Question by Another account again IHSP: How do you feel about the extemists in your own political party in comparison with?
the extremists in the opposing political party?
Best answer:
Answer by Jim
Both are equally sad people.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
‘The election of Obama would, at a stroke, refresh our country’s spirit’
Image by Renegade98
OPINION
Guardian.co.uk | The Observer
November 2, 2008
‘The election of Obama would, at a stroke, refresh our country’s spirit’
It has been an epic campaign for the American Presidency and one which has been scrutinised at close quarters by the US’s finest writers on the New Yorker magazine – the country’s leading journal of politics and culture. Here, in their leader column ahead of the election, the editors of the magazine offer a brilliant analysis of the choice facing America, deconstruct the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and finish with a powerful endorsement of Barack Obama as the man best suited to answer the grave challenges facing the next President
Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching – that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a presidency has – at the levels of competence, vision and integrity – undermined the country and its ideals?
The incumbent administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The presidency of George W Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican party – which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time – has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the convention in St Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardour.
The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush administration, the national debt, now approaching trillion, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a 0bn deficit, a precipitous fall from the 0bn surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top 1 per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our healthcare system, our environment and our physical, educational and industrial infrastructure.
At the same time, 150,000 American troops are in Iraq and 33,000 are in Afghanistan. There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime, but there is no longer the slightest doubt that the Bush administration manipulated, bullied and lied the American public into this war and then mismanaged its prosecution in nearly every aspect. The direct costs, besides an expenditure of more than 0bn, have included the loss of more than 4,000 Americans, the wounding of 30,000, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and the displacement of four and a half million men, women and children. Only now, after American forces have been fighting for a year longer than they did in the Second World War, is there a glimmer of hope that the conflict in Iraq has entered a stage of fragile stability.
The indirect costs, both of the war in particular and of the administration’s unilateralist approach to foreign policy in general, have also been immense. The torture of prisoners, authorised at the highest level, has been an ethical and a public diplomacy catastrophe. At a moment when the global environment, the global economy and global stability all demand a transition to new sources of energy, the United States has been a global retrograde, wasteful in its consumption and heedless in its policy. Strategically and morally, the Bush administration has squandered the American capacity to counter the example and the swagger of its rivals. China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other illiberal states have concluded, each in its own way, that democratic principles and human rights need not be components of a stable, prosperous future. At recent meetings of the United Nations, emboldened despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran came to town sneering at our predicament and hailing the ‘end of the American era’.
The election of 2008 is the first in more than half a century in which no incumbent President or Vice-President is on the ballot. There is, however, an incumbent party and that party has been lucky enough to find itself, apparently against the wishes of its ‘base’, with a nominee who evidently disliked George W Bush before it became fashionable to do so. In South Carolina, in 2000, Bush crushed John McCain with a sub rosa primary campaign of such viciousness that McCain lashed out memorably against Bush’s Christian Right allies. So profound was McCain’s anger that in 2004 he flirted with the possibility of joining the Democratic ticket under John Kerry. Bush, who took office as a ‘compassionate conservative’, governed immediately as a rightist ideologue. During that first term, McCain bolstered his reputation, sometimes deserved, as a ‘maverick’ willing to work with Democrats on such issues as normalising relations with Vietnam, campaign finance reform and immigration reform. He co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Edward Kennedy, a patients’ bill of rights. In 2001 and 2003 he voted against the Bush tax cuts. With John Kerry, he co-sponsored a bill raising auto fuel efficiency standards and, with Joseph Lieberman, a cap-and-trade regime on carbon emissions. He was one of a minority of Republicans opposed to unlimited drilling for oil and gas off America’s shores.
Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightwards in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shockingly, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of ‘enhanced interrogation’ that he himself once endured in Vietnam – as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the CIA.
On almost every issue, McCain and the Democratic party’s nominee, Barack Obama, speak the generalised language of ‘reform’, but only Obama has provided a convincing, rational and fully developed vision. McCain has abandoned his opposition to the Bush-era tax cuts and has taken up the demagogic call – in the midst of recession and Wall Street calamity, with looming crises in social security, Medicare and Medicaid – for more tax cuts. Bush’s expire in 2011. If McCain, as he has proposed, cuts taxes for corporations and estates, the benefits once more would go disproportionately to the wealthy.
