The Remmers Report

Unemployment Rate Drops, In This Case Sucks, As Economy Staggers

2010-07-02T09:01:00.000-07:00

The nation's unemployment rate dropped to 9.5%, the government reported Friday, the lowest level since June 2009.

That is terrible, depressing news when you consider 652,000 left the labor force after failing to find jobs. About 1.3 million of the 6 million unemployed have exhausted their unemployment benefits.

The data released by the Labor Department Thursday and Friday in many sectors indicates to me that what gains we made as an indirect result of Congress's $787 billion stimulus package in March 2009 has evaporated as money and programs run out.

Employers cut 125,000 jobs in May and the federal government 225,000 temporary Census takers. Private businesses hired 83,000 new workers, up from 41,000 in April.

"It could have been worse, but it wasn't good," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm. "It's adding to the evidence that growth has slowed."

Factory orders which had been nudging upward for five months dipped 1.4%.

Here are word bites I culled from the financial reports:

-- The nation still has 7.9 million fewer private payroll jobs than it did when the recession began. It takes about 125,000 new jobs a month to keep up with population growth.

-- Counting those who have given up their job searches and those who are working part time but would prefer full-time work, the underemployment rate edged down to 16.5 percent from 16.6 percent in May.

--The number of pending home sales plunged 30% in May from April, to the lowest level since at least 2001, an industry group reported Thursday, reflecting a larger-than-expected fallout from the expiration of the federal tax credit for home buyers.

"The general tone has darkened over the past month," said Sophia Koropeckyj, an analyst at Moody's Economy.com, which this week estimated the odds of a return to recession at 1 in 3, up from the previous estimate of 1 in 4.

A happier forecast:

-- After a series of strong economic data early this year, recent reports have been more mixed, but that hasn't altered the fundamental outlook for the economy, said Ken Matheny, a senior economist at Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm based in St. Louis.

"It hasn't shaken our belief for a solid, sustainable recovery," he said, noting that business investment remained solid and consumer spending was holding up fairly well.

Back to the gloomier side:

-- By all accounts, the broader economy has been recovering since last summer, powered by government stimulus funds and an upturn in manufacturing. But the rate of growth has fallen from 5.6% in the fourth quarter of last year to half that pace in the first three months of this year.

-- The reports renewed fears among economists that the housing market could be headed for more trouble now that the home-buyer tax credit is no longer fueling the real estate market.

The National Assn. of Realtors' pending home sales index, based on the number of contracts signed to buy previously owned homes in the U.S., dropped to 77.6 in May from 110.9 in April. It was the lowest point since the index was created in 2001.

Lawrence Yun, the trade group's chief economist, said June and July's numbers were also likely to be sluggish. But if pending sales don't begin rising by August, the housing market could be headed for a more prolonged decline, he said.

"We need to see a steady rise in that figure," Yun said.

To a large extent, the housing market depends on the job market – because to buy a home, people need to have money coming in and the confidence that they won't lose that income.

"The housing market just can't stay on stimulus medicine forever," Yun said. "What is really needed is jobs."

-- Investors' willingness to lock up their money in bonds at such low rates -- 2.92% for 10-year Treasury notes -- typically is a sign that they expect the economy to slow sharply.

A beleaguered President Obama did his best Friday to brighten a gloomy forecast by announcing a nationwide project to expand broadband Internet access in rural areas. He said it would create 5,000 private sector construction jobs in the short term and ultimately benefit "tens of millions" of people.

And where does that money come from? The remaining portions of the $787 billion stimulus package.

Criminal Cartels Shootout Leaves 21 Dead

2010-07-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

Shortly after President Obama in a highly political speech Thursday said the U.S.-Mexican border is the safest in 20 years, 21 persons were killed in a gun battle between rival drug and immigrant trafficking gangs.

Although the shootout occurred 12 miles south of the Arizona border, residents north of the border fear the motive for this kind of violence spills into the United States in other forms.

One aspect of such collateral damage is Phoenix being turned into the kidnapping capital of the U.S., second only to Mexico City, according to Arizona Sen. John Kyl.

Politics notwithstanding, border security can only be measured to the extent of what happens just south of the border is contained from spreading north.

Compared to Mexico, the sporadic murder of one Arizona rancher, the increased violence in kidnapping and shakedowns for ransom, the uptick in drug smuggling arrests are a clear and present danger to those that live in the Southwest.

The degree the Mexican criminal cartels go to protect their trade is blood curdling. Since 2006, the Mexican drug cartels have murdered 23,000 people, including 4,300 in Ciudad Juarez, which borders El Paso, Texas.

The 21 killed near Hermosillo Thursday illustrates the more recent confluence of drug and human trafficking gangs because the area is a prime corridor for crossing the border into the United States.

Sonora state prosecutors confirmed the number killed. They said nine were arrested, including six who suffered gunshot wounds. Seven rifles were confiscated, they said.

Mexico's El Dario newspaper said police seized 19 high-powered weapons and 11 late-model vehicles.

Not to be outdone and typical of the daily violence along the 1.993-mile border was the drive-by shooting death of Chihuahua state assistant attorney general Sandra Salas Garcia and one of her bodyguards.

Salas was responsible for evaluating the work of prosecutors and special investigations units in Chihuahua working out of her office in Ciudad Juarez.

Elections in 12 Mexican states will be held Sunday. On Thursday, the decapitated head of Hector Murgia, a candidate for Ciudad Juarez mayor representing the opposition PRI party, was found on the doorstep of his home.

Yes, this is Mexico's problem. But the winners of these turf battles use the power and profits to supply the United States with drugs and cheap labor, their most lucrative market.

Real or imagined, that's how American border residents perceive it. And that's why they snicker when the president says the border is the safest in 20 years.

As a result, the knee-jerk countermeasures the border state governments take is not surprising.

Obama Pitches Immigration Reform, Mucha Suerte El Presidente

2010-07-01T13:41:00.000-07:00

One thing President Obama is not is accused of being incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. The president has so many major platters on his agenda it dwarfs the size of a picnic table jammed with plates of enchiladas and tamales at a Mexican fiesta.

For the first time in 18 months as president, Obama Thursday delivered a major speech calling for immigration reform legislation.

It fulfills a campaign promise to his Hispanic supporters. He called for a path to citizenry for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, a road his opponents describe derisively as amnesty.

Obama also signaled to Hispanics not to get their hopes up if the legislative package -- he did not spell out with specifics or set a timetable -- won support from enough Republicans.

Translation: Democrats in his own party don't want to touch this hot-button issue with a fork. They have enough problems in the November midterms without being saddled with immigration.

The Los Angeles Times:

“We can create a pathway for legal status that is fair and reflective of our values and works,” Obama said in his speech at American University. “The question now is do we have the courage and political will to pass a bill through Congress and finally get it done.
“I’m ready to move forward. But the fact is without bipartisan support we cannot solve this problem. We cannot pass comprehensive reform without Republican votes. That is a political and mathematical reality.”

Obama politically was mugged into itching the scab known as immigration reform. The 50 million Hispanic population in the U.S. represents a large percentage of his base of support.

In May, national attention was heaped on Arizona when its Republican Legislature passed a law rubber stamped by Gov. Jan Brewer that made it illegal to step foot in the state without proper documentation of national origin.

That law and more passed in Arizona and other states were embarrassing for it meant they were taking matters in their own hands in areas usually reserved for the feds.

“The border is more secure today than at any time in the last 20 years,” the president said in his speech.

Assertions such as that drive his opponents nuts, especially those who live near the Mexican border and have to live daily with what they consider a heinous problem.

Not to mention residents in interior states from the Rockies to New England who view the predominately Hispanic work force as a drain on their health and safety public services.

As late as Monday, Hispanic lawmakers who have criticized Obama for being lethargic on the issue, met with Obama and his people in the White House. The Times article said they left pleased.

In the past, Obama said the illegal immigrants who have permanently settled in the United States need to go to the "back of the line," pay a fine, learn English and then submit to the citizenship process.

Whatever path immigration reform takes, it must include border and interior enforcement, employer sanctions and a streamlined resolution what to do with families who want to live here permanently.

For a president who prides himself in mastering details of complex issues, he was not exactly forthright saying the border today is more secure than in the past 20 years.

He was spot on in that arrests along the 1,933-mile border from California to Texas are down 54%, from 1,171,396 to 540,865, between 2005-2009.

At the same time, U.S. Border Patrol agents increased from 9,891 to 17,408. Last week, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, increased assignment to the Tucson sector to 3,318 agents, the most of any sector along the border.

The decrease is not in itself increased Border Patrol officers, says T.J. Bonner, president of the union representing 17,000 agents. It reflects a downturn in the U.S. economy beginning as early as 2007.

Bonner in an article in the Free Republic Wednesday is quoted that the sharp increase in drug seizures has coincided with a steady decline in apprehensions, indicating to him that the agency cannot handle both problems at once.

He said once the economy recovers, the illegal entry tide will rise again. His agents apprehend about one out of three persons illegally crossing the border.

Speaking as a cop true to his profession:

“Are we anywhere close to border security? No, we’re not. True border security means that no thing and no person crosses that border without our permission.”
What few people realize is that the Obama administration has kept a low profile in targeting employers who hire illegal immigrants, a weapon that strikes at the heart of the problem.

Two immigration attorneys co-authored this report on the California Employment Attorney website:

In the past nine months, 65 employers have been arrested and 109 companies have been fined a total of about $3 million. The government has also notified more than 1,600 companies nationwide of plans to audit their records, and has already begun hundreds of inspections.

The Obama policy is a stark contrast to the Bush administration which they said:

(C)onducted work-site raids that targeted employees rather than employers. Although thousands of illegal workers were prosecuted, few employers were held accountable for their hiring practices and new illegal immigrants replaced those who were deported.

What the attorneys are advocating to their clients is joining E-Verify, a voluntary electronic program that checks whether new hires are authorized to work in the United States. They said about 1,400 new businesses each week join, with enrollment in June of about 17,000 employers in California and 204,000 nationwide.

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EPILOGUE

I wish Obama luck. I don't think he has his heart in it, politically. Under current laws, enforcement of employer sanctions will work if it is applied with the same mindset as Bonner, the union boss. Think of the outcry when homeowners are fined and tossed in the pokey when arrested for hiring illegal workers hanging around the Home Depots and other drive-by places of "employment." If you drain the pool, the horses will not come to drink.

(Cartoon from Insights on Law & Society)

Nancy Pelosi, The Straw Lady Republicans Love To Hate

2010-07-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

Even before she became Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi was a lightening rod for the Republican attack machine, the epitome of a liberal, free-spending Democrat from -- gasp -- San Francisco.

In my family and circle of friends in California, Pelosi is the face of all what is wrong with Democratic liberals for she is seen as an elitist, environmental tree hugger, bleeding heart, anti-war activist, big government advocate and, worst of all, from a city that harbors illegal immigrants and honors homosexuals.

When I ask for specific examples of legislation Pelosi favors, they can name none. My friends and family are not dumb. Those on the right of the political spectrum are following the Republican propaganda machine. Ditto heads.

When I point out to them that as Speaker, Pelosi never lost a vote on any piece of major legislation, they are not in awe.

"With that majority behind her," one family member suggested, "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb could pass any cocklemanie thing they so desired."

In today's politics, vilifying one's opponent is staple as if displaying cartoons of Pelosi, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Hussein Obama will turn their cause to triumph at the polling booths.

What turned me on to this discussion is a story in Thursday's Washington Post, a new attack ad by the Republican National Committee and a months-old YouTube clip in TV ads used by Republican candidates in a few "red" states.

It features what the Post described as "a colossal tax-dollar-engorged monster who ravages small towns and must be brought down by Republican ray guns." The cartoon version is called "Attack of the 50-Foot Pelosi."

There's a variety of versions of the message the ad offers.

In North Carolina, House candidate Harold Johnson, according to the Post:

"If you're a small-business owner," Johnson says, "you get up every morning and you put your helmet on, because you think that Nancy Pelosi is going to come into your bedroom and hit you over the head with a baseball bat."

My reaction: At least she was honest enough to wait until he awakened.

Pelosi has what is known in advertising markets as a high "Q" rating and the mere mention of her name in Republican circles triggers a Pavlovian response.

"If you go to almost any grass-roots event and you mention the speaker's name," said Bill Flores, a Republican who is challenging Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), "you will get a huge response from the audience." Which is why, by Flores's estimate, he manages to drop Pelosi's name into his speeches about as often as he does President Obama's.

I suspect the hidden motive of Republicans is, in male chauvinistic terms, penis envy or subliminal jealousy.

Her success in pushing health, energy, financial and stimulus bills through the House is a crowning achievement, described by political analyst Charles Cook and most congressional observers as "the most powerful speaker we've seen in modern history."

The question becomes if these ads the ilk of a 50-foot Pelosi translate to success on election day, the answer is no.

Before former House Speaker Newt Gingrich self destructed, the Democrats cast him in the same vilified cartoonish freak as Republicans are doing today with Pelosi. Reid, et. al.

Steve Elmendorf, a strategist for the Democrats during Gingrich's rein said "It's very hard in any of these races to make it about the congressional leadership."

For the Post interview, I was amused that Gingrich turned his bag of intellectual expertise to that of neutral political observer.

Gingrich warned that campaigning against the Democrats — even one as unpopular with Republicans as Pelosi — is no substitute for offering voters some idea of how the GOP would govern if Republicans won back the House. "People who think that all the Republicans should do is just yell 'no' are just plain wrong," he said.

Reaching Economic Recovery Blindfolded

2010-06-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

The $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress in 2009 did better than Republicans would have you believe and worse than the progressive Democrats maintain.

The U.S. economy needs another transfusion of gigantic proportions but without the pratfalls of the last one to avoid
what Kensyian economist Paul Krugman predicts a third prolonged depression since 1873.

Actually, I have one foot on Krugman's boat and one on the dock. Which poison would you prefer:

Risking inflation and a massive debt.

Holding fast to prolonged unemployment potentially longer than in the 1930s during the last Great Depression when it took a world war to scrape ourselves out.

The error of Krugman's ways is printing money (inflation) and selling U.S. Treasury notes at loan shark interest rates.

Krugman argues the panic-generated 1873 Long Depression and 1933 Great Depression

(B)oth included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.
We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And,

(Y)ou might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

So,

The Obama administration understands the dangers of premature fiscal austerity — but because Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress won’t authorize additional aid to state governments, that austerity is coming anyway, in the form of budget cuts at the state and local levels.

Thus,

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

Let's leave Krugman, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to their own little world and pontificate what a new stimulus would do where the last one left off.

In the broadest terms, the 2009 stimulus with a year to go got us where we are today: Saving public sector jobs with bailouts; tax breaks for the private sector where jobs failed to materialize as hoped.

A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows the Recovery Act has increased the number of workers by between 1.2 million and 2.8 million. The CBO also projects that 3.7 million jobs could be attributed to the stimulus by the end of September.

When the Senate killed a mini-version of a stimulus bill last week most of the attention was placed on the failure to extend $47 billion in unemployment benefits.

But it also would have expanded the COBRA subsidy by $7.8 billion; increased Medicaid payments to states by $24.1 billion; extend the welfare emergency fund by $2.5 billion and provide $1 billion for summer jobs.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics for May was bloated with a once-every-decade hiring of federal census workers which accounted for 411,000 new jobs, excluding farming. Only 41,000 new jobs in the private sector were added. Unemployment dipped to 9.7% meaning 15 million Americans out of work. The civilian labor participation force for jobs was 65% and the employment population rate was 58.7%. About 2.2 million were marginally attached to the labor force showing no improvement for the past year. Factory employment gained 29,000, bringing that total to 126,000+ in the past five months.

On the downside, construction jobs decreased 35,000 and that signals an even deeper problem.

Part of the $787 billion stimulus was a program offering an $8,000 tax credit to new home buyers. The program ended April 30 and new home sales dropped abruptly to the lowest levels in 40 years.

"The tax credit expired as the peak home-buying season kicked off," said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities. "Imagine what would happen to retail sales if they canceled Christmas."

Dumb.

The backlog of unsold new homes is 210,000 which is a drain on market values and only perpetuates the drop in new construction jobs.

Another failed Obama program was helping drowning homeowners with mortgages in the Home Affordable Modification Program. Out of 3 million eligible, only 170,000 borrowers were approved and more than half of those defaulted for missing payments more than three consecutive months.

Banks bailed out by the government took the equity to regain profits but a renewed vigor by tougher banking regulators curbed their ability to loan in a much tighter credit market.

The ultimate result was between the stimulus and bank bailouts the public sector for the most part held on to their jobs, the banks rebounded and the private sector business community gained additional tax breaks and credits.

The only guy left out was the poor soul living on Main Street.

And To Think John Boehner Could Be The Next House Speaker

2010-06-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

To hear Democratic media cheerleaders tell it, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner had a tough day at the office Tuesday. The office of the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, that is.

His interview did not go well and the film clips I saw made him look like he swallowed a month's prescription of a sedative moments before the sit down.

I disagree with Rachael Maddow his comments spoken in a monotone laced with no doze may cost the Republicans the November midterm elections.

Judge for yourself with the commentary and clips she provided on her nightly MSNBC broadcast and some pro and con slings and arrows in this blog roundup.

In the interview, Boehner said the financial reform legislation is as "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." What's most needed is more transparency and better enforcement by regulators, he said.

Said one blogger:

Perhaps his dismissal of what happened to millions of jobs and the collapse of the real estate market is based on the fact that it was a Republican who was in charge when it happened and that the loose financial regulations that allowed it to happen were written by Republicans.

Now that has a familiar ring to it.

Boehner believes the Democrats are "snuffing out the America I grew up in."

That drew this snort:

As Keith Olbermann observed, growing up the 1950's as Mr. Boehner did meant segregated schools, Jim Crow laws, anti-miscegenation laws, political assassinations, jail time for being gay, and polio. And the Edsel. Does Mr. Boehner really want to bring those things back?

Boehner raised the political mantra of the Tea Party to new levels by saying a political rebellion is brewing and "I don't think we've seen anything like it since 1776."

Maddow and her fellow progressives, better schooled in history than the minority leader, pointed out that little event called the Civil War.

Boehner said he wants to raise the age of Social Security retirement to 70, explained accordingly:

“We’re all living a lot longer than anyone ever expected,” Boehner said... “And I think that raising the retirement age — going out 20 years, so you’re not affecting anyone close to retirement — and eventually getting the retirement age to 70 is a step that needs to be taken.”…

Boehner also floated several other reforms to Social Security, paired with raising the retirement age, to make it more solvent. Boehner said benefits should be tied to increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) instead of wage inflation, and he suggested reducing or eliminating benefits to Americans with a “substantial non-Social Security income” while retired.
“We just need to be honest with people,” he said. “I’m not suggesting it’s going to be easy, but I think if we did those three things, you’d pretty well solve the problem.”

Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Minority Leader, but Social Security benefit increases in deed are tied to the cost of living index.

Here's a gotcha which embarrassed the minority leader:

Pandering John Boehner appeared on Hugh Hewitt's show on May 27th to complain President Obama was doing too little:

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Administration is not fulfilling their responsibility to the people of the Gulf Coast area or the people of the United States.

But Friend of Big Oil John Boehner told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review today that President Obama is doing too much:

Boehner said Obama overreacted to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill might warrant a "pause" in deepwater drilling, but Obama's blanket ban on drilling in the gulf -- which a judge overturned last week -- could devastate the region's economy, he said. Louisiana State University scientists estimate the ban could have affected more than 10,000 jobs.

Hey, Dude, what about the 16,000 jobs lost as a result of the blowout, the economic impact on the entire Gulf Coast and the ruination for years of an ecological system depended upon by thousands of species of fish and wildlife.

Summed up one critic:

I also find it disturbing that Mr. Boehner, along with a number of other Republicans, are cavalierly tossing around death and killing metaphors to describe the Democrats; they're "snuffing out America," or candidates talking freely about "taking out" their opposition through Second Amendment remedies or "gathering your armies," not to mention the ubiquitous Hitler and Holocaust imagery that pops into the campaign ads from Alabama to Alaska. I realize all campaigns go overboard, but where the Democrats were mean to George W. Bush and called him names, these folks are skating a little to close to dangerous. There's a difference between snark and death threats.

We've heard that tit for tat before.

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EPILOGUE

Here's what I think. John Boehner is a lousy mouthpiece for the Republican Party. The GOP is leaderless but not rudderless. Their best spokespersons are Sarah Palin who coins catchy phrases that stick -- "death panels" -- and frequent other misrepresentations of fact -- Ronald Reagan attended Eureka College in California (Illinois, actually) -- and conservative radio mega ego Rush Limbaugh. They will gain seats in both Houses not because of their lack of oratorical eloquence and opposition of no but because of history and voter anger over jobs, unemployment and frustration of a cursed Democratic administration. Yes, the party of no plays a small part of that equation. Good political strategy but bad for governance. The party out of power is always 100% accurate in hindsight. Wouldas and shouldas don't mean much.

Kagan Hearings Are A Farce, She Said, Until She Was Nominated

2010-06-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

In a 1995 book review, Elena Kagan wrote that the Supreme Court confirmation hearings were an "air of vacuity and farce."

Now that Kagan is the nominee, she changed her mind and now agrees the lifetime appointees should remain mum if questions from senators “have some bearing on a case that might some day come before the Court.”

Her epiphany came, she testified Tuesday, when Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah took her aside and urged caution in her testimony.

Furthermore, she testified she would not discuss past Supreme Court decisions.

This proves the obvious. Why hold the hearings? It's a dog and pony show.

Instead, we are spoonfed garbage from Republican senators that Kagan's mentor Justice Thurgood Marshall was some liberal freak activist who supposedly once said make a decision and let the law catch up with it. The man has been dead 17 years.

And Democratic members on the Judiciary Committee lambaste the current Chief Justice John Roberts court as conservative activists. In case you haven't heard, activist is a dirty word in political parlance addressing the courts.

These decisions, Kagan responded, are what they are. Brilliant. And a rose is a rose is a rose.

The fact is less than 20% of Americans have ever heard of Kagan, the Obama administration's Solicitor General, and my guess is that less than 1% can name all nine current justices of the high court and that same 20% could not name the justice she is replacing.

Yet, we must endure more days of hearings and unless an illegal housekeeper or an Anita Hill incident is surprisingly sprung, the chances of the full Senate confirming Kagan are
a slam dunk.

I rarely rue for the old days but it wasn't until the middle of the last century that the Senate hold hearings because it infringed on the integrity of the Judicial branch of government. Newsweek:

“For most of American history, the Senate considered Supreme Court nominees without soliciting [the nominees’] input,” wrote Benjamin Wittes, of the Brookings Institution, in his 2006 book, "Confirmation Wars." Politicians considered it an intolerable affront to judicial independence to ask a nominee how he would vote on a matter; to answer any such question was unthinkable.
It was not until the high court’s epochal decision desegregating public schools, in 1954, that senators began to be emboldened to press nominees by asking directly or indirectly about what they would do if confirmed. It was an effort to exert some influence on a judiciary that--since Brown v. Board of Education--has assumed a far more commanding role in setting national policies via interpretation of the Constitution.

The 1987 Reagan nomination of Robert Bork killed by the Democrats is my time line for the extreme partisanship. Ever since Bork, both parties and their special interest backers have one upped each other and turned the nomination process into a Roman gladiator spectacle.

I could care less Kagan is charming when she handles questions such as this as reported in the New York Times.

But the hearing placed an early emphasis on more abstract issues like Kagan’s judicial philosophy about constitutional change. (Sen.Patrick) Leahy (D-Vermont) asked her to expound on how the Constitution had been amended, and she plunged into a kind of Civics 101 discourse on the framers, drawing a contrast between clear-cut provisions like the one that requires senators to be at least 30 years old, and other more general provisions, like the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.
“Those provisions,” she said, “are meant to be interpreted over time.”

Wow.

I loved Newsweek's description:

Within a couple of hours after Supreme Court nominee Kagan began her long-awaited question-and-answer session with the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning, most of the 19 committee members had left the chamber for much of the time. The spectator gallery was far from full—especially after Sen. Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, dispatched people to the exits by announcing: “Let’s talk about antitrust.”

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is fast becoming a favorite of mine for telling it as it is.

"Why should we have this dance if we're not going to find out real answers about real issues about what you really believe?"

Coburn is the guy in the MSNBC promos for its morning show with former congressman Joe Scarborough. Standing on the Senate building steps being told of Congress's disapproval rating, Coburn said Congress stinks and questions the sanity of those 23% who think they are doing a good job.

I place the court confirmation process as it now exists in the same category of the president pardoning some stupid turkey on Thanksgiving Eve.

Why I Am Not In Awe Of The Rich And Famous

2010-06-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

A friend from the 1960s tracked me down after all these years and in our email exchanges asked what I thought about Joe McCain.

Joe is Arizona Sen. John McCain's younger brother. He worked briefly for the two San Diego dailies in the late 1960s where my friend and I toiled.

Joe immediately established himself as a legend. Not as a reporter. As a prankster of which survivors of those days still fondly recall.

Joe is the literal definition of a Navy "brat." It was beneath his dignity as the son of a famous admiral and brother of the more famous prisoner of war in Vietnam that a lowly editor assign him the mundane task of providing the papers' readers with the vital statistics of birth, marriage and death notices.

Joe was fired for showing his disdain by sneaking into the day's list of divorces:

"Mouse, Mickey vs. Minnie."

Joe was quickly rehired and assigned as a general assignment reporter unfortunately under my domain as assistant city editor.

I honestly cannot recall whether he was any good as a reporter and writer. I do recall him returning about 30 minutes before deadline on a story I assigned.

Instead of briefing me what he had and starting writing, Joe walked over to another part of the newsroom and began regaling them with his nocturnal adventures of the past evening.

"Get your ass over here, McCain," I shouted. "We're on deadline." In those days, we could talk that way in newsrooms.

"You can't talk to me that way," Joe shot back.

"I just did," I said. "Do your damn job."

My friend Janet recalls another occasion. The two engaged in an argument and Joe pushed her into a trash can. She had to be restrained by others in the newsroom.

"Had I caught his skinny ass, I would have dismembered him," she recalled.

I haven't followed Joe McCain's career since he left the San Diego newspapers. Here's one report I found on a quick Internet search:

In late October 2008, it was reported that Joe McCain called 911 emergency services in Virginia to complain about traffic. He was campaigning in the state for his brother at the time.

That is typical of Joe as I remember him.

Joe also defended his brother who claimed during the campaign he couldn't remember all of the homes he and his wife owned.

Joe immediately jumped to his brother's defense that he wasn't elitist and came from a "middle class" Navy family. True, but elitists also includes "privileged."

The reason I yelled at Joe in those bygone days was that I had no fear nor awe of what may be described by a once popular program as the "Rich and Famous."

I was one of them during those critical years growing up between the ages of 13 and 18.

My father somehow found the $2,000 tuition fee ($35,000 by 2006, the 50th anniversary of my class reunion) to send me to Webb, a boarding school, considered an elite school in California and an equal to those such as Choate on the East Coast attended by the Kennedys and other mucky mucks.

My classmates in the 1950s were from the day's rich and famous. From movie families such as Koster, Kahn and Astaire, to Firestone and Guggenheim, to San Francisco's most powerful with names that included Fleischakker, Sutro and Roos.

I assure you they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like me and the rest of us. At Webb, we were treated equally by the teachers we called masters.

Wealth meant nothing when it came to discipline and violating the honor code. Fred Astaire Jr. was kicked out of school for some infraction and although a few raised eyebrows, it was par for the course.

The Roos scion I learned was far from immortal. One morning he was found dead, naked and hanging from the ceiling with one of his belts. That was a learning experience from the mind of 15 year olds.

Snobbery based on family fortune was almost non-existent. I was judged not as a son of a dirt farmer but how I performed in the classroom and athletic field.

The strange thing was that the bonds created in boarding school rarely extended beyond graduation except for a very few. When the class reunions of 25 and 50 years were held, I am told those attending were quite small in numbers.

After graduation, I returned to visit the campus once, weeks after I married, to show my bride.

I sought out one classmate of my fellow 1956 graduates. That was Dan Guggenheim who was a stock broker in Newport Beach where I was living at the time. Dave Firth, another classmate, visited me when I was a junior in college.

This is embarrassing for me. Erik Larsen, another classmate of mine for four years, contacted me and visited twice after our 50th school reunion was held. He was a day student, living at home in Claremont, and to this day cannot place him anywhere in my memory bank. Even a review of five school "El Espejo" annuals didn't help. Sorry, Erik. My mind works in mysterious fashion I can't always explain.

As a newspaper reporter, one meets the "rich and famous" routinely. And, with the foundation and background formulated in my high school days, I was never in awe or intimated by the powerful.

I interviewed Ronald Reagan once when he was California governor. Nice guy. He offered me those damn jujube candies on his desk where he preferred to talk about other actors he knew rather than the subject I came to interview.

And the number of officious bastards I tried to interview were endless. During the Vietnam War, a downed Navy pilot Dieter Dengler was captured by the enemy, escaped and air lifted to Naval Hospital in San Diego. I was sent to confirm his presence and interview the officer.

The Navy's PIO, a captain whose name I cannot recall, yelled at me for entering his office without permission.

"Get our of here before I throw your sorry ass in the brig," he shouted at me. "Don't you know who I am?"

I told him his name and rank didn't mean squat to me personally but could he confirm Lt. Dengler was in the hospital ward.

My photographer, a retired Navy combat photog, quickly grabbed me and nudged me out of the office.

The paper won that battle. Nolan Davis, the only black reporter on the staff, went to the hospital, donned the clothes of an orderly, grabbed a bucket and mop, and strolled the hallways until he found the pilot and asked him a few questions before someone on the ward got wise.

Ah, those were the good old days. But for me, the rich and famous are all the same. Some are good guys. Others are jerks.

And we all put our pants on one leg at a time.

The King Of Pork Is Dead, Long Live The Process

2010-06-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

The loss of Sen. Robert Byrd who died Monday is not any particular game changer of politics played out in Washington for it is peanuts compared to other people's pork he fed the folks in his home state of West Virginia.

Byrd was dubbed the "King of Pork" and damned proud wearing that mantel no matter how hard the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste tried to embarrass him. Byrd even flipped the bird at his detractors.

I come before you today not to bury or malign the longest serving senator in United States history but to reflect on the impact he bestowed on his fellow West Virginians, recipients of more federal money than any of the other 49 states.

Robert Byrd was old school politician. Until stepping down two years ago as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, of which he served as a member for 49 years, he doled out at least $5.5 billion in projects for West Virginia.

And that was only since 1991 which the watchdog group tracked. It does not include $1.2 billion from 1995 to 2008 in projects the group claims most likely attributed to Byrd.

Whether West Virginia voters endorsed their senator's political stands on other issues, it didn't matter for he was their rainmaker and why he was elected a record nine terms.

Even as age was wearing down the old warhorse, the last two budget sessions of 2008 and 2006 indicates he was still on his game.

In 2008, Byrd sent $326 million to West Virginia which was $179.80 per person. It ranked 4th nationally. The national average was $33.77 per person.

In 2006, it was $239 million in pork projects that amounted to $131.58 per person when the national average for all other states was $30.55.

Let's put aside all the statues, monuments, roads, highways, bridges and buildings named after Sen. Robert Carlyle Byrd in West Virginia. In stead, let's peek at the year 2005 for specific allocations he and his constituents deemed necessary to be paid by other people's money:

Agriculture -- $11,452,000

-$4,418,000 for the GIS Center of Excellence at WVU

-$3,638,000 for the Appalachian Fruit Laboratory in Kearneysville

-$860,000 for Appalachian small farmer outreach

-$711,000 for aquaculture product and marketing development

-$654,000 for agriculture waste utilization research

-$569,000 for water pollutants research

-$300,000 for the Potomac and Ohio River Basin Soil Nutrient Project

-$150,000 for turfgrass research in Beaver

Energy and Water -- $75,372,000

-$25,000,000 for the Marmet Lock on the Kanawha River

-$9,000,000 for the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Laboratory Training Facility at Camp Dawson

-$6,600,000 for Bluestone Lake dam safety

-$59,000 for Island Creek at Logan

Interior -- $18,066,000

-$4,275,000 for the New River Gorge National River

-$3,400,000 for Harpers Ferry National Historic Park

-$1,086,000 for molecular biology and a water resource study at Leetown Science Center

-$1,000,000 for freshwater mussel recovery and the Wild Fish Propagation Center at White Sulphur Springs National Fish Hatchery

Labor/HHS -- $56,528,000

-$20 million for WVU to construct a Biomedical Science Research Center

-$4 million for Mountain State University to construct the Allied Health Technology Tower

-$2 million for Marshall University for a mobile medical unit that will provide pediatric care to children in rural areas of Wayne, Lincoln, and Cabell counties

-$1,050,000 for the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation

-$135,000 for the Kanawha County Board of Education for the Herbert Hoover High School Technology Project

Military Construction -- $23,150,000

-$13 million for a C-5 airport parking apron/hydrant system at Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport in Martinsburg

-$6 million for a fire crash rescue station at Yeager Air National Guard Base

-$4,150,000 for a C-5 flight simulator at Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport in Martinsburg

Transportation/Treasury -- $95,350,000

-$15 million for the King Cole Highway in Mingo County

-$15 million for Corridor H

-$3 million for improvements to U.S. Route 35 in Mason County

-$1.4 million for WVU’s Exhaust Emissions Testing Initiative

-$750,000 for the I-95/West Virginia Drive Interchange

-$200,000 for street scape improvements in Berkeley Springs, which offers visitors “state-of-the-art spas, unique shops and local arts, all surrounded by West Virginia’s splendid outdoors.”

Veterans Affairs/HUD -- $61,429,250

-$4,296,000 for the Vandalia Heritage Foundation

-$2,037,000 for Glenville State College for the construction of a new campus community center and the planning and design of a new science center

-$1,250,000 for the McDowell County Commission for infrastructure and site development at Indian Ridge Industrial Park

-$750,000 for Beckley for downtown revitalization

-$657,000 for the Greenbrier Valley Economic Development Corporation in Lewisburg for facilities construction

-$97,000 for the Strand Theatre Preservation Society in Moundsville for theatre renovations

-$97,000 for the Tyler County Commission for facilities construction and renovations

-$72,750 for the Wetzel County 4-H Camp in Martinsville for facilities renovation.

Sen. Byrd was the "conscience" of the U.S. Senate who rewrote Senate rules and carried a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his coat pocket at all times.

But most of all he was the gravy train express for West Virginia and the epitome of when all is said and done the only thing that matters is looking out for the people who got him there.

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EPILOGUE

My condolences to the Byrd family and the people of West Virginia. The obituary I have written is not an indictment of the man who died at age 92. It is the portrayal of a political reality in which our system of governance works in the narrow prism of pork and earmarks. For a man who prided himself on the rule of law and the constitution, Sen. Byrd turned his back on a process by abusing power as a senior committee member and condoning the practice of earmarks allowing federal money spent without a hearing. But it is a proven process in Congress where deals are made under the umbrella that if you vote for my project, I'll vote for your lousy bridge to no where in some other state.

Rumors, Heads Fly In Afghan-Pakistan-Taliban Talks

2010-06-27T13:25:00.000-07:00

There are conflicting reports out of the Afghanistan capital of Kabul that President Hamid Karzai has held face-to-face talks with Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of a particularly brutal militant group with ties to al-Qaida.

Al Jazeera, a normally reliable Arab news agency, reported the meeting Sunday. The presidential palace denied such a meeting. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul had nothing to report.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said earlier in the week that that the Haqqanis were probably irreconcilable with the Afghan government and unlikely to give up their al-Qaida ties.

And CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC's Sunday news show "This Week" he was skeptical because militants had no reason to negotiate seriously.

All who did speak pointed the finger at Pakistan's army and intelligence service brokering the meetings. Al Jazeera said the Pakistan officials accompanied Haqquani to the talks.

The Haqqani network is a group high on the CIA's hit list that is believed to have been behind some of the most sophisticated attacks across Afghanistan.

Al Jazeera reporter Zeina Khodr said Pakistan is trying to forge a deal that would safeguard its interests in Afghanistan.

Besides the U.S., Pakistan arch enemy India has sent more troops to its part of Kashmir and eastern Afghanistan to fight militant groups it says Pakistan supports.

"We have seen no evidence that they are truly interested in reconciliation, where they would surrender their arms, where they would denounce al-Qaida, where they would really try to become part of that society,” Panetta said.

The top U.S. intelligence official admitted the American-led counterinsurgency effort is facing unexpected difficulties which leads him to believe no Taliban force would contemplate a power-sharing arrangement in Kabul.

Rumors of the Karzai-Taliban talks have circulated since last Wednesday when President Obama fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus.

Karzai has expressed willingness to talk with Taliban leaders in the past year but those signals, U.S. officials claim, were intended to pacify local constituents.

The Times:

Panetta reiterated the narrow goal Mr. Obama set for the Afghan war: “The fundamental purpose, the mission that the president has laid out, is that we have to go after al-Qaida. We’ve got to disrupt and dismantle al-Qaida and their militant allies so they never attack this country again.”

Such comments fly in the face of intelligence estimates of only about 100 al-Qaida terrorists fighting in the Afghan provinces. However, such estimates are about six months old and many foreign fighters may have returned to join the Taliban in the summer battles.

The Times:

But Mr. Karzai and Pakistani leaders believe that with the United States scheduled to begin a withdrawal next year, it makes sense to work aggressively toward a coalition that would involve elements of the Karzai government and the Taliban, both largely from the dominant Pashtun ethnic group. That has led to nervousness on the part of Tajiks and other ethnic minorities, which fear Pashtun domination.

With casualties rising among NATO forces fighting in the south, Taliban atrocities have too. MSNBC:

In the latest such violence, the headmaster of a high school in eastern Ghazni was beheaded by militants on Saturday, the Education Ministry said. A high school in the same district — Qarabagh — was set on fire the same day.

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EPILOGUE

If the U.S. is spending about $63 billion to ramp up the Karzai government and he negotiates a settlement with the Taliban which would make Pakistan happy, wouldn't the thought occur to Washington to get the hell out. Finally.

New Research Finds Fat Surgery A Family Success

2010-06-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

I have battled obesity most of my adult life and in the past year considered gastric bypass surgery or at least a lap band procedure.

I mention it only because a story Saturday is circulating about a New Jersey researcher who concluded two family members having the surgery are more successful in weight loss and improved health yardsticks than those who try it alone.

That makes sense even though it rules me out since I'm single.

Dr. Gus Slotman, a clinical professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey — Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, said the best results were competitive siblings who lost 86% of excess weight compared to 60% of patients doing it solo.

Slotman announced findings of his three-year clinical research at the annual meeting of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery Friday.

He compared 91 patients undergoing surgery with a family member to a group of bypass surgery patients matched in age, gender and body mass index (BMI), who went through it alone.

“Families have a built in support system that can turn a good result into a great result, particularly during the first year after surgery when people are having to dramatically change what they eat and adjust to a new lifestyle,” says Slotman...

The benefits went way beyond the weight loss. A year after surgery, diabetes had resolved in 65% of those who had surgery with a family member, as compared to 31% of those who had surgery alone. High blood pressure went down to normal in 60% of those who had surgery with a family member, as compared to 33% of those who had surgery alone.

I have been intrigued with the successes of gastric surgery since watching a "60 Minutes" segment last year and recommendations from my health insurance broker.

My insurer, Health Net, is not so ecstatic even though it could save them a bunch of money.

My primary physician isn't exactly floored with the idea either as she outlined the game plan.

First, I must have supervised weight-loss diet and weigh-ins for six months. Just finished that cycle. After losing 21 pounds on Nutri-System I hit a wall and lost only one in the past two months.

Second, I would be referred to a gastric surgeon to determine if the operation was mandatory to the degree of being a life-or-death decision.

Only with both primary and surgeon signing off would I undergo surgery covered by insurance of which I would pay the 15% balance due. Not knowing the cost, I doubt I could afford it.

Even though my weight loss has improved my diabetes now requiring less dosages of insulin and my blood pressure and cholesterol levels normal, my age is a factor which may limit me to the least invasive lap band procedure. Two years ago my cardiologist refused open heart surgery to remove the pericardium, the protective sac around my heart, because he didn't believe I could survive the trauma.

What I don't understand from the research I is how anyone could not benefit, especially from the more invasive bariatric surgery.

In layman's terms, it shrinks the stomach where it tells you in pain it can't take any more rather than a chemical signal sent to your brain with the same message. My brain has the uncanny knack of telling me to hell with it and eat on.

NutriSystem has helped me eat less and more nutritionally. Cheeseburgers with fries and three-egg breakfasts with sausage and hash browns and dinners with a pound or more of red meat topped with a pint of ice cream for dessert are ancient history in my household. Don't miss them and the thought makes me want to vomit.

It all starts and ends in the head. Because of the 22 pounds lost since the first week of February and despite a mountain to go, I for the first time in nearly 50 years like my body.

The David Weigel Saga On Speaking Out of School

2010-06-27T04:27:00.000-07:00

Let's see if I got this right. The Washington Post hired an on-line reporter to cover the Tea Party and other conservative causes because his resume was that of a libertarian conservative.

Three months later the Post fires the reporter, Dave Weigel, because a gossip website published snide remarks in emails he wrote about the very conservatives he was paid to cover.

That's when all hell broke loose. You would have thought Ben Bradlee, managing editor of the Washington Post, had fired Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein three months into the Watergate burglary story back in 1972.

To give you an idea of the thunder bolts launched by the gods of media heaven, I will take you on a reactionary journey from my colleague Kathy Kattenburg's blog roundup in The Moderate Voice, to Ezra Klein's defense to a satire on the Post's ombudsman.

I hope you were taking notes because I defy anyone to explain and define what exactly is an "objective" reporter.

A good reporter is always accurate in his factual presentation. He is never objective because there is never enough space or air time to list every single fact to an issue that satisfy every reader or listener.
Reporters are biased. Get over it. They're humans as the rest of us. The trick which isn't always achieved is setting those internal mechanisms aside when sitting in front of a keyboard or live mik.

The experienced reporters don't express their deepest prejudices in writing unless they want those opinions thrown back in their face as happened to David Weigel. We live in a nasty society and Washington D.C. is especially cruel. If you live by the sword, you die by the pen, I always say.

I lived by a code of journalistic ethics which I stretched to the hilt. It was part of selling a story called an "angle" or "slant."

I would and still do "slant" the facts to support an "angle" that Jack Abramoff was a crook but by God had facts to support it and reactions from other to say I was full of prunes.

Don't laugh. We lived by the credo "fair and balanced" long before Fox News stole the term and abused its meaning.

The best reporters tell stories that grab readers by the neck. It's the "hook" that the beast lures to catch the reader in the first two paragraphs or the first two seconds of a broadcast.

Much is made of Weigel being hired by the Post to write about the Tea Party and conservatives because he was a libertarian and understood the mindset.

That is a valid reason most of the time. I mean you don't hire someone in sports to cover the Federal Reserve.

My first truly great editor Jim Dean at the old Santa Ana Register was assigning new beats for reporters and one vacancy was covering San Juan Capistrano. I volunteered, boasting I was raised there and knew the town and its rich history.

Jim looked at me with a disgusted look. "That's as bad as asking Bobby Kennedy to cover his brother Jack," Jim mocked. He assigned me to the Newport Beach beat.

As young reporters develop their trade, smart editors will take notice and assign them stories and beats where they have shown some expertise.

I made my mark as a police and government reporter. I recall walking into the news room one day. The night city editor handed me a press release and told me to interview the Coldwell Bank chairman of the board. At the time all I knew was banks were for checking accounts and auto loans.

I filed the story but not after I called the Coldwell PR guy. With total loss of pride, I read the story to him for blatant errors and gross misrepresentations. I then informed the night city editor never to pull that on me again. He informed me I was the only reporter available and the assignment came directly from the publisher's office. Oh.

But I digress. David Weigel got caught in the same trap as Helen Thomas and hundreds before them. You would think in today's age of 24/7 cable, blogs, emails, Facebook, Twitter and gadgets anyone can record and launch immediately to cyberspace, they would learn.

They don't.

William Shakespeare was right as far back as 400 years ago. "Kill the messengers," he wrote in Hamlet.

The most prestigious broadcasters in my time were Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. They were maligned by the far right, among other things, for working for CBS they called the Communist Broadcasting Company.

The best writer/reporter I ever knew was a despicable chap of flawed character, M. J. Lagies, who most of you probably never heard of. The targets of his sharp pen hated him but none ever beat him in a court of law.

Financial Reform Comes Cheap Compared To What Fannie And Freddie Lurk

2010-06-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

In the polarization of politics, parsing words of politicians has become a fine art form by opponents to score points as if the public has a mental scoreboard in their heads.

I'm drawing from memory here as most voters would on criticism tossed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate
Banking chairman Chris Dodd.

After passage of the health reform legislation, Pelosi said we won't know what's in the law until it plays out in real time.

After the joint conference agreement on the pending financial reform package, Dodd said he hoped the new regulations would work.

That's how I understood what they were trying to say.

The Republican attack machine framed it differently. They suggested Pelosi didn't bother to read the health legislation. And Dodd was dabbling in some unproven experiment for heavy-handed governmental interference of the capitalist system.

Both pieces of legislation are 1,500 to more than 2,000 pages thick. Not in a million years am I so altruistic that I believe all 535 House and Senate members read every word of both legislative proposals.

Nor do I believe every subsection of each law will work as intended.

Laws are not set in concrete. They can be amended. They can be improved to meet the test of pragmatism. They can be dropped as failures. Awkwardly, it takes Congressional action to do that.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, the one proposal Ross Perot advocated I subscribed to was that each law passed by Congress have a two to five-year sunset clause to determine if it was working.

Now that's a reasonable concept rather than the Republican battle cry to repeal the health reform law because they don't like the one section, of hundreds, that mandates purchase of insurance coverage. Some opponents, such as former Alaska half-Gov. Sarah Palin, I presume would not settle for less than a repeal of the entire legislative act.

As for the financial reform legislation, no one other than a cheer-leading President Obama, who does not have a vote, is so bold as to predict passage, especially in the Senate.

What Dodd maybe was referring to as a "hope," is based on what a batallion of lawyers will write as specific regulatory rules applying to each subsection of the massive legislation overhauling our financial industry how it conducts business.

How that plays out is anyone's guess. Here are two analyses that may help in determing the prospective winners and losers.

What I object to is that the financial reform package exempted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which were instrumental in creating the housing market collapse.

The Congressional Budget Office says Fannie and Freddie will end up costing taxpayers more money than the historic bailout of the financial industry.

Congress voted in 2008 to effectively place the two mortgage giants in a federal receivership by taking over 80% of its paper holdings.

So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion, and it grows with every foreclosure of a three-bedroom home with a two-car garage. The CBO predicts that the final bill could reach $389 billion.

Rather than being in the lending business, Fannie and Freddie are just as active in the foreclosure end of it.

Every 90 seconds in the first quarter of this year the two giants foreclosed on a home they financed and guaranteed to pay back investors.

By the end of March they owned 163,828 foreclosed homes, about the same number of total households in Seattle.

"Our business is the American dream of home ownership," Fannie Mae declared in its mission statement, and in 2001 the company set a target of helping to create six million new homeowners by 2014. The New York Times, reporting from Casa Grande, about an hour's drive from Phoenix:

Fannie and Freddie increased American home ownership over the last half-century by persuading investors to provide money for mortgage loans. The sales pitch amounted to a money-back guarantee: If borrowers defaulted, the companies promised to repay the investors.
Rather than actually making loans, the two companies — Fannie older and larger, Freddie created to provide competition — bought loans from banks and other originators, providing money for more lending and helping to hold down interest rates.

They paid no heed to predator lenders requiring no money down, balloon payments nor financial statements
from new home buyers' ability to pay.

The result is Fannie and Freddie today are the nation's largest landlords.

The two companies together accounted for 17% of real estate sales in Arizona during the first four months of the year, almost three times their share of the market during the same period last year, according to an analysis by MDA DataQuick.

It costs the government about $10,000 to sell each foreclosed house and recoup less than 60% of what the homeowner failed to pay after a resale at deflated market values than the original mortgage purchase price.

Some sales are to investors who "flip" the houses for quick profits after the government repaired interior damage and maintained its yards.

Fannie more than Freddie have programs to new homebuyers who pledge to use the houses as their primary residence.

As to the maintenance costs, just the cost of contracting mowing an empty foreclosed property costs $80 per month. The Times:

That's a monthly grass bill of more than $10 million.
All told, the companies spent more than $1 billion on upkeep last year.

To ensure more new homeowners buy the foreclosures, Fannie and Freddie agreed to sell to nonprofits usuing taxpayer grants from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

Chicanos por la Causa, which won $137 million under the program in partnership with nonprofits in eight other states, plans to buy more than 200 homes in Phoenix in the next two years. It plans to renovate them to sell to local families.

Another gimmick:

Fannie Mae last summer announced that it would give people seeking homes a "first look" by not accepting offers from investors in the first 15 days that a property is on the market. It also offers to help buyers with closing costs, and prohibits buyers from reselling properties at a profit for 90 days, to discourage speculation. Fannie Mae said that 68.4% of buyers this year had certified that they would use the house as a primary residence.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is our problem because Congress bought them for us without our asking.

First Storms Approach Gulf Coast, Capping Would Stop, Cleanup Worsen

2010-06-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

Relief well drilling, capping and cleanup crews will be forced to evacuate in as early as three days if the first tropical storms of the hurricane season find a path to the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Hurricane Center by mid-Friday placed a 70% chance one of the storms with winds in excess of 100mph will whip through the area where an oil well blowout of volcanic proportions has spewed an estimated 60,000 barrels of oil and gas daily since April 20.

However, computer models were divided evenly whether the storm would head directly to the blowout site 40 miles south of Grand Isle, La., or west to inland Mexico.

Usually, rig operators begin closing down as early as 120 hours before a storm of 40mph winds. BP engineers said crews and support ships at the blowout site will remain as long as possible.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, in charge of the government's response team, said on CNN this morning that contingency plans were well prepared.

No matter what the plans, the cap on the ruptured well will be removed from siphoning and the full force of the blowout estimated unimpeded at 100,000 bpd will directly enter the sea already blackened with oil plumes.

Drilling on the two relief wells will be terminated for the storm's duration and not resumed until at least a week after their crews return.

Storms or hurricanes will not disturb the capping and containment pipes and submersible submarines at the rupture point 5,000 feet below the surface. But all piping to the surface will be removed.

What is unknown is the volume of surface oil slick surged to inland beaches, marshes and drinking water sites from the force of the tropical storm or hurricane. Nor do experts agree on how much disturbance the storms will have on the gigantic oil plumes in shallower waters of 2,000 to 3,000 feet.

Earlier this week, the New York Times talked to industry officials about evacuation procedures in the event of tropical storms and hurricanes.

“An early hurricane season or a series of hurricanes could be a double whammy, disrupting both the relief-well process as well as the recovery of the leaking oil,” said Donald Van Nieuwenhuise, director of geoscience programs at the University of Houston.

Hurricane forecasters say as many as seven hurricanes and two dozen storms are predicted through the end of November.

Last season was rather benign, rarely interrupting work on the nearly 4,000 oil rigs in deep and shallow water in the Gulf.

Coast Guard offshore compliance officer Steve Sutton said oil companies have filed evacuation and return plans his office approves.

“But we don’t tell them when they have to leave,” Sutton said, and “we don’t prescribe" when they return.

Holly Hopkins, an expert on production operations with the American Petroleum Institute, said that of all its workers in the gulf, BP would probably want those at the well site — which in addition to the roughly 250 people aboard the relief-well rigs includes scores of engineers and technicians aboard large oil-processing vessels and smaller service ships — to be “the last ones out” as a storm approaches. “Obviously, safety’s first,” she said. “But they’re going to want to stay on location as long as possible.”

She said last-minute evacuation by helicopters is complicated since they cannot operate safely in winds in excess of 45mph.

If any of the equipment encountered storm conditions it would have to be inspected before work could resume, adding to the delays, she said.

Whether government inspectors are directly involved, the Times article did not say.

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EPILOGUE

The first hurricane will be put up or shut up time for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. After throwing public tantrums, the Army Corps of Engineers reluctantly authorized a prototype six-mile sand berm drudged from the Gulf inland shores constructed on his coast barrier islands. Whether the six-foot-tall, 25-foot wide berms of sand withstand the wind and ocean ferocity during the storm is crucial. Skeptics said the dredged Gulf floor would only accelerate the velocity and volume of surge action into coastal inlets.

