BOILING IN OIL -- Pipelines and Politicians, If You Please

DATELINE: BOILING IN OIL -- As we wait for that great leader President Obama (aka Spineless Willie) to decide on the Keystone Pipeline, I thought it might be fun to throw some numbers at you. In the past twelve years, in the United States, there have been at least 82 known pipeline leaks. Now, that doesn’t seem like a lot, I suppose, but these are the ones where there was no human involvement to cause them, and these are just the pipelines that carried those elixirs of life – crude, diesel, gasoline and, in two cases, jet fuel. This does not include the ones that were hit by construction workers because the pipeline was plotted wrong on maps or by human error. These are just the suckers that woke up one morning and decided to let that precious lifeblood of a nation land on the ground.

82 leaks – little (or in some cases big) holes that sprung out of nowhere. Just 82, you are saying. Well, yes, but let me clarify this some more. For 11 of those 82, there are no estimates for how much product was lost, so when I say that considerably more than 209,024 barrels were spilled, it is based on only 71 of those leaks. This part you’ll love... I just KNOW it. Oil company talk is 209,024 barrels, but do you know why? Well, it’s because it is a whole lot less scary when they say that than when they say more than 8,778,997 gallons. Yes, that is almost 9 Million gallons of crap spilled, in just 12 years, from just little leaks that happen.

Now, I should be clear about this. These numbers are based on researching the leaks that are made known and are recorded in information on the internet. If anything, they are low-balled, perhaps a lot. Nonetheless, here is more information for you to chew on. Of those 82 leaks, at least 40 of them, so half, resulted in severe environmental damage and contamination, almost always of water sources, many times killing animals, sometimes resulting in evacuations, and sometimes, because that shit is incredibly flammable, causing fires when it ignites. In at least one case, the spill was so bad in the water, the oil company had to burn it off – yes, they set the damned lake on fire. I bet fish and fowl were totally thrilled with that.

Funnily enough, the name Enbridge, as owners of the pipeline, came up 9 times, and Kinder Morgan owned the pipeline 6 times. Even more surprising, while these leaks were spread out over 26 US states, 8 of them happened in Illinois. I bet a lot of oilmen don’t drink the water in that state. While Illinois takes the prize for the most pipeline leaks, it is followed closely by Texas, Oklahoma then California.

These leaks, it should be noted, have occurred many times in areas where they then contaminated major waterways. In several instances, huge numbers of fish and wildlife, including endangered wildlife, were killed – and it is a slow painful death for them. In many cases, these leaks happened in very environmentally sensitive areas, where there never should have been a pipeline in the first place.

Yes, we need cars. No one is so fucking dumb as to say otherwise. We need oil and gas, but we need the oil companies to be responsible. Up to now, they haven’t been. The only guide of any significance to them has a damned dollar sign in front of it. Some of these leaks went on for considerable time because they were small, but their damage was huge. Some of these leaks went unreported for a long time, so the oil companies could ‘hide’ it. There was absolutely NO consideration given to the fact that this contamination could kill more than environments or wildlife; it could kill people. We are gonna look a right asinine lot when we have cars to drive but not one drop of water to drink. Of course, Sarah ‘Blowhole’ Palin, Mitt ‘Who’ Romney, Newt ‘No Funny Nickname Required’ Gingrich, Michelle ‘Harpies Really Were Insane’ Bachman, et all, would have given any oil company the keys to a kingdom and a ticker tape parade – without one moment of consideration for the farmland, wetlands, water tables or homes that the pipeline would casually crash over with no regard for any form of organic life, including the fucking farmers. You see, oil companies are bullies at heart, because their only concern is the money. As for the jobs, take it from someone who knows – they will be there, for a year, maybe, but not as many as they say. Then they will suddenly disappear, and the oil company won’t give a flying fuck about anyone who was promised anything, including a job and great pay. We’re talking politicians and oil companies here. Never ever forget that.

But Mz Palin and friends bring me to another point – it’s not just the oil companies who cannot be trusted. The governments have made it more than clear they would sell out their own fucking children for one vote or a few campaign dollars. The pipeline going through the US now could well mean enough money for the Democrats to purchase the White House deed for decades to come. We are supposed to trust the very same organization that slipped the god damned Monsanto Protection Act through the process to become a law without anyone knowing it? Oh, wait... that happened ‘anonymously’*. The politicians sold out our entire farming community AND our entire food supply to one company, and now they say they have no idea how that happened? I can tell you how. Monsanto is run by bullies with money – the worst sort of human excrement on the planet. They made it legal for Monsanto to do whatever it bloody well wants with our food, genetically modify it and genetically engineer it using sheep crap to make beef steaks, and there is absolutely NO recourse for anyone. They have been given a permanent golden Get Out Of Jail free card and our entire food supply was the cost. We want to sell out the water supply to the oil companies? I suppose at this point in time, why the hell not.