In Washington the craze for pure market triumphalism is over. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrived in town (via Goldman Sachs) a Republican, but it seems that he will leave a Democrat. In other words, he has come to see that the abuses that led to the current financial crisis – not least, excessive speculation on borrowed capital – can be fixed only with government regulation and oversight. McCain, who has never evinced much interest in, or knowledge of, economic questions, has had little of substance to say about the crisis. His most notable gesture of concern – a melodramatic call to suspend his campaign and postpone the first presidential debate until the government bail-out plan was ready – soon revealed itself as an empty diversionary tactic.
By contrast, Obama has made a serious study of the mechanics and the history of this economic disaster and of the possibilities of stimulating a recovery. Last March, in New York, in a speech notable for its depth, balance and foresight, he said: ‘A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting, coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement, allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences.’ Obama is committed to reforms that value not only the restoration of stability but also the protection of the vast majority of the population, which did not partake of the fruits of the binge years. He has called for greater and more programmatic regulation of the financial system; the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would help reverse the decay of our roads, bridges and mass-transit systems and create millions of jobs; and a major investment in the green-energy sector.
On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade programme to reduce America’s carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 – an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, such as utilities, would acquire carbon allowances and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide bn a year for developing alternative energy sources and creating job-training programmes in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that 10 per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.
There was once reason to hope that McCain and Obama would have a sensible debate about energy and climate policy. McCain was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to support federal limits on carbon dioxide and he has touted his own support for a less ambitious cap-and-trade programme as evidence of his independence from the White House. But, as polls showed Americans growing jittery about gasoline prices, McCain apparently found it expedient in this area, too, to shift course. He took a dubious idea – lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling – and placed it at the centre of his campaign. Opening up America’s coastal waters to drilling would have no impact on gasoline prices in the short term and, even over the long term, the effect, according to a recent analysis by the Department of Energy, would be ‘insignificant’. Such inconvenient facts, however, are waved away by a campaign that finally found its voice with the slogan ‘Drill, baby, drill!’
The contrast between the candidates is even sharper with respect to the third branch of government. A tense equipoise currently prevails among the justices of the Supreme Court, where four hardcore conservatives face off against four moderate liberals. Anthony M Kennedy is the swing vote, determining the outcome of case after case.
McCain cites Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two reliable conservatives, as models for his own prospective appointments. If he means what he says, and if he replaces even one moderate on the current Supreme Court, then Roe v Wade will be reversed and states will again be allowed to impose absolute bans on abortion. McCain’s views have hardened on this issue. In 1999 he said he opposed overturning Roe; by 2006 he was saying that its demise ‘wouldn’t bother me any’; by 2008 he no longer supported adding rape and incest as exceptions to his party’s platform opposing abortion.
But scrapping Roe – which, after all, would leave states as free to permit abortion as to criminalise it – would be just the beginning. Given the ideological agenda that the existing conservative bloc has pursued, it’s safe to predict that affirmative action of all kinds would likely be outlawed by a McCain court. Efforts to expand executive power, which in recent years certain justices have nobly tried to resist, would be likely to increase. Barriers between church and state would fall; executions would soar; legal checks on corporate power would wither – all with just one new conservative nominee on the court. And the next President is likely to make three appointments.
Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, voted against confirming not only Roberts and Alito but also several unqualified lower-court nominees. As an Illinois state senator, he won the support of prosecutors and police organisations for new protections against convicting the innocent in capital cases. While McCain voted to continue to deny habeas corpus rights to detainees, perpetuating the Bush administration’s regime of state-sponsored extra-legal detention, Obama took the opposite side, pushing to restore the right of all US-held prisoners to a hearing. The judicial future would be safe in his care.
In the shorthand of political commentary, the Iraq war seems to leave McCain and Obama roughly even. Opposing it before the invasion, Obama had the prescience to warn of a costly and indefinite occupation and rising anti-American radicalism around the world; supporting it, McCain foresaw none of this. More recently, in early 2007, McCain risked his presidential prospects on the proposition that five additional combat brigades could salvage a war that by then appeared hopeless. Obama, along with most of the country, had decided that it was time to cut American losses. Neither candidate’s calculations on Iraq have been as cheaply political as McCain’s repeated assertion that Obama values his career over his country; both men based their positions, right or wrong, on judgment and principle.
President Bush’s successor will inherit two wars and the realities of limited resources, flagging popular will and the dwindling possibilities of what can be achieved by American power. McCain’s views on these subjects range from the simplistic to the unknown. In Iraq, he seeks ‘victory’ – a word that General David Petraeus refuses to use, and one that fundamentally misrepresents the messy, open-ended nature of the conflict. As for Afghanistan, on the rare occasions when McCain mentions it he implies that the surge can be transferred directly from Iraq, which suggests that his grasp of counterinsurgency is not as firm as he insisted it was during the first presidential debate. McCain always displays more faith in force than interest in its strategic consequences. Unlike Obama, McCain has no political strategy for either war, only the dubious hope that greater security will allow things to work out. Obama has long warned of deterioration along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and has a considered grasp of its vital importance. His strategy for both Afghanistan and Iraq shows an understanding of the role that internal politics, economics, corruption and regional diplomacy play in wars where there is no battlefield victory.
