The Speech
I have to agree with James Fallows that, overall, Obama's Oval Office address was a wasted opportunity to leverage an event (the spill) that could be used to justify changing the status quo.
That said, the status quo has a powerful protector: Congress, specifically the Senate. We just saw the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression and all we're getting is ever more watered down legislation. Sticking it to the banks is a political no-brainer in an election year, yet it isn't happening.
Similarly, setting aside climate change, the politics of lessening our dependence on foreign oil and creating our own high-tech energy industry are also no-brainers. We don't need to defend global warming to justify our need to get off the oil teat via energy reform legislation. Yet we get this strange passage in Obama's speech:
[...] Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill –- a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America's businesses.
Now, there are costs associated with this transition. And there are some who believe that we can't afford those costs right now. I say we can't afford not to change how we produce and use energy -– because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.
So I'm happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party -– as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels.[...]
There's not even a call for the Senate to take up the legislation. The bitter political reality is that Obama doesn't have enough confidence in the Senate's ability to pass anything to even suggest that they try. That's why he's specific on the small things the Executive Branch can do (restitution and MMS reform), and mushy on the big changes needed to keep us from drilling at 20,000 feet or propping up despots on the other side of the earth.
As soon as Arizona passed its recent immigration law, some reporters and commentators were quick to cast the story with the usual actors: "Tea Partiers," race activists, conservatives and liberals. Like our politics, much of our news media coverage has become a clash of caricatures — easily categorized groups with one-dimensional motives for mass consumption. Some commentary even suggested that supporters of the law are either open or closeted racists. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., recently called the law both "fascist" and "racist."
Though I am a critic of the Arizona law, I do not view its supporters in such one-dimensional terms. Indeed, I do not view the public response in purely immigration terms. Whether it is illegal immigration or the mortgage crisis or corporate bailouts, there seems to be a growing sense among many citizens that they are expected to play by the rules while others are exempt.
Keep reading: http://jonathanturley.org/2010/06/15/do-laws-even-matter-today/#more-24066
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International Red Cross denounces Israeli blockade of Gaza as violation of international law.
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Waves crashing on Alabama's beaches. Thanks, BP.
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Why is the budget-gouging military worried about flamboyant homosexual hairdressers serving in the military when the general who runs the longest war in American history is given to precious fainting spells? A battalion of florists and make-up artists would tell General Petraeus: "Suck it up, Mary!" In fairness, listening to John McCain (a Viet Cong collaborator brat who only graduated from Annapolis because of daddy and who went on to joyride 5 military aircraft into destruction) is incentive enough to resort to any excuse to tune out his psycho-fascist pandering.
Sign of the Times #10The Global Peace Index
According to the Global Peace Index, Iraq is the most dangerous place in the world for the fourth year in a row. The most peaceful: New Zealand. Interactive timeline, map, and stats at the link. The United States ranks 85th, just above Angola. ATLANTA: Charges Dropped Against Man Who Called For Murder Of Elton John
Charges have been dropped against anti-gay nutjob Neal Horsley, who was arrested in March for calling for the death of Elton John. Neal Horsley, 65, was arrested in March for writing a post entitled "Why Elton John Must Die" on his website WeChooseLife.net and for protesting with a sign that read "Elton John Must Die" outside John's condominium in Atlanta. Horsley's protests came after the openly gay singer, who lives part-time in Atlanta, described Jesus as a "super-intelligent gay man" in an interview with Parade magazine. Horsley was charged with terroristic threats, criminal defamation and using the Internet to disseminate threats. At Atlanta judge ruled Monday that Horsley's actions did not warrant criminal charges, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require oil companies to begin drilling emergency relief wells concurrently with any new offshore drilling sites off the coast of the United States. The idea is to preemptively ensure that the most surefire safety mechanism is in place should major eruptions or spills occur. It would not apply to sites currently operating in the Gulf.
My prediction? The Republicans will filibuster this while simultaneously screeching about how oil drilling needs to be safer and it's President Obama's fault that safety regulations didn't work.
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Steve Hynd: Did NYT's Risen Get Played On Afghan Mineral Wealth Story?
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It seems like BP was standing by the 5,000 barrels per day estimate only yesterday. then it was 10,000 and then 20,000. Now it's much higher. So how exactly do we know BP will be able to capture 90% of the leak when they can't even count how much oil is escaping through their damaged well? How can anyone have any confidence in the numbers when they keep changing?
