Obama announces $2 billion for solar energy development

As the Gulf oil leak has reminded us, throwing more money at Big Oil and the status quo is not what we need. Washington Post:President Barack Obama announced Saturday the awarding of nearly $2 billion for new solar plants that he said will create thousands of jobs and increase the country's use of renewable energy sources.

Obama disclosed the funding in his weekly radio and online address, saying it is part of his plan to bring new industries to the U.S. Read the rest of this post...

Ian Welsh on the Afghan War as stimulus

Nice catch by Ian Welsh regarding Michael Steele, Obama, and Afghanistan. He begins (my emphasis):

Michael Steele’s comments on Afghanistan remind me of my favorite definition of a gaffe: “saying the truth in the worst way possible.”

To whit, Steele said that Afghanistan is a war of Obama’s choosing, and that everyone who’s occupied Afghanistan has come to grief over it.  Now one can quibble a bit over the details of who came to grief and who didn’t, but basically he’s right.  Afghanistan went badly for the Russians and the British, most recently.  There’s a reason Afghanistan is called the “graveyard of Empires” and if the US isn’t careful it’ll be the graveyard of the US empire.

Likewise, yes, this is a war of choice for Obama.  He could have done his review, said “hey, there are almost no al-Q’aeda fighters in Afghanistan anymore, so we won, let’s go home.”  He could have said “fighting in Afghanistan is seriously destabilizing Pakistan, which is far more important than Afghanistan, so let’s go home.”  He could have said “yes, if we leave, some al-Q’aeda camps might spring up but we can always bomb them and anyway there are plenty of failed states where al-Q’aeda can set up camps and we can’t occupy all of them.”

Ian then makes a second point I'll bet many of us hadn't considered (again, my emphasis):

Now here’s a truth that Steele didn’t tell.  Obama has to stay in Afghanistan because war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has.  The economy is in bad shape, and it needs that stimulus.  Since he can’t get a new large stimulus through Congress that means he MUST keep the Afghan war going if he doesn’t want an economic disaster, which would then lead to an electoral disaster. . . . Instead of hiring tens of thousands of teachers, building a high speed rail network across the country, refitting every building to be energy efficient and doing a massive solar and wind build-out to reduce dependence on oil, well, the US would rather turn Afghans and Pakistanis into a fine red mist.

A fine red mist designed to keep the "good guys" in office, as Ian points out.

I hadn't considered our many unfunded permanent wars as stimulus, but that's obviously the case — just as WWII was the stimulus that kicked the U.S. out of the self-imposed 1937 slump. Sad, but true. Good catch.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Scientists: oil now in Gulf food chain

Not that it's a surprise. McClatchy

Scientists with the University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University in New Orleans have found droplets of oil in the larvae of blue crabs and fiddler crabs sampled from Louisiana to Pensacola, Fla. The news comes as blobs of oil and tar continue to wash ashore in Mississippi in patches, with crews in chartreuse vests out cleaning beaches all along the coast on Thursday, and as state and federal fisheries from Louisiana to Florida are closed by the BP oil disaster.

"I think we will see this enter the food chain in a lot of ways — for plankton feeders, like menhaden, they are going to just actively take it in," said Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. "Fish are going to feed on (crab larvae). We have also just started seeing it on the fins of small, larval fish — their fins were encased in oil. That limits their mobility, so that makes them easy prey for other species. The oil's going to get into the food chain in a lot of ways."

Read the rest of this post...

Anonymous sources

I'm not wholly against them, and have used them myself when I've trusted the source and felt the story was important. But the recent Washington Post story, in which anonymous Pentagon officials tried to smear a Rolling Stone reporter, claiming he printed "off the record" and untrue "facts" about General McChrystal, bothered me.

A lot of times, when we've run with something anonymous, it's because the source could face retribution if they went public. I somehow doubt that the Pentagon is fighting from a position of weakness, and thus needs to be protected. Bottom line: DOD screwed up, and now they're trying to smear the reporter who caught them. But they're not even brave enough to do it on the record. Adams Clymer, a former NYT reporter, wrote to the Washington Post about the incident today.

The Post should have told them to go on the record, or no story. Read the rest of this post...

Oil spill likely to reach Keys and Miami

That's OK because the Florida economy was already doing so well. Tourism isn't all that important so this study won't likely have much of an impact. It's comforting to know that Big Oil is prepared for disasters which is possibly why Obama agreed to open up drilling along the east coast. LA Times:

Using computer simulations based on 15 years of wind and ocean current data, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report Friday showing a 61% to 80% chance of the oil spill reaching within 20 miles of the coasts of the Florida Keys, Fort Lauderdale and Miami, mostly likely in the form of weathered tar balls.

Shorelines with the greatest chance of being soiled by oil — 81% to 100% — stretch from the Mississippi River Delta to the western Florida Panhandle, NOAA scientists said in a statement on its projections for the next four months.

Other areas of Florida have a low probability of oil hits. The Florida Panhandle has already seen tar balls wash up on beaches.

But the chances of oil reaching east-central Florida and the Eastern Seaboard are less than 1% to 20%, NOAA said. And it is "increasingly unlikely" that areas above North Carolina will be hit.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's a really quiet weekend in DC. Just got back from a long walk with Petey and, even for a weekend, it seems especially slow. I'm not doing my usual long run today -- and it is a perfect day for a long run -- because I have an annoying summer cold.

I haven't posted any of the most excellent haikus from KarenMrsLloydRichards. So, here's a sampling of some of her most recent, very relevant writings. On Sharron Angle:

Sharron's fetuses,
Saved from her Lord's damnation,
Born from Daddy's girls.

On Afghanistan:

Graveyard of Empires
Graveyard of Presidencies
Graveyard of Careers

And, this:

Disaster movie--
Thunderstruck black hurricanes
Blazing the night skies

That last one is really powerful. And, it's becoming disaster reality.

What's on the agenda for the weekend besides World Cup and Wimbledon (I've been finding more ESPN and Univision than CNN of late.) Read the rest of this post...

Los Lobos, Evangeline

After our big heat wave which lasted for a few days (well, heat wave for Paris) it's cooled down thanks to some heavy rain today. Thankfully the rain held off until 6:30AM because we had friends from Toronto over for dinner outside in the garden last night. Whenever it stops we should be hovering around 80F. Meanwhile the garden is getting plenty of water so that's one less task for the day. Read the rest of this post...

European unemployment holds steady at 10%

It's not great but it could be much worse.

The unemployment rate in Germany dipped to 7% in May from 7.1%, while France's jobless rate was unchanged at 9.9% and Italy held steady at 8.7%.

Spain's unemployment rate -- the highest in the euro zone -- rose to 19.9% from 19.7% in April, Eurostat said. Separately, the Spanish government on Friday said jobless claims fell in June for a third straight month. Read about Spanish jobless claims.

Elsewhere in the periphery of the euro zone, Irish unemployment rose to 13.3% in May from 12.9% in April. The Portuguese jobless rate rose to 10.9% from 10.8%.

Read the rest of this post...