President Obama's Gulf drilling moratorium has driven away its first oil rig.

And the Ocean Endeavor's exodus probably won't be the last, according to oil industry officials and Gulf Coast leaders who warn that other companies eager to find work for the now-idled rigs are considering moving them outside the U.S.

Devon Energy Corp. had been leasing the Endeavor to drill in the same region of the Gulf as BP's leaking Macondo well, which has been gushing crude since a lethal blowout April 20.

But Diamond announced Friday it will lease the rig through June 30, 2011, to Cairo-based Burullus Gas Co., which plans to send the Endeavor to Egyptian waters immediately.

Larry Dickerson, CEO of Houston-based Diamond, signaled that other of his company's rigs could be relocated, too.

The Gulf economy won big when the district court knocked down Obama's drilling ban as "arbitrary and capricious" and won again at the Fifth Circuit, which refused to keep the ban in effect during the appeal. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration keeps signaling that it won't allow drilling no matter what the courts say. On the day the Fifth Circuit ruled against, the Administration announced that if any company attempted to resume drilling it would reissue its drilling moratorium, forcing the issue back to the courts again.

That is the very definition of "arbitrary and capricious" government action, but the uncertainty it creates is more than enough to depress economic activity in the Gulf.

"There are two types of rigs in the deep-water Gulf today: those that are leaving the country and those that want to, because with this moratorium hanging over their heads, they simply can't go back to work," Brady said. "I'm afraid this is the first of many rigs and many American jobs to leave the Gulf."

Yup.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:07 AM | Comments (177)
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OK, we all know that Islam has some "interesting" ideas about how to live your life.

If a woman is raped, but she cannot find not one, but two MALE witnesses willing to testify that she was raped, she will be found guilty of adultery and stoned to death.

If your daughter is too friendly with a Christian or Hindu young man, religious leaders not only allow you to kill her, but they ENCOURAGE the murder.

If you compare two Muslim men; one is a civil engineer who works his ass off to bring people into the 20th century with indoor plumbing, adequate roads and properly treated drinking water, and the other is some moke who straps Semtex to his body and blows up spectacularly on a bus full of Jews...........the splodeydope is the one who is celebrated and will (supposedly) be rewarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife.

All that being said, today's news makes me think that Islam isn't COMPLETELY crazy. Thanks to the United Arab Emirates, we now have a Fatwa (Fatwa #11625 if you're keeping score at home) against..........vuvuzelas.

Maybe they're right.......we're not that different after all?

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 06:25 AM | Comments (94)
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My own waiting-to-be-read stack of books is grab-bag of fiction and non-fiction at the moment. And the stack grows apace: even though I have a Kindle and carry it with me just about everywhere I go, I don't have as much time as I'd like to just dig in and read.

On the fiction side, I've got Justin Cronin's The Passage, which was recommended to me as a book very much in the mold of The Stand, only with Vampires. We shall see. In this post-Twilight world, I look upon vampire novels with a very gimlet eye.

I've also got Colleen McCullough's series of novels set at the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Empire. There are four very big books: The First Man In Rome, Grass Crown, Fortune's Favorites, and Caesar's Women. I have been told that these are more historical novels than bodice-rippers set in the Roman age, but again, we'll see. I was a big fan of Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire, so I'm going to give these a shot. It'll take me a year to read them all in any case -- they are doorstops of books.

On the non-fiction side, I've picked up a used copy of Chester C. Hearn's Rebels and Yankees: Naval Battles of the Civil War. I've also got Andrew Foote: Civil War Admiral on Western Waters by Spencer C. Tucker, and I picked up a copy of Lincoln's Admiral: The Civil War Campaigns of David Farragut. Admiral Farragut, you may remember, uttered the famous "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" in the battle of Mobile Bay. (Though he didn't say those exact words.)

The naval campaigns of the US Civil War are almost unknown to modern Americans, which is a shame. There was the riverine war, which was waged on the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Red, and hundreds of smaller rivers; and there was the oceanic war, of which most only know the tale of the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac. The oceanic campaigns encompassed not just blockades (and blockade-running by the South), and sieges of land-based forts, but also privateering and battles on the high seas in every ocean. For interested Morons who don't know much about this side of the Civil War, I recommend picking up some material -- it's a fascinating part of the Civil War. America went from having a fairly tradition-bound Navy at the start of the war to having the best Navy in the world at the end of it (and revolutionized the entire concept of the warship in the bargain). Wooden ships were doomed after the American Civil War. (And let us not re-fight the Civil War in the comment thread, okay? This is a thread to discuss books and reading, not to wage internecine warfare. We have the ONT for that.)

