So with some hope finally appearing in the Gulf of Mexico and seemingly the end to the largest oil spill the U.S. has ever seen I thought it would be interesting to see the comparison to other oil spills throughout history. The rest of the world sure isn’t changing anytime soon but with any luck the gulf spill will be seen as a catalyst moment in history that broke the way for the U.S. to move to cleaner energy. Click the image below twice to get a larger view.

Worst Oil Spill Ever: Arabian Gulf/Kuwait – January 19, 1991
Location: Persian Gulf, Kuwait
Amount of Oil Spilled: 380-520 million gallons

Ironically, the worst oil spill in human history wasn’t an accident. During the Gulf War, Iraqi forces, attempting to thwart a potential landing of American soldiers, opened the valves at an offshore oil terminal and dumped oil from several tankers. The oil they released created a 4-inch thick oil slick that covered 4000 square miles. To put it in perspective, that’s enough oil to cover the entire state of Rhode Island one foot deep in oil.

I used to consider myself more a moderate republican for the most part, because I am not a believer in big government, based solely on the notion that larger gov’t equals more taxes and more gov’t programs that don’t produce revenue just spend money.   Lately, however I have found myself listening to the Democratic argument more because the Republicans have been exposing themselves as large rhetoric screamers more than anything else without real solutions.  Think I will be moving to Independent soon.

Case in point the healthcare summit Obama held two weeks ago, which by the way I thought was a genius play and totally exposed the Republicans even if he was trying to or not.   Healthcare is a huge issue that the majority can agree needs to get resolved which is what Obama has been pushing for, but the back and forth finger pointing and inability of lawmakers to get anything done has pissed off the public who have now seemed to stop caring because they are tired of it.  The round table style summit which was nationally televised put Democrats and Republicans in a room to iron out their specific differences in the current bill and put together a bill that met the needs of both parties.  If you watched it, it was clear that Democrats showed up with some concrete suggestions and comprises and Republicans showed up to make campaign speeches and spit rhetoric.  Obama serves McCain here.

My 2nd point to this is the recent exposure of a Republican National Committee strategy document which surfaced after a RNC member left the 72 page document in their hotel room where the meeting was held in Boca Grande, FLA.  The point of this meeting is tell republicans what strategies to use to help raise funds for their campaigns this fall. One page, headed “The Evil Empire,” pictures Obama as the Joker from Batman, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid are depicted as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo, respectively.  The document uncovered by politico.com outlines using Obama and fear towards socialism to raise funds and tap the ego-driven wealthy with promises of access to the party.  Given Democrats used Bush to throttle to them power 2 years ago, it’s obvious Americans are fed up with politics like this.  Politics are not about facts, rather who has the best marketing machine, won by who ever has the most money behind them getting the american public to believe whatever they want.

We should really start a movement where elections are more focused around qualifications and the records of candidates with an equal $ amount provided by the gov’t that each can spend on their campaign.  The primaries would be open game, but after that you would have to play by the rules.  People are tired of it all and confidence in gov’t is nearly all lost, so something will need to happen sooner or later.

If your somewhere in the middle on political views it’s nearly impossible to find an evening news anchor worth watching because they are all so far right or so far left.  Every night I go through the news shows, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, NBC’s Keith Olberman, Glenn Beck, Rachel Madow, Chris Wallace, Sean Hannity.  All express good points and seem right and it’s always fun to go through the channels and see how much they hate each other.  But with all the shit these guys talk on each other and their political views I always wondered why the hell they never square off.  Politicians debate each other, but it is a truly rare event to see news anchors at opposite ends of the liberal – conservative spectrum in the same room together.  I was originally writing this as a rally call to create scheduled television events where these guys square off, there could be fact checkers and point systems and at the end someone walks away the real champ.   So I flipped on the tube tonight and it turns out wishes do come true.  O’Reilly had Jon Stewart on his show.  The king of comedic liberal satire vs the conservative cornerstone of Fox News.   Take your pick, but I give it to Stewart, O’Reilly reaches too far into the conservative bag which makes his argument points a little far fetched against Stewart’s realist views.  Enjoy, its more entertaining than 2 drunk ballbags arguing politics at a party.

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The world’s #1 search engine is vowing to take a stand against China.  The communist nation has censored results for the Chinese version of the search engine google.cn since it launched in 2006. The people of China only get search results the gov’t wants them to get.   Now viewing the censorship as a free speech and human rights issue Google is trying to find a way to work within the laws of China and make google.cn uncensored or possibly abandon operations in China if necessary.  To complicate things further, Google has accused the Chinese gov’t of a cyber attack, with a primary objective of gaining access to gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.  From the official Google Blog:

“First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.”

Internet freedom will continue to be a growing debate and with Google owning 67% of the search market in the U.S. they will continue to be influential.   Google’s actions with this issue will have a much bigger impact than simply what search results the people of China get to see.  Maybe a defiant Google will buck the trend of American companies bowing down to China just to get a piece of the 1.3 billion person market 253 million of which are internet users.  Probably not though.

Hilary Clinton’s speech themed around internet freedom on Jan 21st couldn’t of had better timing.  She said this “We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas”.  It’s nice to know our gov’t believes in the freedom of internet.  Doesn’t mean they won’t try to put all kinds of crazy restrictions around it though.

So I’m watching the today show on tuesday, yea I’m a religious watcher, definitely lame but it’s part of my morning routine. Lauer is interviewing Ex New York Governor Elliott Spitzer. This is the BIG exclusive interview omg!! we all pay attention but never get any answers, we just like watching celebs train wrecks, so we tune in. We all know the story of his love of hookers and blow which lead to his quick fall from office. Long story short, the explanation he gives for all this is “it was my inner gremlins”. We’ve heard this garbage explanation from many a celeb before, ahhhh it was my inner demons. ShUT UP with that bullshit!
For once in my life i want to see a public figure just be straight up honest when confronted with “image damaging” allegations. Wouldn’t it of been great if when they asked spitzer why he did it, for him to just to be like ” hey listen Lauer, i did it because i like hookers and blow, have you done blow with hookers?” But we will never get honest answers. Public figures will always beat around the bush and reporters will refuse to push for an answer because if they demand answers to tough questions then other celebs won’t do interviews with them and ratings are shot. Thats the world of phony journalism we live in. Screw political correctness lets get some honest answers already god knows they would be hilarious.