- Dear BP: We would like you to conjure up $20 billion to pay for the recent oil spill in the Gulf region and we’re going to need that money soon. Say, the end of this week if you can swing it. That edict came down from High Emperor/Senate majority leader Harry Reid and members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, who sent a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward in a letter on Monday with their demands. "Establishment of this account would serve as an act of good faith and as a first step towards ensuring that there will be no delay in payments or attempt to evade responsibility for damages," the letter said. Of course, scrounging up that sort of money could be difficult, especially when the oil giant has been pouring its money into buying up Google search results so that positive stories about its attempts to clean up the massive oil spill appear first in any user searches and spending millions of dollars on television ads to promote its commitment to the clean-up efforts. On top of that, BP had about $7 billion in cash as of March 31, according to its most recent financial statement. With the company scheduled to pay out dividends on June 21, the budget becomes even tighter. A meeting on the payment of those dividends was to take place Monday, so perhaps some cooler heads will prevail and postpone those payments for now. Neither Reid nor any of his caucus cohorts have said whether the $20 billion would be requested as a lump sum or by installment payments. Personally, I think ten low, low payments of $2 billion sounds a little better, much like those three low payments of $19.95 to buy that ridiculous upside-down tomato planter thingy that is constantly being advertised in infomercials. In laying out their case against BP, the senators were heavy-handed in likening this spill to the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in March 1989, when more than 11 million gallons of oil spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound and Exxon failed to live up to its initial promises to make reparations. "After the spill, damages totaled more than $7 billion; although Exxon continued making massive profits after the accident, it fought liability at every step and ultimately paid far less than the billions of dollars worth of damages it had caused many, many years later," the letter lamented. Under the terms of the caucus’ demands, the special account would be managed by an independent third party and would pay for clean up costs and lost compensation to individuals and businesses affected by the oil spill. The letter seems to suggest than establishing this fund would do more for BP’s public relations troubles than its search engine hijinks and numerous TV ads. "Although creating this account at this level in no way limits BP's liability, we believe it will do more to improve BP's public image than the costly public relations campaign your company has launched," the letter states. Every one of the Senate’s 59 Democratic senators signed the letter with four exceptions: Mary Landrieu, D-La.; Kent Conrad, D-N.D.; Robert Byrd, D-W.V.; and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. Bingaman is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and Mary Landrieu is the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, so perhaps they feel something of a conflict of interest in inking their names to the letter. As the letter goes into the mail, President Obama is busy making his fourth visit to the Gulf region since the April disaster before returning to Washington, D.C., to cram an 8 p.m. ET televised address on the oil spill down the throats of the public on all four major networks. The senators have requested a response from BP by Friday, so we’ll have to see whether Hayward and his crew can man up and reply……….
- Video game dorks, this week is your week. But then again, you already knew that. This week is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the annual trade show where the biggest news in the video gaming world is made each and every year. The event, known as E3 in the gaming world, has a huge reveal this time around - futuristic motion sensors that could get rid of the need for a game controller. Gaming in 3-D will also be on display and industry experts claim that the announcements could change the way people play games. E3 has grown exponentially since starting in 1995 as a spinoff from the Consumer Electronics Show, which remains a huge draw in Las Vegas every year as a showcase for a wide range of gadgets and gizmos. But E3 has taken on a life of its own, serving as a launch point for the Sony PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, GameCube and the games "Resident Evil," "Starcraft" and "Tomb Raider." This year’s event runs through the end of the day today and while it seems like a tough task surpassing last year’s appearance by the two surviving Beatles - Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney - to promote "The Beatles: Rock Band," this year’s E3 may well do that before all is done. The major players at this year’s show have been Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. All three will have upgrades and add-ons to existing systems that promise to advance the gaming industry. Much of the buzz has been around Microsoft’s unveiling on Sunday of its new Kinect system, which has been the talk of the gaming industry for the past year. The system, which works in tandem with the Xbox360, utilizes a camera and gesture recognition to let players use their whole bodies to run, shoot or most anything else that their in-game avatars do. In short, it takes the motion-sensing ability of the Wii and turns your entire body into the controller. Attendees at last year’s E3 show received a sneak peek of the system, but it was nothing compared to Sunday’s show, which featured gamers playing the Cirque du Soleil game. Sony looked to make waves of its own with a new motion controller for the PlayStation 3, expected to be similar the Wii and cost less than $100. As for Nintendo, the Japanese game maker is hoping to add 3-D to its bag of tricks and showed off a new stand-alone device -- the portable Nintendo 3DS. The system promises the enticing possibility of glasses-free 3-D, which sounds good even to non-gaming-dorks like myself. Social gaming also carved out its niche at this year’s show, with developers looking to strike it big with the next "FarmVille" or "Mafia Wars." Regardless of your system of choice or preferred platform, gamer dorks, hopefully you all have enjoyed your annual time in the sun…………
