon.

Obama acknowledged the booms haven't been working well out in the choppy gulf, Nungesser said.

After the oil rig explosion, which killed 11 people, the flow of oil should have been stopped by a blowout preventer, but the mechanism failed, as have continuing efforts to activate it.

"As you can imagine, this is like doing open-heart surgery at 5,000 feet, with — in the dark, with robot-controlled submarines," BP PLC Chairman Lamar McKay said on ABC's "This Week." He defended his company's safety record.

Charlie Holt, drilling and completing operations manager for BP in the Gulf of Mexico, said Sunday it's still unclear why the blowout preventer failed. But he suggested something could be in the way, or it could be damaged.

"There is nothing unique about the situation that should have prohibited the BOP from working as designed," Holt said of the device.

The containment boxes being built to stop the leak — 40 feet tall, 24 feet wide and 14 feet deep — were not part of the company's original response plan. But they appear to be the best hope for keeping the oil well from gushing for months.

The approach has been used previously only for spills in relatively shallow water. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said engineers are still examining whether the valves and other systems that feed oil to a ship on the surface can withstand the extra pressures of the deep.

"This is a completely new way of dealing with this problem," said Greg Pollock, commissioner of the oil spill prevention and response program at the Texas General Land Office. "Generally speaking, nobody's ever tried anything like this on this scale."

If the boxes don't work, BP also has begun work on its only other backup plan: two relief wells that will take as long as three months to drill.

Bob Fryar, senior vice president for BP in Angola, said the Bureau of Minerals Management has approved a plan to drill the wells. BP wants to drill two in case one doesn't work.

He said teams are working 24 hours a day on every possible solution. He said 389 people reported to an emergency center at BP's Houston office alone.

"What BP's doing is is throwing absolutely everything we can at this," he said Sunday. "We ceratainly want to do everything we can, everything we can possibly think of, as a company, as an industry."

BP has not said how much oil is beneath the seabed the Deepwater Horizon rig was tapping when it exploded. A company official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels. Fryar said any numbers being thrown out are just estimates at best. The rig was operated by BP and owned by Transocean Ltd.

Teams working to contain the spill have had limited success using airplanes to drop chemical dispersants meant to break up the oil, and rough seas have prevented ships from skimming crude from the surface.

In Alabama, National Guard soldiers arrived on the state's Dauphin Island to build a berm meant to buffer part of the island against the slick.

However, the oil on the surface is just part of the problem. There could be far more oil unseen below the surface. And the pipe sprouting from the well could completely collapse — leading to an even more devastating gusher

HOPE

O.K. -- so The Church is still a mess. Our US oil spill is getting worse -- but -- this according to Krugman:

" May 2, 2010, 4:44 pm
Greek Deal

More serious than I expected.

The Greek fiscal problem has been turning into a death spiral, in which fear of default is driving up borrowing costs, making default even more likely. The EU has now, in effect, given up on trying to restore market confidence; instead, it’s going to break the death spiral by main force, providing Greece with all or almost all the financing it needs directly, at an interest rate much lower than the market was demanding.

The plan still requires savage austerity on Greece’s part, and ensures a terrible few years for the Greek economy. But it does rise to the scale of the problem, and it might work."


Here are some details from Bloomberg.com"


Greece Gets $146 Billion Rescue on EU, IMF Austerity Package

By Gabi Thesing and Flavia Krause-Jackson

May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Euro-region ministers agreed to a 110 billion-euro ($146 billion) rescue package for Greece to prevent a default and stop the worst crisis in the currency’s 11-year history from spreading through the rest of the bloc.

The first payment will be made before Greece’s next bond redemption on May 19, said Jean-Claude Juncker after chairing a meeting of euro-region finance ministers in Brussels yesterday. The 16-nation bloc will pay 80 billion euros at a rate of around 5 percent and the International Monetary Fund contributes the rest. Greece agreed to budget measures worth 13 percent of gross domestic product.

“It’s an ambitious program, it’s austere but it’s absolutely necessary,” Juncker told reporters. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, speaking at the same press conference, said Greece’s plan will “help to restore confidence and safeguard financial stability in the euro area.”

Policy makers agreed to the unprecedented bailout after investors’ concerns about a potential Greek default sparked a rout in Portuguese and Spanish bonds last week and sent stock markets tumbling. At stake is the future of the euro 11 years after its creators left control of fiscal policy in national capitals.

Interest Rate

The extra yield that investors demand to hold Greek debt over German bunds surged to 826 basis points on April 28 after Standard & Poor’s cut its rating to junk. It eased to 594 points on April 30 as signs of an agreement emerged. The Portuguese spread jumped to the most since at least 1997 last week and the premium on Spain climbed to the highest since March 2009.

The euro, which fell to a 12-month low of $1.3115 on April 28, strengthened to $1.3294 two days later.