Opening Salvos In Cal Gov Race: Didn't Vote vs. Chameleon

2010-06-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

In the campaign to be elected California governor -- a job no one in their right mind would want -- the opening salvos between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown perfectly frame the candidates' Achilles heels.

The Republican Whitman paints Brown as a chameleon in a television ad released Friday. In a montage of old news video clips, one shows a 1992 debate where Bill Clinton says Brown "reinvents himself every year or two."

Brown's union supporters earlier blanketed the airwaves with a video showing Whitman explaining why she didn't vote for 28 years as she made her fortune as a corporate CEO. "But, why?" the reporter keeps asking. "I should have but didn't," she keeps saying.

The winner of the Nov. 2 election is saddled immediately with a $19 billion budget deficit. Whitman, 54, has spent zero minutes in government and only the last two years thinking about it. Brown, 72, was born in government and has lived his entire life in the trade, if one dares call it that.

"Jerry Brown is in many ways very unusual because he has been many, many things," Jack Citrin, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

The opening Whitman ad is described by the Los Angeles Times:

The ad opens and closes with Brown's image on a 45 rpm record. The not so subtle message? That Brown is a relic of a bygone era, sure to be contrasted with Whitman's EBay resume. In between is a video collage of images ranging from Vietnam-era helicopters to peace march imagery of the 1970s to shots of Brown and Clinton on the campaign trail in the 1990s.

Whitman campaign strategists say they will portray Brown, who served as governor from 1977-1983, as a typical free-spending Democrat who busted the state surplus with outrageous spending programs.

The Brown camp counters that as governor the surplus he took was shifted to cities and counties who lost revenue as a result of the Proposition 13 property tax curbs voters approved in 1978.

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said: "If Meg Whitman had ever bothered to vote, she might know that Jerry Brown cut taxes by $4 billion, built up a surplus and created 1.9 million new jobs for Californians" before he bailed out counties and cities.

Brown, who has served as governor, attorney general, secretary of state and mayor of Oakland among his assortment of jobs on the public payroll, is by his Jesuit upbringing personally frugal.

As governor, he rented a cheap apartment rather than live in the governor's "mansion" and drove his own 1972 Plymouth in stead of a limousine chauffeured by a California Highway Patrol officer.

On the campaign trail, he flaunts his frugality compared to the lavish lifestyle of the vast personal wealth Whitman has achieved.

But it is a fine line he walks.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports he and his wife, former Gap executive Anne Gust, own a custom-designed, $1.8 million house, a Zen-inspired, five-level architectural gem perched high in the wooded Oakland Hills overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Slumish compared to Whitman's $3 million home in the Silicon Valley community of Atherton.

As Round One ends, Whitman is the ruthless tycoon too busy to vote and Brown the lizard of many colors.

-----------------

EPILOGUE

All I can say at this stage of the campaign is at least Brown knows what he's getting into.

Extra! Extra! Free Condoms For First Graders

2010-06-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

Provincetown, Mass., school district now allows free condoms given to first graders upon request. This is serving a softball right up Bill O'Reilly's alley. Film at the click of your finger.

Judge Shoots Obama In The Foot, Again, On Gulf Moratorium

2010-06-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

In a game of chess, the Obama administration may appeal a federal judge's second order ending the government's six-month moratorium on some drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The government in effect is stalling for time as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar crafts a new moratorium that he hopes will pass the legal hurdles posed in the first one issued May 5.

Fifth District Judge Martin Feldman Thursday rejected to stay his decision June 15 when he ruled the government failed to prove its case shutting down exploratory drilling platforms in the Gulf was necessary for safety reasons just because one failed.

No immediate word from the government that it take its case to the 5th District Court of Appeal.

The case involves only the moratorium applied to the 33 deepwater exploratory rigs in the Gulf. There are more than 3,600 wells now drilling in deep and shallower waters of 500 feet or less.

It is unknown whether work on the 32 rigs has resumed although industry experts said last week it would be unlikely until the path was cleared from legal stays, appeals and the now possibility of a new moratorium.

The moratorium designed to allow time for the government to assess the safety conditions on all drilling wells was invoked after the Deepwater Horizons platform exploded April 20 that killed 11 crew. The resultant blowout has dumped an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 barrels daily of gas, crude and dispersant chemicals causing what the government classifies as the worst accidental environmental disaster in the nation's history.

Salazar on Thursday told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee the Department is reviewing plans for BP, the leaseholder of Deepwater Horizons, to drill off the Alaska coast.

Interior's former Mineral Management Services agency waived environmental review of the Liberty Fields project in 2007.

"The whole process for approving Liberty was bizarre," one of the scientists said in a New York Times story Wednesday.

Liberty Fields is a 31-acre mound of gravel dumped three miles off the Alaska coast in the Beaufort Sea and is considered by BP and the government at that time a land-based oil drilling operation even though pipes would extend at least eight miles out to sea in search of a deepwater oil reserve.

The project has already received its state and federal environmental permits, but BP has yet to file its final application to federal regulators to begin drilling, which it expects to start in the fall, the Times reported.

Rather than conducting their own independent analysis, federal regulators, in a break from usual practice, allowed BP in 2007 to write its own environmental review for the project as well as its own consultation documents relating to the Endangered Species Act, according to two scientists from the Alaska office of the federal Mineral Management Service that oversees drilling.

BP said Liberty would provide about 400 jobs and add an estimated 100 billion barrels of oil produced from U.S. lands.

Welcome Back To Afghanistan, Gen. Petraeus

2010-06-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

Besides my computer crashing and taking care of nasty business in my drug coverage caused by cutbacks in California's Medicaid bankrupt system, I was effectively muzzled by weariness yesterday to file a column on Afghanistan.

So a day late and many dollars short, I think what I began to write still holds true. Here's the first part.

By naming Army Gen. David H. Petraeus the new military commander in Afghanistan, Barack Obama is failing to take advantage of a crisis -- his chief of staff's term -- and taking his eye of the ball -- his words during his successful presidential campaign.

"This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy," Obama said in public comments after he accepted Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's resignation.

"As difficult as it is to lose Gen. McChrystal, I believe it is the right decision for our national security."

First of all, McChrystal's disparaging remarks of NATO, diplomats and politicians were ill advised but spoken out of a frustration for a failed mission in Afghanistan.

It is based on nation building and not national security.

And the president should review the policy he crafted with Petraeus and do what President Nixon did in Vietnam.

I can define the new policy in two words.

Back Off.

Vice President Joe Biden had it right from the beginning. Conservative columnist George Will had it right. And Richard N. Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, got it right Wednesday.

That's as far as I wrote until my little world crashed.

After sleeping on it, Obama's decision to remove a mouthy, almost insubordinate general was the correct option for it preserves the concept of civilian control over our military.

To "demote" Petraeus to replace McChrystal in Afghanistan was a political necessity because the former has the chops to carry out the mission and the support of Senate Republicans to confirm as easy as a slam dunk as Sen. John McCain might have said. That support extends to the far left of the Democratic Party.

Obama has chosen not to second guess his policy for the Afghan/Pakistan theater. Fair enough. His new miracle worker is Petraeus.

Lots of luck.

Let's review the Obama policy which now stands dead center of when it was launched and when the targeted pullout begins next summer.

The counterinsurgency concept is failing to win the hearts and minds of Afghans because its government remains corrupt and feeble in the provinces controlled by the Taliban. If the U.S. jerked its billions of dollars in support annually, the government would fall immediately probably into the hands of the Taliban.

Since our intelligence teams suspect only 100 or less Al-Qaeda operating in country now, we are fighting only the Taliban which in itself is fragmented on its goals, depending upon the local enclave.

So what if the Taliban retakes control. It would impose no worse conditions on women, using just one example, as the Karzai government has rendered.

Here is how Ariana Huffington on her website Oct. 19, 2009 described concerns expressed by Sen. Diane Feinstein:

"I particularly worry about women in Afghanistan," Feinstein said, "acid in the face of children, girl children who go to school, women who can't work when they're widowed, huddled on the streets, begging, women beaten and shot in stadiums, you know, Sharia law with all of its violence."
This is indeed very tragic, and I share her concern. But missing from the discussion was the fact that "Sharia law with all of its violence" has just been made the law of the land by President Karzai -- you know, our man in Kabul. The Sharia Personal Status Law, signed by Karzai, became operational in July. Among its provisions: custody rights are granted to fathers and grandfathers, women can work only with the permission of their husbands, and husbands can withhold food from wives who don't want to have sex with them. On the plus side, if a man rapes a mentally ill woman or child, he must pay a fine.
Of course, even with America standing guard, only 4% of girls in Afghanistan make it to the 10th grade, and up to 80 percent of Afghani women are subjected to domestic violence. As one of the Afghan women interviewed in Rethink Afghanistan sums up the current situation: "The cases of violence against women are more now than in the Taliban time."
So can we please put to rest the nonsensical rationalization that we're there for women's rights?

It was Joe Biden who preferred a strategy on fewer troops, using covert special ops and CIA teams to eliminate militant leaders and call in drones to carry out the kill. He lost and as a good soldier in the Obama camp has kept his mouth shut -- a minor miracle in itself.

But, Biden to World: That is the exact policy the U.S. is using in Pakistan with some additional success by convincing the Pakistan government fighting Al-Qaeda in their country is to their benefit.

Although Adrianna Huffington wanted Biden to resign at that time in October 2009, she did link to a Newsweek cover story at the time about a Sept. 13 national security meeting at the White House.

"Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent.

Well, said, Mr. Vice President.

My favorite conservative, because he's a sports nut as I am, is George Will, the brains behind that ideology. He stirred the Afghan policy pot with this assessment in late August 2009:

[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Haas of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote shortly after Obama revised his Afghan/Pakistan policy:

"If Afghanistan were a war of necessity, it would justify any level of effort," writes Haas. "It is not and does not. It is not certain that doing more will achieve more. And no one should forget that doing more in Afghanistan lessens our ability to act elsewhere."

As of Wednesday, he saw nothing to change his mind.

The United States has embarked on a policy of state-building in a country with little tradition of a strong state. Making matters worse is that the Afghan government is riddled with corruption and the Taliban has the benefit of a sanctuary in Pakistan, which remains as much of a problem as it is a partner. Such a policy offers little likelihood of enduring results that would come close to justifying the enormous costs -- all at a time the United States faces a looming fiscal crisis and mounting strategic challenges in Iran and North Korea.
The president was wise to act swiftly to replace his theater commander; he should act no less decisively in reviewing the policy. The focus should be on scaling back U.S. military presence, on what more can be done to induce some Taliban leaders and troops to reject working with al-Qaeda and join the Afghan political process -- and on what is to be done to those who refuse.

And that national security thing Obama proclaims is so essential to nation-build Afghanistan?

Consider this 2009 assessment by Robert Baer, a former CIA field operative but by no means an expert in foreign policy. It was quoted in the Huffington Post column I referred to earlier:

"The notion that we're in Afghanistan to make our country safer is just complete bullshit... what it's doing is causing us greater danger, no question about it. Because the more we fight in Afghanistan, the more the conflict is pushed across the border into Pakistan, the more we destabilize Pakistan, the more likely it is that a fundamentalist government will take over the army -- and we'll have Al-Qaeda like groups with nuclear weapons."

The only tangible evidence I see in the Obama Afghan/Pakistan counterinsurgency policy that military experts assured us would happen is the kill rate of our NATO coalition troops would increase.

Right they were. June is the bloodiest month in nine years in Afghanistan. With a week remaining, the death toll is 76 total forces, including 46 Americans.

Screw The Generals, It's The Foot Soldiers That Count

2010-06-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

The frenzy whether Gen. Stanley McChrystal will resign, be fired or retained as commander of Afghanistan military forces for disparaging remarks about his civilian counterparts is misplaced.

The focus should be on the foot soldiers carrying out the counterinsurgency mission with rules of engagement that are "handcuffing" their efforts to defeat the enemy.

Indulge me for reprinting one paragraph from my column yesterday from the Rolling Stone article that I considered most revealing:

At one outpost, a soldier McChrystal had met earlier was killed in a house that the local U.S. commander had repeatedly asked to destroy. The request was denied, apparently out of concern that razing the house would anger locals whose allegiance the U.S. is trying to win.

"Does that make any (expletive) sense?" Pfc. Jared Pautsch asks. "We should just drop a (expletive) bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself, 'What are we doing here?'"

I have more compassion for the life of Pfc Pautsch than the career of Gen. McChrystal.

As if the gods were smiling on those forced to make the ultimate sacrifice, the New York Times Wednesday addressed that issue squarely.

“I wish we had generals who remembered what it was like when they were down in a platoon,” a sergeant said to a reporter in the back of an armored transport. “Either they never have been in real fighting, or they forgot what it’s like.”

It is McChrystal's rules of engagement that have made it much more difficult for troops to use air strikes and artillery in the fight against the Taliban.

“The troops hate it,” one army colonel said. “Right now we’re losing the tactical-level fight in the chase for a strategic victory. How long can that be sustained?”

Troops in the trenches are always bitching about the food, weather and conditions. But when more and more are questioning the sanity of their commanding generals, a serious morale problem becomes a cancer.

As the Times and Rolling Stone articles suggest, McChrystal or his successor faces a far more serious problem than keeping their civilian diplomatic and political leaders happy. A constituency no commander wants to lose is his own troops.

The natural instinct of a combat soldier when his buddy is killed, no matter how well trained, is to bomb the bastards that did it. That's a recipe for frustration and anger becoming redirected up the chain of command.

U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan are playing by a set of rules of engagement.

The enemy has no rules. They exploit those rules to blend, hide and shield themselves amongst the villagers to escape and fight another day.

The Times:

Young officers and enlisted soldiers and Marines, typically speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs, speak of “being handcuffed,” of not being trusted by their bosses and of being asked to battle a canny and vicious insurgency “in a fair fight.”

Rolling Stone:

“Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing...The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.”

COIN is the abbreviation for counterinsurgency.

The generals and diplomats have slapped the brakes on indiscriminate air and artillery strikes from lessons learned in Iraq. No need to remind anyone of some of those atrocities

It also is an effort to appease Afghan President Hamid Karzai who has lodged countless protests earlier in the 10-year war that too many innocent civilians were killed as collateral damage. For his local audience, he has threatened to negotiate with the Taliban for peace.

The way many sergeants and platoon leaders see it, some rules do not merely transfer risks away from civilians. They transfer risks away from the Taliban.

The Times:

Now, with fire support often restricted, or even idled, Taliban fighters seem noticeably less worried about an American response, many soldiers and Marines say. Firefights often drag on, sometimes lasting hours, and costing lives. The United States’ material advantages are not robustly applied; troops are engaged in rifle-on-rifle fights on their enemy’s turf.

From a tactical ground decision:

This has lead to situations many soldiers describe as absurd, including decisions by patrol leaders to have fellow soldiers move briefly out into the open to draw fire once aircraft arrive, so the pilots might be cleared to participate in the fight...

But restrictions that are popular in Kabul have often alienated soldiers and Marines whose lives are at stake, including rules that limit when Western troops can enter Afghan homes. Such rules, soldiers and Marines say, concede advantages to insurgents, making it easier for them to hide, to fight, to meet and to store their weapons or assemble their makeshift bombs.

The chilling KIA count in Afghanistan is 1,000 U.S. soldiers, a list growing daily now that the fight to capture Taliban strongholds in the south is escalating.

I end this story the same way the Times article concluded:

(No) one wants to explain whether the restrictions are increasing the number of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base, and seeding disillusionment among those sent to fight.

---------------

EPILOGUE

Hitler boasted a 1,000-year Reich. I fear a 1,000-year war in Afghanistan at the rate events are progressing. It is not that I value an American life higher than an innocent Afghan civilian caught in a crossfire.

Meet Jessie, Detention Officer A La La

2010-06-22T15:58:00.000-07:00

I needed a respite from talking generals and oil blowouts so what better than tell the story of an Arkansas detention officer who posed in the semi-nude for Playboy's on-line gig?

Jessie Lunderby, 21, was placed on administrative leave Sunday when her boss, sheriff Tim Helder of Washington County in Fayetteville, Ark., found out about it.

He said wearing a pink bra and panties in a photo shoot as Playboy's on-line "June 7th Cyber Girl of the Week" violated department policy.

"It's just kind of shady, the way they're doing the whole thing," Lunderby complained to Fayetteville's KFSM-TV.

What teed off the sheriff is that the detention officer listed the department on her Playboy bio and the distractions it will cause when the inmates she escorts to court start behaving badly once the video becomes widely distributed.

"In my view, taking your clothes off and making a private issue a public one has done nothing to aid us in our mission," Helder said.

The sheriff dropped kicked the problem onto the desk of the county attorney for any disciplinary action.

Just as generals talking out of school and oil rigs blowing out, Jessie is not the first young woman to get in job trouble for posing seductively in national pop media. Nor, the last.

Oil Moratorium Lifted, For Now

2010-06-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

One minute after I filed the post (below) on the oil industry propaganda machine, Judge Martin Feldman issued a ruling (a day early) lifting the government's moratorium on exploratory well drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the government will appeal immediately to quash the temporary restraining order.

Feldman from his bench in New Orleans said the Obama administration failed to prove shutting down all 33 exploratory drilling platforms in the Gulf was necessary for safety reasons just because one failed.

Meanwhile, the publication Mother Jones reported:

According to the most recently available financial disclosure form for District Court Judge Martin Feldman, he had holdings of up to $15,000 in Transocean in 2008. He has also recently owned stock in offshore drilling or oilfield service providers Halliburton, Prospect Energy, Hercules Offshore, Parker Drilling Co., and ATP Oil & Gas.

You can interrupt that anyway you wish. My take is that if the judge, appointed by President Reagan, still owns stock in those companies, particularly Transocean which owned the Deepwater Horizons platform, he should have recused himself from the case.

Big Oil Propaganda Machine Talks Back

2010-06-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

Big Oil got its licks in Tuesday. It hammered President Obama for his moratorium on deepwater off-shore drilling as if they couldn't wait one lousy day for a judge to decide. A BP house organ concluded the 60,000 barrels of oil from its blowout well since April 20 was "good for business" in the affected Gulf states.

What else would one expect from an industry acting like Marie Antoinette telling French peasants to eat cake if they didn't appreciate the king's regime.

What galls me about the moratorium whining is that a federal judge in New Orleans is poised tomorrow to rule on that issue brought about by the industry.

But, no, oil titans couldn't resist the temptation to vent their anger at the World National Oil Companies Congress meeting in London Tuesday.

Transocean Ltd. president and CEO Steven Newman said

"There are things the administration could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit."

Transocean owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and killed 11 crew, resulting in the worst accidental environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Judge Martin Feldman has said he will decide by tomorrow whether to overturn the six-month ban. An industry attorney argued Monday that the six-month suspension of drilling work could prove more economically devastating than the spill itself.

"This is an unprecedented industrywide shutdown. Never before has the government done this," the attorney testified.

At the London talks, heckled by protesters, Chevron global vice president for business development Jay Pryor said the drilling moratorium would "constrain supplies for world energy."

"It would also be a step back for energy security," said Pryor.

Fact: American off-shore oil drilling produces only 2% of the world market supply.

BP, which leased the platform, says it has paid out $2 billion to try to unsuccessfully cap the blowout and pay damage claims to affected fishermen, businesses and state and local governments. Last week it agreed to an Obama administration request to establish a $20 billion escrow fund and turn its disbursements over to a government-appointed administer.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports BP's in-house on-line press organ told an audience intended only for BP worshippers:

"Much of the region's [nonfishing boat] businesses — particularly the hotels — have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams."

One BP reporter dispatched to Louisiana quoted a local seafood entrepreneur the region relies on the oil industry for work and "There is no reason to hate BP."

Indeed, one tourist official in a local town makes it clear that "BP has always been a very great partner of ours here…We have always valued the business that BP sent us."

That clapping you hear in the background comes from the grave of Joseph Goebbels.

Time To Refocus Afghan Policy Stirred By A Frustrated General

2010-06-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

What amazes me is that a magazine article not scheduled to be published until Friday has created a foreign policy crisis that undermines the direction the U.S. has taken in Afghanistan.

I'm talking about the Rolling Stone article leaked in advance to the Associated Press and other media outlets that the top commander in Afghanistan is displeased with the president and U.S. diplomats who he and his aids believe are undermining his plan to win over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal has apologized for his remarks. NBC reported he has been called to Washington where he will be taken to the wood house for a spanking.

What I see in all this is a modern day comparison of President Truman flying to Wake Island and telling Gen. MacArthur, no he cannot drop an atomic bomb on China to end the Korean war. An exaggeration, yes. But the principle is the same.

What a general thinks of his commander-in-chief should remain private and essentially that is what McChrystal apologized.

He's frustrated for signing on to an impossible mission which he crafted and agreed to an arbitrary troop withdrawal date by August 2011.

According to the article:

McChrystal felt sandbagged by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry claiming the government of President Hamid Karzai is corrupt.

His aids described Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan:

"The boss says he's like a wounded animal," a member of the general's team is quoted as saying. "Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous."

Vice President Joe Biden was mocked. His sin was favoring a more limited counter-terrorism approach and increased use of attack drones, which, unfortunately, kill innocent villagers with the same impunity as intended targets.

Another aide called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a retired four star general, a "clown" who was "stuck in 1985."

McChrystal himself said his first meeting with Obama was unimpressive and resented it being turned into a photo-op. "I found that time painful," McChrystal said... "I was selling an unsellable position."

The army leaders in Afghanistan were complimentary of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for insisting the president assign more troops to the mission even though the 30,000 were below the amount recommended.

NBC News reported when McChrystal called to apologize to Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff "expressed his deep disappointment in the piece and the comments" in it during their 10-minute conversation.

What I found most revealing in the article is McChrystal's own troops in the field challenging the general's policy for being super cautious of accidental collateral damage when it comes to innocent Afghan civilians.

At one outpost, a soldier McChrystal had met earlier was killed in a house that the local U.S. commander had repeatedly asked to destroy. The request was denied, apparently out of concern that razing the house would anger locals whose allegiance the U.S. is trying to win.

"Does that make any (expletive) sense?" Pfc. Jared Pautsch asks. "We should just drop a (expletive) bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself, 'What are we doing here?'"

What we have is the dilemma of the military carrying out an impossible mission with, as usual, one hand tied behind its back.

One reason I brought up the Gen. MacArthur reference is McChrystal is using the same public relations tactics as the old man did in Korea. In McChystal's case it was to promote a success story of his mission.

Without the blessing of McChrystal, I doubt the Washington Post would have been granted total access to this story filed Monday.

It tells how a tribal leader led his village of Gizab to rebel against the Taliban and retake control and ultimately gained support from U.S. combat forces.

"We had enough of their oppression," Lalay, the one-named shopkeeper who organized the uprising, said in recounting the late April battle. "So we decided to fight back."

The significance plays right into the hand of what McChyrstal's mission is all about.

U.S. diplomats and military officials view the rebellion as a milestone in the nearly nine-year-long war. For the first time in this phase of the conflict, ordinary Afghans in the violence-racked south have risen on their own to reclaim territory under insurgent control.

It is a turnabout that U.S. and Afghan officials were not certain would ever occur. One U.S. commander called it "perhaps the most important thing that has happened in southern Afghanistan this year."

I don't pay much heed to comments from generals calling their civilian leaders "wimps," as McChrystal apparently has expressed.

What is curious is why a magazine such as Rolling Stone which does not have a national image of a right-wing war mongering propaganda machine, was allowed several weeks of access time following the general and his command staff.

I think the general knew damn well what he was doing. But, if he thought it would win favor for his mission he is dead wrong.

What this does is pick a scab off an old wound and refocus our attention on the Afghan war effort and why the hell we are there.

More than 1,000 American troops have died in that country fighting a cause where the real enemy is in neighboring Pakistan which we can't invade with troops but allowed to fly over with drones with the tacit support of that country's government.

McChrystal's mission will take decades to accomplish at the rate it's progressing with no assurances at the end the Afghan government and people give a damn.

It raises the specter of what's in it for us despite the national security implications as an excuse.

The lone bright spot on the horizon is a Rubik's Cube. That is what to do with the $1 trillion in mineral deposits that beckon for exploitation by competing nations whether it be the U.S., China, Russia, the Euros and others of that ilk. Solving that to everyone's satisfaction could become the new bottom line.

(Update: Here is the complete Rolling Stones article which became available after I filed this post several hours earlier.)

A Small Bite In The Political Correctness Butt

2010-06-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

Ah, the best made plans of mice and men. I'm referring to a story in the Los Angeles Times Monday.

It is a case of political correctness that has turned and bitten the mayor and city council on the butt. Just a tiny bite, mind you.

The Los Angeles City Council by an overwhelming majority had voted to suspend business ties with companies in Arizona because of that state's anti-illegal immigrant law.

There were a few exemptions because of contractual obligations. But, by and large, the city leaders patted themselves on the back and joined a growing boycott against Arizona.

First, the boycott.

In the eyes of the ethnic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and city councilmen, many who represent districts with vast majorities of Latinos, the Arizona law was seen as requiring police to determine the status of people they lawfully stop, encouraging racial profiling and violating constitutional rights.

It is not, in the minds of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, the Legislature and its supporters.

Either way, the law makes it illegal to be in the state of Arizona without proper legal papers such as birth certificates. passports or visas.

The LAPD wants an exemption to extend a contract with an Arizona firm that provides 32 intersections with cameras catching motorists running red lights.

Analysis by two city departments say the $3.8 million contract with American Traffic Solutions of Scottsdale costs the city $300,000 after fines -- some as high as $500 --
even though it reduces traffic accidents. Proponents contend the safety cost of reduced accidents in property, deaths, injuries and medical costs should be factored in to that equation.

American Traffic Solutions and another Arizona company are rated the two top companies in the country providing the service.

Ed Reyes, a vociferous boycott supporter and councilman representing a district of mostly minority voters, is caught between the proverbial rock and hard place.

He supports the LAPD exemption request because "I would not jeopardize Angelenos." But, he would prefer other options:

One option, he said, could be to use the city's contracting power to lure existing vendors to the Los Angeles area. Or the city could help new local companies develop the capacity — and jobs — to provide photo enforcement equipment and services. "I want to be opportunistic with these dollars and nurture new business and bring in new jobs," he said. "This would be a classic case for that."

