Jul 30 2010
Remember how we were all told that by installing new regulation oversight on the banks would fix what is wrong with the economy?
Remember how the same guys who broke the financial economy and stole trillions stood before the world and declared that they now know how to fix it?
Well … one thing is for sure … The Fix Is In!
Jul 07 2010
It’s been a while since we had to have a real heart-to-heart, the Obama Administration and I, and last time it was because Rahm Emanuel had been a bit snippy toward those of us who are carrying the water for this Administration.
We need to have another one of those conversations today; this time the circumstances are a lot more positive-in fact, if the Administration follows my suggestions here, we have a real chance to put the Democrats on the road to victory, not just this November, but also in 2012.
What I’m proposing will create hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs, and it will stimulate millions more as we create a national source of discount electrical power that can be used by business and consumers alike.
Here’s the best part: it’s no “pie in the sky” promotion I’m offering here; we’ve already done the same thing before, it’s been working out well for almost three quarters of a century…and even better than all that…my idea first pays for itself, and then…it actually makes the Federal Government a profit, forever after.
Jul 01 2010
The top political story today at the New York Times was adorned with a promising headline…
“Harsh Words for G.O.P. From Obama”
Okay! Tell it like it is, Barry! Sock it to those torture-pigs and perverts!
Liars! Cowards! Whores!
Satanic ministers of violence and greed!
What is their foreign policy?
Violence!
What is their domestic policy?
Greed!
Who is their master?
Satan!
But instead of an accurate identification of “conservatism” with the Satanic agenda of greed and violence…
And a radical re-alignment of the Democratic Party in accord with the defining Christian principles of peace and charity…
What kind of “harsh words” did Barack Obama apply the the Republicans?
“I just want everyone to remember – we’ve tried the other side’s theories,” he said at a town-hall-style meeting. “We know what their ideas are. We know where they led us. So now we’ve got a choice: We can return to what we know did not work, or we can build a stronger future. We can go backwards or we can go forward. And I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward in this country.”
“I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward in this country.”
You can’t argue with that!
Jun 23 2010
This week the President of the United States watched cluelessly while what was already the worst environmental disaster in American history somehow got even worse, winked while a Democratic Congress refused to extend unemployment benefits for millions of desperate citizens, and fired his battlefield commander because of… opinions which the general’s assistants expressed in a bar.
As the Senate scrambles to scale back a $140-billion recession relief bill, the poor, the elderly and the unemployed are bearing the brunt of the squeeze. But NASCAR track developers, movie producers and other special interests are likely to escape unscathed.
In the hunt for ways to cut costs, neither party has proposed curbing the panoply of narrow tax preferences, which Congress has routinely extended each year.
Instead, Senate leaders have proposed a $25 cut in weekly unemployment benefits; temporarily allowed a 21% cut in Medicare fees for doctors; and are planning to withhold or scale back $24 billion in payments many states expected to help pay for Medicaid for the poor.
Tax-breaks for NASCAR developers!
Cuts in Medicaid for the poor!
You gotta love those Democrats!
Jun 23 2010
I have long maintained that the only thing that will stop America’s Forever War is the exhaustion of the US Treasury. Some view the removal of McChrystal as the unexpected consequence of a careless interview, but if one considers the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan it is more logically seen as a meltdown of a defeated leader. McChrystal grasped that he would never have enough resources to achieve what he had promised: a sweeping counter-insurgency victory that would make Afghanistan a tractable ally. I believe that this realization fueled the rage that led to his intemperate outbursts.
America is now in the terminal phase of its addiction to war. It is spending its last available (borrowed) resources on two hugely expensive and futile crusades to control strategic nations. When our unsustainable budget deficits force budget cuts, the military will not be spared, and these brutal wars will end. Never in the history of our nation have we squandered so much wealth to such little effect. We have wrecked Iraq, one of the most ancient civilizations of the world, and we have made Afghanistan a failed state, at a cost of over a trillion dollars. Fortunately there is no more money where that came from.
What decency and shame could not achieve, our pending bankruptcy (moral and financial) will necessitate: the end of America’s Forever War.
Jun 23 2010
In his latest column David Ignatius says McCrystal’s…
…comments actually understate the backbiting among these senior policymakers and their staffs.
Anybody who has been around Washington’s foreign policy elite (I have, at times had a window into that world) knows the tension between civilian leadership and various faction of the military and, indeed, between not only the services but between factions within those services. Also, most people don’t understand the balance of power has shifted, over the decades, toward the Pentagon because, frankly, money talks and the Pentagon budget has a enormous influence over political realities in Congress. So, at the moment, we are as close to military rule as we’ve ever been as should be obvious by the MSM’s obvious reluctance to criticize the military despite the overwhelming evidence of atrocities practiced by both low and high ranking personnel. It is important to understand that this civilian vs. military conflict is very much a cultural conflict between an institution dominated by southerners and red-state Republicans who have a strong need to have “enemies” to be psychically healthy and a strong disdain for people who can see both sides of issues. Life to them is a simple matter of “them and us.” Frankly, these guys just consider themselves more manly than the civilians involved in FP discussions.
Jun 18 2010
Obama’s content-free address from the Oval Office will go down in history as an official declaration of incompetence of the US Government. Conspicuous by its absence was the lack of any emergency plan to stop the oil leak by mobilizing the technical resources of the world’s most powerful government. Specifically, there was no mandate to create a task force to deploy unconventional measures to seal the well. Here is Obama’s decision on how to apply the best minds in the Federal Government to the worst environmental disaster in American history:
Because there has never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. That’s why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge — a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.
As a result of these efforts, we’ve directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology.
Translation: Our government is not competent to fix this problem, so we must rely on BP. This, more than any other sign, is conclusive proof of the poisonous fruit of the “Reagan revolution” – a government that declares itself incompetent to protect its people from the most severe crisis.
