#7
Good luck bringing him down. He owns Obama, and is getting a very good return on his investment.
Soros has a large investment in Petrobras, which is working a large Brazilian deep-water off-shore oil deposit (in 14,000 ft of water).
First Obama loans them two billion dollars of our money. Next, he's making sure that deep-water drilling platforms are readily available. Soros should make (another) fortune.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
06/24/2010 13:44 ||
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#1
Does this mean the German Marks I neglected to exchange and stashed in some box will once again be legal tender? In that case, I'm in!
Posted by: ed ||
06/24/2010 15:37 Comments ||
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#2
I don't think corruption will kill the Euro, by itself, because it is typically factored in to currencies as a cost of doing business. It can be calculated as a *reaction* to bad government policies--a way for the common man to cause economic adjustment. As such, it is like the other laws of economics that politicians hate.
For example, bribes are a two way street. Without a bribe, a person gets no or poor service. With a bribe, they get good and prompt service. The person getting the bribe does not feel rewarded enough by his boss, and the person giving the bribe thinks they are getting preferred service. Both of them think they are sticking it to "the system", which they both hold in contempt.
If widespread enough, bribes cause inflation from the ground up. This punishes the government for having too loose a fiscal policy.
#1
Canada is a major energy exporter, many don't realize that. They are poised to be a big player in the next oil crunch, something the Chinese just can't keep their greasy little fingers out of.
#2
IOW, He apparently decided that getting the word out to the public (probably against political orders) is more important than his low profile and perhaps his current position.
It's not just millions of gallons of black gold spilling into the Gulf of Mexico that are being lost. Also disappearing into watery despair are the last shreds of credibility for progressive Big Government. Never underestimate the tenacity of big government. People will always say "the government should do something." The government always will. The government will 95 percent of the time screw it up. But people will keep saying it, and politicians will keep reaching for more power. It is their nature.
It's Day 65 of the Deepwater Horizon spill and the only hope of stopping the flow of thick, gooey crude remains the relief well being drilled by the private sector. None of the ass-kicking political speeches by President Obama, bureaucratic edicts by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar or EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, or hypocritical posturing for the cameras in Congress has plugged the hole to stop the flow of suffocating oil headed to the beaches. Nobody's been fired, nobody's resigned, nobody's even said "I screwed up." The business of government remains collecting a paycheck.
We see this week a remarkable confluence of events signaling the eventual end of Big Government: The bureaucrats and politicians can spend trillions but they can't plug the Gulf oil spill, agree on a budget in Congress or end the Great Recession's foreclosures and unemployment...
Now it's Big Government that needs a bailout because its progressive politicians and bureaucrats can't stop doing what they've always done -- spending more, taxing more, regulating more, grabbing more power for themselves and their special interest buddies.
Just as most Americans stopped trusting Detroit to build the world's best cars, we no longer believe the grand promises that more massive, wasteful government will bring prosperity and good health for our families, security in our old age and a better life for our kids. We see the Gulf.
Worrisome hints abound of the progressives' response to their crisis:
They wrote Obamacare behind closed doors in Congress, then rode roughshod over public opposition to make it the law of the land.
At the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Election Commission, they're reaching for tools to silence their critics in the media and on the campaign trail. And when a judge rules their Gulf drilling ban is unconstitutional, they give him the middle finger, too, with a vow to impose a new ban.
In short, they're doing what they always do -- grabbing more power over the rest of us.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/24/2010 10:43 ||
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Desperate times call for desperate measures. Saving Florida thousands and thousands and jillions of hotel and resturant jobs require this threat be dealt with in the most obvious fashion possible. First, fetch the nearest battleship, that would be the Alabama, remove all obvious armaments and add deck cranes to change the siloette, that it might be able to sneak up on the well. Cleverly insert a surplus B53 inside the newly added cargo hold.
Sneak up on the well, have the Parche blast open a hole in the torpedo bulge, use miles and miles of wire to guide the Alabama Cargo Ship to the target.
#2
I hate to tell you, but the Alabama no longer is floating, she rests on the bottom of Mobile Bay, to make her float again would cost millions in dredging.
The Bay's too shallow.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/24/2010 11:56 Comments ||
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#3
Do you think that anyone in D.C. has figured out that all the pontificating in the world wont stop oil from coming out of that pipe?
Also notice that the activity level has dropped off markedly in the last few days despite the sub incident and the flow actually increasing?
