Shame on the Port of Oakland and the Longshoremen

Its nice to see that labor can be co-opted by terrorist sympathizers.

Today in Oakland, the Longshoremen refused to the handle the cargo of Israeli ship. All reports seem to agree that there was nothing on the ship that was controversial. Just normal goods produced in Israel and exported abroad.

But then the terrorist sympathizers of ANSWER got involved. They managed to convince the longshoremen to honor the picket for a day. That means that no one would offload the cargo from the ship. Having a ship sit idle is incredibly expensive. So congrats ANSWER, you managed to hurt Israeli manufacturers.

I have no love for ANSWER, an organization which claims to be against war and racism. Apparently, that means war when waged in defense of democracy and racism, as long as it does not include any opposition to anti-semitism.

ANSWER has clearly planted its flag with the terrorists. They are on the side of the Free Gaza Movement. Gaza is controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization. Unlike the State of Israel, which exists to protect its people, the goal of Hamas is not to uplift and promote Gaza. Its stated goal is the destruction of Israel through violence.

To that end, since Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas and its allies have been launching attacks against Israel. They have kidnapped and continue to hold Sgt. Gilad Shalit as a hostage. They teach, urge, and breed hatred for anything that does not conform to their vision of Islam.

And ANSWER apparently has decided to take up their cause. To support them they have organized the picket of the Israeli ship. They say this in response to the IDF's response to the Free Gaza flotilla which attempted to run the blockade of Gaza. Despite being perfectly valid under international law, ANSWER has decided that because the people aboard the ships described themselves as "humanitarians" that Israel must be in the wrong. Despite evidence to the contrary of how each side handled themselves during the confrontation.

Is that who you want to support?

Is that what the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 wants to support? Apparently it does.

A President Speaks

Tonight, President Obama took to the airwaves to defend his administration from being called out for its response to the oil spill going on in the gulf.

Let's step back and remember a few things about what is going on. The BP deep water oil platform suffered a catastrophic explosion about 57 days ago. Since that time, an undetermined amount of oik has been spewing into the gulf waters near Louisiana. The oil spill is expanding and is expected to cover parts of the coast of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida when its through.

President Obama's most in-depth conversation with the press about this has been tagged, rightly or wrongly, with the sound bite of him explaining that he has been having meetings with experts, "so I know whose ass to kick."

Remind me, of our last two president's, he is supposed to be eloquent one?

Tonight, he spoke to us directly. Perhaps in the hopes that if he uses the teleprompter this time, eh would be able to convince the public that he is really doing a good job.

In the first three minutes of the talk, he manages to reference virtually every problem that this country currently faces. He commends the work of Americans handling those tasks, and conveniently forgets to say how his administration is hamstringing them. (The U.S. Military has been given a time limit that make sense only in political advisors mind. The nation is mired in a recession that Obama's spending plan seems to only be making more prolonged. etc.) He also manages to get a dig in at the George Bush (W., not H.W.) for Katrina with the reference that the oil spill is nothing like a Hurricane.

Let me pause to express what a bunch of drivel that is. They're both disasters. Neither is unforeseeable. If you are going to open up drilling rights, you ought to have a plan in place for when a spill happens, because nothing man made is fool proof.

President Obama then goes on to make his case that he is doing something. He refers to 30,000 people working on various disaster projects and that he has ordered the National Guard to be deployed to deal with the oil spill (or to process claims, because apparently that is what he thinks they are meant to do). And no matter what, he promises, more damage will be done to the Gulf coast before the siege is done.

At five minutes into the speech, he introduces the evil doers. He promises that tomorrow, 58 days since this frak-up began, he will be meeting with the heads of BP. Whats on the agenda? Apparently its just going to be about penalizing BP and dictating to them that BP will establish a sufficiently funded compensation fund for those affected by the company's "reckless" actions.

Leaving aside the issue that there could be a Fifth Amendment issue going on here (no illegal takings), what he says between minute 5 and 6:20 is interesting, especially in light of what he says below. He labels BP as reckless. Yet, he justifies his 6 month moratorium on all deep sea drilling (between 7:17 and 8:40) because no one knows exactly what went wrong. Its so nice to have president who will think first and then assign blame. BP could very well be the one at fault. However, to call their actions reckless, without doing any sort of investigation, seems to be a rush to judgment and an attempt at demagoguery. If BP were a person and treated like this, there would that it was racist, anti-semitism, or classicism. Apparently, in the Obama Administration its just good politics.

From 6:20 until 7:17 in the address, President Obama made the obligatory references to the destruction of the environment in general. And how he is making a commitment to restore the Gulf coast region. And that BP will pay for it. And just for good measure, the President threw in a gratuitous Hurrican Katrina.

It must be nice to have a limitless fund. BP is almost like George Bush now, except President Obama seems to believe it has a check book (or rather a cheque book) with limitless blank drafts that will cover whatever President Obama and his advisors can think up.

This is followed by the study that the President is going order into this disaster. I referenced it earlier, but wanted to touch on one more thing: it seems to be open ended. Which is great if you are one of those people assigned to the project. But perhaps it would have been better to put a deadline on the project. Say 3 months to produce a report. No reason why they should not have to work under a deadline. But apparently, if you are going to demonize an industry, you want to have as much time as possible to get it done in full. Or something like that.

Now at 8:40 into the speech, the President finally admits that there might have been some Federal hand in this mess. President Obama talks about the Minerals Management Service, describing it as a regulatory agency hostile to regulation. He compliments the work done by Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, for cleaning up corruption in Department of the Interior that was left over from the last decade (i.e. the Bush administration). However, President Obama says that the "pace of reform was just too slow."

Too slow? Because after more than a year and a half in office, it did not seem that they had foudn the time to replace the head of an agency which had become a major policy issue for the Obama Administration. Apparently, you can fire all the US Attorneys in a day, but firing the head of an agency takes more than a year and a half? And more than seven months after the MMS's oversight committee had found that the agency was failing in its duties. That would be eight months since the inspector general for the Department of the Interior issued a report that the MMS had employees who were accepting. And it would be almost two years since the story first broke that the MMS employees had "accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients, and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms."

The question should be asked: Why is Secretary Salazar being allowed to keep his job? Prior to the spill, the only thing that seemed to be done to clean up the mess that is MMS was to launch an ethics program for the agency. An ethics program. Great. It works really well up in Congress I hear. Which, by the way, was the previous employer of both Secretary Salazar and MMS Director, Elizabeth Birnbaum. Director Birnbaum, who was fired/resigned, previously had worked as a staffer on Capitol Hill. Did Secretary Salazar order a sweep of all those who were implicated in the various investigations? I cannot find any evidence that he did. So why, when BP is being castigated as it is, that President Obama is not demanding Secretary Salazar resign for failing to keep his house in order?

That's right. Its never the Obama Administrations fault. Its always the other guys fault.

At 10 minutes into the speech, President Obama talks about how drilling for oil entails greater risk. And that we could alleviate this risk if we would just expand our use of green energy, like China, so that we could also expand clean energy jobs. Basically, if we have clean energy, we wiull not have these kinds of catastrophes again. then he starts to talk about how small businesses are opening to meet the demand. Where the numbers exist to support this, I still cannot find. There are projections. There are hopes. There are wishes. But to date, this statement does not seem to be born out. Maybe he is right on this one. Maybe transition to clean energy will grow the economy, and "only if we seize the moment" and "act as one nation".

The last few minutes of the speech, President Obama merely lays on the platitudes. He makes his obligatory statements that he is open to ideas from both parties (which the more he says, the funnier it gets in a sad sort of way). Finally, he concludes the speech talking about how the US met the production needs of the Second World War and the Moon Race. Great. For most Americans, I don't think there is any question that if we have the capability. The question is whether we have the leadership.

Given the tone, and statements, of this speech this is not a leader. He is a politician. Too bad we elected him.

Harry Truman once said that the buck stopped with him. Apparently, the blame starts from President Obama.

The Editorial Comics

He's a teenager...

...and has more intestinal fortitude than most of the rest of the Jewish community in LA.

(h/t Elder of Ziyon)

And The Madness Ends For This Season of Dancing With The Stars With...

Another win for Derek. Oh, and Nicole Sherzinger took home the Fabulous Mirror Ball Trophy.

Its Finals Madness with Dancing With The Stars

So we are down to the final three. I called two of them (Evan and Nicole). Erin surprised me. And quite frankly, I'm still not sold on her. The judges love her.. but ultimately its the fans who make the decision.

Now its the first night of finals.

Erin and Maksim lead off the night with their samba. And they are getting help from an orange Bruno. They are getting help from a guy who didn't notice that they turned him into a walking, talking rally pumpkin. And they are mucking about to start off the dance. Not filling me with confidence about this routine. Although Erin says that she wants to go for it with this routine, its kind of a safe dance with some comedy thrown in. And now we have their hairography at the end. Was this better than the last samba from Erin? Yes. But was it a finals level quality samba? Not really, despite the fact that Bruno has the gay man's crush on a leggy blonde! What is up with the scores? 10s from Carrie Ann and Len and a 9 from Bruno? Angrybabybelle cries foul. Of course, the scores in the finals are always inflated.

Evan and Anna drew the second slot. And Len showed up to coach them a bit on the Viennese Waltz. At least he doesn't look orange. This is a good version of the Piano Man that they have. This dance looks a lot better than the first time they did it. They are right on each other like they should be. The problem is that every so often, the hands are whipping around so fast that they threaten to kill one or both of them. The connection though is still not there, but he did improve on making it look less like ballet. Mrs. Angrybell disagrees and things he still looks like a ballet dancer. The judges disagree with the Angrybell family, but Angrybabybelle did enjoy the dance. The judges surprisingly went 28.

Nicole and Derek are in clean up slot tonight. Their redemption dance is the rumba. Carrie Ann dropped by and said a few platitudes. Mrs. Anrgybell wants to know what the costume is, if its just something out of Victoria's Secret with a wrap. The standing split from Nicole got a wow from Mrs. Angrybell. The end move was impressive. Mrs. Angrybell could only say"Core strength... abs of steel." It was improved. I wasn't wild about it but I thought it was done really well. Carrie Ann is nuts with this lift. Derek was right. Once again, I'm with Len on this. Some nice subtle shadings, but some things about it... Argh, can't explain it. And of course, Bruno gushing over the woman. A 28.

Whats going on with this competition. After a round, Erin is in the lead. Whats up with that?

Erin and Maks doing the freestyle to Heart's song. Mrs. Angrybell is laying odds that Maks is going to be shirtless before this is over. Erin is more manly than Maks? What is up with this winging her around in cirlces on to the bed? This bed thing is .. not working. Mrs. Angrybell thinks she is not fluid and sexy. And then towards the end there was a problem with the lift and Maks almost lost her. I just thought it was.. silly. I understand the song, How Do I Get You Alone, but it was.. bleh. Len liked but didn't love it. Bruno called part of it incredible? Whatever. I liked Carrie Ann's comment of "Maks, its not your strength to make your partner look good." The 26 was fair I suppose. But it just did not look polished.

Evan and Anna followed that up with their free style. Watching the practice portion, I want to take Evan and smack him upside the head. He is not the pro. Anna is. Let her do what she does best. She has so far guided him to the finals and at the last minute, he wants to be the honcho for it? Give me a break. Anna, on the other hand needed to be more confident about everything. And they got Footloose. They are hewing a little too close to the movie with their routine. Some of the lifts are impressive, but then there are times when they seems to be looking at each other questioning whether they were in sync and what was going to happen next. Mrs. Angrybell said "It was alright. Didn't not my socks off." Angrybabybell agreed with Carrie Ann. As Mrs. Angrybell says, choreograph is not Anna's strong point. Basically, I think this was Anna doing the same thing wrong that Tony did Stacy Keibler. The final score of 24 was right. Too bad they inflated Erin and Maks score.

Derek and Nicole finished off the night with their freestyle. They lucked out with their son, Little Less Conversation. They were doing so well, then at the end, then it all fell apart with the costume shift. Frankly, I'm disappointed in the choreography. It was clean, but it was conservative. That lift at the end was a mess. The nice thing, they showed a bit of each of the dances that they did through the season. The problem was, it did not tell a story at all. It was just like it was a showcase of steps. They got 9's for a 27.

So where does this leave everything? Evan and Anna dropped the ball big time tonight. They had a chance to threaten Nicole and they blew it. Are Erin and Maks good enough to be in the final two? If you ask me, the answer is no. The freestyle was a mess of Maks tossing Erin about onto a bed.

Looking at consistency, you vote Nicole and Evan, with Nicole coming out ahead. Sorry Erin, I know you have a fan base, but at some point, you have to look at the whole season and your season was not good enough to be in the final two.

The winner of the season should be Nicole. She and Derek have week in, week out shown they are the class of this competition. Evan only gets to second if people remember he was consistently better than Erin. Erin... you got hosed by having Maksim as your partner. Put you with Derek, Jonothan, or Tony, and its likely that you end up in the final two.

Don't let me down America. Let's reward the right people. Nicole should get your votes.