FAREWELL DANIEL SCHORR

From NPR:

No other journalist in memory saw as much history as Daniel Schorr.

He was born the year before the Russian Revolution and lived to see the Digital Revolution. He was there before the Berlin Wall went up and there a generation later when it came down. He was born before people had radio in their homes but pioneered the use of radio, television, satellites and then the Web to report the news.

How many people were personal acquaintances of Edward R. Murrow, Nikita Khrushchev, Frank Zappa and Richard Nixon?

For all the history that he reported, Dan Schorr will always be remembered for the moment he stood before live television cameras in 1974 with a breaking bulletin about a list of enemies compiled by the White House.

Schorr began to read the names. One of them was his own. "The note here is, 'A real media enemy,'" he read, before continuing through the list.

"What went through my mind was, 'Don't lose your cool. Be professional,'" he said years later.

More here, with audio.

I didn't start digging Daniel Schorr until I started listening to NPR over a decade ago. Even then, he was older than God. At first, I didn't know how important he was, how many important events he had reported on. I just liked his news analysis, solid stuff, none of the bullshit that had become typical of the corporate media at that point.

It took a moment from The Simpsons to get me thinking about him: Moe had developed an enemies list for some reason, but when Barney started reading it out loud, naming Jane Fonda and Schorr, it became clear that the sleazy bartender had simply copied President Nixon's enemies list. I was like, "Wait a minute. Is this for real? Was Daniel Schorr really on Nixon's enemies list?" After hitting the internet and reading up on him, "Wow" was all I could say.

In addition to being around for most of the important events of the twentieth century, Schorr was very clearly a throwback to a different, and better, era of journalism, back before television decided that news and entertainment were essentially the same thing, back before "balance" meant dutifully recording what "liberals" and "conservatives" said, instead of gauging the accuracy of their statements, instead of contextualizing the words within the grand scheme. I didn't always agree with Schorr, but he always had solid arguments.

If I had one gripe about him, it was that he tended to cut the establishment too much slack. But I'll cut him some slack on this: back in the day, the establishment took its job much more seriously than it does today. That is, Schorr remembered an era when people in government and business truly believed, to an extent, that we were all in this together. Back when being a citizen meant something.

I'm truly going to miss this man's reporting and insight. And so will our nation.

Farewell, Daniel Schorr.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Reine



Dash



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

STAR TREK
Return to Tomorrow

From Wikipedia:

"Return to Tomorrow" is a second season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast February 9, 1968 and repeated August 2, 1968. It is episode #49, production #51, written by John T. Dugan, under the pen-name "John Kingsbridge", and directed by Ralph Senensky.

Overview: Telepathic aliens take control of Kirk's and Spock's bodies.

More here.

Okay, I'm going to try something a bit different this time. I feel like, for the moment, I've said everything I have to say about Star Trek, conceptually speaking. So I'm going to strip these Trek posts down a bit, avoiding full blown reviews, and simply posting the notes I take when I watch. And the pics, too. Pics are still important. So important, in fact, that I'm going to try posting them directly on the page, instead of simply linking to them. At any rate, this all may change depending on how the rest of the run moves me. For now, however, let's see how the new format works.

First, go watch the episode.

Now, read my notes.

* The Enterprise is "hundreds of light years" beyond any known human exploration. It takes "three weeks" for a subspace message to reach Starfleet. The episode establishes right away that they are way the fuck out there.

* James Doohan, who plays Scotty, is the voice of the disembodied Sargon. I totally recognize it now, but had to have somebody point it out to me when I was a teenager--that is, Doohan was a damned fine voice actor.

* Diana Muldaur as Dr. Ann Mulhall, this episode's guest star, who plays another role in an episode in the third season, and gets yet another role years later in the Next Generation series, is totally beautiful, with a fabulous voice.



* Spock says, regarding Sargon, "Pure energy, matter without form." Was this the line that was sampled for that 80s techno dance tune? Or was it from another episode, say, the first season's "Errand of Mercy"?


Sargon's ball.

* The narrative goes through great pain to establish just how advanced beyond the Federation Sargon's people are--they had a "primitive" nuclear era.

* Very nice monologue Shatner has the first time he's possessed by Sargon. His big physical Shakespearean style works well for a space god.







* Music, sets, and overall story do a good job of creating a nice sense of sci-fi wonder.

* There's a great cut, from the scene where Sargon suggests temporarily possessing Kirk, Spock, and Mulhall, to a shot of Scotty saying "You're going to what?!?"


You're going to what?!?

* Kirk's "risk is our business" speech. He's totally at home with this overblown semi-poetic rhetoric.



* This episode makes gratuitous use of the zoom-in. It's interesting, but I don't know if I like it, or what it might add to getting the story across.

* Nice purple light on faces for the consciousness trading moments.



* Yeah, that's right. Kirk-as-Sargon gets to make out with Mulhall. Twice. No surprise there.



* Nimoy, as Spock, is great, as usual. But he's sublime when possessed by Henoch. I fucking love his smirky smile.



* Why robots? Why not build actual biological bodies via genetic engineering? I mean, these entities are super advanced. Maybe this is something of a cultural bias of the era in which the episode was produced. Genetics and cloning were simply not part of the popular imagination at that point.

How many years was this before The Boys from Brazil came out?


Robots.

* Oh, I get it. Sargon is Adam, or Yahweh, whatever. Thalassa is Eve. And Henoch is Lucifer. But this time they beat him. Fuck you and your fruit from the tree of knowledge. Or something. Works for me.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I KNOW HOW TO END THE DEFICIT!

From CNN courtesy of AlterNet:

Tab for 'War on terrorism' tops $1 trillion

The United States has spent more than $1 trillion on wars since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, a recently released Congressional report says.

Adjusting for inflation, the outlays for conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world make the "war on terrorism" second only to World War II.

More here.

To some small extent, I'm being facetious--for the last two years, the federal budget deficit has been hovering around $1.25 trillion dollars; ending the "War on Terrorism," its military aspect at least, would only pay off a single year's worth of deficit. But more generally, in terms of the insanely bloated US military budget, an amount of spending that has us always ready to fight wars against everybody at once, no seriously, everybody at once, the government already has enough money to pay for everything. All we have to do is radically scale down our military such that it is truly a defense force, rather than capitalism's global enforcer.

