1

What's that smell?

Mildew, I think.

2 Nader's running?  Is there any space to Obama's left?

3
The democrats and that rat f*cker KOS are focusing on what Barton had to say.

So - in turn, we should focus on what Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC2) has to say, all while committing an assault.

And we should focus on how the democrats and BP are connected financially and politically. and stuff.

4 Run Ralphie run!

Spoiler '12!

5

I'm running too!

6 Today's White House spokesman (not Gibbs) makes an a** out of himself & Obama. What's right & good for me is not right & good for thee.

7 So - in turn, we should focus on what Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC2) has to say, all while committing an assault.

And we should focus on how the democrats and BP are connected financially and politically. and stuff.

Posted by: Lemon Kitten at June 21, 2010 06:16 PM (0fzsA)

I think we should demand a daily accounting from the White House of what President Obama personally accomplished that day with respect to the oil spill.  Who did he meet with, what advice did he get, what decisions did he make?  And how, specifically, did that advance the goal of capping the well, containing the oil and restoring the Gulf to its undamaged condition?

We can then compare how effective and how diligent he's been on the spill with how effective and diligent he's been in getting sufficient recreation time for himself.

8 Apparently, BP isn't even allowed to do anything without a "yea" or "nay" from Admiral Allen. Someone from BP (COO Doug Suttles, perhaps?) needs to start screaming about this.

9 Follow the money...

10 Ralph Nader is a self-aggrandizing horse's ass whose overblown ego won't allow him to retire quietly.  He longs for relevance, but alas, relevance eludes him.

11 I loved Lucifer's Hammer. I liked how one of the most important things was trying to preserve knowledge.

12

Lucifer's Hammer!!  Will the hot fudge sundae fall on Tuesday?  It was the first book I read that vividly described places when I had lived or visited being utterly destroyed (hate to say it but it was a reasonably fresh book at the time) ... and I have had a bailout bag packed ever since.

13 Politicians and lawyers can't solve problems.  They just can't.  That's not what they do. The real lesson here is that Obama can't do anything to clean up this thing.  But the regulations his friends put in place ensured that BP wouldn't be able to drill near a nice safe shore or in a wilderness in the middle of the frozen nowhere.

14 LBJ would have plugged the hole with his gallbladder and had enough left over to make sausage.

15

http://tinyurl.com/2g5e5vb 

Fox opinion where the guy says that BP had warned the Feds MONTHS before the blowout that they were having problems with the well...

If true, it explains Obama's rush to cement BP's liability in the Public mind... because it shows our own Government did not excercise due diligence in protecting us.

16 Ah... dam... now I know what I could have done with those tapes...

17 Damn, I love Lucifer's Hammer, and as a matter of fact just finished reading again a couple of weeks ago, and I love The Mote in God's Eye and Inferno, by the same authors.  The Mote in God's Eye is probably the best book ever written about first alien contact.

18

15  Among MMS's regulatory decisions contributing to the 2010 BP oil spill:

• March 2008 - The mineral rights to drill for oil were purchased by BP at the MMS's Lease Sale #206, held at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.

• MMS's 2009 decision that acoustically-controlled shut-off valve (BOP) would not be required as a last resort against underwater spills at the site.

• MMS's failure to suggest other “fail-safe” mechanisms after a 2004 report raised questions about the reliability of the electrical remote-control devices.

• Prior to Director Birnbaum's appointment, MMS granted a categorical exclusion waiver on April 6, 2009 to BP exempting it from National Environmental Policy Act's requirements including a detailed environmental analysis, concluding the spill risk in that part of the Gulf was “minimal or nonexistent.” Such NEPA waivers have become routine at MMS, and the Interior department approves 250 to 400 per year for Gulf of Mexico projects

 
• MMS gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA) that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from NOAA about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

• MMS routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of drilling proposals in the Gulf and in Alaska.

19 Lucifer's Hummer? That about Ahhh-nuld and his gross SUVs?

I kid, I kid. LH was kinda like Red Dawn with a meteor playing the role of a bunch of Cubans....

20 If you think this is all about incompetence, watch Beck today.

I know, I know....

Who is BP's lobbyist?  Tony Podesta, brother of CAP head John Podesta, the cat who writes O's policies for him, like cap and tax.

Who benefits from the moratorium?  Petrobas, one of Soros's top 2 holdings, who will be drilling at 3 times the depth of the blown Gulf rig.

21 Lucifer's Hammer?  Great book... just needed a little more wave action...

22

Or better than "Lucifer's Hammer" was "Footfall".

 

Yes, LBJ would have gotten something done. He knew how to twist arms and get things accomplished. As big a pork-barrel statist that he was, he would be a quantum level improvement over Obama.

And yet, you could probably draw a straight line of causality between the days of LBJ and the eventual appearance of a President like Obama.

