May 28, 2010

Geek Week

I just had to note that Rachel Maddow's "Geek Week" has elevated her from brilliant liberal commentator to a brilliant journalist as well. She may very well be the finest broadcaster in media today.

Gusher Clean-up Too Slow

I don't think the Obama Administration has been dragging its feet in plugging up the gusher, but they get a mixed report from me on their handling of the cleanup. Admittedly, the decision to leave British Petroleum in charge of the leak appears to have been wise. No one else really has any idea how to plug it up, and no one else has the equipment to do it. The clean-up is a separate story. As Rachel Maddow pointed out recently, there have been no advances in oil well capping and spill clean-up technology in 30 years, and we knew 30 years ago that the technology we had did not work. We were going into this mess with gusher busting tactics that have proven to fail and clean up methodologies that may cause more of a mess than they clean up. What is the wisdom, for example, of allowing them to use dioxin to disburse the oil? Less oil and more carcinogens does not seem to me to be a good environmental trade off. There are mechanical means of keeping the oil off the land although its easier said than done. There are biological tools for eliminating the oil once it makes landfall. The drawback to the bugs is that they retain the heavy metals and return them to the food chain… like we didn't already have enough inedible seafood. Still it's better than dioxin, a toxin, which would not necessarily eliminate oil from the beaches at all. There has been a lot of coverage of exotic ways to clean up the mess. There is the Kevin Costner machine that can separate oil from seawater. Apparently this is being tested and Costner's company says they can have more than 20 machines deployed and cleaning more than 2 million gallons of water a day. There is the guy from Florida who says a little straw or hay will clean a lot of oil out of the water. Apparently some hay is being used, but not in great quantities. The former President of Shell Oil suggested bringing in a fleet of oil tankers to vacuum up the oil from the ocean floor. This guy says it has been done successfully at least once. BP has one of its own tankers on site sucking up oil. Why not more? I recognize that the government cannot make miracles, but it's hard to be patient when I see obvious solutions laying around not being used. The tanker solution seems real obvious to me, and BP has a fleet of them on hand on the gulf. If the government is really in charge can't they order them to strap on a few hoses and start sucking? Can the government rent a few tankers, deploy them and send the bill to BP? (Do other oil companies have an opportunity to scarf up some free oil here? IS BP trying to save all the oil for its own purposes? Does the oil sucked up belong to whom ever does the sucking? Is this an issue?) And why test Costner's machines? If they don't work, can they make the mess any worse? Why doesn't the government order their deployment? So much to do, so little time. Someone needs to be thinking fast and thinking outside the box.

May 27, 2010

Roeder the Tiller Killer

It is ironic, isn't it, Alanis, that Scott Roeder, the crazy redneck who one year ago this week murdered Dr. George Tiller at a church, likely egged on by the rhyming urges of one Bill Orally, was sentenced to life without parole for 50 years and not to an appointment with a firing squad? And that he was sentenced on April 1, no less? Don't get me wrong. Unlike most "pro-life" goons, I abhor the death penalty. In ALL circumstances. Even for such a misguided monster like Roeder. He got the right sentence. Let him sit in a cell for the rest of his life working his ass off at justifying to himself what he did. Anyway. I wanted to note the anniversary. It's horrifying that a guy can be gunned down WHILE USHERING AT HIS OWN CHURCH for conducting a legal medical procedure. And just so it's noted that Senate Majority Leader Hairy Reed isn't altogether useless, he said this today on the Senate floor:
"A community in Kansas still shakes one year after the brazen murder of one of its own. This weekend will mark the first anniversary of Dr. George Tiller's death. He was gunned down in front of his Wichita church the day before last Memorial Day. "Dr. Tiller was killed at point-blank range, at his place of worship, in the middle of a Sunday morning, while his wife sang in the church choir just yards away. "He was murdered by an unrepentant assassin who took a life in the name of protecting life. It was an indefensible crime and an incomprehensible excuse. "Just as despicable as Dr. Tiller's death was the fact that his murder wasn't an isolated incident. It wasn't even the first time someone tried to kill him. His clinic was bombed in 1985. He was shot twice in 1993. And over the next 16 years, seven clinic workers would be killed before Dr. Tiller would become the eighth. More than 6,000 other acts of violence have been launched at clinics and their workers – bombings, arsons, assaults and other attacks. "The last doctor killed before Dr. Tiller was a husband and father from Buffalo named Barnett Slepian. He was an OB/GYN who also helped poor women access safe, legal abortions. Because of that, he was murdered in his home. I didn't know Dr. Selpian, but I knew his niece. She came from Reno, Nevada, and she once worked in my office. "The tragedy of Dr. Tiller's death, and of Dr. Slepian's death – and of every atrocity like it – is independent of the issue of abortion. It's not about the legality of abortion or funding of abortion. These are emotional debates, and ones on which people of good faith can disagree. "What so shook that Kansas town was rather an act of terrorism. What reverberated out to our borders and coasts from the center of our country was the violation of our founding principle: that we are a nation of laws, not of men. "Everyone in America has the right to disagree with its laws. Everyone has the right to dispute and protest its laws. But no American has the right to disobey them. "Not all of us would choose Dr. Tiller's profession. Not all of us would seek his services or agree with his philosophy. But it is the responsibility of every American to respect another's right to practice his profession legally. "Those who believe in the sanctity of life cannot be selective. We must value every life – not just those with which we agree."
NARAL has established a Web form where you can go write him a little thank you note. And, I'm sure that somewhere in the process they ask you for some munny. Might not be a bad time to consider a donation, eh? Here ya go.