There has been much talk about the use of a small nuclear device to seal the oil leak, but the US government’s agencies also have extensive experience with the deployment of conventional high explosives underground. In the face of American airpower supremacy, our potential adversaries have been busily digging and tunneling for decades to establish hardened structures protecting their command posts and strategic weapons development sites. America’s response has been to develop steadily more powerful “bunker buster” weapons to destroy deeply-buried structures.
The development of powerful bunker-buster weapons requires advanced research into explosive effects on geological strata. In short, America’s weapons researchers know a great deal about what happens to underground structures when a large conventional bomb is detonated near them. This knowledge is directly applicable to the problem of sealing a runaway oil well. When a new bunker buster was needed to destroy Saddam Hussein’s most deeply buried bunkers, the US Defense Department developed the weapon in just a few months. No such urgency is felt for sealing the runaway well. But even if such a solution could not be devised before the completion of the relief well fix, it would surely be of immense value to stopping future catastrophic spills.
But Obama said exactly nothing about letting our government take the lead in protecting our people. You see, Obama is a great admirer of Reagan, and Reagan said “Government is the problem.” Having declared our government incompetent, America must now rely on predatory corporations to protect public safety. The result will be more and greater environmental catastrophes, as organizations with no incentive to protect the environment continue to pretend to bear this responsibility while maximizing the profits of stockholders and dumping their risks on the helpless people of the world.
Ronald Reagan destroyed the ability of the United States government to protect its own people, clearing the path for rule by corporate oligarchs. Barak Obama is ensuring that that our governmental incompetence remains intact and the power of the oligarchs remains unchecked.
Jun 16 2010
As the oil spill (gusher) reaches towards higher and higher estimates of it’s size (today’s ‘new’ estimate: 35,000-60,000 barrels per day) the American president reaches for more rhetoric, in hopes that will work. A bunch of passing the buck, a very small amount of promising things that obviously should have been done yesterday, some religious mumbo jumbo, and nothing else.
Yesterday, he said this:
“in the end, I am confident that we’re going to be able to leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before.”
Says he.
How?
By hiding the problem with dispersants? And hoping the resultant cancers and liver disease don’t get noticed until he’s out of office?
That is a “ridiculous statement, and worrying,” said Susan Shaw, the director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute. “Obviously he has no idea of the consequences, or doesn’t want to.”
(speaking of Obama’s statement) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Today, he offers this:
So I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party – as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels. Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development – and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.
Uh, right. “ideas from either party”
Either party.
These parties have no ideas.
You have no ideas, Mr Obama, yet you promise to “look at” ideas from the two parties.
The fact is, this is Obama’s third chance to do something positive for alternative energy: the stimulus, the bailouts, and now his BP spill. And each time he’s failed to deliver anything; less than Jimmy Carter delivered in 1975 in fact.
Jun 14 2010
Jun 13 2010
Everyone is following the BP story. Everyone is witnessing the horror in the Gulf.
Dead birds. Dead fish. Dead turtles. Dead dolphins.
No more blue fin tuna.
No more domestic shrimp and oysters.
Fishermen out of work. Tourist industries decimated.
Bobby Jindal, Bob Riley, Haley Barbour, Charlie Crist feet stomping about BP’s and the government’s delayed response.
What does it all mean?
Nothing really. Here’s why….
Jun 12 2010
So, I receive this from Sen. Leahy today, as follows:
Dear …….
Figuratively speaking, what BP has done to the communities and ecology of the Gulf Coast is downright criminal.
Eleven workers lost their lives in the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. Countless more have lost their livelihoods. The environmental devastation to marine life and coastal wetlands is unfathomable.
Yet under current law, if a jury finds BP criminally negligent, the company would not necessarily have to pay any restitution to the victims of the spill — not even to the families of rig-workers who perished or to the fishermen put out of work. Furthermore, criminal penalties are currently too lenient to adequately deter corporate wrongdoers from authorizing risky schemes that damage the environment.
That’s why this week I introduced the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to make restitution for violations of the Clean Water Act mandatory and increase criminal sentences for violators.
Urge your members of Congress to support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to start treating preventable environmental catastrophes as serious criminal acts.
This legislation takes important steps towards deterring criminal conduct that leads to environmental and economic catastrophe.
Too often, big oil companies treat criminal fines and penalties as a mere cost of doing business. But passing ECEA would change all that, sentencing corporate wrongdoers to serious prison time and mandating restitution payments be made to the victims of corporate malfeasance.
So please, take a moment to support this important legislation by clicking here.
I fully support lifting the miniscule $75 million liability cap on corporations responsible for environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill, but I believe we must also go further to treat such acts as serious crimes against our communities, our economy, and our environment.
If you agree, please support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) today.
Thank you for taking action to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable and ensure something like this never happens again.
Sincerely,
Patrick Leahy
Jun 09 2010
http://www.rollingstone.com/po…
Tim Dickinson at Rollingstone has done some fine and much needed investigative journalism. He reveals that BP and the government anticpated a much higher volume of flow from the first:
From the start of its operation in the Gulf, BP had found itself struggling against powerful “kicks” from gas buildup, just as MMS had warned. Now, on April 20th, the pent-up methane exploded in a fireball that incinerated 11 workers. Like a scene out of a real-life Jerry Bruckheimer film, the half-billion-dollar rig – 32,000 tons and 30 stories tall – listed over and sank to the bottom two days later, taking a mile of pipe down with it.
Within hours, the government assembled a response team at the “war room” of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. The scene, captured by a NOAA cameraman and briefly posted on the agency’s website, provides remarkable insight into the government’s engagement during the earliest hours of the catastrophe, and, more troubling, the role of top administration figures in downplaying its horrific scope.
