Much to the chagrin of the Republican Party, a clear victory was scored today for the Obama Administration as British Petroleum executives have agreed to create a $20 billion dollar fund from which to pay the victims of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Though one administration official bluntly stated that the $20 billion is not a cap, and that if legitimate claims arise that exceed the holdings in the independently managed fund they too will be paid out by BP.

Now. we’ll have to watch how the fund’s manager, Kenneth Feinberg will handle the payouts. Known as Obama’s “pay-czar” Feinberg was the man who oversaw the payments that went to the vicitims of the 9-11 WTC disaster, and who was also put in charge of setting salary limits for companies that received money from the $700 billion government bailouts.

For Rand Paul and his Tea Party, and the GOP’s John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, forcing BP to pay for their mishap is a crushing blow, as they support the unregulated free market operations of the private sector. One could only guess that their answer to who pays for BP’s debacle would ultimately come from us, the tax payers, since there is no one else in line.

Though, it seems to me that it’s impossible to put a price tag of all that has already been lost, and all that will be lost as the crisis continues spilling into the Gulf by tens of thousands of gallons every day. It may just turn out to when we get a clear view of BP’s Tony Hayward shuffling around like Steve Martin in “The Jerk”, searching for his remote control and his paddle-ball while repo-men remove his belongings from his mansion. At least we can hope.

Carly Fiorina, the recent primary winner and Republican candidate for a California Senate seat currently occupied by Barbara Boxer, is donning the clothes of the anti-GOP, as she believes the Obama Administration should’ve played a greater role in government regulation over offshore drilling.

In an interview with right wing media outlet Newsmax, Fiorina told the reporter that the Obama Administration was “asleep at the switch” and according to the report “failed to monitor offshore drilling activities properly.” With her constituents almost wholly against regulating the free market which BP is a part of, Fiorina has slipped right into the murky waters that may leave her alienated from those who just elected her to represent them as their Congresswoman.

As ex-CEO of tech giant Hewlett Packard, Fiorina has expressed her beliefs that our government should be run like a business. Although her track record at the helm of HP was disastrous. Under her 5 year watch the company lost 30,000 American jobs either to “lay-offs” or to overseas outsourcing, and cut the company’s stock value by 60%.

A 62 foot tall, 40 foot wide statue of Jesus erected on the property of the Solid Rock evangelical church in Monroe, Ohio burned to the ground after it was struck by lightning Monday night. The statue, dubbed Touchdown Jesus by locals, was the concept of the wife of Lawrence Bishop, the owner of the 4,000 member church. She claimed that she intended the $250,000 figure to be a beacon of hope and salvation, though to many passersby it was nothing more than alarming. 

For the gangs of exclusory Christians – those who claim their god caused the devastation in Haiti because of a pact the people made with the devil; the same who believe Hurricane Katrina was their god’s wrath sent to destroy the sin-tainted streets of New Orleans (even though the “evil” French Quarter was one of the only sections of the city that was largely untouched by the deluge), this must be another one of those head-scratching moments. Especially when we consider the “Hollywood Hustler” sign advertising a porn shop that is near the statue was untouched during the storm. This must be one of those moments when if asked why, they could only answer, “God works in mysterious ways.”

Photo courtesy of AP

When asked about volume with regards to anything the non-statistician/“normal Joe” usually answers, “Tons!” when it’s a large amount or, “Not much,” when it is indeed not much. I would think that most people who are seriously concerned over the situation right now in the Gulf of Mexico would answer, “Tons!” because a precise figure is needed only by those who have either given up hope, and so now think it would be interesting to find out exactly how much of BP’s crude continues to flow into the waters of the Western Hemisphere, or by those who have forgotten how to think about the “here and now”.

On Sunday, 54 days into what is amounting to a global disaster, engineers from British Petroleum deployed deepsea sensors so they could produce a more accurate number of how much oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Initially BP officials measured the daily flow-rate between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels (42,000 and 210,000 US gallons respectively). It wasn’t long before “outside experts” got involved for that number to be pushed aside, however, and the tally has continued to grow ever since. For a long time it was nothing more than a guessing game, factored largely by the video captured of the endless spew from the broken pipe one mile beneath the water’s surface.

