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New spill in Gulf area after barge crashes into abandoned oil well
July 27, 2010
Oil and mud spew from busted La. well
Pictured here is an aerial photo of smoke billowing from a wellhead after a towing vessel's dredge barge allided with the structure in Barataria Bay, La., as the vessel and barge exited Mud Lake, July 27, 2010. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Wayne Alleyene. )
http://www.fox8live.com/news/local/story/New-Video-Oil-and-mud-spew-from-busted-La-well/c5kCQQyVmkSkck41A3QnbA.cspx
Jefferson Parish - It's not the kind of news Jefferson Parish was prepared to hear.
"There's about a 100 foot plume of natural gas and oil spewing from the well head. And it appears to be the well head is spewing both natural gas, contaminated water and some light crude, not very heavy crude," said Jefferson Parish Emergency Manager Deano Bonano.
Around 1 a.m. Tuesday, a barge being pushed by a tug boat ran into an abandoned well head.
The tug captain smelled gas and called the Coast Guard, which planned to visit the site at daybreak.
Before Coast Guard investigators got there another boat captain called in and reported natural gas and oil leaking.
"We have investigators going over the incident and conducting interviews with the captain to find out exactly what happened," said Coast Guard Captain John Arenstan.
Governor Bobby Jindal and local officials surveyed the site, which is in Bayou St. Dennis, 15 miles south of Lafitte.
The Coast Guard has a two mile radius around the leak closed to traffic and has hired a contractor that was already working on the BP spill to also clean up this one.
"You know the bad part here is that over the weekend we had to take down some of the assets that were out in the water trying to protect from the initial spill and yesterday and today focus has been trying to get the boats and the boom back out following the tropical system that threatened us this weekend and then the main waterway here is blocked off," said Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts.
It's not clear yet how much oil and gas is leaking, but whatever the amount this spill is one more woe on the water Jefferson Parish doesn't need.
"We thought once we got Barataria Bay cleaned up and they have a temporary cap on the well, looks like they're gonna try to kill it next week, we felt comfortable," said Councilman Elton Lagasse.
The Coast Guard says the well head should have been lit, but the tug captain says it was not lit.
The well is owned by a Houston company called Cedyco, which is no longer in business so the federal government is dipping into the country's Oil Spill Trust Fund to cover the cost of the clean-up.
13-year-old knuckleballer Chelsea Baker hasn’t lost a single sanctioned game in four straight seasons,
and is widely believed to be the best Little Leaguer in the country.
This is her story.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/e60/news/story?id=5386830
Afghanistan Field Report: Losing the Arghandab They Never Had
Monday, Jul 26 2010, 4:21AM
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2010/07/afghanistan_fie/
This is a guest note by Al Jazeera correspondent Clayton Swisher who is currently embedded with US troops fighting in Afghanistan. This essay originally ran on Al Jazeera's "The Asia Blog."
(The photo below is of 82nd Airborne soldiers in Arghandab; Photo by Tom Nicholson; reprinted with permission.)
Losing the Arghandab They Never Had
Last night we got a 0345 wakeup call from Spooky. For those of you who play Call of Duty-type video games, you'll know what I'm talking about. For those who don't, Spooky is the Vietnam-era call sign for the AC-130U Gunship, a massive airplane that blasts 105mm artillery and 40mm shells from its fuselage.
It was raining death and destruction on a position just a few kilometres from us across the Arghandab River. The Taliban have virtual free reign west of the river and have made a mockery of American forces setting up Forward Operating Bases in their midst.
There aren't too many Spooky Gunships here in this country. They are flying collateral damage machines, used by the Air Force Special Operations to support commandos on the ground. But their employment over the skies of Arghandab signals a reality that most soldiers here understand: that conventional army tactics have failed to wrest this real estate from the Taliban.
Fighting the Taliban in Arghandab - where much of its history is based - is like taking on the Crips in LA's Compton or the Italian Mafia in Sicily. As far as war goes in Afghanistan, the Arghandab and neighbouring Panjwaye and Zahri Districts remain the toughest areas of fighting. From Arghandab it is an easy ride to Kandahar, where insurgents stage and conduct attacks against the Afghan government and Isaf forces in the country's second largest city.
As I fell back asleep, I couldn't help but trust that the Taliban would have the final answer. Since we started this embed on July 14th, their attacks have been as harassing a presence as the blazing hot, 45 degree Celsius temperatures. Rocket launches during our check in at the Kandahar Airfield. Small arms fire at the Forward Operating Base once we arrived. The unmistakable sound of roadside bomb detonations - every day since we've been here - somewhere in the tangle of Arghandab's lush orchards and mud villages.
The soldiers getting hit the hardest are a replacement unit near our perch at Forward Operating Base Sarkari Bagh. A few kilometres across the river, at Combat Outpost Nolen, a platoon of men from the 101st Airborne have gone to "combat ineffective" after just weeks of being here. They arrived in Arghandab in early July with 17 men. Only 9 remain.
Thus the late night calls from Spooky. Though pummelling the villages around Western Arghandab will hardly bring a solution, however good the vengeance feels.
The unit we've embedded with, Delta Company of the US Army's 82nd Airborne, 2-508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, seem to get that. They're short timers here in Arghandab.
They have just a few weeks left in their year-long deployment. They're not thinking much about policy discussions back in Washington over whether this country should split along the predominantly Pashtun South and more ethnically-mixed North. Soldiers we've joined out on patrol here have told me bluntly that as soon as the Isaf packs up "this country will go straight to civil war," which might anyhow bring that partitioned outcome, policymakers be damned.
For most US troops here, the goal is to get home alive, after so many dozens from their Regiment have been sent home crippled, or worse, from the Taliban's lethal tactics, supported by many here in the South.
This is a snapshot of the war being fought here in Arghandab. Men lacing up their boots to fulfil their required patrols, thankful to come back alive, falling asleep to the sound of exploding ordinance. They hope it's the Taliban blowing themselves up while seeding their bombs.
But oftentimes they learn the next day it is not. Whenever their Internet access is cut - which has been often, since summer fighting season began - they know the dead includes someone from within their unit, sprawled out in this area. It's a paltry measure aimed at preventing fellow members of their unit from emailing home about casualties before the families of the fallen have been formally and properly notified.
Thousands of miles away, no doubt Washington politicians and America's foreign policy elite are readying their minivans for August vacation or re-election campaigning.
The soldiers here feel out of sight-out of mind, and one has to wonder after visiting the Arghandab if they might be right.
From neighbouring barracks, the sombre metal lyrics have droned all day with Alice in Chains' "The Rooster." It aptly sums their sentiment, helping others either to sleep, or in this case, through one more night on patrol:
Ain't found a way to kill me yet
Eyes burn with stingin' sweat
Seems every path leads me to nowhere
Wife and kids, household pet
Army green was no safe bet
The bullets scream to me from somewhere
As we finish our day and settle down once again to sleep, the sound of Spooky returns. The bass shakes the ground as its cannons belch rounds. Bright orange chaff drops, as Spooky makes its slow left banking turn repeatedly while firing on the Arghandab villages. A full moon gives away the madness of it all.
Desperation, really, for a coalition that has little chance of winning after nine years of conflict.
-- Clayton Swisher
Update: This is a video report by Swisher from Arghandab as well.
SP 500 moment of truth
SP 500 chart analysis ;
1) My trading system is still in a "neutral" mode on both short & long term signals.
2) People, we are facing a key moment of truth .... expect a wild move !
3) Current channel pattern (down) suggests we are heading down ....
4) This last "tight channel" will be our moment of truth
5) Focus on those "key triggers"
6) Short term trigger : long above 1100
7) Long term signal : long above 1130
PS : a break below 1050 could cause some serious damage .... a break below 1010 .... mmm
Posted by Moise Levi at 7:57 PM
http://gicharts.blogspot.com/2010/07/sp-500-moment-of-truth.html
Forty-ton whale lands on yacht during Cape Town sailing trip
A couple who took a yacht for a quiet sailing trip were stunned when a 40-ton whale crash-landed on their boat off Cape Town.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7901247/Forty-ton-whale-lands-on-yacht-during-Cape-Town-sailing-trip.html
Teabaggers Welcome White Supremacist, running for governor in Arkansas
“I don’t want non-whites in my country in any form or fashion or any status,” he says.