Like I said, I have so many books underway and on my "to read" stack that it'll probably be a year or more before I get through them all. What are you all reading?

Posted by: Monty at 04:17 AM | Comments (188)
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Hey how about some grammar on Caturday...

Interjections

Pronunciation: \ˌint-ər-ˈjek-shən\
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1 a : the act of uttering exclamations : ejaculation b : the act of putting in between : interposition
2 : an ejaculatory utterance usually lacking grammatical connection: as a : a word or phrase used in exclamation (as Heavens! Dear me!) b : a cry or inarticulate utterance (as Alas! ouch! phooey! ugh!) expressing an emotion
3 : something that is interjected or that interrupts

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:47 PM | Comments (851)
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The guy? Well, the New Black Panthers as an organization were named as defendants, and this guy's the head of the Black KKK, so yeah, this guy too.

Can't wait until the MFM gives this big play. Giggle.

Here's the Grand Cyclops admitting the guilt of his organization, apparently directed from the top:

Here he gives a shout-out to his buddies Barack Obama and Eric Holder.

And here's something: The New Black Panthers won't be the only lefty groups at Glen Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial. The left is trying to create an Anti-Tea Party, yet again.

In an effort to replicate the tea party's success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement's political energy and influence. They promise to "counter the tea party narrative" and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering.

And speaking of the Tea Party, the Hill asked me to do a dueling-essays thing with a liberal blogger about Lindsey Graham's prediction that the Tea Party would die. I can't say what I wrote is interesting -- I sort of wanted to talk about preference cascades, but ran out of space and also realized I was being pedantic about things -- but here's how that went if you're interested.

The best thing I can say about that effort is that the pixels managed to stick to the screen, and that's it.

Oh, by the way, if you're wondering why I didn't rebut Liberal Dude's a-u-t-o-matic cry of "racism" and "John Birch Society," it's because I never saw his take on things until ten minutes ago. We just wrote separately and uninformed of the other's efforts.

Since I didn't finish mine (or, actually, abandon mine: As they say, writing is never finished, it is merely abandoned) until 10:33 last night, that's not The Hill's fault or anything. It's just how it's set up.

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (548)
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My description of him as a "shameless, dishonest, hack" still fits (as if there was any doubt).

Thursday, Keith went after Sharon Angle for comparing herself to Abe Lincoln. She said Lincoln lost 'quite a few elections' but won the "one that mattered for the country". Olbermann then 'corrected' Angle by saying Lincoln only lost 1 election. He specifically used the word "election" twice.

Last night he changed it to "popular election" when it came to Lincoln's two bids for the US Senate.

As the American Spectator, who did the original legwork on this, notes, Lincoln himself knew he lost the 1854 Senate election. Lincoln wrote,

"I regret my defeat moderately, but I am not nervous about it."

Perhaps Keith would like to have a word with Mr. Lincoln about this inaccurate description of what happened.

Olby claims the 1858 Senate race doesn't count because "neither Stephen Douglas, nor Lincoln appeared" on the ballot.

Okey dokey Keith. Let's see how that theory holds up.

An article in the September 2008 issue of the Smithsonian on Lincoln by author Fergus Bordewich includes this line:

But while Lincoln may have won the debates, he lost the election.

"Lost the election"? Sir, have you no decency?

Or this from the Illinois state commission on the Lincoln Bicentenary Commission.

Douglas won the election, but the contest raised the profile of the tall prairie lawyer.

So, if Douglas "won the election" I think we can safely infer that Lincoln lost it.

As for Lincoln's failure to get nominations, of course they count. If they don't count, then Sharon Angle has apparently never lost an election. She was in the State Assembly for 6 years before leaving to run for the Republican nomination for a House seat but lost.

As Daniel Foster noted at NRO (and major congratulations for the Worst Person in the World win), if only direct elections count, then no one has ever been elected President of the United States, since people only vote for electors not individual candidates.

Funny but Olby gives Lincoln credit for winning the Presidency in 1860 and 1864 even though it wasn't a "popular election".

In short, it's nothing we didn't already know, Olby is a buffoon.

Of course all these pointless super tight fact-checking efforts by Olbermann miss the larger issue...Angle was making a simple point, sometimes we don't always get what we want, it's how we deal with setbacks that matters. Do you stay down or get back up and get on with life?

