The MMS has been a joke for last few years

Post #326,374 by lincoln 5/17/10 11:45:06 AM Reply	The MMS has been a joke for last few years because the RepubliCANT administration wanted less regulation and more free market capitalism; thus, when they should have been doing their job high up MMS employees were doing hookers and blow on the taxpayer dime. "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Post #326,376 by drook 5/17/10 12:15:27 PM Reply	Anyone know how to read a budget request? http://www.mms.gov/adm/budget.html The format is vastly different year to year, so I'm not sure how to compare them. But the 2000 budget -- http://www.mms.gov/a...Justification.pdf -- seems to request $610,648,000. The 2008 budget -- http://www.mms.gov/a...Justification.pdf -- seems to request $297,181,000. Like I said, the format is vastly different and I could be misreading it. -- Drew
Post #326,386 by Another Scott 5/17/10 12:51:52 PM Reply	It's complicated. If one looks at the total bottom-line numbers, it's distorted by royalty payments to the states. It might make sense to compare the "Regulatory (RO)" numbers between the years, but since the 2000 PDF isn't searchable, it takes too long for the time I've got available. 2008: (p.102 of the PDF) - $56M, 334 FTE (Full-Time Equivalent employees) 2000: (p.13 of the PDF) - $42.5M, 347 FTE request. But it's hard to know whether it's an apples-to-apples comparison without more digging. HTH. Cheers, Scott.
Post #326,377 by boxley 5/17/10 12:18:02 PM Reply	Re: The MMS has been a joke for last few years yes they have and the current officeholder has been in place 16 months plenty of time to have cleared the rubbish out. The way the current admin ignored the early days of the spill was the same way the repos operated when in charge. It wasnt until someone told Obama that he was heading for a PR nightmare did they got off their asses If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
Post #326,378 by lincoln 5/17/10 12:21:07 PM Reply	Because he was focused on health care reform Removing the RepubliCANT drones in places like MMS was much lower on his priority list. "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Post #326,380 by boxley 5/17/10 12:23:19 PM Reply	yup, it shows shoving bad legislation down peoples throats while ignoring real world events describes this administration to a T If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
Post #326,452 by mhuber 5/18/10 2:21:54 AM Reply	Maybe yer side should have taken him up on the offer to work with them, rather than announcing that they were going to oppose everything no matter what. Your side went with the pure win/lose, no compromise, we don't care what the legislation is we just don't want a win in the other side's stat's strategy. Traded the opportunity to make a difference for a cynical shot at a box score. Played horserace politics when there was real work to be done, and lost. Suck it up. Your side is dedicated to the President of the United States failing, and if that means disaster for the United States, well, gee, that's just too bad isn't it? ------------------------- A little thought experiment for you. Let's pretend that Obama had made MMS a priority, and brought it to the state you demand, where it was able to prevent the disaster. What would your side be saying about that? --------------------------------------- I think it's perfectly clear we're in the wrong band. (Tori Amos)
Post #326,465 by boxley 5/18/10 8:32:38 AM Reply	maybe you shoud have been paying attention my "side" as you put it wasnt even addressed by either the republicans or the democrats and I discussed at length here how it should be done. As a reminder the last time I voted for a republican was for reagan. As for MMS a reform has been overdue for years and if a reform had been done, and the well blew anyway I dont think the head of the agency would have taken a whitewater rafting trip during the first 3 days of the spill. He might have even thought about doing his job, you know the thingy they give you money in exchange for
Post #326,382 by drook 5/17/10 12:42:13 PM Reply	Another tired meme Have you ever gotten a raise? Does any of this sound familiar? * You just got a raise, we should get a new car. * You just got a raise, we should paint the house. * You just got a raise, we should go on vacation. * You just got a raise, let's eat out more often. You can't do everything first. After 8 years of an administration openly trying to dismantle everything they could, there are plenty of things that are ready to crash and burn. -- Drew
Post #326,388 by boxley 5/17/10 1:00:33 PM Reply	maybe he should get off the golf course and hit the office If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
Post #326,401 by lincoln 5/17/10 3:08:11 PM Reply	Shrub rode bikes and cleared brush so what's your point? "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Post #326,405 by boxley 5/17/10 3:23:52 PM Reply	so Obama is no better than bush, glad you could admit that
