I listened with dread yesterday morning when they announced on the radio that British Petroleum would be shutting down one of the largest oil fields in the country due to a problem with a corroded section of pipeline.  I have an hour commute everyday and the last year has seen our monthly fill-up bill basically triple so I wasn't happy, but the radio report made it seem like a relative small and easily fixed problem.  Imagine my surprise when it was announced later in the day that BP was replacing 73% of its 22 mile pipeline at Prudhoe Bay! 

73%??  How do you get into a situation where "suddenly" you find out that three fourths of the pipeline you "oversee" is so corroded it has to be replaced?  Wouldn't regular maintenance or diagnotistics catch this sooner or was a decision made not to do anything until too late?   

(via The LeftCoaster)

(Update 8/8/06): If you needed any more bad news about how badly managed BP's Alaska operations are, check out this report from last week about how the DOT demanded BP's safety and maintenance logs after reports of numerous pipeline leaks.  No doubt this and an ongoing EPA and DOJ investigation helped prompt BP to finally do something but it doesn't say much for the folks Congressional Republicans want to turn ANWR over to does it?

So much for listening to the commanders on the ground in Iraq?  Its especially refreshing to know that the President thinks events in that country have gone into some sorta weird stasis where nothing much has happened since the people there voted in the last elections.  I guess the fact that they did vote somehow prevents the unthinkable, kinda like when the United States dodged a bullet in the 1860 election?

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Rep. Bob Ney, dogged by an influence peddling probe in Washington, will not seek re-election.

Borat strikes again:

No one knows for sure who he was, that Middle Eastern man in an American flag shirt and a cowboy hat who was supposed to sing the national anthem at a rodeo Friday night in the Salem Civic Center.

But he sure shook up this town before leaving in a hurry.

Introduced as Boraq Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan, he was said to be an immigrant touring America. A film crew was with him, doing some sort of documentary. And he wanted to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" to show his appreciation, the announcer told the crowd.

Speaking in broken English, the mysterious man first told the decidedly pro-American crowd - it was a rodeo, of all things, in Salem, of all places - that he supported the war on terrorism.

"I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards," he said, according to Brett Sharp of Star Country WSLC, who was also on stage that night as a media sponsor of the rodeo.

The crowd's reaction was loud enough for John Saunders, the civic center's assistant director, to hear from the front office. "It was a restless kind of booing," Saunders said.

Then the man took off his hat and sang what he said was his native national anthem. He then told the crowd to be seated, put his hat back on, and launched into a butchered version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" that ended with the words "your home in the grave," Sharp said.

Hat tip: Atrios.

Another hilarious piece from the Onion!  Anybody else notice we've gotten to the point that parody news seems so much more insightful and useful then what passes for the mainstream media?

Wow, Chris Matthews, shades of 2002-- where the hell did this come from?  Need to go after the liberal New York Democrat so blame Clinton for 9/11 and the first World Trade Center bombing?

I would like to point out to Chris that if Bush isn't at fault for 9/11 but gets kudos that there hasn't been another attack in the last four years, then Bill's off the hook for the first World Trade Center attack: because it happened only one month into his first term.  I'm sure that won't matter much to someone left so unhinged by the former President's political survival during the 90's but how pathetic...

Eric Umansky directs our attention to an LA Times photo of Israeli soldiers standing around a number of dead bodies covered in sheets that they claim are Hezbollah fighters, but for some reason, they've transported them from southern Lebanon to Israel?  Either Umansky's right and these bodies might be used in future exchanges of dead and wounded or we have the equivalent of Iraqi insurgents being put into boxes and sent to Dover Air Force base, and we know that doesn't happen, does it?

OUTRAGE...The Florida Republican Party is trying to tell Katherine Harris, much beloved heroine of the 2000 Florida recount, to end her Senate bid.  Oh, why can't they just give her an up or down vote in the Republican primary, huh? 

Fidel Castro's suddenly ceding power to his brother while apparently undergoing medical treatment should remind us that we, the United States, really need to face the fact that we haven't done enough to be in a position to constructively engage a post-Castro Cuba.  This neglect has been bipartisan and whether tied to appealing to the Cuban immigrant vote or the embarrassment of being unable to eliminate Castro during the Cold War it brings us no closer to promoting a democratic transition in Cuba. 

This CNN piece gives you an idea of where we're at and while its good that the State Department has a group and a point man devoted to democratic transition in Cuba, I may be reading this wrong but essentially we assume that when Castro dies, suddenly Cuba will open up, bygones will be bygones, the Cuban people will be singing our praises and Americans carrying big suitcases with money will start showing up and rebuild everything for only a couple hundred million dollars, or so?  Sounds like the kinda planning that made Iraq such a success.  In fact it reminds me a little of an old interview with Jorge Mas Canosa a few years before he died where it was suggested that once Castro was gone, it was a only a matter of Mas and his Cuban American National Foundation buddies stepping off the boat and taking the reigns of government.  Woof...

Update (8/1/06): Heather Hurlbut over at Democracy Arsenal provides us with a link to the latest report from the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba with some  thoughts on the more dubious aspects of their analysis.  Bottom line: This is the crew that was instrumental not only in toughening sanctions and meaningful diplomatic contact between the two countries but making it harder for Cuban Americans to see and help families still on the island yet they see few obstacles to a new Cuban government quickly seeking U.S. help when Castro's gone.  Your tax dollars at work...

The Family Research Council:

Keep Pornographers Away from Major League Baseball

In an otherwise interesting poll on the GOP's electoral woes, one which showed a 13-point swing for Democrats in the top 50 House races, we find this little gem:

"I believe the tax breaks that Republicans give, even though I didn't benefit much by them, I believe the country did."

That's our problem in a nutshell.

CNN will give just about any ramblin' conservative idiot their own show.  Why Glenn Beck?  I have no clue, but he's so bad that some conservative bloggers question whether or not CNN hired him because they felt his schtick would thoroughly discredit otherwise sound conservative views. 

Update (7/27/06): Sorry, got interrupted there.  Anyway, I just wanted to point out that yet again for conservatives there can only be criticism of the messenger, not the message.  After all, in the example I posted, Beck is running with the "This is World War III" line that supposedly "serious" conservative thinker, Newt Gingrich, introduced only a week or two ago.  The fact he can't lend any serious intellectual coherence to it either is understandable but doesn't say much for the idea in the first place!