This Is Ok

Janis

Holy Mother

Monday Morning Smile

Feed Your Head

The isolated vocal track from ‘White Rabbit’ illustrates Grace Slick's powerful voice

April 20 - In History

2010

Massive oil spill begins in Gulf of Mexico

On this day in 2010, an explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, kills 11 people and triggers the largest offshore oil spill in American history. The rig had been in the final phases of drilling an exploratory well for BP, the British oil giant. By the time the well was capped three months later, an estimated 4.9 million barrels (or around 206 million gallons) of crude oil had poured into the Gulf.

The disaster began when a surge of natural gas from the well shot up a riser pipe to the rig’s platform, where it set off a series of explosions and a massive blaze. Of the 126 people on board the nearly 400-foot-long Deepwater Horizon, 11 workers perished and 17 others were seriously injured. The fire burned for more than a day before the Deepwater Horizon, constructed for $350 million in 2001, sank on April 22 in some 5,000 feet of water.

Before evacuating the Deepwater Horizon, crew members tried unsuccessfully to activate a safety device called a blowout preventer, which was designed to shut off the flow of oil from the well in an emergency. Over the next three months, a variety of techniques were tried in an effort to plug the hemorrhaging well, which was spewing thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf each day. Finally, on July 15, BP announced the well had been temporarily capped, and on September 19, after cement was injected into the well to permanently seal it, the federal government declared the well dead. By that point, however, oil from the spill had reached coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, where it would inflict a heavy toll on the region’s economy, particularly the fishing and tourism industries, and wildlife. Scientists say the full extent of the environmental damage could take decades to assess.

In January 2011, a national investigative commission released a report concluding the Deepwater Horizon disaster was “foreseeable and preventable” and the result of “human error, engineering mistakes and management failures,” along with ineffective government regulation. In November 2012, BP agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges brought against it by the U.S. Justice Department, and pay $4.5 billion in fines. Additionally, the Justice Department charged two BP managers who supervised testing on the well with manslaughter, and another company executive with making false statements about the size of the spill. It is anticipated that BP, which has set up a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the spill, will pay billions of dollars more in environmental penalties in the future.




1980
Castro announces Mariel Boatlift
On April 20, 1980, the Castro regime announces that all Cubans wishing to emigrate to the U.S. are free to board boats at the port of Mariel west of Havana, launching the Mariel Boatlift. The first of 125,000 Cuban refugees from Mariel reached Florida the next day. The boatlift was precipitated...

1777
New York adopts state constitution
The first New York state constitution is formally adopted by the Convention of Representatives of the State of New York, meeting in the upstate town of Kingston, on this day in 1777. The constitution began by declaring the possibility of reconciliation between Britain and its former American colonies as remote and...


2008
Danica Patrick becomes first woman to win Indy race
On April 20, 2008, 26-year-old Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 at Twin Ring Montegi in Montegi, Japan, making her the first female winner in IndyCar racing history. Danica Patrick was born on March 25, 1982, in Beloit, Wisconsin. She became involved in racing as a young girl and as...


Cold War
1978
Korean Air Lines jet forced down over Soviet Union
Soviet aircraft force a Korean Air Lines passenger jet to land in the Soviet Union after the jet veers into Russian airspace. Two people were killed and several others injured when the jet made a rough landing on a frozen lake about 300 miles south of Murmansk.The jet was on...


Crime
1999
A massacre at Columbine High School
Two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. At about11:20 a.m., Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, dressed in long trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage. By the time SWAT team officers finally...

Civil War
1861
Lee resigns from U.S. Army
Colonel Robert E. Lee resigns from the United States army two days after he was offered command of the Union army and three days after his native state, Virginia, seceded from the Union. Lee opposed secession, but he was a loyal son of Virginia. His official resignation was only one sentence,...


General Interest
1689
Siege of Londonderry begins
James II, the former British king, begins a siege of Londonderry, a Protestant stronghold in Northern Ireland.In 1688, James II, a Catholic, was deposed by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, in a bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution. James fled to France and in...


1871
Ku Klux Act passed by Congress
With passage of the Third Force Act, popularly known as the Ku Klux Act, Congress authorizes President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations, and use military force to suppress the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).Founded in 1865 by a group of Confederate veterans, the...


1902
Curies isolate radium
On April 20, 1902, Marie and Pierre Curie successfully isolate radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris. In 1898, the Curies discovered the existence of the elements radium and polonium in their research of pitchblende. One year after isolating radium, they would share the 1903...


Hollywood
1926
New sound process for films announced
On this day in 1926, Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), and the Warner Brothers film studio officially introduce Vitaphone, a new process that will enable the addition of sound to film. By the mid-1920s, several competing systems had been developed to add sound...