Think the W.H. told the national media to put a lid on it?
#6
RJ, the Texas is prime backup. Old but steel is steel, pipes are pipes.
Worser comes to worser (which it will, it always does) the North Carolina may have to be overhauled.
Seriously tho... 9 Presidential Unit Citations! Don't believe the conventional wisdom of Parches demise... she got chillrun hanging out at the wellhead all the time.
#7
It's not correct to say no one has resigned. The head of the Minerals Management Service resigned 27 May, (per WSJ:) as the agency is under intense scrutiny from lawmakers, some of whom have complained that her agency was too lax in setting and enforcing safety regulations on offshore oil and gas companies. A Wall Street Journal article earlier this month detailed how the agency had often deferred to the industry on decisions about what sorts of technologies or practices should be implemented to improve safety.
MMS played a key role in approving some of the engineering which led to the blowout in the Gulf.
#8
It is the MMS responsibility to approve all of the engineering which led to the blowout in the Gulf. Once that approval was given BP was legally bound to adhere not only to the casing and cementing design, but also the installing and testing processes required by the permit. A drilling company can legally do no more or no less than is stipulated in the permits issued by the MMS.
Snip, too many problems for me to clean up. Please hit the link.
Some articles can be cleaned quickly. This one had non-unicode characters and that's a problem for all of us. If it is going to take too much time, just post with a title and link, and advise us in one line in the body to go to the link (or add your own interpretation and analysis; that's always okay).
In general, we want the posts edited so that they are readable. At a minimum, please remove the stuff that obviously doesn't belong like unrelated links and sidebars. You can also remove repetitious stuff near the bottom of an article. If you feel like fixing non-unicode characters, that's even better.
To Total_War: you won't get crap for posting, but we mods would like people who put up a post to clean said post. We can't be here all the time, and a good post is more pleasant to read. Fred and all the mods have day jobs.
To all: don't feel that we have to post everything and anything just to post. The Burg is just as good with 20 focused posts on the WoT (and stupid animal stories, of course) as with 80 posts that are all over the place.
AoS at 1420 CT
Posted by: ed ||
06/24/2010 13:27 ||
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Could you clean this up next time instead of all the web page spam? It only takes a fee seconds to delete the extraneous stuff out. And clean up the Euro characters and other things.
Here is a tip. Copy the article. Paste it into Notepad or another plain text editor. Edit out the garbage. Replace the special characters like whats embedded here " Infidelâs " (to me thats a a with a hat, a Euro symbol and a TM symbol between the l and the s at the end of the word).
The article is rife with crap characters to the point where its nearly unreadable and more than half your post is trash.
Posted by: No I am The Other Beldar ||
06/24/2010 14:12 Comments ||
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#2
Whoops. Please delete the text before and including "# A A A"
Posted by: ed ||
06/24/2010 14:57 Comments ||
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Ed
Thanks for the link and the post and the effort. I feel for you. I have never tried to post an article out of fear that I would get more 'cr-p' for posting it improperly then I would over the content.
Posted by: Total War ||
06/24/2010 15:02 Comments ||
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Whomever becomes the next head of U.S. Central Command will be facing no small task: running the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while dealing with one of the most volatile areas of the globe.
Oh, and getting along with the last guy who held the job - Gen. David Petraeus.
The added issue of commanding Petraeus highly visible, widely considered a success in the job and someone with great rapport with leaders in the region - will be one of the biggest challenges facing the new Central Command leader, says Gene Deegan, a retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. who served on the command of Colin Powell during the first Gulf War.
"On that level, egos can be a problem," says Deegan, who once ran Parris Island for the Marines and now lives in Tampa and works for Allegheny Petroleum. "Admiral (William) Fallon is example No. 1."
In early 2008, Fallon stepped down as Central Command commander after an article was published in Esquire in which he like Gen. Stanley McChrystal criticized his boss. For Fallon, the criticism was directed at then-President George Bush.
Given that there is already a major rift between the military and the State Department over how to prosecute the war in Afghanistan, the new Centcom commander will have to be given the word by President Obama to stay out of Petraeus' way in Afghanistan, says Deegan.
"It's a real tough choice to find someone to sit titularly over Petraeus," Deegan says.
Which brings Deegan to the question: What kind of person should you pick if you are going to be head of Central Command but only have half the job?