European Union leaders will meet on May 7 to discuss the pace of parliamentary approval of the Greek loans. Germany plans to debate the plan on the same day.

“The EU can afford to bail-out Greece and even Portugal, but it cannot afford bailing out Spain,” said Andrew Bosomworth, Munich-based head of portfolio management at Pacific Investment Management Co., which oversees the world’s largest mutual fund from Newport Beach, California. “Therefore a lot is resting on getting Greece right.”

Germany will provide 28 percent of the euro region’s overall contribution.

‘Not an Easy Day’

In return for rescue funds, Greece agreed to measures that the ADEDY civil servants union called “savage.” Greece will cut wages and freeze pensions for three years as well as increase the main sales tax to 23 percent from 21 percent. Progress will be monitored quarterly, the Greek government said.

“It is not an easy day,” said Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou in Brussels. “It’s not going to be easy for Greek citizens. But it’s absolutely clear that the Greek government is prepared to do what it needs to do.”

The financial lifeline lasts three years and forces Greece to cut its budget deficit below the European Union’s limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product by the end of 2014, a year later than originally planned. The shortfall was 13.6 percent last year, the second-biggest in the region after Ireland.

Greece now expects its economy to shrink 4 percent this year and 2.6 percent before returning to growth in 2012. The package will also set up a “financial stabilization” fund to help banks with potential bad loans stemming from the austerity measures. Ten billion of the total rescue package will be earmarked for the fund, said EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn.

Ringfence

Policy makers are trying to ringfence the Greek crisis after yields surged across the euro region’s periphery on concern Spain, Portugal and Ireland will also struggle to cut their deficits. S&P followed its decision to cut Greece’s credit rating to junk on April 27 with downgrades on Portugal and Spain.

Rehn indicated that the Greek bailout plan can’t be seen as a blueprint for other euro nations as Greece is a “special case” because of the way previous governments fudged its deficit statistics.

At 11.2 percent of GDP, Spain’s budget deficit was the third-highest in the euro region last year and Portugal’s was the fourth-biggest at 9.4 percent.

Asked about contagion risks, Austrian Finance Minister Josef Proell said yesterday’s agreement “will send a clear signal to the markets that Europe is able” to handle the crisis and “minimize the risk” of it spreading.

Debate

The Greek bailout marks an end to nearly three months of debate among EU leaders on whether and how to rescue a euro region nation teetering on the brink of default. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been reluctant to put taxpayers’ funds at risk as her government faces a regional election in North Rhine-Westphalia on May 9.

Fifty-six percent of Germans oppose giving Greece aid, calling such support “wrong,” Bild am Sonntag reported, citing an Emnid survey. Germany hopes to secure parliament’s approval for the plan by May 7.

Merkel yesterday said she was right to demand IMF involvement in the fund over the objections of her European peers.

“Three months ago it would have been unthinkable that Greece would accept such tough conditions,” she said in Bonn.

Austerity

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is likely to face his own difficulties. The austerity plan has sparked opposition in Athens, with the federation of civil servants calling a 48- hour strike starting May 4.

“They won’t manage to enforce these measures,” said Pavlos Nikolaou, 39, who runs a mini-market in Athens. ‘I don’t think this will be the end of measures, they’ll have to announce more next year. Cutting salaries is also not what’s going to solve Greece’s problems.”

“Implementation will now be investors’ foremost concern in the coming months, and Greece will have to work hard to rebuild its reputation and regain market confidence,” said Annunziata. “It will be an uphill struggle.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.netGabi Thesing in London at gthesing@bloomberg.net

Failure -- all around

"President Obama will visit the Gulf of Mexico in the next 48 hours to check in on the oil spill and the response, a White House official announced this morning.

The president's trip will have "a very small footprint."

The above was from Talking Points Memo.


As far as I'm concerned, Pres. Obama's response to this disaster is no better than Pres. Bush's response to Katrina.

No real response until it's damn near (or is) TOO LATE. No gearing up. No questions. Reliance on the reassurances of the oil company that screwed it all up -- and has a history of screwing up, at the cost of workers lives.

This President seems to believe everything the CEO's and Wall Street fatcats tell him. It seems independent experts (unless they have jobs as lobbyists) need not apply.

Does any of this crap explain why so many older folks are so upset, why there is so much diffuse rage out here. Twist it the way you want -- and you have all sorts of "Tea Party" crap.

It is time to listen to The People. It is time to respond to some of the real needs out there -- and tell folks you are doing it.

WE'RE #1 - WOW!!!

BY THE WAY -- In case you were wondering:


Supersized! First it was thought to be leaking 1,000 barrels a day. Then 5,000. Now the guestimate is up to 25,000 barrels a day. That's a million gallons a day – 9 million so far. The Exxon Valdez was 11 million gallons. We have a winner.

