Obama is not the first President to not be at the Tomb on Memorial Day. Bush jr sent Cheney a couple of time so he could go to his ranch. It's not that big of a deal to me and I am a veteran.

-----------

I keep thinking about Jimmy Carter and solar panels on the roof of the White House and Carter's call for 20% of our energy coming from non-fossil fuels (I think he actually specified solar) by the year 2000.............then Reagan was elected and the solar panels came down and Carter's energy policies were dumped.

I remember those gas station lines around the block and people getting shot and killed in those lines.

-----------edited t o add: yeah for Tesla Motors. They are going to make their electric Roadster in the now closed NUMMI plant in Fremont......batteries are being made in the bat area also...........

THIS is how you choose to evaluate a presidency? Comments like this - stupid ass dribble put forth by the Repugs and Faux Newz and then repeated by all thier little followers until people think that it's true - show so clearly what is so very wrong with this country - that too many people get caught up in nonsense shit instead of paying attention to what matters. I understand judging him on policy and stuff that matters, but to go all high and mighty over where he spent a holiday? Give me a fucking break.

Also, remember that on Veterans Day, after official ceremonies at Arlington, Obama cleared his schedule and spent time at the cemetery walking around the graves and talking to families. Shrub spent a Memorial Day - along with a quarter of his entire presidency - at his Texas ranch. And the almighty Reagan missed a Memorial Day at Arlington.

As for spending the weekend in the Gulf area, people clearly don't understand the impact that a Presidential entourage has on an area. Hundreds of hotel rooms locked up, roads blocked for motorcades, areas cleared for security details, etc. People would have been bitching that they couldn't get to the cemetery or missed their picnic because the freeway was shut down for an hour or cleanup crews couldn't work because the Secret Service had to cordon off areas. The righties would have been spewing froth over how he disrupted the efforts in the area for a three-day photo shoot.

Andrew:

I'm curious, did you lose respect for Bush the Younger because he didn't go in 2006? Did you lose respect for Bush the Elder because he didn't go in 1992? Did you lose respect for Reagan because he didn't go in 1983? I'm just curious if there is a different standard at play. In 2006, Bush the Younger didn't go because he was in Crawford, TX on vacation. In 1992, Bush the Elder didn't go because he was in Kennebunkport, ME. In 1983 Reagan didn't go because he was at a summit.

Despite what TV and/or talk radio might have you believe it is not uncommon for the POTUS to have either the Veep or another proxy lay the wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Arlington. I'm not saying don't use whatever metrics you wish to use, if for you what the POTUS does on Memorial Day is the deciding factor, that's the deciding factor. I trust, though, that you are applying a consistent standard without favor or bias and so pretty much have no respect for any President from the last half of the 20th century and into the first part of the 21st based solely on that criteria.

Cheers
Aj

One of the things that gets me about where our politics are now is that they are almost COMPLETELY divorced from facts. It's not just that right-wing talk show hosts or FOX news say things that are factually untrue. It's that they know that for many people it does not *matter* if things are factually true or not. Most people, on hearing "President Obama isn't going to Arlington", wouldn't even *think* to Google "how many times have Presidents been out of Washington DC on Memorial day". This might seem trivial but it's not.

What this means is that our politics are no longer at all fact-based or fact-biased. If someone says that, for instance, Reagan was POTUS from 1968 until 1988 it no longer *matters* whether or not that is even possible! Let me repeat that--it no longer matters, to a non-trivial portion of the American body politic--whether or not some statement X is true or not, or even if the statement is *plausible*. When a culture reaches that point, they have a serious problem on their hands because politics stops--or more poignantly politics becomes nothing *but* scoring political points.

Were 'Death panels' in the HCR bill? No. Did it matter? No. All that mattered is that people *said* that they were in the bill. The facts were irrelevant and it was considered perfectly acceptable to vote against the bill based upon *false* information. Does it matter that other Presidents missed Memorial Day at Arlington? No. All that matters is that people say that Obama is the *first* POTUS to miss that holiday at Arlington.

