Matt Simmons on Dylan Ratigan’s Show July 15th: BP cap is absurd

MSNBC’s site is not search friendly at all, so here it is from Youtube:

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Here is a more in depth interview, almost an hour long on a radio show called TruNews.  I had not heard of this show before.  It seems to be pretty religious.  However, this is the only venue which has given Simmons more than a few minutes to explain the information he’s been getting from the NOAA scientists.

(It is worth noting:  If you live in or around the Gulf area, please make arrangements to get your family out.  Even if the Benzene and other dangerous cancer causing chemicals don’t bother you, they bother the tourists.  The economy of this area is dying.)

Tags: bp, disaster, energy, environment, federal government, gulf of mexico, matt simmons, oil leak

Debtor’s Prisons are Illegal, but…

They are making a comeback as attorneys take over debt collection agencies and use the sheriff to enforce their repayments.  Small numbers of people are quietly being thrown in jail across the country.  This story comes to us from the Star Tribune in Minneapolis – St. Paul, Minnesota.

“In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009…..Consumer attorneys say such arrests are increasing in many states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Washington…..In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man “to indefinite incarceration” until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt.”

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As the economy doesn’t improve, we will see more of this and have to stand up to it.  This is called Unsecured Debt for a reason.  It is UNSECURED.  There is no collateral for them to keep or collect if you are unable to pay.  The Credit Card companies have no legal grounds to collect the money.  That is why they sell it to Collection Agencies.  The secret they don’t tell anyone is that YOU never signed a contract with the Collection Agency.  Therefore they are considered Third Party Interlopers by the law, with no legal standing to collect anything from you.  There is no legal grounds for you to even answer their phone calls, much less meet them in court.  However, once you make the choice to go to court, then you have “agreed” to abide by whatever the court decides.  That is when they get you.

Tags: collection agencies, credit card, debt, debtor's prison, debtors, depression, government, jail, recession, unemployment

Lebanon fires on Israeli Warplanes….and BP admits there is another leak at “broken disk”

This sure doesn’t look good.

No damage is claimed, but I doubt they will stand for it.

It seems as if all the hotspots around the world and at home are heating up at the same time.  And the system is unable to deal with the problems as they arise.  This is one of the hallmarks of peak energy.  The other big one is a financial meltdown which has only just begun.

Let’s pray this isn’t the spark of war.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.984c60f1f6d018375cbcf93436d3ad1a.9a1&show_article=1

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BP admits there is another leak

And in what may be an overlooked article from the Wall Street Journal, BP says that a “Broken Disk” is the reason that Top Kill failed.  That it allowed their mud to seep out below the sea floor so they could not maintain enough pressure to overcome the oil.

The article leaves it at that.  They don’t ask questions.  They don’t think outside the box.

If there is a break in the pipe allowing their mud out, then wouldn’t that also be allowing the oil to leak out at the well head area?   Couldn’t this be the source of the larger leak causing the underwater plumes with the heavier oil?   The engineers working on this are smarter than a laymen like me on this subject.  BP and the Gov. are not telling us what they know to be happening.

“Meanwhile, US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told a Congressional inquiry that the government estimates the flow to be between 12,000 barrels per day and 19,000 bpd.”

Who do you think is telling the truth?  These guys or Matt Simmons, Nick Pozzi, and other scientists who say it’s likely over 100,000 barrels per day?

Tags: bloomberg, bp, coast guard, defense, energy, environment, federal government, israel, lebanon, matt simmons, nicholas pozzi, oil leak, oil spill, peak oil, planes, security, top kill, war

Matt Taibbi’s new piece in Rolling Stone explains how Financial Reform has been gutted

For those who don’t read Rolling Stone on a regular basis, Matt Taibbi is one of the better financial writers of our time.  He has done multiple pieces on the shenanigans that pass for legitimate business on Wall Street and their lackeys we know as politicians.

“It’s early May in Washington, and something very weird is in the air. As Chris Dodd, Harry Reid and the rest of the compulsive dealmakers in the Senate barrel toward the finish line of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act – the massive, year-in-the-making effort to clean up the Wall Street crime swamp – word starts to spread on Capitol Hill that somebody forgot to kill the important reforms in the bill. As of the first week in May, the legislation still contains aggressive measures that could cost once-indomitable behemoths like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase tens of billions of dollars. Somehow, the bill has escaped the usual Senate-whorehouse orgy of mutual back-scratching, fine-print compromises and freeway-wide loopholes that screw any chance of meaningful change.”

continued at Rolling Stone

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You can make your own conclusions after reading the entire article.  I have made mine.  I have no doubt that he gives us an apt description of how D.C. works.  Thus, it seems logical that if the system is unchangeable, then it is collapsing upon itself as we watch.  There is no other way to describe the aggregate of events.