Unimaginably painful personal experience taught McCain that war is above all a test of honour: maintain the will to fight on, be prepared to risk everything and you will prevail. Asked during the first debate to outline ‘the lessons of Iraq’, McCain said: ‘I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear: that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.’ A soldier’s answer – but a statesman must have a broader view of war and peace. The years ahead will demand not only determination but also diplomacy, flexibility, patience, judiciousness and intellectual engagement. These are no more McCain’s strong suit than the current President’s. Obama, for his part, seems to know that more will be required than will power and force to extract some advantage from the wreckage of the Bush years.
Obama is also better suited for the task of renewing the bedrock foundations of American influence. An American restoration in foreign affairs will require a commitment not only to international co-operation but also to international institutions that can address global warming, the dislocations of what will likely be a deepening global economic crisis, disease epidemics, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and other, more traditional security challenges. Many of the Cold War-era vehicles for engagement and negotiation – the United Nations, the World Bank, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – are moribund, tattered, or outdated. Obama has the generational outlook that will be required to revive or reinvent these compacts. He would be the first postwar American President unencumbered by the legacies of either Munich or Vietnam.
The next President must also restore American moral credibility. Closing Guantánamo, banning all torture and ending the Iraq war as responsibly as possible will provide a start, but only that. The modern presidency is as much a vehicle for communication as for decision-making and the relevant audiences are global. Obama has inspired many Americans in part because he holds up a mirror to their own idealism. His election would do no less – and likely more – overseas.
What most distinguishes the candidates, however, is character – and here, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama is clearly the stronger of the two. Not long ago, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said: ‘This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.’ The view that this election is about personalities leaves out policy, complexity and accountability. Even so, there’s some truth in what Davis said – but it hardly points to the conclusion that he intended.
Echoing Obama, McCain has made ‘change’ one of his campaign mantras. But the change he has provided has been in himself and it is not just a matter of altering his positions. A willingness to pander and even lie has come to define his presidential campaign and its televised advertisements. A contemptuous duplicity, a meanness, has entered his talk on the stump – so much so that it seems obvious that, in the drive for victory, he is willing to replicate some of the same underhanded methods that defeated him eight years ago in South Carolina.
Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for 21 months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on Saturday Night Live, but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the back-up to a President of any age, much less to one who is 72 and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.
The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceptive, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatising, erratic and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a ‘maverick’ senator. But in a President they would be a menace.
By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment.
Yet it is Obama’s temperament – and not McCain’s – that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centredness as self-centredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humour for lack of seriousness.
Nowadays almost every politician who thinks about running for President arranges to become an author. Obama’s books are different: he wrote them. The Audacity of Hope (2006) is a set of policy disquisitions loosely structured around an account of his freshman year in the United States Senate.
Though a campaign manifesto of sorts, it is superior to that genre’s usual blowsy pastiche of ghostwritten speeches. But it is Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995), that offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of a potential President. Obama began writing it in his early thirties, before he was a candidate for anything. Not since Theodore Roosevelt has an American politician this close to the pinnacle of power produced such a sustained, highly personal work of literary merit before being definitively swept up by the tides of political ambition.
A presidential election is not the awarding of a Pulitzer prize: we elect a politician and, we hope, a statesman, not an author. But Obama’s first book is valuable in the way that it reveals his fundamental attitudes of mind and spirit. Dreams from My Father is an illuminating memoir not only in the substance of Obama’s own peculiarly American story but also in the qualities he brings to the telling: a formidable intelligence, emotional empathy, self-reflection, balance and a remarkable ability to see life and the world through the eyes of people very different from himself. In common with nearly all other senators and governors of his generation, Obama does not count military service as part of his biography. But his life has been full of tests – personal, spiritual, racial, political – that bear on his preparation for great responsibility.
