swimming freestyle

Potentially biased judge refuses Administration's request to stay drilling ban

The federal judge in Louisiana who recently lifted the government's moratorium on deepwater oil drilling refused the Obama Administration's request to stay the ruling until an appeals court could rule on the decision.

In an emergency hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman denied the government's motion to stay pending appeal "for the same reasons given in [the] Court's June 22, 2010 order granting the plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction."

The six-month ban had halted all drilling in more than 500 feet of water and prevented new permits from being issued. (Link)

As it turns out, Judge Feldman has a potential conflict of interest:

The federal judge who lifted Obama's six-month drilling moratorium had interests in Transocean and a number of other offshore energy companies, according to financial disclosure forms from 2008.

Martin Feldman, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, held energy stocks in Transocean and Halliburton, as well as two of BP's largest U.S. private shareholders -- BlackRock and JP Morgan Chase. The law Feldman overturned would have halted the approval of any new permits and suspended deepwater drilling at 33 existing exploratory wells in the Gulf, four of which are BP rigs.

Judge Feldman, strangely, didn't feel those investments warranted recusing himself from the case, while plenty of his peers in the Gulf Coast have felt otherwise.

Seven of the 12 federal judges of the Eastern District of Louisiana already have cited potential conflicts of interest in bowing out of cases brought by fishermen, charter operators, tourist services and families of those killed in the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. (Link)

The near-term Obama Administration strategy is to issue a new moratorium and wait for the inevitable challenge.  That will give the Administration enough time to appeal Judge Feldman's decision.

Fake Clint Webb for fake Senate

A very funny (or, maybe not) spoof of campaign advertising.  

(h/t Reason)

McChrystal gets the boot

MSNBC is reporting Gen. Stanley McChrystal will be relieved of his command of the Afghanistan theater following the publication of his remarks criticizing his civilian command.

Summoned to Washington to explain himself, McChrystal arrived from Kabul in the early morning and met first at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. After his next face-to-face, with Obama, the general was not seen returning to the White House for a scheduled Afghanistan strategy session, as had been expected. It was not known where he went, as he did not appear at his Pentagon office, either.  (Link)

CNN has a headline that Gen. David Petraeus will assume command of the Afghanistan forces, replacing McChrystal.

Rep. Joe Barton just can't leave well enough alone

Two stories about Rep. Joe Barton today:

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) will retain his top spot on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to GOP lawmakers.

Barton, who came under fire after apologizing to BP CEO Tony Hayward at a hearing last week for the way the government had treated the oil company, will stay on as ranking member of the committee, which oversees oil and gas regulation, among other areas. 

Barton gave a "heartfelt apology" to members of the GOP conference on Wednesday morning, according to one of his toughest critics, Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.). 

Bonner told The Hill that Barton's apology was the "end of that."  (Link)

Just hours later (via Dave Weigel)

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) has cheekily responded to criticism over his "apology to BP" by tweeting a link to an American Spectator article titled "Joe Barton was right."

The tweet has now been removed and Barton representatives claim they were only linking to a Peter Hannaford article defending Barton's original apology to BP.

It seems Rep. Barton or his staff aren't interested in having Barton's "heartfelt apology" to the GOP conference being the "end of that".

McChrystal has submitted his resignation

Time Magazine is reporting Gen. Stanley McChrystal, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, submitted his resignation this afternoon following the publication by Rolling Stone of comments made by the general and his aides mocking top civilian commanders.

McChrystal was summoned back to Washington when the Rolling Stone story became known and is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Defense Secretary Gates and President Obama.

In the magazine article, General McChrystal or his aides spoke derisively of Vice President Biden, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, National Security Adviser General James L. Jones, Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, an unnamed minister in the French government, and even Mr. Obama himself. But in many ways, his comments expose similar remarks others inside the group have made about each other over the past year.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates released a statement criticizing General McChrystal for "a significant mistake" and "poor judgment in this case," while Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was described by a senior aide as "deeply disappointed" in the article and the comments it contained. (Link)

The president could, obviously, choose to not accept McChrystal's resignation, but McChrystal has put the president in a serious bind, both politically and militarily.  The Afghanistan strategy is, to a great extent, built around McChrystal's recommendations and command.  Firing McChrystal would force that strategy to be reconsidered at a time when the president has plenty of other irons in the fire.

