June, 2010 archive
Spill Here, Spill Now, Pay Later . . . or Not at All (Updated) 1
Michael Tomasky reports, in the Guardian, that Exxon still hasn’t finished paying off claims from the Exxon Valdez. A nugget:
. . . O’Neill says that his clients are still awaiting their late installments, 21 years on.
Do you really want that to happen to the people of the gulf? The Republican Party functionally does. They wouldn’t say it that way, . . . .
Addendum:
Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
In fact, the parallels between the Gulf tragedy and Wall Street’s meltdown are manifold. The conditions that created one disaster created the other as well. In both cases, government regulators were declawed and seduced, greed-driven executives were freed to take big risks, industry hubris created a false sense of confidence and a disaster that we were assured could never happen did indeed happen.</blockquote>
Plus Ca Change 1
Down with Tyranny looks at the Know Nothings–the Teabaggers of their time.
Dialectic 2
Via DownWithTyranny, who points out the internal contradictions of Teabaggery, which amount to this: Teabaggers want the world fixed, but don’t want anyone actually to take action to fix it.
It is Magickal Thinking.
It’s their Catch 22, the Best Catch There Is.
I Flipped a David Brown Once 0
I was cutting grass along the highways for the state–funnest summer job I ever had. I hit a drainage ditch that was completely obscured by honeysuckle with the right front wheel and the tractor went over to the right. I hit the dirt and headed into the soybeans on my belly.
Didn’t know I could move so fast on my belly.
My buddy, who was on a Ford, wrapped a chain around the frame and pulled the tractor back upright.
We continued cutting grass.
Decades ago, a John Deere tractor flipped over on Silas Fralin.
At the time his son Franklin Fralin, now 73, was in his early teens and working the family’s farm in Union Hall.
“It broke him all up and a rib went through his lung,” Fralin recalled. “I had to stay there after that. Daddy didn’t have but one lung. He didn’t have much breath.”
The Fralins, like many other row-crop farmers in Franklin County, often relied on the smaller Farmall tractors manufactured by International Harvester.
And Franklin Fralin’s restored 1949 Farmall Cub was among the antique tractors displayed Saturday during the seventh annual Southwest Virginia Antique Farm Days at the Franklin County Recreation Park.
Comic Relief 1
Albert Hunt at Bloomberg rounds up two-party weirdness. The article is worth your while for a little perspective. A nugget:
Illinois gets honorable mention and Louisiana is included for historical perspective.
“The World’s Mine Oyster Tarball”
0
Because the oysters are in decreasing supply:
The piles of oysters shucked by Shores & Ruark Seafood in Urbanna have shrunk by as much as 60 percent. And L.D. Amory & Co., a seafood processor on the Hampton waterfront, trucked 35 bushels of oysters last week to a Chicago buyer that normally gets 50.
Seafood operations up and down the Virginia coast hook a large part of their business to the fishing industry in the Gulf. Many have suffered a drop in sales since the BP oil spill led to the shutdown of large fishing areas along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Much more at the link.
Tea Grounds 0
There is nothing new about teabaggers.
Teabagging is not a movement; it’s a publicity campaign. As a publicity campaign, it has succeeded: it’s attracted and distracted the media most skillfully.
As a movement, it is the same old elitist, corporatist, odiously-Southern-strategic right wing grounds dressed up in new flow-through bags.
From the Denver Post:
What they haven’t done is deliver more voters to the GOP ranks, which have instead dwindled a bit and left the much-hyped movement’s impact on the general election even less clear.
Never Apologize, Never Admit 0
From the oldie but moldy department, here is a history of BP’s involvement in turning Iran into an enemy of the West.
Short version: BP wanted the oil and, through the British government, using the spectre of Communism, convinced the United States to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Iran.
(In those days, you could say “Communist” to the United States and it would do whatever you asked, then sit on its hindquarters and beg for a doggie bone. Yeah, it was stupid. But there it was.)
BP has not an honorable history. It still breaths the breathe of empire and believes the myths of Kipling.
Most oil companies have skeletons in their closets.
BP has mausoleums in its closet.
So, if they were wiling to foment subversion and overthrow a government, why the heck should we expect them to care about a few dolphins, shrimp, and pelicans. Or fish. Or beaches. Or watermen. Or people. Or societies.
Tradition, baby. BP is all about tradition.
Image via ia Bart Blog.
QOTD 0
Mark Twain, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Actually, never had such thoughts about my father. He was a good father and a role model.
If I am half the man he was, I can be proud.
The President’s Weekly Address 0
Meanwhile, in Backwards World, the Republican Party of BP is trying to label BP’s wild well a “natural disaster.”
Let the Circular Be Unbroken 0
George Monbiot reviewed a book recently, pointing out that the central thesis of the author was completely false, his evidence questionable, and his reasoning circular (in fact, I think I might have linked the review, but I’m too lazy on a Saturday afternoon to check).
The author begged to differ.
In responding to the author’s dissent, Monbiot explains how the circular reasoning of right wing economics works and why it is successful:
(snip)
When, as I have found many times before, you explain an inconvenient truth about neoliberal or anti-environmental ideas, it is met with silence. The media simply looks the other way. There is a massive rightwing echo chamber. Nothing comparable exists on the left.
Driving While Brown 0
Head of Prince William County Board of Supervisors pushing racial profiling for Virginia
Spill Here, Spill Now, Falling Out Dept. 0
Family squabbles:
The company’s chairman and chief executive, Jim Hackett, said in a statement BP’s actions probably amounted to “gross negligence or wilful misconduct”.
BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward, who was grilled about the disaster by Congress for seven hours on Thursday, said he “strongly disagreed” with the allegation and expected the firm’s partners to “live up to their obligations”.
Loose Tea Bags (Updated) 1
The Richmonder does the unthinkable and actually considers historical facts:
Follow the link for the history.
Addendum, the Next Day
Per Cargosquid in the comments to this post, the discussion in the comments at the link is worth looking at.
Carlyfornication 0
Tom Levenson on walking and chewing gum at the same time.
QOTD 0
Paul McCartney, from the from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. I suddenly realized that anyone doing anything weird wasn’t weird at all and it was the people saying they were weird that were weird.
The Republican Party of BP 0
The scary thing is that they seem to have drunk their own Kool-Aid.
It’s not campaign rhetoric. It’s how they see the world.
Via The Richmonder.
Dustbiters 0
The FDIC seems to have waited till late in the evening to start gobbling banks:
