Trump 2.0 - Dictator

 

Despicable.  AP.  It's not a leftwing rag, FFS. Everybody will bow down!

Bending the knee: Over the Google barrel

Google Calendar users recently noticed that certain cultural observances, including Black History Month and Pride Month, are no longer displayed on the platform.

The company previously included these events in prior years, but for 2025, they have been removed without public announcement.

The change, which The Verge first reported, has sparked online discussion, with users questioning why these events were excluded.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the update, The Verge reported, stating that the company is now only showing public holidays and national observances instead of manually maintaining a broader list of cultural moments.

  Fox

But...

So much of our computer usage is tied into Google.  

Stupid

"Officially" is doing a lot of work here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Idiocracy

Rep. Dan Crenshaw complained to Tim Cook today that Apple Maps still has not changed the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America after Trump’s executive order. (It does not apply to private businesses).

  Meidas Touch

But I won't be surprised if I later see that Cook actually makes the change.

Get out your sharpies

Fucking ridiculous.

And, don't think I didn't notice that Section 5 authorizes - at the very least - some national monument be named after Trump.

If you never saw the Woody Allen movie "Bananas", I suggest you take a look.  

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 08:33 am:

UPDATE 12:18 pm:

Well, of course.  But Trump doesn't care what the rest of the world calls it.  He can force US agencies to call it - and label it - the Gulf of America.

Going down fast

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO).

"Oooh, that's a big one," the newly inaugurated US president said as he approved the document after arriving back at the White House. It was one of dozens of executive actions he put his signature to on day one in office.

This marks the second time Trump has ordered the US be pulled out of the WHO.

Trump was critical of how the international body handled Covid-19 and began the process of pulling out from the Geneva-based institution during the pandemic. President Joe Biden later reversed that decision.

  MSN

President Donald Trump will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate deal, the White House said on Monday.

The announcement is part of Trump's broader agenda to boost U.S. oil and gas production, and to 'drill baby drill!'

Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris deal during his first term in office, although the process took years and was immediately reversed by Joe Biden in 2021.

America's second withdrawal is likely to take less time, perhaps as little as a year, because Trump will not be bound by the deal's initial three-year commitment.

  MSN

[In his inaugural address, Trump] announced the Gulf of Mexico was to be renamed the "Gulf of America" under hisadministration.

[...]

He is expected to sign an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico in one of his first moves as he retakes the White House.

  MSN

Bananas.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07:32 am:

President Trump said early Tuesday his staffers are "actively in the process of identifying and removing" over a 1,000 presidential appointees from the Biden administration, including retired U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley and celebrity chef José Andrés.

[...]

Trump said on Truth Social his Presidential Personnel Office is targeting appointees from the previous administration "who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again."

  Axios

Chef Andrés???

What Trump means is anyone who is not aligned with his Nazification of the country.

Trump identified four people in the post, whom he said he's issuing a notice of dismissal with "many more" to come soon.

"Jose Andres from the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, Brian Hook from the Wilson Center for Scholars, and [former Atlanta Mayor] Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President's Export Council — YOU'RE FIRED!" Trump wrote.

Jesus, what a juvenile POS.

And so much more.  From the Whitehouse:

In other words, whatever Joe Biden signed, Trump revokes.

Also, if you ask me, and I understand you didn't, Executive Orders are out of hand, but maybe that's because Congress abdicated its responsibilities a long time ago.

The King decrees:

MAGA  is now in the "find out" phase.

A (likely temporary) win for the environment

A US judge invalidated a major oil-and-gas lease sale saying the government failed to account for its climate change effect, in a significant win for environment advocates.

The decision cast uncertainty over the future of the US federal offshore drilling programme, which has been a chief source of public revenue for decades but also drawn the ire of activists concerned about its effect on the environment and contribution to global warming.

[...]

The sale generated more than $190m, the highest since 2019, on 1.7 million acres sold. It drew bids from US oil majors including Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp.