Of course, we'd have to get off the oil. We'd have to revive our once mighty domestic manufacturing base. But those are actually good things with dramatic benefits for our economy. Unfortunately, a significant minority of Americans make a lot of money off of oil and the slave-based economies of the third world, and they use that money to control the political elites who make such decisions: even though ending the American Empire in order to restore the American Republic is absolutely the best thing to do for our great nation, the greedy pieces of shit who profit from our empire status like things just the way they are, which means we absolutely have to burn trillions on the military to keep the whole system going.

It's all very unstable, but as long as the rich keep getting richer, what's the problem?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

USDA worker pressured to resign over race comments

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Obama administration is standing by its quick decision to oust a black Agriculture Department employee over racially tinged remarks at an NAACP banquet in Georgia, despite evidence that her remarks were misconstrued and growing calls for USDA to reconsider.

Shirley Sherrod, who until Tuesday was the Agriculture Department's director of rural development in Georgia, says the administration caved to political pressure by pushing her to resign for saying that she didn't give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago when she worked for a nonprofit group.

Sherrod says her remarks, delivered in March at a local NAACP banquet in Georgia, were part of a story about racial reconciliation, not racism. The white farming family that was the subject of the story stood by Sherrod and said she should keep her job.

"We probably wouldn't have (our farm) today if it hadn't been for her leading us in the right direction," said Eloise Spooner, the wife of farmer Roger Spooner of Iron City, Ga. "I wish she could get her job back because she was good to us, I tell you."

The NAACP, which initially condemned Sherrod's remarks and supported Sherrod's ouster, joined the calls for her to keep her job. The civil rights group said it and millions of others were duped by the conservative website that posted partial video of her speech on Monday.

More here.

"Post racial" my ass.

I don't know who I'm angrier with, Obama's White House or the racist conservatives who set this stunt up. As for Obama, this is all very Pontius Pilate, washing his hands and throwing an innocent under the bus for political expediency. The right wing has been going after him for all kinds of bullshit from the day he was elected: you don't get a bully to back off by cowering in front of him like a little girl; you get a bully to back off by punching him in the face. By caving in to artificially constructed "scandals" again and again, the President does nothing but embolden his enemies while giving spectators the perception that maybe there's actually something to the vomit the conservatives are always spewing. From ACORN to "death panels" to bogus deficit fears to New Black Panthers to this latest pack of lies, it's all going to get worse if the President doesn't pound these fuckers hard on each and every occasion.

But I guess that's just not his style.

As for the conservative serpents who doctored the tape and pushed it into the mainstream media, well, they're scum, but they've also revealed how the right wing has, apparently, managed to subvert the language of racism discourse to their own racist ends. Listening to them makes it sound like black people run all the corporations in the Fortune 500, or that the criminal justice system is wildly tilted toward keeping white people in prison at rates far higher than their proportion of the general population, or that black cops shoot white people in the back on subway platforms, or that banks redline white neighborhoods, or that black people brought white people here in chains, stripped them of their culture and identities, sold them as property, and then complained that they couldn't get their shit together after all that good treatment had ended.

I just don't understand why these white assholes freak the fuck out over the slightest vaguest hint of the remotest possibility that a black person might have treated a white person unfairly. I mean, they're on psycho hyper-aware lookout for anything at all that might be twisted to show that blacks are just as racist as whites.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

That is, because these conservatives are total fucking evil racist assholes, they're trying to justify themselves using the classic rhetoric of the four year old caught stealing: "Well, he did it, too!!!!" Very disturbing, but not surprising. They are, after all, racist assholes. What's surprising is how the mainstream media, mostly white, presumably "liberal," whatever that's supposed to mean these days, swallow this racist drivel hook, line, and sinker.

Personally, I think the media's racist, too.

UPDATE

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The White House did a sudden about-face Wednesday and begged for forgiveness from the black Agriculture Department employee whose ouster ignited an embarrassing political firestorm over race. She was offered a “unique opportunity” for a new job and said she was thinking it over.

More here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Netanyahu In 2001: 'America Is A Thing You Can Move Very Easily'

From the Huffington Post news wire:

As noted in Haaretz, Netanyahu seems to boast of his knowledge of the US by saying, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in their way."

He also boasts of manipulating the U.S. in the ongoing peace process, as the Washington Post points out:

"They asked me before the election if I'd honor [the Oslo accords]," he said. "I said I would, but ... I'm going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the '67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I'm concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue."

More here.

Wow, that's pretty arrogant, lots of contempt for the American people. And utterly unsurprising. As I've asserted several times before, Israeli policy toward the Palestinians makes no sense if you take them at their word that they're making good faith efforts toward a just and peaceful solution to the conflict. But if you don't take them at their word, if you look at the entire peace process as nothing more than an Israeli ruse to cover their slow war of attrition and demographic gain against the Palestinians, then their actions start to make a lot more sense.

If, for instance, you're honestly trying to make peace, why the hell do you continue to allow ultra-orthodox right-wing Israeli "settlers" to invade and occupy Palestinian land? And the list of in-your-face contradictions just goes on and on. Israel is not interested in peace. Their real strategy is to make the Palestinians "live like dogs" in hopes that they get the hell out.

So Israel has been lying to us for decades, and gotten away with it almost completely. They say "jump" and we ask "how high?" Of course, their leaders hold us in contempt. We're nothing but a bunch of sheep who give them guns.

Pretty pathetic.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Biden: White House Wanted Bigger Stimulus; Republicans Howl Immediately

From the Huffington Post news wire:

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Biden endorsed the viewpoint held by Keynesian economists like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who he referenced by name), acknowledging that the stimulus passed was likely too small. But, he added, there would have been no package at all had it not been made smaller and, subsequently, more palatable to moderate Republicans.

"There was a reality," Biden told host Jake Tapper. "In order to get what we got passed, we had to find Republican votes. And we found three. And we finally got it passed."

