Your Daily Downer in Video:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

I thought they had remote cutoff systems:

As work crews try to contain an oil well that is pumping thousands of barrels of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, many businesses are bracing for the worst.
Much is at stake. BP [BP 51.58 -0.98 (-1.86%)], owner of operator of the well, has already had its image dented by recent accidents. This event will likely cause its image further harm—not to mention the millions in costs associated with containing the spill and drilling a new well.
But the fallout stretches well beyond that. The oil industry is fresh from a victory over President Obama’s decision to open up parts of the Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling.

How can “Drill Baby Drill” go ahead, when government doesn’t require the industry to use the most modern safety equipment available:

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., sent President Obama a letter Thursday reminding him that in 2000 the Interior Department insisted “oil companies have ‘reliable backup systems’ in the event of a rig blowout.”
By 2003, the plan was scrapped.
“This could be one of the world’s greatest nightmare scenarios of an oil gusher,” Nelson said.
The backup systems are supposed to act when an oil rig fails and starts leaking. Then, a valve deep under the water where the drill pipe meets the ocean floor is supposed to choke off the flow of oil. In the case of BP’s platform, either the valve wasn’t activated or didn’t work, possibly because of the explosion.
But there is another line of defense this oil platform did not have, a so-called acoustic switch. It can be activated by remote control sending acoustic pulses through the water to trigger the blowout preventer even if the rig is damaged or evacuated.
Acoustic switches are used in Norway and Brazil after those oil producing countries suffered spills. The U.S. considered requiring them, but drilling companies questioned the $500,000 cost and whether the devices even work.

Update: From the Comments … ht: LC Bennett

A Virginia NASCAR fan’s vanity license plate was recalled by the state’s DMV after “motorists and Muslims groups complained that his Virginia vanity license plate…was really code for neo-Nazi, white supremacist sentiments.”
Douglas Story says his plate, 14CV88, was “an homage to the car numbers of his favourite NASCAR drivers: Tony Stewart, who drives car No. 14, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who drives No. 88,” and that CV is common shorthand for “Sons of Confederate Veterans.”
Not so, according to Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, who said “his group looked into the meaning of the numbers 14 and 88 after receiving complaints about Story’s license plates. He said the group found that among neo-Nazis, 88 refers to ‘Heil Hitler,’ because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.”
Okay. So what about the 14?

White supremacists sometimes use the number 14, Hooper said, as shorthand for the 14-word motto, ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.’

Story, who had a large anti-Islam sticker on the back of his Ford F-150 until he removed it, says “There is absolutely no way I’d have anything to do with Hitler or Nazis….My sister-in-law and my niece are Jewish. I went to my niece’s bat mitzvah when she turned thirteen three years ago…”
Three years ago?
Hmm….

The Revenge of the Brands

… [M]uch of No Logo is devoted to documenting the ways small groups of committed activists retaliated by turning the power of the brand back on itself. But 10 years later, the rule of the brand is more entrenched than ever, largely thanks to lessons learned from a close reading of No Logo.

The book devotes a great deal of attention to the various strategies of anti-brand activism that were coming into play at the time. Joining the old-school consumer boycott were newfangled techniques such as guerrilla marketing, culture jamming (ad parodies, basically), and Reclaim the Streets initiatives aimed at reversing the “commodification and criminalization of street culture.”

However edgy or subversive these strategies once might have seemed, every single one is now a standard part of the tool kit of every advertising agency and brand manager. You think culture jamming is subversive? Kenneth Cole has been jamming its own advertising for years, embroidering its campaigns with slogans and quotations addressing topics such as AIDS, homelessness, gun control, and same-sex marriage. Guerrilla marketing might once have been a cool way of getting attention for your alternative band or performance-art installation, but today, thanks to the viral capabilities of Twitter and YouTube, the technique is used to sell everything from fried chicken to the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

via Full Pundit

… order him to look like a complete fool:

Oops! The Quincy Police Department released a bogus statement calling the SWAT Team on the the protesting grandmothers yesterday. Unfortunately, they forgot about the army of videographers that filmed this incident.

And, just in case anybody needs a refresher on how the left protests:

Lawrence Martin does not understand the difference between being a political moderate and a political partisan. Which might explain his endorsement of the Liberal Party of Canada as the party of non-partisanship:

The subject of media bias is a complex one in Canada because of the political culture. Normally a journalist is considered neutral or objective if he or she is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, reflecting neither the left- nor right-wing point of view.

But in Canada, the big mushy middle is the home of the Liberal Party, which has sought to locate itself in the mainstream and has profited over time from doing so. Therein lies the conundrum. If you’re a centrist, you can well be accused of having a Liberal bias.

Where did they go?

And while we’re at it, did anybody notice that the new conservative pitbulls are more often than not women.

