Deregulating the preferred length of my posts

This is just too good not to add here, even though it's longer than I generally like to put on here:


Time to Tap T.R.
And renew the progressive tradition.

by Jonathan Alter June 19, 2010

The BP spill is a failure not just of technology but ideology. That oil flows into the ocean from the deregulatory tide of the last 30 years. President Obama is right to compare the fiasco to 9/11. If he can frame the message more memorably than he did in his Oval Office address, Obama may yet use the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history to speed the transition to a green economy, just as George W. Bush used terrorism to refashion foreign policy. To do so, “deregulation”—once a Reaganite call to arms—must be transformed into an epithet. If the president can’t put the antigovernment, Tea Party types in their place now, when will he? The legacy of the American progressive tradition is on the line.
Regulating industry in the public interest began a century ago with Theodore Roosevelt. He was the last Republican president who argued strongly that government had to check the free market—or else it would kill people. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, and the raft of health and safety rules that came out of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, showed that regulation could save lives. In the New Deal and post-war period, regulations grew like Topsy. Some, like the creation in 1970 of the Environmental Protection Agency (the product of a Democratic Congress and the reluctant acquiescence of President Nixon), had a powerfully positive effect.
Regulating the economy, by contrast, often proved burdensome. Beginning with the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, consumers benefited from relaxed economic strictures. But then came the Reagan era, when regulatory agencies were stocked with industry lackeys. The pendulum began swinging too far. Clinton Democrats, bolstered by new campaign donations from business, caught deregulatory fever.
This proved disastrous. Clinton protected environmental and safety regulations, but went along with Sen. Phil Gramm’s idea to free financial institutions from meaningful oversight. By the Bush presidency, deregulation was out of control. Dick Cheney convened secret meetings on energy that handed regulation to industry. In 2002 I reported that, during his transition, Bush had assigned an old friend to interview candidates for chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A guy named Ken Lay, of Enron.
So BP’s oil spill, or something like it, was inevitable. Without regulators to insist on unprofitable safety measures, prevent corner cutting, and plan for emergencies, the odds of a disaster shot up. It wasn’t just that the Denver office of the Minerals Management Service gave “in bed with industry” new meaning. Supervision across the government was so lax that every oil company had identical, pathetic gulf cleanup plans, which included references to walruses and other arctic mammals not found in the Gulf of Mexico—and a contact number for a wildlife expert who died in 2005. Congress, long in the pocket of the oil and gas industry, capped liability at $75 million, which is a bar bill at the golf club for these gents. More than 100 GOP members of Congress belong to a committee that attacked Obama’s plan to make BP set up a $20 billion escrow fund.
Conservatives are again trotting out the idea—slam-dunked by history—that energy and environmental regulations kill jobs. If we’d listened to them in the ’70s, we would be living in a cesspool of pollution. And if we listen to them now, and stay addicted to fossil fuels, we’ll miss out on the clean-energy technologies that are already changing the world. On the ballot this fall, it’s the 19th century vs. the 21st.
If you think I’m exaggerating, listen to the Republicans. Glenn Beck believes progressivism is “a cancer” and we should go back to the Gilded Age’s unfettered capitalism. Rush Limbaugh and his Capitol Hill stooges still oppose more stringent regulation and won’t renounce their “Drill, baby, drill!” platform. When Obama said that hazardous deep-water drilling was the result of a scarcity of shallow-water oil, they blamed Democrats for preventing drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf. In fact, it’s states like California and Florida—the states whose prerogatives conservatives claim in principle to respect—that have been most obstructionist.
The president was right to forgo aggressive BP bashing until he had secured the liability fund. The key is to attack the idea of deregulation—and that pressing BP is a “shakedown,” as Rep. Joe Barton put it—without a broad-based assault on all business. Now is the time for Obama to renew some of the older progressive traditions that have helped make the country great—to agitate and regulate in what we must, once again, define boldly as the public interest.