You Read It Here First

As the Republican Party works itself into a lather over the Obama administration's offer of a job to Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn) in exchange for him not entering the Pennsylvania Senate primary, seasoned political observers, historians, and lawyers are responding with veritable yawns. American presidential history is littered with quid pro quos, implicit and explicit secret job offers, and backroom deals, so much so that the Sestak offer may be more the norm than the exception to it.
See the full Sam Stein column at The Huffington Post.

She Said 'Bushism'

There for a minute, I thought Helen Thomas told the President of these Untied States not to give her any bullshit. Thank goodness the New York Times liveblogged the press conference.
From Jeff Zeleny: President Obama – perhaps looking to change the subject? – called on Helen Thomas, the longest-serving member of the White House press corps. He hasn't called on her since his first press conference more than a year ago, but turned to her today, after several questions about the oil spill. The topic? Afghanistan. Before he answered, she warned him: "Don't give us this Bushism" that the terrorists will come to the United States if we don't fight them in Afghanistan. The president delivered a standard answer, saying the U.S. military was making progress in its mission, but he acknowledged that major challenges loomed.
Anotherwerds, she got the Bushism she warned him not to give her. I'm always a bit surprised by progressive folks who bristle at Mr. Obama. He campaigned on an Afghan war. I suspect myself that he did so because, politically, he had to; because the worst thing you can be in this world if you want to win in politics for some reason is a liberal peacenik. The point being, that Obama never said he was going to end our role in war. He said he'd end the stupid one in Iraq, but only to build up the stupid one in Afghanistan. That is what he said he'd do. Not that Helen Thomas is wrong to accost the President on this. The war is still stupid, and Obama's boilerplate answer is not helpful. "Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here" sounds just as stupid coming out of his mouth as it did from his predecessor's. Believe me, UBL has glazed his cave ceiling thousands of times by now regarding our presence in Afghanistan; it is his wet dream come true. Anyways. Back to point #1: Barack Obama ain't a liberal, kids. He never was. He's not ending the war; he's not sticking his neck out for true universal health care; he's meandering toward ending DADT. Part of political activism is accepting that party politics may not always move for you as quickly or as effectively as, say, movement politics might. Abbie Hoffman never ran for office. Hell, Abbie formed his own party. For certain, though, is that we're better off than we'd have been with a President McWeirdsmile and his vapid sidekick. Then we'd likely be balls deep in Iraq instead of getting out and we'd have marched to Tehran by now. By the way, my father's excellent research in sunny Kansas ("Nothing new under the sun") got a nice mention on an excellent blog that is apparently named after a neatly stocked Scrabble rack. Thanks!

May 25, 2010

Sestak's Deal woth Obama: BFD

One of the more bullshit stories that has come out of the recent election is the "What did Obama offer Sestak?" saga. The claim is that President Obama offered Rep. Sestak something real important if he would get out of the Pennsylvania senate race and leave the path open to Democrat turned Republican turned Democrat Arlen Specter. So maybe they offered him a Kingdom in South Jersey? That's what the English kings used to do to Scottish Lairds who rebelled against the Crown. Make them Lords. Give them a title and an estate. Who knows? We know what Obama promised Specter if he would switch parties and solidify the Democratic majority in the Senate. Be certain the President promised undying loyalty and support in the senatorial campaign. That probably did include some effort to get Sestak, a freshman Congressman, but not a dumb one, to stand down. Whatever Obama offered it was enough to convince Specter that the President was serious. Maybe Secretary of the Navy? Maybe a cabinet post? Who cares? It is in the scope of Presidential powers to make appointments as he will (advise and consent aside). Sestak is a highly qualified public servant, 31years in the Navy, a retired admiral. He would be good at most stuff the President could appoint him to. Nothing wroing with trying. If they are trying to make the case that it is big news that a politician gets offered a sweet deal to go away and leave the field so someone else, that's nuts. The Kings of Engliand have done it and American Presidents have done it and there ain't nothing wrong with that. Politicians have been manipulating each other with pork chops since the beginning of time. What would be new about this?