It is perfectly legitimate to call attention, as McCain has done, to Obama’s lack of conventional national and international policy-making experience. We, too, wish he had more of it. But office-holding is not the only kind of experience relevant to the task of leading a wildly variegated nation. Obama’s immersion in diverse human environments (Hawaii’s racial rainbow, Chicago’s racial cauldron, countercultural New York, middle-class Kansas, predominantly Muslim Indonesia), his years of organising among the poor, his taste of corporate law and his grounding in public-interest and constitutional law – these, too, are experiences. And his books show that he has wrung from them every drop of insight and breadth of perspective they contained.
The exhaustingly, sometimes infuriatingly, long campaign of 2008 (and 2007) has had at least one virtue: it has demonstrated that Obama’s intelligence and steady temperament are not just figments of the writer’s craft. He has made mistakes, to be sure. (His failure to accept McCain’s imaginative proposal for a series of unmediated joint appearances was among them.) But, on the whole, his campaign has been marked by patience, planning, discipline, organisation, technological proficiency and strategic astuteness. Obama has often looked two or three moves ahead, relatively impervious to the permanent hysteria of the hourly news cycle and the cable news shouters. And when crisis has struck, as it did when the divisive antics of his ex-pastor threatened to bring down his campaign, he has proved equal to the moment, rescuing himself with a speech that not only drew the poison but also demonstrated a profound respect for the electorate.
Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of ‘mere’ words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one – something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s ‘mere’ speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the centre of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.
We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential.
The election of Obama – a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of 21st-century America – would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting – rights acts of the 1960s and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.
Offshore Wind a ‘Mixed Bag’: University of Maryland Study
Image by University of Maryland Press Releases
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Offshore wind power offers a feasible way for Maryland to help meet its renewable energy goals, but presents some economic and political hurdles, concludes a new study by the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER).
Maryland Offshore Wind Development, is the most in-depth feasibility assessment to date of developing and operating wind farms in Maryland’s Atlantic coastal waters, the researchers say.
Among the study’s key findings, offshore wind development will have to address two serious hurdles to move forward:
* Likely interference with the NASA Wallops radar installation, as well as military operations;
* Inadequate transmission facilities on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that would raise the cost of moving the energy produced to the utility grids; this could be accomplished most economically in Delaware.
"Offshore wind is not a slam dunk for Maryland, but the potential remains very strong," says principal investigator Matthias Ruth, a University of Maryland public policy professor and CIER director. "It’s economically feasible and environmentally advantageous, but will require some tough trade-offs, compromise and collaboration between public and private sectors."
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Last spring, Maryland officials notified the U.S. Department of Interior of potential interest in wind turbine development in federal waters (12 to 40 miles) off the Maryland coast, the researchers explain.
Subsequently, the Maryland Energy Administration, with input from the Department of Natural Resources, commissioned the CIER study, including an economic comparison of the relative merits of shallow vs. deep water locations for the turbines.
Ruth adds that recent developments since the report’s completion may add to the potential benefits of offshore wind:
* Uncertainty surrounding development of a new nuclear reactor in Calvert County (Calvert Cliffs), which he says makes it more important to consider other potential renewable sources of electric power, including offshore wind.
* Proposal by a Google-led investment group could enhance prospects for distributing electricity generated by Maryland offshore wind farms, he says. The Google group would create a transmission network connecting such facilities at various points along the eastern seaboard.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT
"The technology is known and proven, especially in Europe, to be clean and cost-effective," Ruth concludes. "Compared to any alternative, this is a low risk addition to our energy portfolio."
"The impediments are not technical, they are institutional," adds co-investigator Andrew Blohm, a CIER researcher. Ultimately, overcoming the hurdles will require close collaboration between Maryland, Delaware and the federal government."
SPECIFIC FINDINGS
Meeting State Energy Targets: The study finds that offshore wind holds the potential to help Maryland meet both expected increases in electricity demand and renewable energy targets set by the legislature six years ago. Under these standards, one-fifth of the electricity sold in the state by 2022 must come from renewable sources.
"Not only would offshore wind development help Maryland meet its renewable energy goals, but it would also provide ancillary benefits, such as jobs and industry development, and further position the state as an environmental first mover," Ruth says.
Interconnecting with the Utility Grid: Delivering energy produced by wind turbines in Maryland waters to the electric utility grid could be accomplished most economically in Delaware. Previous studies found that connecting to the grid near Ocean City, Md. would cost an estimated ten times more than at Bethany Beach, De. – about 0 million vs. million.
"A difference of only twenty miles raises costs ten-fold," Blohm explains . "On the Delmarva Peninsula, the Delaware side of the state line has a more fully developed, and in this case, a more strategically located electric transmission system than Maryland’s Eastern Shore."
While this does not prevent placement of offshore wind facilities in Maryland waters, it does complicate the interconnection process and may require a more regional approach to development, Blohm adds.