In terms of politics, this is a no-win situation for the president.  Firing McChrystal will drive the GOP crazy and they'll sputter endlessly that McChrystal was just speaking inconvenient truths.  Not firing McChrystal will feed Republican charges that Mr. Obama is weak and intimidated by the military's top brass.

This doesn't seem that difficult and Stanley McChrystal understands what needs to be done.  Generals just don't diss their civilian commanders, whether they agree or not with their policies.  The general's comments were immature and reckless - not the kind of thing you would expect from a decorated and respected general, and not the kind of behavior a president would want from the general who's charged with managing a war theater.

Looks like we'll know tomorrow Gen. McChrystal's fate.

Rudy Giuliani has the 'Morning Joe' team fooled

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

George Bush famously had trouble with that one.  It seems the folks at "Morning Joe" do too. 

MSNBC's Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski accused former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of coming on the show last week to "vomit out complete, baseless lies."

Appearing on the show last Thursday, Giuliani claimed that the Obama administration had not talked with oil industry experts about how to stop the leaking well.

But Brzezinski said Monday the former New York mayor did not have his facts straight and initially left the hosts "stunned."

"I'm glad there’s someone on the set who is actually asking questions when people come and vomit out complete and baseless lies on our set," Brzezinski said of herself. "I’m sorry but that was so over the top, and we sat there like stunned in silence because it was so untrue because we could not believe it."  (Link)

Oh, really?  Couldn't believe that Rudy Giuliani would come on, spew GOP talking points and talk out his ass?  Maybe if they just paid a bit of attention...

Just six months ago, Giuliani appeared as a terrorism expert on "Good Morning America" and, with a straight face, tried to claim there hadn't been any terrorist attacks on the U.S. during the Bush Administration's tenure.   

Giuliani is, mysteriously, regarded by the media as something of an expert on terrorism issues.  In his GMA appearance, Giuliani was either lying or ignorant of the facts yet gets invited back to shows like "Morning Joe" on a regular basis to talk about subjects he knows even less about, including deep sea oil exploration and fixing mile deep oil wells.

The "Morning Joe" team may feel they've been duped, embarrassed by Rudy Giuliani's line of bullshit that's routinely unbounded by fact.  Gosh, what a surprise.

In order to have an opportunity cost, there needs to be an opportunity

Opportunity costs are those things that don't get done because one's too busy doing something else.  A friend recently sent me an editorial from an Arizona newspaper that expresses concern China will be, sometime soon, eating our lunch.

In the nine years since we invaded Afghanistan, China has gone from a second-rate manufacturer of cheap goods to the most significant economic power in the world. While the rest of the industrial world spent the past two years in recession, China’s economy expanded by 5 percent. 

While we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on bullets, armored vehicles and prosthetic limbs, China has invested hundreds of billions in its energy grid, its cellular and Internet networks, its roads and its ports. The most modern industrial economy in the world is now in China (it used to be Japan, but they’re in worse shape than we are, these days).

The author includes a list of examples of China's bare knuckled moves to guarantee the supply of needed minerals and building materials necessary for the continued building of Chinese infrastructure.

We need to ask ourselves why we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on our military every year so Chinese communist industrialists can safely travel the globe securing the resources it needs to become the greatest economic power on the planet?

I agree with the premise.  Our government is being managed in a 1950's mentality that equates military strength as the only determinant of world power.  Sixty years later, we can pretty clearly see a world in which very significant world powers can assert themselves without invading countries and having the most nuclear warheads.

However, I don't agree with the notion that if the U.S. wasn't dumping money hand over fist in Afghanistan and on "bullets, armored vehicles and prosthetic limbs" we would be spending it, instead, on our energy grid, our cellular and internet networks and our ports.  My guess is that, if we weren't spending all that dough on the military, there would be an irresistible push from Congress to just provide greater and greater tax breaks.  

If China ever does kick our ass, it will be because we let them.

Sarah Palin's solution for the BP oil spill

Last week I posted a video of Bill O'Reilly quizzing Sarah Palin on how she would handle the BP oil crisis if she were president (jeez, a chill just went down my spine).   Here's the video again:

Palin kinda hesitates when O'Reilly asks if she knows how to fix the leaking oil well and goes on to criticize the Obama Administration for failing to listen to experts and entrepreneurs.

