Posts from — April 2015

Oil started flowing into the Gulf when the Deepwater Horizon exploded at 9:53PM CDT on April 20th, 2010. It stopped at 2:25PM CDT on July 15th after spewing 190 million gallons [4.5 million barrels] of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The explosion killed 11 workers on the platform, and the oil and dispersants shortened the lives of countless others.

The CBC has a broad overview of the costs and a video report on conditions today.

The US corporate media, like the US government and BP think that people are too fragile to hear the truth about what happened and what is continuing to happen in the Gulf. A major portion of the oil that was spilled is sitting in cold water on the bottom of the Gulf waiting for a hurricane to bring it ashore.

With next to nothing going on right now the most interesting Florida story was about Doug Hughes, a Ruskin, Florida mailman, who wanted to deliver letters to the Congresscritters about campaign finance reform and decided to fly his gyrocopter to DC and land on the lawn near the Capitol building.

Lots of people took videos of the flight, which is low and slow, and the consensus is that the videos are funnier with the Inspector Gadget theme playing.

A gyrocopter flies so low and slow that it stays below radar, and shooting it down would probably cause more damage that following it to see what was going on. It can’t carry much weight beyond a pilot, so even if there were explosives on board, it would be less dangerous to move people out of the way, rather that bringing it down.

Bored

Where is everyone?

[Editor: Hadley came out for the first time in days as the sun peeked through, but there was nothing to attract his interest.]

The Friday Ark for lots of animal pictures.

From McClatchy: As it moved to seize home, bank never told widow her loan was insured

WASHINGTON — For more than a decade after her husband died, Laura Coleman Biggs paid her mortgage to a Bank of America subsidiary. She was never told, even as she was weeks from losing her home, that her husband had actually protected her against foreclosure.

George “Kenny” Mitchell had taken out a special lender-pushed insurance policy to pay off most of his loan if he died.

Read the entire thing to understand that this insurance policy paid off $100,000 on the $120,000 loan, leaving his widow with only a $20,000 mortgage. The bank not only didn’t tell her about the policy, it continued to collect the premiums for the policy from her. Since the bank is the beneficiary, the widow wouldn’t be aware of the policy.

Why are these crooks still allowed to operate?

Property and Excise are 8 today.

The traditional theme music for the day on YouTube.

So, why did M$ decide to issue its monthly patches today, when people are using their computers to finish up their taxes?

The thunderstorms held off until this afternoon, so there was no repeat of the 5 inches of rain we got yesterday, but we had dense fog this morning, followed by solid overcast. I pity those kids on their spring break.

About the only story I saw of any interest was out of Georgia and reported by the BBC: Woman wounded in US armadillo shooting

Authorities in the US state of Georgia say a woman was accidentally shot by her son-in-law as he was trying to kill an armadillo with a handgun.

Police say the bullet ricocheted off the animal’s hard armour, entered the woman’s mobile home, and hit her in the back as she sat in a reclining chair.

The 74-year-old woman was taken to the hospital where she is expected to recover, local police told US media.

The response from the local police – he should have used a shotgun for armadillo and other varmints.

I don’t understand doing anything about the animal, as they eat termites and ants. The borrows can be annoying, but their food preference is a definite plus.

So, Marco finally admitted he was running for President, which is good because it means he can’t run for re-election to the Senate. You can only appear on a ballot once in Florida, so if he puts his name on the ballot in the Presidential primary, he can’t have it on for the Senate primary challenge by the Tea Party if no one else.

I have seen people who are actually treating him as a viable candidate, which is absurd. He isn’t crazy enough to win the wingnut vote, and he lacks the fund-raising capability to make it through the early round without those voters. Further, if Jeb Bush takes the nomination, Marco isn’t viable for the VP slot because of the requirement that Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates be from different states.

In local news the weather forecast is for thunderstorms for the next week. We have already had more than twice the normal rainfall for the entire month, and it is just going to get soggier as a cold front has stalled north of us.