At the start of last week BP had pinpointed a number as the collection cap was securing the oil at a rate of 630,000 gallons a day. A sense of relief rippled, even through the relentless statisticians. But the measure was short-lived, however, as an unknown amount was still seen leaking from around the capture point of the broken pipe. From this point new estimates of the “new” amount being leaked came in, registering at approximately “hundreds of thousands” of gallons per day. Of course, the vague figure still left the curious-minded without that precise figure.

The most recent estimate reported between 760,000 gallons to 1.8 million gallons continues to pump from the broken pipe each day. Though with the assistance of these deepsea sensors – that seemingly have been left to sit in storage up to this point, perhaps along side of some contraption also idly awaiting to be put to use, called a Miracle Plug – we’re finally going to have an accurate number of gallons, or barrels still leaking from the floor of the Gulf. As if it really matters.

In 1992, the city of Chicago experienced a flood in which 250 million gallons of water leaked into a tunnel that was once used in the early 1920’s for the transportation of coal. It happened when construction workers were driving new pilings into the Chicago River. The hammering caused a weakening of the tunnel walls which cracked under the pressure, and resulted in the flooding of the intricate network of tunnels, passageways, and basements throughout Chicago’s downtown “Loop”.

In both cases, the errors were the fault of humans wholly ignorant to what effect their operations were having on the surrounding workspace. The difference in reaction was drastic, however, in the sense that the officials in Chicago knew they needed to focus on nothing but plugging the hole. They called in truckloads of cement, rocks, and dirt in their hasty attempts at stopping the leak. At one point they even tried closing off the hole with truckloads of mattresses. Yes, it sounds silly, almost comical that people would take the tampon method of plugging the leak, and figure that a mass amount of mattresses might do the trick, but we have to give them the utmost credit, simply because they spared nothing in their attempts to plug the hole. The point is, nobody sat around trying to figure out the flow-rate of the water as it passed through the city’s underground, only how to stop the flow completely.

To this point we’ve watched high definition video of the flow coming from the floor of the Gulf, and now we know we can do a fairly decent job of surgically manipulating the area as we witnessed a submersible clip the pipe with a fixed set of shears. We’ve watched BP set “hats” and “caps” on top of the pipe, and all the while oil flows steadily toward the shores of the United States and beyond, yet they still can’t seem to find the urgency in which to drop in everything that isn’t buoyant to try plugging the leak.

There’s a point when we should be able to discount the priorities of someone who seemingly lacks the urgency necessary to quell a situation, and simply shove them out of the way. These people who need an exact figure to measure whether or not we need to take immediate action in any potential dire situation, should be forced to remain sidelined until the situation has been remedied. It seems too often they need to be reminded of the situation at hand, and what is most important. Sure, we can keep them at the sidelines where they could be used to simply answer questions such as, “Have we tried stuffing it full of mattresses?” In the meantime, take a backseat while we panic our way to dumping everything including the kitchen sink to dam the flow from the hole BP punched into the earth, where really no human should be allowed to play.

When city officials and heads of state bid for global sporting events, it seems the desire of winning titles such as “home of the 2010 World Cup”, becomes the priority over the welfare of the public who live and work in the shadows of the sporting venues. With the kickoff of the World Cup 2010 today in South Africa, the news coming from the country that has been socially, politically, and economically ravaged for many years is that this trend of popularity over human dignity continues to thrive.

The inhabitants of Mataffin – a district of shanties in the northeastern town of Nelspruit, with many who live everyday without electricity, running water, and who use any hollow vessel they might have to scoop water from mud puddles, watched on helplessly as their two primary schools were closed to their children, and taken over by construction engineers for the zoning of a 46,000 seat soccer stadium. Decked in safari flare with zebra striped seating, and being suspended by 18 metal structures stretched to resemble giraffes, the nearly $150 million Mbombela Stadium will be host to 4 cup matches totaling 6 hours of soccer. Without a national team of their own to use the stadium once the games have ended, the townspeople will be left with a monstrous reminder of an unattainable life of opportunity, and waste; a hollow super-structure born from hollow promises.

When the land owners sold the grounds, the people in Mataffin were told they would be given improved infrastructure, with new roads, electricity, plumbing, and new schools for their children. Instead they spent three years learning in boxes like trailers made of tin before a new school was built. The roads were never built, and the electricity and plumbing were never installed.

James Maseko, deputy chairman of the ward committee for Mataffin, said, “The authorities still say they will keep their promises, but the community is not sure it’s going to happen. When tourists visit, I think they will try to keep them away from the poor. I feel bad about that because this situation needs to be improved. The only way to improve it is to let others in the world see the situation.”

