[jdonn]

cherdanno, on May 31 2010, 08:44 PM, said:

I think the American electorate has been trying to send that message for many years. I haven't noticed it's power yet.

Really? I don't. And even if the message is ineffective I still prefer it to voting for a moron.

[kenberg]

This moron explanation is way, way, too easy.

Repairing the leak. I think some pretty smart people have no idea how.

Why in the hell are we pumping oil a mile beneath the surface, didn't someone realize the danger? Well, perhaps they did. But wasn't this supposed to be the way to protect the environment? Unless we all start biking to work we have to pump it from somewhere.

Shouldn't someone have been watching the procedure more carefully? Well of course, but maybe we have noticed that regulatory units often end up in cozy relations with the regulatees. Easy to decry, hard to fix. Shooting the SOBs maybe would be a deterrent, but there is opposition to capital punishment.

My Senators are Mikulski and Cardin. I don't know their IQs but I seriously doubt either one of them could plausibly be described as an idiot.

I hope we can save the gulf fishing industry. I hope we can save the gulf. I hope we can figure how to get the oil we need w/o selling our souls for it. I don't really see how, and hell, I don't even think of myself as a moron.

[cherdanno]

jdonn, on May 31 2010, 09:31 PM, said:

cherdanno, on May 31 2010, 08:44 PM, said:

I think the American electorate has been trying to send that message for many years. I haven't noticed it's power yet.

Really? I don't. And even if the message is ineffective I still prefer it to voting for a moron.

First of all, voter turnout in the USA is lower than in any other democracy that I know of, by a lot.
Second, have you ever heard the term "voter suppression"? Yeah there are people out there who want to win elections on purpose by decreasing voter turnout. Do you think they will be scared by the "powerful message" of the success of their tactics after they have won the election?
Third, yeah there are morons in Congress. But to change that the best thing voters can do is every time there is a vote, to vote for the less moronic candidate.
Why is special interest money so powerful in the US? Because politicians are corrupt, or because in any election there is a huge chunk of uninformed voters whose vote get swayed by millions worth of campaign ads? Why do morons get elected - because the other candidate is also moron every single time, or because voters vote for whoever looks prettier, or has a nice accent?

And anyway, even if two morons are running for the Congressional seat in your district, there is still a lot at stake as the winner will, most of the time, vote with their party, and the two parties have fundamentally different opinions about what government should do (or whether it should do anything).

[hrothgar]

Winstonm, on Jun 1 2010, 03:22 AM, said:

I also noticed you said "legislative accomplishments".  I suppose you do not give him such high marks in foreign affairs or civil rights?

I give Obama mixed marks on Foreign Policy.

I'd prefer to see the US cutting our losses in Afghanistan. I think that we need to cut off aid to Israel (especially in light of the latest idiocy). With this said and done, Obama's gotten an awful lot more right that he has wrong.

On the civil rights front, I'm horrified at the way Obama has been backpedaling regarding civil rights detainees. While something is happening on DADT, I think that this has a lot more to do with generational shifts in the military than effective leadership from the administration.

Then again, I don't find any of this all that surprising. Obama isn't a liberal / progressive. He's a centrist regardless of what the Republican's claim. I'm not surprised at the policies he's enacting.

Quote

Still, why is Obama trying to placate morons?

1. He's trying to co-opt the center
2. He's letting the Republican's portray themselves as completely useless obstructionists
3. Half a loaf is better than none

I'm going to close with a couple observations

Teddy Kennedy famously said that his greatest failure was his unwillingness to work with Richard Nixon towards health care reform back in the late 60s / early 70s. Kennedy preferred to hold out for something better and health care reform was delayed by close to 40 years (and what we have now isn't nearly as good as what was on the table back then)

Newt Gingrich self destructed when he and his merry band of yahoos decided to "shut down" the government.

[TimG]

jdonn, on May 31 2010, 08:39 PM, said:

Winstonm, on May 31 2010, 08:05 PM, said:

PassedOut, on May 31 2010, 07:59 PM, said:

Winstonm, on May 31 2010, 07:22 PM, said:

Still, why is Obama trying to placate morons?

Can't speak for Richard, but in my opinion Obama's alternative is to fail to get anything accomplished at all. I fault US voters for electing so many morons.

The parties tell us for whom we can vote. Own the parties and you dictate who is on the ballot. For whom other than the balloted candidates would you have us vote?

If you think the choice is between 2 candidates and that both are morons then perhaps you shouldn't vote altogether. Having Moron A beat Moron B 936 to 395 rather than 19,500 to 13,311 might not help us in that given election but could definitely send a powerful message regarding future elections.

Perhaps better is to vote for a 3rd party or independent candidate rather than feigning apathy.

[PassedOut]

Fellow conservative David Brooks has put into words some observations that realistic people cannot fail to make: The Oil Plume

Quote

In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don’t want it in the oil business. They know there is nothing a man in Washington can do to plug a hole a mile down in the gulf.

On the other hand, they demand that the president “take control.” They demand that he hold press conferences, show leadership, announce that the buck stops here and do something. They want him to emote and perform the proper theatrical gestures so they can see their emotions enacted on the public stage.

They want to hold him responsible for things they know he doesn’t control. Their reaction is a mixture of disgust, anger, longing and need. It may not make sense. But it doesn’t make sense that the country wants spending cuts and doesn’t want cuts, wants change and doesn’t want change.

At some point somebody’s going to have to reach a national consensus on the role of government. If this disaster teaches anything, it is that we are a venturesome, entrepreneurial society. We rely on corporations like BP to bring us energy. At the same time, it is clear that even well-meaning corporations sometimes take shortcuts when it comes to controlling pollution and protecting worker safety.

So we want government to regulate business. We want regulation to be strong enough to reduce risk but not so strong as to stifle innovation.

Like everyone, I want the leak fixed. But I also want Obama to use the leak as a lever to force stronger government regulations upon large corporations.

[vuroth]

TimG, on Jun 1 2010, 08:38 AM, said:

Perhaps better is to vote for a 3rd party or independent candidate rather than feigning apathy.

No question. People who don't vote don't worry the politically entrenched at all. A third party or candidate gaining a foothold would change the flow of money and power considerably.

[TimG]

vuroth, on Jun 1 2010, 10:54 AM, said:

TimG, on Jun 1 2010, 08:38 AM, said:

Perhaps better is to vote for a 3rd party or independent candidate rather than feigning apathy.

No question. People who don't vote don't worry the politically entrenched at all. A third party or candidate gaining a foothold would change the flow of money and power considerably.

There should be a "none of the above" option.

[mike777]

IT will be interesting if the claims become so high that at somepoint the owners of BP simply hand over the keys to the front door and walk away.

At the very least if leases are taken away, customers boycott and the company is criminal, it could be crippled.

Keep in mind payments must come from customers or the sale/stripping of company assets at fire sale prices.


The owners of FNMA, Freddie Mac, GM basically did so.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Teddy Kennedy famously said that his greatest failure was his unwillingness to work with Richard Nixon towards health care reform back in the late 60s / early 70s. Kennedy preferred to hold out for something better and health care reform was delayed by close to 40 years (and what we have now isn't nearly as good as what was on the table back then)

Newt Gingrich self destructed when he and his merry band of yahoos decided to "shut down" the government.

These are good observations, Richard. I understand I often go way overboard in decription of actions but it is not meant to be taken as a realistic portrayal but as a caracituristic description.

I agree that Obama is centrist. And perhaps in today's climate he has done some things well. However, I think he has squandered historic opportunity in order to cater to Rahm Emmanuel's misguided ideas of creating a Democratic powerbase by catering to the center and ignoring the progressives. The disenfranchised are on both ends of the Democratic spectrum and the only ones whistling Dixie are the Democrates who think Dixie is the national anthem, anyway.

[y66]

[y66]

Why James Cameron Is Diving Deep On Gulf Oil.

Quote

In a 20-minute phone conversation on Friday, the film director described the meeting of deep-sea minds, which took place on Tuesday and has resulted in a memo, signed by the participants, that he provided to the Coast Guard and other agencies overseeing BP’s efforts to stanch the seabed gusher. He told Andrew Revkin of the NY Times he’ll make the document public once the agencies have had time to review it.

[kenberg]

I really like that New Yorker cover drawing. Imagining ourselves hauled in front of a court of dolphins and pelicans to explain our actions is more than a little frightening.