Social Security is on the rack. The man about to turn the screws is Barack Obama. This should not be a surprise. The indictment of Social Security began many months ago when Obama cited 'entitlement' programs as a prime source of fiscal imbalance. Then, this past winter he sent to Congress a proposal that would have established a special commission mandated to make recommendations on so-called 'reform' of Social Security and Medicare that the legislature would be required to vote up or down as a package. This in the midst of the debate on health care. Congressional leaders demurred. Obama responded almost immediately by creating just such a commission stacked with avowed foes of keeping Social Security as we have known it. When that commission offers its predictable dire forecast to justify a drastic scaling back of the program, Obama will back it.
If there were any lingering doubts about the man's underlying social values and political perspective, they were violently uprooted by Robert Gibbs diatribe against progressives -- using language and imagery sure to warm the hearts of the most retrograde Tea Partier. Apparently, the White House is seething that some progressives are not bowing low enough in their obeisance to His Highness -- and a few recalcitrants aren't even genuflecting.
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The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is halfway through its 20-state "One Man, One Woman" tour at which approximately one man and one woman seem to show up for them at each stop. But what NOM lacks in popular, grassroots support, it more than makes up for in funneling money for "anonymous" donors. Wednesday, NOM announced that it would spend untold sums to advertise in Spanish in California in support of Carly Fiorina, the failed CEO who wants to buy a Senate seat.
Not to be outdone, a few miles south of here in San Diego, a year-old right wing group called GOProud has carved out a niche for itself as the NOM of the gay right wing. GOProud, a so-called 527 organization that exists to influence the outcome of federal elections, is the first "gay" organization to accept funds from Doug Manchester and his Hyatt Hotel in San Diego that has been under boycott for two years. Mr. Manchester denies workers their rights and put $125,000 into the Prop. 8 campaign just as it qualified for the ballot.
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Where else on TV do you regularly see an attractive, shirtless, African-American man engaged in a passionately sexual dance with a lithe, beautiful blonde wearing almost no clothes, without controversy or comment? Or an Hispanic B-Boy with jerry curls performing a hip hop dance with a young Asian woman? Where else on network TV do you see such overt eroticism, rather than the fake, snarky kind that passes for sexual innuendo on many shows. On what other reality contest show do you see an obviously gay judge calling an obviously gay contestant "honey"? Where else but on "So You Think You Can Dance", now in its 6th season on, of all places, Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network?
Here, the culture wars of the past 30 years appear over, at least for an hour or two, and the progressive side--which has stood for racial equality, gender equality, and gay rights--is the undisputed winner, without the need even to overtly comment about it. I'm not sure what Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, or the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal would have to say if they were watching. But then, Rupert Murdoch has never been known to let his conservative political views get in the way of making a buck.
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I often receive a lot of questions from clients about careers. Having been in the employment industry for over 20 years, I have, almost daily, come across people who are undecided about what decision to make when it comes to choosing careers. It's almost universal that people are concerned about making the 'wrong' decision and one that will impact the rest of their life. I can't tell you how often I hear people say that they aren't sure what they want to do with the rest of their life. Quite honestly, who does? And, more importantly, when did it become mandatory to decide now about what you want to do with the rest of your life?
However, that's how many of us think. How debilitating is that? What ends up happening is that we become paralyzed with fear and end up having an extremely hard time making a decision. This is what I say to this - 'lighten up' (you know I'm saying this with the utmost of respect and compassion, right!?). If you can lighten up around this topic, you have the ability then to think more clearly which then allows us to attract the thoughts that are going to most help us make a decision that works for us.
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The New York Post has revealed that CNN is once again considering adding a person of color to one of their nighttime anchor spots. The move is long overdue, since black and brown people have been subject to the "all-white, all-night" phenomenon, where none of the major cable news networks have granted any of their nightly branded news spots to an African-American host. One has to argue that freezing out African-American journalists on all of the major networks is a bit insulting, given that there is a tremendous amount of talent waiting in the wings.
John King's 7 p.m. slot may be up for grabs soon, as he hasn't been able to get the kind of ratings that CNN execs would like to see. This opens the door, hopefully, for Soledad O'Brien to get the opportunity everyone knows that she deserves. The same might be true for Roland Martin and other CNN personalities who've gotten a tremendous amount of exposure on the network. The departure of Tony Harris to Al Jazeera is disappointing, for it's hurtful to see talented men like Harris in line behind less-capable anchors like Nancy Grace.
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By now, you are probably aware that Rick Santorum is running for president. You're also probably aware that he plans to participate in this thing called the Iowa Caucus. You're also maybe aware that Santorum has been a political non-entity for many years. But have you considered that Santorum could be a "force" in Iowa? Because I hadn't been forced to consider how forceful Santorum could be until Politico told me that "Rick Santorum could be an unlikely Iowa force." (As with most pieces of pure, uncut campaign speculation, the equivocation begins right in the headline.)
Why would Rick Santorum be a force, in Iowa? Because he has visited Iowa, "11 times since 2009." That's a good start, actually going to the place in which you want to be a "force." In 2008, Rudy Giuliani did not go to Iowa that much, and he ended up not being a "force." Of course, it's a fine line. John Edwards practically lived in Iowa, for years, before the Iowa caucus, and he was not a "force." Tom Vilsack went to the extraordinary length of actually serving as the governor of Iowa for two terms, and it didn't end up dong him any good at all.
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Sharply rising food prices have often meant trouble for governments, especially when people expect better and the cost of food is a big fraction of average household consumption. In the U.S., where grocery costs are a small fraction of the average budget, it is hard to imagine the effect of sharply rising prices for bread or rice, cooking oil, and other essential foods. It's seldom been enough for out-of-touch regimes to say, "let them eat paistries" (or brioche, as Marie Antoinette put it in the face of the French revolution).
In what countries is a big fraction of the average household budget gobbled by purchases at the produce market, bakery, and butcher? Based on data from Nomura, Business Insider claims that the highest percentage occurs in Nigeria (70%). and that every North African nation is among the top 25. (Disclosure: I once spent a year in Tunisia after it won independence from France and before it hosted the Palestinian leadership). The first of the recent headlines about riots against the regime came out of Tunisia (36% of household consumption spent for food) and Egypt (48%). Algeria has not been quiet (53%). All are in North Africa, along with Morocco and Libya.
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Crises exist to test who the real leaders are. During the present crisis, as people lose confidence and anxiety grows, two leaders stand out, in the media at least: President Obama and his most vocal antagonist on the right, Sarah Palin. This might seem like a radically unequal contest. A sitting president versus a woman who served for half a term governing a state with a population smaller than any major American city? But leadership has always been considered mysterious, and one never knows.
To clear up the mystery, I began teaching CEOs and other top corporate officers in a business school course, "The Soul of Leadership." It was a daunting challenge for me and also for them: "Soul" isn't a word frequently heard in the boardroom. But voices on all sides cry out for the kind of leadership that does two things: first, fulfill the needs of the group, which can be as small as a family or as big as a nation. Second, bring meaning and values back into everyday life. Corporate leadership has a reputation for being divorced from both goals. It wasn't hard to find forward-looking people who wanted a change, even before Wall Street greed and excess began to paint a picture blacker than anyone was prepared for.
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Two stories dominated the news this past week - the passing of Elizabeth Edwards and the agreement between the President and Congressional leaders to extend the Bush-ear tax cuts for all Americans coupled with an extension of unemployment benefits and a payroll tax "holiday." The juxtaposition of these two stories offers a sharp contrast. One story spoke of moral courage in the face of death, of devotion to one's family (even husband) in the most difficult of times, of the personal strength of a remarkable life. The other story spoke of the inability to grapple with our need to stop hemorrhaging public debt; it was a story of much more limited moral courage as each side got much of what it wanted - at the expense of future generations.
At the heart of each of these stories is a message about, in one case the vales that we think should drive American and the other the values that seem to predominate in our public life. Last May, 82% of Americans said that "the overall state of moral values in this country today" was "only fair" or "poor," and 71% said "the state of moral values in this country" was "getting worse." This is not new to the American experience. Neither is what will come next.
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It seems to be a foregone conclusion the Democrats will take an expected hit and end up losing the House in the upcoming midterm election. Should that hit become a shellacking (i.e. losing the Senate), many factors will be cited: an unemployment rate that is too high, a stagnant housing market, a deficit perceived to be "out of control." There will be a fundamental factor at the core of the results, however -- a catastrophic loss by the Dems in the messaging war.
The Obama communications team was virtually flawless during the campaign of '08. But quite frankly since it has occupied the White House, its efforts have been pretty poor. Others have noticed. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was on ABC's This Week recently, and said there has never been a unifying message.