LAPD Lt. Ron Katona, who oversees the camera enforcement program, said the boycott is likely to be a factor in choosing a new contractor but that he doubted the city would select a firm that was rated poorly or was far more costly just because it was not in Arizona.

The first exemption to the boycott resolution also was filed but withdrawn by LAPD when some councilmen balked. The department wanted to send officers to a safety training conference in Arizona.

This prompted the police officers' union to complain that political correctness at City Hall was taking precedence over public safety.

The red light intersection contract extension will be voted on Tuesday by the city council.

--------------------

EPILOGUE

The Arizona boycott, in my opinion, is ill served because the economic sector it hits hardest -- conventions and the tourist industry -- is serviced by a labor force primarily of Latinos, many of whom are legal residents.

Bashing Sailor Tony Hayward Is Childish

2010-06-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

I won't mince words.

The feigned outrage that CEO Tony Hayward went sailing one day after he was removed from daily operations of the BP blowout disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is childish and misplaced.

What's he supposed to do? Take a BBC camera crew into the Church of England and show his repentance? Would that make the BP bashers feel better?

The guy is toast. Rapping him for taking his son to watch his boat sail in a major yachting race is spooning marmalade on that burnt slice.

The world is perception and Tony Hayward is the poster child of one who doesn't get it. The world also is substance and that's where the focus ought to be: Stop the damn blowout.

Following the lead of Rahm Emmanuel, the president's chief of staff who would cut his own mother's throat if he thought it would score political points, others became lemmings jumping off the cliff.

Emmanuel on ABC's "This Week," said Hayward's day at the yacht races is “part of a long line of P.R. gaffes and mistakes.”

“To quote Tony Hayward, he’s got his life back,” Emanuel said.

In an interview Saturday with Fox News, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) described Hayward's version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off “the height of arrogance.”

“I can tell you that yacht ought to be here skimming and cleaning up a lot of the oil,” Shelby said. “He ought to be down here seeing what is really going on. Not in a cocoon somewhere.”

I didn't even bother to watch or download the other Sunday talk shows to see politicians or talking heads kick the BP big shot while he's down. Don't care.

I had seen enough Saturday night on CNN, NBC and CBS. Those copy cat producers were instructing field reporters to interview oil blowout victims.

A typical response extracted from a CNN reporter from a Cajun fisherman: "Uh, yeah," he agreed.

The feeling is more:

"Man, that ain't right. None of us can even go out fishing, and he's at the yacht races," said Bobby Pitre, 33, who runs a tattoo shop in Larose, La. "I wish we could get a day off from the oil, too."

Not that Hayward doesn't deserve a good thrashing.

My theory is if the way he muddled and stonewalled through the blowout crises is a reflection on how he runs the world's fourth most profitable corporation, he rose through the ranks via the Peter Principle.

From interviews and emails sent to the New York Times from a BP spokeswoman, Sheila Williams, Hayward is still in command despite the capping and cleanup in the Gulf operations taken over by the American Robert Dudley, BP's chief of oil drilling management team.

“Tony receives regular updates from the gulf,” Williams said in an e-mail message.

“Obviously, Tony’s main priority remains overseeing all BP operations,” she said. “Over all, there will be some responsibilities handed over, but Tony will remain in full control until we have stopped the leak.” I suspect after that, Hayward will be out of a job.

On May 31, six weeks after the blowout, Hayward confided to a British television station he "wanted my life back."

His first chance, apparently, was Saturday to view the rich folks' yachting race around the Isle of Wight. His boat "Bob" placed fourth.

As usual, his timing was impeccably awful. Especially at a time victims are waiting for their claims checks from BP and 60,000 barrels of oil are gushing into the Gulf.

Testimony at Coast Guard inquiries and congressional hearings has established that BP engineers, at the urging of top management, were rushing and cutting safety corners to get the Deepwater Horizons well into operation because the delays were costing them millions of dollars.

Hayward is not the only BP official prone to gaffes. BP board chairman Carl-Henric Svanbert last weekend referred to Gulf residents as "small people." He apologized and most reasonable and tolerant people forgave him since English is not his native language.

What cannot be forgiven is the proven incompetence and pending criminal activity against BP officials that so far has killed 11 crew on the now sunken oil platform and spewed nearly 4 million bpd from the blowout into Gulf waters since April 20. The water and marshes are turning into killing fields for birds and wildlife. In recent weeks, a siphoning process is capturing about 24,500 bpd daily when the system isn't broken down.

Gulf residents are scarred veterans of disasters and Tony Hayward is only the latest straw man they have heard issue false promises and low-ball disaster damages.

They pay no heed to Hayward. Their focus is twofold: Stop the blowout and how soon can Kenneth R. Feinberg, the new claims czar appointed by President Obama, begin processing and streamlining the issuance of checks.

------------------

EPILOGUE

Folks, I'm sorry if you think this post is a rant. But, gosh darn it, we are facing the worst accidental environmental disaster in our nation's history. Now is not the time to vent a spleen over perceptions, images and perceived political correctness. Hayward, who certainly is culpable for the disaster, is now out of the picture and I suspect in due course will receive his comeuppance by being axed by his board as well as in the U.S. courts. In the meantime, if he chooses to sail on a Saturday, that's his business. He's got his life back as he wished.

Hoodlums, Hooligans And Homies Behaving Badly

2010-06-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles Lakers are throwing themselves a victory parade Monday morning for winning the NBA championship, promised to pay for the costs and regretted the expected violence after Thursday's win, a reaction a psychologist called a spike in male testosterone.

What?

That's right, male testosterone. Like you, my reactions mimic Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's Daily Show.

Hoodlums would be a more apt description.

Police are still assessing the post-game damage. No one was killed, 51 arrested and dozens injured, including a bicyclist bumped into by a Sheriff's car and an LAPD officer with a broken nose. At least one car was set ablaze, trash cans burned and stores vandalized. Dozens of buffoons ran onto the Interstate 10 freeway about an hour after rush-hours traffic receded.

On Friday morning Miriam Aguirre, owner of one of dozens of businesses vandalized near the game site at the Staples Center, was sweeping shards of glass instead of tallying the previous night's cash receipts.

She asked a Los Angeles Times reporter: "What kind of celebration is that?" Aguirre owns a taco shop with her husband.

Also Friday morning, Robert Reitz, office manager of a printing company, began cleaning up remains of six broken store windows by mob action.

"The Lakers cost the city more than they're worth," said Reitz, a one-time season ticket holder who has renounced the team. "I was kind of hoping the other team would win so this wouldn't happen."

Post championship game rioting is nothing new to Los Angeles and the Lakers team. This year's hooliganism was tame in comparison to past riots. In 2000, revelers burned and looted with seeming impunity because of a lack of police preparedness and presence. Last year, a greater force of LAPD still failed to stifle the crowd. And more than 1,000 LAPD and reinforcements from neighboring cities including the Sheriff's office still were pressed to the limit in this year's so-called celebration following the victory over the Boston Celtics.

You call that testosterone?

Explains psychologist and author Robert Cialdini, who has studied the behavior of sports fans, the seemingly inevitable reaction by fans on the winning side is rooted not only in the emotional connection they build to their teams but in a chemical one as well.

I'll let the Times explain it:

Fans are so heavily invested in their teams that studies have shown that their testosterone levels spike significantly after they watch a major victory, Cialdini said. Elevated levels of the hormone are known to cause increased aggression, especially in young men.

"When the team wins, we win and we feel it in a very personal way," Cialdini said. "We're likely to experience a great sense of arousal and joy even though we haven't done anything."

The Lakers are one of the most storied franchises in the National Basketball Association with 19 championships and millions of dollars under its belt.

The 2009 victory parade after beating the Orlando Magic stuck the city with a $1.8 million tab, half of which was picked up by private donations from team fans.

Monday's parade costs will be paid for by the Lakers, the team announced. They can afford it.

Forbes ranks the Lakers the second most financially valuable professional franchise in the world at $540 million.

The Times reports the city is closing a $485 million budget shortfall by laying off hundreds of city employees and curtailing library hours, among other measures.

----------------------

EPILOGUE

Violent victory celebrations are old hat in world sports culture and the Lakers incidents don't raise a zit on the mayhem compared to other sports, including soccer, known outside the U.S. as football. This website lists the 15 worst soccer disasters/riots. Ranked No. 1 occurred at National Stadium, Lima, Peru, May 24, 1964. The death toll: 318. As for the psychoanalysis by the good Dr. Cialdini, you can explain testosterone until your heart's content and your diagnosis I don't quibble with. But that mob sill was a bunch of hoodlums, hooligans and homies behaving badly.

Shape Up America, And Spill (sic) Correctly

2010-06-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

Man, this is a tough day for us wordsmiths.

Kathy Gil, a colleague of mine, admonishes us for referring to the Gulf of Mexico disaster as an oil "spill."

The New York Times yawns from an historical perspective, the Gulf of Mexico disaster may not be America's worst as we are told by our president.

And, Robin Koerner, publisher of a website that translates foreign news into English, suggests the stuff we write may be read but not reproduced because our youth cranked out by our education system is grammatically challenged.

Let me say this about them.

Kathy Gil is spot on. The Deepwater Horizons explosion resulting in the pollution destroying the ecological system and economy in the Gulf states is by definition from the oil industry itself a ..

BLOWOUT

A spill, she says, is when you accidentally knock a glass of milk on the kitchen table. Certainly, something dumping 1.4285714 million gallons per day ain't a napkin to blot up.

Henceforth, I no longer will refer to the blowout as a spill in my writings and headlines which Kathy suggests all us scribes subscribe.

I suppose crafting spill as 60,000 barrels per day in the same sentence is an oxymoron. For shame.

Alas, the lady has an agenda. Blowout, she says, describes the magnitude of the event to help educate the fatheads who don't appreciate the suffering created in the Gulf coast. Agreed.

Where I part ranks with Kathy Gil is I don't in my daily accounts of the tragedy use it as a weapon to shape U.S. energy policy and move the country away from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of heating, cooling, driving and powering our economy.

I prefer to simply report the stupidity, greed, tunnel-vision and destruction of our economy and environment that the blowout represents. If the electorate and politicians can get it through their fat heads that perhaps we should change our energy policy, I have done my job.

Now, the question of whether the blowout is America's worst environmental disaster depends on how you define it, according to historians and scientists quoted in the New York Times story.

“The White House is ignoring all the shades and complexities here to make a dramatic point,” said Donald E. Worster, an environmental historian at the University of Kansas and a visiting scholar at Yale.

Some examples:

The Dust Bowl. For a decade beginning in the 1930s a drought exposed horrendous farming practices creating erosion by plowing that extended from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota. More than 2 million people migrated to other parts of the country looking for work. The dust clouds were so intense and widespread that a session of Congress addressing the problem was postponed because of the dust.

The Johnstown Flood. On May 31, 1889, torrential rains swelled behind a poorly man-made dam and when it burst, a water avalanche 14 feet high swept through the southwestern Pennsylvania town killing about 2,200 residents.

The Bison Slaughter. Buffalo, the staple for food and clothes for Native Americans, were slaughtered to the point of near extinction by white hunters and orders from Gen. Tecumseh Sherman after the Civil War. Sherman wanted to starve the tribes into submission.

The Lakeview Gusher. On March 14, 1910, an oil well blowout between the towns of Taft and Maricopa in California's Kern County gushed 100,000 bpd for 18 months. Union Oil collected the oil in huge sandbagged pens and earthen berms, siphoned the bulk to refineries for tidy profits and the rest soaked back into the earth or evaporated. "Today, little evidence of the spill remains, and outside Kern County, it has been largely forgotten," the Times reported. "That is surely because the area is desert scrub land, and few people were inconvenienced by the spill."

Sorry, New York Times. A gambler at heart, I will put my money on the Gulf disaster beginning April 20, 2010, and ending gosh knows when.

I include Robin Koerner's article on grammar because it is a subject close to my heart, you know, being a wordsmith and all that.

She uses an example of a college masters degree student with a 3.9 point grade average unable to properly use the apostrophe in a sentence -- in his job application resume where the written word is essential.

Koerner must be old school like me. It boggles our minds we have an education system that allows students to progress when they haven't mastered fifth grade grammar, spelling and punctuation rules.

We wordsmiths take the high road and automatically throw such written matter into the trash can.

We both agree that colleges should never accept students for enrollment that are clueless in English basics. That would force the high schools and elementary schools to do their damn jobs and we both mean not just throwing money at the problem. The buck has to stop somewhere.

In fact, Koerner volunteered to help her 3.9-GPA student to demand his money back from the school systems.

I am a complete America-phile, so it pains me to ask this, but how exactly, America, do we expect to be taken seriously if our people around the table in the international halls of power, where rightly or wrongly the big decisions get made, write our own language with more errors than those foreigners who’ve had to learn it as a second language, or even as a third?

We wordsmiths are a persnickety and sometimes grouchy group.

More Gulf Horror! Scientists Say 'Unusual' High Methane Could Turn Sea Into Dead Zones

2010-06-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Take it from me, the big news Friday from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is not BP CEO Tony Hayward removed from disaster responsibilities but scientists reporting the gusher contains about 40% methane that could turn Gulf waters into an ecological dead zone for fish and plant life.

John Kessler, a Texas A&M oceanographer, reports oil deposits his team has examined potentially could suffocate marine life into "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives. Typical oil deposits contain about 5% methane, he said.

"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," Kessler said.

Methane is a colorless, odorless and flammable substance that is a major component in the natural gas used to heat people's homes.

BP is burning the excess gas attached to the crude siphoned from the breached well in which it claims it has collected about 2 million barrels.

But that is only a fraction of what has been leaked and uncaptured since the Deepwater Horizons explosion April 20. Scientists earlier this week estimated 60,000 bpd are spewing from the disaster site 5,000 below the Gulf water surface.

The burn off of natural gas in the containment operations represents enough to fuel 450,000 homes for four days. It is unknown whether BP petroleum engineers realized the gas contained such high levels of the combustible methane.

Scientists say they do not know how widespread the high methane concentrates are mixed in the crude from 3,000-foot depths to those reaching the shorelines.

In early June, Samantha Joye, leader of a research team from the University of Georgia, located a 15-mile-long plume in 4,200 feet of water. She was reported to say samples indicated methane concentrations 10,000 times higher than normal depleting oxygen levels 40%.

Here's one definition: Microbes living in the sea feed on the spilled oil and gas, consuming large quantities of oxygen which they need to digest food. It creates two problems. When oxygen levels drop low enough, the breakdown of oil grinds to a halt; and as it is depleted in the water, most life can't be sustained.

The findings by Kessler and Joye are baffling and both admit they do not know what the impact could be in the long- or short-term. As Joye expressed in an email to a news outlet, her findings are "the most bizarre looking oxygen profiles I have ever seen anywhere."

Robert Haddad, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's chief of the assessment and restoration division, cautioned that more research is needed to understand the ramifications of high methane concentrations creating the low oxygen levels.

"The question is what's going on in the deeper, colder parts of the ocean," he said. "Are the (methane) concentrations going to overcome the amount of available oxygen?"

Methane has played a killer role in the disaster so far. A bubble of methane is believed to have burst up from the seafloor and ignited the rig explosion that killed 11 crew. Methane crystals also clogged a four-story containment box that engineers earlier tried to place on top of the breached well.

All this puts the beleaguered Hayward out of sight and out of mind. BP board chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg announced on SkyTV Friday the spill responsibilities were being turned over to Robert Dudley, a member of BP's board of directors management team.

Profiles In Stonewalling, Fear, Courage And Journalistic Integrity

2010-06-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

Now that I have had a day to absorb and assimilate the House committee drilling of BP CEO Tony Hayward, some impressions people of higher intelligence may not have reached.

Bart Stupak. Joe Barton. James Quinn.

First, Mr. Stupak.

He chaired the committee and asked probing, specific questions of which most the BP big wig either dodged or stonewalled. I haven't seen a prosecutor that tough since the fictional one in "Anatomy of a Murder."

“We had really hoped by giving you information that you’d be better prepared to answer our questions,” Stupak admonished when closing the hearing. Ouch.

What stuck me is that Stupak is retiring since first elected to the House in 1993, representing Michigan's 1st District.

Prior to Thursday, the only time the nation realized Stupak was in Congress was late last year and early this year when he opposed the health reform legislation until his anti-federal-funding abortion amendment was enacted to his satisfaction.

The national spotlight was so bright it made Stupak blink and led to his decision not to seek a 10th term in Congress. A time to move on, as he put it.

What I saw Thursday was a congressman who no longer feared voter backlash and did his job, in this case one tough dude taking no guff from the CEO of the world's fourth most profitable corporation.

Three cheers for a lame duck. I had thought it made a case for term limits. But, the way the seniority system works in Congress, I'm not so sure.

Joe Barton has been in Congress since 1985 and has no reelections problems from his Texas district. After telling the BP big shots he thought the Obama administration committed a shakedown for circumventing legal channels to establish an escrow fund to pay claims to Gulf Coast oil spill victims, he reversed course, apologized and retracted his early statements.

Why? Not because they weren't true in his opinion. But, because the Republican leadership threatened to remove him from his seniority posts on committees.

Now, which of the two congressman wins the Profiles in Courage award?

James Quinn. He's the London Telegraph's U.S. Business Editor, and brings that perspective in chronicling America's "troubles."

Let's review some of his perceptions from Thursday's hearings:

5.40pm
So, what did we learn? Was there a ’smoking gun?’ No, not at all. If there was a key lesson from today’s hearing, it was that Tony Hayward came to the committee not wanting to give anything away, and managed not to. That shone through in the politician’s increasing frustration with him, as he resorted to either saying he didn’t know, he wasn’t involved in the decision, or that it was subject to the ongoing investigation of the Deepwater explosion. Granted, Hayward is the chief executive of a massive multi-national company, and he cannot be expected to know every answer to every question, but given the intense focus which he is under, it would made sense to have at least spent some time investigating some of the likely areas of interest. Unless of course, that was his plan all along: plausible deniability. If that was the plan, he executed it perfectly.

And, this gem:

5.11pm
Congressman Peter Welch is bitter: “Your answer 65 times that you don’t know, doesn’t inspire confidence.”

Quinn has been in the U.S. too long, perhaps, for he speaks not of his countrymen's favorite new pinata. The once popular and now Mr. Evil Barack Obama.

Whitman Ad Insults Latino Intelligence

2010-06-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

File this under Mexicans are Stupid and Gullible Department in the minds of white politicians.

In California, Republican governor candidate Meg Whitman is releasing a new Spanish language television ad. Translated, it beckons, in part:

"Meg Whitman is a different kind of candidate. She is a business leader ready to fix Sacramento, ready to create more jobs and better schools in California. She respects our community. She is the Republican who opposes the Arizona law and opposed Prop. 187. She means real change..."

As MSNBC's First Read points out:

During the primary, Whitman ran a radio ad featuring former California Gov. Pete Wilson, the man behind Prop. 187, who said in it: “Meg Whitman will be as tough as nails on illegal immigration.” And in a TV ad during the primary, Whitman looked directly at the camera and said she opposes amnesty and will send National Guard troops to the border, if necessary.

My hat's off to NBC's Sarah Blackwill for calling this to national attention.

Politicians of both parties are shameless for exploiting minorities with blatant distortions and omissions of on-the-record statements in their foreign-language radio and television commercials. These pols operate under the assumption their foreign-language-speaking constituents are gullible and stupid.

In California, Latinos represent 36% of the electorate and are fortunate to have plenty of Spanish-speaking radio and TV stations where hopefully the broadcasters can set the record straight.

It is understandable that Whitman is trying to repair fences after leaning far right to win the governor nomination.

The issue is not how the entire electorate perceives issues close to the Hispanic community. The issue is being honest and forthright on those matters by politicians.

Vaya con dios, Meg Whitman, but don't insult people's intelligence.

24/7 News Cycle Class 101 On Stupid Comments By VIPs Who Speak With Forked Tongues

2010-06-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

Rap. Rap. Rap. Attention class. Let's get something straight in this era of 24/7 news. Grownups say stupid things.

Two examples.

BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said he was sorry the Deepwater Horizons oil spill damaged the livelihoods of the "small people" on the Gulf coast.

Then he said he was sorry that his choice of words were "clumsily" expressed.

Class, give the guy a break. English is his second language, if not the third, fourth or fifth. So, lighten up.

Example two which is today's major topic of discussion. Listen carefully and take notes.

Congressman Joe Barton, whose second language is English because he's from Texas, said the Obama administration's ability to force BP to establish a $20 billion trust fund to ensure payments of claims from Gulf residents amounted to a "shakedown."

His exact words at House committee meeting were:

"I'm speaking totally for myself, I'm not speaking for the Republican party ... but I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday."

He called it "a tragedy of the first proportion, that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, a $20 billion shakedown."

Class, essay No. 1. Did he mean it?

But, wait. He apologized. He said "shakedown" was too tough a term even for a tough Texan. He meant to say the government should have used legal, constitutional, avenues to ensure paying the claims.

Class, Essay No. 2, and it is okay to keep your answer to one word. How many legal paths did the government have to insist BP establish an escrow account.

Now, get this class, Barton unlike most Texans, apologized for telling BP he apologized for the "shakedown" and retracted his early BP apology for the embarrassment he felt his government put the oil giant in.

Class, Essay No. 3. What changed Barton's mind.

Here's some clues.

Minority leader John Boehner's office said the "shakedown" comment was wrong and does not represent the sentiments of the Republican Party. Translation: With the midterm elections approaching, Republicans don't want to be cast as friends of BP responsible for the nation's worst environmental disaster.

Right now, BP are the bad guys. But, class, you wouldn't know it in our 24/7 system of endless news flashes featuring Republican talking points.

Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana said:

"The oil spill in the Gulf is this nation's largest natural disaster and stopping the leak and cleaning up the region is our top priority."

Now, class, listen to this and tell me if it doesn't have a familiar ring to it.

On Wednesday, NBC News noted Republican Tom Price of Georgia, saying:

BP's willingness to go along with the White House's new fund suggests that the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics.

Class, do you detect a trend here? Oh, I almost forgot, that escrow account. It's now a political football, referred to as a "redistribution-of-wealth fund" by Republican phrase-maker Michele Bachmann. Rush Limbaugh calls it a "slush fund."

Now, the conspiracy minded element in this 24/7 news cycle is dog-piling on top of Barton with the Center for Responsive Politics saying he has collected $1,447,880 from political action committees and individuals connected with the oil and gas industry since 1989.

Hold on one cotton-picking moment. The Federal Elections Commission reports BP is stingy when it comes to Barton, donating a paltry average of $1,350 annually since 1990. Public Campaign figures a grand total of $27,000 to Barton from BP since 1985.

That's it class. Turn in your papers when the bell rings.

SCOTUS Rules Against Florida Beachfront Property Owners In Fifth Amendment Test Case

2010-06-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a Florida eminent domain case that beachfront property owners not be compensated when the government improves the shoreline to restore beach erosion.

The court's 8-0 verdict is a setback for eminent domain advocates and likely to draw the wrath of property rights groups across the nation.

In this case, the government added sand to the private beaches making those sections public and thereby depriving private beachfront owners exclusive rights and access to their shoreline.

The owners argued their beachfront property values declined and should be compensated under provisions of the Fifth Amendment.

The six homeowners in Stop the Beach Renourishment vs. Florida Department of Environmental Protection claimed the regulatory action by the state violated their common law littoral rights -- direct ocean access, use and view.

I find the case enthralling because it wraps a constitutional issue around 1) the state improving eroded beaches and 2) the owners saying the action amounted to "taking" away their rights of exclusivity.

The facts in the case are best presented in a June 2009 summary by the Owners Counsel of America on its The Eminent Domain blog site.

After years of beach erosion caused by tropical storms and hurricanes, state and local agencies decided to renourish about seven miles of beaches in Destin, Fla., and Walton County by a width averaging 210 feet. It is a process by which sand is dredged from the ocean floor and transported through pipes to the eroded areas.

A survey was taken to establish the high water line. At that point, everything on the land side remained private and everything on the ocean side called the Erosion Control Line became public property.

As a result, beachfront owners would no longer have a direct boundary with the ocean and denied compensation for their loss even though the beaches were improved with a width of 200 feet more of sand.

As the litigation worked its way through the state courts beginning in 2003, the Florida Supreme Court on Sept. 29, 2008 "opined that since enactment of Florida's Beach and Shore Preservation Act (specifically Part I of Chapter 161, Florida Statutes), the state has a constitutional duty to protect the beaches."

Private property advocates had hoped the court would rule for the first time that a court decision can amount to a taking of property.

The court's four conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — were prepared to rule that way, even though the homeowners still would have lost in this case, Scalia said in his opinion for the court. But they lacked a fifth vote.

Retiring associate Justice John Paul Stevens recused himself from the court decision. He owns an apartment in an oceanfront building in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., an area slated for an erosion-control project similar to the one in the high court case.

-------------

EPILOGUE

Laws in each of the nation's coastal states vary in regards to public access to public beaches. My understanding of the Florida case is that the law suit was a legal stretch since their property was not confiscated by the government but allegedly the loss of exclusivity rights. The plaintiffs did not specify compensatory damages from the state. I am more familiar with California law where all beaches are public and private owners cannot deny access if their property obstructs such passage. In the early 1950s, the private gated community of Three Arch Bay avoided a threatened law suit by the state. It maintained its practice of allowing only visitors who provided names of residents and advanced permission from the owners to enter. However, if the visitor insisted all he wanted to do was enjoy the pleasures of the public beach and nothing else, the security guards would allow entrance after taking the license and make of the automobile and names and addresses of the visitors. And then wish them luck finding a legal parking space. I am informed by a resident I knew then who still resides in Three Arch Bay that she was unaware of anyone who insisted and was granted his state constitutional right to use the beach.

Rise Of The New Right., According To The Old Left

2010-06-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball," launched what the network called a documentary Wednesday night on the Tea Party, militia groups and the other various and sundry extremes purporting to be the base of the Republican Party.

Except for one segment on a housewife explaining how she stumbled into forming a Tea Party in her neighborhood, the one-hour show was dominated by videos of the crackpot element of America's right seen through the lens of a moderate to liberal Democrat, Mr. Matthews.