Jul. 15, 2010 11:37 PM
Billy Roper is a write-in candidate for governor of Arkansas and an unapologetic white nationalist.
“I don’t want non-whites in my country in any form or fashion or any status,” he says.
Roper also is a tea party member who says he has been gathering support for his cause by attending tea party rallies.
Snips ~~
“We go to these tea parties all over the country,” Roper said. “We’re looking for the younger, potentially more radical people.”
Accusations about racism within the tea party have rumbled for a year, but they suddenly exploded this week with a resolution at the NAACP convention in Kansas City saying the party is attracting people and groups hostile to minorities.
More facts on 'Billy Roper'
Roper, a former organizer for the neo-Nazi National Alliance and now chairman of White Revolution, said he has been attending tea party rallies to recruit members and garner support for his 2010 write-in campaign for Arkansas governor.
Roper, a member of the ResistNet.com tea party, said in an interview that he sees tea parties as a base of support.
--------------------
Ron Wight, who stood with dozens of tea party activists at the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain in April, complaining about the Obama administration, its socialist agenda and being called a racist.
Those like him who complain about President Barack Obama are accused of racism, lamented the semi-retired music teacher from Lee’s Summit.
Then he added: “If I was a black man, I’d get down on my knees and thank God for slavery. Otherwise, I could be dying of AIDS now in Africa.”
------------------------
Another concern — even within the tea party — is the actions of some who are in leadership positions.
A photo circulating on the web shows Dale Robertson, founder and president of Houston-based TeaParty.org — also called the 1776 Tea Party — at a 2009 rally carrying a sign that said: “Congress = Slave Owner, Taxpayer = Niggar.”
Robertson also sent a fundraising e-mail that contained a picture depicting Obama as what some describe as a stereotypical black pimp with a thin mustache and wearing a zebra-striped fedora trimmed in white fur with a black feather on top.
----------
The Council of Conservative Citizens, a St. Louis-based group that promotes the preservation of the white race, has sponsored its own tea parties in some Southern states.
The council’s website has referred to blacks as “a retrograde species of humanity” and said non-white immigration would turn the country into a “slimy brown mass of glop.”
Gordon Baum, the group’s founder, told The Star that the council encourages members to participate in tea parties.
He described the tea party rallies as “mainly a white thing, because there’s not a whole lot of blacks that participate, and the ones that do get to be speakers.”
“They have black speakers, and sometimes when they can’t get one lined up, they just get some poor devil that’s on their side, black guy, in the audience and drag him up on stage,” he said.
---------------------
Some other white supremacy groups also see tea parties as recruiting grounds.
Roper, a former organizer for the neo-Nazi National Alliance and now chairman of White Revolution, said he has been attending tea party rallies to recruit members and garner support for his 2010 write-in campaign for Arkansas governor.
--------------
Watchdog fears
Those who monitor hate groups are worried about racism in the tea party.
“There are probably close to a couple thousand of these local tea party chapters now,” said Devin Burghart, vice president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which is finalizing a special report on tea parties.
“A number of these groups have been either thoroughly infiltrated by more hard-core folks, or at least those more hard-core folks are allowed to swim in that same ocean.”
As examples, Burghart cited Robertson, as well as some speakers promoted by tea parties, such as Red Beckman, an anti-Semite who was once evicted from his land by the Internal Revenue Service for refusing to pay taxes.
The racism isn’t coming only from the fringe, Burghart said.
“This is not just a nut showing up in the audience with a crazy sign,” Burghart said. “It’s someone who they vetted and decided to give a platform to.”
Zeskind said racist tendencies may be broader within the party than even critics realize.
------------------
“Liberals think these are all poor, angry, working-class whites, but that’s not true,” said Zeskind, who helped draft the NAACP resolution. “It’s a solid middle class. The belief that these are people hit by the economic downturn is a myth. It’s people who have what they want and don’t want it taken away. They’re defending white privilege. Their slogan is ‘We want our country back.’ ”
there's more
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/15/2087023/tea-party-rejects-racist-label.html
Tom Toles on America's "Captain Ahab-ism"
Pursuing al Qaeda, a.k.a. Moby Dick.