The situation worsened, however, when the people started holding public protests. One instance, in which the police interfered, turned violent as the protesters burned tires and a police car was torched. The police fired rubber bullets into the crowd, wounding many elderly and children who mingled amongst the protesters. Nhlesiphi Mathebula, an elderly woman whose only crime was to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, was beaten with the butt of a police officer’s rifle, as she stood at her front gate concerned and only trying to spot her grandchildren. And as if this wasn’t ugly enough, the violence spiraled further as a string of murders of people related to the situation were later uncovered.

Sadly for the hopes of Mr. Maseko the world is largely unaware of the situation, because the news that came from the host nation as they prepared for the World Cup 2010 was hardly reported upon. Besides, most people have grown so accustomed to the inhumanity that seems to plague the African continent that most reports pass right through our consciousness like water through a sieve. And many of the neighborhoods that lie adjacent to the other stadiums hosting World Cup matches scattered across South Africa were by no means immune to the pre-games strife.

Just outside of Cape Town is a shanty-town called Blikkiesdorp – the “tin can town”, to where thousands of the urban poor are being forcefully relocated so as to avoid being a blight on the landscape en route to Cape Town Stadium, where 9 cup matches are scheduled. Four families must share one toilet and a water tap in Blikkiesdorp, and those who refuse to move there are under the threat of imprisonment. Though ensured by the authorities that the relocation would only be temporary, many of the inhabitants have been there for years now, without any sign they’ll be able to return from where they came.

The practice of disguising reality is common amongst nations holding sporting events that will be broadcast worldwide. Who could forget the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, when the authorities grew embarrassed by the homeless people living in the vicinity of the event-grounds, and so used some of their budget money to purchase suits and ties in which to disguise them. If only the officials in South Africa could be as peacefully humiliating.

Many Christians believe that morality is born from the 10 Commandments, and that those who do not have a personal relationship with their God cannot possibly be moral individuals. This might be the reason that members of the Texas School Board feel it’s perfectly acceptable to indoctrinate their children into the school of fear and superstition; ultimately training their minds to be void of reason.

Thanks to global information being available with the click of a finger, the issue of “fear”, that is the driving force behind the search for an individual’s spiritual connection to the almighty unknown, is dissolving further each day. This comes even as the fear of our disruptive planet is growing with every natural and man-made disaster that is brought into our living rooms by way of the television each night.

Most people who hold faith in gods will argue against the notion that they harbor any “fear”; they know what they believe in, and that actually provides comfort for them rather than fear. But if it’s not from fear, then why believe in gods; why not let curiosity thrive and allow the search for truth to continue? With this question we are brought right back to “fear”, for those who use “God” as their answer to what is still a mystery to us, either fears the unknown, or fears science finding another instance where God is not the answer. The thought of dying without fulfilling a life’s purpose is a monumental fear of many. Likewise, dying without having someplace to go is as equally significant. Without the careful, and directing hand of a god these things are simply unattainable.

Now, in the age of hyper-information, we are given the opportunity to learn what the world outside the small town is all about. We no longer have to be led by spiritual guides as we learn that morals are not god’s gift, but purely instinctual. The global movement of Humanists is a perfect example of people living perfectly moral lives without gods. Of course, there will always be those who have chemical imbalances, and who might very well have an altered view of the right and wrong ways to treat all things great and small. And those effected by these imbalances are woven throughout every belief system, since they are essentially woven throughout the genes of the individual.

In some unfortunate parts of our nation, these people who have a great fear of science’s ever-progression toward truth, are fighting back tooth and nail. The really don’t want to know that their lives are without purpose, and that everything they’ve always held as truth was entirely false. They don’t want to learn that it’s a fact that we share a common ancestry with monkeys, and sure don’t want to  learn that the more liberally-minded Americans were right all along. They are so fearful of what they may learn that they chose to break commandment by lying to their own children, so they’ll remain fearfully ignorant to reality.

Just last week we watched the Texas School Board - mostly made up of people whose experience as historians is zilch - reform our children’s history books so their kids will be kept from learning factual information. They have the Separation of Church and State – specifically implied within our First Amendment rights so as to keep government out of churches, and churches out of government – nagging at their beliefs, because they want to instill only their religion into our laws. They want nothing more than to close off everyone’s mind to everything but their own beliefs, and influence a nation to be as lost on the road of progress as they are. 