"I've worked here since 1989. I personally, just as a reporter or columnist in Washington, have never seen a worse communicating administration," he said. "Just at the basic, technical level of 'Hey, we've got a good plan, maybe someone out there would be interested in writing about it."Obama's team and the Democratic leadership have committed the communications Cardinal Sin: allowing the opposition to define and control the debate.
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It seems that the only things in higher education making money these days are books decrying the sorry state of higher education. Almost every week, we encounter a new release calling for the end of tenure, the need to support public universities, and the failure of universities and colleges to transform in the face of economic decline and global competition. This week I received copies of Mark C. Taylor's Crisis on Campus, Martha Nussbaum's Not For Profit, and Parker Palmer's and Arthur Zajonc's The Heart of Higher Education. Perhaps universities should simply shut down and just allow the faculty to spend their time writing their institutions' obituaries.
However the death of universities and tenure has been greatly exaggerated, and if we step back from the apocalyptic language of crisis, we can formulate a more sober analysis. While it is true that the number of faculty with tenure has decreased dramatically in he last thirty years, this does not mean that tenure can and will die out completely. Moreover, while many private universities have lost a large chunk of their endowments and public universities have suffered through state de-funding, most schools are surviving by jacking up tuition and squeezing the faculty by demanding more work for less pay.
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There is an air of both tragedy and farce as the Arizona Republican primary for the United States Senate comes to a conclusion this Tuesday. Incumbent John McCain -- a venerated war hero and once celebrated presidential candidate -- has been forced into the sludge against an unworthy opponent, J.D. Hayworth, in what is likely to be the final campaign of his political career. McCain has sullied his carefully crafted legacy by swinging sharply to the political right, betraying his once hard-forged positions on everything from immigration reform to global warming.
In many respects, the McCain image as a "maverick" and "reformer" has always been something of a charade. McCain's seminal role in the Keating Five scandal during his first term in office forever tarnished his reputation. Indeed, there are many who would argue that what we are now seeing is the real McCain--stripped bare of the fanciful narrative--whose guiding light is neither public virtue nor principle, but raw ambition and a lust for power.
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All week, I've been discussing how remarkable it is that these WikiLeaks disclosures resulted in a stunning and hitherto unvoiced consensus from the media that the "conventional wisdom" is that the War in Afghanistan is not going well -- and that hearing about it all over again in the form of a document dump from Julian Assange was "nothing new." Now, we've come to the end of the week, and Time magazine has a graphic cover depicting a woman named Aisha who was maimed by the Taliban, along with the tagline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." Just when everyone was beginning to ask, "What is going to happen if we stay much longer?" (As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, there may already be an answer to that question.)
Obviously, the Taliban are a disaster for women and a blight on the face of human civilization. But this cover story, by its own admission, concerns itself with what we are doing there, what we hope to accomplish.
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Sometimes, the most urgent truths are rolled up and hidden away in the most apparently trivial news. So if I tell you that Moody's, the leading credit rating agency, has downgraded Ireland's debt, it sounds pretty irrelevant. In fact, if you unwrap and decode this story, you'll discover the reason why you are going to be more likely to lose your job or your home soon, if Obama doesn't unleash a new starbust of stimulus soon, or if the Republicans win.
The British finance minister, George Osborne, visited Ireland a few years ago to say it was a "shining example" for Britain to mimic. When the recession hit, the country's government immediately applied the medicine Cameron and Osborne are now imposing on Britain. They argued that when the economy withers, the government needs to react like any responsible family and cut spending to pay down its debt. They warned that if they didn't do it fast, the international bond market would charge Ireland more for its liabilities, and the debt burden would become intolerable. Better to purge now, so you can get back to fiscal health as soon as possible. "Look and learn from across the Irish Sea," Osborne said.
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This week, Americans for Prosperity--a right-wing political powerhouse funded by the billionaire Koch brothers--started running anti-union TV ads in Wisconsin. The ads allege that Wisconsin's public workers, protesting Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to dismantle their right to unionize, "walked off their jobs, abandoning our children." The ads ask, "Who decides Wisconsin's future? Voters or government unions?" Unsurprisingly, the TV spots don't go into detail about who paid for them--viewers might be less likely to trust faux-populist rhetoric if they knew it came straight from the mouth of a corporate front group run by a pair of billionaires.