Am starting to hear even from liberal commentators that the Oil Geyser is starting to feel like "Obama's Katrina." Hogwash. Yes. It's bad. It's so bad it's making Bobby Jindal look good. Remember. THIS is Bobby Jindal:

Of course, it would behoove us to remember that Jindal is a card-carrying member of the "drill baby drill" party. Sorry, Bobby, you don't get points now, not when you were probably among the crazed throng in the Twin Cities a few summers ago. Your party was the asshole who decided to make offshore drilling a political issue, despite the fact that the tech simply hasn't gotten far along enough to be safe (can it ever?). You asked for it, buddy, and you got it. Enjoy your fucked seafood industry. Douche. But no, kids, this is NOT "Obama's Katrina." That is an impossibility. Comparing this thing to Katrina is as sensible as comparing Kent State to the Holocaust—and I do not make this reference lightly. Just look at the sheer numbers. Conservative estimates put the death toll as a result of Katrina at ONE THOUSAND, EIGHT HUNDRED THIRTY-SIX people. Direct death toll as a result of the Deepwater Horizon 'splosion? 11. But the numbers don't precisely explain why this is no way no how even close to being "Obama's Katrina." Katrina was a unique monster. It warned America that the George Dubya Boosh administration was quite comfortable not acting while thousands of our fellow citizens were stranded on their own rooftops and were drowning in their own attics. It was a dramatic exposition of the argument we'd been making for years here at the KIAV: That the administration was an incompetent fuckup that cared more about power than it did about the safety and welfare of the American people. This is not to say that there isn't some criticism to be leveled at the federal response to this disaster. But the feds' limp-wristed response to this is largely due to the fact that we have too long tolerated life in a goose-stepping, global corporatocracy. Do you grasp that Uncle Sam has tried to send independed observers to the Gulf but was REBUFFED by a foreign corporation, the very same foreign corporation that CAUSED this shit? Doesn't that piss you off? Doesn't it make you yearn for a more muscular federal government, one that doesn't take shit from nobody? It sure does me. Still. Anyone who says this is "Obama's Katrina" doesn't understand what the hell Katrina was.

May 20, 2010

But Dick Blumenthal Is

An avid Howard Stern fan such as myself cannot help but think of one of Stern's classic bits these days: Stern's Vietnam stories. Stern, born in 1954, was just a bit on the young side to have served; he'd have been 19 in 1973. Still, Stern would regale his audience with his war stories. Am embedding a YouTube clip below. I should warn that some of the language might offend. Duh.

Yet another example of Connecticut Democratic Senate Candidate Dick Blumenthal's strange lies regarding his own military service has emerged. Here's what he reportedly said at a Veteran's Day parade in 2008: "I wore the uniform in Vietnam and many came back . . . to all kinds of disrespect. Whatever we think of war, we owe the men and women of the armed forces our unconditional support." Not only is Blumenthal claiming to have been in country. He's also claiming that a hippie spit on him when he returned. You've almost got to wonder if he's just kidding around like our good friend Howard. He really should listen and crib some of the material. Blumenthal is insane. There is no other explanation. He is crazy. No sane person stands up in front of a crowd and claims credit for a tour of duty in Vietnam unless he's actually waded in a rice paddy. I don't care that it means that the Democrats abdicate a Senate seat; he really should be pulled from the race. HE IS A CRAZY PERSON. The end.