And

But Biden's comments are already being jumped on by Republican strategists, who have spent the past year ridiculing the stimulus as a massive, wasted, $800 billion check. Kevin Madden, a longtime consultant and confidant of Mitt Romney, predicted television ads attacking the White House for Biden's remark.

More here.

"And we found three."

Seriously? The White House's famed efforts at bipartisanship netted three, three, lousy GOP votes for a shitty stimulus package so small that it couldn't possibly do what they were claiming it would do. This is disturbing. If I'm to understand this correctly, the Obama administration was fully aware that the bill they settled on would be ineffective, but went for it anyway in order to foster this come together unity shit that the Republicans had pronounced dead on the day the President took office. What were they thinking? How could they possibly believe that the right-wing psychopaths of the Republican Party would play ball?

They would have been much better off - indeed, the country would have been much better off - if they had gone the true Keynesian route, pumping WWII amounts of spending into the economy, and telling the GOP to fuck off. Sure, it would have been difficult to go it alone, as the health care legislative battle ultimately revealed, but we would have gotten a bill that would have actually jump started the economy, rather than simply making up for state spending cuts.

I truly hope the Obama administration has learned, or is learning, that there is no bipartisanship. The Republicans want to dominate totally; it's their way and no other way at all. Given such an obstacle to governance, the only sensible course of action is to destroy them. Totally.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

NO, CUTTING TAXES DOES NOT RESULT IN HIGHER TAX REVENUES

From the New York Times, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman weighs in on GOP demands to make hundreds of billions in Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, in spite of the conservative party's relentless demands for eliminating the budget deficit:

Redo That Voodoo

But the real news here is the confirmation that Republicans remain committed to deep voodoo, the claim that cutting taxes actually increases revenues.

It’s not true, of course. Ronald Reagan said that his tax cuts would reduce deficits, then presided over a near-tripling of federal debt. When Bill Clinton raised taxes on top incomes, conservatives predicted economic disaster; what actually followed was an economic boom and a remarkable swing from budget deficit to surplus. Then the Bush tax cuts came along, helping turn that surplus into a persistent deficit, even before the crash.

But we’re talking about voodoo economics here, so perhaps it’s not surprising that belief in the magical powers of tax cuts is a zombie doctrine: no matter how many times you kill it with facts, it just keeps coming back. And despite repeated failure in practice, it is, more than ever, the official view of the G.O.P.

More here.

And to think, I actually used to believe this shit. Indeed, by the time I was eighteen years old I was so well versed in the bullshit jargon of Reaganomics that I was able to win my district in extemporaneous speaking, which advanced me to the national speech tournament where I ultimately ranked fifteenth in the nation. Ah, those were the days! I was a young conservative, and every morning was morning in America. Back then, I believed in God and Jesus and the magical power of tax cuts. It was as though anything was possible.

Of course, the older and wiser version of myself now understands that anything is not possible, especially the notion that cutting taxes actually results in greater tax revenues. I mean, I'm still holding onto the possibility of God, but can just no longer accept the weird wonder of tax cuts. Because, you know, when you cut taxes, the government gets less money. No way around that.

Okay, I'll admit that interesting things can happen, economically speaking, when you write the tax code in specific ways. That is, you can encourage or discourage particular behaviors, which, depending on the circumstances, may very well result in economic activity that generates more tax revenue than would have existed without such tax manipulation. But you've got to be very specific with how you write tax law.

Indeed, some of Reagan's tax cuts were quite beneficial: former Reagan economist Paul Craig Roberts insists that:

The supply-side policy used reductions in the marginal rate of taxation on additional income to create incentives to expand production so that consumer demand would result in increased real output instead of higher prices. No doubt, the rich benefitted, but ordinary people were no longer faced simultaneously with rising inflation and lost jobs. Employment expanded for the remainder of the century without having to pay for it with high and rising rates of inflation.

That is, supply side tax cuts were, for Roberts, all about ending the horrible inflationary spiral that arose in the 70s, an extraordinarily specific use of tax cuts for an extraordinarily specific problem.

But to the best of my knowledge, Roberts never asserts that all tax cuts always result in greater tax revenues. He probably stays away from such a notion because it isn't true.

I mean, think about it. How does this actually function? Conservatives say that tax cuts for the rich are invested, which results in taxable business expansion and activity, which results in more employment, which is also taxable, which results in more consumer spending, which is also taxable. But does it really add up to replacing, or even increasing, lost tax revenue from the original tax cuts? We've been on the tax cut train for thirty years now, with a few exceptions here and there, so we have a real world answer to that question: no, tax cuts do not result in greater tax revenues. Generally, the wealthy, who are the biggest beneficiaries of GOP tax cut religion, simply pocket the money, or spend it on bullshit that doesn't really stimulate the economy.

Actually, I've read at least a couple of arguments over the last few years asserting that heavily taxing the rich, instead of cutting their taxes, forces them to spend their money wisely, sheltering it in investments, so the government can't get it, that end up stimulating the economy. That is, the opposite of tax cut mania may actually be the key to a healthier economy. But like I said, the tax code can do some interesting and unexpected things depending on how you write it.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

CABLE OUTAGE

Cox meant to shut down a neighboring apartment. Instead, they shut down mine. Apparently. Anyway, I'm back online now. Regular blogging resumes, well, as of the cat blogging post below.

Sorry 'bout the hiatus.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING
Another Special Canine Edition!

Kuzco



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

MY SENATOR IS A "BIRTHER"?

From the AP via Google:

Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says he supports conservative organizations challenging President Barack Obama's citizenship in court.

Vitter, who is running for re-election, made the comments at a town hall-style event in Metairie, La., on Sunday when a constituent asked what he would do about what the questioner said was Obama's "refusal to produce a valid birth certificate."

Such claims about Obama's birth certificate have been discredited. But with the crowd applauding the question, Vitter responded that although he doesn't personally have legal standing to bring litigation, he supports "conservative legal organizations and others who would bring that to court," according to a video of the event.

"I think that is the valid and most possibly effective grounds to do it," Vitter said, although he later cautioned that the matter could distract from policy issues.

More here.