Yes, we need oil and gas. We also need to find ways to NOT need oil and gas. We need that oil and gas to be transported safely. That doesn’t mean that they just bulldoze homes from people who don’t want the pipeline over their pristine land. It doesn’t mean that it goes over sensitive aquifers or through national wildlife reserves or national parks. The fact is, no matter what they fucking do to make it ‘totally safe,’ it is still made by humans and therefore is capable of accidental yet catastrophic failure. There needs to be strict guidelines for how they get their land and where they run their pipelines. There needs to be HUGE penalties for every god damned drop of product that lands in the air or on the ground – not some bullshit slap on the wrist. There needs to be absolute vigilance – not the relying on their state of the art computerized doodads that will protect us, because quite honestly, they fail as well, and when they do, with no human checks and balances, we are totally fucked.

So, Mister President, while you consider the pipeline – and the successful election of your democratic successor, because we KNOW that’s all the party is thinking about – give some thought to how the people have already been sold down the river – the grossly contaminated, undrinkable river. There will be oil for everyone, but there will be no one left to drive a damned car. While you’re at it, passing crap like the Monsanto Protection Act, perhaps you could come up with some new law that involves duct tape and Michelle Bachman’s gaping, stupid, idiotic maw. Now THAT would be a law worth some heavy campaign dollars.

It’s a time for responsible thinking, balance, logic and compromise. It is for this reason, I fear, that perhaps there is no hope, because these are words that don’t exist anymore in the power houses, ivory towers and hallowed halls of the United States of America. More’s the pity; it has become a living, breathing historical display of how empires crumble.


* The whole bullshit that is the anonymous inclusion of something in a bill being considered for legislation is probably the most lame-ass ignorant slap in the face to the voting public I have ever heard of, because there is no way in hell they don’t know how it got in there, but it’s just a whole lot more convenient to blame no one than be responsible and wear your convictions yourself. Shame on the entire political system for allowing this mountain of crappola to exist at all.

DAILY NEWS - JANUARY 10th, 2012

DATELINE: OBSERVING THE CORONATION OF TURD ISLAND’S KING SHIT -- Finally, the damned GOP primaries have started – not a fucking moment too soon, because I was really starting to get sick of the gazillion debates so far. I’m excited. I’m a bit of a politics junkie, and, well, there is no nice way to say this, but the US has become the ultimate crack/speed/LSD fix – always extreme, always ugly, with a surreal quality of constant ‘what the fuck, man!’ that continually offers a follow-up hit with more pizzazz and less time in between, exactly what a junkie longs for. Their new prayer is Thank God for the United States of America and its never-ending election cycle. That said, I do not envy the Republicans their job of gleaning the wheat from the chaff in this weed-infested crop of crooks, hate-mongers and idiots.

I have grown tired of the hypocrisy of Romney and Gingrinch – holy crap, those two have written the damned book on hypocrisy in the extreme! I have given thanks (and even lit a candle) that Palin and Trump decided not to run – yet – and that Bachmann and Cain pulled out, because that was just way too much stoopid to even consider a possibility. That Santorum is still in there astounds me: to my dear friends on the warm side of the border, there are no coincidences – there is a reason that the man’s name is synonymous with frothy semen-filled shit. That ain’t no accident, and is something you really don’t want to be looking at every night for the next 8 years while eating dinner and watching the flatscreen. The man is fucking insane, and will seriously take your human rights back to a point where Kim Jong Il and Stalin would look moderate.

Of the many concerns I have with Ron Paul, the top one is that I can’t look at him without hearing Mr. Magoo’s voice. I can’t imagine the most powerful country in the world being led by a cartoon character. The thought of Mr Magoo strolling into the United Nations building with a passionate plea to call the world to arms, to unite against some heinous mutual threat, would have people laughing their asses off. Sorry, but he may as well talk like Alvin the Chipmunk as well, because as far as credibility goes, anyone who had good cartoon taste as a kid is not gonna take him seriously… and that could be more the danger.