A small minded lout like Olbermann is forever missing the bigger point in the hopes that he can appear to be smarter than he is by latching on to some perceived misstatement. Usually they wind up doing exactly what Olby did here...confirming their status as a weak minded public joke.

Professor Bathtub Says......

Thanks to Slublog.

If you want to see what stupidity looks like, watch the video below and behold the wonder that is the dishonest, shameless, hack that is Keith Olbermann. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 10:16 AM | Comments (78)
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I had an idea to try this for a while. We pick a movie, watch it, I review it in a lead post, but the review only really is a jumping off point for group discussion.

With so many people on Netflix it's pretty easy.

steve_in_hb just recommended to me "Overnight," a 2003 documentary about the guy who wrote Boondock Saints.

I've never seen the movie (I've heard it's kinda awful, though for some reason it has a cult following), but I was interested by steve's plot summary:

1. Boston tough-guy bartender/bouncer is plucked out of obscurity and given a million-dollar deal for his script (and his band, actually).

2. Guy makes a lot of videos of himself and his friends after the deal talking about how awesome he is and how he and his band/entourage (called "The Syndicate") will forever change how people view music and film, because, he says, they have "a deep cess-pool of creativity" (and he didn't mean that in a funny way).

3. Guy's fundamental nature as first-class egotist and all-around asshole causes friction and then vows by most people in Hollywood to never work with him again.

4. Guy returns to being a bartender/bouncer.

If that interests you, it's available at Netflix (at the link above) as a play-over-your-computer option. I think I'll also watch Boondock Saints and see if this movie really had the potential, as this guy alleged, to completely remake our conception of entertainment. I kinda suspect not. (That's also free for playing over the computer.)

So, sort of a double feature, if you want to bother with the second feature.

I'll put up a review/discussion post on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Posted by: Ace at 09:05 AM | Comments (210)
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Morning Morons. It's a lovely day in Central Texas, and by that I mean overcast and cool, which ain't normal for early July round these parts.

Here's a couple things to check out over coffee and aspirin.

A masterful takedown of Glenn Greenwald's outrageous distortions and outright lies, despite evidence, facts and the friggin obvious regarding the Israeli Gaza flotilla "incident". My favorite line: "the weakness of his case is measured by the degree to which he is compelled to lie about it." [via TheRickWilson]

Why the Obama Administration's challenge to Arizona's SB1070 could stall any chance of passing immigration reform. Hint: it's because it pisses people off I think, and you sorta need them unengaged to pull it off.

Boeing and EADS formally jump back in to the mess that is the USAF refueling aircraft RFP. Meanwhile we'll continue to refuel our warfighters in the sky using 50 year old 707s with 20 year old engines on em (hey, they're quieter at least). Oh, here's a nice little story about a couple of pilots who met in one of these chance encounters, were smitten by the experience, and decided to get hitched. [I caught this one a few days ago from one of the Hostages] (although those of you who remember the opening credits in Dr. Strangelove may wonder about the gender/joke confusion since the pilot of the tanker is the lovely bride)

And if you don't remember those, here you go. Bonus breakfast burrito for first person who can name that tune. With jalapenos.

Last one, I broke down and decided to check out the iPhone 4. Will give you a moron review later this weekend, but right now I'll just say "ooo.. cool". Also time elapsed from online order to active phone was 2.7 days. Not too shabby. Incidentally, those of you who have a 3GS can download the 4.0 iOS, which will give you multitasking and a very cool new "fast scroll" feature for long comment threads in posts other than this one.

Dump a little Valu-rite in your coffee, and start your day off like you mean it.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:44 AM | Comments (201)
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The upswing continues in equities, leading the major indices the the best week in nearly a year. The S&P 500 ended the session up more than 7 points to close at 1,077.94, and the Dow closed up nearly 59 points at 10,197.65. At least my 401(k) isn't sucking wind quite as badly as it's done since, oh, April....

How the recession has changed American spending habits. I do know that I tend to hunt hobos locally now rather than going on safaris to Detroit or Cleveland, and I've started being rather more picky about which fences I will use for my stolen goods. I also tend to haggle more when hiring hit-men for jobs I cannot do myself. more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:09 AM | Comments (73)
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Mel Gibson: Jackass

Mel's built up a lot of goodwill over the years and I always figured his main problem was alcohol. But here he seems sober and way too comfortable with racial slurs and threats so maybe he's just an asshole. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:36 PM | Comments (679)
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