No, Rand Paul Is Not Insane

Am just listening to Stephanie Miller read an e-mail that indicates in many creative ways that newly-minted Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul is insane, following his interview on The Rachel Maddow Show last evening. That's the scary thing, though. He's not insane. The interview was just aggravating. Paul knows he can't come out and say that he thinks that private businesses ought to have the right to refuse service. So he goes all Fred Astaire on our dear Rachel. And, although listening to it causes the average American to present with a splitting headache, he is exceptional at it. Let me say this. I believe Rand Paul when he says he abhors discrimination. I don't think he's a racist. If only. What Rand is, is clearly a product of the extreme Bizarro-Utopian Anarchist thinking that has gripped this country (and for which he may be named for). Rand Paul is so blinded by his belief that ownership is morality that he can't fathom that sometimes, the federal government has to be able to tell people and institutions, including privately owned businesses, where to step the hell off. And he's so clouded up with "objectivism" that he can't see the difference between denying service to People of Grander Melanin and denying service to people who are packing heat, and to top it off he somehow thinks that's a great way to argue with Known Liberal Rachel Anne Maddow. No, I don't think Rand Paul is insane, not in the conventional sense. I just think he's taken the suppository*. *"...the jagged, horrid, rusty, poisonous suppository that is used to corrupt Republigoats, that travels from their ass through their entire bloodstream, leaving behind shards of poison and bad ideas, and ending up in the brain, where it severs the corpus collosum and implants the text of 'Atlas Shrugged,' poop, and the hallucination that Ann Coulter is hot."

Rand Paul's Nonsense

Watching Rand Paul try to wiggle out from his statements about opposition to The Civil rights Act of 1964 was like watching a weasel trying to find an escape route from a chicken pen. For a man who says he is not a politician, it was a study in political obfuscation. (Kudos to Rachel for putting him on the spot.) What Paul believes is that the government has no right to instruct private business to not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color or national origin. What this means is that he believes the progress we have made in desegregation of public accommodations like restaurants and bars and department stores would never have happened, and may be turned back . It also means that private employers would not be required to hire blacks and Hispanics and women, and landlords could exclude any minorities. Paul says that he is adamantly opposed to discrimination, but he thinks that the rights of property owners are more important. The diversions Rand used to avoid this basic fact were many and curious. Paul claimed, for example that Boston was integrated in 1840 by the great work of Williiam Lloyd Garrison, and by implication similar efforts would have eventually integrated the South. Nice idea, except that Boston was the most segregated city in the North until recent years, and it's school busing riots were as violent as those in Birmingham. Then he tried to shift the discussion to freedom of speech… as in "should we prohibit crazy racists from saying what they think." Of course, no one has ever suggested that racists do not have a right to say their piece, regardless of how outrageous it is. In fact most liberals go to the wall to defend the rights of nut jobs like Fred Phelps and the American Nazi Party. The ACLU (of which I am a card carrying member) has always come to the defense of these whackos. (My personal view is that the solution to Fred Phelps is a gang of liberals armed with ball bats). Moreover, freedom of speech has nothing to do with ensuring a just and integrated society i.e. restricting your diner to whites only is not "speech." Then Paul moved on to the Second Amendment, as in "if you can force people to serve blacks, shouldn't you force them to serve armed nut jobs?" (Curiously I just had lunch in a rural Kansas saloon that had a sign on the door: "NO GUNS ALLOWED.") This is, of course, a ridiculous comparison. While the government has a compelling interest in promoting a just society through integration, it has no compelling interest in promoting shoot outs at the OK Saloon. Rand Paul's twisted logic is typical of the nonsense that we often hear from the Pee Party, all gas and no facts. It is marked primarily by an inability to read history, to understand context, to get the finer points of reality. Paul is an idealist and in some ways I admire that, but you can't run a government based on idealism. It takes a thorough appreciation of the gray areas, a willingness to craft policies that address the best solution, not the ideal system. The Constitution itself, about which Paul claims (incorrectly) to be an expert, was a compromise. It would never have been ratified if it had been left to idealists.

May 19, 2010

Instant Runoff Voting

Last evening's election events—called spot-on by this amateur wonk in this blogspace last evening, by the way—offer me an opportunity to speak with you for a moment about an electoral concept that every American ought to take a moment to digest at some point in their political lives: Instant runoff voting. Last night in Arkansas, you had exactly the situation we'd foreseen here at the imaginary think tank Crack Whores for Good Government, with Sen. Bland Lincoln forced into a runoff by Lt. Gov. Bill Halter (and, to some extent, by D.C. Morrison, who garnered 13 percent of the vote). In Arkansas, you don't win without a majority of the vote. So on June 8, voters will return to the polls and opt between Lincoln and Halter to see who will run against Republigoat John Boozman. That's the "runoff." This method of voting, applied routinely, could turn the American elections system on its ear, empowering voters and opening up the field to third-party and non-conventional candidates. It could decimate "winner-take-all" voting. It could dismiss the typical American voter's lament that, I would have voted for so-and-so, but I didn't want to throw my vote away. It's called "instant runoff voting," and it could really be a doozy. Here's how it works. Imagine if, instead of being faced with a slate of candidates and being forced to choose only one, you could rank them. So, for instance on the 2008 ballot, I would have put Dennis Kucinich as my number one, probably Barack Hussein Obama as my #2, probably John Edwards as my #3 (hey, we didn't know!), and maybe then Chris Dodd and the Hillary. So, instead of just voting for a single candidate, you get to put them in the order of your preference. So the votes are counted. What you do, see, is you count the #1 votes. If one of the candidates has a majority of the #1 votes, he or she wins. If there's no majority, then you throw out the low-vote-getter, and you count them again, this time using the #2 choices as your vote. And so on, until you get yourself a majority winner. That it's runoff voting keeps it constitutional. That it lets the voter RANK his or her choices hands the average voter Thor's hammer, and for candidates, it blows the door wide open for third-party and/or unconventional candidates. We should be pushing for this, which is the one best reason in the universe to get out and support your local Green Party, the only political organization in America that is actually taking IRV seriously. Push for this. Push for motor voter (my Granny G is not going to like that a bit). Push against term limits. Push to demolish the electoral college. Push for any and all initiatives that make your vote more powerful. That's what it is. And everything I have just written has been stolen directly from liberal talker and author Thom Hartmann. Tag, you're it!