Metairie, where I live, a classic white flight community, and the most conservative place with which I have any first hand familiarity, had at least one individual publicly asserting on the night Obama was elected, "That's it. Now it's going to be white slavery." That is, there is a great deal of racism here. No surprise that Metairie residents attending a town hall with Vitter have swallowed the wacky conspiracy theory that the President, an African American, isn't really one of us.

And Vitter is a douche for playing into these racist and xenophobic attitudes.

My Senator, a family values guy who got caught with his name on the infamous DC Madam's client list, may be a hypocrite scum bag, but he's not stupid. I'm pretty sure he does not buy into the birther thing. I mean, maybe he does. But the guy went to Harvard and Oxford. He was a law professor. Unlike our last president, Vitter reads newspapers and such: he has to know that Hawaii has produced Obama's birth certificate repeatedly, that this was a non-issue from the very beginning.

But here he is saying he supports some kind of litigation, even though there's been plenty of litigation already, and it's all been laughed out of court. What's almost funny is that he soft pedals his support, talking about how "the matter could distract from policy issues." It's like, "Yeah, sure, I'm with you guys on this, but let's not get too carried away with it," almost as though he's a bit embarrassed.

What a douche.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

REPUBLICAN JOBS PLAN: CASTIGATE THE UNEMPLOYED

From Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog, courtesy of Eschaton:

In the latest example, we see Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett (R), the frontrunner in this year's gubernatorial race, arguing publicly that jobless workers in his state are choosing not to work, preferring to live on meager unemployment aid.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett on Friday accused some jobless Pennsylvanians of choosing to collect unemployment checks rather than going back to work, prompting swift criticism from his Democratic opponent and one of the state's top labor leaders.

"The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are just going to sit there," Corbett told Harrisburg radio station WITF at a campaign stop in Elizabethtown. "I've literally had construction companies tell me, 'I can't get people to come back to work until . . . they say, "I'll come back to work when unemployment runs out."'"

I obviously can't speak with confidence about what some guy told some other guy who in turn told Corbett. But the general argument is getting quite tiresome.

"The jobs are there"? No, they're really not. Nationwide, there are five applicants for every one opening, which is a terribly painful ratio. Pennsylvania's unemployment rate is currently at a 26-year high.

More here.

This is a variation on the old Cadillac-driving welfare queen narrative. Nice little change up for the new millennium. I guess. But wagging a shame inducing figure at the unemployed isn't going to create any new jobs. At least, not in the real world. The above excerpted post goes on to observe that this kind of language is all over the place in Republican land, which just reinforces my dawning realization that Republicans, in addition simply to being mean spirited, just don't understand economics.

I mean, some of them do, or at least they're starting to. But most of the tribe is mired in some thirty years worth of demagoguery disguised as economic philosophy.

I mean okay, there is a kind of internal logic here: why get a job when you're getting free income from the government? Never mind, for a moment, that you can't get a job that doesn't exist: such "logic" makes a mockery of human psychology. Unemployment payments are only a fraction of what was made on the job, but rent, bills, debt, and groceries continue to cost just as much. Believe me, UE insurance makes joblessness easier, but when you're getting it, you still desperately want to get back into the work force. Furthermore, unemployment, even when you're getting government money, isn't some sort of wonderful vacation. Indeed, it's more like a blast of personal meaninglessness, a trip into the bowels of existential misery. People don't work simply to make money; they also work to make their lives have meaning. You can play video games when you wake up every morning for only so long before you know, without any doubt, that your life absolutely sucks.

Then there's the conservative "logic" that McDonald's is always hiring, which, of course, it is. And that's a fine jobs plan, too, "everybody go work at McDonald's." On the other hand, if you take such "logic" to its, well, logical conclusion, you're talking about total destruction of the middle class, which has been happening, anyway, very slowly for decades now, as organized labor has become emasculated, and domestic manufacturing outsourced to third world countries.

The bottom line here is that telling the unemployed that they're lazy good for nothing parasites for not having jobs is so beyond absurdity as a serious economic assertion that it ultimately constitutes nothing but callous cruelty. But we already knew that, right?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

JUST DON'T CALL ME LIBERAL

The New York Times' young conservative columnist Ross Douthat flirts intensely with liberalism but can't quite bring himself to admit it:

The Class War We Need

The left-wing instinct, when faced with high-rolling irresponsibility, is usually to call for tax increases on the rich. But the problem, here and elsewhere, isn’t exactly that we tax high rollers’ incomes too lightly. It’s that we subsidize their irresponsibility too heavily — underwriting their bad bets and bailing out their follies. The class warfare we need is a conservative class warfare, which would force the million-dollar defaulters to pay their own way from here on out.

Consider the spread that the Giudices currently occupy (pending potential foreclosure proceedings, of course). The first million of its reported $1.7 million price tag is presumably covered by the federal mortgage-interest tax deduction. Intended to boost middle-class homebuyers, this deduction has gradually turned into a huge tax break for the affluent, with most of the benefits flowing to homeowners with cash income over $100,000. In much of the country, it’s a McMansion subsidy, whose costs to the federal Treasury are covered by the tax dollars of Americans who either rent or own more modest homes.

This policy is typical of the way the federal government does business. In case after case, Washington’s web of subsidies and tax breaks effectively takes money from the middle class and hands it out to speculators and have-mores. We subsidize drug companies, oil companies, agribusinesses disguised as “family farms” and “clean energy” firms that aren’t energy-efficient at all. We give tax breaks to immensely profitable corporations that don’t need the money and boondoggles that wouldn’t exist without government favoritism.

More here.

This is extraordinarily interesting: Douthat sounds just like a liberal.

I mean, he goes through some rhetorical squirming in order to give lip service to his membership in the Conservative Tribe, but in the end, he's essentially calling for raising taxes on the rich. Yeah yeah, I know he condemns liberals for doing the same thing, apparently asserting that his proscription is somehow different, but, when you get right down to it, his hairsplitting is on such a microscopic level that he might as well be a liberal himself. That is, there really isn't much of a difference, in my liberal mind, between raising taxes and eliminating tax breaks--they both amount to the same thing; the rich pay more taxes. This is nothing short of heresy coming from a conservative.