Intended or not, the thrust of the show warns Americans this new group borrowing slogans from old zealots cloaked under the U.S. flag and the pre-Revolutionary War flag "Don't Tread On Me," have the state and federal government in their cross-hairs.

The one and perhaps only valid point Matthews makes is that this group unlike those of past years has new technology on its side -- the Internet and its social networking, conservative talk radio and Fox News.

That maximizes its chances for persuasion, hopefully by peaceful democratic means and not by the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms and, by Matthews' fear, aimed against our law enforcement and elected officials.

I confess being a fan of Matthews for most of the years he has hosted his show. He has a phobia about common folks carrying guns around political rallies and his fears are well grounded of memories of attempted and successful assassinations of President Kennedy, President Ford, President Reagan, Bobby Kennedy and yes, even George Wallace, to name a few.

What Matthews is so worked up about is that the anger we see that is trumpeted into their ears about overthrowing the government is that some nut in the crowd will take a shot at our president or like Timothy McVeigh blow up a federal building killing 168 people.

The documentary failed miserably in accurately depicting the Tea Party other than its extreme elements such as the woman we all saw in the promo hype who said President Obama is a liar.

A more honest assessment of the Tea Party is that as a national power force it is at the present time too decentralized, too localized and too fragmented. They do share a common bond that the federal government is too large.

Where Matthews does score correctly is that the anger we observe from the right is based on economic fears and the erroneous perception the president is "not one of them."

It is not coincidental that the "new" right gained traction when the housing market collapsed, the financial institutions melted and the government responded with bailouts, stimulus packages and what many of them believe a "take over" of our health system that mandates everyone purchase medical insurance.

And, as Matthews argues, what they thought in their minds were hammered and confirmed with the rants of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and to a lesser extent by Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

But peeling that onion skin deeper was the resentment their president was not legitimate because the echo chamber they listened to said he was born perhaps in Kenya, Glenn Beck said he "hated white people" and Rush Limbaugh assured them the president was part and parcel of a tyrannical regime.

Matthews who is a good student of history should no from history that the political pendulum forever swings both ways over time. The American people correct their mistakes by either throwing the rascals out or during that 13-year period beginning in the 1920s approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of liquor and then repealing it.

The same holds true for the "new" right. They may gain seats in Congress but can the true believers such as libertarian Rand Paul, if elected, sway his fellow senators to his way of thinking. I doubt it.

I think the "new" right is more militant in words than in actual practice and have been prey to Republican operatives for the expediency of winning elections than getting the chance of actual governing.

I grew up in Orange County, Calif., a Republican bastion, and people like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, the Republican Tea Party Senate nominee in Nevada, don't scare me. They have a political philosophy I don't adopt. but they are not threats to democracy as my liberal friends would like you to believe.

Sorry, Chris, your documentary failed to send shivers up my leg.

BP $20 Billion 'Check' In The Mail

2010-06-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

BP says the $20 billion check is in the mail. Let's hope it doesn't bounce.

As critical as I have been on President Obama for too many misguided efforts in micromanaging America's worst environmental disaster, on the $20 billion + escrow account, he hit a home run or in terms of his favorite sport. a game-winning three-point basket from half court.

Using the full powers of the federal government, Obama without a legal leg to stand on, bullied the giant energy company into compliance to meet most of our desires.

The "Show Me The Money" account will be administered by Kenneth Feinberg, the mediator who oversaw the 9/11 victims compensation funds.

The fund is important for it squelches speculation that BP is bleeding catastrophically as a result of the April 20 explosion that killed 11 crew, dumped as much as 60,000 barrels of crude per day into the Gulf of Mexico and reached a credibility of -5,000 feet trying ineptly to plug the hole.

The fund will be padded over the years since no company, including BP which is the fourth most profitable in the world, has that much cash on hand for a one-stop deposit.

White House officials said BP also agreed to add more to the $20 billion down payment if needed..

BP did put its foot down and refused to pay compensation for lost wages of other oil companies whose deep water wells were shut down until at least December by a moratorium Obama slapped on the Gulf operators last month.

A major complaint among fishermen and businessmen in the Gulf states was that BP was slow in processing its claims, usually dispersed in $5,000 increments.

A smaller faction among those effected were the small business owners who had licenses but were paid in cash and lacked IRS returns to prove their income losses.

It now rests with Feinberg to streamline and accelerate the claim process. Lots of luck, fella.

I was slightly concerned that BP might turn corporate enemy No. 1 by filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy to protect its North American subsidiary assets.

They include oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico and Prudhoe Bay in Alaska’s North Slope. Its refineries in Texas City, Tex., and Whiting, Ind., are among the five largest in the country.

But as the Brits would say, BP's "troubles" in the Gulf were mounting daily.

Many investors panicked, dumping the company's market valuation down by 48% since the spill began, erasing $91 billion in shareholder value. One French credit agency classified as "junk" BPs bond rating.

From Baird Maritime:

Shares trading closed Tuesday at $31.40, down from $60.48 on April 20. Over time, analyst say that a drop in BP’s market value could turn the company into a target for a takeover by Western rivals or even one of Asia’s national oil companies...

But as long as oil sells for $75 bpd or better they should survive.

Both Obama and BP have maintained all along that BP will pay all damages and claims. BP says it has paid $1 billion so far.

It would be smoother sailing legally if two Republicans -- blocking a bill increasing retroactively the $75 million liability set in the 1990 Oil Pollution Act to $10 billion or more -- would stop acting as a Big Oil mole posing as U.S. senators.

While the president may have gotten what he wanted with bluster, it goes to show the White House is better at that game than Democratic congressman.

They wanted BP to establish a similar escrow before paying its shareholders dividends amounting to $10.5 billion a year.

No such measure was announced by BP following its board members meeting with the U.S. president Wednesday.

The rich kid got his pockets' picked and damn well (no pun intended) deserved it for being so greedy.

Hey Suckers! I Have A Political Poll Just For You

2010-06-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

Has it occurred to anyone but me that political polling in America no longer can be considered a cottage industry and that these vultures can crunch the numbers and phrase the questions to produce answers their clients desire.

I mean politicians can't go to the bathroom without taking a poll. I exaggerate, of course. But it is getting close to that.

As a student of political behavior, I consider polls as a ballplayer throwing blades of grass in the air to figure which way the wind is blowing at that particular moment.

Let's look at today's latest poll, this one an Associated Press-GfK Poll, which I quote:

There's encouraging news for Democrats battling to retain control of Congress in this fall's elections, with the party holding a slender edge in public trust for shepherding the economy and small gains in those saying their finances are healthy...
The good news for Democrats: By a margin of 47% to 42%, people trust them more than Republicans to guide the economy, and slightly more — 64% — say their household budgets are in good shape.

For me, a Democrat, that's encouraging. But I guarantee you there are dozens of other polls out there that say the Republicans will win, perhaps even a majority, in November.

These polls are like blogsites. You embrace the ones in which you agree and reject those that in your considered opinion rub against your way of thinking.

On the right, Fox News loves the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll because it usually shows President Obama swimming in troubled waters.

Golly gee, Rasmussen reports as of today, Wednesday, 24% of the nation's voters strongly approve of Obama's performance and 44% strongly disapprove. We need to wait three days before Rasmussen determines a bounce from the president's oil disaster speech Tuesday night.

Heading into the speech, 30% of voters gave President Obama good or excellent marks for handling the oil spill. Forty-five percent said he was doing a poor job. Most voters (57%) still favor offshore oil drilling.

Rasmussen results are based upon nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis.

I don't become concerned what methods pollsters use or what voter list they try to reach because if they screw up such as the outfit that predicted Alf Landon would beat President Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election, they won't be around very long.

Polls are like the Bible. You can find passages that will justify your beliefs no matter how bizarre.

Some polling companies such as Gallup and Pew have been around for years and have a decent reputation because they more often than not are on target.

I randomly selected the Zogby poll because I have heard about them. Here are some of the headers:

• Zogby Interactive: 66% of Americans Believe Gulf Spill is a "Disaster" That Will Cause Long Term Damage... (6/8/10)

• Obama Approval Steady at 47% While Oil Spill Continues... (6/7/10)

• 71% Don't Like 'Bank Bailouts,' But Small Majorities See Necessity of Government Intervention... (5/20/10)

And, so on.

Politicians cannot live without polls for they are tools to hone their messages to the voters. The trick, in my opinion, is not to become a whore and sell your soul as I believe John McCain is now doing in Arizona to win the Republican Senate nomination.

The media is big on polls because they give us something to write about to support particular angles to a story. I suppose it makes the authors seem credible as if they are quoting historical documents or something. Far from it, I say.

let's take a look at the story that triggered this tirade.

In addition, people want Democrats to win control of Congress by a 46% to 39% margin. That is the second straight month in which Democrats have held a delicate advantage on that question since April, when 44% preferred Republicans and 41% picked Democrats.

A reminder: Today is June 16, not Nov. 2 and as they say, a lot of sewage can flow downstream between now and then.

These polling results have their organizers scrambling to explain contradictory evidence culled from the surveys.

The public's anti-Washington mood remains robust, with 55% saying they want a new member of Congress — bad news for Democrats with more incumbents to defend. A low 24% approve of how Congress (both with Democratic majorities) is doing its job, a hefty 72% still say the nation's economy is in poor condition, and 77% consider huge federal budget deficits a top concern.

Most polls released by pollsters put a face on their topics.

"It's just my conservative views on taxes, on how involved government gets in people's lives," said Jessica Iskander, 25, a homemaker from Hartly, Del., who wants Republicans running Congress.

And the honest ones as the story I'm using as Exhibit A of long-term insignificance polled 1,044 adults by landline and cell phone with a 4.3 margin of error.

That "margin of error" interests me, not being a numbers cruncher myself. I suspect it means the person doing the polling was unreliable and some of the voters misunderstood the questions and lied to get off the phone and go back watching a reality show on television.

Now, if only those geniuses estimating the BP oil spill could wish for a 4.3% margin of error, that's progress.

Obama Plays Tough Guy With BP, Mr. Reasonable For New Energy Laws

2010-06-15T20:52:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama in a nationally televised speech Tuesday night on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill accused BP of "recklessness." We knew that.

"We will make BP pay," he said. How much, he didn't say.

He announced still another presidential commission.

He called it the Gulf Coast Restoration Plan. It will be headed by former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus working in conjunction with local states, towns, fishermen and conservationists.

He was vague on details but any restoration plan would cost billions of dollars. He said BP will pay for that, too.

Last month Obama appointed a presidential commission investigating the cause of America's largest accidental environmental disaster and gave the seven-member panel until December to offer fixes.

He told a whopper, too. That is his assertion that 90% of the spill will be siphoned into oil cargo container ships by early July.

It is based on estimates from his Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu, and BP engineers.

That's a bold assertion for a president known for sweeping generalities than specificity.

It comes hours after the Chu team revised estimates the spill from 5,000 feet below the Gulf surface was gushing between 50,000 and 80,000 barrels of gas and crude daily, up from 1,000 bpd shortly after the April 20 accident.

The president was not specific for good reason setting a target date for August when relief wells are expected to intersect the broken pipe 8,000 feet under the Gulf floor and cap it off permanently.

"We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes," Obama said.

He used military terminology. Words like "assault" and "fight" and deploying 2,000 more National Guard troops.

What he didn't say was confusion among the governors where to assign the troops since they are restricted to activities on the ground and not on water, according to one report filed by CNN's Anderson Cooper.

The president confessed the Interior Department's Mineral Management Services agency contributed to the BP disaster for being slack in its regulation duties. We knew that.

It is being overhauled, he said. Michael Bromwich, who was a Justice Department head-hunter, will be the new director.

'His charge over the next few months is to build an organization that acts as the oil industry's watchdog — not its partner," he promised.

Borrowing terms he used cautioning Americans that the fight against Islamic terrorism and turning the economy and unemployment around will take time, Obama said the oil spill is an epidemic lasting months and years unlike earthquakes and hurricanes.

One-third of the 22-minute speech was directed at the need of Congress enacting an energy policy in crafty language that referred only once the words "climate change," a term radioactive to Republicans in both the House and Senate.

Justified the president:

We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserves. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean — because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.

For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we have talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked — not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.

Immediately after the speech, I switched to Fox News and as sure as the sun was setting in the West, Charles Krauthammer, who makes more money in a week than I do in a year, was telling Bill O'Reilly the American people cannot afford the new energy taxes which would add to our electric bills about $30/month.

This was after the president was just warming up to his campaign pledge.

We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny.

I also switched to CNN where a correspondent in Jefferson Parish hosted a group viewing of the presidential address. All the people interviewed said the same thing.

Give us the money BP owes us and plug the damn hole so we can get our lives back.

-----------------

EPILOGUE

Obama delivered a good speech. Gulf residents have been kicked in the gut so often with every hurricane that passes through and now the BP spill, little wonder they feel as Little Orphan Annie and develop a "show me" attitude of their northern brothers in Missouri. But where the president's speech I fear failed was reaching deaf ears in places as Peoria, Ill., or Butte, Mont., where the effects of the disaster will not be felt, at least not this year. Did he rally the nation? I think not. Did he have to use the occasion to pitch energy legislation? Normally I would say yes, of course. In this polarized political climate with midterm elections on the horizon and the economy in the tank for many, I think not. An environmental disaster does not get the entire nation's attention. Gas prices above $4 a gallon do. I checked it out. Regular goes for $2.70 nationally with a high of $3.05 in California, according to the June 14 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Yawn, Another Earhquake

2010-06-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

Earthquakes are as common in California as tornadoes are in the Midwest. I have experienced both, and if I had my druthers, would prefer a temblor.

I was born and raised in California and spent many years living on top of the San Andreas fault which means 200 miles on either side.

Monday night within 10 seconds of getting into bed, I was rocked gently by Mom Nature from what I learned Tuesday morning was a 5.7 magnitude earthquake geologists said was centered about 60 miles south of my two-story apartment building.

The rocking was similar to being in a water bed not filled to capacity or as was the case in my former life, aboard a small boat swaying in the wake of waves generated by some cretin exceeding the 5mph bay waters speed limit.

We all have preconceived notions of what earthquakes, tornadoes and floods are like if we have never experienced one up front and personal.

Minor shakes and rolls to a Californian are as common as flies entering your house when you leave the doors open.

The worst I remember was at home in South Laguna, Calif, where pictures and a few of my mother's cherished pottery fell and broke.

The worst I saw live from a safe distance of 800 miles was the 1988 earthquake at Candlestick Park in San Francisco during the start of a World Series game.

The worst my father told me was having the misfortune of being in Long Beach on business during the 1933 earthquake.

As a child I recall seeing a movie of an earthquake that opened up a huge cavity where people fell into and then as a big whale or shark closed and crushed its prey.

Now, that's the impression I get from non-Californians living through a temblor registering as little as only a piddling 1.5 on the Richter scale.

California authors are no help to the bad rap blamed on earthquakes.

My friend Neil Morgan, a former boss when he was columnist and editor of the Evening Tribune in San Diego, wrote a book I think was titled "Westward Tilt." In it, he wrote with graphic description that the population of California was becoming so dense it was only a matter of time when its weight would cause the burdened land mass west of the San Andreas to fall into the ocean.

In another chapter of my previous life, I was traveling in a motorhome when in Iowa spotted a tornado setting its whirling funnel touch down about two miles away in a corn field.

I drove and parked under a highway overpass for protection. As I waited it out completely mesmerized as well as terrified since I never witnessed one before, a pickup truck with a gaggle of youth in the back bed were waving Iowa State University banners.

They must have observed the California license plates on my motorhome.

'Yeah! Yeah! A Californee wuss. Scardy cat!" as they zipped past with several flipping me a middle finger salute.

The next morning outside Iowa City I bought the Des Moines Register. Under the weather section in small agate print was one sentence which as I recall read:

''A minor tornado was spotted near Ames causing no damage."

And, in Tuesday's on-line Los Angeles Times was this report:

There were no injuries or significant damage reported in this quake swarm.

As Walter Cronkite would end each of his broadcasts...

"And, that's the way it is. Tuesday, June 15, 2010.'

Petraeus Collapses During Senate Hearing

2010-06-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

How fragile our leaders our was visibly demonstrated Tuesday morning in a Senate hearing when Gen. David Patraeus collapsed. He returned 20 minutes later.

Here's the initial account and a video of the incident.

Petraeus is the commander of U.S central command. He was testifying on the war in Afghanistan.

What Obama Should NOT Say

2010-06-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

Here's what I don't want to hear from President Obama in his Tuesday night address to the nation on the BP oil spill, the worst accidental environmental disaster in U.S. history.

That is, the government will "leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before."

That's poppycock, Mr. President, in all due respect. I don't believe it. Shrimp and oyster fisherman don't believe it.

Even the U.S. geological experts don't believe it and will prove it after the tropical storms and hurricanes sweep the polluted water inland and the surges will reach and seep into water tables local residents use for drinking water.

Even those who believe the government can do everything -- which it can't -- have no answers how long the oil choking oxygen from plant and sea life and settling on the Gulf floor will endure after killing off the plankton shrimp and oysters need for its very existence.

The Gulf Delta is the cesspool of agricultural soil and chemical runoff eroding down the Mississippi River that man has worsened but the natural force of nature corrects over time.

Add toxic oil coated in chemical dispersants into the equation and the ecological balance is shot to hell for generations for man and untold plant and wildlife species, some possibly for ever.

So, Mr. President, don't tell me the Gulf will return to normal as if you waved some magic wand.

Nor, Mr. President, do I want to hear you say one word that smacks of political overtones or decisions based on such.

Decisions made to mitigate the Gulf disaster should not be based on polls or political calculations.

I'm talking about you seizing the occasion to implore Congress to adopt climate change legislation that includes a tax on carbon. The Atlantic described it better than I could:

The pivot from gushing oil to climate change is at once harder than it seems and blindingly obvious. Oil is polluting the Gulf; it's not raising temperatures.

Nor, Mr. President, do I want to hear BP is the evil empire. We know that. Stop beating a dead horse.

Instead, I do want to hear Tuesday night or Wednesday after the face-to-face with BP brass bigger than Tony Hayward that you used your bully pulpit to force the company to place $20 billion in escrow for interim claims, cleanup and damage liability with the proviso that fund be increased if needed.

BP is unlikely to go broke for it is a money making machine the extent of which can be summarized in this article.

It could create a sticky widget, as the Brits says, if it filed under one of numerous options of Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its North America subsidiary.

No, what I want Obama to explain is how he plans to untangle the bureaucratic red tape in the decision-making process to provide which laughingly is referred to devices that capture the oil spill before most of it reaches into the marshes and estuaries.

As reporters followed Obama during his two-day visit to the Gulf, one filed this anecdote that illustrates the confusion and frustration of local residents:

Watching oil flow through Perdido Pass in Alabama's Gulf Coast, former Navy firefighter Clayton Ard said he wished Obama would break up the unified command responding to the crisis and let local governments handle it with more autonomy.

"It's just a huge bureaucracy that's slowing things down. ... We want to stop the oil now, but we can't do anything," Ard said.

-------------

EPILOGUE

Those who cover the president's every move including the White House political staff are fussing over what a big deal it is that Obama's televised Tuesday address will be delivered from the Oval office. Big frigging deal. Neither myself nor the residents of the Gulf coast gives a damn if he addresses the nation from New Orleans or from riding the back of Shamu at Sea World. We're not seeking perceptions and graphic images of grandeur. The time has come for words reinforced with action.

I Raise A Toast To Abby, 16, No Matter What Others Say

2010-06-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

To the legions of online and cable television critics claiming child abuse that Laurence and Marianne Sunderland allowed their 16-year-old daughter Abby to sail alone around the world, I say get a life and mind your own store.

Abby Sunderland was better prepared to circumnavigate the oceans than Magellan. I was going to use the analogy of Tiger Woods father telling his son at age 16 he had to stop playing golf because, well, you know, but thought better of it.

The fact is those decisions are made by child and parents and in the Sunderland's case, the risks were well known and worth taking. If Abby was my daughter, I would encourage her to go for her dream.

As the Sunderlands pointed out on the Good Morning America show, it was less of a risk on the oceans than for a teenager getting killed in a traffic accident in her hometown of Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Yes, the inevitable happened and Abby's 40-foot sloop capsized in huge waves in the Indian Ocean and she was fortunate to be rescued by a French fishing vessel. But it wasn't all luck.

If she wasn't such a proficient sailor, she would have drowned.

Of course, if a full scale air and sea search was involved, I would suggest the bill be sent to the Sunderlands.

As the Denver Post noted:

In an era when social scientists worry about "helicopter parents" hovering over their offspring, shielding them from dangers real and invented, the saga of the globe-circling, teenage solo sailor presents a dramatic counterpoint.

I'm old fashioned and cringe at the thought of Abby being cast into a reality television show when I would prefer she write a book about her solo sailing experiences. Oops, there I go off on a tangent playing "Father Knows Best" like those helicopter parents.

But the lass is blogging her experiences and tells the world before even touching land she plans to write a book.

From the Los Angeles Times:

"At first I decided that I wasn't going to write a book. But then I started to think about all the good times Wild Eyes and I have had together," she wrote. "All that's left of the voyage of Wild Eyes are my memories, eventually they will get fuzzy and I won't remember all the details. I don't want that to happen. Wild Eyes and my trip have been the best thing I have ever done or been through and I don't ever want to forget all the great times we have had together, or the bad ones for that matter."

As for her journey, she added: "I'm still out on the ocean headed to a little island called Kerguelen and then will be on another boat for ten days up to an island near Madagascar. From there I will eventually make it home."

The Denver Post:

Children, Laurence Sunderland argues, should be encouraged to confront and manage challenges.
"Let's face it. Life is dangerous," Sunderland said on "Good Morning America." "How many teenagers are killed in car accidents? . . . Should we stop every teenager from driving a car?"
Even when Abby returns home to California, she is likely to face some of the same questions.
"The culture is conflicted," said David Halle, a professor of sociology at UCLA. "The culture has constructed this elaborate extended childhood that holds it is a difficult world and, on the other hand, there is this other point of view which is that young people can do amazing things, and every so often it bursts out."

The Times:

On its website, Magnetic Entertainment said it is producing a reality TV show featuring the family.
"We follow the family in their day-to-day lives as shipbuilder Laurence Sunderland and mother/teacher Marianne try to balance work and family," the show description says. "Their philosophy on building strong, well-rounded adults is to mentor their seven home schooled children into setting goals, creating a plan to reach those goals, and implementing them ... allowing each of them to pursue their dreams of becoming world class adventurers."

-------------------

EPILOGUE

I have owned two small boats and am fully aware of the dangers our seas present. I also know with a love and passion for sailing, the right equipment and sailing vessel, it is possible for even a youngster of 16 to sail the world alone, a far cry more safer than traveling by land. I also know first hand of the tragedies involved. As a reporter I was befriended by a hot-air balloonist. He was a sponsor of a group launching a balloon race from Santa Catalina Island to San Diego. An experienced woman balloonist lost control in tricky channel winds and was killed. The race was the first and last of an annual event.

Meet Rick Barber -- True Patriot Or Another Wing-nut?

2010-06-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

Every political nook and cranny can be found a wing-nut so allow me to join MSNBC's First Read and YouTube in introducing Rick Barber, a Tea Party Republican in Alabama who wants to take arms against his country.

In a TV campaign ad, Barber is seen railing about President Obama and the new health reform law which he says the Internal Revenue Service will force everyone to buy health insurance.

Except he says it in a manner of which only the video below does justice.

The scene has Barber chatting with presumably President George Washington and reminding him:

'You, gentlemen, revolted over a tea tax! A tea tax! Now look at us. Are you with me?" Replies the actor playing one of our founding fathers, "Gather your armies."

Excuse me, but if that isn't a candidate advocating taking up arms against his country because of a political position he opposes, my name isn't Jerry Remmers and the moon is made of cheese.

Barber faces Martha Roby in Alabama's 2nd Congressional District in a runoff from the June 1 Primary. The winner would face Democratic incumbent Rep. Bobby Bright.

In the first round, Roby received 36,266 votes (48.6%), Barber 21,290 (28.5%), Stephanie Bell 13,760 (18.5%) and John McKinney 3,346 (4.5%).

I need not remind you that Barber is considered true blue by some of his constituents including Luann Dawkins who filed this report for the River Region Community Examiner, Ala., on April 22:

In today's political climate it is hard to tell whom to believe and whom to throw to the curb. One stand out candidate for Alabama's 2nd Congressional District, Rick Barber, gives no such confusion. In an interview with Mr. Barber, it was clear he has an easy way about him, that lends to conversation, never intimidation. He has a passion for the politics in this Country and to turn the tide for a fair and working government that works for the PEOPLE, not special interest groups.

It gets mushier.

Iran Tempers Blockade Threat

2010-06-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

Cooler heads may be prevailing in Tehran as semi-official news reports say Iran's Society for the Defense of the Palestinian Nation announced one ship loaded with humanitarian aid for Gaza departed Sunday and another is scheduled to leave Friday.

It is in stark contrast to the bellicose threats two weeks ago the Revolutionary Guard's navy was awaiting word from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to escort cargo ships and break Israel's blockade delivering goods directly to Gaza ports.

Both reports were filed by the Reuters news agency.

It is unknown whether the ships carrying food, construction materials and toys for Palestinian refugees in Gaza would challenge the blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt or try to port in Egypt.

"Until the end of (Israel's) Gaza blockade, Iran will continue to ship aid," said an official at Iran's Society for the Defense of the Palestinian Nation.

Israel insists all cargo headed for Gaza be unloaded at Israeli ports and inspected for arms before being trucked to Gaza.

Israel commandos boarded a flotilla of Turkish aid ships heading to Gaza on May 31 in which troops killed nine pro-Palestinian activists after they were confronted by some passengers with metal rods and knives.

More Iranian bravado: An official of the Iranian Red Crescent Society's youth organization said some 100,000 Iranians had volunteered as potential crew for aid ships.

And the Revolutionary Guards threat: "Such a thing is not on our agenda," Hossein Salami was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government bowing to international demands has vowed to investigate the May 31 flotilla shootings but has refused to consider dropping its blockade.

In 1967, the Israeli's offered no official public apology or released findings of an investigation when its air and naval ships sank the U.S. surveillance ship Liberty without warning, killing 34 and wounding 174 American crew.

$1 Trillion In Minerals Discovered in Afghanistan

2010-06-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

The good news is Afghanistan has at least $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits that could transform that impoverished war-torn nation what oil accomplished for Saudi Arabia.

