Author Archives: 1LymSlagter473

Shell retreats from the Arctic, sending its battered vessels to Asia for repair

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on February 12, 2013

Shell retreats from the Arctic, sending its battered vessels to Asia for repair

By Philip Bump

You know how in movies there’s sometimes a moment after some cataclysm in which the protagonist sits up in bed or steps out of a doorway, rubs his eyes, and the sun is shining? All around him are crumbled buildings and cars missing doors, but he looks up and the air is still and the sun is out and you, the audience, understand that something has changed. The terror is behind us.

Well, sit up in bed and rub your eyes. From the Times:

In another blow to its Alaskan Arctic drilling program, Royal Dutch Shell said on Monday that it had decided to tow its two drill vessels there to Asian ports for major repairs, jeopardizing its plans to begin drilling for oil in the icy northern seas next summer.

The new potential delay in drilling does not necessarily doom Shell’s seven-year, $4.5 billion quest to open a new oil frontier in the far north, but it may strengthen the position of environmentalists who have repeatedly sued to stop or postpone exploration that they claim carries the risks of a spill nearly impossible to clean up. …

For drilling to proceed, two vessels are needed, one to stand by to drill relief wells in case of a blowout. It would be difficult to find other suitable ships for drilling in the Arctic.

kullukresponse

The

Kulluk

during happier times.

The two vessels Shell is sending out for repair are the Kulluk — which ran aground in December, damaging its hull — and the Noble Discoverer — which escaped its moorings and almost ran aground, but needs fixes to its propulsion systems.

It is amusing (and largely warranted) to blame Shell for all of these mistakes. It is also worth questioning the role that the Arctic itself played. The vessels are old (the Times notes that the Kulluk was built in 1983; Discoverer in 1966), but the Arctic is also a notoriously harsh environment. One of the long-standing objections to drilling there is how hard it is to mobilize resources in a remote and forbidding environment, concerns reiterated loudly after the Kulluk grounding.

Shell is retreating, tail between its legs — at least for 2013. The company’s move into the region was something of an exploration anyway, the Vasco de Gama of Arctic oil drilling. The Arctic will someday be teeming with activity as the ice recedes; The Economist magazine is hosting a conference in Oslo next month titled, “Arctic Summit: A new vista for trade, energy, and the environment.” Shell wanted to be first; no one expected it to be the only one there.

Which brings us back to the movie analogy. Sometimes, when our hero is taking his first calm breath in days, closing his eyes to feel the sun on his face, free from the threats he’s defeated, another, bigger enemy is lurking just out of sight. In a moment, the hero’s eyes snap open, and the fight resumes.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Shell retreats from the Arctic, sending its battered vessels to Asia for repair

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San Francisco plans expensive ‘managed retreat’ from rising seas

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on February 4, 2013

San Francisco plans expensive ‘managed retreat’ from rising seas

By Susie Cagle

When you live on a coastline, looking down the barrel of imminent and unstoppable rising sea levels, sometimes “managed retreat” is your only option. What if we rerouted the highways before they ever flooded?

Apricot Cafe

That’s the thinking behind San Francisco’s Master Plan for the city’s western shoreline. This retreat is not just managed, but proactive. KQED reports on the “test case” that other coastal cities will be watching: a more than $350 million plan to move the Great Highway and allow the surf to reclaim its turf.

“A lot of the things we’re recommending at Ocean Beach are very expensive,” says Benjamin Grant, who manages the Ocean Beach Master Plan for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR). “But you have to set them against the costs of the band-aid measures already taking place.”

SPUR is acting as a facilitator for the project, bringing together the myriad city, state, and federal organizations involved.

“We can’t close our eyes to what’s coming and it’s definitely going to get worse and not better,” Grant says. “If we can find a way to work with those processes to achieve the kinds of outcomes and build the kinds of places we want to have in our city, then we’ll be ahead of the game.”

Planning students noodling with designs for this retreat say the reroute “makes it possible to re-imagine the southern end of Ocean Beach as a more socially and ecologically beneficial landscape.” San Francisco is rare in its comprehensive climate change planning, maybe because it’s also rare in being a city surrounded by water on three sides.

But will the city really be able to pave the way for preemptive urban planning for rising seas nationwide, or will we have to suffer a few more Super Sandys before we start really retreating?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Yet More Non-Change on Tap From Republicans

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on February 4, 2013

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The Wall Street Journal reports that Eric Cantor plans to tell his fellow Republicans that they should “begin talking about how the federal government can help American families rather than focusing primarily on the need to reduce federal spending and tackle budget deficits.” That seems like good advice. So what’s on tap?

Mr. Cantor plans to emphasize existing GOP policies, such as educational initiatives that the party says would mean more school choice for students who often are forced to attend poorly performing public schools, the aide said….The Virginia lawmaker also intends to discuss the need to repeal a tax on medical devices that was introduced as part of the Affordable Care Act, arguing that it was raising health-care costs for people; the need to allow highly skilled foreign nationals educated at U.S. colleges to remain in the country after they graduate; and the need to simplify the U.S. tax code, which would save families money and free up more family time.

So: vouchers, lower taxes, and tax “simplification”â&#128;&#148;which I assume, as usual, to be code for flatter tax brackets. In other words, just like Bobby Jindal, who made a big show of telling Republicans to stop being the “stupid party” without suggesting even the tiniest change in actual Republican ideology, Cantor is making a big show of telling Republicans to talk differently without suggesting even the tiniest change in the substance of how they act. Good luck with that.

Of course, there’s also the bit about allowing highly skilled foreign nationals to stay here after they graduate from college. There’s nothing new there, either, but it’s not something Republicans usually emphasize much outside of talks to corporate audiences. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes over if they start pushing it at their next series of town hall confabs.

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Don’t Expect Anyone to Ask Chuck Hagel About an Orphanage Massacre During Vietnam

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 31, 2013

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

He’s been battered by big-money conservative groups looking to derail his bid for secretary of defense. Critics say he wants to end America’s nuclear program. They claim he’s anti-Israel and soft on Iran. So you can expect intense questioning—if only for theatrical effect—about all of the above (and undoubtedly then some) as Chuck Hagel faces his Senate confirmation hearings today.

You can be sure of one other thing: Hagel’s military service in Vietnam will be mentioned—and praised. It’s likely, however, to be in a separate and distinct category, unrelated to the pointed questions about current issues like defense priorities, his beliefs on the use of force abroad, or the Defense Department’s role in counterterrorism operations. You can also be sure of this: no senator will ask Chuck Hagel about his presence during the machine-gunning of an orphanage in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta or the lessons he might have drawn from that incident.

Nor is any senator apt to ask what Hagel might do if allegations about similar acts by American troops emerge in Afghanistan or elsewhere. Nor will some senator question him on the possible parallels between the CIA-run Phoenix Program, a joint US-Vietnamese venture focused on identifying and killing civilians associated with South Vietnam’s revolutionary shadow government, and the CIA’s current targeted-killing-by-drone campaign in Pakistan’s tribal borderlands. Nor, for that matter, is he likely to be asked about the lessons he learned fighting a war in a foreign land among a civilian population where innocents and enemies were often hard to tell apart. If, however, Hagel’s military experience is to be touted as a key qualification for his becoming secretary of defense, shouldn’t the American people have some idea of just what that experience was really like and how it shaped his thinking in regard to today’s wars?

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Don’t Expect Anyone to Ask Chuck Hagel About an Orphanage Massacre During Vietnam

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Corn on MSNBC: Will Immigration Reform Survive Congress?

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 30, 2013

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President Obama rolled out a plan for immigration reform today, but immigration is a tough sell in the US, where it’s both an economic and a cultural issue. Watch DC bureau chief David Corn discuss how immigration reform will fare in Congress with Rep. Tony Cardenas (D. Calif.) on MSNBC‘s Martin Bashir:

David Corn is Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He’s also on Twitter.

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Cool job posting: Earn $20 pretending to hate wind energy

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 24, 2013

Cool job posting: Earn $20 pretending to hate wind energy

By Philip Bump

Important job opportunity, everyone. From Craigslist:

Our firm needs 100 volunteers to attend and participate in a rally in front of the British Consulate/Embassy in Midtown Manhattan on the East Side on Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 12 noon. The event is being held in order to protest wind turbines that are being built in Scotland and England. Your participation will be to ONLY stand next to or behind the speakers and elected officials/celebrities that will be speaking at the rally.