Thursday’s decision came after the environmental group Earthjustice challenged the sale on behalf of four other green groups, arguing US President Joe Biden’s interior department was relying on a years-old environmental analysis that did not accurately consider greenhouse gas emissions that would result from development of the blocks.

[Judge Rudolph] Contreras agreed, faulting the administration for excluding foreign consumption from its greenhouse gas emissions analysis and for ignoring the latest science on the role of oil-and-gas development in global warming.

[...]

The offshore drilling industry slammed the decision.

“Uncertainty around the future of the US federal offshore leasing programme may only strengthen the geopolitical influence of higher emitting – and adversarial – nations, such as Russia,” National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito said in reaction to the ruling.

Scott Lauermann, a spokesman for oil industry lobby group the American Petroleum Institute, said it was “reviewing” the decision and “considering our options”.

  alJazeera

I'm guessing this will go to the Supreme Court.

Biden last January had announced a moratorium on new gas and oil drilling on federal land pending a review in an effort to make responding to the climate crisis a central part of his presidency.

But a federal judge in Louisiana, nominated by former president Donald Trump, ruled in June the administration had to get congressional approval for such a move.

[...]

Devorah Ancel, senior lawyer at the Sierra Club, one of the plaintiffs, told the Financial Times: “The Biden administration’s failure to adequately evaluate the climate impacts of this massive lease sale wasn’t just out of step with their stated commitment to climate action, it was also illegal.”

Biden campaigned for the White House partially on a pledge to end federal oil-and-gas drilling to fight climate change, but efforts to suspend new auctions failed after Gulf Coast states sued.

Congress has mandated that the United States hold regular auctions of public lands for oil-and-gas development.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Despot Don and the Enemy of the People

Here's the State Department's statement of the U.S.-Mexico Joint Declaration.  I don't know about any "signed agreement", but is he saying that lie he's telling about an agreement that Mexico will immediately buy more agriculture product from US farmers was left out of this statement, and will be added "at the appropriate time"?  What a large lying asshat.

Mexico and the US haven't been cooperating for decades?  Hmmmmm....what was NAFTA?

"Profitable" tariffs.  For manufacturers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile in the Gulf of Mexico

The "Taylor leak" started hemorrhaging oil into the Gulf Of Mexico around 16 kilometers (10 miles) off the coast of Louisiana in 2004, after Hurricane Ivan caused a mammoth submarine landslide. Some 14 years on, with just nine of the 25 leaking wells plugged, it’s still spewing tens of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf every single day.

The quantities of oil are still a matter of contention and secrecy, but most estimates suggest it will become one of the worst offshore disasters in US history.

[...]

A big investigation by the Associated Press (AP) in 2015 found that the oil leak was far worse – over 20 times worse in terms of oil quantity – than Taylor Energy had originally reported.

[...]

Remarkably, the public only found out about the leak in 2010 when people investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill noticed an odd oil spill in satellite images of the area. Even after it came to light, they downplayed the spill’s scale and claimed that photos of the leak were misleading.

Taylor Energy is now defunct. Four years after the company’s founder died in 2004, the company agreed to sell off all its energy assets to Samsung C&T Corporations and Korea National Oil Corporation. A $666 million trust was set up to pay for leak response work, however, there is now a legal dispute over the remaining $423 million, which has been left unspent.

Meanwhile, the oil continues to flow.

  IFL Science

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

But It Has

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Yeah, Because One Glass Is the Same As a Daily Diet

I get it - it's "the optics", as they say in the business. But this is some of the dumbest bullshit. It's for kids, right? "See, Honey? Daddy drank it.  It's okay."

Stick around Flint for a year or so, and drink your recommended eight glasses per day.  Then tell us how you feel.  THAT would have meaning.

He did the same thing after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. Went down to Louisiana and ate a shrimp dinner.