The bad news is the minerals will test corrupt Afghan government and tribal leaders, stimulate the Taliban to retake the country and China and the rest of the drooling major powers to compete and exploit its new found riches.

This is a game-changing story first reported Monday by veteran writer James Risen of the New York Times and so far overlooked by media and bloggers in the West because, frankly, stuff such as iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium are dull topics of discussion.

Lithium, a mineral used in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries, potentially has larger deposits than Brazil.

The mineral deposits were surveyed by U.S. geological experts and updated and far exceeded what the Soviets mapped during their occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s.

China was the first major power to negotiate a contract for copper mining. It was tainted by a $30 million bribe given to an Afghan government official who since was fired and replaced.

Of major concern to Pentagon officials is how to work with Afghan officials to develop the mines without exploiting its people or the environment.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines. He said the country's gross national product is about $12 billion mostly from opium production and narcotics trafficking.

Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.

“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, undersecretary of defense and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.

The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”

Pentagon and industry officials quoted in the Times story seemed to position the U.S. as chief adviser for the Afghans in hopes of being a step ahead of other nations bidding for the mineral wealth as a just reward for fighting its wars so far costing the lives of more than a thousand Americans since late 2001.

-----------------------

EPILOGUE

The Times story is a must read. It means the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is more than justifying its invasion in retaliation for 9/11, fighting al-Qaeda, putting up with government and tribal corruption and condoning the opium and drug trades. Thar's money in those arid hills and valleys after all. I don't know if this escalates the wars or signals the beginning of a new era of colonialism. Done correctly, the mining operations are a jobs boon for the Afghan people.

Gary Nerry, Unintended Victim Of Government Red Tape

2010-06-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

As many of us who believe in strict enforcement of governmental regulations designed for safety and protection of consumers and the environment, the concept is idyllic in theory but detrimental far too often in practice.

As far back as the Franklin Roosevelt administration, Americans have fought the battle of what's too much and what's too little in our regulation of commerce.

My concept has always been to do just enough to level the playing field and keep the bastards honest. What I don't know is where you draw that line in the sand.

Our policymakers far too often are driven by knee-jerk reactions. Rather than solving the nuclear waste problem, they made restrictions so rigid no new atomic energy plant has been built in the United States since the Three Mile Island power plant accident in Middletown, Pa., on March 28, 1979.

For years, the more extreme wing of the environmental movement has called for closing down off-shore oil drilling and now gleefully point to the Deepwater Horizons oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as "gotcha" and "I told you so."

President Obama's decision for a moratorium on Gulf drilling pending studies and recommendations and safety inspections I do not consider a knee-jerk reaction.

But the safety inspections are completed for shallow drilling in less than 500 feet of water and the Minerals Management Service has issued a new set of rules with more to come.

Yet, the drilling operators are laying off workers claiming confusion and indecision within the agency that reaches to top management in the Interior Department.

It's the domino effect of unintended consequences that makes a tragic situation worse as it reaches truck driver Gary Nerry of New Iberia, La., who is losing $4,000 a week hauling pipe to oil rig operators.

This story is as much about Nerry as it is about the chaos that is engulfing the Gulf Coast while BP and the Obama administration engage in a urinating contest of whose in charge.

If you think Obama is in charge as he claims to be, read on, my friends.

The Houston-based Seahawk shallow water oil rigs have 1,000 drillers about to be laid off because of foot-dragging by government regulators.

Here's an account reflecting the industry's position as related in the Washington Post Sunday:

Rig owners say that confusion over safety regulations issued last week by the Interior Department and uncertainty about additional rules Interior says are on the way could extend delays in the issuance of shallow-water permits, creating a de facto moratorium. That in turn could force companies to idle rigs and furlough thousands of workers. Since the April 20 (Deepwater Horizons) accident, the number of rigs actively drilling in shallow waters of the gulf has dropped by half.

James W. Noe, general counsel of Hercules Offshore, the biggest shallow-water rig operator in the gulf;

"Putting semantics aside, there are no new permits being issued in shallow waters."

Rick Storey, Seahawk's director of sales and marketing:

"We've submitted the paperwork we think they're asking for, but nothing's really clear. The regulations are so vague."

Randall Stilley, chief executive of Seahawk:

It is not the new safety regulations that are causing problems for shallow-water rig operators. "We can live with that," said Stilley. But, he said MMS officials are now too nervous to issue new permits without approval from senior administration officials.

Chett Chiasson, executive director of Louisiana's Port Fourchon:

Not only rig owners and workers are hurt -- the costs are spilling onto shore too. (He) said the six-month deep-water moratorium along with delays in shallow-water drilling could mean a loss of $750 million for the area and layoffs among the 4,000 workers there who provide support to rigs.

"It used to be that if fishing was down, people would go work on the rigs," Chiasson said. "Now you've got fishing and shrimping gone and now the drilling side of our economy is gone. It leaves us in a bad, bad situation."

"If we don't bring in stuff for them then we don't make nothing and we stay at home," Nerry said, looking out at his 18-wheeler.

The Curious Case Of Alvin Greene And The Cess Pool Of Southern Republican Politics

2010-06-12T09:32:00.001-07:00

Through no fault of his own, Alvin Greene landed in the middle of disgraceful South Carolina politics as if he arrived from Mars.

Greene won the Democratic nomination to oppose Republican incumbent Jim DeMint for one of the Palmetto state's two U.S. Senate seats in Tuesday's primary elections.

For four days I have been squeamish to write about Greene because he is an honest, proud man who in my opinion is a pawn of some demonic Manchurian candidate plot hatched by the sleazebags who run the state's political machines.

Greene is what in Southern parlance is described as "slow." His public face does not square with most of his resume in that zilch politicians we encounter don't limit their answers to "Yes" or "No."

I was denounced by South Carolina readers for my coverage of the state's primaries that from an outsider's view was more sex, crime and innuendos than substance. I did not mention Greene's Senate victory because even if the Democrat nominee's name would have been Jesus Christ Superstar, he would lose to the Republican DeMint in November.

The DeMint people scoff at the absurdity of they being involved in Greene's win as a "plant."

I heard former state Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian opine on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC "Countdown" show that in past years it is not uncommon for Republicans to financially support black candidates as "plants" to degrade the Democrats.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a black, said he also suspects Greene was a Republican plant and has called for an investigation.

In the 1990 primary, Clyburn recalls Rod Shealy recruited unemployed black fisherman Benjamin Hunt Jr. to challenge Arthur Ravenel Jr.

It is cruel crap such as this that is systemic in South Carolina in which political consultant Stuart Rotenberg calls the Republican national stinkpot.

In Saturday's Washington Post, a reporter describes a three-hour sit-down interview with Greene at his father's home in rural Manning, a town of 4,000. Interrupted repeatedly by telephone calls from friends, fans and political consultants offering free campaign advise, the reporter observes:

He has no cellphone and no computer, except the one at the public library.

"I check my e-mail, like, it varies, maybe — I'm more, I mean — two or three times a week," he says. "I prefer the telephone. I'm a little old-fashioned. I prefer the telephone. That's the easiest."

Greene, a solidly built 32-year-old with a close-shaved head, sighs heavily as he speaks, pausing often during meandering monologues. Wearing a green T-shirt from a 1993 family reunion, he taps his fingers, alternating between staring at the floor and covering his face with both hands.

He sits on a folding metal chair at a patio table set on the linoleum floor of his father's wood-paneled living room. Above him, a ceiling fan with a bare bulb hangs motionless in the heat. Piles of magazines and mail clutter a desk. The house is dark except for a lone, dim lamp and the glow of the muted television. His father — who says he's a kidney dialysis patient still recovering from open-heart surgery four years ago — lies on the couch, a step away from his son, occasionally moaning in pain or interrupting Greene to say he's veered off subject.

The record shows and has been verified that Greene graduated from Manning High School in 1995 and received a degree as a political science major at the University of South Carolina in 2000.

He served as an Army intelligence and a unit supply specialist, the last assignment in South Korea, and granted an honorary but involuntary discharge in 2009. He also served in the Army and Air Force Reserves.

His service jacket includes the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Air Force Good Conduct Medal, the Korea Defense Service Medal and the National Defense Service Medal.

His early discharge is murky, the Washington Post reported.

"Things weren't working out. . . . Same thing happened in the Air Force. It's a long story in both services."

Greene told the Post reporter he got the idea of entering politics while serving in Korea and saved his money to pay for the $10,400 filing fee to run for U.S. Senate.

That's where this story turns to mud, South Carolina style.

Greene has been unemployed since his Army discharge and filed court documents proving he was an "indigent" to qualify for a court-appointed attorney representing him in a criminal case.

According to one report, Greene tried to pay his filing fee with a personal check but was told by the county official only campaign account checks were acceptable.

The report also indicated Greene failed to file legally required papers with the Secretary of the Senate and Federal Elections Commissiion.

He told the Post reporter he has $114 in his campaign account and plans to debate DeMint on a "major television network."

In the primary he did not campaign, attend rallies and after saying he criss-crossed the state knocking on doors, he retracted that assertion.

He has rejected pleas from Clyburn and state Democratic leaders to withdraw.

Some South Carolina black politicians say Greene's win was a fluke because his name was on top of the ballot in which he drew 60% of the votes over his only rival, a white man, Vic Rawl, a former judge who has served four terms in the state legislature.

It is impossible to determine the number of Republicans voting for Greene because voters don't register by party in South Carolina's open primary system.

As I said, Greene's written resume doesn't jibe with his in person appearances thrust in the national limelight and resigned to give succinct yes and no answers we almost never hear from politicians running for national office.

From the Greenville News, S.C. May 25, 2010, Wikipedia reports Greene's platform:

Greene describes himself as a "moderate Democrat." His campaign slogan is "Let's get South Carolina back to work." Greene favors measures to lower the price of gas and supports offshore drilling. He supports a united Korea under a democratic system of government. He would let the Bush tax cuts expire and supports reform of the financial industry.

Greene supports job creation and would increase highway construction projects and pursue alternative energy sources. He has also called for better school facilities and pay raises for teachers. When asked about free trade, Greene has stated that he has to look into the issue further before taking a position. On the subject of firearms, Greene said he supports the Constitution.

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EPILOGUE

There is a ciminal charge against Greene that is still wallowing in the South Carolina court system. It involves a coed at South Carolina University claiming Greene asked her to look at something she contends was pornagraphy on a school library computer and suggested they go to her room. Greene says simply he thinks the charges will somehow mysteriously "go away." Despite that, it is obvious that at best Greene does not articulate as well as we have preconceived notions how U.S. senatorial candidates should Until I am convinced someone else did not pay his $10,400 filing fee, I will stick with logic and believe some slimy Republican political operative did. This is one of the most disgraceful dirty tricks I have ever seen as a political observer for 60 years. Think of it in terms of a ruthless manipulation of what white southerners deem a "slow" black man. Until South Carolinians can clean up their act, there is no way in hell people outside the state can consider them major players on the national political arena.

As BP Stocks Sink, BS Rises While Victims Seeth And Wildlife Die

2010-06-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

So much of the BP oil spill damage in the Gulf of Mexico is predicated on educated guesses but the speculation I consider most relevant in the long-term is whether the British-based conglomerate will declare bankruptcy for its North American division.

At first blush, the idea appears preposterous because it would involve shutting down or selling all its drilling and contractual obligations to the U.S. Defense Department.

BP is the world's fourth most profitable industry and Britain's second. It has a legal obligation to pay dividends to its shareholders and by a 1990 idiotic U.S. law to clean up any spills from its drilling accidents and an 1851 maritime law limiting its financial obligations by today's calculations at $27 million.

I contend the 1990 Oil Spill Pollution Act is idiotic not so much it places responsibility on the polluters to clean up the mess but caps its liability at $75 million when, again that speculation factor, damages may reach well into the billions.

Here's two paragraphs from Friday's New York Times:

As investors have fled BP stock over uncertainties about the company’s future and its ability to pay what it will end up owing, BP has lost nearly half its market capitalization since April, and its bonds are now trading at junk levels.
Credit Suisse estimates the cleanup costs could end up at $15 billion to $23 billion, plus an additional $14 billion of claims. But analysts make much of BP’s financial flexibility: it had net profit of $17 billion last year alone.

BP is self-insured. It along with other oil companies drilling in America contribute 8-cents per barrel to a fund that pays for oil cleanup. That fund is estimated at $1.5 billion. Since its enactment nearly 20 years ago, that tax levy has been added to the price of gasoline and natural gas consumers pay at the pump.

Rather than speculate, I will question. Is BP tapping into it to pay claims by fishermen, all other related business victims including the U.S., states and local responding governments?

The House has passed a bill that would increase the 8-cent tax to 34 cents per barrel to go into the pollution trust fund to pay for future spills.

Senate Democrats propose a 41-cent tax opposed by Republicans. The Senate Democratic bill would raise $15 billion over 10 years. Republicans counter that the money is attached to unemployment benefits, jobs for youths and other programs in what amounts to a shake down to reduce those program costs to $78 billion over 10 years thereby depleting the future oil cleanup funding pool.

On the liability issue which would be retroactive, the House wants to increase the $75 million ceiling to $10 billion or more. Two Senate Republicans have put a similar measure on hold. I'll leave it to others to speculate on the devious motives involved there.

Several weeks ago Robert Reich, a University of California, Berkeley, professor and former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor, was excoriated for suggesting the government place BP in some form of receivership.

Reich listed six reasons of which I will repeat only those I think make sense.

The prime reason is putting the feds in charge of protecting America's assets where as BP' is more focused on business decisions. The analogy is this:

No president would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for-profit company to melt down in the United States while remaining under the direct control of that company.

The other reason would clarify a chain-of-command and reorder priorities from BP contractors who have been sluggish setting up and properly maintaining the oil spill reaching the shorelines of the Gulf Coast.

What Reich was saying leads to a question I have had from the beginning of what is now know as our nation's worst environmental disaster.

If local governments through FEMA and other agencies developed a plan of defense in case of a disaster and had a warning period of five to six weeks before the spill reached their shores, why were not every antiquated but minimally effective protection devise such as booms and skimmers installed?

I think a partial answer is in the 1990 Oil Pollution Act putting the oil polluter in charge and the government agencies scared to death to assert themselves and do their jobs for fear of down-the-road lawsuits.

It is a pox on the feds and the oil industry for not requiring or spending a dime on new innovations to cleanup oil spills since those that were developed shortly after the Exxon Valdez of 11 million gallons of oil in the Alaska tanker accident.

Instead the research billions were directed at drilling in deep water at depths of two miles beneath the oceans' floor, in deed, an engineering triumph. But no contingencies were made in case of an accident the size of the Deepwater Horizons exploratory well.

No fool would design a car without brakes but after years of deep water drilling in the Gulf without a major accident, the thought of such a thing was not in the cards. It was as if the Mexican Pemex drilling in 61 feet of Gulf waters that took nine months to cap never happened in 1969-70.

One of the reasons BP has been sandbagging and low-balling its estimates of the leak now estimated at 30,000 barrels per day is that by terms of the Clean Water Act they will be fined on a per-barrel formula which could reach into BP's deep pockets to the tune of billions of dollars in fines and penalties.

I am at a point of not believing a word BP says. Just going on memory, BP in recent days has said proceeds of the oil collected in vessels at the sunken platform site will be donated to victims and special grants to academics studying new methods to clean up and disperse the toxic spillage.

Next we learn the containment vessel filled so rapidly BP had to call in another vessel from the North Sea to collect the spillage siphoned from the jerry-rigged cap 5,000 feet below. The ship won't arrive until next week and the collected oil is being burned in total until then or until some other excuse is offered.

The new spillage estimates have been taken over by a group of scientists called the Flow Rate Technical Group and their margin of error is +/- 5,000 bpd.

Ira Leifer, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a member of the flow-rate group, said the new figures confirmed a suspicion he had developed, based on looking at satellite data, that the rate of flow for the well was increasing perhaps daily since April 20.

“The situation is growing worse,” Leifer told the New York Times.

When Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen took charge as the government's incident commander in early May he said the amount of spillage was irrelevant until it was stopped.

He was right and wrong, simultaneously. Where he was wrong was not taking a worst case scenario and forcing BP to adequately launch defensive measures along the coastline to capture the slick. I'm speculating, but I fear the go-to-admiral who did a credible job after Hurricane Katrina was conned by BP that the chemical dispersants they were applying at the source of the leak and on the surface would mitigate the damage.

When I hear President Obama and top government leaders will meet with BP board members next week to seek assurances BP will pay it claims to victims before dispersing dividends to its shareholders, I can only laugh as it is just another media dog and pony show.

It is as meaningless as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of one committee investigating the spill, suggesting that the government would take action to block the dividend payments if necessary.

“This company, I think, will stay solvent,” said Markey.

Dumbing Down Of American Politics Sells Because We Are Lazy

2010-06-10T15:55:00.000-07:00

I have always detested being accused of being a member of what I think is described as "herd" or "pack" journalist.

I detest labels assessed by journalists on groups such as the Tea Party because even though they share a few common bonds, they are as different in South Carolina as they are in California.

I detest Sean Hannity's ilk that all Democrats are liberal and even a few moderate ones are taking our nation down in a hand basket.

I detest the blanket phrase that this year's primary and midterm elections are anti-incumbent. I agree only that many voters are angry.

I detest the sweeping label that women in politics is a big deal as so many pundits have swooned over recent election successes by Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Republican governor nominee Nikki Haley in South Carolina and the former corporate mogul twins Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California.

That trend was trumped years ago with the last glass ceiling to break is reaching the Oval office.

I am impressed with the first time breakthroughs long overdue in our political culture such as a black winning the presidency as is the case of Barack Obama.

People, journalists in particular, love to pigeon hole events because they are lazy.

Rachael Maddow on her Wednesday show on MSNBC rightfully shamed the "anti-incumbent" backlash supplied by the pundit pack by doing some homework.

And then there‘s Congressman Bob Inglis - Bob Inglis of South Carolina. Bob Inglis of South Carolina legitimately is an incumbent who got voted down in a primary without a corruption scandal or a party switch or a weird activists-only vote at a convention to explain it. Bob Inglis. That‘s the one.
That‘s the one piece of data supporting the whole national narrative of the anti-incumbency wave, one guy who most of us had never heard of before last night. One guy, for what it‘s worth, who didn‘t even lose. He‘s in a runoff.

And, then there's the herd that jumps on the Obama-doesn't-show-his-rage persona as if he's commander-in-outrage or something. That silly contention is raised once again in Obama's approach ineffectively articulating the government's leadership in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill other than the one "ass kicking" comment.

I watched Jonathon Capehart, the black columnist invited to Chris Matthews' "Hardball" MSNBC show also Wednesday, explain it best. One, it's not Obama's style, and two, it's not wise to be portrayed as an "angry black man," especially if one is a black President of the United States.

Capehart is talking stereotypes here and that leads me back to women in politics.

In past years, we heard they weren't tough enough to make national security decisions. I got over that years ago watching in action Golda Meier of Israel and Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain.

In the U.S. we are constantly reminded of Sarah Palin's choice of wardrobes compared to that preferred by Nikki Haley.

The latest is Carly Fiorina's catty comment about Barbara Boxer's hair style.

Also Fiorina talking into an open mik questioning the sanity of her GOP ally Meg Whitman granting an interview with Sean Hannity.

It's as if no male politician ever made that mistake of which Joe Biden, George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan ever did.

I quote you verbatim of a breathless CNN dispatch:

Carly Fiorina won big in Tuesday's California Senate primary and wasted no time making her first gaffe of the general election -- getting caught on an open mic making fun of her opponent Sen. Barbara Boxer's hairstyle.
While getting made up for an appearance on Sacramento's KXTV-TV Wednesday morning, Fiorina checks her phone and banters with people off camera. She off-handedly mentions that a friend "saw Barbara Boxer briefly on television this morning and said what everyone says, 'God, what is that hair?'" "Sooo yesterday," Fiorina dishes, laughing, before stopping short as someone off camera points out the mic.
Earlier in the video, Fiorina responds to an off-camera comment with a smile, saying, "Failedsenator.com. Hello, Barbara."

Presto! It's an immediate YouTube sensation seen by millions and reported by all forms of the media, including myself, whose only lame excuse is pointing out an example why we perpetuate the dumbing down of America in political discourse.

It sells.

Rather than getting worked into a fervor over gaffes and sound bites, and Facebooks and Twitters, and fears of being stereotyped by ethnicity and gender by a lazy media and electorate, it would be nice to put off all those preconceived notions and listen to an honest debate.

Fiorina vs. Boxer and Meg Whitman vs. Jerry Brown in California would be worth the admission price of a two-hour debate with follow-up questions in a forum run by the League of Women Voters.

Sames goes for a showdown debate in Arkansas between Lincoln and her Republican opponent Rep. John Boozman. And in Florida between Charlie Crist, Marco Rubio and the Democrat who's on life support, politically, at the moment. And in Arizona between John McCain and J.D. Hayworth.

Instead, voters who do manage to vote, and they are in a minority, are swamped with paid political attack ads, sound bites, and biased political activists and dummies in the media who are more prone to grind an ax or entertain than inform.

In desperation, only the snooze channel is a last resort. Good old reliable C-Span.

California Dreaming Again For No Apparent Reason

2010-06-09T03:57:00.000-07:00

California Republican voters love their new-found fat-cat beach girls Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina and had the good sense to chain the lifeguards to their stations while kicking sand in the face of the original birther girl Orly Taitz.

The Democrats, meanwhile, had a bunch of putzes on the ballot, including an old geezer who was the state's governor about a zillion election cycles ago who they picked for governor again because his competition was more putzes.

While on a roll, voters from both parties passed two propositions in which one would save them money and the other a tiny step to improve their dysfunctional government while, gasp, rejecting three other propositions that would have made public utilities and auto insurers richer and provide a test trial of public financing for a statewide elective office no one gives a damn.

Let's hear it for the Golden State, broke but not beaten. At least as of this morning.

Just think. Meg Whitman spent $81 million of her family fortune to win just the primary. Her opponent, Silicon Valley tycoon and incumbent state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner blew $26 million of his wad to lose by more than 15 points the last I looked. If you took all the money spent by all candidates in the primary and wrote a check to the state, the $19 billion deficit would be reduced by 0.02%.

Hey, it's a start and no dumber a proposal than any of the candidates have suggested. For instance, Whitman said the problem with California government is a "crises of confidence." And a few other things she plans to address, like bitch slapping the state's public union leaders.

Before Whitman moves to Sacramento, she must defeat that old buzzard Jerry Brown, the Democrat, who served Californians as governor from 1975 to 1983 when he was known as Governor Moonbeam for his fascination with the stars, those in Hollywood included. Remember Linda Ronstadt?

Whitman, the former Ebay boss lady and Fiorina, who was dumped unceremoniously as Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO, are not the best of friends but share a common bond -- rich, Republican and female. Whitman congratulated Fiorina Tuesday night when she took the stage at the Universal City Hilton hotel ballroom.

"Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., be warned: You now face your worst nightmare — two businesswomen from the real world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done."

Before buying a one-way ticket to Washington if she doesn't purchase the airline, Carly must defeat Barbara the Boxer who buried some putzes in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

Brown has been keeping his powder dry but has massed a war chest of $20 million to take on Whitman who he challenged with this remark from a Los Angeles bar Tuesday night

"It's not enough for someone rich and restless to look in the mirror one morning and decide, 'I want to be governor of California.' We tried that. It didn't work," Brown said, in reference to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who is termed out of office next year. He's got the 40,000 state workers on his side who Whitman wants to fire.

Fiorina and Boxer exchanged pleasantries, too. A Carly mouthpiece called Boxer "a bitter partisan who has said much but achieved little." Boxer called Fiorina out of step with mainstream California voters and noted that Fiorina fired thousands while running Hewlett-Packard and in the end got fired herself.

Cool it ladies. Boxer is right on one thing, California is a blue state, Pacific blue, at that, but so much in the red as in ink the state's love affair with their Democratic politicians could be in for a sea change come November. It's been that Democratic sway since Republican Gov. Pete Wilson riled the state's entire 6 million Latino base with the ill-fated Proposition 113, a precursor to Arizona's recent anti-immigrant law but not as ethnic cleansing.

Speaking of ethnics, Orly Taitz, the target of a last day blitz by progressives in all forms of media, was running about 50 yards behind Damon Dunn, a Stanford grad and former professional football player, who ran a stealth campaign for Secretary of State, a position no one in Calfiornia has a clue what it does except perhaps rubber stamp and certify bureaucratic paperwork.

Thanks, Republicans. Mr. Dunn, meet Democratic incumbent Debra Bowen who's gonna whip your butt in November unless you come out from hiding.

As for those ballot props, Prop. 13 would exempt property value increases from owners retrofitting their property to meet earthquake standards. Get this, it was receiving an 85% yes vote. Proposition 14 was approved, allowing party cross voting in primaries with the idea it would reduce the power of special interests and incumbents in gerrymandered districts.

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EPILOGUE

My apologies for writing mockingly of the candidates, but as a native Californian who has followed state politics for 60 years I have heard these tired old campaign promises a million times. I see little hope of any governor, especially one with not one day of experience in the public arena, to solve its problems just by wishing it and applying business-practice axes to cut spending. Meg Whitman, unless she implodes and the crafty Jerry Brown pulls a prestidigitational miracle, will be the next governor. Even if voters elect a Republican sweep in the Assembly and Senate, which I think would be a mathematical impossibility because of the gerrymandered districts they live in, they still won't be able to balance the budget without raising taxes or throwing millions of the sick, elderly and poor out into the streets. Maybe they will. Ronald Reagan tossed all the inmates in mental hospitals into the streets and the only thing that saved the skin for the former governor was a rebound in the economy which he had nothing, or very little, to do with.

Unions, Progressives The Big Losers In Arkansas Senate Race

2010-06-09T01:11:00.000-07:00

The unions and progressive put their money where there mouth was on Bill Halter in the Arkansas Democratic Senate runoff race and ate it because President Obama's No. One arm-twister and fix-it man Bill Clinton still got it by backing incumbent Blanche Lincoln.

So, a jubilant and surprised Lincoln survives a scare from a formidable opponent who really did run a good race as a longshot only to face a longer shot herself in the November general election against Republican Rep. John Boozman.