The story of the year since Citizens United v. FEC may be perfectly crystallized in the fight that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is waging against his state's public employee unions. Organizations like Americans for Prosperity spent millions of dollars in 2010 running misleading ads bashing health care reform, progressives, immigrants, and American Muslims in order to elect politicians who would stand up for the interests of big business. Now those interests are working hard, and spending a little extra money, to make sure they collect on their investments.
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Yes, I know you're angry about the state of our country. You're worried about your future, worried about your employment status, worried about our national debt. And you should be. But before this anger and angst causes you to blindly vote for any new political face or--worse yet--sit out the election completely, you need to understand why it is very important for you to vote--and vote Democrat.
1. You don't want a future of economic crashes and bubbles. If you don't like the mess we're in now, then we need to elect leaders who are willing to crack down on Wall Street--something Republicans have a lousy track record with. Over the last 30 years, Republicans (along with moderate Democrats) have eliminated key regulations that were put in place after the Great Depression in order to--you'll never guess--prevent a second Great Depression. While both parties share the blame, the Republicans have been the ones leading the deregulation charge, and they continue to be the party pushing for more relaxed rules. This year, Democrats passed the most sweeping regulatory reform in half a century to try and restore sanity to our financial system. Today, many Republicans are hoping to repeal this legislation--and the important consumer protections that go with it. Don't let them.
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Whether it's a second career, time to think during maternity leave, or simple necessity, these moms found a way to turn their everyday problems into products. The LA Times wrote about mom inventors hitting it big by scoring a distribution deal with a major retailer (check out this cute video of Soleil Moon-Frye seeing her baby clothing line at Target for the first time), but in the internet age, you don't need a storefront to sell your wares. Mom Invented is a space for women to sell their inventions (see a video of product demos), and many women still set up their own individual websites (see Paci-Plushies, DaysAgo timers, and Pop Pals) in addition to any online or in-store retailers they land. Here's a round up of California-Mom inventions that are making life cleaner, saner, and more fun.
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The late Dennis Hopper's compound is for sale, and the asking price is $6.245 million for the sprawling property that encompasses 330, 334, and 326 Indiana Boulevard in Venice, California. The 15,500 square foot lot includes a Brian Murphy-designed main home (with corrugated metal exterior), three two-story condominiums designed by Frank Gehry, a pool, a pool house, a guest cottage, and a landscaped yard. Of course, for those who just want single houses instead of monuments to the industrial aesthetic, the condominiums can also be sold separately, with prices ranging from $750,000 to $1.05 million. If these smaller properties were sold on their own, the main home is a steal at $3.95 million.
Luxist notes the historical import of the property: "His home served as the center of his artistic output and the property was host to some of the top celebrities as well as important artists like Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein..." The official listing praises the Venice community: "Close to both Abbot Kinney and Main Street, this property offers both a rich history and unlimited possibilities for a creative live and/or work space celebrating the very best of Venice."
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If you use a cell phone or computer, you're probably connected -- whether you know it or not -- to the long-standing conflict in Eastern Congo. Minerals mined there -- from tin, tungsten, and tantalum to gold -- find their way into many of devices we use every day (including at this moment, if you're reading this online). Many of the mines in Eastern Congo are run by outlaw militias that are destabilizing the region -- killing countless people, mass-raping women and girls, terrorizing and displacing populations, perpetuating the world's most deadly but least publicized war. Just as buying foreign oil and dirty diamonds can unintentionally aid and abet terrorist organizations, almost every high-tech purchase has, until now, helped fund some of the most vicious, lawless, violent people and organizations on earth in the Congo.
But this week, the President will sign into law the Financial Reform Bill, passed by Congress last week. And thanks to the good work of thousands of activist citizens -- many of them mobilized by the Enough Campaign -- that bill not only seeks to reform Wall Street, but it contains a Congo-minerals related provision. An Enough Campaign posting explains:
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Just three days after the Obama administration recently announced a commitment to reenergize the United States' manufacturing base, Intel co-founder Andy Grove released a compelling and widely-discussed piece, "How to Make An American Job Before It's Too Late," on the nation's need to move away from dependence on overseas production and toward rebooting the domestic manufacturing sector in an effort to rebuild our economy. But as discussions about the toll that offshoring is taking on innovation and jobs continue, changes among China's labor force are altering the economic landscape of the future. This leads me to wonder: How are these shifts going to affect the U.S.? Ethically speaking, what kind of industrial nation do we want to be? 

