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Watching James Carville make excuses for Obama Wednesday on CNN was heartbreaking. I heard enough excuses under Bush, I didn't vote for Obama to hear more. I don't suppose an anonymous and occasional diarist has much pull, but whatever pull I have, whatever my elected officials think they owe, I'm calling it in: MOBILIZE THE FULL POWER OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO FIX THIS SPILL.
I'm mad about this. I want bazillions of people cleaning up those beaches and marshes. I want miles of boom lined up waiting to be used. And I DON'T want people like Carville saying that Obama must not be getting good advice, or that he might not understand the scope of this disaster.
Imagine if it had been terrorists. Respond accordingly. Worry about billing BP later. Two-hundred-umpteen thousand federal employees, and this is the best we can do?
Here's one listof what the White House could be doing, including declaring a state of emergency (he hasn't done that yet?!); getting DARPA to create a skunkworks rapid solutions team; and
9) Call that lazy-assed sad-sack Joe Lieberman and tell him whatever super-secret-y deal you guys have going in the way of a quid pro quo is off if Lieberman cannot find some reason to investigate the relationships between Department of Interior and any corporation with which it deals.
Unfortunately, I still haven't seen more than this tepid response from the White House spokespeople:
MR. GIBBS: I would say relating to some of the earlier questioning, we've asked them to provide more public data on air and water quality, and we asked them 10 days ago and reiterated in a letter yesterday to provide video footage of what's happening 5,000 feet underneath the sea --
Q: Why didn't you order them to do that rather than ask them?
MR. GIBBS: Because it's -- you can't do that from a private company.
It's time to start ordering people.
I will be calling my senators and representatives tomorrow on this. They can harrass BP all they want, but the first job for the federal government is to FIX IT.
Fletcher Features
The Impact of Shale Gas Technology on Geopolitics
Dr. Daniel Fine of MIT discusses how new technology in extracting gas will impact geopolitics and the environment
Dr. Daniel Fine of the Mining and Minerals Resources Institute at MIT addressed Fletcher students at a talk sponsored by the International Security Studies Program and offered his insights into how the development of new technology will allow the United States to tap vast, previously inaccessible, resources of natural gas that will impact everything from the price of gasoline to the ability of Chinese companies to buy equity in Russian natural gas fields.
The United States has a monopoly on "hydro-fracing" technology. The technology, short for hydraulic fracturing, releases natural gas trapped in shale deposits by injecting the deposits with high-pressure water mixed with sand and small amounts of chemical additives.
According to Dr. Fine, the "cloud over gas" used to be "do we have enough gas?" In 2003, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan declared that the United States did not have enough natural gas, and that it would be necessary to import liquid natural gas (LNG). This, said Dr. Fine, was clearly a mistake in the light of the new hydro-facing technology, not only because importing LNG poses a security risk to the United States, but because tapping natural gas from shale represents an economic "bonanza" in "the most [economically] repressed parts of the country:" western New York, western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, areas which suffer from high rates of unemployment, and are estimated to host 490 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The thousands of jobs that could be created in these areas could stand in the way of President Obama's pursuit of subsidies for renewable energy.
Washington (FNS)-An exclusive investigation by FNS reporting staff has identified and confirmed, through a second source, the Obama Administration's secret plans for resolving issues with certain residents of Arizona that has been in the news over the past week, known as "Operation Terraform".
The plan depends upon American authorities cooperating with the Canadian, Mexican, and North American Governments, and the plan will require one of the largest transport efforts since D-Day.
Until today, no one outside the involved agencies had been aware of the existence of the plan, much less its details, and as of today, no official will admit, on the record, that the plan is already in effect.
Another excellent article on Energy Security and Regulation! Enjoy!
Energy Security and the Regulation Imperative in a New Economic Era
Did the economic crisis stabilize oil prices? What is the future of energy security? Has China bypassed the United States in the green energy revolution? How will the global community approach the "fourth corridor" pipeline in relation to Iranian power and Russian resurgence?
Dr. Daniel Fine, research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Mining and Minerals Resources Institute, addressed a diverse set of energy-related questions at The Fletcher School on September 15. The presentation was part of the International Security Studies Program Global Speaker Series.