That Vietnam Service Thing

The press has been reporting accurately that anyone who was a member of the National Guard in the Vietnam Era got there because his daddy had enough influence to get him the slot. Service in the Guard in those days was anything but honorable, to be certain, and Richard Blumenthal should be called out for trying to spin his Guard service into actual Vietnam miles. Funny the national journalism establishment forgot that fact in the nine or so years that The Great Moron George W. Busch was on the national stage. In those days, National Guard service like Blumenthal's was treated as service to the country… if not heroic, at least a recognized form of public service that could not be attacked. Now, the press is noting, rightly, the chickenshit use of National Guard billets to protect the sons of the rich and powerful from the draft. Many a fat cat and pol found a home for his kid in the Guard. George W. Busch, Dan Quayle, Richard Blumenthal, Jeff Sessions and many others managed to avoid service by getting daddy to twist a few arms. There were no National Guard slots for the less-well connected. Most politicians are sociopathic liars. Ron Raygun's publicity people told the fan magazines that he was serving overseas when, in fact, he never left Los Angeles, and Raygun eventually believed he had served in combat. LBJ arranged to get himself a Navy Cross even though he never faced enemy fire. Joe McCarthy lied extravagantly about is war experience, inventing wounds, exaggerating the number of missions he actually flew, and making himself a "tailgunnner" when was in fact an observer. I can't say I can condone Blumenthal's narcissism, but I hate to lose a senate seat to the GOOP over it. Maybe we can forget it if we revisit the list of GOOP cowards who have been leading us in recent years. http://www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks/

May 18, 2010

Nothing New Under the Sun

"It was found that eight miners and one little boy had been sacrificed in order to save a few dollars that should have been expended in providing the proper means of escape for the brave men who are obliged to work in our coal mines." Osage City (Kansas) Free Press, May 7, 1881, in an article about a fire in a coal mine in Carbondale, Kansas.

Here's How It Pans Out Tonight

Sestak beats Specter in Pennsylvania. Halter forces a runoff in Arkansas. And Rand Paul wins in Kentucky.

I'm only half-kidding when I say that I think that candidates for President, Senate, and Congress should be allowed to take a "Family Values Exemption," that is, they swear never to harangue their constituencies about so-called "family values," and then if it comes out that they're fucking around, they get a free pass. It should be clear to most people that political power helps men get laid, and I wonder if our current policy of throwing a guy out just because he wanders into a faraway enchanted forest doesn't remove an incentive from public service. If the candidate hasn't waggled his finger at us about abstaining or hasn't rehashed the Murphy Brown speech at us, why in the hell do we care if he's getting a little strange? Of course, in the case of Indiana Republigoat Mark Souder, I says hells yeah, put him on a horse blindfolded, take him to the county line and slap the horse's ass. Did you know that the broad he's alleged to have been banging was his co-star in some "pro-abstinence" video he'd made? I am not making this up.
Last November, Souder's office posted a video of Jackon "interviewing" the Congressman about an abstinence-only education hearing. The caption of the video noted that Souder was "one of the only voices speaking in defense of abstinence education."
They've pulled the video itself off of the YouTube, but I can imagine how it might have gone:
TJ: So, Congressman Souder. Your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why is abstinence-only education so important to you? Souder: Stand up. I want to ogle at your buttocks. TJ: But Congressman. Doesn't the Lord command us to refrain from sexual intercourse? We have to keep ourselves pure. Souder: If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? TJ: Congressman! Souder: Get it? Get it? Get it?
Oh, dear. Republigoats are FUN.