Have some pride, dude.  And stop insulting thinking people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Repairing Damage in the Gulf

After the BP oil "spill" in the Gulf of Mexico, there have been settlements. But where did the money go?

Last October, five years after the spill, the BP oil spill settlement was finally announced. Alabama received $2.3 billion of the $20 billion settlement (which was split between five states along the Gulf and the federal government).

[...]

[Alabama] Gov. Robert Bentley is using some of the BP settlement money to fix the governor’s mansion along the beach — despite the fact that the mansion was destroyed long before the spill [by Hurricane Danny more than two decades earlier].

[...]

Alabama also plans to use a good chunk of the recovery funds to build a 350-room hotel and convention center on the coast.

  Grist

While Alabama’s oyster industry and coastal communities continue to suffer from the effects of the massive Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout, the repairs to the governors’ mansion are estimated to cost between $1.5 million and $1.8 million. Though Bentley says he will stay there only “on occasion,” the administration said the property would be “primarily” used to wine and dine corporate executives considering the state for investment.

  Think Progress

It takes money to make money, right?

Why couldn't they do their wining and dining in the hotel and convention center?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Heads Up Central East Coast

In a major shift in U.S. policy, President Obama is expected to open the door to oil and gas drilling in parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Interior Department is poised to release as early as Tuesday a five-year lease plan that would allow drilling in the mid- and south-Atlantic off the coasts of the Carolinas and Georgia.

  The Hill

But not Florida, of course.

The Wall Street Journal reports leases off the coast of Virginia and the Carolinas are expected to make it into the plan.

The plan would not allow drilling in waters near Florida, Delaware or Maryland, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle.

It would also allow drilling in some Arctic waters and areas along the West Coast.

But not where people live whose money matters in elections.

And those of you in the areas that obviously don't matter, you might want to ask the people in Gulf Coast cities what it's like.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Deepwater Horizon II?

An explosion off the US coast in the Gulf of Mexico on an oil and gas platform has killed one worker and injured three others.

The blast occurred on the Echo Platform just before 3pm about 12 miles (19km) off the coast of Louisiana, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), as quoted by AP. The platform is owned by Texas-based company Fieldwood Energy, which has not yet released a statement on the reported incident.

[...]

[Shannon Savoy, a spokeswoman for Fieldwood Energy] described the explosion as an "isolated incident that has been fully contained. The facility was not damaged and there was no pollution that resulted from the incident."

  RT

Of course not.

What Oil?

A new report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that a massive layer of coagulated oil remains on the Gulf of Mexico’s seafloor nearly five years after the Deepwater Horizon sank and spilled some 5 million barrels of oil in the area.

The “bathtub ring,” a layer of water containing high levels of oil, covers 1,200 square miles about a half mile below the surface. The researchers also say that a “fallout plume” of oil particles sank into sediment as much as a mile below the surface.

  Outside

Well, yeah. Did anyone think that shit they sunk was just going to magically disappear?

BP released a statement Monday criticizing the report over the chemical fingerprinting used to identify the oil on the seafloor.

Of course they did.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Deepwater Horizon Trial

Government experts estimated that the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 workers, caused 176 million gallons of oil to spill into the Gulf. BP attorneys have urged U.S. District Judge Barbier to set the figure at nearly 103 million gallons.

The final number will determine how much BP pays for the cleanup. Using government figures, a maximum penalty if the company is found grossly negligent could total $18 billion. The company's figures would result in a $10.5 billion fine.

[...]

In the first eight months of 2013, some 3.01 million pounds of "oily material" were cleaned up on Louisiana's coast, up from 119,894 pounds in the same period last year, according to the state's Department of Natural Resources.

While the state did not reveal why there was a more than 20-fold increase in the amount collected this year, some believe Tropical Storm Karen, which occurred earlier in October, may have washed away sand and exposed more oil.

  al Jazeera

And, would it be possible that the toxic chemicals BP used to “disperse” the oil are breaking down?  They didn't eat the oil.  It's still somewhere.

