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Today’s Snooze

Jun 21, 2010

maha

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Obama Administration

Oil still spreading in Gulf of Mexico, wingnuts still crazy. Today’s headlines –

In crazy wingnut news, we’ve learned that Rep. Michele Bachmann is so crazy she makes Bill O’Reilly seem sensible.

By now you may have heard the rumor that Rahm Emanuel will be leaving the White House. I say “rumor” because the story seems to have been fabricated entirely out of speculation, but “Rahm Emanuel expected to quit White House” is an easier headline to write than “Anonymous Source Who May Not Know Diddly From Squat Expects Rahm Emanuel to Quit White House.”

Not that anyone I know would mind if Rahm Emanuel did quit the White House, but apparently, there’s no “there” to this story. The columnist for The Telegraph just pulled it out of his butt. That hasn’t stopped anyone on the Right Blogosphere from seizing this story as evidence that the Obama White House is on its last legs.

Regarding the Gulf — everybody screwed up. This was in the New York Times —

An examination by The New York Times highlights the chasm between the oil industry’s assertions about the reliability of its blowout preventers and a more complex reality. It reveals that the federal agency charged with regulating offshore drilling, the Minerals Management Service, repeatedly declined to act on advice from its own experts on how it could minimize the risk of a blind shear ram failure.

It also shows that the Obama administration failed to grapple with either the well-known weaknesses of blowout preventers or the sufficiency of the nation’s drilling regulations even as it made plans this spring to expand offshore oil exploration.

Finally, today Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explains how economic growth (or not growth) happens.

Spotlight

15 Comments

felicity • Jun 21, 2010 @3:37 pm

As it was with health-care reform, instead of researching single-payer systems now in place in the rest of the world, take the best from each and model our system accordingly (which is what Taiwan did) we, just like any average teenager, insisted on not listening to or copying anybody elses because WE KNOW BEST.

Canada demands off-shore drillers drill relief-wells in conjunction with any producing well they dig. Of course, we can’t possibly even consider such a condition because WE KNOW BEST. We make me sick.
c u n d gulag • Jun 21, 2010 @3:50 pm

- Bachmann is so crazy, she actually makes Palin look sane in comparison. Pallin’s a ‘grifter,’ Bachmann is seriously crazy.
- Rahm was good yesterday going after the R’s. He’s an assett when he’s attacking the right, rather than the left.
- MMS was really working hard at trying to be the most corrupt and incompetent agency in US History. I’m hard pressed to come up with any one as bad.
- As for Krugman, well he was right about a whole bunch of things in the past few decades. The fact that he knows what he’s talking about, and is usually correct, immediately disqualifies him from being taken seriously by the punditocracy and those ‘in-the-know’ involved in politics in DC.
Jon • Jun 21, 2010 @4:09 pm

First Palin, now Bachman . . . Bill O’Reilly has become the voice of reason on the right.
I did not see that coming.
jugheadjack • Jun 21, 2010 @5:05 pm

So, according to the nyt Obama was suppose to know about the weaknes of blow out preventers plus the coruption of mms? Come on Ken Salazar why didnt you tell him? Are did you not know either? come on Cheney you knew, you set it up that way.
Doug Hughes • Jun 21, 2010 @7:46 pm

The NYT article was one of the best-researched pieces I have ever read. And depressing as the reporters were ruthless in reporting how the failures of business and government allowed this predictable and preventable disaster.

Jist a guess, but as the POTUS was trying to advance the energy bill, and needed some GOP support, I suspect the policy desidion was made to offer expanded offshore drilling – maybe – as the carrot to entice Big Oil to tell the GOP – yes support the energy bill.

Unfortunately, the inherent risk of offshore drilling was not something that ANYBODY wanted to hear in the White House or the halls of Congress. A real-time failure rate of 45% for the last-ditch method of shutting down a well SHOULD have been brought to Obama’s attention but somebody decided that such an inconvenient bit of data would derail the ‘big plan’.

I have long held the position that every administration needs a cabinet-level position called ‘devil’s advocate’. The function of this person would be to explain to the POTUS how a proposal might turn around and bite him on the ass. It’s needed by ANY president, but won’t happen.
biggerbox • Jun 21, 2010 @9:06 pm

I’m confident that some day Rahm will leave the White House. I mean, it’s quite common for chiefs-of-staff to leave after midterms. And if not then, sooner or later Obama’s term will end. So it’s a pretty safe bet, if you’re a lazy Brit journalist, to write a piece saying he’s leaving, because sooner or later you’ll be right.

Still, it’s mean to get people’s hopes up that way.
Dave S • Jun 21, 2010 @9:36 pm

I have long held the position that every administration needs a cabinet-level position called ‘devil’s advocate’.

Back in the day, I believe they used the term “court jester.” Somebody paid to speak truth to power.

Krugman? A national treasure.
biggerbox • Jun 22, 2010 @2:11 am

Oops. Peter Orzag, not Rahmbo. Sorry, silly British person, close but no cigar.
joanr16 • Jun 22, 2010 @1:12 pm

Unsurprisingly, there’s still a treasure trove of crazy in Texas:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/22/texas-gop-platform-advoca_n_619601.html

Michele B’s just sort of an “honorary Texan.”
c u n d gulag • Jun 22, 2010 @1:34 pm

Joan,
NO STRIP CLUBS! And NO porn?
This could make tons of Bubba’s in the South into Democrats for generations.
Let the Republicans have their “Southern Strategy.” We can have a “Striptease Strategy.”
c u n d gulag • Jun 22, 2010 @1:35 pm

My comments are disappearing again. Oh well, maybe later…
c u n d gulag • Jun 22, 2010 @1:35 pm

Oh sure, you take that one!!!
felicity • Jun 22, 2010 @2:10 pm

I’ve been trying to put a ‘label’ on the Palins and Bachmans and Becks and…a depressingly long list of political flotsam and jetsam and I’ve decided that they all suffer from cases of arrested development. – stuck at about the age of 6, maybe 4-5, is my guess. From buying any Santa Claus story with nary a -but-that’s-impossibe to believing that there is good and there is evil, there is black and there is white with nary a nuance in sight, reasoning with them will get me about as far as reasoning with a 5-year-old will get me.
maha • Jun 22, 2010 @2:23 pm

c u n d gulag — even I can’t get a comment with the “p” word in it past the almighty spam filter.
c u n d gulag • Jun 22, 2010 @2:44 pm

maha,
D’OH!
Sometimes, I’m such a dumbass…