- I preface this next story by stating that I could not care less about either one of these chicks as individuals and I firmly believe that both of their music sucks on such an exponential level that they should retroactively be stripped of every dollar they have ever made and forced to destroy every shred of music they have ever recorded in any form. However, if Katy Perry and Lady Gaga want to scrap and have a chick fight, I’m down. They both produce crap-tacular music, they are both gimmicky hacks who resort to hideous outfits and over-produced, synthesized songs and theatrics to sell their music, so they actually have a lot in common. Neither of them would be a great loss to the music world if they fought and were incapacitated or jailed as a result of said fight. As such, I am urging Katy Perry to reconsider her assertions that she is not feuding with Lady Gaga and that the two of them are cool. “I’m a massive fan,” Perry claimed over the weekend. Why? Because Gaga dresses like a giant drop of blood or as if she’s been swallowed up by a flock of mutant swans? Because her lyrics are so ridiculous, thin, superficial and moronic? I liked it better when the rumors of a Perry-Gaga feud were alive and well after Perry tweeted that “Using blasphemy as entertainment is as cheap as a comedian telling a fart joke.” Everyone assumed that the Tweet was a direct attack on Gaga’s “Alejandro,” video which uses religious imagery. Maybe that Tweet was about the video or maybe it was about something else, but Perry is sticking to her story, claiming it was “more of a non-specific, general thing. But everybody made it out to be a cat fight. I think people love cat fights. It’s a turn on for people. But everybody knows I am a massive Lady Gaga fan. If you look through my tweets, there will be about ten of them that say that I am obsessed with her.” That is a huge disappointment and I could not be more bummed out to hear it. However, I do get a kick out of Perry claiming that her Tweet was due to her background, being raised as a Christian and having a problem with what she regards as blasphemous behavior regardless of who the perpetrator is. Remember, this is a girl whose first big single was a song about making out with other chicks and enjoying it. Nothing screams Christian values quite like lesbian love, K.P. Asked about her objection to that sort of behavior, Perry cited a recent example of boyfriend Russell Brand, who said something she didn’t like when they were driving around L.A. “He said something a bit off color, kind of blasphemous about the Lord Jesus Christ, and I smacked him for it. It’s just kind of deeply rooted inside of me, and hard to get away from,” Perry said. Just not deeply rooted enough for you to actually embrace any of the actual values of Christianity…………
- Let the battle begin for the riches of Afghanistan. Now that the United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, go ahead and assume that the brawl is on for the right to dig up and profit from those riches of the earth. The find is above and beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself. Those claims come from none other than senior American government officials, so they would seem to have at least some merit. Included among the previously unknown deposits are massive veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and industrial metals like lithium. The veins are so large and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could literally become one of the most important mining centers in the world over time. In fact, the hyperbole is being ratcheted up a notch by none other than the Pentagon itself, which stated in an internal memo that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” Now I don’t know how much you know about the industrial mineral world, but being the “Saudi Arabia of lithium” is a bit like being Jay-Z on the hip-hop scene - bad ass. Lithium, aside from being the title of a great song by Nirvana, is a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys. Discovery of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was made by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists, who recently briefed the Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai on their findings. Of course, now Afghanistan must develop the infrastructure to handle such a massive mining industry, but with the enormity of this find, investments to make that happen could begin flowing in sooner rather than later. “There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.” Of course, mining has a long way to go to best opium as the country’s biggest export, but being legal might give minerals something of an advantage. With Afghanistan’s existing economy in shambles as its war rages on, the boost is sorely needed. You can also bet that the Taliban will want to find a way to get its hooks into this new endeavor and turn a profit. “This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines. Ironically, the find comes as tensions between Karzai’s government and the White House are at their highest. Will the promise of incredible riches be enough to get everyone on the same page? Will the mining industry become just another arena for the corruption that is so pervasive throughout Afghanistan and its government? After all, it was just last year when Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The only certainty here seems to be the inevitable court battles and legal fights between provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts, as the mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country. Deciding who the minerals belong to will be an all-out war of its own and the fighting is about to begin…………
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