Are the teabaggers racist ?
Shadow Banking Is Still Bigger Than Traditional Banking
July 14, 2010
by Jacob Goldstein
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/07/14/128511585/shadow-banking-is-still-bigger-than-traditional-banking#more
In recent decades, a parallel universe sprung up in American finance — a new way for the finance industry to perform its traditional role of linking savers with borrowers. It's often referred to as the shadow banking system.
This system was at the heart of the financial crisis — and, according to a new paper from the New York Fed, it's still bigger than the traditional banking system.
In all, there's still some $16 trillion sloshing around the shadow-banking system, more than the entire gross domestic product of the U.S.
Shadow banking involves lots of the arcane stuff that came to define the crisis — securitized loans, CDOs, the repo market. But it also involves the money-market mutual funds that have long been familiar to ordinary investors, and that provide much of the cash that keeps the system flowing.
While the housing bust was the catalyst for the financial crisis, the acute phase of the crisis was defined by a run on the shadow banking system: All of the savers/lenders wanted their money back, all at once.
Banks can't survive when that happens — particularly if they're heavily dependent on short-term loans. That's why Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns ceased to exist.
In the heat of the crisis, to stop the run on the shadow banking system, the Federal Reserve issued guarantees to key parts of system, including money-market mutual funds.
Since then, there have been lots of questions about why the Fed and other regulators let the shadow banking system become so precarious in the first place.
In its new paper, the New York Fed argues that regulators should focus on what financial institutions actually do, rather than on whether or not institutions are officially designated as banks.
In other words, the paper suggests, shadow banking is subject to bank runs just like regular banking, and should be subject to some of the same kind of regulations.
The finance bill Congress is about to pass seems to dovetail with this conclusion: It gives officials the power to regulate non-bank financial institutions whose failure could cause widespread economic problems.
Hat Tip: Economist
Worried About The Deficit? Blame Health Care
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/06/30/128219374/worried-about-the-deficit-blame-health-care#more
by Jacob Goldstein
The big debate these days is when to move away from stimulus spending and toward cutting deficits.
But the debate is only about the when: Everybody agrees that some combination of higher taxes and lower spending needs to come sooner or later.
The latest long-term forecast is out today from the CBO. It's a reminder that, unless something changes, rising federal deficits in the coming years will be driven largely by government spending on health care.
(It's also a reminder that the big health-care bill didn't do much to change the basic economics of health care in this country — CBO estimates from last year look pretty much the same.)
A few graphs from the report tell the story.
First, here's government health-care spending as a share of GDP.
Health spending
Of course, an aging population is bound to drive higher health-care costs. But, as the next graph shows, it's not just aging — it's also the fact that the cost of health care is rising faster than the cost of almost everything else.
Source of health costs
Finally, here's a graph that shows the government's revenues (the dotted line) versus costs, over time. The CBO uses different models for these estimates; the estimate below is based on a model that "incorporates several changes to current law that are widely expected to occur."
The Billionaire And The Tire Repairman
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/06/29/128195395/the-tuesday-podcast-the-billionaire-and-the-tire-repairman
Wayne Disowney runs a tire repair shop in Kingston, Jamaica. He took scrap parts from an old Lincoln and turned them into a machine that retreads tires. It works great.
His shop is a shack. He's totally outside the formal economy. If he wanted to get a loan — say, to expand his business — he'd be out of luck.
Michael Lee-Chin's a billionaire. He's the chairman of a big Jamaican bank, a guy who flies in on a helicopter for an interview.
On today's Planet Money, we talk to both guys. And we explain why it's so rare for guys like Disowney to get loans from guys like Lee-Chin.
Michael Lee-Chin came by helicopter for his Planet Money interview.
The end of Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) ?
Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) chart analysis ;
1) Clear double top ("big picture")
2) Clear main trend broken (note that the last top was slighly higher than the previous one, that is why my trend line goes from the lowest low to the low prior to the higher high.
3) Fake move was quite clear, followed by a price/volume/news action
4) Ex support is now our key resistance channel
5) Possible oversold condition could bring in value players
Gut feeling ; The end of Microsoft ? Well, at least not yet ..... but this crisis will/could cause some serious damage to well known Tech names ......
