Information Station...

Here are some interesting pieces of information that I heard or read recently, with some of my commentary...

• The ocean oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is now America's greatest environmental disaster. As of mid-June, it now equals about 14 Exxon-Valdez oil spill incidents. And it's not over yet.
• Wouldn't you know that some Republican Congressman (Joe Barton from Texas, to be exact) would apologize to BP for the disaster of their continuing oil leak?!!! That guy has to be an incredibly inept and stupid politician. Now, with a ton of bricks falling on him in political heat, he has apologized for his apology to BP.
• British Petroleum (BP) spent $50 million on a recent TV ad campaign. That tells me, considering all the money that BP is going to have to dish out for its oil disaster, is that we all are certainly paying too much for our gas prices at the local pumps. All those oil companies have reaped huge profits. Talk about a shakedown of consumers.
• BP has $9 billion in contracts with the U.S. Defense Department and billions for contracts with other governmental departments. So far this year, BP has garnered $837 billion in federal contracts.
• BP has enough oil in reserves to furnish the U.S. gas needs for more than two years.
• Okay, some non-BP oil leak news...Since 1910, the color border of National Geographic magazine has been yellow.
• My father, who liked to use his hands to fix his own cars, would be annoyed at the modern cars of today which are dependent upon electronics under the hood. It often takes a diagnostics test at the car repair shop to see what's wrong with the electronics of a car. Well, here's something distressing...A recent AOL report noted that criminals now can use laptop computers to disable the brakes of a car or even turn off a car engine.
• With a 9.7 unemployment rate nationally, there are 7 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months.
• Mother Jones magazine for July-August has a story about Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks. His website has been referred to as the world's most famous source of secret information and, to quote the magazine, "the uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis."
• I remember that my mother (and I) thought country singer Jimmy Dean was very entertaining and talented. He could play the banjo and other instruments and had a likable personality. I remember being impressed by his talents when he was a guest host on the old Mike Douglas Show, among others. Later, he became known as a brand name for breakfast sausage. He died this month.