Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Back in 2008, after the election, it seemed that Barack Obama was actually going to make things different from how they were under George W. Bush. Remember that?

Here’s what President-Elect Obama had to say on climate legislation:

“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process… Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.”

Here’s what President Obama has to say on climate legislation now:

Yesterday, congressional Democrats announced that they would stop trying to pass “comprehensive energy legislation”. That’s the new term they took on after they had removed real climate action from the bill, and added in big subsidies for oil and coal companies to encourage more fossil fuel use.

Now, the Democrats are saying they’re not even going to try to pass THAT shameful compromise. It was Barack Obama who led the way in abandoning the effort to deal with climate change. He just stood back and watched it fail.

Now, in the middle of the hottest year ever recorded, watch as climate change continues “to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.”

Vote for Barack Obama in 2012? This environmentalist says Hell no!

A new pro-coal piece of propaganda wonders why coal mines aren’t allowed to take the tops of mountains as easily as women can take off their shirts. Seriously.

A poster making the rounds protests against Appalachian native Ashley Judd, who opposes mountaintop removal coal mining. It asks, “Ashley Judd makes a living taking off her top. Why can’t coal miners?”

Why? For one thing, Ashley Judd knows how to put her top back on. The coal mining companies don’t put the tops back on mountains. They just blow the mountains up and dump the debris into mountain streams.

Secondly, when Ashley Judd takes her top off, she doesn’t dump huge amounts of toxic heavy metals like arsenic into the local drinking water supply. Mountaintop removal coal mining does involve such toxic dumping.

Do these big coal companies truly not understand the difference? Anyone who has flown over the Appalachians recently, and seen the great scars on our nation created by mountaintop removal coal mining gets it.

Bradford Braley, who apparently got the privilege of conducting an officially-sanctioned big government worship service in front of the House of Representatives last week just because he’s the brother of Congressman Bruce Braley, dropped the ball.

Braley had the chance to pray for an end to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but what did he do? He prayed for a little emotional manipulation instead.

He prayed, “Inspire a sense of awe and wonder at the bountiful resources of this land, and in light of the environmental tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, may we humbly dedicate ourselves to preserving and protecting those resources.”

Braley had the chance to stand before the most powerful legislature on Earth, and to pray to his supernatural, all powerful deity, but all he asked for was for his deity to inspire a sense of awe, and to encourage people humbly dedicate themselves? If his God is truly as all-powerful, why didn’t Bradford Braley just ask his God to make the oil spill go away?

Does Braley not really believe in the power of prayer, or was he just being stingy?

Yesterday, on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Ted Poe said, “The Federal Government needs to get out of the way and let us continue safely to drill offshore and provide the energy needs of this country.”

Continue to drill offshore safely? How can something be continued if it hasn’t started yet?

Doesn’t Ted Poe get it? Offshore drilling has been proven to be deadly dangerous. It’s killed people. It’s killed one of America’s natural treasures. It’s killing the American economy.

Sorry, Representative Poe, but no, the government does not need to get out of the way of offshore drilling. The government needs to end offshore drilling.

They say the eyes don’t lie. Look at the live feed of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and it sure looks like there’s just as much oil gushing out of the busted offshore drilling site as there was before BP installed its “top hat”.

New York Times reports, “At least one expert, Ira Leifer, who is part of a government team charged with estimating the flow rate, is convinced that the operation has made the leak worse, perhaps far worse than the 20 percent increase that government officials warned might occur when the riser was cut.”

Read the rest of this important article.

They call it progress. BP is capturing four times the amount of oil that it had claimed was actually leaking from the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling site, and still, huge amounts of oil are gushing out of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, evading the best technological solution it has, a solution that took a month and a half to put into place.

Look at this, here, a photograph of the water next to the site where BP’s cap is in place. That’s from just a minute or two ago, and as you can see, the water is still a disgusting brown, filled with massive amounts of petroleum escaping into Gulf waters.

They’re saying we should feel good about this, but the way I see it, it’s same kind of progress as a skydiver with a malfunctioning parachute finding that he can reduce the speed of his fall a little bit by sticking out his arms.

No, BP, it’s not good enough.

Weird headline of the day comes from Jake Blumgart of the Philadephia Inquirer, writing that U.S. owes dead coal miners real change.

Of debt and death: How can the U.S. government owe change to dead people? What are the dead people going to with change?

The article’s right that the U.S. government owes it to some people to force the lazy coal industry to operate safer mines. However, the people who deserve change are the people that change can actually help: The coal miners who are still alive.

It’s an amazing sight this morning from the Deepwater Horizon drill site: A robotic submersible has a circular saw attached, and a mile down under the surface, is cutting into the pipe from which a massive amount of crude oil has been gushing since the oil rig exploded and sank a month and a half ago.

BP has been repeatedly impotent in its efforts to contain the oil spill. The current effort, to cap the main spill site, isn’t even aiming to completely stop the spill. Oh, how the standards of offshore drilling have fallen. They once told us that they were technological geniuses. Now, they’re big energy goofballs.

Why, with this repeated incompetence, should we continue to allow offshore drilling?

There’s a powerful bill in the U.S. House of Representatives right now that deals with the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling crisis in a clear, direct way. H.R. 5248, the No New Drilling Act, looks at the damage caused by the gigantic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and proposes a restoration of the moratorium on the expansion of offshore drilling.

U.S. Representative Danny Davis has not signed on as as a cosponsor to the No New Drilling Act. Why? He’s been busy.

Busy doing what? Busy supporting another piece of legislation: H. Res. 1297.

What would H. Res. 1297 do? It would recognize the importance of American Craft Beer Week.

The resolution, supported by Congressman Davis, notes the serious contributions of American craft beers, observing that, “American craft brewers increase awareness of the differences in the flavor, aroma, color, alcohol content, body, and other complex variables of beer.”

Come on, Representative Davis. If you have time to sit in your office, noting the differences in the complex variables of beer, you have time to sign your name to H.R. 5248, and take on the serious offshore drilling crisis. Please – cosponsor the No New Drilling Act.

This Sunday, a march to protest BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling oil spill will take place in Franklin County Florida. The march will start soon after 5:30 PM at the Apalachicola City Hall and will end at the Franklin County Courthouse.

Call D.T. Simmons at 323-0344 for information before the march.