Dr. Fine indicated that Saudi Arabia views the current price of oil, roughly $70-75 per barrel, as reflecting a price that is both fair and natural. The 2007-2008 price spike, which increased the per barrel price 220% over its 2005 level, was accompanied by a mere 2.5% increase in consumption. According to Dr. Fine, this undermines the oft-cited argument that consumption spikes drive price increases.
The real story of runaway oil prices, Dr. Fine said, lies in the enormous amount of available credit in the 2007-2008, which allowed speculators to buy and hold massive reserves, disturbing traditional forces of supply and demand. Combined with a global finance system that neglected deposits and encouraged rampant buying and a lack of regulation, this perfect storm brought the financial world to its knees in September 2008.
As the global economy shows signs of recovery, Dr. Fine urged the audience to ignore speculators. So-called "geopolitical analysts" on major news shows, he said, are often self-interested frauds with no actual training in geopolitics, serving only to promote a product (oil, gas, or energy) and make faulty predictions.
In the framework of energy security, Dr. Fine cited President Obama's speeches in Cairo and on Wall Street, as evidence of the administration's movement away from hard power "oil politics" and toward Joseph Nye's conception of soft power. Dr. Fine cited President Obama's Cairo speech as the backbone of a new regional policy in which the United States will move away from energy independence and toward energy interdependence, working alongside the global community and with regulators to ensure transparency.
The new geopolitics, Dr. Fine noted, focus on the location of and environment that surrounds oil supplies. He indicated that this symbolizes a shift from "great salesmanship" to true political geography with an associated acknowledgement of the reality of sector specific risk. In this context, Dr. Fine discussed the "fourth corridor" pipeline route, popularly known as Nabucco, which will stretch across the Caspian Sea to Austria. Turkey's attempts to claim 15% of the overall revenue would, if successful, render the proposed pipeline uneconomic, while the tumult in Georgia poses enormous political risk to the project. Russia, which holds a virtual monopoly on European natural gas supply and is dabbling anew in great power politics, is vehemently opposed to Nabucco. This is one of the reasons, Dr. Fine stressed, that Russia does not want to see regime change in Iran; the current anti-Western hard line ensures Iran's illegitimacy in the West and thus prevents Iranian oil sales to Western powers.
Dr. Fine also touched on China and its crucial coal factor. China will inevitability decline the carbon emissions cap to be proposed at COP15, and India, along with other developing powers, will follow suit in rejecting emissions caps. But Dr. Fine argued that China's emphasis on carbon capture synchronization, or CCS, demonstrates its relative advantage over the West in certain green energy issues.
Dr. Fine concluded by citing President Obama's recent hard-line regulation speech on Wall Street as an outline of future policy. If regulation fails, Dr. Fine indicated it is likely that a pricing bubble will return in concert with a buying surge. But with regulation, and with stringent enforcement by both the U.S. and Europe, a permanent cap on oil prices can be established that will maintain transparency and coincide with the fair and natural price.
We all "know" that our unusual president showed so much promise and has failed to live up to it. Except there are a few glimmers of hope left:
But by Election Day, 2010, Obama will have soundly achieved many of his chief campaign promises while running a highly competent, scandal-free government. Not bad for a guy whose opponents (in both parties) for the White House suggested he was too green in national life to know how to do the job - and whose presidency began in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis that demanded urgent attention and commanded much of his focus.
After speaking with a human, I was connected to a very long prerecorded inflammatory diatribe from Wayne LaPierre, the gist of which was "they're trying to get our guns away from us, even if they say they aren't", followed by a one-question "poll" (actual human) asking whether I thought President Obama and Speaker Pelosi were protecting my second amendment rights.
It wasn't but a couple of days ago that we had a conversation about The Fear and the emails that are used to spread it, and I figured with that out of the way we had dealt with the topic, and that we'd move on to new things.
Well, we would be moving on, Gentle Reader, if it wasn't for the fact that an email came in today that was so ugly, so disturbing, and so indicative of what we are about to see as the battle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) begins to heat up (ENDA being possibly the next "big contentious thing" that this Administration hopes to accomplish), that I had to interrupt my story schedule to bring it to your attention.
I was listening to morning AM DJ Al Kulas, a conservative commentator who runs the Saturday and Sunday early morn shows on WKBK talk radio in Keene.
On the eve of the Sunday vote for healthcare, the phone line was heating up from conservative callers... Anger and frustration... Within bounds.
