This is the Moment We Discover We’ve All Been Living in Purgatory

Dick “Dick” Cheney, a portrait in incompetence and leadershit.

This was widely known. There was a near-blowout on a BP deepwater rig in the Gulf in 2003; disaster was averted because the blowout preventer worked as designed. In the followup report, BP and NOAA wrote that, if it hadn’t, the oil spilled would have equaled the Exxon Valdez accident in the first week. They were right on the money.

And just today, unicorn and rainbow fans, the Obama Admin authorized shallow-water (500 ft and under) drilling to recommence, notwithstanding the fact that the 1969 Santa Barbara spill, the 1979 Ixtoc I spill (in the Gulf) and last year’s spill off Australia were all in shallow water and took months to bring under control.

@ManchuCandidate: The only thing keeping Bush/Cheney from a perfect record in national self-destruction is that they didn’t privatize Social Security.

Stinque Programming Advisory: Election-night open thread at 7 p.m. ET, because the day’s so fucking slow.

oh, for fuck’s sake

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Dean Martin? I thought he was dead.

@nojo: Lakers game at 9 E.T. The boys need to play some fucking defense tonight. These are the Celtics, not the fucking Clippers.

I HATE THIS!

Screw the Ark. Will France let me back in? Maybe I need to do the NatGeo DNA test thingagig first. I am so outta here.

D’ju all see that producer/musician Daniel Lanois was hurt in a motorcycle accident over the weekend in LA? Dude’s in the ICU now and will spend several months in recovery.

In addition to a roster of artists including Emmylou Hariss, the Neville Brothers, Dylan and Martha and the Muffins, Lanois worked with U2 and Brian Eno on the recent No Line on the Horizon album, as he had for just about every U2 record since The Unforgettable Fire. With Bono out for at least the next 10 weeks due to back surgery, look for a third U2-related incident if these things do happen in threes.

Here’s the improvised in the studio “Moment of Surrender.”

@Dodge: nice quote you fed CNN. “Fucking incompetent” (paraphrased)…FTW!

@JNOV: we’re all from Africa, which won’t truck well with the Franch.

@RML: sad. I bought ‘No Line’ in part because of Lenois, and your continuing fandom.

@ManchuCandidate: “leadershit” is brilliant!

@Nabisco: Thanks. There’s only so far I can go without getting reassigned to patrolling the alley behind our office for bums.

@Nabisco: Magnificent, Breathe, MOS, and White as Snow are some of their best songs ever. Boots is trashy fun. The remix/live version of Crazy Tonight is pretty fucking awesome. Unknown Caller is a total Eno song.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:

So they’re gonna build tent-prison cities, Great Walls, and deploy troops and somehow not raise taxes? That’s one helluva magic trick. Quite ironic considering the next article: Worries increase along with Arizona’s debt

“Imagine selling your house to raise money – and then leasing it back, with interest, over 30 years.

That’s essentially what Arizona is doing this week as it conducts a two-day sale of state buildings. The sale, which concludes today, is expected to net the state $300 million. But it will cost much more to repay when interest is added, and it will contribute to raising the state’s total debt load to more than $10 billion, a figure five times as great as a decade ago…

This week’s sale includes the Arizona Supreme Court building, which the state just finished buying back from an earlier lease-purchase agreement.”

And the Republicans control all branches of the state gummit, verdad? So why are the commenters still screeching about all the gawdam liburls? “Cut K-12, cut ASU. Throw out public employee union contracts.”

Sure, why not?