One step forward, Two steps back

BP and the US Coast Guard are backing off from the Deep Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico because of a Tropical Depression in the eastern gulf. Currently, it has sustained winds of 35 mph and a pressure of 1006 mb. The most recent reconnaissance shows no strengthening.

Tropical Depression Three is located north of Cuba and south of the Bahamas. It looks like it will threaten Florida and possibly the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Mississippi. If it were to sing east instead it would go into the Atlantic or skirt along Florida's east coast and the Georgian coast. That is if...

The cap which they have been testing will have to come off. With BP and the Coast Guard vacating the area for 10-14 days, there will be more oil in the gulf again.

We can only watch and pray. Again.

Bill O! Shit!

Bill O'Reilly managed to apologize only to then find something else. He said that she used the USDA banner to talk politics. That I will agree with him. Under the Hatch Act, as a political appointee, she cannot make political statements in public as a representative of the government.

I'd like to point out his rebuttal to Rachel Maddow: No, Bill. The station you work for is really that lame and stupid. And just because Fox leads in the ratings doesn't mean they're smarter. It just means Fox cornered the market on conservative TV viewers. Most of these viewers, I'm not saying all, seem to have no idea what journalism is. Or even integrity. I consider anybody that takes time - irregularly, let alone habitually - to cite their ratings, good fortune and success to be a vain, egotistical shit. It's a vice that is unbecoming, provincial and without class.

Seriously, countering someone's argument by stating that his channel leads the ratings as proof that the other is wrong is pure foolishness. Since when did higher ratings equal better programming? Look how many people watch reality TV shows! Are they the bastion of television excellence or a three ring circus? Does Bill's head still fit through the door or have they built his studio around him?

Just facts and all the facts!

After a few days of brutality in the media, Shirley Sherrod has made the truth known.

A little recap. Two days ago, Conservative Commentator Andrew Breitbart released a video clip of Shirley Sherrod, a USDA agent in charge of rural development in Georgia, saying that she would not help a poor white farmer. This is what was said in the clip of a larger speech that was delivered March 27 as it was posted on Fox News:

You know, the first time I was faced with helping a white farmer save his farm. He took a long time talking but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing. But he had come to me for help. What he didn't know, while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me, was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him.

I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland. And here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land, so I didn't give him the full force of what I could do.

So I took him to a white lawyer that had attended some of the training that we had provided because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm. So I figured if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him.

It was big news after that! Everyone ran with the story. But there were those who did dig deeper. Unfortunately, many did not. The Department of Agriculture was one and the NAACP was another.

The Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in response to the tape:

There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person... We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.

The NAACP stated

Racism is about the abuse of power. Ms. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race. We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers. Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man.

All to make sure that we all knew they were against the actions of this Georgia woman. Tuesday, she was called three times by Secretary Vilsack asking for her resignation. While she was on the road form West Point, Georgia, she was told by the White House to resign. It was said that they wanted her to resign before Glenn Beck aired later that day. The White House has denied that they had anything to do with pressuring her to resign.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch - er, farm that is - the Spooner Family were willing to tell everyone that would listen that Shirley Sherrod was a great lady. She had helped them keep their farm decades ago and were still friends with her.

So, when I was watching The O'Reilly Factor last night, after the statements, the resignation and the Spooner Family's take on the past, why did Bill O'Reilly not mention the Spooners? He went with the clip as it was. He did not take a deeper look into it as he claims to do. Guess he only does that when it's white men and/or Republicans. Later, he argued that the lack of Black Panther coverage on the other networks meant they had less journalistic integrity. Apparently, they all have blinders on just not for the same stories.

But regardless of how hypocritical Bill O'Reily is, the clip in its entirety and the full context of her remarks have been released.

...if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him ... but that lawyer failed to help ... I did not discriminate against [the farmer]. And, in fact, I went all out to frantically look for a lawyer at the last minute because the first lawyer we went to was not doing anything to really help him. In fact, that lawyer suggested they should just let the farm go. The second attorney [was able to help the farmer] file Chapter 11 bankruptcy to help the family stay on the farm.

Working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who haven't. They could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to help poor people - those who don't have access the way others have.

The full video is now up for viewing on the NAACP's website.



The NAACP retracted their previous statement and has stated

With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA Official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias ... Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.

After the uproar regarding Ms. Sherrod's resignation, Tom Vilsack released a statement on the night of July 20, 2010 saying that the Department will "conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts".

Ms. Sherrod asserts that the NAACP was “the reason why this happened.” They got into a fight with the Tea Party, and all of this came out as a result of that.”She adds that "she might not want her job back if it's offered ... because of all the publicity surrounding what happened … how would I be treated once I'm back there? I just don't know ... I would have to be reassured on that."