But one regular called in. "I have a gun" he warned... And then words to the effect "shoot the bastard." As we were taking about Obama and healthcare, the context pointed to a threat at the O-man.
I called in to Al Kulas, calling on him the step on such calls. It was what we in the radio see as "a call to action," a big no-no.
Yes, the seven second delay or "kill" switch is useful against F-bombs and George Carlin's other six bad words, but contextual stuff does get through the best of us... So a disavowal is necessary...
Al and his engineer said they heard the gun part but not the second... Other callers backed my version of events... Including a gun guy who said this kind of talk discredits gun-ownership...The mayor praised my calling them out on this...
Today, the General Manager told me, on air, that the angry caller was not targeting Obama but a previous caller, a local Gay liberal, who was happy about the upcoming healthcare vote.
So I guess that makes all the difference... But makes me feel actually, for some reason, worse...
Opponents of health care reform have been using the derisive term ObamaCare to describe the reform debate in an effort to sink our president. The president, to his credit, with his back to the wall (and with us behind him!)stood and went toe-to-toe for the past month, fighting for something that he believed in. In hindsight, his instincts and political acumen appear to be brilliant.
But I want to talk about, quite possibly, the most progressive and strongest Speaker of the House we've ever had. Madame Speaker held the House of Cards together after the Brown debacle, faced down Rahmbo, whipped members running for the hills, and nudged an already shifting young president toward this historic measure.
A month or two ago, CSP took some heat for joking that women run this world...she was right, and it's about time someone said it. Pelosi showed leadership on this issue that would have made most leaders crumble from the pressure. I can't think of a single person who might have had the personal courage and political chops to pull this off.
She's not the run of the mill grandmother - she won't get a lot of credit for this in the history books, but this bill is hers as much as it is anyone else.
Reid's letter to McConnell is a thing of rare and exquisite beauty, or as my father-in-law is fond of telling me, Go f&^k yourself. (I don't know why, but people tell me it's my shining and agreeable personality that pisses him off.) It is often said that civility is the art of telling someone to go f%^k themselves and have that someone think it's probably a good idea. That's my brand of civility, and as I've said before, we should start worrying about building bridges when the other side stops shelling us.
My favorite passage from Reid, in his conclusion: "at the end of the process, the bill can pass only if it wins a democratic, up-or-down majority vote. If Republicans want to vote against a bill that reduces health care costs, fills the prescription drug "donut hole" for seniors and reduces the deficit, you will have every right to do so."
Relatedly, good news from the NY Times, via Mark Kleiman, on student loans. Eliminating the middle men, raising Pell Grant amounts, and softening payback. Awesome. It's starting to look like Dems are flexing legislative muscle...can we hope?
It seems like everywhere you look these days, someone's trying to spread...The Fear.
All around us...in every town...on every corner...a massive Army Of Fear is standing by, according to the Messengers, ready at a moment's notice to obey the dictates of some unappointed Czar or another.
Just ask Glenn Beck: concentration camps for the white people, jackbooted stormtroopers ready to snatch the guns from your cold dead fingers...Socialist Government-Controlled Healthcare That Threatens Your Not Socialist Medicare...it's all coming, my friends-and unless we organize, as a community, to return to the values of the Founding Fathers, The Government, meaning that awful Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and George Soros and all the other Evil Community Organizers, will win.
There's no government, we're told, like no government.
You know who would find all of this fear of self-government just entirely bizarre?
The Founding Fathers.
In today's conversation we'll consider the fundamentals of American patriotism, we'll ask one of those Founding Fathers how he saw the role of Government-and we'll toss in a few words from Abraham Lincoln, just for good measure.
LANGUAGE WARNING: Today's story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.
Gentle Reader, you have been officially...warned.
With that in mind, if you take offense when confronted with language strong enough to knock a fuckin' buzzard off a shitwagon, please stop reading now.
It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against "blue dog" Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.
Now we're not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we're finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone's mind for the past year or so.
It's pretty obvious to even uninformed observers that the WH wants the public option to disappear. But why won't they just say it? Instead, we get mixed signals from Reid, the WH, and now the House. Majority Leader Hoyer is now saying that comprehensive reform is in jeopardy...
Hoyer: Comprehensive health bill may be no go
Is it going to be the House that holds this up after all of this?