What can this possibly mean?

Of course, I can only speculate. But according to Douthat's above linked Wikipedia biography, he's some eleven years younger than me. That means he missed all the "morning in America" Reagan bullshit that informed the political identity of my lazy good-for-nothing generation. We witnessed the rise of the Conservative Movement just as we were becoming politically aware, and to most of us, it looked pretty damned good. Thus, most Americans around my age, at least the white ones, tend toward the right side of the political spectrum. After all, as we moved from our teens into our twenties, and then into our thirties, conservatism slowly came to dominate Washington's political imagination, and, as usual, the news media followed suit. Even when we were supporting "liberals" like Bill Clinton, we were supporting people that the Washington consensus had forced to move rightward.

Really, as a generation, we never had a chance to fairly consider liberal positions: conservatism, as an ideology, steamrolled everything during our formative years and beyond. I mean, not for me, of course, at least not in the long run, but I'm sure you get my drift.

Douthat, however, was born in 1979. By the time he was fifteen, Newt Gingrich's Radical Republicans had taken Congress. By the time he was nineteen, those same Republicans impeached President Clinton for a blowjob. Douthat was twenty two when radical Islamic extremists, under the watch of Conservative Messiah George W. Bush, crashed jet planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He was twenty four when the Abu Ghraib torture scandal hit the headlines. He was twenty five when Katrina hit New Orleans. He was twenty seven when Wall Street had its infamous meltdown.

In other words, Douthat started conceptualizing politics when the Republicans were already at the height of their power. Since then, all he's seen them do is destroy themselves. Pretty much the same thing my generation saw with the Democrats.

What we are seeing with this Douthat column, I think, is evidence of a younger generation of conservatives beginning to understand that the ideas that drove the movement with which they tribally identify are unworkable in the real world. That is, young smart right-wingers like Douthat know that cutting taxes and deregulating business is not the panacea that their elders have pitched for years. But these kids still fancy themselves to be conservatives. But movement conservatism is, almost by definition, all about tax cuts and deregulation.

What's a young Republican to do?

It looks like Douthat's solution, for now, is to tentatively embrace a few liberal ideas, dressing them up in a nice blue conservative suit, so as not to cause cognitive dissonance. I mean, that's probably not what Douthat believes; I'm sure he continues to see himself as staunchly right of center. But the guy just called for taxing the rich. He wants a "class war."

What other way is there to explain these strange contradictions?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

BP's OTHER Spill

From Greg Palast, back in late May:

With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there's no space in the press for British Petroleum's latest spill, just this week: over 100,000 gallons, at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. Still is.

On Tuesday, Pump Station 9, at Delta Junction on the 800-mile pipeline, busted. Thousands of barrels began spewing an explosive cocktail of hydrocarbons after "procedures weren't properly implemented" by BP operators, say state inspectors. "Procedures weren't properly implemented" is, it seems, BP's company motto.

Few Americans know that BP owns the controlling stake in the trans-Alaska pipeline; but, unlike with the Deepwater Horizon, BP keeps its Limey name off the Big Pipe.

There's another reason to keep their name off the Pipe: their management of the pipe stinks. It's corroded, it's undermanned and "basic maintenance" is a term BP never heard of.

How does BP get away with it? The same way the Godfather got away with it: bad things happen to folks who blow the whistle. BP has a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

More here.

"No space in the press" is quite right. I did a Google news search for some more info on this smaller spill in Alaska, and it took me something like five or six pages of hits before I got this AP article picked up by the Huffington Post. Given the enormity of the Gulf spill, I'm pretty certain there's no corporate press angle here, no media conspiracy to quash the story. I mean, what's a few thousand barrels compared to hundreds of thousands? The Gulf spill is big, big, big news, and this relatively minor thing some six weeks ago in Alaska is, well, relatively minor.

But I wonder what else we're missing while the hole at the bottom of the Gulf spews black vomit into the ocean?

Let's see. There's the release of toxic emissions at a BP plant in Texas City two weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion kicked off the chain of events with which we are now dealing. Massive leakage problems back in 2006 with the same pipeline mentioned in the excerpt above. A massive explosion back in 2005 at the same BP plant with the toxic emissions I mentioned a sentence ago. And that's just what I've posted on my blog.

Turns out, I've been blogging about BP on and off for years, and didn't realize it until just now. Clearly, BP, as an organization, has utter contempt for safety and the environment. Indeed, check out this whistleblower statement:

Some of the employees, speaking anonymously, said BP follows an "operate to failure" attitude. Kovac said that means BP Alaska avoids spending money on "upkeep" and instead runs the equipment until it breaks down.

While this might be a good financial strategy for owning and driving shitty beat up used cars, it is insane when applied to the oil business. That is, when your crappy $500 dollar used Pinto breaks down, fine, just buy a shitty used $500 dollar Dodge. Nobody gets hurt, and maybe you saved some money on oil changes, tuneups, and spark plugs. When billion dollar oil equipment breaks down, however, you take everybody in the vicinity out with you, whether they have anything to do with the business or not--like I've said before, there's no margin for error with this shit.

But behemoth corporations like BP simply don't care. Damage to the environment, human beings, and businesses not related to the oil industry, from BP's point of view, are what economists call an "externality," that is, cost from an economic transaction imposed on parties who are not part of that transaction. Who cares if the Gulf fishing industry goes belly up? As long as it doesn't affect BP's bottom line, no big deal. Of course, the problem is when people subjected to a negative externality get so pissed off about it they decide to sue. That's why BP has been so agressive in keeping the press away from the sights and sounds of the Gulf disaster. That's why BP, as Greg Palast observes in the above linked essay, destroys anybody who would alert the authorities as to their chronic disregard for safety. After all, if there's no or little available evidence, it's much more difficult for third parties subjected to externality costs to win in court.

And that's good business.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Roi



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Federal gay marriage ban is ruled unconstitutional

From the Washington Post courtesy of Eschaton:

The federal law banning gay marriage is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define the institution and therefore denies married gay couples some federal benefits, a federal judge ruled Thursday in Boston.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, a 1996 law that the Obama administration has argued for repealing. The rulings apply to Massachusetts but could have broader implications if they're upheld on appeal.