This from "Some Assembly Required"

"We Are Wall Street"

Supposedly, the following e-mail has been making the rounds of Wall Street the past few days. I have no idea if it's true or not -- but it does sound (read) like something the overpaid, narcissistic a-holes on The Street would write. Got this from ft.com/Alphaville. Please follow link to original.


“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.

We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?”

Catholic order to be overhauled after founder's abuse

So, I wasn't going to post anything else today -- it is Mayday, and the import of that MUST be driven home -- BUT, the following is just too funny. They are going to "overhaul" a deeply "conservative" Roman Catholic "order" because the "Saint" who founded it was a MONSTER.

After supporting, protecting, shielding, the founder during his lifetime -- they allowed his reputation to be destroyed AFTER his DEATH. I guess they really do not believe in any sort of "afterlife".

Now a dead MAN is one of the major scapegoats. "See, we did the right thing".



Catholic order to be overhauled after founder's abuse

Father Maciel founded the order in 1941

Pope Benedict XVI is to appoint an envoy to overhaul a conservative Roman Catholic order whose Mexican founder abused young children over many years.

Marcial Maciel's actions were "immoral" and the Legionaries of Christ order had to be "purified", the Vatican said.

Maciel, who died in 2008, fathered a daughter with a mistress as well as sexually abusing many boys and young men over a period of 30 years.

He had enjoyed the support of the previous pope, John Paul II.

In 2006, Father Maciel was banned from exercising his ministry in public and told to retire to a life of prayer and penitence.

The priest - who founded the conservative order in 1941 - had always denied any wrongdoing. He died in January 2008 at the age of 87.

'Unscrupulous'

The Vatican statement came after the Pope met five bishops who investigated the order.

It said Fr Maciel had led a double life "devoid of scruples and authentic religious sentiment".

Pope Benedict XVI on 28 April
The Pope has been accused of being part of a culture of secrecy

"By pushing away and casting doubt upon all those who questioned his behaviour, and the false belief that he wasn't doing harm to the good of the Legion, he created around him a defence mechanism that made him unassailable for a long period, making it difficult to know his true life," the Vatican statement said.

The Catholic Church has been hit by a wave of allegations that Church authorities in Europe and North and South America failed to deal properly with priests accused of paedophilia, sometimes just moving them to new parishes where more children were put at risk.

The Pope himself has been accused of being part of a culture of secrecy, and of not taking strong enough steps against paedophiles when he had that responsibility as a cardinal in Rome.

However, his supporters say he has been the most pro-active pope yet in confronting abuse.


"Most proactive" --- after stonewalling and risking the total destruction of the business he is the CEO of. They make Goldman look like goodguys (well, not quite).

A Song For Mayday

Here's a little ditty sung by Billy Bragg. This was written by a Frenchman in 1871. He had been involved in The Paris Commune. It is a WORKERS song -- as subversive as that is these days.

For your Mayday enjoyment

Mayday

Today is May 1st. It's Mayday -- a holiday with deep roots in the European tradition. It's now both an end of winter celebration AND a day for labor to rally.

Here in the USA May day has been downplayed by the corporate leaders. It's been tied in with "Godless Communism", etc., etc., etc. In fact, May 1st as a workers holiday began in the USA and Canada as a call for a strike for the 8 hour day. Do you remember those quaint old traditions -- the 5 day week and the 8 hour day?

There actually was a time when workers could band together and form a union -- today, everyone is so brainwashed they think unions are "bad", as they endure horrid working conditions.

Most European workers have more balls that us "rugged Americans".

Anyway, this is not only about that -- it's also about MAYDAY, the old pagan holiday -- that was taken over by the Christians (what hasn't).

When I was in Grammar School (primary school today) we would build a Maypole, festoon it with crepe paper flowers and streamers. Then, all the BOYS AND GIRLS (not just the girls) would dance and skip around the Maypole. There would be a "Queen Of The May", and we'd have a little party. It was a nice little celebration that I remember over 60 years later.

Of course, that had to end -- after all, we were told May 1st was a COMMUNIST holiday. In addition, it's pagan roots "offended" "The Official Church of Child Rapists", AKA "The Roman Catholic Church".

So, today, a celebration of the end of winter, the beginning of the six warm months, the growing season, is no longer celebrated in the Good Old USA (TM applied for).

It's not seen necessary by our corporate overlords.

Even in Medieval England The Lords allowed their serfs a holiday to go (sorta) wild. There was drinking, dancing around the Maypole, and various sorts of revelry (most likely a lot of fucking, too).

We have forgotten all our roots.

Today, any teacher asking little Jimmy to dance around a Maypole would probably be fired. It's not "masculine" enough. Jimmy needs a little AR15 to kill "The Enemies of Freedom". Dancing and skipping might make him "gay" (or something).

Labor is only "celebrated" when our overlords ALLOW it, and only in "designated areas".

We have become our own joke.