It's not anybody's fault! These things just happen! Government certainly shouldn't dictate what companies do, anyway, the market will determine whether or not oil spills are important.
...Rand Paul, winner of the Kentucky Republican Senate Primary.
In an interview last night, Paul told Maddow that he agrees with most parts of the Civil Rights Act, except for one (Title II), that made it a crime for private businesses to discriminate against customers on the basis of race. Paul explained that had he been in office during debate of bill, he would have tried to change the legislation. He said that it stifled first amendment rights.
As a young, and presumably naive Obama Administration was shaping AfPak policy way back in aught-nine, there was a lot of hooey from bloggers, pundits, the chattering class, and politicians from both sides of the aisle about who was really in charge -- a neophyte Democratic President or the wiley batch of Generals backed by a behemoth and press-savvy Pentagon.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, goes before Congress this week, and with him comes this question: Who's really in charge here, the generals or President Barack Obama?
{snip}
"The president's decision is already being softened and made mush of," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. And within the House and Senate Appropriations committees, senior Democrats - themselves veterans of past wars - have grown increasingly concerned by the political clout of a generation of younger, often press-savvy military commanders.
{snip}
"I've always believed that the president of the United States is the commander in chief," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who was awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II. "It concerns me when I see my president, the commander in chief, having to debate with generals. They can do that privately, but he should be able to say to General A, 'This is the way we're going to do our business.' ... I would expect generals to advise the president but not to go public."
{snip}
"He's got to be very, very much on top of the type of missions and the way in which these troops are deployed," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) told POLITICO. "It's clear to me that there are limitations. We should not be going in, clearing and holding areas where we don't have the ability to come in immediately with Afghans."
"If we don't, we're going to be digging ourselves a hole," he said. "[Obama] has to very careful not to allow that to happen."
Some advance snips from Jonathan Alter's new book The Promise, President Obama, Year One provide a riveting look inside the Obama War Room, and reveal a remarkably astute Commander-in-Chief who out-manueved, out-foxed, and decisively reigned in the military leadership intent on testing his mettle.
Well (no pun intended), BP managed to shove something up their greasy hole today (pun very specifically intended). This is something many have suggested that they should do since the burning and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon on April 20. The leak has not stopped, but at the moment some oil is being collected by a ship located above the site of the wreckage. There is no word that this effort will contain all of the leak until new wells are drilled this summer, but something is better than nothing.
The official line is that the leak had been running at 5,000 barrels (200,000 gallons) per day, though estimates by outside sources put it at up to 70,000 barrels (2,800,000 gallons) per day. To date, therefore, the accident has released between 5,200,000 gallons (half of the Exxon Valdez spill) to 72,800,000 million gallons (seven times the Exxon Valdez) into the Gulf of Mexico.
Well, the Tin Man's Hat didn't work, so BP is onto - as Rick Sanchez puts it - somewhere between Plan B and Plan G.
Politics has gone dormant - as attested by the slow pace of political blogs these days - and as one of those paying less attention I find myself unsubscribing from many of the political mailing lists I had been on for the past year or two (I particularly don't care what Michael Steele and the Party Formerly Known as Republicans have to say).
What about you all? Life more interesting than politics? Got any good surfing stories to tell?
Consider this a particularly slippery open thread.
This Monday, May 10, 2010 musician activists Bono and Bob Geldof will edit the Toronto-based newspaper the Globe and Mail. In the issue, will be a special edition devoted to the future of Africa.
It was unusually sunny this morning at the Central London polling station when I voted in the UK General Election. If the steady stream of voters I saw is anything to go by, turnout looks to be high - up to 70 per cent from the 60 per cent turnout in 2005. There are many reasons for this... and not of a few of them connected to Obama's campaign in 2008, which not only re-energised my interest in politics (and the left wing blogosphere) but captivated the country.
But the kind of change the British General Election has ushered isn't that obvious, as can be seen from thee front page the Murdoch-owned best-selling conservative leaning Tabloid this morning.
Yes, you got it. The people who supported John McCain, the company that brings you the 24 hour asinine right wing ass-hattery of FOX TV, have the temerity to use the Obama Change image as their crucial headline.
'It was the Sun Wot Won it' was the famous refrain after the tabloid claimed it swayed the last close election - in 1992 - for the Tories. Recently, the Political Editor of The Sun told some journalists recently that his job was 'to win the fucking election for David Cameron' (one of his predecessors on the Sunday Murdoch Tabloid is none other than the Conservative Campaign Honcho). There are several transparent financial interests that the Murdoch Empire has in a Conservative election victory in the UK, as the spoofters have already spotted..
More of these to be found here. But the bigger question is - how can a Conservative candidate be an avatar of change? And what kind of change is the UK looking for?
DHS agents tonight grabbed a doorknob on an airplane and took it with them when they left. The doorknob is currently being questioned, and is expected to spend the rest of its living days in a small concrete cell next to Eunch the Crotch Bomber.
Play was halted while grounds crew mopped stupidity off the playing field. When play resumed the visiting team was penalized fifteen yards for delay of game when the pitcher put his cup on backwards and caused an acutely strained hernia while rowing the first wicket, and the coach was carried out after breaking his tibia opening a Fresca.
If those jokers don't start sending in their A team we're going to have to start shortening the cheerleaders' skirts to keep the fans in their seats.
It's all a conspiracy, folks. Simple as that. Bunch of environmental whackos snuck aboard an occupied oilrig at sea in their wheatgrass-powered magic submarines, planted bombs strategically located to cripple this million-ton floating city and sink it in just the right way to ruin the emergency shut-off mechanism (which is a 450 ton block 40 feet high) located 5,000 feet below on the sea floor.
It is believed that Hollywood actors and notorious do-gooders Brad Pitt and George Clooney participated in the raid, killing all 11 missing men with their bare hands during the operation.
Thank you, Rush, for straightening that out for us.
If it is Sanchez, you are a legal Resident Alien in Arizona and you get swept up in an event involving the police you had better have Your Papers with you.
A wall in the conference room of the Adams County Courthouse in Hastings, Nebraska sported a Photoshopped picture of President Obama looking like a street tough with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth... at least until the photo attracted media attention.
Meetings of the Adams County Board of Supervisors were held in this room with the photo hanging on the wall. It was placed there by an elected official.... Adams County Supervisor Eldon Orthmann.
Supervisor Orthmann said that hanging the picture was not a political statement, but was just a joke.
It was more just fun. It is not anything against him. I am a Republican, but that was not the issue at all.
As a young, and presumably naive Obama Administration was shaping AfPak policy way back in aught-nine, there was a lot of hooey from bloggers, pundits, the 
DHS agents tonight 