“Volunteers” will each get $20. That’s the going rate in New York City for a closely held political principle.

ray_from_la

This is sort of what protestors look like.

Later in the ad, the firm behind the job request is identified as Ovation. It’s a common enough name that it’s hard to pin down the who’s coordinating this thing. I’ve emailed to see if we can find out more information, but am not holding my breath for a response.

The main question is this: Who hired Ovation to stage this totally authentic rally? Are there any morally questionable opponents of wind energy in the U.K. who are centered in midtown New York City and are willing to use money to buy allies, but not really very much money? Not that I can think of.

Source

Earn Quick and Easy $20 for an hour or less of work (Midtown East), Craiglist

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Filibuster Reform Stumbles to the Finish Line

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 24, 2013

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One of the great liberal hopes of 2013 was that Harry Reid would pull the trigger on filibuster reform and return to the Jimmy Stewart talkathons of Hollywood legend. Well, it’s not going to happen. Rather than use the “nuclear option” to pass filibuster changes on a party-line vote, Reid has reached an agreement with Mitch McConnell for a bipartisan reform. Sam Stein and Ryan Grim have the details:

The deal would address the filibuster on the motion to proceed, which had regularly prevented the Senate from even considering legislation and was a major frustration for Reid. The new procedure will also make it easier for the majority to appoint conferees once a bill has passed, but leaves in place the minority’s ability to filibuster that motion once — meaning that even after the Senate and House have passed a bill, the minority can still mount a filibuster one more time.

Reid won concessions on judicial nominations as well. Under the old rules, after a filibuster had been beaten, 30 more hours were required to pass before a nominee could finally be confirmed. That delay threatened to tie the chamber in knots. The new rules will only allow two hours after cloture is invoked.

There’s a bit more to make post-cloture debates a little more onerous for the minority, but this is about it. Instead of three chances to filibuster, the minority party will now be able to filibuster only twice (once when the bill comes to the Senate floor and a second time after the final conference report comes to the floor). In addition, once a filibuster is broken on a judicial nomination, the minority party can waste only two hours of floor time, not 30. See update below.

So did Harry Reid cave? Could he have gotten more by ignoring McConnell and passing a more robust reform with just Democratic votes? Maybe. But I think David Atkins is right:

Despite Senators Udall’s and Merkley’s bold claims, it has never been entirely clear that there were ever a full 51 votes for real reform. So it’s possible that Harry Reid, rather than subterfuging Democrats, is instead counting votes and playing his best hand.

….But the most important outcome is the realization that while we aren’t quite there yet, the newer crop of Democrats like Merkley and Udall is far better than much of the old guard responsible for abetting and supporting the broken system. We’re only a few retirements and progressive primaries away from a Democratic Senate majority progressive enough to make the necessary changes.

The sad truth is that Democrats only have 55 votes in the Senate, and there were almost certainly more than five Democratic senators who just weren’t willing to give up the filibuster. Partly this is because they want it in place in case Republicans ever get back into power, and partly it’s because they themselves don’t want to give up the personal privileges associated with the filibuster.

This is a pretty tiny step. But for now, anyway, we simply don’t have a strong enough Democratic Party to get more than this. Maybe someday.

UPDATE: Apparently this is an even tinier step than I thought. Dave Weigel reports that the 2-hour limit on judicial nominations applies only to district court nominees, not to the more important appellate court nominees.

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Filibuster Reform Stumbles to the Finish Line

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The Silly Conservative Freak-Out Over Women in Combat

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 24, 2013

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Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced Wednesday that the Pentagon plans to lift a 1994 prohibition on women serving in combat roles. The announcement prompted an ill-informed outcry from conservatives, who were perhaps unaware that American servicewomen are already in the line of fire, serving in combat though not doing so in what the Defense Department defines as “combat roles.”

Late Wednesday night, Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson tweeted, “The administration boasts about sending women to the front lines on the same day Democrats push the Violence Against Women Act,” suggesting an equivalence between choosing to serve on the front lines and being targeted for domestic assault. Carlson followed up: “Feminism’s latest victory: the right to get your limbs blown off in war. Congratulations.”

