News: June 2010 Archives
I hate to give any attention to such a despicable crowd, but as a Christian and a Baptist I feel an obligation to condemn them. I hope it's obvious to everyone, but just to be clear: Westboro Baptist Church is a hateful, evil organization that doesn't represent the teachings of Christ and doesn't have anything to do with Baptists other than despoiling our name.
Yet again they're in the news for protesting at a soldier's funeral. Disgraceful.
The American Civil Liberties Union has won a temporary restraining order that would allow members of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest at the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Michael Bailey.Corporal Bailey died June 16th in combat operations in Afghanistan, and will be buried from his old high school, West County High in this St. Francois County community.
The church protests at some military funerals, to promote its anti-gay agenda.
It's hard to think of a way that these "Christians" could be less Christlike and more damaging to Christ's mission for the church.
Oh, and thanks ACLU! I hope this lawsuit lets you put a check mark on your annual report about how you vigorously defend the rights of "Baptists" even though you disagree with them!
I agree with Victor Davis Hanson's perspective on General McChrystal.
There are plenty of other causes to worry: McChrystal’s derision of a dinner with a French diplomat, the entire notion of letting off steam to a leftwing reporter in Paris during a war, even the revelation of whom McChrystal voted for (i.e., Obama). Once one digests all the ramifications of this, I think one will see this is not a partisan issue, but one of judgment and deference for the chain of command.Surely if a colonel or a major gave the same sort of interview about the general, and such an officer’s subordinates told the press the same sorts of things about McChrystal (much less Obama), he would be gone yesterday. I recall in Iraq overhearing a conversation among some reporters. One asked out loud, “Do you think Petraeus will ever run for office?” Another piped up, “Maybe, but who knows on which side?” — the point being that even though Petraeus worked with the Bush administration, and even though the Left took after him, he deliberately set a tone of professional nonpartisanship. He would never have disclosed to a reporter his past voting record, or had subordinates relay that information to the press. And he would never have disclosed any of his private concerns about Washington competency to a reporter, much less in a long-running conversation with a pesky Rolling Stone tag-along.
And now President Obama has hitched his horse to General Petraeus, the same man Obama's followers once labeled "General Betray Us". (The Senate voted to condemn the ad, and Senator Obama voted "present". and Senator Obama called the vote a "stunt" and didn't show up.) I guess we should take some solace in the fact that not even Obama can justify sticking one of his incompetent Chicago cronies in charge of an actual war.
"SHR" outlines that we're now facing the worst case scenario in the Gulf. It's a slow-motion disaster that is only going to get worse over time.
All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.
We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.
Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well.
We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.
I haven't read of an optimistic scenario presented by anyone knowledgeable. Links welcome.
(HT: Wizbang and Instapundit.)
U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-Lillington) assaults student interviewer and demands, "Who are you?"
Maybe this apology will make everything better.
Media, politicians, bloggers, world: please stop creating any more "witty" meanings for the initials of British Petroleum. It wasn't clever the first time someone did it, and it's still not clever the ten thousandth time.
- "Big Problems"
- "Barely Paying attention"
- "Blasted Profusely"
- "Bored Poorly"
Just stop.