The clear winner ? Apple Inc (AAPL) !
If Microsoft gets back over $28 in the next 2 weeks, I'll change my mind
Posted by Moise Levi at 9:15 AM
http://gicharts.blogspot.com/2010/05/end-of-microsoft-corporation-msft.html
The end of Microsoft Corporation (MSFT), part 2
Part 1 of the End of Microsoft (MSFT) was posted here
I urge you to pay attention to part 1 ; it shows you the "bigger picture"
Now back to this current chart of Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) ;
1) Fake moves are quite clear
2) Support break down (confirmed by volume action)
3) All patterns confirm a major SELL signal (stop loss @ $26 if you are shorting).
Posted by Moise Levi at 11:05 PM
http://gicharts.blogspot.com/2010/06/end-of-microsoft-corporation-msft-part.html
Bull or Bear Market Rules?
by Carl Swenlin
(This is an excerpt from Friday's blog for Decision Point subscribers.)
This week I wrote the following article for the Learning Center in response to a question from a subscriber.
We use the relationship of the 50-EMA and 200-EMA to define bull and bear markets. When the 50-EMA is above the 200-EMA, we consider the market to be in a long-term bull phase, and vice versa. This is an important definition because we will want to bias our medium-term analysis in favor of the long-term trend. As a reminder, we will often state that, "Bull (or Bear) market rules apply." In the general sense, this means that ambiguous medium-term situations will most likely resolve in the direction of the bull or bear phase, so we should perform our analysis and draw our conclusions with that in mind.
More specifically, let's look at the common occasion when the market is overbought or oversold. In a bull market oversold conditions are seen as a buying opportunity and will usually result in a rally to relieve the condition. When a bull market becomes overbought, it is not usually cause for concern, because corrections from these conditions are often small, and sometimes the market will continue to rally, while the overbought conditions are relieved internally.
The opposite is true with bear markets. Overbought conditions are most often a setup for a new down leg, while oversold conditions should be considered as being "thin ice," not a solid base of compression from which a rally will emerge. For example, buying into bear market declines is a dangerous practice.
Chart formations are another area where the long-term market bias should be considered. For example, a bearish head and shoulders pattern in a bull market is less likely to execute by violating the neckline, or, if it does execute, the decline may abort into an upside reversal before price reaches the minimum downside target. The same would be true of a bullish reverse head and shoulders in a bear market.
As you have no doubt concluded, the bull/bear bias that we apply to our analysis is a purely subjective judgment, albeit based on a purely objective EMA crossover. Further, the amount of confidence we have in the long-term bull/bear signal should be influenced by whether the 50/200-EMAs are converging or diverging. When the EMAs are diverging, it means that price is in front of both EMAs and they are confirming the strength of the move. When the EMAs are converging, it means that price is either between the EMAs or is running behind them. In either case, converging EMAs are a sign that price is performing in a direction opposite of the crossover signal.
Bottom Line: We should temper our expectations of technical information based upon the long-term trend of the market. In a bull market, expect bullish outcomes. In a bear market, expect bearish outcomes.
.......
This brings us to the present and begs the question of what rules should we be using now? On the chart below, we can see that the last 50/200-EMA crossover generated a long-term buy signal on 8/11/2009, so in the broadest context bull market rules apply. However, the 50- and 200-EMAs have been converging for a few months, and the price index is below them, so on a scale of zero to 100 (100 being strongest), I'd have to say that my bull market confidence level is about 60.
Even though my confidence level is getting low because of the convergence, it doesn't mean that a 50-200-EMA downside crossover is going to happen. Convergences happen (see the one in June 2008), and we have to ride them to their eventual resolution. That is not to say we would be holding stocks based solely on the long-term signal. The long-term signal is intended to provide a bull/bear market context within which we perform our analysis and draw conclusions. Our current medium-term market posture is still neutral based upon the Thrust/Trend Model.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Technical analysis is a windsock, not a crystal ball.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
http://birding.typepad.com/gulf/2010/06/oil-goes-from-zero-to-1040-on-grand-isle-overnight.html
As with the bird response, the clean up response seems just as chaotic and ineffective. From prison crews in Grand Isle lounging in the sand, or contractors here on Dauphin Island literally picking up oil with children's sandbox toy shovels and pales is infuriating.
