Oil Containment Boom Sitting in Warehouses - Miles and miles of Floating Booms Stashed

Miles of oil containment booms are sitting in the Packgen warehouse in Auburn, Maine. Miles more can be produced quickly...but someone has to order them, pay for them, come get them and tote them to the Gulf. Does it surprise you, that as the oil washes up on the shores of beautiful beaches and treasured marshes, no one seems to be interested in oil containment booms? See a video below.

Wildlife in Gulf Oil Spill

This from PajamasMedia via Larwyn's Linx and GatewayPundit:

He’s [John LaPoint of Packgen] already had a representative from BP visit his factory and inspect his product. The governor of Maine, John Baldacci, visited the facility and made a video plea to no one in particular to close the deal. Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins wrote a letter on May 21 to the secretary of the Interior, the administrator of NOAA, and the commandant of the Coast Guard to alert them to the existence of Packgen, their supply of boom, and their demonstrated capacity to make more. I have no idea if those are the correct persons and agencies to notify about the manufacturing capacity and the availability of boom. One wonders if the senators know.

So, BP knows, the Maine governor knows, both of Maine's senators know, and thanks to the Senators, Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior knows, the commandant of the Coast Guard knows, and the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) knows.

It's obvious President Obama has been too busy to read the memo about Packgen's oil containment booms. He is looking for some asses to kick, and now he has a list ready-made for him. Take a look at Packgen's website where their oil containment booms practically sell themselves on their homepage.

Here are a some interesting points by Gregory Sullivan at PajamasMedia (linked above):

A lot of people have been suggesting many ways to deal with the oil, and the ideas generally range from the comical to plain counterproductive. A fetish for sending hair from barbershops to the Gulf Coast has swept various pockets of the country. Booms are mainly non-absorbent, because the last thing you want to do is congeal the stuff and contaminate it. Oil collected against a boom is fairly easy to process and recycle. Sorbent booms, designed to collect oil at the water’s edge, are made from materials that absorb oil but not water — unlike hair. Oil full of hair or straw lapping against a shoreline is a HazMat nightmare. And sorbent boom is not in short supply anyway.

This report says that as early as May 27th, two miles of oil containment boom was on its way to Louisiana from Portland, Maine (apparently not from Packgen). So, TWO miles? Only two miles? What's up with that?

The DEP says it does take time to coordinate an effective response to a spill of this magnitude....Maine says its list of available assets is long...and ready to follow the booms to Louisiana whenever they get the call.

From the same May 27th article, I read that "BP has signed a deal with Maine agreeing to replace the boom within two years." Is the boom on loan to BP? BP isn't paying? About Packgen, maybe additional booms are not needed, or other suppliers are being used? Do we really have all the oil containment booms needed in the area? The video has more details.

Maine has Miles of Oil Containment Booms available video

Joe Lieberman Susan Collins Subpoenas Eric Holder, Robert Gates

Senators Joe Leiberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) issued subpoenas to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. This is a "whoa!" moment, friends. Lieberman and Collins and others on the Senate Homeland Security Committee are fed up with their requests for information on the Fort Hood massacres being shoved somewhere among all the opulence of the Department of Justice, where if Holder has his way, it will never see the light of day.

Department of Justice

Lieberman and Collins want Major Nidal Hassan's personnel records, and specifically those categorized as "For Official Use Only." Not an extraordinary request unless those in possession of the personnel files want to keep Islamic terrorism underwraps. Afterall, the Muslim soldier gunned down 14, including one unborn child, while shouting allahu akhbar.

Pentagon officials are reviewing the subpoena before determining their next step, spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters Monday.

The Defense Department, he said, believes that it has responded to requests from Congress, "in keeping with the need to protect the integrity of the criminal prosecution and longstanding privacy practice.

The White House has not referred the killings an act of terror. In late February 2010, however, five-plus months after the shootings, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano finally went on the record and called it what it was: "violent Islamic terrorism....", but that was about the end of it. Now we have a ban on using the words Islamic terrorists, Islamic terrorism, and Obama

When the Pentagon report on the massacre came out, it failed to mention 'Islamic Terrorism' as the motivation for the killings:

[Lieberman] I was startled and really upset that in the whole report that Secretary [Togo] West and Adm. [Vern] Clark did on this Ft. Hood massacre, they never used ther tems radical Islamist extremism or violent Islamic terrorism."

The Homeland Security Committee wants to know who Hasan's superiors were, and what they knew about Hasan's radical beliefs. Rep. John Carter (R-TX) represents Texas' 31st Congressional District which includes Fort Hood. Carter said the Pentagon report was "sanitized."

People are afraid to speak out and label someone because they'll be accused of being a racist or accused of profiling or being prejudiced against a certain religion or race of people," Carter told Politico. "But in a time of national crisis, which I believe we are in, all identifiers must be be discussed.

How sad is it that the first subpoenas of the Obama administration are delivered to the U.S. Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense?