No Time for BBQ

"When the problem is solved : I'm confident that people are going to look back and say that this administration was on top of what was an unprecedented crisis."

Wanna put a date on that O.?

This Memorial Day is beat up on the Prez weekend. In the NY Times, Rich, Friedman and Dowd all get in their licks.

He should have gone to Arlington.

He has got to take charge. I know they'll say they don't have the technology. They have to know the technology. He is wrong. They are not on top of it, and people know that. If he's not fully on his game by the end of this week, he's a done duck.

Sorry O. People are beginning to think you don't know what it is to be president, that you don't get it, that you were shooting hoops while the Gulf burned. Vacations are not in the job description.

To put it bluntly -- get off your ass.

Czech Right

The Czechs voted decisively, if not overwhelmingly, to put a Center Right coalition in power. That will be the direction here in November and over the same issue, viz. the deficit.

Send Bill

This Clinton-Sestak maneuver kind of smells, like so much Rahm touches. Tit for tat is not a good game. Illegal? Who knows. Probably not. But bad smell.

I Was Wrong

“Those who think we were either slow on the response or lacked urgency, don’t know the facts,” Mr. Obama said. “This has been our highest priority.”

Sorry dude, nobody buys that. You've got a lot of catching up to do, and you may never get there.

Take charge or die.

Top Kill

Even if the Top Kill works, this is such a huge disaster, I just hope nobody gets self-congratulatory. Check out ment/2010/05/31/100531taco_talk_kolbert Elizabeth Kolbert in Talk of the Town. She nails the environmental story, but also the political story. Obama must gain control, with a strong speech down at the site of the spill.

Nice Night

Mets beat the Phillies behind a knuckeballer, Suns beat the Lakers with their bench, and I met a lovely person watching the basketball. Late night, but a good one.

But the Sky IS Falling

The NYT reports from London that only 26 percent of Britons believe that "climate change is happening and is now established as manmade." That's down from 41 percent in November 2009.

A Greenpeace spokesman is quoted as observing that "legitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics, and that is a big, big problem."

So what's going on here? Is this shift really based on something real?

The entire matter has been spooked by the unauthorized release of emails from researchers at the University of East Anglia that so-called doubters latched on to as proof that science was overstating the case for global warming. Of course, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence supports the greenhouse thesis, but the skeptics were driven by rightist philosophy.

The Right has a vested interest in supporting industry, but there is also a superstitious element I think. Nobody of course wants to hear news of an apocalypse, even if it's not thought to be imminent, but it makes things muche easeier if you can blame bad news on reason and Science. Still, wouldn't it be best to cut emissions, just to play it safe. It's funny how the Right is so much more Radical. They don't believe in playing it safe. They are basically saying: Fuck the environment, full speed ahead.

Quick Post

O. killed the Bush doctrine. The Mets beat the Yankees. Good day.

Dopes

Barry Bonds was, unquestionably, a great hitter, as was Mark McGwire, but they couldn't resist the culture of cheating. Lance Armstrong is a fabulous, once-in-a-lifetime athlete, who has achieved superhuman feats. But I suspect he also went for an illicit edge, and that now he doth protest too much

New Rules on the Street

It was a lot easier than health reform, which the Republicans managed to demonized, somehow getting the public to think they didn't want health care reform when really they did, but everything got confused with Tea parties and all, so people began to blame everything on "big government," rather than on the insurance industry, which really had its act together.

Wall Street lobbyists didn't have it that easy. The banks know what the public thinks of them, and they also know they can eat these new rules and still make wads of money. The fancy derivatives and other hanky panky really aren't necessary to amass money, which they surely will.

Now if onl somebody could go after Big Oil.

Caught in the Spill

The Times goes for the oil spill jugular, They say that scientists are upset at the administration's failure to come clean on the extent of the spill.

The scientists point out that in the month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the government has failed to make public a single test result on water from the deep ocean. And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well.

Tom Friedman goes so far as to call it O.'s 9/11, which seems harsh, but shows just how vulnerable O. is on this one.

Clearly, some critics have a barely hidden agenda: stop drilling.

Showdown over the bank reform bill too. It must be strong. You can read public support for that into the somewhat wacky primary results. The public wants to punish the banks; O. must take advantage. He needs to figure out his own, grown-up, version of populism Geithner and Summers will NOT help.

Post-Partum Dads

A JAMA study shows that about 10% of men experience serious serious depression between their partner's first trimester and one year after childbirth. That's double the depression rate of men in general. For some reason, it's significantly higher than in other countries.

They seem to assume negative outcomes for the child, but haven't really studied than.

The most vulnerable period was from three to six months after birth. My own observation is that this would be the period when men have to assume more responsibility and also spend more time with any older children. Obviously, hormones are less relevant.

My guess is that their key finding is this one: The depression of either parent can include how one partner's depression affects the other and how intimacy, conflict management and division of responsibilities change after having a baby. In the meta-analysis, men had a higher risk of depression if their partner also had depression.

No Marine

What was that guy Blumenthal thinking?? Did he think nobody would notice he had been consistently lying about his alleged Vietnam war record. Ambition does funny things to your judgment.