Peak Oil is ending the growth assumption in the system.  If the system won’t adapt, then it will die.

Tags: black swan, collapse, depression, federal government, financial regulatory reform, finreg, matt taibbi, obama, politics, rolling stone

Doug Suttles, BP’s COO, says Top Kill has failed…oil may not stop until August

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So, just as Simmons and Pozzi and Ruppert have said, both the Cap and Top Kill containment methods have been unsuccessful.  And I have heard at least Ruppert and Simmons say that the only method which will be successful is the Relief wells to be drilled by late August. (Simmons has also mentioned bombing the well head)

Low and behold, what do we have here in the Wall Street Journal from the Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change:

“Meanwhile, a top aide to President Barack Obama said the administration was preparing for the prospect that none of the measures BP is pursuing, other than relief wells that are several months away, will stop or contain the oil gushing into the Gulf.

In such a scenario, “there could be oil coming up until August when the relief wells…are finished,” Carol Browner told NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704254004575274433337222768.html?mod=wsj_india_main

Tags: bp, collapse, disaster, doug suttles, energy, environment, federal government, gulf of mexico, matt simmons, Mike Ruppert, obama, oil leak, peak oil, relief well, top kill

T. Boone Pickens says the leak won’t stop for at least 3 months

Pickens has been an oilman for a long time.  He knows the industry inside and out.  Here’s his take on Top Kill and Junk Shot and how likely they are to plug the oil leak.  This excerpt from Dallas News:

“But if we’re expecting that fix anytime soon, we may be disappointed, he says.

“There are a lot of people working on this, and someone might find an answer. But I think this may take three months, and you’re going to see it every night on the evening news,” Pickens says.”

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-Hallside_26bus.State.Edition1.5c22ada.html

Here he is on Larry King:

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USF found giant plume of dissolved oil East of leak

And the University of South Florida has found a giant plume of dissolved oil.  They said it “

is about six miles wide, and extends from the surface down to a depth of about 3,200 feet, said Professor David Hollander.

Hollander said that he believed the plume might have stretched more than 20 miles from the site of a leak on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, where the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank April 22. It has not yet reached Florida.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/27/AR2010052703667.html

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LSU scientist finds plume to the West of the leak

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/28/AR2010052802346.html

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Obama Describes Peak Oil without actually saying Peak Oil:

(He has some short comments about our energy situation at around 49:40)

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/293762-1

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Bailout Comedy Sketch Video

If you have any illusions that the bailout will kick start the economy, then you may want to watch this. 

Nothing like a little comedy sketch video to show the truth of bailout mania in Europe and the US:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/05/20/2905304.htm

Tags: bp, deepwater horizon, disaster, energy, environment, federal government, florida, gulf of mexico, junk shot, larry king, louisiana, obama, oil, oil leak, oilspill, peak oil, plume, renewable energy, solar, t. boone pickens, top kill, trans ocean, transition, wind

Matt Simmons and Nicholas Pozzi say real oil leak is much worse than on the live feed

Many people are now looking at the live feed video to watch as BP and the Fed Gov try this Top Kill method to fill the pipe with mud and cement.

Simmons and Pozzi are agreed that the live feed is showing the smaller of the two leaks.  That there is a much larger leak that they are not allowing to be filmed.  That this small, 7 inch rip in the pipe is not pushing out enough oil to account for the large plumes that have been recorded 7 miles away.

These plumes are several hundred feet thick and bigger, now, than both Maryland and Delaware together. (size comparison in video)

Here’s the video from Ratigan’s show earlier on the afternoon of the 26th:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/37363529#

Tags: bp, collapse, disaster, environment, environmental disaster, federal government, gulf of mexico, halliburton, live feed, matt simmons, nicholas pozzi, obama, oil leak, peak oil, top kill

Matthew Simmons says Gulf Oil Leak 120,000 Barrels

Simmons showed everyone why Saudi has peaked in oil production with his book, Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi Oil Shock.

And now he tells us that the Gulf oil leak may be as large as 120,000 barrels per day, which would give us an Exxon Valdez size disaster every couple days.  This may seem over the top, but the Government and BP are most certainly lowballing it.

The other suggestion he has is to bomb the well head in order to get the surrounding rock to block the flow.  He doesn’t think there is any hope of stopping the heavy flow any other way.  And to just let the reservoir empty into the Gulf is an intolerable disaster.

