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To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (564663)	5/5/2010 8:00:08 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1576880

Good question - the Coast Guard just had a spill preparedness exercise in March. Wouldn't veryifying there were firebooms available be a part of that? Coast Guard SONS 2010 National Exercise Monday, March 22, 2010 The U.S. Coast Guard and 50 other federal, state and private organizations will conduct the triennial Spill of National Significance Exercise or SONS 2010 from March 22-25 in the northeast region of the U.S. SONS 2010 is a full-scale exercise designed to test response to a Spill of National Significance. A SONS is a spill that due to its severity, size, location, complexity or impact requires extraordinary coordination of federal, state, local, and responsible party resources to contain and clean up. As the lead federal agency for pollution incidents in coastal zones, the Coast Guard conducts this type of exercise every three years. Since 1994, exercises have taken place in Pennsylvania, Alaska, Texas, California, and the Midwest. The Coast Guard's role in environmental protection dates back more than 175 years to the Timber Act of 1822 that mandated the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service protect government timber from poachers. In 1968, federal roles and responsibilities for oil spill responses were defined by the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan, also known as the National Contingency Plan. The plan was updated in the early ‘90s, to include the lessons learned from the March 24, 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Today the Coast Guard continues to protect the marine environment as one of its 11 statutory missions. This year’s exercise will focus on the response to a simulated oil spill affecting the Northeast . The scenario will include a collision between a tanker transporting of 430,000 barrels of crude oil and a car carrier during a severe snowstorm. The simulated collision will occur about 15 miles from shore in the Gulf of Maine. During the response, the tanker will simulate the loss of 69,000 barrels of crude oil while sinking at the entrance to the harbor in Portland, Maine. [ You'd think there assuring there were adequate firebooms available would have been part of this exercise. Re: an Americanthinker article:: "..did not have a single cleanup boom on hand. (The booms are made of flame-retardant fabric and have two pumps that push water through its 500-foot length; two boats tow the U-shaped boom through an oil slick, gathering up about 75,000 gallons of oil at a time, and that oil is dragged away from the larger spill and ignited.) Instead, we've learned that eight days after the initial explosion, officials had to purchase a boom from a company in Illinois. americanthinker.com ] “The support of our vital federal, state and local partners, and our industry partner, Shell, has been phenomenal and we expect to have a vigorous and valuable exercise,” said Rear Adm. Paul R. Zukunft, SONS 2010 exercise director. “The lessons we learn together with all our partners will influence national response policy and improvements to the National Response System.” The SONS Exercise Program has four overarching goals: increasing the preparedness of the entire response organization from the field level up to agency leadership in Washington, DC.; exercising the National Response System at the local, regional, and national levels using a series of large-scale, high probability oil and hazardous material incidents; providing an environment for an unprecedented level of cooperation throughout all levels of government, private sector, and non-governmental organizations; and offering broad opportunities to improve plans and procedures. SONS 2010 is the only Coast Guard-sponsored Department of Homeland Security Tier II exercise on the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program five-year calendar. The exercise involves more than 600 members from a variety of federal, state, local, tribal and private organizations. marinelink.com

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (564663)	5/5/2010 11:38:18 AM
From: longnshort	4 Recommendations Respond to of 1576880

Did President Obama & Eric Holder Suspend Another Bush Era Terrorist Investigation? (From LindyBill) By AJStrata on Times Square Bomber We all know AG Eric Holder's 'Justice' Department (sort of a oxymoron these days) closed down Bush era terrorist investigations into Major Nidal Hasan (killer in the Ft Hood Massacre) and probably also into radical US-born cleric al Aulaqi (see here, here and here for details). It is pretty obvious that shutting down the surveillance of these American traitors working with our enemies also gave Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab an opening to nearly bring down a plane full of passengers on Christmas Day as it landed in Detroit, MI. Reader Frogg1 points out a very disturbing blurb inside a New York Times article chronicling the Times Square Bomber's past: George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply "checking everything out." Emphasis mine. Shahzad was under surveillance by the Bush administration, that is why the was an active Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation in 2004. And I doubt it was ever suspended under President Bush given this: Mr. Shahzad apparently went back and forth to Pakistan often, returning most recently in February after what he said was five months visiting his family, prosecutors said. A Pakistani intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr. Shahzad had traveled with three passports, two from Pakistan and one from the United States; he last secured a Pakistani passport in 2000, describing his nationality as "Kashmiri." You don't go back and forth to Pakistan with connections like this without being at least checked. It appears the Pakistanis were assisting the US in monitoring this character. So how is it he was able to get within a bum detonator's distance from killing lots of people? Is this why the Pakistani arrests of his cohorts was so quick, yet the US is fumbling around looking for allies or other threats? And it seems there may be a link between Shahzad and the failed NY City Subway Bomber Zazi. Mr. Shahzad only recently became a US citizen last year, around the time Holder started closing down investigations. This act of resisting terrorists leads linked to Americans fits the pre 9-11 pattern of incompetence in the Obama administration. An administration filled with people who think President Bush went too far in protecting Americans from terrorist attack. Of course, all of us we avoided death and mutilation, pain and loss, would disagree that there was too much protection under Bush. I am sure the families of the victims in the Ft Hood massacre would have preferred Hasan and al Aulaqi were monitored instead of ignored. strata-sphere.com

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (564663)	5/5/2010 12:23:35 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1576880

Uncovered Video: Key Obama Ally Joel Rogers Explains Why American Capitalism Is ‘Monstrous’ breitbart.tv

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (564663)	5/5/2010 1:50:11 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576880

Another Fine Mess; The Obama administration was caught unprepared for the oil spill. By John Fund 05 May, 2010 The Wall Street Journal (Online and Print) s The Obama Administration has tirelessly pushed the line that it has employed every available tool to fight the Gulf oil spill from "Day One." Well, it's certainly true that every media resource is being deployed to squelch comparisons with the slow-footed 2005 Bush administration response to Hurricane Katrina. But as for having actual oil-spill fighting technology on hand before the crisis, as the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires, the administration was clearly caught unprepared. After the Transocean rig blew up two weeks ago, it turns out the federal government didn't have a single fire boom on hand in the Gulf to enable a controlled burn of the oil slick, according to The Press-Register of Mobile, Alabama. Instead, the government quickly purchased the only fire boom that an Illinois-based manufacturer had in stock, and then asked the company to call its customers around the world to see if the U.S. government could borrow their booms. Ever since 1989 Exxon Valdez tragedy, the federal government has been required by law to keep spill-fighting equipment in place for an emergency. Ron Gouguet, who once led such efforts for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Press-Register that a quick controlled burn might have captured 95% of the oil spilling from the offshore well. In the event, it took federal officials eight days to conduct the first test burn of the leaking oil. By then, strong winds and rough seas inhibited its effectiveness. Another factor may also have played a role in the failure to properly prepare. Certain environmental groups have long opposed the 1994 federal response plan for the Gulf region that called for burning any oil spill right away. Even Rear Admiral Mary Landry, the federal official coordinating the oil spill cleanup, told reporters last week that burning the oil meant a "black plume" of smoke that could effect birds and mammals. I'd say there was a far bigger downside to both humans and animal life from allowing an oil slick that now measures some 130 miles by 70 miles to continue to grow.