Harry, You Know What To Do

I predict that today's Pennsylvania primary will bear out this oft-quoted (here) observation by President Harry Truman: I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign. But when a Democratic candidate goes out and explains what the New Deal and fair Deal really are -- when he stands up like a man and puts the issues before the people -- then Democrats can win, even in places where they have never won before. It has been proven time and again.

May 17, 2010

In Other Words



Now Here's What I'm Typing About

First of all, having grown up in the greater Cleveland metropolitan area, I am utterly tickled that the oversight agency involved in offshore drilling is called the MMS. That is damned funny. The Buzzard. Heh. Now. Check this out.
LOS ANGELES — The federal agency responsible for ensuring that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that inspections be done at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows. Since January 2005, the federal Minerals Management Service conducted at least 16 fewer inspections aboard the Deepwater Horizon than it should have under the policy, a dramatic fall from the frequency of prior years, according to the agency's records.
The last time this rig was even cited for anything was August 2003. Seven years ago. No way in hell a big oil rig like this goes seven years without some sort of violation. No way. Nuh-huh.
The inspection gaps and poor recordkeeping are the latest in a series of questions raised about the agency's oversight of the offshore oil drilling industry. Members of Congress and President Barack Obama have criticized what they call the cozy relationship between regulators and oil companies and have vowed to reform MMS, which both regulates the industry and collects billions in royalties from it. Among the dubious oversight practices, the MMS has reportedly allowed hundreds of drilling plans to move forward without required permits since Obama took office.
So, sure, one can lay some of this mess at Mr. Obama's feet. However, as I indicated yesterday, there is a larger issue at work here. If Obama's guilty of anything, it's of continuing to view the political landscape with rose-tinged field glasses. He may have failed, I think, to grasp the scope of the long-haul war being waged against sensible government regulation and enforcement. Sure, OSHA has been damned near activist in its enforcement efforts under Hilda Solis, at least compared to its previous Rip Van Winkle pose. But OSHA is only a more visible link in a much larger regulatory chainmail. If you mean to step up regulatory activity, you might want to approach it more holistically than to focus on your top-notch agencies. The rest:
Earlier AP investigations have shown that the doomed rig was allowed to operate without safety documentation required by MMS regulations for the exact disaster scenario that occurred; that the cutoff valve which failed has repeatedly broken down at other wells in the years since regulators weakened testing requirements; and that regulation is so lax that some key safety aspects on rigs are decided almost entirely by the companies doing the work.
Here's what I know from my brief professional involvement and long-time study of regulation and enforcement: It works. I guarantee you, when there is an injury or a death in industry, you will find that in the course of that incident, an employee was failing to comply with federal regs in one way or another. He wasn't wearing his seat belt, or he wasn't following the floor plan, or he hadn't properly locked out a machine, or he was wearing a hoodie while working around a conveyor. It's always something that's covered in the CFR. Always. Look, I dig capitalism. I really do. But capitalism unchecked is a monster. The fact is that you need government to create markets, and you need it to force the market players to accountability. The proof is in the headlines. Just look.

May 16, 2010

Apocalypse Now?

