BP has been given substantial access to BP operations and meetings to a Louisiana shrimper's wife named Kindra Arnesen. What she is now saying won't make BP happy. BP is putting on lots of dog and pony shows in the Gulf, and Arnesen is voicing safety concerns too.
I collect quotes and share them at this site. If you'd like to see quote a few more, search under the category called "Quotes" (this function is located in the left column). The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. -Winston Churchill The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. -Winston Churchill If you’re going through hell, keep going. - Winston Churchill We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us. - George Eliot (1819 - 1880) It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. - Alfred Adler Be the change you wish to see in the world. – Gandhi An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions. - Robert A. Humphrey Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. - Albert Camus It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. - Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up" (1936) The electric meat -- that's us! I don't mind that at all. If anything, it's even more awe-inspiring to think that out of physics and chemistry we're able to get consciousness and thought, and you and I can sit here and have a conversation about electric meat and chemistry. That itself is miraculous. Michael Shermer (2006)
Regarding the recently announced "financial reform," Dylan Ratigan asks us to consider what has not been fixed.
- The Cops (regulators and ratings agencies) working for the crooks. - Banks still Too Big To Fail. - Banks gambling with your deposits. - Banks allowed to "mark to myth" and use off-balance sheet accounting to bonus themselves into the atmosphere, with the taxpayer taking the fall. - Banks getting trillions from the Fed, Fannie and Freddie -- AKA you, the future and present taxpayer. What does it mean for us? It means that the same people who brought you these horrible changes -- rising wealth discrepancy, massive unemployment and a crumbling infrastructure -- have now further institutionalized the policies that will keep the causes of these problems firmly in place.This is Orwellian, indeed, yet the Democrats are celebrating. What's going on? Kevin Baker takes a crack at it in a Harper's article titled "The Vanishing Liberal: How the Left Learned to be Helpless."
Coming to power when he did, with the political skills and the majorities he possesses, Barack Obama squandered an almost unprecedented opportunity But it is increasingly clear that he never intended to challenge the power structure he had so skillfully penetrated. With the recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations are, once more, people, American democracy has snapped shut again--the great, forced opening of the past 130 years has ended. There is no longer any meaningful reformist impulse left in or politics. The idea of modern American liberalism has vanished among our elite, and simply voting for one man or supporting one of the two major parties will not restore it. The work will have to be done from the ground up, and it will have to be done by us.
Frank Rich sums it up at the New York Times, provoked by Michael Hastings excellent journalism at Rolling Stone:
The war, supported by a steadily declining minority of Americans, has no chance of regaining public favor unless President Obama can explain why American blood and treasure should be at the mercy of this napping Afghan president. Karzai stole an election, can’t provide a government in or out of a box, and has in recent months threatened to defect to the Taliban and accused American forces of staging rocket attacks on his national peace conference. Until last week, Obama’s only real ally in making his case was public apathy. Next to unemployment and the oil spill, Karzai and Afghanistan were but ticks on our body politic, even as the casualty toll passed 1,000. As a senior McChrystal adviser presciently told Hastings, “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular.”Why are we in Afghanistan? I haven't yet heard anything other than vague metaphors. According to the White House,
So make no mistake: We have a clear goal. We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum. We are going to build Afghan capacity. We are going to relentlessly apply pressure on al Qaeda and its leadership, strengthening the ability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to do the same.Apply pressure on al Qaeda? Give me a break. According to the CIA, there are fewer than 50 al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As far as "breaking the momentum" of the Taliban, consider this retort by Jon Stewart, beginning at minute 4:
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Top officials in President Hamid Karzai's government have repeatedly derailed corruption investigations of politically connected Afghans, according to U.S. officials who have provided Afghanistan's authorities with wiretapping technology and other assistance in efforts to crack down on endemic graft.
This is what rush hour looks like in Utrecht, the 4th largest city in the Netherlands. 33% of all trips are made by bicycle.