A BP contract worker "playing" on the beach on Dauphin Island, 6/4/10
I could have cleaned the entire area that I surveyed for Ghost Crabs today, by myself in much less time than it took the crew of 15 workers ambling down the beach to not even come close to cleaning. In fact, I'm going to prove that tomorrow. Before our very eyes, our gulf is dying, fishermen are going broke, the tourism industry plummets and this is the response our nation is given. This is not a political rant, this is an impassioned appeal for sanity from someone who has seen the mismanagement of this disaster first hand. For far too many people working on this spill, it is a 9-5 job, a quick money grab when people who love this place and feel deeply for it and want to help are excluded under the premise that they are unqualified.
So, I will count the birds and the crabs, and pound my fist into the mattress in my air conditioned hotel room, and cry by myself in my truck for the thousands of birds that will die because of this, but mostly I cry for a nation that can seemingly allow it all to happen as long as they see the pretty images on the news of crews walking the beaches in their white suits, and the workers scrubbing "Lucky" the Pelican with their dawn detergent. An oil disaster on this scale is NOT like a plane crash or a failed mission to space. When a plane crash occurs, several hundred people who made the choice to be on that plane die, and their families are sad. When a deep water oil well explodes, millions of people are affected. People lose their jobs, fisheries disintegrate, ecosystems collapse, and perhaps millions of birds will lose their homes and food sources, not to mention the thousands that will be oiled and die directly. If anyone feels that I went overboard with this, I invite you to join me on a tour of the gulf, and please bring me a new computer with literoom pre-installed and a tent, there's only room for me in my truck.
Pattern of Poor Response Repeated in Alabama
06/06/2010
http://birding.typepad.com/gulf/2010/06/pattern-of-poor-response-repeated-in-alabama.html
I know that no person can be everywhere at one time, and that there is a limit to the resources that are accessible to any one entity. I also know that somewhere around 20,000 barrels of oil per day has been flowing for 46 days from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Well, and that every day NOAA planes survey the spill area and provide trajectory maps, which millions of people look at daily. These maps show the movement of surface oil, and coupled with local weather readings, they provide even a novice like me a way to predict where the oil will land next. This being the case, I am still flabbergasted that I encountered heavy oil in a very ecologically sensitive area completely ignored by response efforts.
Gerry Miller holds back the tears as she surveys the fresh oil on Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge
Today, I have seen more of the same lackadaisical, half-hearted and inefficient cleanup response, and I have met people across the entire coast of Alabama, who along with a growing movement of Americans, (I think) are appalled with the way the onshore response has been handled thus far.
Today, I have seen more of the same lackadaisical, half-hearted and inefficient cleanup response, and I have met people across the entire coast of Alabama, who along with a growing movement of Americans, (I think) are appalled with the way the onshore response has been handled thus far.
Contractors work 20 minutes on 15 minutes off, due to the heat. They will spend over four hours of the day under this tent.
I have seen hundreds of cleanup workers focused around high profile areas, in the public eye, spots that have very little oil, and I have seen heavy oil wash up in an off the beaten path location without any notice by the cleanup contractors. It's not that these areas are just out of sight, but they are also the most important and sensitive bird habitat in this region. The Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge is one of the only places that supports breeding Cuban Snowy Plovers in small numbers here. This subspecies of Snowy Plover has been on the decline for some time, and their population in 2000 was estimated at 500 birds (Brown 2000). It seems, once again, that it is more important for the public to see the showmanship of the work effort than it is for the work effort to respond to where it is most important and most efficient.
Snowy One of around 500 resident Gulf Snowy Plovers with oil caked on its feet today at Bon Secour.
This morning I found moderate amounts of small tar balls and nasty, oily, foam washing up on Dauphin Island. I paid close attention to the workers technique and speed, and re-cleaned an area already cleaned by four contract workers and recovered nearly a pound of tar balls in 25 meters that they had left behind. I also collected oily foam by hand from the beach that was neglected by the contract workers. A simple sorbent pad applied to this foam would clean the oil and leave behind the water, in a simple swipe. I know that it seems kind of ridiculous to expect that every drop of oil be cleaned on some of these beaches, but today on Dauphin Island it was totally possible, and the numbers of workers on site would have had no problem keeping up with it, especially if they spent some time out from under the break-time tents.