1841
First detective story is published
Edgar Allen Poe’s story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, first appears in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. The tale is generally considered to be the first detective story. The story describes the extraordinary “analytical power” used by Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin to solve a series of murders in Paris....


Music
1923
“Mambo King” Tito Puente is born
Tito Puente, the bandleader and percussionist who helped popularize Latin dance music and jazz in America, is born on this day in 1923 in New York City. During a career that spanned six decades, the dynamic showman nicknamed “El Rey” (The King), recorded over 100 albums, won five Grammy Awards...

Old West
1914
Militia slaughters strikers at Ludlow, Colorado
Ending a bitter coal-miners’ strike, Colorado militiamen attack a tent colony of strikers, killing dozens of men, women, and children. The conflict had begun the previous September. About 11,000 miners in southern Colorado went on strike against the powerful Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation (CF&I) to protest low pay, dangerous...

Presidential
1898
McKinley asks for declaration of war with Spain
President William McKinley asks Congress to declare war on Spain on this day in 1898. In 1895, Cuba, located less than 100 miles south of the United States, attempted to overthrow Spanish colonial rule. The rebels received financial assistance from private U.S. interests and used America as a base of...


Sports
1986
Jordan scores 63 points in playoff game
On April 20, 1986, the Chicago Bulls’ Michael Jordan scores 63 points in an NBA playoff game against the Boston Celtics, setting a post-season scoring record. Despite Jordan’s achievement, the Bulls lost to the Celtics in double overtime, 135-131. Boston swept the three-game series and went on to win the...

Vietnam War
1970
Nixon announces more troop withdrawals
In a televised speech, President Nixon pledges to withdraw 150,000 more U.S. troops over the next year “based entirely on the progress” of the Vietnamization program. His program, which had first been announced in June 1969, included three parts. First, the United States would step up its effort to improve...


1971
“Fragging” on the rise in U.S. units
The Pentagon releases figures confirming that fragging incidents are on the rise. In 1970, 209 such incidents caused the deaths of 34 men; in 1969, 96 such incidents cost 34 men their lives. Fragging was a slang term used to describe U.S. military personnel tossing of fragmentation hand grenades (hence...

World War I
1917
Nivelle Offensive ends in failure
On this day in 1917, an ambitious Allied offensive against German troops near the Aisne River in central France, spearheaded by the French commander in chief, Robert Nivelle, ends in dismal failure. Nivelle, who had replaced Joseph Joffre in December 1915 as head of all French forces, had tenaciously argued for...

World War II
1945
Operation Corncob is launched while Hitler celebrates his birthday
On this day in 1945, Allied bombers in Italy begin a three-day attack on the bridges over the rivers Adige and Brenta to cut off German lines of retreat on the peninsula. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler celebrates his 56th birthday as a Gestapo reign of terror results in the hanging of...

This Day In History

Because we need to laugh

Monday Morning Smile

100 Days of Failure/Unkept Promises

Source: Huffington Post

1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.
2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it. Now his secretary of homeland security says “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”
3. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it. Then he didn’t.
5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
6. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually. You bought it. He hasn’t, and says he never will.
7. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest. You bought it. He remains heavily involved in his businesses, makes money off of foreign dignitaries staying at his Washington hotel, gets China to give the Trump brand trademark and copyright rights, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
8. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. You bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
9. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people. You bought it. Then he put Betsy DeVos, opponent of public education, in charge of education; Jeff Sessions, opponent of the Voting Rights Act, in charge of voting rights; Ben Carson, opponent of the Fair Housing Act, in charge of fair housing; Scott Pruitt, climate change denier, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Russian quisling Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
10. He said he’d faithfully execute the law. You bought it. Then he said his predecessor, Barack Obama, spied on him, without any evidence of Obama ever doing so, in order to divert attention from the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives to win the election.
11. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the generals did. You bought it. Then he green lighted a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though  his generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained
12. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. You bought it. He has by now spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.
13. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy. You bought it. Now he gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.

Air Ballet

boing

Monday Morning Smile

42 Years Ago Today

In the top ten of my favorite songs ever.

Here's the background to this song

Syria

has obtained a midnight letter that the noted Arab American composer, author, and foreign policy writer Mohammed Fairouz wrote to Secretary of State Bashar al-Assad’s regime launched projectiles filled with toxic sarin gas into the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, Syria, killing 86 people and wounding hundreds more.

After the victims, which included dozens of children, were evacuated to seek medical treatment, Assad’s jets returned and bombed the hospitals, as they have done countless times during Syria brutal six-year civil war.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was asked about the attack during a photo-op with King Abdullah of Jordan, and refused to answer.