So here we are with a slate of problems on our plate, any ONE of which is difficult but taken together appear overwhelming and we have both a political class and a body politic that, it appears, are no longer interested in making decisions based upon facts and, in fact, seem to be rapidly losing the ability to distinguish between a fact and an opinion or to acknowledge that there is a non-trivial difference between the two. The Gulf oil spill is going to be yet another example of this. In six months or a year, when clean-up operations are still proceeding someone--probably at FOX--is going to make a statement along the lines of "the shrimp catching industry wasn't big along the Gulf Coast, why enviro-whackos are making this big deal about shrimp when there were no shrimp there..." and people are going to react *as if* it were true. Very few people will actually take the 30 seconds it would take to Google 'shrimp industry Gulf coast' to see if, in fact, there was ever a thriving shrimping industry in Louisiana. They will vote for some politician who takes up what is said on FOX and parrot it even though it is demonstrably untrue. That person will go to Washington or their state legislature or governor's office or what-have-you and make decisions based on something but not based on facts. And then, when the next election cycle rolls around, that person will not be punished for making non-fact based decisions and pushing non-fact based policies.

How we get out of this problem I have no idea. The people who repeat these non-factual assertions aren't stupid. Some of them are quite intelligent. It's just that as a *culture* we have lost the ability or willingness to think critically and can no longer make a useful distinction between fact and opinion.

Cheers
Aj

My new favorite is "there were no terrorist attacks on US soil during the Bush (43) administration".

Yeah, I love that one too!

Firstly, I didn't say your remarks were worthless pieces of shit. I'm curious, though, if you held every other president to the same standard? You said that you lost all respect for Obama because he didn't go to Arlington this year. I'm curious if you have no respect for Bush the Younger, Clinton, Bush the Elder, Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Nixon based upon their performance of that act. This isn't about who you voted for, Andrew. It's not about your party affiliation. YOU (not I or MsD) said that you lost all respect for Obama based upon his not going to Arlington on Memorial Day. Now, whatever I might think about using that as a touchstone for grading a President (and I have thoughts on that matter), what I was asking about was whether or not you applied this standard in a consistent fashion. If not, then why not? If so, then why *that* standard? All I was looking for from you, Andrew, was whether or not this "what did you do on Memorial Day, Mr. President" standard was applied fairly and evenly or was this a special standard for Mr. Obama. That's it.

Look, perhaps we have different standards for Presidents. For you, perhaps their performance of symbolic and ceremonial duties (which count for something) trumps policy. For me, policy trumps everything else. I don't even care, as much, about always keeping all their campaign promises but I DO care about what kinds of policies they enact, why they enact them and how they fight for those policies. The ceremonial duties may or may not put a lump in my throat but I'm not going to lose respect for some pol because of what s/he chose to do on some holiday.

One last thing:

As far as doing this thing--and people here do this a lot and as a veteran it *REALLY* pisses me off, by the way--is trotting out their relatives who are veterans to be air cover. Look, I am a vet, as is my son, as is my sister, as was my father before us. A member of my extended family has served in every single war this nation has fought since WWI. There are, within my immediate family, two Purple Hearts and a Bronze star. I have, on my mother's side, three former Tuskegee Airmen. My father was a member of the storied 761st Tank Battalion. My sister made it a career and retired as a Major in 2005. I would have made it a career but I was cashiered for being queer. My son is a Ranger. He is *not* on his fourth deployment to Iraq because he's on his *first* deployment to Afghanistan. So it's been Iraq-Iraq-Iraq-Afghanistan. That's been the last six years of his life and you know what, he's signing up for a second hitch! Now, what have I just proved? Have I made myself more correct? Do I have an argument that judging the POTUS on what he did on his long Memorial Day weekend might not be the best standard?

We're not props and we don't give folks an argument when they don't otherwise have one. I was a soldier. I'd do it again in a heartbeat but I didn't do it so I could be trotted out on an Internet message board as a prop to bolster a flailing argument. I am glad and appreciative that you honor our veterans--but you aren't the only one and, pardon me for being obtuse but I was just enlisted--what on Earth do your relatives have to do with THIS topic? The day someone here says something horrible about a veteran *because* they are a veteran, I will absolutely stand with you but I just don't get why you felt the need to wave your service-member relatives and/or friends around on this thread.