And

The act "plainly encroaches" upon the right of the state to determine marriage, Tauro said in his ruling on a lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Martha Coakley. In a ruling in a separate case filed by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Tauro ruled the act violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"Congress undertook this classification for the one purpose that lies entirely outside of legislative bounds, to disadvantage a group of which it disapproves. And such a classification the Constitution clearly will not permit," Tauro wrote.

More here.

DOMA was mean spirited and Constitutionally futile from the get-go. Mean spirited because marriage has always, always, always been under state jurisdiction, and Congress knew they were playing out of bounds when they passed the law: it is nothing short of a great big "FUCK YOU" to American gays and lesbians, just to show the homophobes back home that their Senators and Congressmen put their panties on one leg at a time. Constitutionally futile for essentially the same reason. Not a damned thing in the Constitution gives the federal government the power to regulate marriage in any way at all. And because powers not specifically granted by the Constitution to the federal government necessarily belong to the states, well, I'm sure you can figure it out for yourself.

So it's nice to see the federal courts start to chip away at such oppressive drivel.

But it's the equal protection ruling that gets me excited. You see, there's already enough basis in the Supreme Court decision on gay sodomy, Lawrence and Garner versus Texas, to suggest that gays and lesbians are, indeed, members of a group worthy of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. As Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissenting opinion, specifically targeting Justice O'Connor's concurring opinion, if gays and lesbians, as a group, are protected by the fourteenth amendment, then nothing can deny them the right to marriage. If this case makes it all the way to Washington, there is every reason to believe that the Court will be bound by the precedent it set with Lawrence.

I keep saying it's only a matter of time, and the clock just keeps on ticking...

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

STAR TREK PROGRAM NOTE

Unfortunately, I'm delaying my coverage of the episode "Return to Tomorrow" because my screencap source has its gallery down for maintenance or upgrading or somesuch. I mean, I could just do the review, but I have so much fun finding the right pictures. After all, I do these Trek posts more for my own gratification than anything else. And the pictures are extraordinarily gratifying. Especially for "Return to Tomorrow" with lots of Spock smiles and Kirk pain-faces as well as the very beautiful guest star Diana Muldaur.

Hopefully TrekCore will have its shit together by next week and we can get on with some deep space fun.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Recovery effort falls vastly short of BP's promises

From the Washington Post courtesy of Eschaton:

In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

The disparity between what BP promised in its March 24 filing with federal regulators and the amount of oil recovered since the April 20 explosion underscores what some officials and environmental groups call a misleading numbers game that has led to widespread confusion about the extent of the spill and the progress of the recovery.

"It's clear they overreached," said John F. Young Jr., council chairman in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish. "I think the federal government should have at the very least picked up a phone and started asking some questions and challenged them about the accuracy of that number and tested the veracity of that claim."

And

Meanwhile, BP also kept revising its estimate of the amount of oil leaking into the gulf. In the early days after the spill, BP and federal officials placed the daily flow rate from the ruptured rig at 1,000 barrels a day, and then raised it to 5,000 barrels a day. In late May, a group of scientists charged by the government with estimating the flow said the rate was 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. And in June, the official estimated rate jumped to 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.

Because of these changing numbers and wide ranges, the amount of uncollected oil might be as low as 1.1 million barrels or as high as 4 million barrels.

Earthjustice, which has joined with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups to sue the federal government over BP's response plan, warns that because these estimates continue to climb, the spillage numbers could go higher.

Earthjustice also says spill damage is being obscured by misleading numbers.

More here.

Full disclosure: I live in Jefferson Parish, so Young, as council chairman, represents me. And I fully agree with him, which probably has very little to do with the fact that I live in his parish, and probably has much more to do with the fact that I'm extraordinarily aware that Washington has for many years been seized by a strange and solemn deference toward corporations, one that trusts them to do what's best for America, indeed, one that believes that what corporations do is, by definition, always best for America.

It is no surprise at all that BP's figures for Gulf catastrophe were completely unchallenged by the federal government. After all, what corporations do is what's best for America. Why would anyone challenge them?

The reality is that corporations do what's best for themselves, which may or may not be good for the country, depending on the circumstances. Currently, BP is in major CYA mode, which is why they're lying right to our faces. This may very well end up being a good strategy for the oil giant: by the time thousands of liability lawsuits make it to court, what BP knew, and when they knew it, will be a major point of contention--"no one could have possibly expected it to be this bad..." Unfortunately, what's good for the corporation, this time, is most decidedly not what's good for America.

Like the environmentalist organization says in the excerpt above, such lies make it difficult to know the extent of environmental damage. If we don't know how bad it is, it becomes that much more difficult to fix. That's why Obama needs to completely take over. Just kick BP out. I mean, retain them as consultants and whatnot, and subpoena all relevant documents, but it is utterly obvious at this point that they have an agenda that runs counter to the nation's. BP can no longer have any say in this matter.

Does the President have the balls to oppose the Washington pro-corporate consensus? Is he even inclined to do so?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

THE STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE OF THE MONTH IS...



...Mr. Spock!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

GOVERNMENT=CORPORATIONS=GOVERNMENT=CORPORATIONS

From Glenn Greenwald:

The BP/Government police state

It's been documented for months now that BP and government officials have been acting in unison to block media coverage of the area; Newsweek reported this in late May:

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials -- working with BP -- who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.

The very idea that government officials are acting as agents of BP (of all companies) in what clearly seem to be unconstitutional acts to intimidate and impede the media is infuriating.

More here.

I keep saying that I can't tell the difference between Big Oil and the government. To some extent, of course, that's metaphor--obviously the government and the oil companies are distinct entities. What I mean is that the oil companies, through both campaign contributions, and the utter lock they have on the American imagination in terms of the omnipresent role oil plays in our economy, have vast influence over the government, at all levels, with elected and appointed officials alike.

