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Romney To Wear Donald Trump's Rug If Elected

... after bald spot confirmed during daring breast exam on a suspect unofficial FaceBook page to appease Gay Voters and Birthers. Dead Liberal Romney also officially confirmed dead after daring Time Machine raid by an HG Wells biographer who claims Obamacare was hijacked from Mitt since HG stole everything including his An Outline of History from a Canadian Spinster or maybe from history when he travelled into the future and incidently inspired Mitt later as HG fell for Yvettte Mimieux in the much better 1960 movie version with Rod Taylor on Blu-ray he found in a dustbin in Clapham in 2025, compelling HG to write The Time Machine when he got back to 1895. Or for the facts wait at least a 100 years to read today's Breaking News, and you might get lucky.

Nuclear Spin Doctors Vs The World

Japan's Earth Hour

You might think that the Fukushima Daiichi disaster has sent shock waves through the nuclear industry. Right, but not into the PR Machine Network that still promises Safe Nuclear. The packaging of nuclear fuel rods in candy wrappers should carry a health warning somewhere? Does now on the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum website and in their important pdf summary tables updated daily on the Status of Nuclear Reactors in Fukushima. The Fine Print on negligible nuclear risks is now making headlines:

APF: More than 200,000 Germans march against nuclear power

It's about Chancellor Angela Merkel, also a Nuclear Physicist, backsliding on decommissioning all German nuclear reactors. Now some older reactors have been shut down pending safety reviews.

Reuters: Closing old atom plants poses safety challenge: IAEA

Old nuclear reactors and containment systems are radioactive waste, plus there are already many unsecured dumps of secondary nuclear waste from these plants as a byproduct of operations and maintenance, plus the many thousands of tons of spent fuel rods considered primary nuclear waste still stored at reactors.

NYT: U.N.’s Nuclear Chief Says Japan Is ‘Far From the End’

Realtime radiation data from Japan: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)

Hmmm? Might consider splitting off new Radiation Sports from the Ministry for a better spin on PR. Atomic Baseball In Japan: Fun For Whole Family!

Watch NHK World: live TV coverage from Japan

--Alan Gillis

Dr Samantha Joye Answers From The Gulf

Dr Samantha Joye of UGA Marine Sciences talks to Rachel Maddow of MSNBC (above). Not only is dispersed oil in the Gulf a threat to marine life, methane gas from the BP Spill is another major hazard, both also acting as oxygen depleters. Subsea Dead Zones could be as bad as oil washing ashore.

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution June 8, she said that "...researchers were frustrated that so far the company [BP] has not revealed the chemical makeup of dispersants it is putting in the oil to keep it from washing ashore.

“Since we don’t know what’s in the dispersants, it's difficult to find out how much is in the water samples....It’s really weird-looking stuff, orange, in long strings. When you put it in a jar, about two days later it turns gray and sinks to the bottom.”

The next day Dr Joye delivered a report on the Undersea Spill to the House Subcommittee on Energy And Environment. She sounded this alarm: "...oil on the surface of the ocean and even on beaches can be cleaned up. Dispersed oil cannot be cleaned up, rather it moves with the water and the oil and dispersants are likely to influence oceanic ecosystems for years to come...."

Follow Dr Joye's weekly podcast on the BP Spill from The University of Georgia.

For her own personal journey through the Gulf Crisis as a scientist investigating the damage, see her Gulf Oil Blog. If you've got questions, she's got answers. With all the media wailing and all the stonewalling and BS from BP, here's a source you can trust.

Hey EPA: How Are Those Dispersant Tests Going?

--Alan Gillis/ NewsHammer

BP Alaska Prudhoe Bay

EXCLUSIVE: New Documents, Employees Reveal BP's Alaska Oilfield Plagued by Major Safety Issues

By Jason Leopold, truthout
June 15, 2010

Nearly 5,000 miles from the oil-spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, BP and its culture of cost-cutting are contributing to another environmental mess in the Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska’s north shore, according to internal BP documents and more than a dozen employees interviewed over the past month. . . .

Two BP management officials, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters, said budget cuts were largely the reason equipment was not upgraded or repaired, and indicated that much of it has yet to be addressed. BP's Alaska budget for 2010 is $1 billion, compared with $1.1 billion in 2009 and $1.3 billion in 2008.

Moreover, according to two BP Alaska officials, projects related to "safety and integrity" have been cut by 30 percent this year and BP’s senior managers receive bonuses for not using funds from BP’s designated maintenance budget, a company wide policy implemented by Hayward. Documents show that Hayward also implemented a cost-cutting directive following the oil spills in 2006 in Prudhoe Bay. . . .

Read Jason Leopold's full report in truthout.

Read the story of BP Alaska's Run To Failure in "Years of Internal BP Probes Warned That Neglect Could Lead to Accidents" on ProPublica.

More on the BP Alaska Spill of 2006 "Fmr. EPA Investigator Scott West: US Has Told BP "It Can Do Whatever It Wants and Won’t Be Held Accountable"" on Democracy Now!

NewsHammer Update June 18, 2010: Hayward infers he will fire himself

BP's Tony Hayward before the House Subcommittee:

"We have focused like a laser on safe and reliable operations. We have made major changes."

"If there's any evidence that anybody put costs above safety I will take action.

Sorry, Tony meant covert action.

--Alan Gillis/ NewsHammer

A Controlled Burn Day 54

The Spill, The Scandal
and the President

The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder

By Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone
June 08, 2010

. . . Nowhere was the absurdity of the policy [deep-sea drillers exempt from environmental review] more evident than in the application that BP submitted for its Deepwater Horizon well only two months after Obama took office. BP claims that a spill is "unlikely" and states that it anticipates "no adverse impacts" to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, "no significant adverse impacts are expected" for the region's beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are "not required" as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill. Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region. Among the sensitive species BP anticipates protecting in the semitropical Gulf? "Walruses" and other cold-water mammals, including sea otters and sea lions. The mistake appears to be the result of a sloppy cut-and-paste job from BP's drilling plans for the Arctic. Even worse: Among the "primary equipment providers" for "rapid deployment of spill response resources," BP inexplicably provides the Web address of a Japanese home-shopping network. Such glaring errors expose the 582-page response "plan" as nothing more than a paperwork exercise. "It was clear that nobody read it," says Ruch, who represents government scientists.

Continue reading Tim Dickinson's report on Rolling Stone . . .

Watch a short BP/Obama recap (above) followed by Tim Dickinson's Interview with Democracy Now!, transcript here.

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