Carlson is a political journalist, so he might be expected to know that there is a woman US Army veteran amputee named Tammy Duckworth currently serving in Congress. Duckworth, who represents Illinois’ 8th District, lost her legs after an attack brought down the helicopter she was piloting in Baghdad.

In the US military, a woman’s service is not recognized, professionally or financially, the same way as a man’s. Because women have not been eligible for “combat role” positions—even though they were shooting and being shot at—they were denied access to certain career opportunities. The plaintiffs in a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the Department of Defense over the exclusion of women from combat roles offer great examples of this discrimination. Two of the plaintiffs in that case have received Purple Hearts, and two have received combat medals. One of the plaintiffs, Air Force Major Mary Jennings Hegar, a helicopter pilot, was shot down in Afghanistan attempting to evacuate wounded US service members. She engaged in a firefight with enemy forces and was shot before escaping. Women are already “getting their limbs blown off in war.” Panetta’s announcement will ensure they are recognized for it.

The Daily Beast‘s David Frum, appearing on CNN, also raised a misguided objection to the new policy. Frum claimed that servicewomen will face sexual violence from America’s enemies and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to serve on the front lines:

The people we are likely to meet on the next battlefield are people who use rape and sexual abuse as actual tools of politics. In Iranian prisons, rape is a frequent practice. Women are raped before they are executed. In Iran, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan rape is a conscious tool of subjugation and it is something women will be exposed to. In the name of equal opportunity they will face unequal risk.

It’s true that women face the danger of sexual assault if captured. The same could be said of men. Frum’s objection seems somewhat selective; women in the US military are more likely to face sexual assault from their comrades in the service than they are to be killed by enemy fire. Perhaps that’s less sensational than the thought of scary foreigners violating American women, but it’s a more urgent threat.

Most men cannot meet the necessary mental and physical requirements for service in combat. Any woman who can meet those standards should not be denied the opportunity because of an arbitrary gender restriction. Moreover, removing the restriction is not about celebrating militarism. The military has long been a path for historically disfavored groups to claim the full benefits of citizenship. Justifying discrimination against blacks, gays and lesbians, or women becomes much more difficult when they’re giving their lives for their country.

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The Silly Conservative Freak-Out Over Women in Combat

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Ontario Cares Aboot Coal

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 17, 2013

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Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, will become the first jurisdiction in North America to boot coal completely out of its energy mix, the province’s Minister of Energy, Chris Bentley, announced last week. By the end of 2013, Ontario will shutter 17 of its 19 coal-fired power plants, leaving less than one percent of the province’s energy mix provided by coal, and close the last two next year, a decision Bentley says was fueled by concern about global climate change and local health.

The phase-out has been coming down the pipeline since 2003, and it’s already paying off: Canada’s Pembina Institute found that greenhouse emissions from Ontario’s energy sector fell by 30 million tons in the last decade.

The move is made somewhat easier by the fact that Ontario was never a major coal addict to begin with: In 2011, less than three percent of its total power generation came from coal; that same year in the US, the share was 42 percent. And part of what has tended to make coal so intractible in the US—thousands of jobs on the line—is a non-issue for Ontario, which never had its own coal mining industry, importing most of its supply from the US, Bentley said. The province, although a net electricity exporter, also imports a little of its power from adjacent US states and Canadian provinces; a spokesperson for Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator said they had no way to know whether any of the imported power came from coal-fired plants.

Ramping down coal over the last several years has given Bentley time to shore up other energy resources to fill the supply gap, including a booming wind industry—which more than tripled in the last five years—and, like in the US, a growing dependency on natural gas.

Down here south of the border, although our appetite for coal is waning, industry lobbyists and GOP pols from states like West Virginia are raising hell, and we’re still pretty far from zero. And even though the US has its own unique challenges in confronting coal compared to Ontario, Bentley says he learned one thing from his experience cutting it out that can apply to his US counterparts: “There are far more people who are supportive than the critics would like you to believe.”

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Ontario Cares Aboot Coal

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Who Needs Tissues? How to Sew a Handkerchief

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 16, 2013

Heather P.

on

Corgi Digs Snow Tunnel (video)

6 minutes ago

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