Grove hints at similar questions when he challenges the pervasive common wisdom that "as long as 'knowledge work' stays in the U.S., it doesn't matter what happens to factory jobs." He recognizes how that assumption undervalues manufacturing's role in the economy, and asks: "What kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work -- and masses of unemployed?"
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Serious collectors of Frank Sinatra -- the ones who buy the endless CD compilations with one rare track, the under-the-counter bootlegs, the import LPs with different artwork -- are a notoriously tough bunch. They're happy to shell out the bucks for music they've already bought half a dozen times, but heaven help the reissue producers, liner note writers, and (especially) the Sinatra estate if someone screws up.
And someone always screws up something, no matter how small. For example, take Sinatra-Jobim: The Complete Reprise Recordings, released last year, which received complaints about a single note of one song sounding different from the originally released version. The historical record has been altered, cried more than one faithful fan. And then there was the 37 CD box set of every album Sinatra recorded for Reprise Records between 1960 and '84. Except, it wasn't. Where was 12 Songs Of Christmas? Where were the Reprise Repertory Theater albums? Why only studio albums and not live albums as well? (And keep in mind, the vast majority of the people asking these questions were people who already owned the music multiple times over.) To add insult to injury, two pages of the booklet were reprinted twice and two pages were missing. J'accuse!
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There is no doubt in my mind that the vast majority of NBA pundits picking the Heat over the Bulls are over simplifying their analysis of the Bulls Heat match-up. Most are breaking it down by saying it's two superstars over one. Chris Mullin, a typically shrewd NBA mind, says this series boils down to two perimeter teams and the Heat have more perimeter firepower with their two superstars so they will win. However, I say they are way undervaluing a few very important factors in this match-up: the last minute re-emergence of Carlos Boozer and his typically-stellar playoff presence and the enormous advantage the Bulls bench has over the Heat bench. The Heat bench is a haphazard mix of aging and/or one-dimensional talent, which collectively is not greater than the sum of its parts, which is what you have with the Bulls bench.
Last but not least, when Tom Thibodeau tells his team to jump, they ask how high. Whereas King James (LeBrick) is the dominant personality on the Heat. Spoelstra is smart but he is not a big time presence, certainly not enough to over ride LeBron when needed, in contrast to how Phil Jackson got MJ and Kobe to bend to his will when their teams needed to go that direction.
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What do you do after spending a decade as the world's most powerful wizard, earning over $100 million in the most successful film franchise of all time and developing into one of the most beloved celebrities of your time? It may seem like a tough question, Daniel Radcliffe seems confident that he'll be able to work his magic going into the future.
Speaking at the 92Y in New York City on Monday, Radcliffe held court with an audience excited to hear about his past, present and future. The city is already privy to one of his next big steps: while the world waits for the July premiere of his final Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," Radcliffe has charmed and delighted theater-goers this spring with his leading role in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying"; when he wasn't nominated for a Tony earlier in May, there were uproars of indignation. Radcliffe, modest as ever, laughed off the snub and said it didn't bother him.
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There's no doubt that "green" is trending right now, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Google real-time search; its been bagged and tagged as cool, which on a certain level is fantastic. Such momentum doesn't come along very often. Banksy pieces scream environmental concern, car engines run on energy efficiency, and the current green movement has ignited its own pop culture firebrand, as evidenced by newly prominent green and environmental sections in major publications around the world.
The problem remains because cool doesn't solve it. Often the buck stops at a relatively superficial level: you might go to a cool green event or buy a sustainable pair of skinny jeans, but that won't get you to go out and start planting trees or recycling all of your trash. Studies and exposés can often have a similarly stunted impact. We rely on the awareness that news media and institutions bring to the issues. They give us the facts, without them there's nowhere for change to begin. Yet, a jarring study about Amazon deforestation or a piece on the immense loss in The Great Barrier Reef may make our jaw drop, but it won't set that collective jaw on a hard mission to change such destruction.
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Sony Music built the palace where last week's Grammy darlings and indisputable music industry queens Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin live. Both honored for a lifetime of artistry, the world was reminded of the solo female artists lasting magical power. But for Sony, the list doesn't end there. A closer look will show that label bloodline filled with more industry queens, princesses, and duchesses than any other, and a proven half-century of lady-centric executive leadership in Clive, Tommy, Donnie and Barry. So if you have the keys to the castle Sony, why live anywhere else?
