Saturday coffee.

Not a cloud in a blue sky. The temperature is around 75 degrees. Coffee was outside this morning at Letizia’s on Division Street. Moms and strollers. Dogs and their owners. Ulysses is getting his summer cut. The Cubs play the Cardinals and there is some game at the United Center tonight. They skate or something. I don’t know much about it. Or care.

It is hard to read a paper or watch the news these days. The BP oil disaster is difficult to watch, hear or read about.

My daughter Leigh was walking after work yesterday and ran into a protest at a BP station in SoHo in Manhatten. She posts on Facebook, “I accidentally stumbled upon this awesome BP protest today. Mermaids drenched in dirty water shut the station down. It was nice to find an outlet in expressing outrage.”

I actually saw people buying gas at the local BP station. Not if my tank was dry and I had to abandon the car.

We need more outraged Mermaids.

Instead we get this from Obama: “Where I was wrong was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios.”

Holy shit.

Bob Herbert on Obama and BP.

Bob Herbert writes:

With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow “had their act together” with regard to worst-case scenarios.

Dennis Hopper, RIP.

In Easy Rider, which he also directed, Hopper played Billy and Jack Nicholson was George Hanson.

George Hanson: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.
Billy: Man, everybody got chicken, that’s what happened. Hey, we can’t even get into like, a second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel, you dig? They think we’re gonna cut their throat or somethin’. They’re scared, man.
George Hanson: They’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ‘em.
Billy: Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.
George Hanson: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about.
George Hanson: Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what’s it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.
Billy: Well, it don’t make ‘em runnin’ scared.
George Hanson: No, it makes ‘em dangerous.

10,000 march in Phoenix against immigration law.

The protests are not going away. At 10AM today:

Thousands of people began a slow march from Steele Indian School Park to the State Capitol shortly before 10 a.m. Saturday to protest Arizona’s new immigration-enforcement legislation.

The march, which is scheduled to wind through downtown Phoenix on its way to the Capitol, is being conducted with a heavy police presence.

As the crowd estimated at more than 10,000 left the park, the sea of protesters stretched half-a-mile along Third Street, from Indian School to Osborn roads.

Another rally – this one in support of the law – is scheduled in the evening in Tempe.