On July 21, 2010, Fox News rejected any claims that they helped inflame the situation with a statement saying

[the network] did not make any mention of this story yesterday on the air until after Shirley Sherrod had already lost her job after Secretary Vilsack had already drawn his own conclusions — conclusions that the president apparently agreed with.

Later, the White House sought for an official review of the case. Tom Vilsack, meanwhile, sent an e-mail regarding the issue that states "I am of course willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner."

Ms. Sherrod was at the CNN Center, watching live, when Robert Gibbs extended an apology to her. There, she stated that she had accepted the apology and welcomed the review although she felt that this experience was "bittersweet".

House Minority Leader John Boehner, a Republican, criticized Andrew Breitbart's airing of only a small portion of the video. He said, "It’s unfortunate that whoever laid this out there didn’t lay out the whole story, as opposed to a part of it... They only put a little piece of the story out there and people make judgments and they rush and they make bad decisions."

Last night, in an interview with CNN's Larry King, Andrew Breitbart responded to questions regarding his intentions of releasing the video saying that:

This was not about Shirley Sherrod. It's about me. This was about the NAACP attacking the Larry King Live show and this [the video of Ms. Sherrod] is showing racism at an NAACP event. I did not ask for Shirley Sherrod to be fired. I did not ask for any repercussions for Shirley Sherrod. They were the ones that took the initiative to get rid of her. I – I do not – I think she should have the right to defend herself. [R]acism is used by the left and the Democratic Party to shut up opposition [a]nd [by releasing the Sherrod video] I am showing you that people who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones.

Yeah... well, Fox News is not retracting the previous articles as good journalists do. They just do their spinning and leave things out there in the collective memory and internet so we can all stumble across it. I thought Fox News could sink no lower.

Last night on CNN, Anderson Cooper managed to dig into it and even put NAACP on the spot for their actions. ABC also gets a mention for taking the time to do research before making snap judgements. Guess I know where the real journalists are.

Governor signs $20M to Dugard

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed a $20 million settlement for Jaycee Dugard, a woman who was held captive for 18 years by a convicted rapist who had been under the supervision of the state.

Parole officers saw and spoke to Dugard during visits to the home of the man accused of holding her captive, but they never questioned why she was there, California officials disclose in newly released documents that figured in the settlement.

At least three parole officers spotted Dugard at the home of Phillip Garrido, a convicted rapist who had been under California state supervision since 1999, according to a June memo from the California attorney general's office. On at least one occasion, a parole officer spoke to her and one of her daughters, whom investigators say Garrido fathered during her captivity.

But those officers "failed to investigate their identities or their relationship to Garrido," the memo states.

The document outlined the $20 million settlement between Dugard and California authorities, which the state Legislature approved last week. It was drafted to brief state lawmakers on the settlement before their vote, said Christine Gasparac, an attorney general's office spokeswoman.

Dugard disappeared in 1991, at age 11, and was found in August 2009 at Garrido's home in Antioch, about 45 miles east of San Francisco. Garrido and his wife, Nancy, have pleaded not guilty to 29 felony counts in the case.

Responsibilty for Garrido's parole was transferred to California authorities in 1999.

A November 2009 investigation found parole officers failed to follow utility wires running from Garrido's house toward the shed where Dugard was held, didn't check out the presence of a 12-year-old girl during a visit or act on information that indicated Garrido had violated the terms of his release.

The June 25 memo concluded that while the state could have successfully defended some of the claims on procedural grounds, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation "recognizes that this case has a unique and tragic character."

"Obviously, no amount of money could compensate these plaintiffs for what they have endured," it reads. But the settlement will provide Dugard and her daughters -- now teenagers -- with "the financial support that they will need to rebuild their lives."

The document estimates the family will need as much as $7 million alone for decades of counseling.

Bedbugs close Stores

A bedbug outbreak at two trendy New York retail shops has sounded the alarm among city residents and businesses, prompting calls for the city to examine how it deals with the prickly pests.

Hollister, a popular clothing store owned by Abercrombie & Fitch in the fashionable Soho neighborhood, remained closed Friday after a bedbug infestation was found earlier in the week, according to company spokeswoman Iska Hain. And an Abercrombie & Fitch store in South Street Seaport also has been closed by an infestation.

Abercrombie and Fitch said Friday afternoon the problem in the SoHo Hollister store had been taken care of and the shop will reopen Saturday morning.

"The company has requested guidance from the mayor's office on how businesses in Manhattan should deal with this issue," the company said in a news release. "In the meantime, the company's first priority continues to be its customers and associates."

The incidents mirror a sharp overall spike in bedbugs in recent years, yet efforts to combat the problem have mostly focused on residential buildings, leaving the issue of contamination in commercial spaces largely ignored.

"We've had them in banks, grocery stores, movie theaters, judge's chambers, schools, dentists' offices -- everywhere," said Jeff Eisenberg of PestAway, an exterminating company in Manhattan.

The problem, according to Eisenberg, is that bedbugs carry a stigma, which causes many cases to go unreported. "It's like a don't ask, don't tell policy," he said. "People don't tell their employers that they have bedbugs in their house" -- bedbugs that can hitch a ride to the workplace.

According to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, it issued 4,811 violation notices to residential landlords for bedbug infestations in 2009, compared with 82 in the 2003-2004 fiscal year. For the first half of 2010, 1,976 bedbug violation notices have already been written.

However, such statistics represent only a fraction of bedbug cases in the city, as they come almost exclusively from buildings in the rental market. Owners of bedbug-infested residences are less likely to call 311, the city's non-emergency hotline, which then notifies the Housing Preservation Department.

Spies among Us!

Two suspects charged with having served as deep-cover Russian agents living in the United States have told investigators they are Russian citizens and have been living under false identities, according to a court document released Friday.

A letter from prosecutors opposing bail for the suspects said that the man known as Michael Zottoli is really a Russian named Mikhail Kutzik. The government also said the woman known as Patricia Mills is a Russian citizen named Natalia Pereverzeva.

Prosecutors said that the couple waived their rights to remain silent and made the admissions soon after being arrested at their Arlington, Virginia residence over the weekend. The two were living as a married couple and have two small children.

The government document also said searches of the couple's home and two safe-deposit boxes they rented revealed that they contained cash, passports and other identity documents bearing their false identities. Investigators said they found $80,000 in one of the safe-deposit boxes. It was divided into eight unmarked envelopes, each of which contained $10,000 in what appeared to be new $100 bills, they said.

The document said another safe-deposit box rented by the two held $20,000 along with passports and other documents bearing their fake identities. Prosecutors said a laptop found in the couple's home had been brought from Russia to the United States by a co-conspirator and given to Zottoli, as court papers referred to him, in March.

The revelations are contained in a letter from federal prosecutors opposing bail for the couple and for another suspect named Mikhail Semenko.

The pair and Semenko remain in custody in Northern Virginia. They waived their rights to ask for bail in hearings at U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia on Friday afternoon. Zottoli and Mills, as court papers called her, appeared in court wearing dark-green jail jumpsuits emblazoned with "prisoner" on the back of each. They did not speak to each other in court. They spoke only to give their assent when the judge asked if they realized they were waiving their rights to ask for bail.

Prosecutors had hoped to get the suspects moved quickly to New York to stand trial with seven others arrested in the case. But attorneys for the three requested a preliminary hearing a judge scheduled for July 7.

Semenko appeared at a separate hearing afterward. He too was dressed in a green jail jumpsuit. He spoke quietly with a slight Russian accent when asked if he understood he was relinquishing his right to ask for bail.

Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan ordered that the three continue to be held in jail and cited the government's contention they are dangers to the community and a flight risk.

Some hit by Oil Spill may not get paid

The new head of the Gulf Coast disaster's claims fund says his first two priorities will be to cut bigger checks and send them out faster to the oil spill's economic victims.

In his first appearance before Congress since taking on the job, Kenneth Feinberg on Wednesday criticized BP's process for compensating those who have lost their livelihoods in the spill's wake. The oil company has paid out almost $130 million so far on 41,000 claims -- but more than 80,000 claims have been submitted.

"It is not sufficiently efficient. It is not paying all that many small business claims," Feinberg said in testimony before the House Committee on Small Business. Instead of the month-to-month emergency checks going out now, Feinberg plans to have his new entity, the Gulf Spill Independent Claims Fund, send out six-month lump sum payments "to give small businesses more certainty."

The former special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, Feinberg has experience with the bureaucratic and political complexities of managing disaster payments. Dozens of Congressional representatives pressed him with questions about how claims will be paid out and to whom.

Exactly what constitutes a "legitimate" claim is still being determined, but Feinberg said that he envisions limits.

What about tourism dollars lost because people don't want to go places they think will be coated in oil?, asked Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., the committee's chairwoman.

"If there's no physical damage to the beaches and it's a public perception, I venture to say that it is not compensable," Feinberg answered. "How we deal with that problem is something I've got to address. That's in this area where some discretion's going to have to exercised."

Real estate claims will be another gray area. Already-depressed real estate values will fall even more for properties physically damaged by the oil or located near beaches clogged with tar balls -- but home values in some areas might fall because of simple wariness.