Out of 2010s Top 5 #1 hits, 3 were from solo female artists -- beyond that, 8 out of the Top 15. Out of those 8, Sony Music was the home to 6. Sony's dominance in the category is not isolated to 2010; their successes span decades and are textbook examples of brilliant solo female development and success. From Whitney to Celine, Mariah to Christina, and Alicia to Britney -- there are billions of dollars in net receipts and a legacy that runs strong with Beyonce, Kelly Clarkson, Kesha, Pink, and Shakira. Not only is there no label better -- there's no one even close. And with more than 30 solo female multi-platinum artists on the roster and in the catalog, Sony should cease all operations involving anything else.
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Get ready for your holiday parties and "may you stand, walk and dance happily ever after." In order for you to dance your way through the holidays more comfortably, check out these helpful toe tips to keep your feet in good spirits. For those of you who are wearing killer heels, muscle spasms and cramping in your arches can be an unwelcomed visitor. These problems are the result of abnormal pronation, which is the excessive collapsing of the arch during walking or standing. Experiencing pain in the balls of your feet is another problem that can occur when standing or dancing for long periods of time while partying. This is caused by wearing high heels that are usually 2 or 3 inches high. Wearing high heels will naturally throw your foot forward and the balls of your feet get jammed into the floor of the shoe. The fat pad in the balls of your feet can shift and expose the heads of the metatarsal bones to increased pressure. Another common foot problem that can occur when wearing high heels that have pointed toes is pain on the sides and tips of the great toe nails. This can be the beginning of an ingrown toe-nail. Ouch! So make sure you are careful when selecting your party shoes.
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House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) says he thinks it's weird that Democrats have "time to bring a comedian to Congress but they don't have time to end the uncertainty by extending the tax cuts." It's an amazing statement when you think about it even for a second. After all, is it possible that the tax cut issue is not really timely? In fact, is there any way to interpret Stephen Colbert's appearance before the House Judiciary subcommittee on his experience as an entertainer-turned-migrant worker as having anything at all, however remotely, to do with extending tax cuts for Americans making $250,000 or more a year? (And couldn't the alleged "uncertainty" be dispelled with a clear, uncomplicated, "You had your party for the past decade. Now get lost.")
Until I heard Boehner on "The Daily Show" I thought the silliest statement he would be able to come up with was in response to Chris Wallace's question as to whether he was aware that "a number of top economists say what we need is more economic stimulus." He replied, "Well, I don't need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists. All I need to do is listen to the American people, because they've been asking the question now for 18 months, 'Where are the jobs?'"
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The only word to describe the dozens of Democrats that are sprinting from President Obama in Olympic record sprint times is gutless. They have taken out ads loudly protesting that they voted against health care and immigration reform, the stimulus, and extending the Bush tax cuts to the rich, are hawkish on the wars, and that they are their own political man or woman and don't take any orders from the White House. Now bear in mind these are the same Democrats that in 2008 clung to Obama's coattail as if it was the Holy Grail. They blitzed voters in their districts with stagey photo-op shots of them with a smiling Obama, splashy videos with his image, and mug shots of Obama on virtually every page of their campaign toss outs.
But that was then. The GOP sniffing political blood in the Democrat's gutless desertion from the president has plowed nearly $40 million into 300 ads ramming Siamese twin like the defecting Democrats to Obama. The White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a legion of Democratic campaign officials shrug this off as just politics. This is the kind of thing they say that Democrats and Republicans have to do to get elected and re-elected. They distance themselves from the policies and even person of an unpopular president.
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They've finally cemented up BP's runaway well (from above with a second relief well plug still to seal it from below). Unfortunately this comes after 220 million gallons of oil slimed the Gulf of Mexico. So what's the effect of a spill 20 times the size of the Exxon Valdez? Apparently not much, if you believe the government's estimates.
The Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget put out by the Department of Interior and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration says one quarter of the total oil naturally evaporated or dissolved. Having spent time in the heat and oil of the Gulf in June and July, and given the volatile compounds in the light crude that was released, I don't have a hard time believing this. Score one for air pollution. They claim 25 percent was burned, skimmed or recovered from the wellhead. Again, having seen the surface burns and the Q-4000 rig flaming off 6,000 barrels a day in July, creating a black column of oily smoke, skipping the middle men (cars and trucks) and putting sooty carbon dioxide right into our already overheated atmosphere, I can almost believe this figure although it would represent the most successful mechanical recovery of spilled oil in history and I know from being there a lot of oily water was counted as recovered oil.
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