Radar and Military Interference: Of the mid-Atlantic radar facilities that might experience interference from the turbines, "the potential for diminished radar functionality exists at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility," the study reports. This is used by several agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA and the U.S. Navy.
"It’s a huge hurdle, but this does not have to be a make-or-break issue." says co-investigator Sean Williamson, a CIER researcher. "Collaboration with the U.S. military and other users could reconcile any conflicts – if the parties are willing to compromise."
Additional conflict with U.S. military operations is likely to involve mobile radar units on planes and ships, as well as flight-testing, training exercises and munitions deployment.
Placing Turbines in Shallow vs. Deep Waters: The overall cost of developing and operating wind turbines in shallow or in deep waters off Maryland’s coast would be about the same – roughly ,850 per kilowatt, the study finds.
"Turbines in deeper waters may be better positioned to capture more wind energy, but transmission costs are higher," adds co-investigator Yohan Shim, a CIER researcher. Ultimately, the study finds that either location would be about the same in terms of economic feasibility.
FULL REPORT AVAILABLE ONLINE
The full text of the report is available online.
cier.umd.edu/documents/Maryland-Offshore-Wind-Report.pdf
CIER – SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR TO THE STATE
The Center for Integrative Environmental Research(CIER) at the University of Maryland has served as the state’s scientific advisor on a series of environmental-economic policy analyses. CIER addresses complex environmental challenges through research that explores the dynamic interactions among environmental, economic and social forces and stimulates active dialogue with stakeholders, researchers and decision makers.
The University of Maryland, the region’s largest public research university, provides Maryland with education and research services statewide, supporting its economic and social well being.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Matthias Ruth, CIER
Principal Investigator
202-701-6484 (cell)
mruth1@umd.edu
Andrew Blohm, CIER Co-researcher
(Interconnection, policy environment, economic modeling)
301-405-8770
andymd26@umd.edu
Sean Williamson, CIER Co-researcher
(Radar interference, military operations, policy environment)
301-405-9436
srw46@umd.edu
Neil Tickner
University of Maryland Communications
301-405-4622
ntickner@umd.edu
The leader of the coalition, Tony Abbott continued campaigning in western Sydney on Monday as the Labor party officially launched their campaign in Brisbane. Abbot refuted promises made earlier in the day by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who’s re-election bid centers on economic resilience. [Tony Abbott, Coalition Leader]: “Big promises before the election, broken promises after the election and I say to the people of Western Sydney, don’t be conned again.” The conservative opposition leader also emphasized the unity of his party, in comparison to the perceived disharmony in the Labor camp. [Tony Abbott, Coalition Leader]: “Isn’t it great to lead a united political party, with a deputy I can trust, a predecessor who is a friend and a former prime minster who is a hero.” Abbot has pledged many spending cuts, including axing the current government’s plans for a future carbon trading scheme to fight climate change. Opinion polls indicate he is narrowly trailing Gillard’s center-left party. The election is expected to be the closest in decades.
Chicago: atrium, Jim R. Thompson Center, 100 W Randolf St
Image by jetzenpolis
photo: 10/11/2004
BIG ROUND ROOF HOLE
Standing on the southeast corner of the building, on the corner of W. Randolf St. & N. Clark St., looking up, I took this shot of the Jim R. Thompson Ctr. (Jim Thompson was an llinois state governor from 1977-1991, a member of the Republican Party, although Chicago is famous for being a political stronghold of the Democratic Party "machine.")
Helmut Jahn, a German architect, designed the building. It was opened in 1985 as the State of Illinois Center, later renamed in 1993 for Gov. Jim Thompson.
Wikipedia: Jim R. Thompson Center
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Thompson_Center
CHICAGO VS. "DOWNSTATE" ILLINOIS
Illinois culture is divided between "city" (Chicago) and everything else ("downstate"). This division is widely recognized throughout Illinois, especially in state government politics. If you can sum up the difference between the two parts of the state in terms of personalities, you could pick Richard M. Daley (mayor of Chicago: 1955-1976) as the iconic political figure of the city and Abraham Lincoln as the iconic political figure of downstate Illiniois.
The suburbs of Chicago are a neutral cultural ground between the two geographic divisions of Chicago and downstate Illinois. The suburbs mix together different characteristics of the city and downstate.