"I'm on the beach, but there's no oil at all there. It's just the public perception that drives the values down. I mean, on the one hand, those people are suffering. They -- they deserve some help," Feinberg admitted. "On the other hand, there's not enough money in the world to pay every homeowner, wherever they live in the Gulf Coast, who says, 'My property is down because of the oil spill.'"

Feinberg made two more pledges about his still-evolving claims process: It will be transparent, and it will be locally staffed. Appeals will be fielded by local officials who have credibility with Gulf residents, he said. And Feinberg himself plans to be a frequent presence in the Gulf.

Baldness Gene Uncovered

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center believe they have found the genetic basis of alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that attacks hair follicles and causes people to lose their hair.

The findings could make it easier to develop new treatments for the condition, in which loss can range from patches on the scalp to complete absence of hair on the entire body. Affecting approximately 5.3 million people, AA is the most common autoimmune disease in humans and is second only to male pattern baldness, when it comes to common forms of hair loss. There is no cure and no effective treatments, aside from painful steroid injections to the scalp that don't always work.

Dr. Angela Christiano, professor of dermatology and genetics and development at Columbia University Medical Center, was lead author of the study. She noted her team's discovery is important because it was originally thought that AA was more related to inflammatory diseases, such as psoriasis, where a particular cell attacks the skin. But during their research, Christiano and her investigators learned that AA is actually more genetically related to celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes – and since there are many drugs under development and some on the market already for the same gene targets, new treatments for AA should be relatively close by. That makes Christiano happy. Not only because her research will be helping millions of people, but she herself may benefit. She, too, suffers from AA.

"It gives us hope, that some day there may be a cure for this condition," she says. " It gives pharmaceutical companies a target to go forward and start developing new drugs to fight AA."

BP is Dirty

BP has been trying to shut down an internal safety watchdog agency it set up under congressional pressure four years ago, according to sources close to the office and a leading congressman.

The Ombudsman Program was set up after a 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas that killed 15 workers and a massive oil spill in Alaska the following year. Its chief, former federal judge Stanley Sporkin, would not comment for this story -- but a source inside his office told CNN, "I'm surprised we're still here."

The Washington-based office was set up to hear BP workers' safety concerns after investigations into the Texas City refinery explosion raised questions about whether employees feared retaliation for speaking up. Since then, 112 employees have filed complaints, and 35 of them have dealt with "system integrity or safety issues" that the office says are extremely serious.

But sources close to the office say BP doesn't like having independent investigators pursuing those complaints. A union representative told CNN that some workers who complained have faced retaliation. Jeanne Pascal, a former lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency, agreed.

"They've been demoted, they've been terminated, they've also been blackballed," Pascal said.

BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said the company has a "zero-tolerance" policy toward retaliation and said it is unaware of any unresolved cases that violate that policy.

"Concerns raised internally or with the Ombudsman's office in respect to our operations are fully investigated and appropriate actions are implemented," he said in a statement supplied to CNN. He added, "If Ms. Pascal or others believe there are cases that have not been resolved appropriately, they can be raised through the ombudsman's office.

BP has promised Rep. Bart Stupak, the chairman of a congressional subcommittee investigating the April sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drill rig, that it will keep the watchdog office in place for another year. But Stupak said the head of BP's American subsidiary, Lamar McKay, told him earlier this year that the ombudsman's office was slated for elimination.

McKay had become the head of BP America in January 2009, more than a year before the the Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 workers and uncorked the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Stupak, D-Michigan, and other lawmakers met with McKay in January and March of that year.

"One of the first things Mr. McKay said was, 'I'm going to replace the ombudsman. I'm going to shut her down,' " Stupak told CNN. "He wasn't even on the job for more than a few weeks, maybe a month or two, and he wanted to shut down the ombudsman. We encouraged him not to do so."

Stupak said lawmakers were "shocked" that McKay would bring up the topic so soon.

"The logic was, 'Well, we will make things better,' " he said. "Well, I'm not sure."

BP has said it can do a good job investigating complaints through an established internal system -- without the ombudsman's office. But Pascal, who spent 26 years prosecuting polluters for the EPA, has called BP a "serial environmental criminal." She said BP repeatedly violates environmental laws, scoffs at safety regulations and treats U.S. government safety and pollution control officials as a mere nuisance.

The company paid record federal fines and pleaded guilty to a felony in connection with the Texas City explosion. It also pleaded guilty in 2007 to one count of criminally negligent discharge of oil, a misdemeanor, in Alaska. In 2009, the Justice Department filed a civil complaint alleging the company had violated clean air and water laws in Alaska.

That record indicates that BP considers safety "a secondary or tertiary concern," with no indication that will change, Pascal said.

"From my perspective, BP for a long time has been a company that is interested in profits first and foremost," she said. "Safety, health and the environment are subjugated to profit-making, and I do not think that has changed."