Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
9 May 2010, a Sunday
The New York Times has
the word on BP:BP, the nation’s biggest oil and gas producer, has a worse health, environment and safety record than many other major oil companies, according to Yulia Reuter, the head of the energy research team at RiskMetrics, a consulting group that assigns scores to companies based on their performance in various categories, including safety.
The industry standard for safety, analysts say, is set by Exxon Mobil, which displays an obsessive attention to detail, monitors the smallest spill and imposes scripted procedures on managers.
Before drilling a well, for example, it runs elaborate computer models to test beforehand what the drillers might encounter. The company trains contractors to recognize risky behavior and asks employees for suggestions on how to improve safety. It says it has cut time lost to safety incidents by 12 percent each year since 2000.
Analysts credit that focus, in part, to the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez grounding, which spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska.
"Whatever you think of them, Exxon is now the safest oil company there is," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University.
I think they make obscene profits, said Obama.
...last year the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found more than 700 violations at the Texas City refinery — many concerning faulty valves, which are critical for safety given the high temperatures and pressures. The agency fined BP a record $87.4 million, which was more than four times the previous record fine, also to BP, for the 2005 explosion.
Another refinery, in Toledo, Ohio, was fined $3 million two months ago for "willful" safety violations...
Doggone, Obama said of his biggest financial supporters, they need to clean up their act...that money could have gone to ME, instead!
In a far corner, the group assigned to figuring out how to blame everything on Bush suddenly evinced great excitement when they came up with a name: Halliburton had been there!
Everybody knows Halliburton is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cheney, and Cheney was the evil genius who pulled Bush’s strings, ergo... The room explored with congratulations! We’ve done it again! somebody shouted triumphantly.
Great lines:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proposed carving a broad new exception to Miranda rights as he asserted that the Times Square bomb attempt trained in Pakistan.
It’s Bush’s fault!
George Will on Afghanistan:
During his recent visit to Afghanistan, the president said: "The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something." This is not true, nor should it be. Because Petraeus cannot subdue the Taliban militarily in a time frame that American opinion will sustain, Petraeus's challenge is to persuade enough of the Taliban to abandon the fight before the Democratic Party base persuades the president to abandon it.
Reasonably true, remembering Vietnam. We did not lose in Vietnam, we emerged with a peace agreement beloved by Kerry and Fonda. When the time came for us to enforce that agreement, after it was breached by North Vietnam, we chose not to participate.
Therefore they won and we lost.
You can lose wars in two ways. One, they whip your ass. Two, you decide to go home and not fight, instead.
Option two was what Democrats chose in Vietnam. We lost.
It could happen in Afghanistan, too.