Via Josh Marshall, here's a Public Policy Polling data find that everyone in the Dem caucus should be paying attention to:
Public Policy Polling
Key graf from the poll findings:
"Congressional Democrats really need to decide if they're going to let their agenda be dictated by voters who won't support them no matter what they do. These numbers provide pretty clear evidence that most of the voters opposed to health care and repeal of DADT will not consider voting Democratic even if the party decides not to move on those issues."
I have always been interested in Obama's early work as a community organizer, probably because I came to realize that I have done some of that as well, organizing a Democratic town committee, persuading people to work on town committees, helping to start the farmers market, etc. I never really thought about the ones who got involved because they had an agenda quite different from those who really wanted to accomplish a particular goal, maybe because they usually disappeared after the second or third meeting when they realized they were outnumbered, but I was taken by this argument about what Obama is doing with the health care meeting he is convening on the 25th.
The attached news brief from Reuters says it all - one in 7+ Americans is receiving food stamps. The USDA expects an average enrollment in 2010 of 40.5 million people.
http://www.forexyard.com/en/ne...
The BLS is reporting the U6 unemployment rate at 16.5% - more than 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.
When viewed through the lens of tightening credit markets and skyrocketing health insurance premiums, it's hard to see where job growth occurs. To be polite, the president's $5K tax credit for job creation is grossly inadequate for creating any meaningful employment. There's simply no demand.
The red shows the increasing job loss suffered during George W Bush's last year in office, the blue the decreasing job loss during Barack Obama's first year.
It would be great if it could improve at a faster rate, but it is improving, which it would not be under the administration we would have had if Obama had not won.
TPM is reporting that Sen Shelby (R-AL) has put a hold on all of the president's nominees - in order to get more pork projects in his state. The sheer audacity must shock even conservatives...
Does anyone care? Why has the president been reluctant to use recess appointments? I don't get it.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen also are expected to announce the creation of a group to assess how to carry out a full repeal of the decades-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which requires gay soldiers to keep their sexual orientation secret.
But Gates and Mullen are also expected to tell senators that it could take years to integrate gay men and lesbians fully into the military, defense officials said. Two appointees will be named to oversee a group that will draw up plans for integrating the armed forces, according to sources familiar with the Pentagon's deliberations on the subject. The planning effort is expected to take up to a year.
Among the issues to be addressed by the group: whether gay soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines will face any restrictions on exhibiting their sexual orientation on the job; whether the Pentagon will be obligated to provide for their domestic partners; and whether straight military personnel could be compelled to share quarters with gays
What a foot-dragging, anemic, crock of shit.
"Years to implement?" It's really very easy: Just end it.
The military already has MANY gay and lesbian members SERVING AND FIGHTING AND DIEING. It is NOT a question of figuring out "how to let them in." THEY ARE IN ALREADY. Straight soldiers are ALREADY COMPELLED to share quarters with gay soldiers, just as white soldiers are COMPELLED to share quarters with black sodiers (gasp!)...and military preparedness and unit cohesion does not suffer.
But individual soldiers do suffer.
A group of soldiers are on leave or having a little down time at a local watering hole. Many of them comment on the tail they hope they get, or wolf-whistle at the waitress they call 'sweetheart,' and comment among themselves as to how hot she is. This of course, is normal, red-blooded American Boy-talk, right?
But one of the soldiers in their midst has to pretend. He has to force a smile, or force a stupid comment or become 'suspect' by the others. He can't be who he is, or say what or how he feels. Because if he does, he loses his job, his health insurance, his honor, his pension.
Elsewhere, a group of soldiers are talking about how they miss their wives and children, and sharing stories of Christmas and breakfasts and vacations, and how they can't wait to see them again. But another soldier is forced to lie, saying there is no one in his life, no one to go back to. If he admits to having a partner, he avoids or invents that partner's name...becasue if he shares his longing, too, he loses his job, his health insurance, his honor, his pension.
Oh, he's good enough to shoot and fight and die. He's good enough to serve, and receive medals and honors - As long as he lives in a closet of denial, as long as he shares nothing, as long as he avoids friendship with others in his platoon, as long as he holds everything so close to his chest that no one gets in.
President Obama, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and as the Head of the Executive Branch, with one penstroke you can end DADT dismissals just as Harry Truman integrated the military. It's time to do it NOW, before another American hero loses his or her lifetime contribution to our nation because of your cowardice.