Though I think of him as more of a hot dog

A new job opportunity for General McChrystal when he gets fired later today (pictured here -->):

Pittsburgh Pirate Pierogi Mascot fired for bashing team on Facebook page

Saturday, June 19th 2010, 1:22 PM

Baseball fans lamenting the Pittsburgh Pirates' failure to win a game now have a new loss to deal with after one of the team mascots got booted from his job. Andrew Kurtz, 24, was one of 18 men who take turns posing as pierogi and racing around the PNC Park after the fifth inning every match.

But team officials told him to turn in his black Spandex pants and shirt after posting unflattering comments about the Pirates on his Facebook page.

Can 0 - 0 ties and an offsides rule be far behind?

News Item:

Free Vuvuzelas Cost Marlins an Out

According to the Palm Beach Post, the promotional "vuvuzela" air horns the Florida Marlins gave away on Saturday evening may have been behind a ninth inning lineup snafu that cost the Marlins an out and got manager Fredi Gonzalez ejected. Brian Barden was called out for batting out of order in after the umpires mistakenly thought Gonzalez had told them Wes Helms would be pinch hitting. Umpire crew chief Tom Hallion later blamed the incident on the deafening noise from the vuvuzelas. Vuvuzelas are, of course, the air horn/trumpet contraptions that have been ubiquitous at this month's soccer World Cup in South Africa. Their stay in America is looking short lived.

Somehow this feels like an invasive species of flora or fauna being brought over to the USA or a species of animal with no natural predator that will only multiply and breed and spread unchecked. I have no problem with them in other countries, or maybe even just at soccer games even here in the USA, but baseball games? Please.

Reminds me of some of the hostels I stayed in in Europe

This is just too easy, I realize, but it needs to be said by someone.

After the USA gave up 2 goals in the first half against Slovenia, or was in Slovakia...or Serbia, maybe, the FIFA website excitedly announced that the "USA have not kept a clean sheet for 18 FIFA Group Matches in a row. The previous record was held by France." And further, "The last time the USA held a clean sheet was in 1950."

Whaddya mean we don't keep clean sheets - and who's checking them anyway? But wait, do we only keep dirty sheets? And is it because we just don't like to hold them? But really, since 1950? 60 years since we held a clean sheet or kept one? I have just way too many questions about all this.

And considering how rarely they bathe in France, well, I'm glad they at least keep clean sheets again.

Kinda like getting a Thrilling Tie for Fathers Day

Look, I love the World Cup as much as the next guy, well, as long as I'm in the USA and the next guy is actually from here, but there is something about this headline that sort of sums up the whole tournament:

U.S.A. battles back for thrilling tie!

I mean it was thrilling and all, coming back from 2-0, excuse me, 2-nil, but no offense to any of my 3 awesome and beautiful sisters, but if it's true that a tie is like kissing your sister, I just don't see how thrilling it can actually be.

Well, OK, either that or "Plastics", I'm not sure which now

If I were to give a graduation speech...or shall I say, WHEN I am someday asked to give a graduation speech, I will give one piece of advice to my rapt audience (and presumably "rapt" in this case may mean "hungover"). Well, actually, I'll probably be unable to stop myself at just one piece of advice, but my main focus, if they only hear me say one thing, the one thing, that if they use these two words as their guide in everything they do, the rest of their lives, in terms of their approach to their job, their studies, their friends, their loved ones, the simple jobs they do around the house, it's this simple suggestion:

Exceed Expectations.

Please, stop with all the good news!

May 20, 2010

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Inflation has essentially disappeared, and that gives the Federal Reserve more room to keep interest rates at record lows.

Consumer prices fell in April for the first time in more than a year. The figures released Wednesday were welcome news for people who qualify for loans and want to take on more debt. But low rates hurt savers, especially those on fixed incomes.

So let's stop with all the saving and get spending! (and by "let's" I mean you, not me.)