Simmons comes in at 6:07 on the video:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32450072/vp/37322455#37322455

Tags: black swan, bp, collapse, depression, disaster, environment, federal government, food, gold, government, gulf of mexico, LATOC, Mike Ruppert, oil leak, peak oil, survival

The Facts about Organic Food

So recently I have had many discussions with friends about Organic foods.  This is mostly due to the popularity of documentaries such as Food Inc.

I had heard that Organics was a trumped up label put out by the Fed Gov to keep people from thinking while they shop.  I had also heard that the Organic standards in some countries were not as strict as ours.  So I decided to do a little digging.

I found this site….Organic Consumers Association, which seems to have a wealth of information on why it’s great to eat organic food.  So much info in fact, I will have to return to check out the large quantity of links and studies done on the health of our food.

I ran across this in the sources from Wiki:

“In addition to hops, the list includes 19 food colorings, two starches, sausage and hot-dog casings, fish oil, chipotle chili pepper, gelatin and a variety of obscure ingredients (one, for instance, is a “bulking agent” and sweetener with the tongue-twisting name of fructooligosaccharides).

The proposed rule would allow up to 5 percent of a food product to be made with these ingredients and still get the “USDA Organic” seal. Even hops, though a major component of beer’s flavor, are less than 5 percent of the final product, because the beverage is mostly water.”

from the Seattle Times.  The problem with things like the hops in that article was that it was grown with pesticides and fertilizers.

And a more recent Washington Post article criticizes the program saying:

“Under the original organics law, 5 percent of a USDA-certified organic product can consist of non-organic substances, provided they are approved by the National Organic Standards Board. That list has grown from 77 to 245 substances since it was created in 2002. Companies must appeal to the board every five years to keep a substance on the list, explaining why an organic alternative has not been found. The goal was to shrink the list over time, but only one item has been removed so far.

The original law’s mandate for annual pesticide testing was also never implemented — the agency left that optional.“

There are more and more mentions of Industry giants lobbying to bend the rules and the Government rolling over like a nice lapdog.  This is not encouraging my search for a food source I can trust.  The Wiki page on Organic Certification lists the countries that have laws and standards for Organics.  It says that all other countries get their certification through NGO’s and private companies.  This does not encourage my trust in the label.

At this point I will probably throw up my hands and just go to my local farmer’s market.  At least there I can talk to the person who grew that food.  I can find out if they use fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, genetically modified organisms (GMO), or anything else that might give me cancer, adhd, autism, or multiple sclerosis.

It also sounds like a lot more fun to build relationships with my local farmers.  This just happens to be where my family is at.  We certainly weren’t buying a lot of our food from markets even a year ago.  And until recently we were only able to buy during the summer.  Some farms will sell year round, but only if you go to them.  It’s all a process.  Babysteps.  Each one is new at first, like reading labels at the store, but soon becomes second nature.

Tags: chickens, conservative, democracy, depression, environment, farmer, farmer market, federal government, food, libertarian, organic, politics, regulations, sustainability

If you don’t know about Peak Oil, then you might want to educate yourself…

Jeffrey Brown explains that Saudi Arabia has peaked, and will have slowly declining output from now on.

Which leads me to question whether that is true or not.  Then I stumble upon this article about the Saudi’s taking a serious look at Nuclear Reactors to power their capital, Riyadh.

Now, why would they be looking at Nuclear energy unless they are no longer able to increase production on a whim.  They probably want to be able to continue to sell their one major export to other countries.  This would indicate also that their domestic energy demand is rising.

We find more on that topic from none other than the Chief Executive Officer of Saudi Aramco, Khalid al-Falih.

“Saudi Arabia’s long-standing status as a swing producer of crude oil could be drawing to a close according to the head of national oil company Saudi Aramco.

Global oil exports from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer alongside Russia, will start to wane in the coming years as domestic demand surges and spare capacity drops…“

It seems the evidence for Saudi’s Peak is stacking up fast.

This is not good news folks.  If this is true, then we have passed World Peak for Oil production.  This would also explain alot about the crunch happening in the Global Economy.  This would also mean that there is not going to be any kind of substantial recovery.  We are in store for a slow slide down the available energy curve.  Less and less energy available per capita.  Trillions of dollars lost in the stock market.  In short…..the Greatest Depression.

This is the Oil Age, Historical/Future Oil Consumption, with some perspective to human history:

This is the Population curve, which will eventually match the Oil = Available Food curve above:

If you have questions or would like to know more you should start with the LATOC link in my blogroll.

Tags: black swan, collapse, depression, disaster, energy, government, LATOC, nuclear energy, peak oil, politics, Saudi Arabia, sustainability