Our forefathers knew one thing; they would form our government to be free of religious preference. Now they’re being demonized by “educators” of our nation’s history. To keep people of a specific religion from having the same access to “All men are created equal,” the Christian right would gladly rewrite the Constitution, as we saw in their support for George W. Bush’s pen when it struck Habeas Corpus from the writ.

If the Texas School Board members held no fear of the legitimacy of their beliefs, they would not fight back so hard against knowledge, and would simply instill God into their children by taking them to Sunday School, as opposed to creating laws that force their dogma into the Public School.

Of course, members of the Tea Party movement throughout America could never connect their views and desires to the support of Venezuela’s own Hugo Chavez. To reach that conclusion it takes thinking through a short series of steps and the utilization of common sense.

The anti-Democratic crowd of Tea Partiers share in common the anti-government regulation, pro free-market sentiment that has spread throughout this nation like an infestation of Kudzu. They believe that anything the government touches dissolves into corruption, and though they will never cease to vote for “new” government officials – as if the new breed of politicians who hold a disdain for all things Washington will make Washington disappear by disbanding the house and senate, before heading home to collect unemployment… or something. They hold the “right to free operation” for corporations very dear to their heart. Essentially, they give full support to foreign corporations running our country – British Petroleum, Spanish owned highways and tolls, Chinese owned ports, Chavez’s Citgo….

Though Wall Street banks were mostly responsible for crashing our economy, and sending it into the toilet-flush like a bunch of Scrubbing Bubbles, Tea Partiers believe the same bankers should be free to operate as they choose to, and mostly rail against the recently passed regulations set for our financial institutions. They protest the regulation of the healthcare industry who charge so high a fee for their services that people are literally left homeless in order to afford to stay alive. Likewise, the Tea Party members believe in leaving the oil industry alone to operate as freely as they want to. The Tea Party hero of Kentucky, Rand Paul, stated that President Obama is un-American because he chastised BP for causing a global crisis.  They essentially believe in allowing the free-market to operate away from the prying eyes of the Federal Government, thinking that once the Feds move in all will go awry.

Tea Party supporters seem to be blind to the reality in front of their eyes – the true workings of the unregulated free market as their own shorelines become drenched in BP’s product. Of course, it isn’t BP’s fault because BP executives told us it wasn’t. They blamed it on Transocean – the rig’s operators. Transocean blamed it on Halliburton for installing faulty parts, who blamed it on BP, and just when we thought the round-robin of fingerpointing was over, we come to find out that BP flatly lied to the public with their original estimation of 5,000 barrels flowing from the Gulf of Mexico daily by over 8 times the amount. America is left with a saturated shoreline – decimated wetlands, and tributaries, and a hope that “…maybe by August,” BP will have the leak capped. They’re unregulated free-market giants who are without enough integrity to accept responsibility. Since they have the ability to push blame elsewhere, even the individuals at fault will never be held accountable for their actions, as that would indicate an admittance to internal failure. Why would they want to hold anyone accountable anyway? Why should they? They’re backed by a large body of politicians and their tea-bag adorned constituents.

One of these giants in the American oil industry is Citgo. The oil company that could be likened to being the Wal-Mart of gas stations is owned by the Venezuelan government, namely Hugo Chavez. Being the dictator that he is, Chavez is despised by the portion of the American poplulation who thinks we have a right in telling other nations how to operate. If a nation’s people are content enough to live beneath the rule of a monarch, Tea Partiers freely speak out against it – whether or not the people there are happy. If a person’s religious rites require they wear a garment that is alien to us, and we find that there are laws in their nation that enforce those religious rules, the right wing portion of America feels they have a right to condemn it. Just last year we watched the upheaval of the Iranian citizens finally take to the streets to speak out against what they deemed as a fraudulent election. The right-wing of America – the “let them take care of themselves” crowd – thought it would’ve been better if Barack Obama joined in, and voiced his opinion in support of the people.  

With Hugo Chavez, it isn’t difficult to spur a fight with a member of the Tea Party, simply by mentioning the dictators name with even a hint of favorable tonality. They’ll tell you in a breath that they’d never stop to refuel at a Citgo, yet they rail against President Obama for even mentioning a word about any free-market operation such as Citgo. They see it as the Feds inching toward the thought of free-market regulations. In the way many liberals wanted to see every one of Bush Jr.’s policies fail, so too would the Tea Party members back a corporation’s right to free operation over any federal decision if for only to see the president fail in his endeavors. Unwittingly, this brings them to directly support the Venezuelan dictator and his wholly owned Citgo.