Traditionally, Chicago is an electoral bastion of the Democratic Party "machine," not only in statewide elections but also national elections. Chicago machine politics under Mayor Richard J. Daley are infamous for having "thrown" the election to a fellow Irish Catholic canidate in the 1960 U.S. Presidential elections: John F. Kennedy. The ballot returns from Chicago wards were withheld from the vote count until after ballots from downstate were counted. The suspicion is that Chicago’s Democratic Party machine stole the election by adding extra votes for Kennedy.
Of course, there are many other cultural divisions within Chicago, of course. The city is divided by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, and every other possible division you can think of in American society. But the division between "city" and "downstate" is especially important because of how conscious people can be of it and the reflection of this cultural division in the political thinking of the state.
If Chicago is Democratic, then downstate is Republican. Again, not every Chicagoan is a Democrat. Some are Republican. Some are socialist, too, or Communist or anarchist or libertarian or, for that matter, are neo-Nazi. In other words, big cities – simply because of their large populations – contain people with many different points of view on politics, religion, or anything you can think of.
Nor is this cultural division between Chicago and downstate Illinois limited to just the poltical differences between Democrats in Chicago and Republicans downstate. This cultural division also shows other fundamental differences in temprament.
Chicago, similar to many East Coast cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, takes the view that emotions should be shown without restraint. "Deep," "heavy" emotions are to be given high regard. It’s taken for granted that the depth with which emotions are felt gives them the "weight" of seriousness.
On the old "Route 66" television series from the first half of the 1960s, the character of Buzz Murdock described everything in Chicago as being "heavy."
Nonetheless, Chicago is emotionally unrestrained only in comparison to its Midwest cultural surroundings. Chicago is notably more emotionally restrained than New York City, for example.
This attitude in East Coast cities also has a class affiliation that is much more obvious than it is in Chicago, though. It is the residents of the outer boroughs of New York City (Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island) who hold the cultural belief that their lack of emotional restraint shows "strength of character" and "heart". Manhattan is different. The outer boroughs angrily berate everybody else. They punish others with their moral judgments that hold nothing back. The more emotional pain inflicted, the better. This is mistaken as "strength of character."
Again, Manhattan is a different story. If you talk about "Manhattan" and "New York City," you are probably talking about two different groups of people. Manhattan is the great urban magnet for art, theatre, publishing, corporate headquarters, stock brokerages, banks, etc. Manhattan is stylish, sophisticated, urbane, well educated. It’s not as raw or harsh in voice or manner as the outer boroughs.
(At least, it’s not outwardly raw and harsh. There is plenty of competition in Manhattan’s "rat race". Having a college degree from a "good" school and good manners doesn’t always prevent people from becoming rats or jerks, of course.)
Without quite recognizing it perhaps, the Loop in Chicago seems to have more and more the feel of being a Manhattan. The Loop as the city’s Central Business District (CBD) has a much different feel than what is seen as the classic Chicago character: broad shouldered, rough mannered, unionized working class.
It’s as if downtown, having becoming to the city’s large tall buildings downtown has lost interest in them, taking them for granted as part of its ordinary, everyday background. "Bigness" for its own sake has lost its appeal. Downtown cares more about being "intelligent" and "creative" than in being big enough to throw your weight around and impress (intimidate) others.
"Manhattan" culture is, more or less, traditional East Coast WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) culture in one of its most sophisticated, tolerant, urbane forms. The essential characteristics of East Coast WASP culture are "open mindedness," "tolerance," and "rationality," Emotions are curbed in WASP culture for the sake of politeness.
(Of course, WASP culture as the leading culture of the East Coast is probably the dominant culture of the United States and is associated with many of the historical justices of American society. Unfortunately, it is rarely given credit for its ability to criticize and reform itself into becoming ever better versions of its former selves.)
Downstate is culturally more "masculine" than the city. In fact, downstate cultural attitudes bear a strong resemblance to the "rugged individualism" of the Rocky Mountain states of the American West (and their ideological propensity toward a laissez faire capitalist libertarianism).
REPORT CARD DAY FOR A SOCIALIST/MARXIST/COMMUNITY ORGANIZER………….A WELL DESERVED “F”
Image by SS&SS
March 14, 2011
Barack Obama: A Management Appraisal
By Frank Burke
In addition to examining the roots of Barack Obama’s political philosophy, an evaluation of his management style, such as might be undertaken by an independent business consultant, is likewise instructive.
The comparison is apt in that the United States government can be viewed from a business perspective as a service provider. In attempting to analyze problems that exist and evolve the correct remedies, consultants typically begin by observing the way in which management — especially top management — leads and interacts with the organization. This would begin with an examination of five key areas.
Management Style
In classic management theory, Barack Obama would have to be described as an abdicative manager.