Ketchup Is A Vegetable has not updated for quite some time. I could excuse this to travel plans; I was on travel the first week of May, while PB is on travel this week, and we all know how travel takes it out of a person and causes said person to lose contact with current events and such. But I've also not blogged because I'm a bit too horrified at what I fear#8212;irrationally or otherwise—that these Untied States of America might be approaching some horrific, slow-mo apocalypse that is what should be renamed the Oil Geyser (because our media can't seem to get it into its head that this is NOT a "spill") in the Gulf Coast region, and it concerns me that I see few media outlets seriously discussing what its effects might actually be. Here's what they're reporting this morning:
Oil from a blown-out well is forming huge underwater plumes below a visible slick in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists said as BP wrestled for a third day Sunday with its latest contraption for slowing the nearly month-old gusher. One of the plumes is "as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots," the New York Times reported. "The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given."
And yet, BP has the gall and, apparently, the gusto, to block neutral scientists from examining the site. What confounds me is that I still don't feel that many Americans are yet connecting the dots. I still see the occasional youngster reading the pornography known as the "Ayn Rand novel" with a self-satisfied grin. We still live in a culture that 30 years ago swallowed the hook whole and rubbed its tummy approvingly when Ron Raygun offered his famous line about someone from the government offering help being absolutely terrifying. I do not see enough people actually connecting the dots between a culture that has purposely frowned on government intervention for 30 years and the sad state of affairs we've seen of late. In 1906, a man named Upton Sinclair wrote a novel called "The Jungle." Sinclair meant the book to expose the plight of the working class, but alas, most Americans took to its discussion of unsafe practices in handling meat. Those revelations were confirmed by federal government inspectors and were so egregious that eventually the industry itself lobbied Uncle Sam to form the USDA in order for it to regain the public trust. Sinclair was appalled. "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach," he is quoted as saying. Regardless of Sinclair's perspective, the fact is that his reporting, conducted now 104 years ago, led to the notion that the federal government has a responsibility to protect the American people from industry, which, when left to its own devices, cuts corners in the pursuit of a fatter bottom line. And yet, with 104 years between us and "The Jungle," we're still having this debate. It is astounding. This is one of the most influential truths on my politics. When I was growing up, I had a great-grandfather who was deaf as long as I knew him. Two big fat hearing aids and he still couldn't understand a thing you said to him. I always assumed this was simply because he was old. But that wasn't it. My great-grandfather was deaf because he'd had a career in the smelters of Pittsburgh, and because there was no OSHA* to make his employers provide him with acceptable hearing protection. Or with, say, adequate safety railing. Or with a break-room where he could go to eat his lunch. Where I work, our guys are ringing the bell about the "new sheriff in town" at OSHA, which is under the Obama administration stepping up inspections and enforcement. But they always frame the issue with an adversarial bent. Watch out, OSHA's coming. How about we instead laud the agency for standing up to actually do its job for a change and reflect on how a greater awareness of safety might actually benefit our industry? We've seen it time and time again as of late, in the form of mine disasters, e. coli breakouts, and now this. This contemporary idealogical regime that demonizes government intervention, which has radically upped the ante with the T Party**, has still seen hardly a peep of backlash despite overwhelming evidence that, sometimes, it is in the public's best interest for the government to provide oversight. In fact, we've just had a Supreme Court decision that has for all intents and purposes codified the sentiment. The agency that doles out offshore drilling permits is the same agency that a few years back reportedly had its employees engaging in sexual intercourse with people in the industry and snorting smack with them off of toaster ovens (I am not making this up). This is how seriously regulation and enforcement were taken in the good old days of Chimpy McCokespoon, an executive administration that was run by an oil guy and another oil guy. And now we have the Oil Geyser. It could be said of course that, hey, your guy's in charge now, so you can't blame the Busch. But blaming this guy or that guy, that's not the point I'm making here. Hell, if I'm blaming anyone, I'm blaming Ronald Raygun, who was inarguably the most effective catalyst in bringing forth this culture that demonizes government regulation at every level. Obama is starting to wake up to it; starting to speak out against it, but only mostly in response to this ridiculous T Party**. But, sadly, his political stance in this political environment prevents him from attacking the Big Problem, industry's 30-year street-level war on sensible government regulation and enforcement. As I indicated, I am horrified at the Oil Geyser and what it might mean for these Untied States of America, and that we are not having a serious discussion about the possible consequences. This is the kind of event that can derail economic recoveries. It is the kind of event that is likely to destroy hundreds, maybe thousands of miles of coral reef. It is unlikely only affect the Gulf; it is likely at this rate that the goo will make its way around America's Penis and will cause problems up and down the east coast. Our fishing industry is screwed, are you looking forward to a $12 Filet-O-Fish? How many other industries will be tanked by this, and just wait to see what this does to the price of gasoline this summer. And nobody is discussing this. It is, as Chazz of Blades of Glory would say, mind-bottling. *OSHA was brought into existence on December 29, 1970. ** Mr. Bonk refuses to any longer acknowledge these folks as the "Tea Party" because it is about as relevant to the events of December 1773 as "Reno 911" is to law enforcement.

May 11, 2010

Drill, Baby, Drill! Then Cap! And Come Back For The Oil Later When It Is More Expensive!

You do understand that's what BP was doing, right? You do grasp, don't you, that BP wasn't drilling up a bunch of oil so it could generously pump it immediately into the American domestic marketplace, causing our gasoline prices to decrease and alleviating our economic dependence on our swarthy adversaries overseas. That's not what was actually happening when they sprung this leak in the Gulf, you do know that, right? That they'd actually discovered some oil, and they were in the process of capping the well so that they could come back later and easily start pulling the Texas Tea out of the ground when prices were higher. You know that, right? That there's a gooey nasty mess of epic proportions in our waters because another corporation was trying to gouge you yet again? Get it?

