There's A Hole In The Bucket...

...dear Liza a hole.

Okay, so the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is still leaking. More than 3 million gallons have leached into the water so far, with no end in sight. Over the weekend the steel dome British Petroleum planned to lower over the leaking pipe filled with a mixture of sludge and methane ice crystals, clogging the line to the surface and rendering the dome useless. BP now plans to try another, smaller dome to cap the pipe, and if that doesn’t work, fill it with a mixture of cement and shredded rubber. In other words, they have little to no idea what they are doing. Over the past decade the oil industry managed to convince a lot of people that deep water exploration and drilling were “perfectly safe,” that the chances of an accident were slim to none. Unfortunately, as everyone should have known then and certainly knows now, nothing is perfectly safe. BP assumed they could simply adapt shallow water clean-up techniques to deep water - that there was no real difference between the two. That proved to be a faulty assumption. It wasn’t the first, and certainly won’t be that last faulty assumption made throughout this process. Fossil fuels will remain as essential part of this country’s energy mix for at least the foreseeable future. But let’s not continue to pretend there is no risk and are no consequences associated with their retrieval. There are millions of people living on the Gulf coast who understand different.

Following heavy rains last week, Nashville, Tennessee found itself partially submerged by a swollen Cumberland River. There were complaints and questions regarding the fact that the Nashville flooding did not receive the level of media attention - positive or negative - that was given to New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Seems to me that the relative lack of attention is a direct result of the vast improvement in disaster response over the past four years. If the Tennessee flooding was an unmitigated disaster, we would have heard of nothing else for the past ten days.

The big news of the day (Monday) was the nomination of Solicitor General Elana Kagan to the Supreme Court. By most accounts the former dean of Harvard Law School is a brilliant legal mind, a student of the law, and a consensus builder, able to sway others to her way of thinking. She lacks judicial experience, something her opponents played up even before she was nominated. But the idea that a Supreme Court justice needs to have judicial experience is relatively new. Prior to the 1980’s it was fairly common for justices to have little or no judicial experience. In fact, former Chief Justice Renquist spent no time on the bench prior to his selection to the court. Of course, little things like facts and precedents matter little in the modern ideological grandstanding exhibition that passes for confirmation hearings these days.

Frankly, I’m a little tired of the whole charade surrounding Supreme Court nominations. The process is so formulaic it’s boring. The President makes the announcement, his party praises the nomination, the opposition claims they’ll keep an open mind. Then the Senate convenes a hearing, both sides insist there will be no “litmus test” the nominee must pass in order to be confirmed, one side claims the nominee in a capable, intelligent moderate who respects the Constitution and will apply the law accordingly, while the other side insists the nominee is so far outside the “judicial mainstream” he/she couldn’t see that mainstream with binoculars and should never be allowed near the bench. Abortion always makes headlines, and Republicans always make a fuss about “activist judges.” Any justice nominated by a Republican president will be cast as “outside the judicial mainstream” by Democrats, and any justice nominated by a Democratic president will be cast as a “judicial activist” intent on shredding the fabric of America. It’s pathetic and it’s beneath us, and I wish we could just get on with it. There’s no need for a twelve week confirmation process, every single Senator knows right now how they intend to vote. The dog and pony show is unnecessary and insulting to the intelligence of people who actually give a crap about the Supreme Court.

In a situation straight out of Brewster’s Millions, Great Britain held an election last Thursday and voted for... none of the above? David Cameron’s Conservative Party captured more seats in Parliament than either current Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party or third party challenger Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. But since no party won a clear majority of seats, there is quite possible that Cameron will not receive the keys to 10 Downing Street, and not impossible that Clegg could wind up Prime Minister. Being the party in power prior to the election, Labour has the first opportunity to try to form a coalition government. Both they and the Conservatives have reached out to the Liberal Democrats in hopes of reaching some sort of consensus. The primary sticking point is Clegg’s demand for electoral reform of the sort that might prevent this type stalemate from recurring in the future. UPDATE: As of Tuesday afternoon, Cameron and the Conservatives have reached a deal with Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats involving a referendum on electoral reform, an “emergency budget,” and the seating of David Cameron as Prime Minister with Clegg as his deputy. Pundits expect this coalition to last anywhere from six months to a year before another election is called. Should be an interesting year in the UK.

In response to global investors’ panic and riots in the streets of Athens last week, the European Union committed to a trillion dollar financial bail-out package over the weekend for any country in the Euro Zone in danger of impending financial collapse. Currently that list is limited to Greece, but Spain, Portugal and Italy have also been put on notice. In order to be eligible for their portion of the money, Greece will still have to go through with the wildly unpopular austerity measures passed by their parliament. It is obvious that Greek citizens either do not understand the situation they are in, or they don’t care. My money is on the latter. This is a country in which almost half of those required to pay taxes, choose not to. The government employs far too many people, with far too generous benefits and far too little fiscal responsibility. Yet the Greek people seem to think that the rest of Europe should pay their debts while refusing to change their irresponsible behavior. They are acting like children, and therefore probably deserve to be treated as such.

Oh, and before someone starts bitching about how the Greek debt crisis is merely a precursor to what we will face here in Obama’s socialist America, a few important notes of distinction. The U.S. economy is the largest in the world, 42 times the size of the Greek economy. We have substantial margin for error. Most of the people in America required to pay taxes, actually pay them. A novel concept apparently. When the rest of the world panics, they don’t run to Greece for security. Frightened investors always flock to U.S. stocks, currency and Treasury bonds. That provides us with access to quick capital at reasonably low rates. And because we maintain control over our own currency, we have the ability to print, extract or devalue our currency if necessary to increase the value of our exports and extricate ourselves from the kind of debt trap Greece worked itself into. It wouldn’t be pretty, but we could do it. Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, all far higher up the “socialism” scale than we are with their national healthcare and free higher education. None of them are in danger of economic collapse. Neither are we.

And now for lighter fare.

Seattle Seahawks perennial Pro Bowl left tackle Walter Jones announced his retirement last week. If you’ve never heard of him, it’s probably because while the offensive linemen are the most important players on the field, they receive the least amount of glory. But for the past 10 years, Jones was easily the best player on a team with four straight division championships and a Super Bowl appearance, and has been widely regarded as the best offensive lineman in all of football. One staggering statistic of how good Jones was at the most difficult position in the game is this - in his 12 years in the league, Jones was flagged for only nine holding penalties. Nine penalties over the the course of 188 games. That’s the basketball equivalent Shaquille O’Neal committing only nine fouls in about two-and-a-half seasons! He should be a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame as soon as he is eligible. Others at his position have made it in on far lighter credentials.

Last week, the Oakland Raiders cut ties with former first overall draft selection JaMarcus Russell. Russell was, to say the least, disappointing. Over the past three years the Raiders paid Russell $39 million, and for all that money reaped a grand total of seven wins. An average of $5.6 million per win. I’m tempted to feel bad for them. It’s not often a team squanders such a massive amount of money on a single player. But I’m only tempted. Russell was selected first overall on the strength of a single game against an inferior opponent, instead of on his body of work at LSU. The Raiders should have seen this coming. There’s a reason that team has been so bad for so long.

Failure of the NHL to come to an agreement with the city of Glendale, Arizona has cleared the way for the Phoenix Coyotes to return to Winnipeg, where they belong. That’s right, I said it. Long live the Winnipeg Jets! Of course, nothing has been finalized yet, but unlike 1996, the NHL seems willing to place higher value on the integrity of the game than the potential size of the market, and there is a billionaire businessman in Winnipeg ready and willing to make it happen. Despite the increase in American viewership during this season’s playoffs, the league’s experiment with the sunbelt has been disappointing at best. Ice hockey teams should play in places where people love hockey. Canadians love hockey. More Canadian teams will be good for hockey. Let me know when I can order my Jets jersey?

The Chicago Blackhawks crushed my dreams of a Vancouver vs. Montreal Stanley Cup final tonight. Damn you Chicago! Damn you! Now I have to rely on the Canadiens - following a grueling seven-game series against the best team in the league - to defeat Sidney Crosby and the Penguins in game seven tomorrow night, then beat the Boston Bruins in seven games, before losing to those cursed Blackhawks in seven in the final. Sigh. It could be a long three weeks.

It feels like I’m forgetting something. Oh that’s right, the failed car bombing in New York City last weekend. (How the heck did that idiot find a parking space in Times Square on a Friday night?) I don’t have much to say about this other than the fact that it seems as though the quality of Al Queda’s operatives has deteriorated significantly. It’s almost as if this moron wanted to be caught. I guess a stupid terrorist is better than a smart one, right?

Finally, co-founder of the Family Research Council and noted anti-gay activist George Alan Rekers took a two week vacation with one Jo-vanni Roman, a male escort Rekers hired from a website called Rentboy.com. Confronted with the story, Rekers claimed that due to his recent surgery, he is unable to lift his luggage and needed someone to carry it for him. The trouble with this explanation - aside from the obvious oddity of a conservative christian activist hiring a male escort for a European vacation - is that in a series of photos taken of the pair at the Miami International Airport, Roman can clearly be seen standing nervously next to Rekers, carefully not handling the cart full of luggage. Anyone who reads this blog regularly understands that I have very little patience for people who make a living condemning certain individuals for the very same behaviors they themselves indulge in. Men like Rekers are among the lowest form of humanity, hypocrites, preaching one thing while doing the opposite. I’m sure his followers will accept whatever explanation he provides for them, regardless of how ridiculous they are, because they can’t afford to have the “liberal media” tear down another “good conservative.” But these clowns are a cancer in our society. It is perfectly acceptable for good people to have honest disagreements. But they should be honest disagreements, not charades.