In the case of BP, however, it's really starting to look like there is literally no difference between Big Oil and government. The excerpt talks about the Coast Guard, but the blog post from which it is taken also reports how local and state police in Louisiana seem to be working directly for BP, harassing reporters and forcing them out of areas that are ostensibly open to the public. The post also mentions how a reporter covering a BP toxic emission release in Texas City a couple of weeks before the spill pretty much encountered the same thing, local cops seemingly on the BP payroll.

This is, to me, something entirely new in America's slow evolution from democracy to corporate state. I mean, there's literary precedent, of course, in science fiction films like the Alien series, or the original Rollerball film. But this blending of corporate authority with civic enforcement is, to my knowledge, unprecedented in real life.

Clearly, this arrangement will most likely end with the spill crisis, but it's got me wondering how much time we have before corporate forces determine that they no longer need the government, and decide to run everything directly. I mean, this is the trajectory we're on, and I don't see anything on the horizon standing in its way. Certainly not the Democrats, definitely not the Republicans.

And none of this even addresses how fucked it is that government is teaming up with private business to censor information that the public desperately needs to know in order to make important decisions about running the country. Almost as if they believe that the public has no business running the country.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Fareed Zakaria Criticizes 'Disproportionate' Afghanistan War On CNN

From the Huffington Post news wire:

Fareed Zakaria criticized the Afghanistan war in unusually harsh terms on his CNN program Sunday, saying that "the whole enterprise in Afghanistan feels disproportionate, a very expensive solution to what is turning out to be a small but real problem."

His comments followed CIA director Leon Panetta's admission last week that the number of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan may be down to just 50 to 100 members, or even fewer.

"If Al Qaeda is down to 100 men there at the most," Zakaria asked, "why are we fighting a major war?"

More here, with video.

Okay, this is actually pretty good news. CNN is a bedrock of corporate journalism: that this was allowed to air is nothing short of a signal that there are now cracks in the establishment consensus on the ten year old US policy of perpetual war. I mean, don't get me wrong. This is one news media personality on one cable news channel. But it was the sight of Walter Cronkite condemning the Vietnam War that started the ball rolling for LBJ's decision to not seek reelection in 1968. As fucked up as they are, the corporate news media matter. If they really are starting to drift in this direction, it can only be with the express permission of their corporate bosses, the people who really own and run the country. And if that's the case, it's only a matter of time before we're out of Afghanistan.

It is interesting to note that Zakaria's criticism of the Afghanistan war is only in terms of monetary expense and ineffectiveness in dealing with Al Qaeda. He does not characterize the entire notion of waging war on Muslim populations as counterproductive, doesn't point out how doing so simply serves to recruit more terrorists. He doesn't talk about US support for Israel, no matter what atrocities it commits. He doesn't talk about oil imperialism. He doesn't mention the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. What he does is leave open the option for this kind of Bush era warfare as long at it is cost effective--only this war, being fought in this way, is a bad idea.

Of course, that's no surprise. Zakaria is, after all, a corporate mouthpiece, and his stated views in this capacity must necessarily reflect the corporate point of view, or, at least, the point of view of some of the players within the corporate oligarchy.

But, for now, I'm calling this a nice development.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The Declaration Of Independence, Read Aloud

From NPR's Morning Edition:

Twenty-two years ago, Morning Edition launched what has become an Independence Day tradition: hosts, reporters, newscasters and commentators reading the Declaration of Independence.

It was 234 years ago this Sunday that church bells rang out over Philadelphia, as the Continental Congress adopted Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence.

Listen to it read by professionals here.

Okay, I have to admit that this is pretty cool.

I listened to it at least twice yesterday, and, while having such good speakers "speak the speech," as it were, is very nice indeed, I was reminded of how pure a statement of American principles the Declaration is, especially when compared to the messy compromises and counterbalances of the Constitution. That is, the Constitution is a document legally mandating how the country should function from day to day: the Declaration of Independence is a document of American identity.

It is also worth noting that the men who signed it took their lives in their own hands by legally declaring themselves to be committing treason against the throne. They, like all good Americans, were willing to die for their principles.

Happy Independence Day! The Wikipedia article on the Declaration, which includes its full text, can be found here. Go check it out while you listen to the reading.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie and Sammy



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

STAR TREK
By Any Other Name

From Wikipedia:

"By Any Other Name" is a second season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast February 23, 1968 and repeated May 31, 1968. It is episode #51, production #50, written by D.C. Fontana and Jerome Bixby, and directed by Marc Daniels. The title is taken from a line in Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet says, "...that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet".

Overview: Beings from another galaxy steal the Enterprise in an attempt to return home.

More here.

No awards for artistic excellence, nor for brilliant acting, nor for special effects, no new ground broken, nothing to really turn you on to Star Trek if you're not already a fan or into science fiction more generally. But if you do like Star Trek, check this one out. It's very solid, a good story, with lots of nice little touches.

It's all very standard. Technologically advanced aliens from another galaxy, scouts for a potential intergalactic invasion to take place centuries in the future, take human form in order to hijack the Enterprise as a replacement for their own wrecked ship. In spite of their superior technology and intellect, these people are self-glorifying conquerors, morally inferior to our Star Fleet heroes, very much in the tradition of Flash Gordon villains. Indeed, their pompous leader, Rojan, is a pasty faced wooden creep seemingly pulled right out of a 1950s Justice League comic book--his acting isn't what I'd call good, but he is interesting; you kind of can't stop looking at him as he declaims his way through the episode. Rojan's sidekick, Kelinda, is something of a 1960s Bond babe--actually, the actress who plays her, Barbara Bouche, really was something of a Bond babe, playing M's secretary Miss Moneypenny in the 1967 Bond parody film Casino Royale. At first you want to dismiss her as just another hot chick for Kirk to seduce, but she ends up giving one of the better performances of the episode.

At any rate, given the charming touches of old school sci-fi, the net effect, as far as the episode's overall feel goes, is very Wally Wood, not unlike this pic here. And, yes, the episode feels just as weird as the picture.

But "By Any Other Name" isn't simply an exercise in science fiction nostalgia and strangeness. There are some extremely well executed moments. For instance, in the wake of a foiled escape attempt, one where Kirk inexplicably shows expert knowledge of unique Vulcan physical abilities, Rojan metes out a sort of Nazi justice, randomly choosing two members of the Enterprise landing party, morphing them into their chemical components, crushing one to death, and then turning the other back into a whole and healthy person. Rojan's casual, nonchalant affect all the while is truly disturbing. Very clinical and psychologically creepy.

Of course, this chemical component state ends up being the fate for most of the crew back on the ship--the previous set up makes this later sequence all the more effective.

The ease with which the aliens utterly dominate the Enterprise puts Kirk into a manic, listless, and impotent frame of mind, which ramps up the episode's weirdness all the more. By the time Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty, the only crewmen left in their natural biological forms by this point, have hatched a plan to regain the ship, however, the Captain is back to his usual confident self. That leaves him completely ready to execute his part of the plan, seducing Kelinda, which you knew was going to happen from the moment she first appears on screen. But the other three have their part to play, as well. McCoy hops up one of the aliens on amphetamines. Spock gets under Rojan's skin while playing three dimensional chess.

And Scotty has his greatest moment in all of Star Trek, getting one of the aliens drunk in an hours long marathon boozing session, going through, by my count, four bottles of liquor. It takes Saurian brandy, another unidentified spirit of some sort, a third bottle of something Scotty describes simply as "green," and, finally, an "old, old, old bottle of Scotch...whiskey!" Scotty drinks the guy under the table, taking him completely out of action. The Chief Engineer takes himself out of action, too, but only after he has accomplished his mission.

In the end, as you would expect, the crew takes back the ship, convincing the now emotionally unstable aliens to stay in our galaxy instead of reporting back to their superiors. Yeah, I know, that's a plot spoiler, but, like I said, the story's pretty standard. It's all in the execution, and this one is really well executed.

Go see how they get it done.


Breaking the intergalactic barrier last seen in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Is Gov. Bobby Jindal Sabotaging Gulf Efforts for Political Gain?

Quick answer: probably.

From AlterNet:

But, taking a cue from Rudy Giuliani's exploitation of the 9/11 attacks while mayor of New York City, Jindal saw a chance rebuild his political capital by using the Gulf oil spill. He sprang into action with press conferences and helicopter rides to show he's a take-charge leader. The governor quickly became Obama and the federal government's chief critic, relentlessly attacking their allegedly slow response to the spill and lambasting the "red tape and bureaucracy" preventing him from getting the job done. Jindal's theatrical deployment of these trappings of leadership has been largely rewarded by favorable press coverage, reigniting speculation of a 2012 run. But new revelations and a close inspection of the facts suggest that Jindal's sound and fury is little more than political grandstanding for the Fox News set, and it serves to obscure Jindal's own serious failings in the spill response effort. While Jindal has been relentless in attacking the federal government for dragging its feet, he has delayed the deployment of National Guard troops, led a crusade to build artificial sand berms that most experts say won't work, and confused the planning of the spill response. Moreover, experts said his "antagonism could actually slow down that response." "When that stuff happens, you actually take away the ability of the unified command to get their job done," said former Coast Guard official Doug Lentsch, who was involved in the Exxon Valdez disaster and helped develop the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. But the true impact of Jindal's blustery leadership may never be known, as Jindal vetoed a bill Friday that would have required him to make public all of his office's documents relating to the spill.

More here.

Katrina was easy.

New Orleans went for nearly a week, with people sitting on rooftops, or festering in the Superdome and Convention Center, starving and thirsty, or trying to get out but being shot at by nervous cops, before Bush's depleted FEMA and federal troops finally showed up. Almost always in such situations, it's a federal show, but the feds were way late to the theater this time--while everybody was waiting, Bush took time to vacation and play air guitar, and to publicly applaud FEMA's crony-appointment director, "Heck of a Job Brownie," who hadn't really done much at that point.

Like I said, easy. Blame can be assessed with one simple question: where the fuck was FEMA?

It's not so easy assessing government response to the BP oil spill. Certainly, I'm not terribly pleased with President Obama's leadership on this one. His now infamous deference to corporate authority, I believe, made him drag his heels for weeks, while BP lied, by several orders of magnitude, about the severity of the spill, until he finally took a stronger hand in directing and coordinating efforts to stop the leak and clean up the mess. It remains to be seen just how effective his efforts will be in the long run, but I'm encouraged by his recently pushing BP to establish a massive fund to pay for damages before they cut and run into legal limbo land.

Assessing the State of Louisiana's response is even more difficult. I mean, I don't really know what the state is doing, or what its responsibility is relative to the feds' role. Further, and this goes for both assessing the state and the feds, I don't really know what the government is capable of doing, or if the government is doing it. And, apart from the very broad imperative to stop the leak and clean up the mess, I don't even know what all needs to be done.

When you see people stranded in flood waters, you automatically understand that somebody needs to come rescue them. When oil gushes up from the bottom of the sea, threatening ecologies and livelihoods, it verges on incomprehensibility. So it's extremely difficult to know that Jesus Jindal has a point when he blasts the Obama administration for ineffectiveness in dealing with the spill, or that Louisiana's governor is, indeed, a hands-on guy, doing really well what Obama is doing really badly.

But I do know this about Jesus Jindal. He's a fucking puppet. People say he's really smart, but when you actually listen to what he has to say, it isn't much more than a clear articulation of that day's Republican talking points. I've never heard him utter an original thought, or even anything coming close to being thought provoking. I also know that his eyes have been set on the national arena for his entire political career: everything he says and does, everything, is aimed at getting into position for a serious White House run some day in the future.

None of that necessarily invalidates his criticisms of the Obama administration, or makes his helicopter photo ops nothing but PR stunts. But it sure does make it all very suspect.

Anyway, go read the essay. It's got lots of links to various sources validating its assertions. My gut instinct is that Jindal is cynically using the BP spill disaster as the ultimate political advertisement at the expense of the constituents who elected him, which would be no surprise because, in the Karl Rove era, Republicans are way better at that sort of thing than Democrats. But, like I said, I don't really know.

Go decide for yourself.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$