The abdicative manager evidences a tendency to flee from responsibility and is frequently encountered in situations where he or she never wanted the job in the first place (for instance, a son or daughter who inherits a company or the individual who discovers that they are incapable of adequate performance). Abdication can be exhibited in a variety of ways, ranging from physically removing oneself through travel (the confusion of movement with action), to obsessing about personal interests or a limited range of controllable subjects.
Obama’s frequent vacations and absences, especially in times of crisis, coupled with his unwillingness to personally invest himself in key initiatives, are demonstrative of this style. An excellent example occurred after passage of the healthcare initiative. Having ceded authority in what would later be described as his key achievement to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he watched as they forced the bill through under a manufactured emergency that precluded lawmakers from having time to read it. He then went on a four-day vacation before signing it.
Team Building and Leadership
If a large organization is to function effectively, it is essential that the management team be composed of individuals who are experienced, capable, and able to function together smoothly in pursuit of stated objectives. To build the team, the top executive names a primary staff or inner circle to select other team members. The confident executive will not hesitate to recruit individuals whose ideas may deviate from his own, as long as they are competent and willing to work with other team members. Having access to multiple, even conflicting, points of view is essential to obtaining a realistic vision of events.
The Obama administration has been singularly ineffective in developing a workable team. The President’s inner circle has, for the most part, consisted of Chicago machine politicians. The appointment of numerous Czars, whose functions are neither well-articulated nor understood, has led to confusion on all levels and among the public. The selection mechanism is badly dysfunctional, as illustrated by the choice of self-proclaimed Communist Van Jones as Green Jobs Czar; under-age sex advocate Kevin Jennings as School Safety Czar; and multiple other controversial appointments. Cabinet appointees include Energy Secretary Steven Chu, (like Obama, an advocate of high gas prices); Attorney General Eric Holder, whose advocacy of racial preferences has resulted in serious dissension within the Justice Department; Janet Napolitano, a career politician with no training or experience in security as Secretary of Homeland Security; and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Conflicts between Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and the administration, arising over a variety of foreign policy questions, have been painfully obvious.
At a time when the economy is in recession, and unemployment stands at historic highs, it is significant that less than seven percent of Obama’s appointees have any private sector experience. The number of administrative officials in high places who have left after two years or less is further evidence of the leadership vacuum.
Strategic Planning
A critical element of executive responsibility, strategic planning sets the mid- to long-term goals of the organization that form the rationale for shorter term and day-to-day activities. In any large business, strategic planning would involve allocation of existing resources, planning the corporate infrastructure, developing timely products and services to assure customer retention and expansion, targeting new opportunities, and phasing out systems no longer efficient or profitable.
Other than placating the far left — a small and shrinking segment of his "customer" base — it is difficult to discover any strategic direction in Obama’s thinking. Even his so-called singular achievement, ObamaCare, was poorly cobbled together without much direction. On questions including foreign policy, to the war in Afghanistan, trials for terrorists, closing the Guantanamo facility, etc., his actions have been tentative and unpredictable. Energy and environmental policies have clearly damaged not only employment opportunities but the nation’s infrastructure in terms of energy independence. Just as he permitted his party to proceed through 2010 without articulating a budget, his continued reluctance to advance any policy with regard to entitlements, leaves the administration – and the country – without a strategy and without a plan.
Crisis Management
The "3:00 a.m. Phone Call" TV commercial, produced by the Clinton campaign, was indeed prescient. That phone has rung numerous times, and it has gone unanswered. The failure to provide even moral encouragement to the demonstrators in Iran, coupled with the more recent waffling on the situations in Egypt and Libya, bespeak a president unsure of his policies and unable to react to events in a timely manner. As the drug wars in Mexico have escalated to critical mass, efforts to strengthen the border have languished. Reactions to real and attempted terrorist attacks on America soil have been met with response that is both tepid and uncertain.
Financial Acumen
Most chief executives spend time with stockholders, analysts, credit sources, and others discussing the financial status of the organization. Where there are problems, the CEO is expected to present a rational turnaround plan detailing the steps to be taken to ensure financial survival.
At a time when the national debt threatens to destabilize the entire economy, Obama’s only suggestion has been to engage in further spending. The lack of a cohesive financial policy has resulted in a global loss of faith in the U.S. dollar, possible economic collapse, and a threat of future inflation. In refusing to consider the recommendations of the Budget Task Force he appointed, it is clear that his grasp of finance and economics is less than rudimentary.