Which amuses me (perversely) to no end, because he is exactly the consequence of decades of "progressive" politics that LBJ, Ralph Nader,Bill Moyers and James Carville really wanted. He is, indeed, the "ONE" that they and their true believers were waiting for.

 

As for the rest of us, if the load gets to great, we shrug it off. Our lives are not a sacrifice, to LBJ, Nader, Obama or the rest of the collectivist crowd.

23 I read Lucifer's Hammer over 20 years ago I believe. Good survival novel.

24 It's about my favorite novel, Lucifer's Hammer

Not available at the Kindle store.

25 Lucifer's Hammer

That thing can f'in' slice

26 Obama should tear down & rebuild MMS. But will he do it? No.

27

@26

You do realize that if he did that, it would be filled with enviro whackos who know nothing about drilling?

It would turn from a saftey issue, to a green issue, and we would never get any real drilling done ever again?

28 There's a woman at work whom I respect greatly who informed me last week she was a green party member and voted for nader.

So much for my judge of character.  fuck.

29 MMS routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of drilling proposals in the Gulf and in Alaska.

Hey, problem solved - no more drilling. Those staff biologists will be pleased.

30 Ralph, LBJ couldn't even get the Civil Rights Act through the Senate when he had even more Democrats than that.  In the end it was passed thanks to the votes of... wait for it... Republicans.

31 Ralph Nader: Hippy vote-sponge.

32 Lucifer's Hammer was good. Reading it now (and I have recently) it's somewhat dated in it's cultural references, though...lots of seventies stuff. I think that I have read everything that Mr. Niven and Mr. Pournelle have ever written, together or in collaboration. My personal favorite is Oath of Fealty in which a gigantic arcology (city in a big frickin' building) towers over Los Angeles. The bad guys are a bunch of environmental/social activists who want to destroy the arcology and get the living crap beat out of them by the time the story wraps up. The book popularized the phrase: "Think of it as evolution in action," which was used to describe stupid people (liberals) getting killed by doing stupid things (usually leftist political stunts). Niven had a flair for coming up with catchy little phrases like that. Oath of Fealty...highly recommended reading.

33 27 @26 Yes. We will have to wait until after 2012.

34 25 THREADWINNER

35 No Comrade. LBJ would bow to the Superior will of the Great Mother Earth, and surrender to the overwhelming Forces of History.

36 Lucifer's Hammer was the book where a big asteroid was going to hit the earth and the stories of people getting ready for it right? If so how did Nader figure in it?

37 BTW.... You know that Hollywood is full of brain dead unimaginative hacks FOR NO OTHER REASON than the fact that they haven't even touched Niven or Pournelle's work for a film. I will give them credit for doing Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and Minority Report from the late Philip K. Dick but why they haven't gone after Niven's and Pournelle's work is a mystery. How hard can it be to secure film rights? And they certainly have the film tech to do justice to them...

38

@37  For the same reason that they butchered Starship Troopers... and won't touch the Dorsai saga... or Hammers Slammers... or heck the more modern Honor Harrington stuff... the last thing they want to show is that sometimes, you HAVE to fight.

 

39

LBJ?

That's Spanish for blowjob, right?

40 Please everyone understand, it is not Dear LeaderÂ’s fault that he has been spending so little effort on dealing with the oil gusher in the Gulf. He has a slight hearing problem and every time one of his aides says itÂ’s time to think about the Gulf again, he thinks they said itÂ’s time for Golf again.ase everyone understand, it is not Dear LeaderÂ’s fault that he has been spending so little effort on dealing with the oil gusher in the Gulf. He has a slight hearing problem and every time one of his aides says itÂ’s time to think about the Gulf again, he thinks they said itÂ’s time for Golf again.

41 The best thing about Lucifer's Hammer is the post-apocalypse town run by Sen. Jellison that gives people work based upon their abilities in a post-apocalypse world.  CPA's and Lawyers are then relegated to grunt work...they have no meaning in a world where traditional law has been wiped away.

42

OT:  According to the Ares Defense Blog (AW&ST) the B-747 Airborne Laser testbed is firing about once per month and extending it's range and "angular engagement envelope".  That means it is pointing down, as well as up.

That means you, Achmed.  We may soon see the world's worst (best) drive-by shooting, one pass along the Pak-Af border: zzzap, zzzap, zzzap, zzzap, zzzap, etc.

43 Pretty sad that Jellison's final words these days would be, "Al, give my children the healthcare again..."

44 i think you have it wrong. nader's referring to lbj's effectiveness and there's a good point there, though not from the perspective that either nader or you or most everyone on the band of the spectrum project lbj as representing the apotheosis of entitlement "great society" 60's. nader pulls him out as a symbol for personal political advancement, saying "see, obarak isn't effective; i know better so go for me". you're seeing lbj as a symbol of opprobrium, saying "oh boy, nader is worse than bama'o. i have a deep respect for lbj, the truly tragic figure in american politics (not nixon, who i also respect a great deal). what? nader is putting down obara for not being effective like lbj? how superficial! lbj was a titan! we haven't seen the likes of the real, actual and good political effectiveness of weilding power like lbj out of congress since him and probably never will. the issues were real, actual and good, too (on civil rights and the noble though absurdly flawed ideal of the "gs"). nader is an irrelevancy, but unfortunately the relevance of both congress and statesmanship have eroded along with the vitality of meaningful issues in this prosperous and politically wan society.