Two months later and an Oval Office speech and even the "notoriously liberal media" is still wondering where the leadership is on this problem.
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This is why every species extinction is so dangerous - we don't yet know their full role in the ecosystem. "In a somewhat unusual research project, scientists have found that sperm whale faeces may help oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Australian researchers calculate that Southern Ocean sperm whales release about 50 tonnes of iron each year. This stimulates the growth of tiny marine plants - phytoplankton - which absorb CO2 during photosynthesis. They note in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B that in the end, this also provides more food for the whales. Phytoplankton are the basis of the marine food web in this part of the world, and the growth of these tiny plants is limited by the amount of nutrients available, including iron. Over the last decade or so, many groups of scientists have experimented with putting iron into the oceans deliberately as a "fix" for climate change. Not all of these experiments have proved successful; the biggest, the German Lohafex expedition, put six tonnes of iron into the Southern Ocean in 2008, but saw no sustained increase in carbon uptake. But the Australian group calculates the natural fertilisation by the 12,000 or so sperm whales estimated to inhabit the Southern Ocean result in the absorption of about 40,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year - more than twice as much as they release by breathing."
And in a related story ...
In the video linked here, it's not a Japanese ship but instead, a Norwegian hunting vessel. The minke whale was hit by an exploding 15 kilo harpoon but was not killed immediately. The ship hunted the whale for two more agonizing hours before it was finally killed. Under the plan that Obama is supporting, Japan will be able to expand their annual hunt as will Norway. In the case of Norway they will be allowed to hunt 6,000 minke whales over the next ten years. Thanks, Hopey!
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Senate Democrats to the unemployed: Drop dead.
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Traitor Joe and the Republicons have the oil company's backs, or they don't give a frak about the deficit
Look at the vote (a "nay" vote is a vote to kill it) and you'll see some surprising senators who stood up for the oil industry. John Kerry. Chris Dodd. Why the hell are they standing up for BP, Exxon and Shell?
It wasn't that big of a tax break, either, maybe $3.5 billion a year.
It just goes to show, though, that when it come to doing anything to tackle the deficit, the Congress is going to put the burden on the backs of the middle class and the working poor.
Which is why you've probably seen a lot of chatter on the blogs over the last few days about how the Republicans are trying to build momentum to having the Federal government default on the national debt. For the Republicans know that the ensuing economic chaos will destroy the middle class and greatly expand the ranks of the working poor. Oh, the rich will take their lumps, but at the end of the day, they'll be, by comparison, far richer.
Which, after all, is what the party of Hoover has been pushing for ever since the end of the 1890s.
It was bogus then, and still is, but now the Rude Pundit turns it back on the anti-immigrant racists:
So this guy, Eric Balderas, a college student who was valedictorian of his high school class, no, even better, a Harvard University student, no, wait, even betterer, a Harvard University student majoring in molecular and cellular biology who wants to cure cancer, was brought to the United States from Mexico when he was four years old by his mother. The twist, of course, is that they've been living here illegally for the last 15 years. So Balderas was stopped by airport security last week before boarding a flight from San Antonio, where he was visiting his mom, to Boston, where he is, as mentioned before, studying to one day cure cancer.This kid's a better human being than at least 90% of the people who get to be Americans, so of course he faces deportation to Mexico because we are a stupid, fearful, racist nation, and it's what we do. Bill O'Reilly will lose his fucking mind if an illegal drinks and drives, but you never hear about people like Balderas, just trying to negotiate a medieval immigration system and do well in this country. Unlike nearly every other undocumented immigrant, Balderas has Harvard behind him, so there might actually be a happy ending, god bless the plutocracy.
Meanwhile, Arizona, continuing in its quest to force white people to keep up their own damn lawns, is considering a bill that would deny citizenship to so-called "anchor babies." An anchor baby is a child born to an illegal immigrant mother on American soil. Our pesky Constitution says those kids are automatically citizens. But, because the state's cruel and idiotic, Arizona doesn't need no stinking 14th Amendment, even though it would seem like the decision as to who is and who is not a citizen of, you know, the nation would be decided at a federal level. Apparently, states' rights extends to disregarding the laws of the land.
If Balderas is deported and he goes to a Mexican university to finish his studies, the Rude Pundit hopes he comes up with a cure for cancer and his patent says that it can never be sold or used in the United States. When someone asks Balderas why he would deny the nation just to the norte a miracle drug, Balderas could say, "Because fuck them."
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