The Tuesday runoff may have been botched in Garland County, one of several where Halter won large in the May 18 regular Primary. County election officials staffed only two of 18 precincts opened in the primary. Voters sweltered in the heat, some standing in the sun for several hours before entering to cast ballots. Halter's campaign planned to decide Wednesday to file a protest.

"It became about whether or not the people of Arkansas, who are great people, were going to continue to be hammered by special interest groups that simply wanted to manipulate them and their vote." Lincoln told the Associated Press.

The Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO in addition to the progressive MoveOn.Org plowed millions into Halter's campaign.

In the final days of the campaign, Lincoln's campaign increasingly relied on an ad from former President Clinton and the former governor who remains popular in his home state. He warned about special interests.

"This is about using you and manipulating your votes," Clinton said in the ad.

The more progressive side of the Democratic Party targeted Lincoln for not supporting a public option in the health reform legislation and for her opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act favored by unions although Arkansas is not a strong union-based state.

Between Clinton and Lincoln's favor with farmers who reap the rewards of her being chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, the two-term incumbent ultimately survived.

"I think she pulled it out because I think people realize, one, what she meant to Arkansas and that she had been a fighter for Arkansas and she was willing to tell them, 'I'm willing to lose this race rather than turn my back on Arkansas,'" Lincoln strategist Jim Duffy said.

Despite what all the political pundits said about Lincoln being cold-shouldered by President Obama, universal disgust with incumbents from either political party, etc., the best analysis came from a woman voter in Little Rock.

"She's head of the Agriculture Committee, which is one of the most important committees we have in Washington," Lori Ritchie said. "It's all about power and what committee you're on. It will take Halter eight to 11 years to get to the position Blanche is at now."

Way to go Lori. That putting those darn pundits in their place.

Arkansas is considered a swing states by those same pundits who I find rather naive. In tough economic times, it is a Republican camp and Boozman, a congressman since 2001, is no stranger to state voters. He was unopposed for reelection in 2008, and serves on the Transportation and Infrastructure, Veterans Affairs and Foreign Affairs Committees in the House.

The question is, how many voters across the state are willing to keep a fragile incumbent the likes of Blanche Lincoln in a position of seniority as Lori Ritchie argues.

The Censored Version Of The South Carolina Republican Primary Results

2010-06-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

If you like your politics dirty, vulgar and blatantly racist, take a jet to South Carolina where political consultant Stuart Rotenberg calls the Republican national stinkpot.

Tuesday's primary vote in South Carolina was not about politics but about sex, lies and innuendos. It may be a Tea Partier's dream but you will need to ask one yourself. How these folks can tout family values in one breath and whisper gossip in the next, boggles the mind.

Republican voters in the Palmetto state will be treated to another two weeks of extra marital affair allegations and the ever-popular "raghead" charges by what out-of-staters would call the lowest redneck rhetoric not heard since Jim Crow days.

I'm referring, of course, to the runoff June 22 between Republican state Rep. Nikki Haley and U.S. Congressman Gresham Barrett for governor. Haley, endorsed by former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, just couldn't muster enough votes to win by a majority-plus one over three other candidates in the Tuesday primary. The survivor will face Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen in November.

Haley, who plummeted in the polls after denying she had two affairs, won 49% of the vote to Barrett's 22%. She also also was endorsed by Jenny Sanford who divorced current Gov. Mark Sanford after he admitted to having an affair with an Argentina woman.

The only way I can describe the "raghead" slur by state Sen. Jake Knotts is that it came in a double-barreled shot at President Obama (ala the "birther" myth) and for questions he raised about Haley's 1977 conversion to Christianity from the Sikh faith of her Indian parents.

Before South Carolina polls closed, MSNBC was breathlessly reporting rumors that Haley told supporters if she won the governor's seat, as fast as it would take to chop up the state's official Palmetto tree fruit into a palm salad, she would quit.

“Of course, the good ol’ boys are going after her,” said Victoria Platt Ellis, a local artist in Charleston who went to the polls for Haley. “And even if it’s true, a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“We knew from the very beginning it was us versus the establishment,” Haley told a cheering election night crowd in Columbia. “I won’t stop until we get a conservative House, a conservative Senate and conservative governor.”

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not, South Carolina politics being what it is. For instance, don't consider Barrett totally out to lunch to make up a 27 point gap in two weeks. In the 2004 U.S. Senate primary, Republican Jim DeMint lost by 14 points to then Gov. David Beasley. But in the runoff two weeks later, DeMint won by 19 points, a 32-point swing.

Yet, between all the mudslinging and attack ads, Barrett is hard pressed to defend his vote in Congress for the bank bailout in 2009. Imagine that! A substantive government issue actually being discussed. As was, time permitting, disagreements between the Republican candidates how much each could cut the state budget.

A GOP consultant who has worked for Barrett told Politico: “If we can keep it out of salacious issue kind of talk and keep it to boring issue kind of talk, I think we can really move some voters.”

Although Democrats currently hold only one statewide office, it will not be a slam dunk for the Haley-Barrett victor over Sheenan who along with family members, has been in state politics for generations. Anything's possible. Name identification in a state controlled by the Republicans that include Rep. Joe Wilson of "You lie" fame shouted during Obama's State of the Union speech is unlikely a ticket to the state capitol in Columbia.

What does it all mean? South Carolina is a red state and will continue to be. They all deserve each other. In the immortal words of another good old boy, that's all I have to say about that.

Blago Promises To Twitter During Trial

2010-06-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

Frankly, Rod and Patti Blagojevich, I don't give a damn if you Twitter during Rod and his brother's criminal trial for selling President Obama's Senate seat and shaking down a children's hospital for campaign contributions and 22 other federal corruption charges.

I don't Twitter so count me out as adding to Rod's list of 819 and Patti's 121 followers, according to Politics Daily.

But, were I U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel, whom I'm not, I would slap a gag order for the duration of the trial as thick as a crust of a Chicago Pizza on the pair.

Freedom of speech my arse. Twittering during this trial by those two publicity-seeking whore mongers would be a travesty to our judicial system which is about the only game in town that isn't corrupted by Chicago politics. I hope.

"Looking forward to opening statements because that will unlock the truth... stay tuned," Blagojevich tweeted Monday morning. Later, he twittered "i'm on with don and roma," referring to two WLS-AM radio hosts, writes Lynn Sweet of Politics Daily and the best damned political writer of Chicago politics there is.

Are we to expect Blagojevich to tweet testimony by a prosecution witness as a liar? Or will we be flooded with personal hardships he endures holding his bladder in check before a brief recess in the trial?

Or will we read Patti's tweet from Sunday "Just got done doing all the chores I won't have time to do this week-groceries,laundry etc. etc."?

And if they are allowed this nonsense, wouldn't the jurors be subject to it? If yelling "fire" in a crowded theater with locked doors is an exception to the First Amendment rule as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court, than anything these two defendants tweet on their behalf during the trial MUST fall into that category.

Blagojevich has said since his indictment in December 2008 all he wants is a fair trial and let the truth be known, well, here's his chance, but, for gosh sakes, keep it inside the courtroom.

I'm one of those who believe the Blagojevich's have set out to woo the jury selection, completed Tuesday,
by appearing on every radio and television who would stomach them, writing books and in Patti's case, eating a tarantula on the reality TV show "I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here."

Judge Zagel so far has dropped the hammer on one Blagojevich request, limiting his lawyer Sam Adam Jr. from Wednesday's opening statement of 2 hours and 30 minutes to one hour and 45 minutes.

Oh, I almost forgot among all this twittering tirade, Blagojevich is the impeached governor of Illinois, the second consecutive one indicted by the feds. The last guy is still serving a 6 1/2-year term in prison.

North Korea Guard Kills 3 Chinese

2010-06-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

I confess to be a North Korea watcher only to the extent of how far this paranoid bully can go before some adult in his neighborhood slaps him silly.

The latest incident is a North Korean border guard killing three Chinese citizens and wounding a fourth on the two country's border in the industrial trading town of Dandong. The guard suspected the four were crossing the border for illegal trade activities.

The only authoritative report of the incident was filed by the Associated Press in a dispatch Tuesday quoting Chinese Foreign Minister spokesman Qin Gang in Beijing:

"On the morning of June 4, some residents of Dandong, in Liaoning province, were shot by a DPRK border guard on suspicion of crossing the border for trade activities, leaving three dead and one injured." The DPRK is the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"China attaches great importance to that and has immediately raised a solemn representation with the DPRK. Now the case is under investigation," he said. End of the regularly scheduled press briefing.

China in recent months has demonstrated extreme patience with its unruly ally whose sole existence depends on a steady pipeline of food, fuel and investments. Beijing has yet to weigh in on North Korea's sinking of a South Korean ship that left 46 sailors dead earlier this year, according to an international investigation.

North Korea's "dear leader," Kim Jong Il made a rare visit to Beijing in early May in search of additional economic assistance agreed upon by China as long as Pyongyang reopened six-party talks on nuclear weapons. Nothing since has been scheduled.

The AP report said some 16,000 North Koreans have used the Chinese border crossings to flee the country since an armistice between North and South Koreas in 1953.

Dandong is where two U.S. journalists, Laura Lang and Euna Lee were captured, convicted and briefly imprisoned by North Korea in March 2009.

The two journalist, working for a publication owned by former Vice President Al Gore, were nabbed inside China by North Korean guards. They were investigating a story about North Korean women forced into sex trade or arranged marriages when defecting to China.

Obama Tells BP Exec To Take His Job And Shove It -- Oops Or Ouch?

2010-06-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

The president of the United States says he would have fired the chief executive of the world's fourth most profitable corporation if he worked for him.

Ouch. With that assertion on NBC's Today show, President Obama has stepped into the metaphoric bloviating of infamous responses such as President Coolidge saying "The business of America is business," and the dollar-a-year Defense Secretary who claimed "What's good for General Motors is good for America."

"He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements," Obama told interviewer Matt Lauer.

"He" is BP CEO Tony Hayward and his statements following the April 20 explosion that killed 11 employees on the Deepwater Horizons oil platform and spilling millions of gallons of gas and Louisiana crude into the Gulf of Mexico in the worst environmental accident in U.S. history were what I called in a post on Sunday as "jumping the shark."

Obama said he has not talked to Hayward. "Here's the reason. Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's gonna say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions."

The president said he prefers talking with experts who are his only hope of plugging the leak and fishermen who have seen their livelihood destroyed.

"I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar," the president added. "We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

"When you watch television or you go down to the Gulf and you see birds covered in oil, and you talk to fishermen who are on the verge of tears, big tough guys ... their livelihoods are being smothered by this oil, it gets you frustrated," he told Lauer.

With his bravado statements, Obama is not tip-toeing but high-diving into a PR tug of war of whom to blame. He has said BP's advertising blitz "is unacceptable" yet he is using his bully pulpit as commander-in-chief to paint a happy face on the government's response.

Both are losing that public opinion battle. In some ways, BP has the government by the short hairs because it they and they alone with the engineering skills to plug the leak and that only by drilling relief wells two miles deep which will take until August at best and possibly to -- horror of horrors -- into the November midterm elections depending on how much work stoppage will result from the summer season's tropical storms and hurricanes.

Obama admits he is frustrated as is the entire nation whose mental condition is always programed for instant results which just ain't gonna happen in this horror flick.

So it comes down to goofy statements of the president blustering he would can the BP executive whose underlings definitely would prefer to muzzle for assinine comments that he "wants my life back" and the Gulf was "a big ocean," and "the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest."

Upon further review, what good what it do to fire Hayward? BP's record is criminally systemic, top to bottom, with even its field employees turning to whistle blowers.

"They are a recurring environmental criminal and they do not follow U.S. health safety and environmental policy," said Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA lawyer who led its BP investigations commissioned by Pro Publica, a non-profit journalism organization, as reported in Tuesday's Washington Post.

In 1999, BP pleaded guilty to illegal dumping at an offshore drilling field in Alaska, the article reported. To avoid a contract cancellation with the federal government, the company agreed to a five-year probationary plan with the EPA.

Less than a year later, employees complained to an independent arbitrator that the company was letting equipment and critical safety systems languish at its Greater Prudhoe Bay drilling field, the article said.

BP hired independent experts to investigate and they identified systemic problems in maintenance and inspections and warned BP that it faced a "fundamental culture of mistrust" by its workers.

The experts' report said that "unacceptable" maintenance backlogs ballooned as BP tried to sustain profits despite declining production, the ProPublica article said.

BP also was convicted of safety violations and fined a half-day's profits in a refinery fire in Texas City that killed 15 employees March 25, 2005..

Also Tuesday, the International Energy Agency said it was downsizing its estimates for oil production by half in the Gulf of Mexico to 300,000 barrels per day by 2015 because of moratoriums and tighter regulations it believes the Obama administration will place on the industry.

The 30,000 oil wells in the Gulf produce about 2% of oil consumed by the United States, according to industry estimates.

If the president wants to "kick ass," forget the BP CEO. Save it to kick butt on the BP pathetic effort to stop the oil spill reaching the shoreline with collecting booms that don't work, are unmanned, and chemical dispersants which are so toxic their effects on human and sea life will endure for generations.

Bhopal Convictions -- 2 Years And $2,175 In Fines 26 Years Later For World's Worst Industrial Accident

2010-06-07T16:08:00.000-07:00

If residents in the Gulf Coast think BP and the federal government is slow to respond to their claims and grievances ...

If victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez in Alaska thought the U.S. justice system moved at a glacier pace to address their damages ...

Then, you got nothing over the 15,000 killed and hundreds of thousands born with birth defects from the 1984 gas leak of a Union Carbide Indian subsidiary in Bhopal where a court Monday convicted seven former senior employees for "death by negligence."

The seven -- all Indians and in their 70s -- were sentenced to two years in prison, fined $2,175 each and released on bail pending appeals. The subsidiary, now renamed Everready Industries India, was convicted on the same charges and fined $10,870.

In the understatement of the year, Law Minister Veerappa Moily told reporters after the verdict: "It's most unfortunate that it has taken that much of time to give the verdict. We need to address that."

Family survivors and rights groups protested the verdict. Rachna Dhingra, an activist with the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, called Monday's ruling "a travesty of justice."

"But this is not new or unexpected," Dhingra said. "Every one of these men is free on bail and will go home to their families tonight. For survivors and families of victims there is nothing to go home to. They lost their families."

Indian government investigators said that after 25 years at least 500,000 people were affected with many children born with brain damage, missing palates and twisted limbs because of their parents' exposure to the gas or water it contaminated.

The leak occurred Dec. 3, 1984, releasing 40 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate gas into the air. India's Central Bureau of Investigation, the country's top investigative agency, has said the plant was not following proper safety procedures before the disaster.

Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemical Co. in 2001. Dow says the legal case was resolved in 1989 when Union Carbide settled with the Indian government for $470 million, and that all responsibility for the factory now rests with the government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, which now owns the site.

On Monday, Union Carbide in a statement on its website said the company and its officials were not subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court since they did not have any involvement in the operation of the plant.

Union Carbide Corp. said the accident was an act of sabotage by a disgruntled employee who was never identified. It has denied the disaster was the result of lax safety standards or faulty plant design, as claimed by some activists.

Just thought I would pass along this little tidbit of corporate negligence and government response that when things look dour in our country, it could be worse in another.

Say Good Night, Helen

2010-06-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

In her day, Helen Thomas was a pit bull with skin as tough as an armadillo who survived the cut-throat, stab-in-the-back culture of United Press International and asked questions that dropped U.S. presidents to their knees.

Despite all the milestones she accumulated in her lifetime for women as well as a beacon for freedom of information, Helen Thomas is leaving the public specter under a black cloud of bigotry. That is tragic. And, she, better than anyone working in the world of communications where public perception is more important than substance, should have known better.

Helen Thomas did not show up for work Monday at the White House press corral. She quit.

I'm sorry, but at age 89, she should have retired two decades ago from the strains of meeting deadlines and sought peaceful semi-retirement writing children's books and memoirs out of the public limelight which she did.

But the fire in her belly would not extinguish. She was captured, in my opinion, in her inner circle of power players, worshippers and enablers. Her final years in the White House press corps was as sad as watching Hall of Fame athletes such as Willie Mays, Babe Ruth and now Ken Griffey Jr. flail away futilely in their final seasons.

Helen Thomas may have been a poster child for AARP, but as the elderly are prone to do, say something they wish they hadn't whether or not it was a true opinion from the dark side of one's heart.

This lady was granted in honorarium of tolerance and long leash until she herself yanked it on a televised interview website RabbiLIVE.com May 27 when she said Israilis should "get the hell out of Palestine," suggesting Jews return to Germany, Poland or the U.S.

Her speaking group consortium fired her. On Monday, Hearst News Service, for which Thomas is a columnist, reported her retirement announcement effective immediately. She began covering the White House in 1960.

On her website, she wrote "I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians." She added: "They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

In one of the strangest, off-the-wall comments coming out of the Thomas affair is one issued at a press briefing Monday by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

"I think those remarks were offensive and reprehensible. She should and has apologized because obviously those remarks do not reflect certainly the opinion of most of the people in here and certainly of the administration."

A journalist reflecting the views of a presidential administration? Helen Thomas, at that? Didn't she once ask President Nixon if he was a crook? Nixon took it that way. Didn't she tell President Johnson he was ill advised to take the course of his generals in the Vietnamese war? LBJ thought so.

What's sad is the flames of Jew bashing will always be at the top of her obituary just as she remarked that "impeached" will be in the lead of President Clinton's obit.

Helen Thomas's contributions far exceed what today is politically incorrect to say when it was commonplace in the world when the Jews were seeking a homeland in Israel in 1948.

Before women, in particular, dismiss Helen Thomas as a demon for expressing outrageous thoughts, keep in mind what she did for you as plucked from her website:

Thomas served as President of the Women's National Press Club in 1959 - 60, and she was the first woman officer of the National Press Club after it opened its doors to women members for the first time in 90 years. In addition, Thomas became the first woman officer of the White House Correspondents Association in its 50 years of existence, and served as its first woman president in 1975-76. Thomas also became the first woman member of the Gridiron Club in its history, and the first woman to be elected President in 1993.

In 1968 Thomas was named the "Newspaper Woman of Washington" by the American Newspaper Woman's Club, and in 1975, she was named the "Woman of the Year" in communications by Ladies Home Journal. She has also received the Matrix Award from the Women in Communications, and the World Almanac named Helen Thomas as one of the twenty-five most influential women in America.

In case we forget, women in the newspaper business when Thomas started in 1943 were known as "hens" assigned to so-called society beats.

One of my favorite stories about Helen Thomas tells us as much of her as a tough but ethical competitor as it does about her as a woman.

In September 1971 Pat Nixon scooped Helen by announcing her engagement to retiring AP chief White House correspondent Douglas Cornell at a reception honoring Cornell's service. Even though it was common knowledge the two were a "couple," it would have appeared unethical in those days for the two chief writers for dog-eat-dog competing wire services to be married, formally. They tied the knot less than a month later, Oct. 16, 1971, Thomas writes were much humor on her website.

And with that, I will say good night, Helen. You were an esteemed colleague of which I am eternally grateful.

I bid farewell as you did so many years ending all those presidential news conferences.

"Thank you, Mr. President."

The Great Wall Of Louisiana Hoax

2010-06-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

I admire Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and, gulp, Sen. David Vitter, for standing up against BP and the federal government in demanding what they consider is the right approach to protect the state's coastline from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

It isn't, a boatload of scientists agree.

The in-your-face approach by the two Republican leaders as well as a contingent of angry parish presidents in their quest to build even tiny portions of a 128-mile protective wall of sand berms has won the admiration of frantic residents and the platitudes of their chief fan club back in New York City, Fox News.

And.they're right. BP and the Army Corps of Engineers has dragged their feet processing the permit application which is a scaled-down version of what the Bush administration rejected as too expensive after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Jindal complains even a prototype could have been constructed by now if it weren't for foot-dragging.

Gregory Stone, director of the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University, agreed with Jindal and his "worth-a-shot" supporters. "I understand we are in a jam right now, but, good Lord, we have sophisticated computer models that can do this in a matter of weeks.… It's sort of unconscionable that we've gone well over a month without scientific input."

Here's the deal folks. Compared to what's-her-name, Louisiana's former governor during Katrina, Jindal is a driving force and unquestionably is trying to do what he thinks is best to protect his state's fragile coastlines. The problem is what he's proposing, and threatening to take action into his own hands, is more of a political hail Mary pass than an engineering fix. It's pie-in-the-sky, throw other people's money at the wall and hope something sticks.

The simple fact is this: What Jindal wants in what skeptical engineers call "The Great Wall of Louisiana" will be washed out with the first tropical storm blowing off the Gulf waters.

Jindal's original plan was to construct 128 miles of sand berms with 102 million cubic yards of seabed dredged from the coastline floor to bolster the barrier islands and absorb oil before it reaches sensitive marshes. It would cost $950 million and take nine months to build. The oil slick arrived two weeks ago and no end on the horizon.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, in charge of the government's supervision of BP's obligation to clean up the mess, said he reluctantly approved the first of six berm sites at Scofield Island, west of the Mississippi River as a prototype.

"There are a lot of doubts whether this is a valid oil spill response technique, given the length of construction and so forth," Allen said. He ordered BP to pick up the estimated $360 million cost of the revised 45-mile-long berm.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler said: "The company will not assume liability for unintended consequences." Although the state signed contracts with a dredging firm, BP has yet to provide the funding.

Jindal said Friday:. "We are moving ahead without BP. We gave them two choices: They can either send us a check, get out of the way and let us start this work, or they can sign a contract and do it themselves. We are going ahead without them."

Although the berms will be 300 feet wide at their base, tapering to 25 feet at the top, a sand wall is not considered a robust structure under the Gulf's extreme summer conditions.

As we are finding out in the Gulf of Mexico disaster, engineers are like economists. For every 10 who claim the job can be done, another 10 can be found to grind out all the insurmountable hurdles to overcome.

While Gregory Stone of LSU agreed Jindal's plan had time for computer model testing, he was not endorsing the plan itself. He warned that scooping sediment out of the sea bottom could accelerate wave action. "It's not advisable to go out into shallow water and dredge and not expect potential negative impacts," Stone said. "That's going to increase the energy of the waves."

Other concerns:

The berm system could reroute the spill up the Mississippi Delta, and it would be unlikely to survive even a mild storm during the current hurricane season.

It also will absorb the short supplies of sand badly needed for projects to restore the state's coastline, damaged by past hurricanes.

Heavy equipment, including barges and dredge lines, could interfere with nesting season, now at its peak, for protected bird species.

The use of sand berms to collect oil has been around for some time but has never been employed on this scale. Jindal has been the plan's most vociferous booster.

Louisiana has for decades been fighting a losing battle to reestablish its barrier islands, low-lying sand spits where natural shifting and erosion have been exacerbated by the channelization of the Mississippi by oil companies and residential and commercial developers and by recent catastrophic hurricanes. The Chandeleur Islands once extended almost to the Mississippi coast but lost 85% of their land mass in Hurricane Katrina.

The berms "will not survive even a low-intensity tropical storm in the northern gulf," said Jack Kindinger, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "If we have one next week, the berms will be gone. We have to be careful not to do more harm than good."

Kindinger said that the new barriers may increase tidal action in open water, which would boost the salinity in estuaries and alter the lives of marsh plants and wildlife.

In a similar manner, the project could inadvertently drive oil into the Mississippi sound, the Biloxi marshes and Lake Borgne, according to the Army Corps' analysis.

Such worries prompted the Interior Department to conclude: "We do not think the risks inherent in proceeding without more environmental study and knowledge are acceptable."

Coastal scientists and oceanographers were brought in this week to present their views on the berm proposal to state and federal responders. Many said they were frustrated, wondering why their expertise was not brought to bear sooner.

Denise Reed, interim director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Science at the University of New Orleans, said that given the construction timelines, expectations that the berms will stop oil are unrealistic.

"There is a public sense that this is the solution that we need," she said. "I found this proposal extremely difficult to evaluate because it's so idealized and conceptual.… We are not going into it with our eyes wide open."

Iran Poised To Join Flotilla Blockade

2010-06-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

Terrific! And I don't mean that in the sense of "Hooray" but more like a Harry Callahan aka Clint Eastwood terrific.

Reuters news agency is reporting that Iran's independent saber rattling Revolutionary Guards is poised to provide military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel's blockade to Gaza.

It quotes Ali Shirazi, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Guard's "naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities."

Shirazi was quoted Sunday in what Reuters described as the semi-official Mehr news agency. Such an intervention would be considered highly provocative by Israel which accuses Iran of supplying arms to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The two-year blockade with Egypt has been a firestorm since last weekend when Israeli commandos dropped by rope from helicopters were ambushed by passengers on the Mavi Marmara.and nine activists aboard ship were killed. Another ship was boarded Saturday and escorted to an Israeli port without incident.

"If the Supreme Leader issues an order for this then the Revolutionary Guard naval forces will do their best to secure the ships," Shirazi said. "It is Iran's duty to defend the innocent people of Gaza."

Israel allows humanitarian aid to the 1.5 million mostly Palestinian refugees in Gaza by road after inspecting the cargo for arms at Israeli ports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will continue to stop ships reaching the shore and creating "an Iranian port in Gaza," a reference to Iran's support for Hamas.

It is unknown if Iran's mullahs are bluffing or prepared to take advantage of a diplomatic crisis.

Turkey had threatened to send its warships to the blockade after last Sunday's incident but has backed off as diplomats between the two countries frantically try to repair their frazzled relationship which until last weekend had been considered positive and beneficial to both sides.

The U.S. has a sizable Navy fleet in the Persian Gulf and is monitoring Revolutionary Guard gunboats constantly and would be aware if the Guard dispatched its ships to join future flotillas headed from Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Revolutionary Guard threat places added pressure for removing the blockade on not only Israel but the Obama administration as Israel's ally in the region.

------------------------

EPILOGUE

I think Iran is bluffing. They are forcing the U.S. into a confrontation it does not want and knows it will lose as a military excursion.. The ruling mullahs must believe it is a win-win situation to gain world attention if not sympathy as the controlling power force in the Middle East. It forces the Obama administration to fully commit to Israel in backing the blockade, a move Iran believes the U.S. is reluctant to take. It's the latest move in a game of chicken played as a chess match. Terrific.