45 "Pieter Jakov"

Best cosmonaut EVUH!

46 my point is: nader is comparing obaka to lbj??? it highlights how light weight baroma is, as well as how irrelevant nader is, of course, and how peripheral both of their "issues" are. lbj was a man of substance from a place of substance when issues had substance. ombara is a lightweight ideologue with harvardtalk and not much more.

47 ... but since reagan, the last heavy weight, there hasn't been a contender for significance on the national scene and brako's delusional self-importance aside, i doubt we will see ANY significant political figure for another 3 to 4 decades.

48 .. because WE ALL WON a great victory in the last half of the 20th century and we are all living in the bounty of those hard-won victories. it should last another 30-40 years. hurray hurray hurrah!

49 wuz i'm tryin to say man... is man... wow ... it's all so fantastic... i love you guys, and like geez, aw c'mon, lez have another beer and... cmon! s'on me. i luf u guys and gee whiz it's really fantastic wow... [clunk] zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

50 LBJ would have voted present too. You know he would.

51

 It's about my favorite novel, Lucifer's Hammer

 

DUDE!!!!

52 Ban Hammer for pipe fitter and purse boy, please.

53 It's about my favorite novel, Lucifer's Hammer . Holy crap, I love that book!

54 nope. lbj would've been in the middle of it. the senate and policy was important then and they took it seriously. they were serious people. [nobody really cares if alvin green wins. it's just personality, not character. you know, clinton, politics, whatever] lbj woulda picked up orbaka by the ears and said "why, you're just a whelp" and tossed him away.

55

28 There's a woman at work whom I respect greatly who informed me last week she was a green party member and voted for nader.

So much for my judge of character.  fuck.

At least now you know that she puts out and in a big way.  A dirty, filthy big way.

56 the erosion of the importance of congress parallels the erosion of important issues. all that's left is the projection of political identity to the electorate. some say that it also mirrors the decline of america on the world stage. but really, it reflects the success of the american endeavor in the twentieth century. the politics is twat.

57 ... even though the left/lib/dems are deadly, deadly serious about gaining and maintaining political power.

58 For anyone that admired Lucifer's hammer, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of One Second After- its brutally real and based on a threat report released just prior to 9/11, thus, ignored and forgotten.

59 ... which is chilling. they make nader look like a principled and reasonable guy.

60 OT: According to the Ares Defense Blog (AW&ST) the B-747 Airborne Laser testbed is firing about once per month and extending it's range and "angular engagement envelope". That means it is pointing down, as well as up. That means you, Achmed. We may soon see the world's worst (best) drive-by shooting, one pass along the Pak-Af border: zzzap, zzzap, zzzap, zzzap, zzzap, etc. Crossbow comes to life, I see... But can it make an enormous swiss cheese?

61

Clean up, aisle 64.

I dunno whether LBJ would've plugged the hole, but I'm pretty sure JKF and Clinton would have. Any hole would do for those two.

62

I just wanted to mention how frickin' awesome Gabriel Malor is.

Posting like a champion, that boy is.

Or like a Viking, maybe.

And Lucifer's Hammer is awesome, too.

Cripes am I ever getting old - I can remember when that book came out in paperback.

63 wow

64
I liked the line in Lucifer's Hammer where one character says something like, "And if you ever mention the ozone layer again I'll find you wherever you are and throw up in your lap."

BTW, Nader gets a mention in J. G. Ballard's Hello America as the last President of the United States. Faced with two major crises (the Bering Straits are dammed, causing a climate disaster, and all the oil runs out), Nader retires to a Zen monastery in Japan.

65 Lucifer's Hammer! Yes! And The Mote in God's Eye, terrific too.

66 I'll do a test with this pair of Timberland water I bought. 'll Tell you I use, as they get older, comfort, etc. Comment a few days I used and under what conditions. Moreover, being a couple bought no compromise with this or any other brand, I can say what you think, good or bad. To see that this first experience
I have been driven by fashion and return to using this type of moccasin, which has not done since the 10 or 11 years. However, in aged skin that gives a much more current. If I'm correct this issue "used" is achieved by waxing the skin and then brushing the wax burns and, to be darker than the skin makes a patina reminiscent of the shoes and other leather goods that have been used for long

67 We are a professional manufacturer of hydraulic quick couplings,pneumatic quick couplings and pneumatic fittings.