Cheers
Aj

Fact finding and BP...
 

I could cry

Several photos are released on Yahoo today

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Animal...788f972a9e2e99

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/r...icture14-6.png

Wow, that's quite a pity party response. The whole point of posting on a discussion board is to discuss. If you don't want people to respond to or question your opinions, then keeping them to yourself might be an appropriate course of action.

Yep, that's what happened. There is an official 'ceremony' (not the right word, but it's too early for the dictionary side of my brain to work) for each casket - part on the plane and part once on the tarmac. Though the cameras were there for only one or two of these, Obama stayed all night.

Also, until Obama, no cameras had been allowed since 1991:

President George H.W. Bush's administration imposed the ban on media coverage of the arrival of fallen troops' remains at Dover Air Force Base during the Gulf War in February 1991. It came about after a controversy arose when Bush held a news conference at the same moment the first U.S. casualties were returning to Dover the day after the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, and three television networks carried the events live on split screen, with Bush appearing at one point to joke while on the opposite screen the solemn ceremony unfolded at the Delaware base.

Both Republican and Democratic administrations have upheld the Dover ban, but both have also made notable exceptions, which some observers view as politically expedient. For example, under President Bill Clinton in October 2000, the Pentagon distributed photographs of coffins arriving at Dover bearing the remains of military personnel killed in the bombing of the USS Cole.

linkyloo

I turned off my cable about four months ago. I search out my news online and listen to NPR when I'm driving. (I drive a lot for work) I'm happier and better informed.

Interesting graphic that suggests possible outlook of the flow if it continues for an extended period (until relief wells are built)

I am a chef...and with the fishing industry on hold, it has been impossible to get any seafood from the gulf. I also saw on the news tonight that BP just spent 5 million dollars to make a commericial apologizing for the disaster. That money could have been spent on the rescue of wildlife, or the effort to stop the leak. I can't believe this happening.

Goldman Sachs somehow knew the fish would be gone. They sold 250 million of BP stock before the spill, which was 46 per cent of their holdings. RawStory.com

This looks more like a case of the internet focusing on one number, sans context, and turning it viral. on 3/31/10, 5 institutions and one fund linkyloo each sold over 1M shares of BP. This was the day that Obama announced opening coastal waters to offshore drilling linkyloo , and the day after BP let $500M in contracts as part of it's new plan to drill in Iraqi oil fields linkyloo. Trading volumes were fairly normal that day, and the stock price was on an upswing.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Get all the facts, then decide.

This is not just going to effect the US. This oil and the toxic chemicals used by BP will be inour food chain .... globally. The oil will be damaging eco sytems worldwide.

oil drilling and exploration as well as its use is a global issue. We have to start realizing this and work together globally in dealing with these matters.

Seriousness about cutting the need for oil in our lives starts on a personal level. Implementing some really simple changes by many makes a difference. However, what about the monied elite? The belief that being able to buy whatever you want no matter what it does in terms of environmental issues and energy-use just because you have the bucks is a big part of the equation.

I have been going nuts trying to figure out what to do with my beloved T-Bird. Yes, I admit, I love big, fast, Detroit engines. I know they must go, but, it hurts. But, this is not a good thing. I have less than 8000 miles on this car (bought it in 2003 and these have stopped being built). I don't drive it much. I have thought about selling it. Then, I realize that most likely someone who buys it will have it on the road more. I had wanted to give it to my niece eventually, but the same applies. I did some research with collectors (only ones that do not drive their cars and have public show rooms for car enthusiasts. And found out that I might be able to do an upon my death contract, in which a collector will buy it, and put it in their collection and give the money for the car to this niece. Just have to get the details worked out. Worth a try.


I know, this pissed me off! Rescue efforts or how about cutting some checks to the people that are loosing their livlihood- as in the fishing and resturant businesses? Probably best for efforts to save the critters. There are several organizations trying to clean as many birds as possible in the Gulf.