Two Alleged Terrorists Nabbed At JFK

2010-06-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

Two New Jersey men were arrested late Saturday at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York where they were about to board separate flights to Egypt and later join forces with the terrorist group Al Shabaab in Somalia to kill American troops.

The only official announcement of the arrests came from Jose Lozano, a spokesman for the New Jersey state Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness and U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Rebekah Carmichael. Both statements said "the arrests do not relate to any known immediate threat to the public or active plot against the United States."

Scheduled to be arraigned Monday at the federal court in Newark, the two were identified as Mohamed Hamoud Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, and Carlos Eduardo "Omar" Almonte, 24, of Elmwood Park, both communities in North New Jersey.

Tipped in advance by local law enforcement sources, the Newark Star-Ledger was on the scene of the two homes raided by state and federal agents and the on-line newspaper was the first to report any details of the case which it said has been under investigation since 2006.

Quoting on the scene reporters and a slew of city, state and federal law enforcement -- almost all speaking anonymously -- the Star-Ledger filed this report:

Operation Arabian Knight.was infiltrated by a New York City undercover cop who provided information the two men planned to join forces with Al Shabaab which has direct ties to Osama bin Laden. FBI agents waited at JFK until the two men began the process of boarding their flights so be certain they planned to carry out their mission which they had boasted to friends and family.

According to property records, Alessa’s parents rented the top floor of their house amid a quiet row of middle-class homes. But the reporter assigned to the Almonte home in Elmwood Park described a surreal incident in which an older man believe to be Almonte's father was seen embracing and talking amicably to FBI agents as if they knew each other.

Neither Alessa nor Almonte is married. Both are American citizens, said the anonymous officials. Agents were seen carrying boxes of evidence and computers from both homes.

The investigation, again according to the Star-Ledger, revealed Alessa and Almonte were growing more militant in the past year buying and listening to jihadist tapes produced by al Qaeda. They believe the pair were being recruited for the Somalia mission.

"We hope this will lead to a spider web of arrests," said one official briefed on the case.

By early Saturday morning, agents had worked out a strategy of following the men to the airport and tracking them through their security check-in, officials said. After that, they planned to quietly get the men out of public view so their arrests could not be seen by any associates who might have been following them. The men were allowed to make it to the jetway boarding ramps before agents took them into custody.
The arrests and planning were coordinated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multi-agency group that includes agents of the FBI, state homeland security office, New York Police Department, Port Authority police and an assortment of federal security agencies.
The investigation began as two separate probes after the FBI and New Jersey homeland security detectives received individual tips about the men, officials said.
In the months leading up to their planned travel, authorities said, Alessa and Almonte saved thousands of dollars, conditioned themselves physically through tactical training and dry runs at paintball fields and acquired gear and apparel to be used once they joined up with al Shabaab in Somalia. The men boasted that they wanted to wage holy war against the United States both at home and overseas, said investigators.

Concluded the Star-Ledger report:

According to a Council on Foreign Relations briefing, al Shabaab’s leader released a video in September 2008 pledging allegiance to bin Laden and calling for Muslim youth to come to Somalia. In February 2009, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, released a video that began by praising al Shabaab’s seizure of the Somali town of Baidoa. The group will "engage in Jihad against the American-made government in the same way they engaged in Jihad against the Ethiopians and the warlords before them," Zawahiri said.

--------------------

EPILOGUE

If the Newark Star-Ledger account is accurate, these arrests, although small potatoes compared to others, is another positive victory for the Obama administration which is not being given full credit for its successes.
Al-Qaeda's number three leader and Afghan operations chief, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, is the latest leader killed. Yazid, also known as Sheikh Said al-Masri, died along with his wife and three children, Islamist websites said, quoting a statement from al-Qaeda. U.S. officials say they believe he was killed recently in the tribal areas of Pakistan in an American drone attack. On the domestic front, the government successfully stopped a cell operating in Minnesota last year and apparently a similar one now in New Jersey.

BP Exec Jumps The Shark, Again

2010-06-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

Tony Hayward, the BP chief executive whose credibility has jumped the shark told a British Broadcasting Co. audience Sunday that engineers have siphoned a majority of the Deepwater Horizons oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hayward, who earlier made such pronouncements that the spill will have only minor environmental impact on the Gulf Coast region, said engineers have managed to divert 10,000 barrels of oil per day since it capped and jerry-rigged a contraption on the broken pipe gushing anywhere from 12,000 to 19,000 bpd by U.S. government estimates.

However, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, in charge of the government's oil spill response, tempered Hayward's claims by saying the process is far from complete as engineers slowly close escape vents so water and gas cannot rush into the containment converter with frozen slush that doomed previous capping and siphoning efforts..

Allen said 252,000 gallons were siphoned to surface ships the first day of this latest Rube Goldberg gimmick. There are 42 gallons per barrel of oil, or 6,000 barrels Allen said compared to the BP's 10,000 claim.

Hayward used his BBC airtime to tell BP stockholders he's still in charge and will not step down as CEO despite calls for his sacking as the British-based petroleum company has lost 30% of its stock value and facing billions of dollars in capping and cleanup costs.

"We are going to stop the leak, we are going to clean up the oil, we're going to remediate any environmental damage and we are going to return the Gulf coast to the position it was in prior to this event," Hayward said. "That is an absolute commitment. We will be there long after the media has gone making good on our promises."

The Deepwater Horizons oil platform exploded April 20, killing 11 crew and causing the worst accidental environmental disaster in U.S. history. Two relief wells are being cored to intersect the ruptured pipe 10,000 below the Gulf floor. The earliest that proven process will occur is August, barring delays because of tropical storms and hurricanes when crew are taken to shore for their safety.

While Hayward was word painting a pretty face on his, his company's and the livelihoods of thousands of ruined fishermen and businesses and the already documented deaths of hundreds of marsh and sea creatures at his Barataria Bay, La., interview --

-- In Gulf Shores, Ala., boardwalks leading to resort hotels were caked with oil globs permeated with toxic chemical dispersants. As soon as crews cleaned the mess, more globs were washed ashore in a horror flick that has no end in sight.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and Allen met for more than an hour Saturday in Mobile, Ala., agreeing to a new plan that would significantly increase protection on the state's coast with larger booms, beachfront barriers, skimmers and a new system to protect Perdido Bay near the Florida border.

-- At Pensacola Beach, Fla., Erin Tamber who said she fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said the beaches stained orange felt "I've gone from owning a piece of paradise to owning a toxic waste dump."

-- At Queen Bess Island, La., Joe Sartore, a National Geographic photographer, had to be rescued from drowning in an oil pool where he was stuck up to his chest.. Booms and barriers left unattended by crews hired by BP haven't been seen in weeks, according to P.J. Hahn, coastal zone management director of Plaquemines Parrish. "We're in the sixth week, you'd think there would be a flotilla of people out here," Hahn said.

-- Federal agencies report 792 dead birds, sea turtles, dolphins and other wildlife have been collected from the Gulf of Mexico and its coastline and the oil slick only began reaching the shores two weeks ago.

And, this dreadful news as reported by MSNBC:

Experts say the Gulf's marshes, beaches and coastal waters, which nurture a dazzling array of life, could be transformed into killing fields, though the die-off could take months or years and unfold largely out of sight. The damage could be even greater beneath the water's surface, where oil and dispersants could devastate zooplankton and tiny invertebrates at the base of the food chain.

"People naturally tend to focus on things that are most conspicuous, like oiled birds, but in my opinion the impacts on fisheries will be much more severe," said Rich Ambrose, director of the environmental science and engineering program at UCLA.

A government report in the 1990s said dolphins swimming in prolonged exposure to oil suffer skin injuries and reduced neurological functions and lower hemoglobin levels in their blood although many avoid the oil lessening the chance of the contact becoming lethal.

Yet dolphins in the Gulf during the past month have been spotted swimming through plumes of crude.

Michele Bachmann, Lightning Rod For Whom?

2010-06-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. For me, Michele Bachmann is neither. As I wrote in a column posted last week, she is who she is and is the sole responsibility of voters in her Sixth Congressional District in Minnesota.

Bachmann is one of those political gadflies who is constantly in the news as a mouthpiece of ratings for Fox News and darling of ridicule, primarily by Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on MSNBC.

So it came as a surprise to me and a shocker for the Washington Post that she agreed to talk to what she calls the main stream media for an interview. She granted the telephone interview on one condition, no questions about her reelection campaign.

Fair enough. First question:

What did she mean by referring to a law authored by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and signed by President Obama that would expand the national number of community volunteers, as political "reeducation camps" for its young participants?

Answer: Silence. The Post picks it up from here after minutes of silence on the other end of the phone.

"I'm not interested in an interview . . . with false caricatures of who I am," she said, adding that some questions were unfairly "pointing to extreme examples of who I am . . . extreme caricatures."

After a moment, however, she pressed on, eventually observing that "people have the sense of the bias of mainstream media." She indicated she had gone outside that mainstream to find new kinds of media outlets to even the political playing field. She lauded the "democratization of media," which, she said, included the Internet.

One such media outlet for Bachmann, the Post tells us, is Jason Lewis, the recently nationally syndicated radio voice from Minneapolis's KTLK-FM, who has known the woman for 20 years and helped her win her earlier political battles as a charter school board member pushing Christian values in the school curriculum and early failed and successful races for local, state senate and U.S. Congress.

The Post:

She sounds liberated in Lewis's world. Recently, she meandered into a discussion of 2012 Republican presidential politics, taking veiled swipes both at former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney ("What happened in Massachusetts is not a good thing for the state," she said in reference to the Massachusetts health-care plan approved by Romney) and John McCain ("We need to get a presidential candidate who is a constitutional conservative with guts. No substitutes this time").

Lewis told the Post Bachmann is brave speaking out in sometimes harsh terms and avoiding the main stream media which he says has lost its political clout.

Bachmann and her team leaders developed that approach after the backlash that nearly cost her last election when she said on Matthews' Hardball show the media should independently investigate members of Congress for their patriotism and concern that President Obama was "un-American."

Other soundbites the Post article offered were Obama's secret plan to impose the highest tax rate on persons earning $65,000 annually and more; derided the U.S. Census as a White House scheme to guarantee Democrats indefinite control of Congress as well as using data to "get" Americans as the Roosevelt administration rounded up all the Japanese to internment camps in early 1942; and her time in Washington, she says, is to beat back government's attempt to "eclipse freedom in people's lives."

For most folks outside the Tea Party and rocked-ribbed Republican conservatism, that's a full platter of crazy things to say.

"She doesn't need mainstream media any longer," says Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota and a longtime Bachmann watcher. "She has whatever cable show she wants to do, talk radio, the Internet, Fox TV. . . . This is likely the new way for many conservative politicians, many outsiders."

The Post in summarizing the Bachmann phenomena:

At the national level, many analysts believe that Bachmann's future within the Republican Party will turn on her willingness to temper what Jacobs calls her "full-throated firebrand nature." Some Republicans worry that her outsize profile might harm their ability to win elections in swing districts.

The lady can draw crowds (that agree with her) and raise campaign funds (from loyalists) in much the same mystic fashion as her new-found friend in politics, Sarah Palin.

My thirst for knowledge about Mrs. Bachmann was not satisfied from reading the Post story. On a lark, I downloaded Wikipedia"s profile, with the caveat it's not the most accurate or objective vehicle but at least gives one a glimpse on what the woman has actually done in public life.

Michele, 54, and husband Marcus Bachmann have five children and over the years 23 foster children, which I think is admirable. An eye opener, if true, based on Michele's limited government pronouncements, is that from 1995 through 2006, the Bachmann family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies, chiefly for dairy and corn price supports.

In the Minnesota state senate from 2000-2006, Bachmann waged an unsuccessful campaign to put a same-sex marriage ban referendum on the state ballot.

In the House, Bachmann voted against a Pell grant bill signed by President George W. Bush that increased
student loan grants to college students from $4,310 to $5,200 and reduced loan premiums from 6.8% to 3.4% beginning in 2011.

Said Bachmann: "It fails students and taxpayers with gimmicks, hidden costs and poorly targeted aid. It contains no serious reform of existing programs, and it favors the costly, government-run direct lending program over nonprofit and commercial lenders."

Bachmann introduced in the House the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, claiming compact fluorescent light bulbs adopted in another House bill approved by Democrats would pollute more mercury content. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association testified reduced energy consumption of fluorescent bulbs would result in significant reduction of mercury emissions as well as greenhouse gases.

Bachmann is credited for co-authoring with Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-Florida, the Credit and Debit Card Receipt Clarification Act signed into law June 3, 2008, that ended alleged frivolous lawsuits aimed at small
business.

During the summer of 2008 when gasoline prices topped $4 per gallon Bachmann joined a group of nine other Republicans pledging to increase oil drilling in Alaska's wildlife preserve and off the continental shelf. She was a leader among the vocal Republicans chanting "Drill, Baby, Drill" at the party's national convention.

On the House floor on Earth Day, April 22, 2009, Bachmann said climate change was a hoax and she opposed the House's bill promoting cap and trade carbon tax.

"Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural; it is not harmful.... We're being told we have to reduce this natural substance to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in the earth."

Bachmann voted against all bailout provisions for Wall Street financial institutions and for the two U.S. automakers which received $85 billion in bailout loans and equity. She advocated a Republican proposal to suspend mark-to-market accounting rules, breaking up home mortgage lending giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, suspending capital gains and barring executives from bailed out firms from receiving excessive compensation or golden parachutes upon retiring.

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EPILOGUE

By her own admission, Michele Bachmann does not see herself in Congress as a legislator but beat back government's attempt to "eclipse freedom in people's lives." I'm a bright guy but unclear what she means by such a remark in specific terms. The one bill she did author and was signed into law, I give her credit where credit is due. I was a small business operator myself, and threats of frivolous law suits were a pain. But everything else she does and says in Congress and on the campaign trail and public speaking circuit is hot air. In short, she is a lightening rod for the far right and nothing else. My opinion of Bachmann remains unchanged although after writing this I fee a little closer to understanding her motives and the new role in party politics carving out a platform designed solely to excite and agitate its base.. But the thought that keeps gnawing at my brain is if she is opposed to the bailouts why did she and her husband readily accept a half million bucks in federal subsidies?

John "Coach" Wooden, 1911-2010

2010-06-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

John Wooden was and will be the greatest basketball coach ever, a truly gracious gentleman who would bring tears to every family values Republican and created a motivational pyramid of success Fortune 500 companies follow.

John Wooden died Friday night at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. He was 99.

His life as a teaching lesson we can all live by.

He won seven straight NCAA national basketball championships, 10 in all and six more than the leading active and former coaches today. People forget he had only one losing season, his first when his Dayton, Kent., high school team went 6-10, and took 16 years at UCLA to win his first national title.

He accomplished it his way, with or without star athletes of which he had the best -- Lew Alcindor who he could never call Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bill Walton, Keith Erickson, Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard who also changed his name to his Muslim faith which Wooden could never grasp.

Wooden was a stickler for preparation and the game's fundamentals, all the way down the ladder imploring his athletes how to put their socks on and tie their sneakers properly so they wouldn't develop blisters. He never swore.

When a player heard Wooden during practices scream "Goodness gracious sakes alive," it was more devastating than a Bobby Knight vulgar tantrum, throwing chairs and physically grabbing a player by his throat.

Wooden was an English major at Purdue and learned the language well. A veteran basketball coach in both college and the NBA, told authors of a book on Wooden:

"He never swore, but there was not a coach in the United States who could use the English language any better than he could. He was always technically and grammatically correct when he was chewing you out."

Among his pithy bromides heard repeatedly at UCLA basketball practices:

"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail."

"Flexibility is the key to stability."

"Be quick, but don't hurry."

Not only was Wooden a great coach, he was one of those rare birds who was a three-time All-American basketball player at Purdue, including one national championship, who could coach better.

He may have been slow to make social adjustments such as calling his black players by the new names they took on as Muslim converts. But his true colors on respect for humans came in 1947 when his Indiana State basketball team was invited to the NCAA tournament if the lone black player on the squad stayed home. Wooden declined the invitation.

Only once in his storied career at UCLA did scandal fringe on Wooden's character. An avid and wealthy UCLA alumnus Sam Gilbert was charged with the program's NCAA "sugar daddy" violations for providing loans and gifts to athletes. Never accused, Wooden would lament later he suspected but didn't know the extent of the Gilbert dealings and had delegated scholarship and rules to then trainer Elvin "Ducky" Drake.

"Among the things Coach Wooden was good at," said Andy Hill, a former guard and later television producer, "was knowing what he didn't want to know."

After his retirement at UCLA in 1975, Wooden developed his pyramid of life formula. In an editorial memorializing the man in Saturday's Los Angeles Times, its editorial raved:

He refused flash and instead championed old verities: Industriousness, Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation and Enthusiasm formed the foundation of his pyramid. Success, naturally, was its peak. There is no "bling," no trash talk or intimidation or boastfulness on Wooden's pyramid...
There, on the pyramid, in the third row in his definition of Team Spirit: "An eagerness to sacrifice personal interest for the welfare of all."
It is for such wisdom that we remember John Wooden.

It is doubtful Wooden's achievements on and off the court will ever be matched. He flourished in a time that precedes NBA rules which allow drafting first-year players out of college, where his peers such as Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski appear in commercials for Chevy and American Express, where agents and shoe company representatives hover as leeches around his players seeking profits and coaches who are run out of town at the first sign of program slippage.

What coach today would do what Wooden did in 1949, turning down a lucrative job offer to return to Indiana State compared to the $32,000 annual salary he received at UCLA where he honored the three-year contract he signed?

Who other than John Wooden would have lasted 13 years in a program that by contractual neglect the employer failed to correct a wrong by not paying retirement benefits?

In life, money was not the only thing for John Wooden. It was honesty and respect and that old midwestern ethos of doing what's right.

We'll miss you, Johnny as he was known only in his youth. Your legacy will withstand the test of time.

California First State To Ban Plastic Bags At Retail Outlets

2010-06-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

California which had led the nation in innovative approaches to complex problems is back in the forefront by becoming the first state to ban plastic shopping bags at retail stores.

"Paper or plastic?" no longer will be asked by checkout clerks when the new law goes into effect Jan 1, 2011. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger is expected to sign the law which he endorsed earlier before Thursday's passage by the Legislature.

The state was first in the nation to adopt controls on property tax increases in 1978 and voters in 2004 were first in the nation to approve $3 billion in bond sales for stem cell research. The state is also one of the most dysfunctional in the nation in recent years, beset with fiscal woes.

Schwarzenegger called the law "a great victory for our environment.

Plastic bags have long been a kill target for environmentalists because they are not biodegradable, meaning they stay for a long time in landfills and oceans. The goal is to reduce their accumulation.

Shoppers will be encouraged to buy reusable canvas bags stores sell for about $1 each. Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, said shoppers who forget their reusables will be issued paper bags made of 40% recycled material for a nickel each.

In 2007, Annapolis, Md., was the first U.S. city to propose a total ban on plastic checkout bags when then-Alderman Sam Shropshire waged a campaign against them. While Maryland's bag campaign failed, it fueled efforts in other cities.

California legislators, who draw an annual salary of $110,880, failed to heed complaints from low-income advocacy groups that the mandated purchase of paper or reusable bags were too costly.

EPA Should Stop Dispersants NOW As Concerns Rise Over BP's PR Move

2010-06-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

If there is one department in the federal government that is shirking its responsibilities as responders to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill it would be the Environmental Protection Agency.

It must act fast and now to determine the toxic damage the dispersent Corexit 9500 is inflicting on humans, sea and plant life, birds, and the underground water tables on the Gulf coastline.

The pungent oil globs permeated in the toxic chemicals sprayed on the surface and at the source of the Deepwater Horizons leak by BP could be making the disaster worse and its residual effects lasting hundreds of years -- perhaps as deadly as DDT on its commercial use applied by farmers after World War II.

Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, did order BP to cut back the aerial drops of 800,000 gallons of Corexit on the Gulf surface waters May 14 but not those applied at the source, 5,000 feet on the Gulf floor where the gusher is estimated conservatively at 12,000 barrels per day.

As of Friday, June 4, the EPA has not reported its findings of samples sent to a Florida laboratory nor soil and plant samples in areas the slick has saturated in marshes and barrier islands of the wetlands near New Orleans.

The chemical dispersents applied by BP on the surface accelerates the evaporation process in which bacteria eat the oxygen-choking tendencies of the fluid while diluting its viscosity from microscopic to fist-sized globs. No one has explained to my satisfaction what long-term effect Corexit has when applied at the source at a mile's depth.

The Coast Guard's efforts of isolating the slick with booms and then setting them on fire seems the better of two bad choices.

But never before has so much volume of chemicals been used -- BP has purchased 2 million gallons of Corexit from the oil industry's favorite supplier -- in a body of water even as large as the Gulf of Mexico.

The risks have been "substantially underblown," according to Christopher D'Elia, dean of Louisiana State University's School of Coast and Environment. "I'm frankly surprised by the lack of discussion of it at the federal level, or from BP."

The National Academy of Sciences published a report on dispersants in 2005 describing current understandings of their effects "not adequate." It recommended further studies. They never happened.

James Diaz,.a medical toxicologist who heads LSU's environmental and occupational health sciences program, said the dispersants contain ethylenes which cause peripheral nerve damage in humans, especially among painters and auto mechanics who use them for cleaning solvents.

The Coast Guard pulled all commercial fishing boats contracted by BP for cleanup efforts in Breton Sound after seven workers were hospitalized from exposure to the toxic-coated oil.

The LSU scientists believe the chemicals have created huge oil plumes at 2,000 to 4,000-foot depths that are now reaching shores from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle.

This has incensed some environmentalists.

Some critics have accused BP of being less interested in the chemical's effectiveness than in its ability to shape perceptions of the disaster by making it harder to see the oil. "They're trying to dissolve it at the source so we don't see it," said Carl Safina, an ecologist and founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, a conservationist organization in New York. "They're just trying to hide the body, to hide the extent of the problem from view. It's a PR ploy."

Even BP acknowledges risks. David Nicholas, a spokesman for BP, announced a $500 million donation over 10 years for a study of the potential risks to sea life and underground water sources local municipalities draw their drinking water.

LSU's D'Elia hopes to be the first recipient. "When you add dispersant, you keep that toxic phase in the water column. Does it ultimately reach the shore? What effect does it have when it gets there? What are the long-term problems to worry about?"

LSU's Diaz frets the complexity of the region's waterways often means water from the Gulf finds its way inland, and not only during a surge resulting from a storm or hurricane. "There comes a point in the summer when water level in the rivers and the bayous are very low, and the Gulf begins to creep up," Diaz said.

If Gulf water is full of dispersed oil that was impossible to skim from the surface, or managed to get below the protective booms now lining the coast, toxins could come with it. "If it goes up high enough to get to the freshwater intake of municipal water-treatment systems, that could cause a significant problem," Diaz said.

The EPA is monitoring air and water in the region for signs of contamination. Chris Ruhl, EPA incident coordinator for field operations in the area, acknowledged that BP's reliance on dispersants added urgency to the monitoring, and described the potential threat to municipal water supplies as a "valid concern."

In the rural fishing communities of southeastern Louisiana, most of the anger about the use of dispersants is directed at BP. The oil has become "an invisible monster," said Billy Nungesser, the president of Plaquemines parish. “Plus, we don't know the health risks.”

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EPILOGUE

The EPA should have halted the dispersants in early May when first concerns were raised and cooler heads other than BP making PR business decisions prevailed. It's late in the game now but not THAT late, no matter what the government studies show. Better be safe than sorry. But as the 400-pound gorilla in the room says on TV. what do I know?

How Rod Blagojevich Will Spend His Summer And We Will Be Tittilated

2010-06-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

Selection of a jury which Rod Blagojevich has wooed or tried to taint since his indictment 18 months ago on 24 corruption charges entered its second day Friday.

The impeached Illinois governor has written a book, hosted a radio talk show, stormed the national television networks with self-serving interviews and appeared on a reality TV series and just may have talked himself into prison to claim his innocence of backroom wheeling and dealing. In Chicago? Whose kidding whom?

"The truth shall set you free," Blagojevich-turned religious as do so many crooks who found their way to prison, told well-wishers as he entered the federal courtroom building Thursday.

As a lifelong student of political science, I could care less about the outcome of this trial which attorneys for both sides expect will continue through the summer. My focus will be on the sleazy backroom politics in a city and state known for its political corruptness -- testified under oath.

I only hope that if Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, chooses to honor a subpoena and "swears" to tell the truth the foul-mouthed former Chicago congressman does not take it literally.The pretrial publicity already has sunk to the gutter.

The jury will listen to 500 hours of tape recordings of Blagojevich and his staff thinking up ways to make money and selling Obama's vacant Senate seat. Two former staffers have pleaded guilty to related charges.

Those include Blagojevich's former chiefs of staff John Harris and Alonzo "Lon" Monk. Harris copped to conspiring to sell the Senate seat. Monk pleaded guilty to conspiring to solicit a bribe in the form of campaign contributions from a racetrack owner.

The G-man in charge of their side of the trial is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Scooter Libby prosecution fame, former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and successful prosecutor of Blagojevich's predecessor, Republican Gov. George Ryan, still serving a 6 1/2-year sentence in stir for racketeering and fraud.

There's no denying interest in the Blagojevich trial is big time, especially in Chicago. "This blows every other political story out of the newspapers and off the air," Roosevelt University political scientist Paul Green said.

Well, Mr. Green, I beg to differ. On a scale of 10, I would rate its news value, except in the narcissistic minds of Rod and Patti Blagojevich, off the radar screen when compared to --

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill threatening to pollute and destroy a third of the Hemisphere. The continual prospects of war between North and South Korea. Israel's belligerent stand keeping arms from being smuggled into Hamas-controlled Gaza. Iran's race to build and develop nuclear warheads. Al-Qaeda's pledge to terrorize Americans. Euro's battle to keep its union from financial collapse. The U.S. economy so fragile it could tank at any moment. The demise of Blagojevich's Democratic Party in the November elections.

If convicted, Blagojevich faces a maximum of 415 years in prison and fines totaling $6 million. That's no laughing matter but don't underestimate the defrocked guv.

From the start of the scandal dating back to December 2008, Blogojevich has been unbowed, saying he has been set up by the Democratic machine in Chicago. "I will fight, I will fight, and I will fight until I take my last breath," he said.

Blow the house down is unlikely to happen. It will be entertaining if not so tragic.