So this evening Fearless Leader delivered an address to the nation, his first from the Oval Office which, I am given to understand, is generally characterized as being a power play of sorts. I have my own theories but I can get into those later.

The topic of discussion was, unsurprisingly, the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Having just returned from yet another trip to the "third coast" (where he gamely partook of the local seafood, as a show of confidence, bravo) Obama laid out, in brief, his outline for how the Federal Government would move forward in it's response to the catastrophe.

In my own mind the single most important item on the list of response measures, after stopping the damned leak itself, is getting the fund necessary to fund as full and complete a clean-up effort as is possible through modern science and also to compensate the millions of people whose lives and livelihoods are dependant on the Gulf Coast, the Gulf of Mexico itself and the biodiversity contained therein. All the expense of British Petroleum, naturally. Well...possibly also at the expense of Haliburton and/or Deepwater Horizon, should they prove to be culpable. It would seem that Fearless Leader agrees with me; Obama stated that he would be informing BP's Chairman that he is to set aside whatever resources required and that said funds would not be under BP's control.

There are a great many people out there for whom this course of action is simply not satisfactory; they won't be satisfied with anything less than British Petroleum's dismantling here in the US. There are others for who the point isn't even taking step to avoid a repeat performance; what they want is simple revenge, in the name of their ideals and the planet itself. Its easy to empathize with that, especially when we begin to understand that British Petroleum has put more effort into trying to control the public perception (the word "optics" has become the current vogue) of the entire situation than in fixing the damned leak.

I heard a great deal of complaint from the left after the address, complaint that boiled down to disappointment that this was not a great, rousing speech made to capture public energy and inspire us all to so great national action...specifically in this case, action to the effect of completely overturning the fossil fuel industry and replacing it with clean energy systems. I empathize with this too. From a purely tactical perspective this event could have been used to justify (which word I use advisedly) a drive towards a green revolution. At the very least, these people would have rather gotten something much, much more akin to Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech (although he never used the word); they wanted a rhetorical boot up the back-side of the American people to propel us away from fossil fuels in general and oil in specific. Again, I empathize...

The consequences of such a speech though, bear consideration. In the first place, the traditional supporters of "big oil" already sounded the cry against this undeniably obvious tactic. On this level, its obvious that little beyond reinforcing the traditional, extant postures and battles would be achieved. There would be no significant improvement in the balance of power between the conservatives and progressives and, furthermore, it would have only put another rhetorical arrow in the quiver of the Right. Secondly, there is a sizable contingent of independent voters...what are somewhat vulgarly referred to as the "mushy middle". This contingent (in which I happily claim membership) played no small part in getting Fearless leader and the current Democratic majority elected and the largest part of our camp has a genuine dislike of dramatic politics, even when it leans in a direction we like. We've been watching the trend towards extremism (largely but by no means exclusively in the right wing) and it makes us uncomfortable; wild vacillations in governing policy can "shake apart" the social structure as well creating a situation similar to that which gave us the Civil War (or, War Between the States, for you lot in moonshine country).

That having been said, I don't think that even the most rabid of left-wing loony tunes can find fault with the open reference to peak oil and the fact that we are past it. He may not have tried to mimic Kennedy's call to "shoot the moon", but he did, finally, point out the 800-pound gorilla.

I've said it many times and I'll say it again: the way forward in our various national policies cannot be to swing wildly back and forth between ideological extremes. The right and left both attack him, but I continue to hold faith with Fearless Leader because even when neck-deep in various crises, many of which could have been leveraged into a number Democratic agenda victories, he has stuck scrupulously to the principal of moderation. In short, I admire the man's ethics.

I'm not going to pretend to understand all of the technical details involved in the current debate over financial reform. I do understand two things rather well though: that allowing investment schemes to take massive gambles while shifting the risk of failure to third parties is insane and that continuing to allow strictly private institutions to have enough pull on the entire economy to wreck it should they fail is suicidal.

This is the perfect case for what I've been saying for years: we are no longer living in a simple world. The number and scale of connections between the various economic nodes has reached such a scale of interdependency that, beyond a certain stage, no major business concern is truly "private".

Conservative Progress

I'm not altogether certain of the mood here; it could be sarcastic, smug, confident, hopeful or relieved. I'll leave it to the beholder.

After much delay and disagreement, a bill was finally passed through the cramped, torturous mechanisms of the national legislature and, like other, similarly processed substances, was not entirely what was expected; necessary, but by no means pleasant. Such is Congress's duty.

The short version is this; we went into the process intending to reform healthcare and wound up regulating health insurance. Make no mistakes, the insurance side of the house was in dire need of attention. It is understandable though, that so many people feel confused and even betrayed. There was more than enough hate directed at what finally emerged from both sides, right and left. The Conservative corporate lapdogs have been trying to sell the whole package as some sort of Orwellian nightmare scenario while the progressives rage about Obama and those I would call moderates "selling out". I have to admit it's tempting to agree with the cynics who claim that a "good compromise" means that nobody is happy. Its worth remembering though that while the Bill isn't a panacea, it does make several very good things happen and it does so in a gradual, phased in manner. Sudden shocks are rarely ever good for public policy.

As a purely political matter, I observed what I believe to have been one of Fearless Leader's "political jujitsu" techniques. In this case it was at the heart of the debate about "bipartisanship". To put it mildly, Obama approached the entire situation in a unique manner. He started more or less where he meant to end. He did not take a far left position or make demands for massive socialization; instead he offered to meet the right in the middle, and went directly to it instead of "negotiating down". The result being that the Republican opposition, which did start from the far right, was forced to either capitulate (thus making Obama look even better and losing the initiative) or completely Stonewall the operation, thus painting themselves as perfectly spoiled curmudgeons (which they obligingly did); in short, by not allowing the Republicans to look as though they were "defending the liberties of the American People" by negotiating with himself and the Democratic leadership, by taking the moderate position at the outset, he forced the Republicans into a choice between appearing malevolent and incompetent.

I said before that if this issue could be managed and sold properly that the Democrats would have a much easier time of it in November, and I maintain this...especially since they are trying to build momentum on the issue of Financial Regulatory reforms even as we speak. The Conference Committee has released dates and if this can be gotten through, followed up one more significant legislative item and continued improvement in job numbers, it might just be possible to make a case for taking national policies back away from the right leaning trends of the last few decades. Not that I'm advocating a sudden, lurching shift; vacillation between policy extremes will only serve to increase the resentment and paranoia in the two main camps.

It is quite possible and even necessary to make the procession back towards moderation a measured, even paced evolution...in fact, that may be the best of all possible ways to think of it; as being evolution, in the Darwinian sense. Slowly changing policies at the lowest level and observing the effects to sort between the malignant and the benign and the beneficial. Sudden, gross mutations can lead to spectacular failure and take the entire series with it.

On that note I'll close with this: I agree that reforms were necessary and I'll even agree that the Bill which came out was good...not as good as it might have been, but good. I'll go further in calling for Single Payer...but I am prepared to wait a bit, if need be, to observe the consequences and revise as seems appropriate.

Asleep at the Weal...

Apologies, faithful followers; I have once again fallen asleep at my dutiues of being the beacon of Truth and Light.

So where to begin? So much has happened since March. I suppose I could make a comprehensive list, but I think for the moment I'll stick to what I consider to be the most important points: Healthcare, Financial Reform, Arizona Ethnic Harasment and British Petroleum.

"Lay on, MacDuff, Lay on..."