There is plenty to do beyond Afghanistan, says Deegan. There is still the ongoing conflict in Iraq and the ceaseless tensions with Iran as well as Pakistan, India and the Saudi Peninsula to deal with.
Two names jump out at Deegan to succeed Petraeus. Not surprisingly, both are Marines.
The first is Lt. Gen. John Allen, the second in command at Central Command.
Deegan says he would be a great choice to succeed his boss, because the two men work so well together.
"Gen. Allen could be it," he says. "When Petraeus was nominated to (run U.S. Central Command) one of the first things he tells Secretary of Defense (Robert) Gates was that he wanted Allen to be his chief of staff."
It was no simple request, says Deegan. Allen had just been promoted by the Marines and Petraeus in essence swooped in and took him away from the Corps. That, says Deegan, is a clear indicator of the relationship the men enjoy.
The second name Deegan mentioned Gen. James N. Mattis is currently commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command.
Mattis had tremendous success as a ground commander in both Afghanistan and Iraq, says Deegan.
"He did a masterful job with the Marine brigade that went into Afghanistan," says Deegan. "In Iraq, as a division commander, his rapport with the troops was unbelievable. He was an upfront leader."
But the skills that made Mattis such a great field commander might not necessarily translate to running Central Command, says Deegan.
"Mattis is such a competent guy himself, the question is can he limit his strong personality and interests in tactical, operation and strategic thinking to stay out of Petraeus' hair?" says Deegan.
Columnist Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner, has found the enemy and he is us. During a recent episode of the Chris Matthews show, Tucker decided that because we are "addicted to petroleum" we are our own enemy just as much as communism was our enemy during the Cold War.
Tucker characterizes our "addiction" to oil as an "external threat" -- just like communism was -- and presents oil as an enemy that we should defeat. Tucker also makes excuses for Obama saying that it's "harder" for him to call on Americans to sacrifice because of this addiction.
Leave it to a member of the Old Media to construe capitalism, progress, a growing standard of living, and even our own fellow citizens to be as great an enemy as an antithetical foreign system that was sponsored by those that promised to destroy us. Leave it to a member of the Old Media to pinpoint our own system as the enemy.
But one wonders, if we take Tucker at her most hyperbolic word, wouldn't the solution be to increase oil and natural gas exploration on our own soil? If the enemy is oil from abroad, why aren't we looking for our own to supplement what we purchase abroad and, thereby, take some of the power away from foreign suppliers?
For that matter, why not enlarge our nuclear power capacity in this country if we want to alleviate the supposed over usage of oil? Even France is smart enough to rely heavily on nuclear power.
Tucker also makes the absurd claim that the BP oil spill is a result of our not listening to failed president Jimmy Carter back in the "malaise" days of the late 70s. Of course, it is rather childish to draw such a simple-minded conclusion. Accidents sometimes happen but we don't cease all activities because of accidents. We kept exploring space after the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, didn't we? Well, we did at least until Obama came to office and canceled nearly all our space exploration programs.
Tucker is too typical of the Old Media, though. They never see an enemy as evil as our own system, our own citizens, and history. No foreign threat is ever as bad as we the people to these folks.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/24/2010 00:00 ||
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#8
Another jet setting socialist lecturing Americans on their fuel usage. What next, one square of toilet paper per bathroom sitdowm? Rocks perhaps? But only one.
Posted by: ed ||
06/24/2010 12:25 Comments ||
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#9
Ever read about peasant revolts in Old Europe?
They were NASTY, real nasty.
Given what I've seen in the Uzbek neighborhood purges of late, they still are.
People like Tucker should consider that possibility long and hard before they push too far.
People in general don't like scolds, and people who have already tightened their belts don't like to be told how greedy and glutinous they are.
#10
people who have already tightened their belts don't like to be told how greedy and glutinous they are Just wait until people have no belts to tighten.
#11
That's when you get a length of rope and tighten another body part.
Posted by: ed ||
06/24/2010 13:17 Comments ||
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"Atlanta Journal Columnist Tucker Says USA is 'The Enemy'"
Then get out, bitch.
There are 194 other countries in the world - pick one and move there.
God, I hate Lefties. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2010 22:20 Comments ||
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#13
you oughtta see how Denny treats her at GrouchyOldCripple Cynthia is an affirnative-action Peter principle in action. She should've stayed at interviewing puppies
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2010 23:05 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