As it turns out, Palin does have her suggestion for how she would handle it if she were president.  She tweeted it yesterday:

There should be some kind of federal mandate that requires all Americans to set aside a couple minutes a day to thank God that Sarah Palin wasn't elected into a position of power in the United States.

BP $20B escrow account vs. the 'rule of law'

Yesterday, conservative columnist George Will appeared on "This Week" and fretted about the $20B escrow account set up by BP to compensate those effected by the (BP caused) Gulf oil spill.  Full transcript is here.  Mr. Will's comment:

"Look, there is no defense of BP which has an execrable safety record in this country, from the refinery disaster in Texas in '05, the Morris Slope leak in '06, all of that and so no apology from BP. But if you don't want to live in a Northern Hemisphere Venezuela, you ought to be a little queasy about the fact that a president, any president of any party, using raw political power, without recourse to courts that exist for this sort of thing, under laws, with due process, essentially confiscates $20 billion from a publicly held corporation, about half of its shares held by Americans, to be dispensed, again, with out judicial supervision, as the political branch sees fit. That is worrisome."

Rep. Joe Barton's charge that the escrow account amounted to a "shakedown" failed miserably.  This new GOP offensive - that this escrow account disregards "the rule of law" - is the charge du jour against the Obama Administration's handling of the Gulf oil spill.

Since the Exxon Valdez spill seems to be the precedent by which oil spills are now measured, maybe there's some value in looking how that worked out in terms of compensating those who were most effected by that spill.

Keep in mind the Valdez accident occurred in March, 1989.

The fight over the punitive damages reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999. Since then, Exxon filed more than 60 petitions and appeals, sought 23 time extensions and filed more than 1,000 motions, briefs, requests and demands. The company requested a reduction in the damages amount, a reversal of the verdict and a new trial, claiming jury misconduct and jury tampering, according to Rodgers.

More than 3,000 claimants died waiting for an outcome in the case. (Link)

The first trial ended five years after the accident and ordered Exxon to pay $5B in damages to fisherman, Alaska natives, local businesses and others.  A federal appeals court later reduced those damages to $2.5B and In 2008, nineteen years after the accident, the Supreme Court reduced Exxon's punitive damages to $507M.

The GOP's new concern for the rule of law, after years of not giving a shit about the rule of law, is good news.  But the court's track record for being an expeditious way to address litigant's financial claims, at least based on the Exxon Valdez case, is pretty lousy. 

I seriously doubt there are a whole lot of Gulf fisherman, hotel workers and local businesses who are concerned, like George Will, about circumventing a judicial system that takes nineteen years to provides damages to folks who need the money immediately. 

Rep. Joe Barton's in trouble. But what about all the others that agree with him?

Rep. Joe Barton committed a cardinal sin for politicians yesterday; he said what he really thought.  Barton, during opening statements before BP's Tony Hayward testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, apologized to BP for the Obama Administration's audacity at demanding BP put into escrow $20B to take care of all the anticipated claims sure to come from the oil company's negligence in the Gulf. 

Most folks, and certainly most career politicians have enough sense to self-censor.  Those that can't usually realize when they've said something really, really stupid and clumsily try to recover - "I didn't mean that", "I misspoke" or, more commonly, "You misinterpreted what I said".

Barton apparently falls into the even smaller group that's so out of touch with the mainstream they have no idea when they say something stupid, offensive and grossly tone deaf.  He may end up paying for it.  

Two House Republicans, Reps. Jo Bonner and Jeff Miller, have called for Barton to step down as ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. From Bonner's statement:

I believe the damage of his comments are beyond repair and, as such, I am today calling on Joe to do the right thing for our conference and immediately step aside as Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee," 

Barton may well wind up the GOP's sacrificial lamb here.  But as he gets slaughtered, the question remains as to how many more Republican politicians think exactly as Barton does - that BP's fortunes are way more important than Gulf coast residents - but have the good sense not to say it out loud on national television.

Andrew Sullivan posted a compilation video of conservative pundits defending Barton's position. 

Granted, these guys get paid to say provocative things.  But it's a reasonable bet that, if these influential conservative pundits all think providing for Americans whose lives are now fucked as a result of BP's negligence amounts to a "shakedown" (classic use of a word to label the president as some kind of inner city  gangster), there are a big bunch of Republican representatives and senators that think exactly the same.