The recent explosion on the Deep Water Horizon Oil Rig in the Gulf is a human, environmental, and economic catastrophe. It took eleven lives. It continues to wreak havoc on the delicate ecosystems on the Gulf. It has endangered huge swathes of the coastal economy. Our first obligation must be to the families whose livelihoods are imperiled. We must act quickly to prevent more damage from occurring, and we must insist that BP fulfill its obligations to the people it has hurt.

But with every crisis, there is an opportunity. An opportunity to learn from our mistakes. An opportunity to make sure they don’t happen again. Last month’s crisis should force us all to take an honest look at our dependence on fossil fuels.  

As we deplete accessible supplies, we will have no choice but to stretch the limits of safety and prudence to find new reserves. We will be forced to go to ever-deeper waters to quench our insatiable thirst for oil.

For the last 46 days, we have learned the cost of our dangerous addiction to oil. It is too high to bear.

Many of us feel a great deal of anger at the spill and those responsible for it. This anger is justifiable, but it should not be our only reaction. Here’s another idea: instead of getting angry, let’s get smart. Every TV set in the country is tuned to coverage of the oil spill.  Public dialogue is focusing on this disaster. It is an unprecedented opportunity to have an honest discussion about the costs of – and solutions for – our fossil fuel addiction.

We must take a decisive stand for alternative, renewable, sustainable energy, and we must do it now.

This is a theme I have been pushing the entire campaign. In our debate in Early April, Rich Anthony and I agreed that searching for alternative energy sources should be among our foremost priorities. On Wednesday, President Obama issued a powerful call to action: we must renew our dedication to passing legislation that comprehensively addresses our climate change and fossil fuel dependence problems.

There are a number of promising alternative energy technologies that could provide supplement and diversify our energy portfolio, and I look forward to discussing them in the weeks – and blog posts – to come.  

If you would like to lie awake wondering why we didn’t do something back then, I recommend you read Jimmy Carter’s speech on US energy dependence delivered in 1977 — that’s 1977, as in 33 years ago.

Here’s a link to the full text of the speech

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/c…

and here’s an excerpt.  Read the whole thing for full impact.

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.

It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.

We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices.

The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war” — except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.

I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The 1973 gasoline lines are gone, and our homes are warm again. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every day until we act.

The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation’s independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce.

. . .

Yep, should have listened to Ol’ Jimmy.  Instead, we turned to Uncle Ronnie and his “Morning in America” schtick.

To whom will we listen now??

Sorry, didn’t mean to scare everyone.

( – promoted by lowkell)

American political discourse is littered with various “-ers” nicknames for political movements.  The first that I can remember were the 9/11 “Truthers.”  Then came the “Birthers,” the “Tenthers,” and the “three-percenters.”  I would argue friends that another political movement ending in “-ers” has emerged: the “Bathers,” short for “Bloodbathers.”

Who are the Bloodbathers?

The Bathers, as I am now going to call them, are political pundits who refuse to write or talk about anything else but their belief that the Democratic Party is headed for a bloodbath in this November’s mid-term elections, in spite of the very considerable evidence that the Republican Party is poised to fumble this year’s elections, possibly very badly.

Now don’t get me wrong–the incumbent party frequently loses at least a few seats during mid-term elections, so starting your election narrative by noting this fact is simply common sense.  But having stated the obvious, the default, a good journalist will then test their hypothesis against observable facts.

Yes, the incumbent party typically loses seats in the mid-term election, but . . .

. . . is the opposition party’s fundraising suffering due to widespread corruption and wasteful spending by party leadership?

. . . is the opposition party riven by a civil war between its establishment and its fringe elements?

. . . is the opposition still widely identified with a former president that is widely seen as responsible for many of the country’s problems?

. . . has the opposition party put forward a viable alternative agenda that it wishes to pursue, or has it simply functioned as a spoiler, opposing everything?

. . . is the opposition party widely seen as being closely tied to the industry responsible for causing the greatest environmental disaster in American history?  Is the opposition party responsible for the lack of regulation that contributed to the disaster?

. . . is the economy, by far the most important issue in this year’s election, turning around in favor of the incumbent party?

This is just a sampling.  There are many more good questions that need to be asked, more issues to be addressed.  Maybe you can help me think of a few more in the comment section.

In 1948 nearly the entire political press corps decided that Dewey was going to crush Harry Truman in the presidential election.  The nation’s political reporters decided the outcome of the election very early in the process and would not be swayed from their prejudged conclusion: Dewey would defeat Truman.

On the night of the election, November 3, 1948, many political reporters didn’t even bother to wait and listen to the election returns: they filed their stories for the day and went home early.  

At the arch-conservative newspaper The Chicago Tribune (the Fox News of its day) the editors decided not to wait for the final results.  They composed a now infamous headline for the first edition of the next day’s paper.  The headline proclaimed: “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” and the front page article described how the Republican Party had gained control of the House and the Senate.  House and Senate Republicans were talking about how they were ready to cooperate with President-Elect Dewey to begin enacting the Republican agenda.

Except it was all wrong.  Truman had defeated Dewey, and the Democratic Party had reclaimed control of both the House and the Senate.  Nearly every political reporter in the United States had been wrong.

Now, I understand that we live in a time when the art of political polling is far more advanced than it was in 1948–yes, that is true.  But it is also true that we live in a time when Fox News is given far more credence than it deserves and at least one major polling company (Rasmussen) routinely slants its polls to try and affect the narrative and the outcome of the issue or election it polls about.

So, for a political reporter in this day and age to mindlessly repeat the “bloodbath” meme over and over without ever bothering to ask whether the underlying facts actually support their pre-conceived notions is journalistic malpractice that can only be explained in one of three ways: 1) bias; 2) laziness; or 3) incompetence.

The fact is that the Republican Party isn’t even close to inflicting a “bloodbath” on the Democratic Party this year: the facts simply do not support that conclusion.  That could change.  The Democrats could easily blow this election by lying down, becoming passive, refusing to press a reform agenda, and generally acting like Republican-lite.  But the way things look, it could just as easily be the Republican Party that implodes due to scandal, intra-party fighting, and the complete lack of a positive agenda to run on.

A political reporter that allows himself (or herself) to become a “Bather” could really end up looking foolish this November.

Thanks for reading this diary.  Can you think of any other questions political reporters should be asking right now?

Can you think of any “Bathers” that have already written off the Democratic Party?  Which category of journalistic malpractice do you think they fit into?