Danny Wallace, a BP incident commander, said the rise in recoveries this year stemmed from where BP was focusing its efforts after Hurricane Isaac rearranged sands in August, 2012.

"In 2013 most cleanup activities have focused on the barrier islands where Hurricane Isaac uncovered heavily-weathered residual oil that had been buried when tropical storms deposited deep layers of sand along the shoreline in 2010 and 2011," Wallace said.

OK, I can buy that...they're just now cleaning up areas where perhaps a majority of the oil settled.

But the bottom line is, don’t let BP settle and call it quits. The penalty figure should simply be that: a penalty. The actual (and opportunity) costs for businesses and clean-up should still be paid by BP, no matter how long it continues.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This Is Rich

Oil firm BP has filed suit against the US government for banning it from federal contracts after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, documents showed Tuesday.

  Raw Story

They’ll probably win.

Halliburton Pleads

US multinational Halliburton has agreed to admit it destoryed evidence related to its part in the huge 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the US Department of Justice announced.

Halliburton will pay the maximum fine available, be on probation for three years and continue to cooperate with the government's criminal investigation, a news release by the department said on Thursday. It did not spell out the fine amount.

  alJazeera

But it must have not been as much as they figured they would lose if they didn’t cop to that plea.

The Houston-based multinational also made a separate, voluntary $55 million payment to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, US Justice Department said, adding that it was not a condition of the court agreement.

Including that.

According to the US Department of Justice news release, Halliburton recommended to BP that the Macondo well contain 21 centralisers - metal collars that can improve cementing. BP chose to use six.

The release also said that during an internal probe into the cementing after the blowout, Halliburton ordered workers to destroy computer simulations that showed little difference between using six and 21 centralisers.

Suppose anyone will do any jail time? Me neither.

UPDATE:

Halliburton Energy Services to pay a maximum $200,000 fine for destroying evidence related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which the Gulf of Mexico is yet to recover from. The company will also donate $55 million towards wildlife protection.

  RT

$200,000? That’s it. To Halliburton, does that even compare to a penny fine for you or me?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Tony Hayward to Testify in BP Trial

Perhaps we'll learn if he got his life back.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

BP: Good News and Bad News

BP Plc has pleaded guilty to criminal charges relating to its 2010 oil spill and agreed to pay an extra $4.5bn on top of the tens of billions it is already paying out.

The British oil company said on Thursday that it would plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect relating to the death of 11 workers, one misdemeanour count under the Clean Water Act, one misdemeanour count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and one felony count of obstruction of congress.

BP will also pay $525m to settle securities claims with US regulators.

[...]

BP will have to retain a monitor for four years, charged with overseeing safety and risk management, as well as an independent auditor to ensure compliance with the terms of the agreement, he said.

[...]

BP's penalties for the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and subsequent leak from the Macondo oil well, will far exceed the previous record for largest criminal penalty in US history.

[...]

John Terrett, reporting from Washington DC on Thursday, said that there was no word at this time on whether any BP employees would be arrested, although sources have said that between two to four would be.

"We understand that two members of staff have been charged with manslaughter and one has been charged with lying to the authorities. But we're still waiting for clarification of this and whether they may eventually serve jail time," he said.

[...]

The company said that it was "prepared to vigorously defend itself against remaining civil claims".

  

Because those guys are unable to afford a vigorous prosecution.

Over the past two years, BP has so far sold non-core assets totalling more than $35 bn to help fund massive compensation costs arising from the tragedy. The figure is set to reach $38 bn by late 2013.

Last month, BP posted bumper profits and raised its shareholder dividend as the energy giant prepared for a new Russia adventure after being hit by the Deepwater Horizon crisis.

So, in essence, that record settlement wasn't even a dent in BP's operation. And, they'll show us … they'll take their oil deals to the Russians.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.