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You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / Another Drilling Moratorium

Another Drilling Moratorium

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Dunno how long before another strict constructionist judge strikes this down:

The U.S. Interior Department said Monday it is issuing a new moratorium order in a second effort to block deepwater oil and natural gas projects.

The new moratorium is to “protect communities, coasts, and wildlife” while oil and gas companies implement safety measures to reduce the risks of blowouts and oil spills associated with deepwater drilling, the government said.

The ban will be in effect through November 30, 2010, or until Interior Secretary Ken Salazar determines that deepwater drilling operations can proceed safely.

We’ll see.

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    Punchy

    How about they find a judge that isn’t fist-deep into the 5-hole of Big Oil and Big Refinery?

  2. 2.

    Chyron HR

    Proof positive that Obama is in BP’s pocket. Or that he wants to destroy BP also. Or both, too.

  3. 3.

    beltane

    There’s that mean, mean Obama administration being mean, mean, mean to the oil companies. I’m sure those poor oil companies will find another tenderhearted judge to sympathize with their plight. Conservative hate empathy except in the case of corporate malefactors.

  4. 4.

    El Cid

    This type of anti-Constitution Obamunism is only going to drive up inflation that much higher.

  5. 5.

    feebog

    One wonders what would happen if drilling continued and there was another catastrophic blowout. Would that shut up the Palinistas, or is Drill, Baby, Drill the only thing they got.

  6. 6.

    beltane

    @feebog: They will never shut up. We could experience monthly oil well blowouts along with severe disruptions in the food supply due to global warming and they still wouldn’t shut up. A true Republican is someone who is utterly immune to reality.

  7. 7.

    Ash Can

    This just proves that the Democrats don’t care about jobs. This is why our economy is in the crapper.

    /GOP, dusting off its hands after flushing said economy down said crapper

  9. 9.

    beltane

    @El Cid: That thing looks like it violates the Prime Directive. We are becoming more like the Romulans and less like the Federation.

  11. 11.

    El Cid

    @beltane: The Sun could send a fusion-powered herald down to the Earth, could write fire in the skies, could melt deserts to glass, and all to tell Earthlings that (a) humans are causing global warming via industrial fossil fuel use and (b) don’t blame it, the Sun, for global warming. And conservatives would claim to have found little rainbow gaps in the flaming sky letters which proved it was a Nancy Pelosi conspiracy and Obama’s trying to takerjerbs.

  14. 14.

    Mumphrey

    @feebog:

    Nah, they’d just blame the next blowout on Obama, saying either, 1: He’s in the pocket of Big Oil, or 2: He rigged the well to blow to cripple Big Oil, or even 3: Both! He’s in Big Oil’s pocket and he wants to put them out of business!

    I myself would go with 3, just because it’s so incoherent, and there’s nothing today’s Republicans seem to like as much as incoherency.

  16. 16.

    cleek

    @Mumphrey:

    3. