Month: May 2010

Why Did Obama Change His Tune? Ctd

The plot thickens:

So how did we get where we are? The White House and Gates seemingly didn’t want a vote this year. Activists wouldn’t let up. Murphy, Levin, and Lieberman put in a heroic effort to salvage repeal. And in my estimation, when Levin was one vote away in the Senate committee, White House officials realized the repeal train was leaving without them and not hopping aboard was a no-win situation. If it passed, they would get no credit; if it failed by one vote, activists would castigate them for withholding support.

This compromise could still fail, and make no mistake, the deal was brokered by the White House, which then treated it as the redheaded stepchild it never wanted in the first place. But the outcome — win or lose — now has the administration's fingerprints on it, even though its refrain since Monday morning has been that Congress was forcing its hand.

Via Smith, who also notes that certain military chiefs are opposing action.

Mental Health Break

Paper Dreams from Kenneth Onulak on Vimeo.

This is my Junior Degree Project that I worked over the Spring semester at RISD. I got the original concept of creating a cutout animation for art made with a single sheet of paper and the stratastencil technique. I wanted the animation to have a dream like quality exploring the reality and space in which the dream exists and felt that the cutout technique fit this idea.

The Khadr Boomerang

Scott Horton:

The Gates Pentagon prepared the manual for the military commissions completely behind closed doors. It disregarded established procedures under which proposed procedural rules are disclosed for public comment and the views of the military bar itself are explicitly solicited. We now see that it turned to secrecy because it had something to hide: the rules were recognized as flawed and weak even within the Obama Administration, where they were subjected to appropriately sharp criticism. Had they been publicly aired, the Pentagon would have been forced to work out the contradictions in them. But it opted to keep the country and the bar in the dark.

“Sex, Drugs, And Government Regulators”

John Hudson looks at all the dirty bits:

Regulators in charge of overseeing offshore drilling cruised porn sites, shook off crystal meth hangovers, and accepted lavish gifts from oil and gas companies, according to an Interior Department report. The agency at issue is the Minerals Management Service. At its Louisiana branch, where the Gulf oil spill continues to cause an environmental catastrophe, the inspector general found "a culture where the acceptance of gifts from oil and gas companies was widespread."