Berman Post |
- Steele (R) - 'Obama Pursued Afghan War Trying to be Cute' And 'we Should Not be Fighting a Land War in Afghanistan'
- Federal Government Blocking State BP Oil Spill Mitigation Efforts
- BP Oil Spill Disaster an Avertible Catastrophe
- Unemployment Drops to 9.5% as 650k+ Workers Remove Themselves From The Labor Force
- Obama's 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform' Speech
- Part Two of Christian Adams (DOJ Attorney) Interview Regarding Black Panther Voter Intimidation Case
- Knicks to LeBron - 'How Does $1 Billion Sound'
| Posted: 02 Jul 2010 02:45 PM PDT RNC chair Steele stepped in it big time with a rather incoherent statement ... again. Any chance this time it will actually result in anything? Video embedded below. "Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was caught on video at a fundraiser in Connecticut on Thursday raising doubts about the war in Afghanistan. ... "Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in," he said. "But it was the president who was trying to be cute by half by building a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?"" 
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| Federal Government Blocking State BP Oil Spill Mitigation Efforts Posted: 02 Jul 2010 02:30 PM PDT If it was part of some general coherent federal plan to protect the country that would be one thing. It is not... http://www.vote.com/mmp_printerfriendly.php?id=2092 (via) "According to state disaster relief officials, Alabama conceived a plan -- early on -- to erect huge booms offshore to shield the approximately 200 miles of the state's coastline from oil. Rather than install the relatively light and shallow booms in use elsewhere, the state (with assistance from the Coast Guard) canvassed the world and located enough huge, heavy booms -- some weighing tons and seven meters high -- to guard their coast. But...no sooner were the booms in place than the Coast Guard, perhaps under pressure from the public comments of James Carville, uprooted them and moved them to guard the Louisiana coastline instead. So Alabama decided on a backup plan. It would buy snare booms to catch the oil as it began to wash up on the beaches. But...the Fish and Wildlife Administration vetoed the plan, saying it would endanger sea turtles that nest on the beaches. So Alabama -- ever resourceful -- decided to hire 400 workers to patrol the beaches in person, scooping up oil that had washed ashore. But...OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) refused to allow them to work more than 20 minutes out of every hour and required an hourlong break after 40 minutes of work, so the cleanup proceeded at a very slow pace." 
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| BP Oil Spill Disaster an Avertible Catastrophe Posted: 02 Jul 2010 02:20 PM PDT Perhaps the most heart wrenching aspect of the BP oil spill disaster is that it did not have to be. This spill may have been 'destined' to dump more water into the ocean then any other spill we have ever had, but the damage could easily have been mitigated much more effectively. It is almost as if we have been trying to make the damage worse. http://www.financialpost.com/Avertible+catastrophe/3203808/story.html (via) "In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts. Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico. When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy." The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained. A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance." 
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| Unemployment Drops to 9.5% as 650k+ Workers Remove Themselves From The Labor Force Posted: 02 Jul 2010 02:09 PM PDT The unemployment rate dropped .2% to 9.5%. Unfortunately, the drop has much less to do with job creation than with the way the number is calculated. Around 83k jobs were created last month. That is less job creation then is needed to accommodate for population growth. The reason the unemployment number went down is because 652k people stopped looking for work and consequently were no longer counted as unemployed. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jobs-report-20100703,0,3397439.story "Private employers added a smaller-than-expected 83,000 jobs in June, but the unemployment rate edged down to 9.5% as many workers dropped out of a labor market that remains very sluggish. The Labor Department reported Friday that total payroll employment, including government workers, was down 125,000 in June, reflecting the loss of 225,000 census workers who finished their assignments. ... Although the jobless rate in June fell from 9.7% in May, that reflected a big drop of 652,000 people in the labor force over the month. The labor force is made up of workers and those actively looking for jobs. With the economic recovery weakening and many employers reluctant to hire, many more unemployed people may have quit looking for work, which would push down the jobless rate. In fact, the percentage of the overall working-age population that is in the labor force fell last month to 64.7% -- near a 25-year low." To put this in the contexts of the last year; after rising to %9.5, 'fake' falling to %9.4, rising to %9.7, and then rising again to 9.8%, and rising again to 10.2%, dropping to 10%, held steady, dropping to 9.7%, held steady, held steady again, increased to 9.9%, dropped to 9.7%, and has now fallen to 9.5%. 
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| Obama's 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform' Speech Posted: 01 Jul 2010 09:01 PM PDT Video embedded below. (Transcript) One sort of irking misquote right at the end of his speech; it is "yearning to breath free", not "yearning to be free". Here is a word cloud (made using Wordle.net) of the speech. Picture embedded below.  
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| Part Two of Christian Adams (DOJ Attorney) Interview Regarding Black Panther Voter Intimidation Case Posted: 01 Jul 2010 08:21 PM PDT Watch part one first if you have not already seen it. Video embedded below. Past related posts: Berman Post: Black Panthers Intimidating Voters in Pennsylvania? Berman Post: Voter Intimidation Complaint Against Night Stick Wielding Black Panther Members Dismissed Berman Post: Black Panther Who Intimidated Voters in Philadelphia Was/Is a Credentialed Poll Watcher For The Democrats Berman Post: Inquiry Opened Into Dismissal of Black Panther Case Berman Post: Obama's Justice Department Went to Bat For The Black Panther Then Covered it up Berman Post: Christian Adams (DOJ Attorney) Resigns Over Dismissal of Black Panthers Voter Intimidation Case 
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| Knicks to LeBron - 'How Does $1 Billion Sound' Posted: 01 Jul 2010 07:28 PM PDT A bunch of Democratic big wigs singing for you is good, but is it Billion Dollar good? If LeBron signs with the NY Knicks he could make as much as $2 billion. http://blogs.forbes.com/sportsmoney/2010/07/lebron-james-what-the-knicks-told-lebron-new-york-and-make-billion-dollars "The Knicks just finished pitching LeBron James. Their main selling point: You could make a billion dollars playing in New York. You can't earn anything close to that anywhere else. To make the case, they commissioned a study from marketing consultant Interbrand ... that says LeBron could earn close to $1 billion over his lifetime in salary and endorsements if he makes Madison Square Garden his permanent home--their high-end estimate sees him earning as much as $2 billion. That outshines the estimated $700 million he'd likely earn in Cleveland, the $690 million in Chicago, and $600 million in Miami. It's a crafty attack that goes right after their rivals' best case for nabbing LeBron: that his brand is so internationally recognizable, where he plays has little influence on his overall earnings. In fact, the same study claims that any generic free agent could see his lifetime earnings jump 30% by signing with the Knicks." 
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