No one died this time, so they've got that going for them.

This video is a couple of years old, but it reminded me of the story The Stranger ran last month about the way (or one way, at least) that Jiffy Lube misleads its customers. The difference between that story and the one below: Jiffy Lube executives evaded the TV reporter, but agreed to talk with The Stranger, and fully admitted that the bullshit was happening. ("We want to thank you for identifying that opportunity to improve our customer service," they said.)

As Goldy wrote in a post earlier today to Occupy Seattle's media team: "It's more effective to spin the facts than to ignore them."

Maybe the TV story below taught the Jiffy Lube higher-ups that lesson.

Thanks to Slog tipper Ned.

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BP last week was awarded its first drilling permit since last year's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that eventually leaked an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. The permit allows for drilling in the Kaskida prospect, a huge area nearly 250 miles south of Lafayette, La. It will be in 6,000 feet of water—deeper than the ill-fated Macondo well whose blowout triggered last year's spill.

Via

Anchorage Daily News:

BP announced Tuesday it is suspending work on the most critical piece of its $1.5 billion Liberty oil field development in the Beaufort Sea — a massive drilling rig.

BP said it needs to begin a broad engineering review of the rig to address a number of problems that have arisen during the rig's construction on a man-made island.

"We've gotten to the point that we need to step back, take a time out and make sure that all of these systems, including some critical safety systems, are just like they need to be," said BP spokesman Steve Rinehart.

....Liberty is considered one of the most advanced deep-water drilling projects in the world because it requires drilling the world's longest wells — eight miles long and two miles deep. It's the biggest oil development project under way in Alaska.

It's a sweat lodge drum circle or something!!!

Via the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — Tests performed before the deadly blowout of BP's oil well in the Gulf of Mexico should have raised doubts about the cement used to seal the well, but the company and its cementing contractor used it anyway, investigators with the president's oil spill commission said Thursday.

It's the first finding from the commission looking into the causes of the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and led to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. And it appears to conflict with statements made by Halliburton Co., which has said its tests showed the cement mix was stable. The company instead has said BP's well design and operations are responsible for the disaster.

Halliburton reportedly tested the cement mixture four times in February and April but only one of their tests—the last one—proved that the mixture would hold. BP didn't even have the results of this successful test on hand when the blowout occurred—just an earlier test that showed the cement could fail.

Oh, man:

The Coast Guard is responding to a report of a rig explosion and fire "and people in the water'' in the Gulf of Mexico south of Vermilion Bay, authorities said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Casey Ranel said the rig is around 90 miles south of Vermilion Bay and that a helicopter earlier today reported that it was in fire "and that there was smoke and there were people in the water.''

Holy fucking shit. Maybe we should work on alternative forms of energy, maybe? For real this time?

(Thanks to Slog tipper Brian.)

Front page, NYT:

TEXAS CITY, Tex. — While the world was focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP refinery here released huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the air that went unnoticed by residents until many saw their children come down with respiratory problems.

For 40 days after a piece of equipment critical to the refinery’s operation broke down, a total of 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including the carcinogen benzene, poured out of the refinery.

What's BP stand for again? Butterfingers Petroleum? (Huh-yuk, huh-yuk.)

This is how we do it!

Incoming BP chief executive Bob Dudley has said it is time to scale back some parts of the oil spill clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico.

BBC:

Oil from BP's damaged Gulf of Mexico well is clearing from the sea surface faster than expected, scientists say, 100 days after the disaster began.

Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said much oil had been "biodegraded by naturally occurring bacteria".

So cold:

BP announced Tuesday that Robert Dudley, an American, will become the company's first non-British CEO on Oct. 1, when he replaces Tony Hayward, widely criticized for his handling of the Gulf oil spill.

The Nation:

In the first few days after BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight.

....Hiring prison labor is more than a way for BP to save money while cleaning up the biggest oil spill in history. By tapping into the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get workers who are not only cheap but easily silenced—and they get lucrative tax write-offs in the process.

CNN:

Child witchcraft allegations are increasing in parts of Africa, as thousands of children have been attacked, beaten or killed, according to a new report.

...The accused children are mostly boys, ages 8 to 14... [and] often suffer from extreme physical or psychological violence as a result of being branded a "child witch," the report said.

Exorcisms that include pouring petrol into children's eyes or ears, and forcing them to swallow various substances have been reported by researchers as ways to "cleanse" the accused.

I-1053's top contributors are all oil refineries—Equilon donated $50,000, ConacoPhilips donated $50,000, Tesoro Corporation donated $50,000, and, most recently, BP donated $50,000. Eyman explains that "local businesses don't like taxes, either, because they're forced to pass those increases straight on to their customers." BP, Equilon, ConacoPhilips, and Tesoro Corporation all have refineries in Washington.

Continue reading >>

All day long, Americablog has been picking apart a promotional photo from BP showing the alleged BP Deepwater Horizon command center. It turns out that the entire command center seems to have been composed—and composed poorly—in Photoshop.

This is a minor scandal as far as this whole crisis is concerned but it's emblematic of something larger, I think: BP is too goddamned cheap to even fake this properly—all they'd have to do if they wanted to pull one over on us was hire some actors and build a phony crisis response set. If they can't even be bothered to get this right, their contempt for the American people is probably bottomless.

Jesus Fuck:

Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week.

It's a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights. And CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it "very easy to hide incompetence or failure."

The Coast Guard order states that "vessels must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law."

Anderson Cooper breaks down the things reporters can't cover:

Greedy corporations, environmental degradation, and now this:

The tanker flipped over Friday afternoon, said Omalanga, the country's minister of communications. It was attempting to overtake a bus in Sange, in South Kivu province, on the country's eastern border.

When oil began to spill from the overturned tanker, local residents attempted to collect the oil. One was smoking a cigarette, causing the tanker to explode, Omalanga said.

The largest group of victims had been sitting in a bar near the accident site watching the World Cup match between the Netherlands and Brazil, he said.

The spill is not only destroying a major body of water but also exposing superhuman levels of greed:

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform set off the worst oil spill at sea in American history, it was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Registering there allowed the rig’s owner to significantly reduce its

The owner, Transocean, moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, maneuvers that also helped it avoid taxes.

At the same time, BP was reaping sizable tax benefits from leasing the rig. According to a letter sent in June to the Senate Finance Committee, the company used a tax break for the oil industry to write off 70 percent of the rent for Deepwater Horizon — a deduction of more than $225,000 a day since the lease began.

With federal officials now considering a new tax on petroleum production to pay for the cleanup, the industry is fighting the measure, warning that it will lead to job losses and higher gasoline prices, as well as an increased dependence on foreign oil.

But an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.

And of all this time, and such a waste of time, you god-fearing people were worried sick about men cock-sucking men, men marrying men, women munching women, women marrying women. You worried about all these non-issues and ridiculed those who pointed in a completely different and more meaningful direction: the real issues of stagnant wages, unregulated corporations, the protection of the environment. Alabama, get your mind off men sucking cock for a minute and look out of your window: Welcome to the real.

With a cameo by the Yellow Submarine-era Beatles:

This video is pretty slow and redundant at the beginning, but there's some great dumb-people watching in there!