On the Sunday, April 25 edition of The National, the CBC did a dedicated report, pre-announced as such, on the recent oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Reporter Peter Akman began thusly: “The stakes have changed drastically on the choppy waters of the Gulf of Mexico when a drilling platform exploded and sank this week. Officials thought the environmental damage was limited to a surface spill, but now they’ve discovered the underwater oil well is leaking.” Rear Adm. Mary Landry of the U.S. Coast Guard was shown saying “This is a serious incident and has the potential to be a major spill. I’m not going to quantify, I’m not going to use any major numbers now, it’s way too early to project.” Akman then explained “The oil rig platform drilling 65 kilometres off Louisiana burst into flames on Tuesday. Now, British Petroleum is saying at least 160,000 litres of oil are pouring into the water each day.” A BP spokesman was then shown explaining the details of the ongoing efforts to stop the leak.
Oh, and here, verbatim, is the conclusion of Akman’s report on that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:
“Environmentalists point out (that) Alberta’s oil sands remain as dirty as ever, polluting not only the water, but also the air and the land. Peter Akman, CBC News, Calgary.”
Oh well. We’re all paying for the CBC, so…

“The bigger you get, the more maggots you can crush with your weight…”

Your constituents have spoken.
Oh, wait, your constituents don’t get a voice…do they?

These idiots are boycotting Arizona for daring to defend the sovereignty of the US.
Here’s the link to the Arizona’s Small Business Association small business directory.
Go
buy
something
now.
Another genius idea, brought to you by the Captain.

John Doyle compares attacks on the CBC to, erm, “beating up a sick puppy“:

… As I write this, CBC NN is on in my office and Suhana Meharchand is cackling with unbounded glee about the premiere of the movie Iron Man 2. She just said, “Wow!” And then along comes Jelena Adzic, and she and Suhana go all girly and OMG about footage of the star-studded premiere of Iron Man 2. Adzic has just announced breathlessly that a block of Hollywood Boulevard was closed to traffic for the premiere. Much cackling and near delirium has ensued. I’m not sure what Liberal bias is afoot here.

Well, if that’s the way you want to play it, guy: Air-headedness is liberal bias.
(Honestly. How else do you explain the president of EKOS describing a Canadian “culture war” as “Obama versus Palin”?)

They told us they were creating the model of what the world economy should be:

The economic growth in the current member countries of the eurozone has been slowing down since the 1950s and 1960s and the euro hasn’t altered this trend in any way. According to the European Central Bank data (ECB Statistics Pocket Book, March 2010), the average annual GDP growth in these countries was 3.4% in the 1970s, 2.4% in the 1980s, 2.2% in the 1990s, and only 1.1% in the “decade of the euro”, more precisely between 2001 and 2009. Such dynamics doesn’t take place in other regions of the world.
Another expected goal hasn’t occurred: the inflation rate of the eurozone hasn’t dropped. Two distinct groups of countries have emerged within the eurozone: one of them has a low inflation rate while the other – Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and a few others – have a higher inflation rate. Long-term imbalances of the trade surpluses and deficits have also increased. The export-dominated countries have been separated from the countries that run trade deficits (it’s no coincidence that it’s the countries with the highest inflation rate). No homogenization of the eurozone has been achieved by its creation.
The global financial and economic crisis has “only” escalated and unmasked all these problems: it hasn’t caused them. It’s no surprise for me. “The euro currency zone” of the present 16 European countries is currently not an “optimum currency area”, which is what the elementary theorems of the economical theory demand. The fact that the birth of the eurozone was primarily a political decision, which in no way guaranteed that this whole group of countries was appropriate for the project of a shared currency, is repeatedly confirmed (most recently, in Prague in December 2009) even by a former member of the banking committee of the European Central Bank and its main economist Otmar Issing (e.g. in his book “The Birth of the Euro”, Cambridge 2008). However, if the currency zone fails to be an optimum currency area, it is inevitable for the expenses to create and maintain the union to exceed the benefits caused by its continuing functioning.

The Eurozone … every progressives economic wet dream.
Luckily in North America, regulators know a good options spread when they see one.
Update: Does it rain in Spain?

A key argument in the government’s refusal to produce to the Commons unredacted documents on the Afghan detainee matter is that there are statutory provisions against doing so in some circumstances. It therefore seems to me that the cornerstone of Speaker Milliken’s ruling is found here:

…
Odgers`Australian Senate Practice, 12th edition, at page 51, states clearly:

―Parliamentary privilege is not affected by provisions in statutes which prohibit in general terms the disclosure of categories of information…Statutory provisions of this type do not prevent the disclosure of information covered by the provisions to a House of the Parliament or to a parliamentary committee in the course of a parliamentary inquiry. They … do not prevent committees seeking the information covered by such provisions or persons who have that information providing it to committees.‖

In light of these various authorities [others before quote begins], the Chair must conclude that the House does indeed have the right to ask for the documents listed in the Order of December 10, 2009…

It seems most odd to me that the Australian citation allows a statutory prohibition–which must be passed by both Houses of Parliament–effectively to be over-ridden by a vote in just one of those houses; indeed it would seem even by a vote in just one committee with a relatively small number of members.