Rick Perry, apart from having terminal Foot-in-Mouth Disease and needing Ed The Talking Horse on stage with him to help him count to three, proudly uses as his big boast the fact that he loves to kill people (just slightly better than Romney stating that he likes to fire people). Yes, thanks to the valiant efforts of Rick Perry, the US is essentially tied for third place at the International Government Executions Olympics in 2011 -- just a handful of lives behind North Korea and Yemen, but miles ahead of the next competitor. With Perry at the helm, you can well expect, with great pride, to give second place Iran, or even the front-runner, China, a run for their money. Does it not bother anyone that there is NO developed country in the world even competing in this event?

Here are the things that make me scream at the set though. How can this incredible collection of excrement stand there and scream about the evils of class warfare while bragging about being a product of it with every other sentence? How can they logically think there is one magic ticket to curing the economic woes of a country? For fuck sake, dropping taxes to the ‘job creators’ is the biggest load of cow crap I have ever heard. It’s the ‘job creators’ taking their jobs overseas, to where they get essentially slave labor at the hands of impoverished, desperate people (and a resultant crap product) that contributed to the problem, as well as Gingrinch’s Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae shit – and sorry, you can paint that outhouse with any color paint you want, but it’s still gonna be nothing more than a hole full of shit, Newt. Historical consultant? My ass! The largest corporations out there right now are sitting on billions, praying for that tax cut, not so they can hire more people on this continent, but so they can line their own fucking pockets and fuck the people over again – while passing handfuls of money under the table to the politicians who are pushing this fucking agenda. Why is this so hard for you dopes to see? There is a desperate need for tax reform, and that does not mean to keep taxing the middle class and lining the pockets of the likes of Gingrinch and Romney, but giving it some mile-long bullshit new name. You wanna talk about fucking class warfare, you better start looking in a mirror, then watchin your ass, because someone is gonna put on their Robin Hood costume and you two dolts are surely gonna be mistaken for that lousy, crooked, evil, heartless Sheriff of Nothingham.

Plus what is this crap about wanting less government, but then saying the government should federally regulate who sleeps with who, who can use birth control, and what church is acceptable? You might be wanting to lead the most powerful nation in the world, but that is not quite the same as being God. A leader with a god complex is… well… Kim Jung Il or Stalin. You want to control religion and ethnicity? Well, Hitler also managed to do that – for a while, but I guess anything is on the table when world domination, your pocketbook and a place in history is on the line. Fucking with this shit in politics is incredibly dangerous, and incredibly stupid, but I guess if the republican party is so narrow-minded and asinine to put someone like this in a position of leadership, they can reap what they sow. That a country the size and scope of the United States of America can only come up with this list of lame-brains to offer as their best and brightest is the saddest fucking thing I have ever seen.

That said, I will go out on a limb and make a prediction. Based solely on the very scientific process of pulling a name out of my ass (the same principle apparently employed by these candidates when discussing just about any issue), I will predict it will come down to sadly, Romney and Huntsman, with a Trump card being played in the end run. Why? Because everyone else on the playing field has had their one major pass, that one chance to take it across the goal line in a hail of glorious cheers, and they have dropped the ball. Bachmann, Paul, Perry, Cain, Gingrinch (twice), and now Santorum all did a meteoric rise to the top of the heap, only to open their mouths with a bit more press coverage and say that thing that made the people go ‘Holy Hell, What Were We Thinking!’. There is a reason for the huge undecided vote among republicans, and that is because the choices they are being offered are about the same as offering them a choice of death by disembowelment or being tied to an anthill and covered with honey to allow the critters to eat them alive. Huntsman has not had that chance to rise to the top yet. He’s a late bloomer, and he will start his holy ascension now, late enough in the game to put him near the top in the end, which leaves the evangelical right with the unbelievable choice of picking from a table with only two dishes – neither one being fish, but both of them belonging to that radical upstart cult of Mormonism. How sad that a candidate’s religion is even a topic of discussion, but if there is one thing it’s easy to scare people about, to bring out the worst in them, its religion.

But what about the Trump card, you ask? Well, I suspect that SOME people, when his choice isn’t going to make it across the finish line, is gonna toss his hat into the ring as an independent. That’s sad on two counts, the first being that he really should not take off any hat that hides that bad comb-over, but is also sad because of the elementary school-yard attitude it portrays. For God’s sake, the man has a golden crapper but still uses a ShamWow on his hair. More to the point though, it will give the Republicans just what they don’t need – another reason to be idiotically divided.