I then took the ferry across the mouth of Mobile Bay to Fort Morgan, where another major cleanup effort is taking place. The beach at Fort Morgan has a mix of tar balls and moderate liquid oiling. It also has a presence of hundreds of contract workers, and sealed off areas with Wackenhut Private Security Guards. This area is about 8 or so miles from where I entered the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge and found heavy oil and no sign of any response effort. What I did find at Bon Secour was a local in tears. A local who re-canted stories of using stethoscopes to listen to the hatching Loggerhead Sea Turtles on full moon August nights, and Snowy Plovers nesting on the beach. The subspecies of Snowy Plover here is in serious peril, and this spill could be the proverbial camelback straw for them. I saw a loan female scurrying along the shoreline in between gooey gobs of oil, and her feet were already caked with the sticky substance.
I am at a loss, and don't know how to affect this situation for the better. All I know is that I see birds and their habitat taking more of a toll than is necessary for the sake of rules, regulations and net profit gain, once again.
Gulf Shores, Alabama is just 10 miles to the east from here, and moderate amounts of oil washed up on its shores today as well. One of the most alarming things that I saw here was that the oil was sticking onto and around mats of Sargassum, a type of seaweed. Sargassum is a common and normal component of the wrack line, and a very important resource for shorebirds. When this seaweed is on the shore most shorebirds concentrate their feeding efforts around this stuff, as many organisms are in and around it. Since the oil is sticking directly to this stuff, I fear that shorebirds like Ruddy Turnstones, Semipalmated Sandpipers and even the Snowy Plover will be more likely to be exposed to the oil. It is of utmost importance to get this oil off of the sand as it comes in, especially as it seems that the people power is here, just poorly managed.
Brown Pelicans cruise over oil soaked mats of Sargassum, as it washes toward shore.
At the main beach in Gulf Shores, I had 3 oiled birds; one Willet, one Ruddy Turnstone, and one Laughing Gull. At the state pier, I saw a Laughing Gull roosting on a sand dune that was pretty heavily oiled, and not flying very well.
I called these birds in to the BP hotline in Texas, and after a lesson in southern Alabama geography, the phone operator hung up, saying that she would print out a report which would go to her supervisor. When we hung up, I was highly discouraged, but shortly after, I received a phone call from someone in Alabama who then referred the case to a US Fish and Wildlife Agent who then called me back promptly, as they were on their way to check out the situation. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised, but happy with the response, and hope that it's indicative of a strong structure in place to deal with the potential of large amounts of oil-affected birds. Fingers crossed.
SP 500 resistance
http://gicharts.blogspot.com/2010/06/sp-500-reversal.html
$USD Dollar Index chart analysis
http://gicharts.blogspot.com/2010/06/us-dollar-index-chart-analysis_14.html
1) Uptrend is "intact"
2) Was overbought ...
3) See that red trend (Parabolic) ? Never liked those (I prefer an up the stairs pattern)
4) Expecting a sideway trade (see yellow levels )
5) Green arrow = Expected scenario
UNG
United States Natural Gas Fund, LP (UNG) chart analysis ;
1) Clear break out above this tight channel
2) Volume increase on the break out confirms bullish move
3) Pull back was expected, will price re test the recent resistance level ?
4) Go long safely above $8.25
Posted by Moise Levi
http://gicharts.blogspot.com/2010/06/united-states-natural-gas-fund-lp-ung.html
Election Cycle Returns
http://www.decisionpoint.com/tac/ORD.html
Below is the performance chart for the market for each quarters of the four year Presidential cycle, (Courtesy www.Hussmanfund.com). The weakest period in this four year cycle starts in the second quarter of the second year (Starts now) and runs into October of this second year. What is interesting is that the strongest performance for the market starts in the four quarter of the second year and runs for over year. To get that kind of rally the sentiment might be pushed to extreme in the opposite direction that was recorded in April (Extreme bullish sentiment). In a nutshell the cycle suggests downtrend into September, October and then bullish for 12 months starting around October.
AI
