Brooke Shields — We’re Off To See The Wizard, on The Muppet Show.

Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the seatback in front of ya, and no spitballs aimed at the ushers please.  This is Late Late Night FireDogLake, where off topic is the topic … so dive in.  What’s on your mind?

(Photo by me and the sysop via Flickr.)

Via Lindsay Beyerstein, the Guardian reports today:

Vital warning systems on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were switched off at the time of the explosion in order to spare workers being woken by false alarms, a federal investigation has heard.

The revelation that alarm systems on the rig at the centre of the disaster were disabled – and that key safety mechanisms had also consciously been switched off – came in testimony by a chief technician working for Transocean, the drilling company that owned the rig.

. . . Sensors monitoring conditions on the rig and in the Macondo oil well beneath it were still working, but the computer had been instructed not to trigger any alarms in case of adverse readings.

. . . [the Transocean technician] said he discovered that the physical alarm system had been disabled a full year before the disaster. When he asked why, he said he was told that the view from even the most senior Transocean official on the rig had been that “they did not want people woken up at three o’clock in the morning due to false alarms“.

As Lindsay notes, “BP/Transocean’s concern for rig workers is touching”… and I’m sure the workers who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion would be quick to express their gratitude if they weren’t, well, otherwise engaged at the moment.

If this reminds you of the corruption of debt ratings prior to the financial-industry meltdown two years ago, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” the “stovepiping” of intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq, and… well, almost everything else that has gone wrong during the last decade or so, there’s probably a reason.  Not wanting to hear bad news turns into refusing to hear bad news, which… inevitably, turns into bad news.

Graphic by Swopa

In one of the most hilarious history fails I’ve ever seen, Nancy Pelosi actually compares the financial reform bill to the New Deal:

[This week's Wall Street-reform legislation has] the boldness and enthusiasm of the New Deal but with less government.

Um, isn’t that kind of like saying that tap water has the boldness and flavor of Dr Pepper but with less carbonation and syrup?  The New Deal was all about forceful government intervention; it wouldn’t have been the New Deal without it, and it wouldn’t have worked.

Pelosi says that the bill was “on a par with some of the measures that were passed at the time of the New Deal to address the Great Depression,” but where’s Glass-Steagall?  Where’s the mechanism for breaking up financial institutions that are Too Big To Fail?  Where’s the help for people who are struggling to keep their homes?  Or is the Speaker just saying that the financial reform bill was comparable to some minor elements of the New Deal that didn’t have much effect on anything?

FDR enthusiastically took on the corporate establishment and implemented forceful measures to right the economy, restore employment and prevent future crises.  Obama cautiously pushed as far as he felt was politically safe (and even opposed the measure to audit the Fed), and took what Scott Brown and the conservadems gave him.

Even if Obama’s apologists are right and this was the best any president could do in today’s filibuster-happy political climate, please don’t expect us to applaud a hollowed-out shell of financial reform (or stimulus, or health care reform, or climate reform) as some kind of grand historical achievement.