Post #326,413 by Ashton 5/17/10 4:23:57 PM Reply	'"The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to EMOTIONALLY comprehend the exponential function." -- Edward Teller Your antidisestablishmentarianism is so automatic that I think you have -- some how -- channeled My Gramma. That does not bode well for you or any impressionable tykes in whom you are inculcating these digital-think habits. You DEMAND instant gratification: the correction of Eight Years of the Cheney Shogunate: NOW, amidst the wreckage of numberless small-to-large programs {wrapped in the exigencies and emergencies which have precipitated a job-declining out-sourced milieu for which there Can Be No 'quick-fix' of the Disneyland kind.} {{Sheesh}} Figure it out: NO Human Being with 'President' or any other title can UNDO a convoluted Mess that has become Terminal.. or at very-least, Near-Terminal for the whole Affluenza-suffering Murican masses. Blaming ObamaÂ for 'his' abject Failure to instantly Un-DO this collective Mess -- is the cheapest of shots, is boring, thence annoying. But in any stage: carping irrelevant to fixing Any Bloody Part of the Mess. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I could almost see voting for Palin in 2012 on the grounds that this sorry ratfucking excuse for a republic, this savage, smirking, predatory empire deserves her. Bring on the Rapture, motherfuckers! -- via RC
Post #326,421 by boxley 5/17/10 5:42:03 PM Reply	huh? you talk about language murder what does the wanting to keep the queen of england in nominal charge of the church of england have to do with yer grammy or cheney? Instant correction hardly, he has a great new social order to put in place, he doesnt have time to do anything as useful as culling deadwood from the bloatocracy or just running the country. I understand the problem, its just these dam reality things that keep biting him in the ass just like any other president. He does love his cheney and is extending and expanding every shitty little pissant security law and creating new ones on the fly so citizens dont have that long wait for anything like a trial, they just get marched into the military compounds and wait for the endless war to be over. Glad that doesnt bother you as long as the checks keep coming for the lefthanded redheaded flute and whistle society keep showing up in the clubhouse mailbox.
Post #326,427 by Ashton 5/17/10 7:21:15 PM Reply	I grant you the absence of Cheney-fumigation, to any effect I'll even grant that it is his wisdom which remains to be proven (or dis-) as regards the puzzle whose unsorted 520 million pieces were dumped into his Admin's lap, 16 months ago. I reiterate: his intelligence is a proven asset (and for me, at least) the attribute that "he is capable of learning" -- multiplies whatever native perspicuity he might generally possess. The ad hominem, oft patently lynching-Murica deja-vus: indicate that his intelligence or other assets make no difference to the mouth-breathers, thus all that hyperbolic shit and their specious non-reasoning cancels-out the n-millions of those detractors. Obama would have to possess all the virtues (and none of the vices) of Lincoln, FDR, Gandhi, Buddha and even me: to perform -- as a single human being -- vastly better than he has. You cannot name a single other (living) homo-sap who can come close that list of attributes, either. And if a New Social Order implies: a dismantling of the oligarchy and its current corporatocracy-wannabe placeholder, via legitimate and Constitutional redrawing of the Rules of Bizness/Med-care/'Insurance', along with changing the means of funding ridiculously expensive 'elections' of the corporate$-beholden? More Power to Him and all who ride in Her. We either alter the accelerating flood of All Assets to the 2%, as now, or Banana Republic is the default, from our current Debtor-Nation world status. But since obstinate disintegration-on-'principle' aka chaos ... is ever-so-much easier to advocate, advertise and precipitate: I see those odds, too ;-/ I think 'we' are too immature and narcissistic to actually Change Any viewpoints, to any successful == cooperative! end.. A Disneyland-besotted majority incapableof Learning, that is. Just like Shrub. See ya on the barricades; there are some gated-compounds right up the hill from here. One local revolution at a time is my motto, for now. [I remember Rationing. It wasn't so bad; millions learned delayed-gratification, had fun with Jack Armstrong paper planes that flew and.. lots else. What, me worry?] I could almost see voting for Palin in 2012 on the grounds that this sorry ratfucking excuse for a republic, this savage, smirking, predatory empire deserves her. Bring on the Rapture, motherfuckers! -- via RC
Post #326,431 by boxley 5/17/10 8:29:50 PM Reply	my hepc buddy who lives in a shed can barely read a repair manual, whose miscegeny and misygeny is world class whose foreign policy is bring all the troops home n fuck those other people couldnt have damaged the country any worse than the current regime is doing and you think he is a combo of lincoln FDR ghandi and you? Well following FDR locking up Japanese and Alaskan natives in concentration camps and Lincoln suspending habeas corpus I guess your anology is apt but he isnt just reserving this for the people of color and southerners, he has graciously extended this to all american citizens, no trial no judge just assassinate as needed and if you grab them alive by some error here ya go. http://www.salon.com...enwald/index.html Barack Obama claims the right to assassinate Americans far from any battlefield and with no due process of any kind. The Obama administration begins covertly abandoning long-standing Miranda protections for American suspects by vastly expanding what had long been a very narrow "public safety" exception, and now Eric Holder explicitly advocates legislation to codify that erosion. John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduce legislation to bar all Terrorism suspects, including Americans arrested on U.S. soil, from being tried in civilian courts, and former Bush officials Bill Burck and Dana Perino -- while noting (correctly) that Holder's Miranda proposal constitutes a concession to the right-wing claim that Miranda is too restrictive -- today demand that U.S. citizens accused of Terrorism and arrested on U.S. soil be treated as enemy combatants and thus denied even the most basic legal protections (including the right to be charged and have access to a lawyer). This shift in focus from non-citizens to citizens is as glaring as it is dangerous. As Digby put it last week: The frighting reality is that not even Dick Cheney thought of stripping Americans of their citizenship so that you could torture and imprison them forever --- even right after 9/11 when the whole country was petrified and he could have gotten away with anything. You'll recall even John Walker Lindh, who was literally captured on the battlefield fighting with the Taliban, was tried in civilian court. They even read him his rights. and you think because he pretends to be a socialist by letting every backbencher in congress pass any type of bullshit social program then jamming it thru while the iron was hot under tarp followed by a complete breakdown of meaningful health care reform jammed thru to the applause of the insurance and pharm lobbyists. He isnt, he just wants them fat and happy so him and his cabal of wall street veterans can strip the last dime out of the public and when the economic shit really hits the fan and people start the revolt he has everything in place for him and the next guy to really bring the whip down hard without fear of the courts stepping in and holding them back.
Post #326,438 by Another Scott 5/17/10 8:59:59 PM Reply	Greenwald likes to beat dead horses sometimes. From December 4, 2002: http://www.cbsnews.c.../main531596.shtml (CBS) American citizens working for al Qaeda overseas can legally be targeted and killed by the CIA under President Bush's rules for the war on terrorism, U.S. officials say. The authority to kill U.S. citizens is granted under a secret finding signed by the president after the Sept. 11 attacks that directs the CIA to covertly attack al Qaeda anywhere in the world. The authority makes no exception for Americans, so permission to strike them is understood rather than specifically described, officials said. These officials said the authority will be used only when other options are unavailable. Military-like strikes will take place only when law enforcement and internal security efforts by allied foreign countries fail, the officials said. Capturing and questioning al Qaeda operatives is preferable, even more so if an operative is a U.S. citizen, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Any decision to strike an American will be made at the highest levels, perhaps by the president. U.S. officials say few Americans are working with al Qaeda but they have no specific estimates. The CIA already has killed one American under this authority, although U.S. officials maintain he wasn't the target. [...] I don't know whether Obama has directed a re-examination of this policy. Panetta's been very quiet. As Ashton said, Bush made a huge mess of things. It's not surprising that Obama hasn't wanted a huge distraction that modifying this policy would entail. Recall that even something as uncontroversial as repealing DADT is taking ages. Imagine how Boehner and McConnell and Lieberman the rest would react if Obama said he was changing that policy. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #326,442 by boxley 5/17/10 9:23:04 PM Reply	and of course drone attacks have all but stopped since he took office, yea right. Note the headline, it doesnt say bush ordered, it states obama ordered http://www.timesonli...rticle7089899.ece The decision is extraordinary not only because Mr al-Awlaki is believed to be the first American whose killing has been approved by a US President, but also because the Obama Administration chose to make the move public. not exactly trying to make it go away or waiting for a better time to stop the program exactly is it? The only modification appears to step it up. Those rose colored glasses must be heavily tinted to miss all the steaming piles of brown around the current resident on the civil rights front
Post #326,443 by Another Scott 5/17/10 9:35:41 PM 5/17/10 9:36:22 PM Reply	Whoops. Posting error. Ignore. Edited by Another Scott May 17, 2010, 09:36:22 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #326,445 by Another Scott 5/17/10 9:51:58 PM Reply	I'm not convinced that anything has changed on that. The WashingtonPost, NYTimes and TimesOnline seem to all be saying roughly the same thing. It may be based on the same few sources. It may be true, but it may simply be a continuation of a Bush policy. Or it may be an exaggeration of what Obama has authorized. http://www.realclear..._week_105515.html TAPPER: Senator Joe Lieberman and some others introduced legislation this past week which would give the State Department the right to strip the U.S. citizenship from anyone who is designated a foreign terrorist agent. I understand the administration does not support this and thinks that there are constitutional issues, but there's a point that Senator Lieberman made about the fact that President Obama currently has the authority -- at least according to Lieberman, who's the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee -- to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen, the cleric Awlaki, and -- well, this is what Senator Lieberman had to say. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LIEBERMAN: If the president can authorize the killing of a United States citizen because he is fighting for a foreign terrorist organization, we can also have a law that allows the U.S. government to revoke Awlaki's citizenship and that of other American citizens who have cast their lot with terrorist organizations. (END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: Isn't there a strange double-standard here? The administration gets all offended about revoking, you know, terrorist suspects' citizenship, but feels no compunction at all about ordering their assassination? HOLDER: Well, I'm not going to assume that what has been said there about ordering anybody's assassination is necessarily true. But with regard to the bill that Senator Lieberman is potentially talking about, that's not something I had a chance to really review. There are potential constitutional issues with it, as I've seen some critics discuss. I've not had a chance, as I said, to review it in any great detail, but I think what people have to understand is that the system we presently have in place takes terrorists and can put them in jail for extended periods of time. We can put people in jail fro the rest of their lives. We can even execute people under the law as it presently exists, and one has to wonder whether we need to go further than that. (Emphasis added.) Maybe Holder's not in the loop. Maybe he's lying. Who knows. AFAIK, Obama never said he was going to stop or curtail the drone attacks (even though there may be good strategic reasons to do so). During the campaign he got a lot of grief for his statement that he was going to escalate Afghanistan (and he has). Greenwald (for good or ill) goes off the deep end when he gets upset about things, and one of those things is Obama and his supporters. I'm not excusing Obama. I'm simply saying that it's nothing new and it's unrealistic to think that he would reverse policies like these so early in his term. He tried to close Guantanamo and try KSM in a civilian court in NY, remember... FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #326,447 by boxley 5/17/10 11:38:23 PM Reply	holder is lying or out of the loop if the president cannot come out publically and state that US citizens cannot be targetted for murder by the feds without trial, judicial review or any other agency besides the executive branch, he has just recinded Saint Ronnie's proclamation against assassination. Spin that in any form you care to name.
Post #326,492 by lincoln 5/18/10 2:20:52 PM Reply	I admit nothing of the sort Hell, President Obama at least can speak like an intelligent person; there are daily calendars of "Bushisms" where Shrub totally mangled the English language and all logical reasoning. Obama is way better than Bush because he wants a better USA for all Americans - Shrub wanted a better USA just for rich people. "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Post #326,494 by boxley 5/18/10 2:27:00 PM Reply	for some americans a different set than bush but not u or me

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