I must admit, I don't understand this. What do US presidents, or for what it's worth, US governments, know about how to stop oil spills 5000 feet below the surface of the sea?
What reason is there to assume that BP is not trying the best it can to stop the spill, and to them being the best experts on the subject?
Also, hasn't the government called in a panel of independent experts already?
It's simple. When things are going well, everybody spends all their time calling government the problem, cutting funding, shredding regulations and defanging any government enforcement agencies.
Then when things go bad, everyone's pissed that the government isn't omnipotent.
You're forgetting that Obama and the Dems campaigned on "we're far more competent than Bush and the Repubs. If you elect us, sea levels will fall, [etc]."
It's sort of like the "huge financial firms aren't giving money to Obama, that money comes from their executives" argument. While true, you never hear it about money going to Repubs.
> So do you think the government should have done more to prevent this? Or that this isn't a big deal and that the private sector is handling it fine?
mu.
I don't think that the govt could have done more to prevent this without causing other, more significant problems.
It is a big deal. I think that the private sector is doing a better job of fixing the leak than govt would have.
I note that govt had reasonable plans for dealing with the effects of leaks yet didn't bother. (For example, burning, which should have been started on day 1 and would have helped significantly, was pre-cleared in the 1990s for exactly that reason. Note that it never happened in any meaningful way.) It's unclear why I should blame the private sector for that.
Well, fair enough. It does actually sound like most people involved are doing their best job, except for the safety inspectors who let the thing get built that way in the first place.
I like this quote because it is true as well. It is easy to point to finger.
"But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well."
> It does actually sound like most people involved are doing their best job, except for the safety inspectors who let the thing get built that way in the first place.
Not at all. The cleanup and reaction people failed horribly, and most of them were in govt.
Big Oil gives to the Democrats. I wonder why? I read somewhere that Obama has been the biggest recipient of Big Oil monies as a politician in the last 25 years. Again, I wonder why?
Obama has quite loudly proclaimed that he wants to take our economy off of oil dependence and onto renewables. He says this multiple times every week. If Big Oil has bought and paid for him, they've done a horrible job of it.
FYI: "I wonder why?" is terrible form. Make a statement and defend it with facts. You're not even arguing anything, just trying to insinuate things that are quite clearly contradicted by the man's repeated public statements.
> Obama has quite loudly proclaimed that he wants to take our economy off of oil dependence and onto renewables. He says this multiple times every week.
He says similar things about "big finance" but his actions are different.
I'm frustrated too although we did have attempts at financial reform and at cap and trade in the House and Senate. I don't think Obama's the principle person holding them up -- and yes, they're flawed proposals. But he's trying to do something.
Just curious, do you see oil dependence as a problem too?
> Just curious, do you see oil dependence as a problem too?
Which "oil dependence" problem? The US dependence on imported oil or the developed world's dependence on oil?
I don't see imported oil as a huge problem. It's actually a much bigger problem for other countries.
The US is still a huge oil producing country - it just uses more than it produces. It gets the vast majority of its imports from Canada and Mexico, with a significant fraction from South America. If the Middle East went south, the US could survive by blocking exports from this hemisphere.
As to the world's dependence, I don't see it as a huge problem either. It's also a choice - we could have more nuclear power.
I think "oil dependence" is a hard problem to solve because it is hugely political on both sides of the aisle. Dependence on anything is generally bad. However, a "viable" alternative has to be found as well, which I am sure is hugely political as well.
Sorry about the "I wonder" above...was just being snarky.
For bonus points, it's usually the same people who were loudest about shredding regulations and disempowering government in the first place.
Related examples include the NIMBY a-holes who lobby against cell phone towers in their town while having a family plan, and of course people who insist on tax cuts while demanding better services.
Basically, if your profile picture were private, it would be hard for someone (who is your friend/acquaintance in real life) who isn't friends with you (on Facebook) already to find you on the site.
The most effective argument is that it is a "Gateway Drug". There is no proof that weed makes people use crack or heroin but it is a good way to scare the public.
Marijuana is a gateway drug to other illegal drugs because it itself is illegal. In order to get marijuana you need to go see a guy that is ALSO selling other drugs (the kind that are actually dangerous).
Legal marijuana makes it so that people don't start using more dangerous drugs on a whim. They are no longer presented with an easy opportunity.
If pot is on the same level as alcohol which do you think is more of a gateway drug? One that makes you introverted and cautious or one that makes you more confident while simultaneously impairing your judgement?
It's also a 'gateway drug' in that you don't go crazy and commit mass-murder when you try it the first time, so you start to disbelieve all of the anti-drug propaganda and maybe decide that 'they' were lying about the harder drugs too.
In the article they explain it is more like wine than a standard commodity. After legalization you will end up with everything from cheap mass produced quality up to artisan award winning products with a wide range of prices.
At the rate facebook is currently going, in a couple years all data on facebook will be world-readable. At that point it should be easy for anyone to download their facebook to another site. One could then clone facebook, and at an agreed-upon date, everyone could move over to the new site.
I say this only half in jest. One can't get 400 million + people to move, but niche sites could certainly peel off a substantial number of users over time. And facebook itself started out as a niche social netorking site...
I can't see that being easy. Since most of a social network is your relationships with other users, and those users may or may not exist on other sites (or may have duplicate people with the same name, etc), it seems like it would be quite a difficult problem. You'd also have to somehow convince one or more major providers to use it, but I don't see that being easy either.
That said, it would be a very useful thing to have if someone could get it right.
Interesting, However I trust my wife way more than I trust a 'company' that may or may not get bought by someone that wants to reinterpret my pre-nup to determine if it is iron clad enough to invalidate their right to half my stuff
They controlled for IQ, but they didn't control for desire. Some people want to make good grades for pride, to impress their parents, etc.. Others would rather do something other than the busy work required to be in the 94th percentile as shown in the graph. There is no difference between getting As and Bs in 8th grade. Colleges mainly look at grades in 9-12.
"Into thin Air" showed how easy it can be if everything goes well. He talks about people who were out of shape making it. But if one or two things go wrong, you're dead.