Elena Kagan. I am Not Impressed

Pardon me if I am not impressed my Elena Kagan. Just another Ivy League establishment apologist. Not what you would call an addition to the court. More like a replacement part except the guy she is replacing is older and smarter… and not from the Ivy League. Now they have a matched set. All nine stamped from the same mold. Does anyone who heard her pathetic efforts to confront John Roberts in the Citizens' United debate seriously think she is the intellectual powerhouse who can challenge the right wing of the court? The question to Kagan from Roberts was isn't it paternalistic of the government to police corporations against making political decisions that shareholders may not like? Can't shareholders vote their views by selling their shares? Kagan's answer (after stumbling around for a response) was "Gee I don't know what shares are in my mutual fund." (See it on Rachel http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#37075110) The right answer is it's bad policy to politicize stock picking. The public has a right to make investment decisions on purely economic grounds. Otherwise, we end up with liberal corporations and conservative corporations, and we may force some investors out of the market all together. The government has a vested interest in keeping the market free from politics. Kagan's greatest claim to fame, other than being an FOB (Friend of Barack) is that she brought conservatives into the Harvard Law School. What's wrong with having a liberal faculty? (She filled 31 positions, 25 with white males, one asian, five women. No Hispanics or African Americans.) I might consider it an accomplishment worthy of note only if she had simultaneously managed to get George Mason to hire liberals. If Kagan reminds me of anyone, its Little Sammy Elito, who started grooming himself for the Supreme Court by signing up for Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which was created to limit the number of women and minorities admitted to the Ivy League bastion. It also gave Elito, the child of Italian immigrants who themselves would never have been allowed in the Ivy Halls except to mop the floors, an opportunity to suck up to Antonio Scrolia and other powerful right wing bigots. Kagan set her sights on the Supreme Court when she was 12, and like Elito she spent her career making sure she took no controversial positions while sucking up to the powers who can get her the chair she wants. Once she gets it is she really capable of doing the job? History is full of unprincipled suck-ups. At worst, they attach themselves to a strange planet, are challenged by history, and fail to rise to the call. (See the entire Busch Administration.) At best they get the job of their dreams, feather their nests and are never heard from again. Elena Kagan may not rock the boat, but she is not going to advance the cause of progressive government. I sense a big disappointment about to happen. At least she is not Catholic.

May 10, 2010

RIP Lena Horne

She was beautiful and fabulously talented. The first black woman to be considered white enough to play movie leads, she none the less spent years with marginal work because they had to edit her out of movies shown in the south. Can you believe that? Dog those crackers were a stupid ignorant bunch.

May 5, 2010

Lord, Hear My Prayer

Since I'm at a hotel this week, I get to read the USA Today, America's favorite short-attention-span news delivery vehicle. There is a story in there on page 6D about how Franklin Graham of the Jesus Grahams is all upset and junk because the Pentagon has nixed his plans to have a prayer meeting in the Pentagon. You know. The building where they plan all the wars. That's an excellent place to pray.
If President Obama fails to intervene to allow controversial evangelist Franklin Graham to lead a National Day of Prayer event Thursday inside the Pentagon, "it will be a slap in the face of all Christians," Graham said Tuesday.
Graham says that if his rescinded invitation is not restored—bear in mind, it was rescinded because Graham is an exclusionist scumbag—he will stand outside of the Pentagon and pray. Here's where MY prayer comes in. Dear Lord. Please, while Mr. Graham is praying, please let the Pentagon break from its foundation, rise, and hover in the sky. Please, Lord, let Franklin Graham finally accomplish what Abby Hoffman never did. Lord, let Franklin Graham inadvertently levitate said Pentagon, bringing joy into the hearts of all of us wannabe Yippies everywhere. Amen.

May 2, 2010

Times Squares

There were, as it stands, two bombs on television last evening: Jay Leno at the nerdprom—also known as the White House Correspondents' Dinner—and an actual bomb in Central Park. It was heartening to know that my initial reaction to Jay Leno's schtick was the general consensus, that Leno was anything but actually FUNNY. Even President Obama wasn't bothering after a while to even fake-laugh. Leno isn't funny, and his nerdprom performance last evening cemented this amateur pundit's position with team coco. Besides. We red-beards gotta stick together. Regarding that other bomb: There are reports tonight that A) Some fakakta Muslim terrorism organization took credit for it, and that B) After they stopped laughing at that, authorities began investigating the possibility that a white dude seen on camera running away from the vehicle might have actually been the culprit. Now, I don't know about you, but I said from the moment this thing was reported that this wouldn't be some Muslim extremist outfit, but instead that it'd be some cracker with a crew-cut. Nosiree...what we sawl in New York—and maybe in Pittsburgh, too—I almost guarantee you that we've just seen the first bombing attempts by people in this country who are energized by the tea party poopers. And our guys had better find them.