I wonder, if Obama decided that Citgo was no longer allowed to operate in the United States, would the Tea Partiers cry out against forced removal of free enterprise? In the way that we’ve seen the conservatives try and guard the financial industries that drove our economy into the sewer, we could only guess they would.

A team of American scientists, led by Dr. Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute in Maryland and California, have successfully developed the first synthetic “living” cell, and have set what many are calling a “scientific landmark”.

By injecting what the scientists referred to as synthetic “software” into a host cell, the cell’s qualities take on the role of whatever the software is commanding. Because the cell is self-replicating copies are innumerable; eventually becoming programmable bacteria. The bacteria can be programmed to suck Carbon Dioxide from our air, or to turn into a biological agent to be used in a bomb. It could be fashioned to become fuel, and we can imagine that it won’t take long before they formulate cancer-cell seeking creatures.   

As expected, the news immediately released a backlash from the “bioethics” community, and rightfully so. Not for any reason that “ethics” can even come into play – it shouldn’t be about duelling morality, but about the many instances where we’ve seen scientific means used to quell natural problems fail miserably.

France once introduced foreign plants called Spartina Alterniflora to strengthen their shorelines and protect them from erosion, only to see them flourish to an unmanageable amount. The plants decimated the marine life, and they have been struggling to find a solution to the problem ever since. Many people have a valid argument against vaccinations, for the fear that injecting our children with Polio does nothing more than keep Polio around, and those vaccines that contain mercury, and its potential relation to Autism. There’s the Cane Toad in Australia, and the Tall Fescue. The introduction of invasive species was never the intention. But the intentional introduction of invasive species is exactly the end result.   

Have scientists taken one step closer to inventing computerized worker bugs, or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster? The answer to that is yet to be realized. In the meantime, we should probably demand the invention of the Off switch.

Photo Courtesy of Marcel Marchon

Phil Pagano, the Chief Executive of Chicago’s rail system, Metra, committed suicide this morning when he stepped in front of one of his company’s own commuter trains.

Only one week after the start of an investigation into a $56,000 bonus he received on top of his $260,000 salary, the executive director for 20 years took his life in a manner that would make Franz Kafka’s Officer in his classic “In the Penal Colony” smirk.

Friday morning’s “emergency meeting”, in which his investigation was to be discussed, was cancelled by Metra executives shortly after his body was identified.

On this “National Day of Prayer”, I wonder exactly what so many people pray for. World Peace, or perhaps a sick loved one to finally find comfort in healing? Is some child praying for a new doll, while across the nation another is praying for a new bike? I can only imagine that the focus of these prayers are as numerous and vastly different from one another as the people doing the praying.

For the boxer who thanks God for helping him knockout his opponent, and the basketball player who is praying for a playoff victory, I have to wonder why many aren’t praying to give thanks to this god – granter of all touchdown passes, and bulls-eyes. I wonder how many are praying to be sent home alive from the middle-east, and how many have been praying endlessly for the miracle of a limb to regrow in place of the one that was blown off along some roadside in Iraq. Likewise, I wonder how many are praying for a plague to afflict those of a different religion, or of no religion at all.

In recent news we’ve heard of a new War on Religion, when a court in Wisconsin deemed the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. Those most upset by the news often complain about their rival religions, and show tremendous fear and uncertainty over the future of their faith. It is understood that many of them believe the National Day of Prayer to be more exclusive to their own religion, especially when directly faced with the prospect of praying along side of someone with opposing views on the subject.

In 2003 the American Humanist Association along with the Washington Area Secular Humanists co-sponsored the National Day of Reason, and set the celebratory date for May 6th – right in the face of those seeking national recognition for praying to omnipotent beings. Though many might see this as a petty act of defiance, some of us view it as more of an instructional alternative. Truly the Day of Reason should be recognized moreso, if only because there are more people in this nation than there are religious people. Since freethinkers generally hold the “come one come all” stance, and openly invite all walks of earthly life, this is a celebration for all as opposed to some. It is a day to recognize the power of humanity when it works toward a common goal, as opposed to breaking off into exclusive groups and worshipping god(s) that are only your own.