Those were different times. We all tried to get out of the draft. But Blumenthal gave speeches sympathizing with those who had to go. That is really deeply unacceptable. And he said he went to Vietnam with the Marines

The Vietnam Draft is almost forgotten now, in these days of a volunteer force, but back in the sixties, the draft defined our very reality. Today, Richard Blumenthal is bringing it all back.

Stop and Frisk

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/nyregion/

The Times has a story today about what the cops call "stop and frisks", Not surprisingty, the principal objects of this technique are minorities. Nine times as often to be precise. The most frequently cited reason for the frisks is what the cops call "furtive moments," which can, of course, mean almost anything. The practice has quintupled under Commissioner Ray Kelly. The cops say they're seizing more guns and flooding areas where weapons possession is highest. "These are not unconstitutional,” Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said of the stops. “We are saving lives, and we are preventing crime.”

According to the analysis of the 2009 raw data by the Center for Constitutional Rights, nearly 490,000 blacks and Latinos were stopped by the police on the streets last year, compared with 53,000 whites. But once stopped, the arrests were virtually the same.

John A. Eterno, a former city police captain who worked to computerize the department’s stop-and-frisk data before he retired in 2004, said the tactic could be effective in pushing down crime. But Eterno also said, "My take is that this has become more like a ‘throw a wide net and see what you can find’ kind of thing,” he said. “I don’t see it as targeted enforcement, especially when you see numbers that we are talking about.”

Force is is also used disproportionately against blacks and Latinos.

Read All About It!

http://brooklynheightsblog.com/

My local "paper"

Funny

Arnold Quote all over the net: "I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me," - Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Nudging Left

"Nothing is a better fit for this White House than a blank slate, institution-loyal, seemingly principle-free careerist who spent the last 15 months as the Obama administration's lawyer vigorously defending every one of his assertions of extremely broad executive authority."


Thus Glenn Grunwald at his nastiest. Kagan is there to forge a new majority. O is a great politician. Let's pray he gets another appointment.

Warren's Way

Wisdom from Warren Buffett:


Warren said that the common thread with all the managers of his companies is that they absolutely love what they do. That’s what he looks for in a manager.
“Find your passion and don’t let anything stop you.”
“Always try to go to bed a little wiser than when you woke. If you do that for a long time, you will be a success.”


And it's okay to be a little hokey.

Markets Roiled

The wild day on world markets, with manifold explanations, points to the need for ironclad regulations.

Link

OK, now they say there was a link to the Pakistani Taliban. I'm officially scared. I didn't want to believe it. It seemed too amateurish. A whole new can of worms.

Reminder

With an oil slick and a terrorist to worry about, I was surprised to see the NYT weigh in on financial reform, but at least they got it right. It may be good timing. It's really important.

Crisis Mode

Good piece by Tumulty in the Post on O's juggling of two big crises in a week.

They got the guy, but not without some luck. One time, there won't be that much luck -- certainly one time where there's no nearby vendor who spots smoke in a vehicle. More people with names like Faisal Shahzad will go on no-fly lists and be apprehended and harassed -- which could be a good thing, but ultimately fruitless because there are so many residents with Arabic names, many who are citizens like this man is.

Welcoming the Feds

Dana Milbank had a good piece showing how Conservative Republican governors are the quickest to put out their hands for Federal assistance, like with the oil spill. The oil slick is hard for the Tea Party to swallow.

Times Square

It doesn't seem to be the Taliban. In some respects, I'd prefer it to be a Pakistani import and not a homegrown McVeigh type. Thankfully, it will probably be neither, but rather some loner. Then again, loners add up.

Run For The Roses

I like watching the Derby. All that action and power packed into two minutes. The jockey's won thre times in four years. Why would you ever bet against him?

The Sport of Kings or, failing Royalty (Kings, Queens, Sultans, Omirs), the sport of rich white guys. Now, most horses are owned, not by individuals but by syndicates. Today's winner -- Super Saver -- was owned by a few guys representing a single farm.

The owner hires a trainer, who is a professional. So, you've got the breeder, the owner, the trainer and the jockey, plus the masses who bet on the outcome. A perfect class society.

A fact:
* A thoroughbred is a breed of horse whose ancestry traces to three foundation sires—the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerly Turk. These three stallions were brought to England from the Middle East during the 17th century and bred with English horses.
* No horse has won the U.S. Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978.

Super Saver is out of the A.P. Indy mare Supercharger, who traces back in tail-female line to grade I winner Dance Number, a blue hen mare for the Phipps family and a direct descendant of the great La Troienne. Supercharger’s dam, Get Lucky (by Mr. Prospector), is a full sister to Travers (gr. I) and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (gr. I) winner Rhythm.

Super Saver despite his fine bloodline, was not auctioned at Keeneland, having been bred on the farm.

The horse's trainer, Todd Pletcher, won the Derby on his 24th try.

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I see Obama is finally getting down to the Gulf. My son is also scheduled to fly over the slick tomorrow, showing the same degree of enterprise as the one-step-too-slow-again Prez.