It isn’t of Biblical proportions, but it is at least one book’s worth. Mobile had over 7 inches of rain yesterday.

I have the BBC app on my iPad and it has a very distinctive alert sound. When it went off this morning I checked the site on my computer and couldn’t figure out what the alert was about. I didn’t see any breaking news.

So, I checked the CBC site to see if they had anything, and they actually had the announcement that Hillary Clinton formally confirmed that she was running for President in a Breaking News box.

I opened up the iPad to see if that was, in fact, what the BBC was alerting, and sure enough it was.

Excuse me, but this ‘news’ has been breaking for two years, and the fact that she was going to do it today was announced last Friday.

I can see reporting it, but ‘Breaking News’ – I don’t think so…

Okaloosa wasn’t the only county with an odd violent incident this week. In the county just West of us things got really strange: Santa Rosa deputy attacked by man with Samurai sword.

The guy sliced the first deputy on the scene pretty badly. but the second deputy who arrived started shooting as soon as the guy headed for him, killing him.

The wounded deputy is now listed in good condition at a local hospital. No one has figured out the reason behind the attack.

The moon wasn’t full and the weather was pleasant. No report yet on possible ‘chemical’ involvement.

Dissatisfied Customer

No more drama!

[Editor: CC apparently thinks I was responsible for what happened.]

The Friday Ark for lots of animal pictures.

While confined to bed in the hospital I finally turned on the TV to stop people from asking if I wanted help to get it working. Other than the weather channel, the only thing I found interesting were some of the commercials.

One commercial in particular, this video, by my insurance company, resonated with the recent passing of one of my favorite comedians, Stan Freberg.

Among his many accomplishments, he convinced TV advertisers to make funny commercials – essentially creating the genre. The insurance commercial was typical of a Freberg ad: most the run-time was spent on the humor with the sponsor showing up at the end, there was always music, and they tend to be rather absurd.

I grew up with my Dad’s Freberg records playing in the many places where we lived that lacked TV, and often even radio. Early exposure to “St George and the Dragonet” (mix of the traditional story told as if it were an episode of the old Dragnet show) really perverted the way I read fairy tales to my niece and younger cousins. In my version of Goldilocks, she was arrested for burglary, criminal mischief, and theft at the end.

I am sitting here with armed police officers on both sides of my house looking for a suspect who is considered ‘armed and dangerous’ in the apartments.

He is drunk, very drunk, and has at least one knife. He was loud, and making threats which resulted in the call to the police. There was a single shot, but I don’t know who fired it, and now they can’t find him.

The tenants have been forced out of their apartments, with no idea when they will be allowed back in. I did not go towards the sound of the shot, because I don’t want to show up on YouTube shooting someone, and don’t get paid to do that sort of thing anymore.

This has not been a very good week.

So, current governor, Rick “the fraudster” Scott, mistakenly said that he was in favor of the Medicaid expansion when he was running for re-election, but has ‘corrected the record’ to show that he always against it, even when he said he was for it.

Then you have former governor, John Ellis “JEB” Bush, who says that he isn’t a Latino, even though he checked the box on his voter registration form saying he was, and signed the form under penalty of perjury.

There are a lot of Republican officials in this state who haven’t mastered the concept of checking boxes.

The “big story” was Rand Paul announces 2016 White House bid

Senator Rand Paul has announced he is launching a 2016 presidential election campaign on the Republican ticket.

“Today begins the journey to take America back,” he said in a campaign event in Kentucky.

He didn’t say how far back, but the 18th century is probably a safe choice.

The latest in an on-going series: Russian nuclear submarine fire ‘put out’ in Arctic dock. They are saying there were no weapons or nuclear fuel on-board as the vessel was in dry dock for maintenance.

In nostalgia news, American Pie lyrics sell for $1.2m. Don McLean auctioned off the original, hand-written lyrics to the song, and said they would explain as much as can be explained about the lyrics. The BBC has an companion piece on the lyrics.