[PrestonSturges]

Reid has been free to ignore Angle as she literally runs from the press. But now he has an attack ad that ends "that's just crazy" and crazy is the word they will attach to her.

Everyone would like to be like Palin and play the victim, but that life boat is too small to carry the whole GOP.

[efarmer]

Angle seems to be the real article of a religious conservative. Like Bush and others they inevitably go to Washington to dismantle as much federal government as they possibly can in opposition to liberals who seek to grow it into something large enough to meet their objectives. But both views succumb to corporate money and they end up not growing or dismantling as much as crippling the federal government to help it live as a beggar on K street. Angle's approach works well to make an independent and local area that is self sufficient and liberals would do well to see if their approach could do the same, because the federal government is so rotten it will have to be rebuilt by something proven to work in a redundant local fashion again. Liberals have to figure out how to do the social part local and self sufficient without basing it on religion if they want something under the constitution.
Conservatives need to see if they can change the constitution to be religious so their logic works.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'R')eid ... has an attack ad that ends "that's just crazy" and crazy is the word they will attach to her.

[PrestonSturges]

Rand Paul flirts with this awkward religious/libertarian thing, but Angle seems to be committed to it. It's all about getting-government-off-the-backs-of-big-business-and-into-your-personal-life-and-bedroom.

Libertarianism has provided cover for a lot of things, but this crop is using it for religious based social engineering, micromanagement, and government intrusion like America has never seen. Their model seems to be Iran, which better than the Somolia model so many candidates favor this year I guess.

Was it Angle who was also pushing a very expensive Scientology based rehab program for the prisons?

[quadzillajim]

Yes she is or was infavor of giving scientology based spa treatments for inmates in state prisons. She also thinks that social security is like welfare and should be phased out.

[Plantagenet]

While its bad enough that President Obama didn't quickly take steps to plug the BP oil leak months ago by using conventional explosives or tactical nukes, consider the fact that there is no guarantee that the "relief wells" are going to work any better then the other remedies already attempted by BP....all of which have failed to stop the leak and some of which made it worse.

The BP well, if the high-end oil flow estimates of >100,000 bbl/day are correct, is one of the largest if not actually the single largest oil well in history. There is a huge amount of pressure---perhaps unprecedented pressures-- driving the flow. This means there is a real danger that the relief wells will also blow out, creating more huge leaks, and making things much worse.

If the relief well scheduled for August fails to plug the leak, or if it also blows out, then Obama's foolishness in ruling out plugging the hole by explosives will be even more apparent.

[Frank]

...and what guarantees are there that tactical nukes or conventional explosives can work? As far as I know no one around the GOM has experience with that sort of thing. Supposedly the Russians did years ago, but what do we know about that? What if explosives make things worse?

Do you really think Obama (or any president) makes decisions based on nothing but his gut? (oh, wait a minute... lol) - isn't it possible that the majority of advisers are recommending that we do exactly what we're doing???

[PrestonSturges]

Someone pointed out that with all the wellheads and pipelines on the floor of the gulf, a nuke is probably out of the question. There's many miles of plumbing on the ocean floor in that region.

[dissident]

What's the point of talking about the nuclear option without knowing the procedure? This endless talk about a surface detonation is just ridiculous. The Soviets drilled relief wells and used small tactical nukes to crush the original well bore deep underground. From what I have read on this subject the results depend on the rock formation. Apparently the Mocando well goes through a few thousand feet of sand, silt and clay before burrowing through shale rock. Clearly any surface detonation would be totally pointless and shale may not have the physical properties that would allow a detonation to plug the well, instead it could just produce a large crush zone through which the oil-gas will leak to the original well bore above.

Right now it looks like the relief wells with mud are the best option.

[efarmer]

The Soviets used nukes against natural gas wells on dry land 5 times and succeeded four times.
A runaway oil well has never been nuked, much less one under a mile of water.

What is worse than a runaway deep water oil well? One that emits radioactive petroleum from
cracks and fissures totally impossible to seal.

[PrestonSturges]

The Jones Act story is still getting pushed by the GOP and reported by the press

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-0 ... spill.html

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'T')he Jones Act story is still getting ... reported by the press

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-0 ... spill.html

[dinopello]

The exception 55113 in the Jones Act (most recent recodified in 2006 version) for foreign flagged oil spill response ships acting under the authority of the Federal On-Scene Coordinator does not seem to indicate any offshore distance limit to the response allowed.

[Plantagenet]

Its a classic "Catch-22" situation.

The Obama administration is in charge of assigning the response vessels, both foreign and domestic, what work to do and where to go. Yes the Obama people say---theres no problem with the Jones Act---the federal onscene coordinator has the authority to waive the "Jones Act" any time if any of the foreign vessels request to work along the beaches--- but gosh, whadya know, strangely enough those foreign vessels just haven't requested it. And of course, since the Obama administration is telling the foreign ships to work out at sea, there is no reason for them to request an exemption because the Obama administration isn't sending them close to shore to skim the oil coming into the beaches.

Catch-22.

Its not like the beaches and marshes and islands and bird sanctuaries and oyster beds are important enough to send those nasty foreign vessels close to shore there to skim oil and set boom and protect them anyway.

[Frank]

Well, I guess I'm confused. Deepwater is 48 miles from shore, not exactly a stone's throw away... From the same article:

' “There are a lot of foreign vessels operating offshore,” Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the government’s incident commander, told reporters on June 25. The Coast Guard would be happy to aid in requests for waivers, “but to date, since they’re operating outside 3 miles, no Jones Act waiver has been required.” '

'Twenty-four foreign vessels are already working in the Gulf, according to Clark Stevens, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, in a phone interview. Coast Guard Rear Admiral James A. Watson, the federal on-scene coordinator in the Gulf, has put in place a process to allow Jones Act exemptions if they prove necessary for foreign skimming vessels to operate within three miles of the coast, according to Stevens.'

...sounds to me that the folks "on the ground" so-to-speak know what they're doing and will do whatever is necessary to get the job done.

[PrestonSturges]

I don't expect every guy on the docks to know international law, and it seems like the people spreading this story are all GOP operatives.

Eventually in these situations, they will set up someone "official" to give the nonexistent "approvals," like for these GOP operatives who claim they "can't get" the probably nonexistent waivers.

It's like Ronald McDonald house setting up little collection boxes where people can collect pulltabs from soft drink cans. There's an urban legend that somehow they redeem pull tabs and through some alchemy they get kidneys and livers for little kids needing transplants. People kept spending $1 on postage to send them $.0005 worth of scrap aluminum. So now they set up little boxes so people can put in there pull tabs, which are then thrown away. But not to worry, nobody will say "Sorry Billy, you can't have that liver because you're 20 pull tabs light."

Notice that at the end of the article we get to what is probably the real motivation - abolishing the maritime labor unions. Because port security would be so much better if everyone there was temps.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'T')he Jones Act story is still getting ... reported by the press

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-0 ... spill.html

[PrestonSturges]

Well if Atlas Shrugs believes it
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Why isn't the President of the United States working on the problem 24/7? Why isn't the President of the United States accepting help from the myriad offers from allied nations?

Where is the BP war room? And why isn't the POTUS in it? We should not be subjected any more of his speechifying and verbal diarrhea until he orchestrates the solution to the gulf crisis.