Remember those oil rigs that President Obama assured us really do not cause spills? Well another one just exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion of the rig 80 miles off the Louisiana coast further undermines Obama’s insistence on lifting the long moratorium on drilling off our East Coast.
The platform is owner by Mariner Energy of Houston. The rig was not producing oil or gas at the time but it is unclear if there was a spill with this explosion. However, there are reports of a spreading oil spill around the rig. Other reports state that there were four or five active wells on the rig. Update: There are conflicting reports on the sighting of a spill from the explosion.
The Administration is committed to opening up the coast to drilling — even arguing for weeks that the oil from the BP spill had mysteriously disappeared until outside groups pointing to a huge 22-mile-long oil plume under the water.
Despite the President’s assurances, there have been other leaks at rigs — an inconvenient fact for the Administration.
Source: Miami Herald
Buddha:
I could the same thing about most anyone on the left side of the aisle as well. You think you have a corner on truth? You don’t, and neither does Alan Watts nor Ayn Rand.
You believe socialism works to the degree I believe capitalism works, I don’t call you a cultist or a self deceiver.
“Freedom to make as much money as dictated by your personal desire without restraint and without consequence.”
Pardon, I am literally juggling cats at the moment.
W=^..^,
Feel free.
One lives to be of service.
Byron,
Your logic fails. Address the logic, not your wishful thinking. As evidenced by your statements you equate money with freedom – another false equivalence. Freedom to make as much money without restraint and without consequence.
Freedom as used by people like Jefferson was an inherent state of being unrelated to wealth.
Address the logic.
Because if you don’t, your protestation notwithstanding, you side with fascism by blindly worshiping free market capitalism as the “natural order”. Which is not only thinly veiled social Darwinism, but self-rationalizing bullshit.
Buddha:
“No, Byron, I don’t. Your logic is on its face fallacious. As in formally wrong. I can see the lessons of Zen are wasted on you. Your dichromatic worldview is inherently flawed. Now I see one thing as evidenced by your posts: you’re as brainwashed about free markets as any cultist.
They are, and money by extension, are your God.”
Shit I wish money was my god, I see about as much of it as Christians or Muslims do of theirs. At least the Greeks had some good statues.
No money is not my god but I do like freedom.
“I reiterate (in hopes that like water the words and logic will wear away the stone of your skull) . . . ”
Damn BIL, I like this, bon mots!, and I’m gonna use it too….
😉
FFN:
“And to briefly respond to your response to Gorder Port, if we tallied up the body count of capitalism vs (what leaders of the states call) communism, I’m pretty sure who would come out on top. Between the slave trade, working laborers to death, genocide of native peoples, worldwide military expeditions, etc, I’d like to give the edge to capitalism — a wide edge.”
I’d like to see those numbers.
When your logic is a lie, then you are lying to yourself. You remind me of the words of Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov . . .
“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea- he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too…”
As long as your logic is formally faulty, you are building your castle on a foundation of sand.
I reiterate (in hopes that like water the words and logic will wear away the stone of your skull) . . .
“The problem with your thinking is that it’s a formal logical fallacy – a pattern of reasoning which is always wrong due to a flaw in the logical structure of the argument which renders the argument invalid. Specifically, by insisting on viewing the analog universe in a binary way, you are quite prone to making what is specifically known as the bifurcation fallacy. This is a logical error created when the thinker insists on one of two outcomes creating a form of false dilemma.
You want a real life example of the logical error at work other than the one in your head concerning economics?
Bush saying “You’re either for us or against us” when it came to combating terrorism.
It’s a false dilemma that disregards quite real possibility that people could be either neutral or that they could endorse different tactics than those Bush chose – which if you recall was the tactic of invading a sovereign country that had not attacked us (Iraq) for his and Cheney’s families personal profit instead of attacking those who manned and funded the 9/11 attacks, their business partners the Saudi Arabians.
You are making the same logical error Bush did.
. . .
You are also guilty of making false equivalences. Again, socialism is not communism, but rather a spectrum of economic model behaviors that rely on – and here’s the important word – varying degrees of controlled markets to ensure the greatest stability of society as a whole.”
Please feel free to try and prove otherwise.
No, Byron, I don’t. Your logic is on its face fallacious. As in formally wrong. I can see the lessons of Zen are wasted on you. Your dichromatic worldview is inherently flawed. Now I see one thing as evidenced by your posts: you’re as brainwashed about free markets as any cultist.
They are, and money by extension, are your God.
Buddha:
really good videos. Now you know why I like markets free from government intervention.
Since economics have become part of the thread . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Extortion anyone?
BP Says Limits on Drilling Imperil Oil Spill Payouts
And here’s the homework that goes with the tune . . .
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aufuwMiKmE&fs=1&hl=en_US]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ8WeLrtFnY&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Byron,
This one is for you.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXmz605GAnc&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Byron,
Disregarding that WRONG bit about man being able to survive without the environment(another false dichotomy by the way, man IS the environment), I’d like to ask a question.
Have you ever considered the implications of you assuming that the government needs to consider the effect of it’s actions on job creation?
FFN,
I think it’s their tendency to think in terms absolute – either a structure has the requisite tolerance or it fails – rarely if ever do they think in terms of partial failure. This mindset comes from, in my opinion, from a combination of natural proclivity (in varied degrees according to the individual) and their training.
What is more disturbing his how this kind of extreme thinking in general is reflected in the unusual percentage of terrorists with backgrounds in engineering.
Here are links to two articles on that subject. The first is from Slate and the second is a white paper produced by an Australian engineering firm.
Build-a-Bomber Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees?
Engineering and Terrorism: Their Interrelationships
BIL,
“you’re thinking like an engineer (and I don’t mean in the good way)”
I’d like to know exactly what you mean by this because I’ve often thought the same thing and have trouble putting it into words. What is at about engineers that cultivates this mindset? And what is that mindset, exactly?