Lacking both the relevant education and experience, were he applying for an executive position in any company, he would in all likelihood be quickly rejected. His refusal to divulge school records and grades would also work against him. If the business to which he applied was involved in any form of sensitive or defense work, his past associations with radicals would result in the denial of any security clearance.
From a business standpoint, his lack of performance and organizational skills would demand that any ethical consultant approach the Board of Directors with a very strong recommendation that Mr. Obama be fired. Perhaps in 2012, he will be.
On the positive side, it must be noted that, were Mr. Obama an effective executive, his agenda might well be much further advanced.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZING/SOCIALIST/MARXIST/BUFFOON………..
“Final Friday” is coming to a close in Egypt, but protests and uncertainty remain. One thing is for sure, Egyptians want foreigners out of their inner affairs so they can build their own government. The world and Egyptians alike do not want America meddling in Egypt, especially given the US support for Mubarak over the past 30 plus years. While the US openly supports democracy, and realizes the people of Egypt want change, they have been careful to support neither side calling for restraint but not dismissing past support for Mubarak. American media and political pundits have been quick to push their agendas. Many conservatives in the US are worried change may bring about a radical Islamist government. They oppose such an option at all costs, even if it is democratically elected. Dr. Emile Nakhleh, a former senior intelligence officer who served as director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program at the CIA explained the US and Obama administration specifically is careful, and continues to watch Egypt because it is an important nation in the region. He pointed out Egypt has played pivotal rolls in the Middle East peace process, the global fight against terrorism, and is generally a center piece for stability, all of which work to the interests of the west. However, he explained it is not wise of the US to ignore or discount the Muslim Brotherhood. “You really cannot engage Muslim majority countries, Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia, Turkey, any Muslim majority country …
Video Rating: 0 / 5
COMMENT! RATE!! SUBSCRIBE!!! Imran Khan is one Politician in Pakistan who doesn’t give a DAMN about US interests in the region..he kicks their ass day in and day out..Unlike other political leaders and military dictators of Pakistan who have bowed to Western pressure each time just to legitimize their rule..The latest examples of such puppets are Pervez Musharraf & Asif Ali Zardari.. This video clip consists of the protests made by Imran Khan’s political party ‘Movement for Justice’ against the status quo and their legitimate rights of ‘free media’ and an ‘independent judiciary’..But the irony is, that the United Snakes condemned these protests in which hundreds of people were killed by the dictators whereas they support the protests in Iran just coz the President of IRAN stands up to their aggression each time and humiliates them at every forum..And the Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad is the one who made the slogan a household call – DEATH TO AMERICA!!
Question by You are still dry shaving me?: How accurate is this political party comparison?
Simply brilliant – Sadly true.
If a conservative doesn’t like guns, they don’t buy one. If a liberal doesn’t like guns, then no one should have one.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, they don’t eat meat. If a liberal is, they want to ban all meat products for everyone.
If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy. A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.
If a conservative is homosexual, they quietly enjoy their life. If a liberal is homosexual, they loudly demand legislated respect.
If a black man or Hispanic is conservative, they see themselves as independently successful. Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church. A liberal wants all churches to be silenced.
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that his neighbors pay for his.
Best answer:
Answer by DrLihookedx
I’m conservative and think that you need to not say crap like that, you give no proof of any of your accusations, both parties want to better their country just in different ways. so you need to not be so disrespectful to the other party because with out them there would be no American way
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Top Shelf
Image by andyi
I really dig the Bookshelf Project Flickr group. It gives me an outlet for a common sick urge that many people in my demographic suffer from.
You were kind enough to invite me to your home for a dinner party and I excused myself in the middle of the meal to use the restroom. But it was a ruse: I high-tailed it to the living room so I could spend ten minutes standing with my head tilted to the right, checking out the couple of dozen books you have on that one shelf above the center-channel speaker in your entertainment hutch.
I’ve been meaning to do one of these "annotated bookcase" photos for a long, long time. Recently a pal posted one and it sort of egged me on to finally do it. That, plus the fact that Zero-Sum is due for an overhaul (where I cautiously decide which titles wouldn’t be missed if I removed them, and decide which new titles have earned a coveted spot in the rankings). Kinda fun to document these things.
This is the big "zero sum" bookcase in my office dedicated to "entertainment" books. "Zero Sum" meaning that when a new book goes _in,_ obviously an existing book (or two) has to come out to make room. I have no self-control when it comes to books in the office and this is the only way to keep the things from becoming such an infestation that my computers sit on desks made of books, I sit on chairs made from books, I keep my books in bookcases made of books…
(More shelves to come…)