Here is a full transcript of Fairouz’s letter:

These are hard, dark days. Earlier, I saw you, the Secretary of State of the United States ignore a question about the recent massacre in Syria. I’ve been stunned ever since. You did this and the whole world saw it.
Secretary Tillerson: your moral cowardice wounded me. Over the long term, you may have altered the face of the United States in that moment even more drastically than the circus and parade orchestrated by your boss thus far.

I understand that you do not have a background in diplomacy or global affairs and I have made no secret of my conviction that this makes you terrifically and dangerously unqualified for the grave office you currently hold.

I didn’t expect you to spend the day scrambling to prepare your UN Ambassador (after all, she too, had no diplomatic credentials before her ascension to this appointment) for the emergency meeting at the Security Council today.

But this is not a joke. Your failure in the face of this catastrophe would count as a referendum on more than just the diplomatic prowess of the United States.

I do not expect you to be exploring avenues to make a watertight case to the Security Council unambiguously exposing Bashar al-Assad to the principle of Universal Jurisdiction. I do not expect you to have studied the proceedings of the international court as established by the United Nations in the International Tribunals for Rwanda, the Former Yugoslavia or to have examined the workings of special courts from East Timor to Lebanon.

Mr. Secretary: I don’t know if you’re aware of this or if you mind it at all, but Assad’s actions over the last several years and most recently in the preceding days count as grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions.

They count as a violation of the Geneva Protocol. I don’t expect that you are up right now thinking of your diplomatic options in the face of a regime that has no regard for the International Criminal Court, the rule of law or, indeed, humanity itself.

I expect that, as Bashar Al Assad spawns a generation of orphans, you are sleeping peacefully.

Your boss and his cohorts are involved in a comprehensive blame game. To be clear, nobody is letting Obama or his administration off the hook nor will I ever forgive him for his red line.

But Obama is not our president right now and John Kerry is no longer our Secretary of State. Your boss, who sold himself as an antidote to Obama’s worst failings, has no business blaming his predecessor.

A little over two years ago I wrote of Obama’s global failings and I concluded by saying the following:

“If these fires of world war are not extinguished the next administration and, indeed, the next generation will be vexed with a global nightmare of unfathomable proportions.”

Secretary Tillerson: this is a deadly moment and it now falls largely upon you to awaken the global community from this nightmare.

I understand that you are not a career diplomat; that you have likely not studied the treaties that the United States is bound to or the opportunities that we are ripe to explore.

I’ve watched your work and, while I appreciate the advancements of the current administration in contending with the threat of DAESH, I cannot decipher an intermediate or long game.

I admit I do not believe you to be aware of your options when it comes to the application of the military or the intelligence community in support of your diplomacy. Expecting that of someone with no background in geopolitical statecraft would be unfair. Frankly, my hope is that you were getting good advice and listening.

I was not encouraged when you did not protest drastic budget cuts to the State Department.

Here, I’m reassured by the fact that your counterpart at the Department of Defense is qualified to hold his office.

His exercise of an extremely sensible demeanor suggests to me that General Mattis understands that he is operating without the safety net of a seasoned diplomat at the helm of State.

He knows very well that every cent that is cut out of the budget of the State Department is a cent that he will need to spend on artillery. And he knows that the interest he pays on those cents will need to be paid with the blood of his troops.

Mr. Secretary: I don’t say any of these things to offend you. You admit as readily as I that you are not a diplomat. I am not upset that you are not thinking like one.

But when it comes to the use of these weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, the international conventions are unambiguous for a reason.

These people died the worst deaths imaginable; they died in convulsions, bleeding from the nose and mouth. The inconceivable pain of their final seconds are a testament to why the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention were drawn up.

My heart broke when I saw our Secretary of State walk away from a question about this event. Mr. Secretary: the correct thing to do would have been to halt for a moment and condemn the atrocity without reservation. The fact that you did not have the human instinct to do that leaves the United States with that much less moral fiber than we had before you exposed us to that moment.

Mr. Secretary: your boss has called the United Nations, the world’s largest diplomatic organization, a “social club.” That demonstrates a great failure of perspective that I hope the tragedy of these days moves you to counteract.

I am a young person, 31 years old. When the Great Generation, the generation your parents belonged to, came forward to lay the foundations of the United Nations, they made a solemn promise eternally enshrined in the Charter:

“WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.
That great generation sealed that promise after witnessing the very horrors that we are once again witnessing today in Syria. You shied away from that promise when you didn’t address the horrors in public. But I ask as a young person who still looks forward to a future with great hopes for the world that my generation must build upon: please, Mr. Secretary, do not fail in your promise to us altogether.

Follow Mohammed Fairouz on Twitter.

BIRDLAND

A beautiful blast from my past

Monday Morning Smile

Yes, I like cats. They are predictable and unpredictable. This video makes me laugh due to the way the two cats get really manic about ringing the bell for food. The cat on the left got confused, but it made for more humor to me.

Have a good week.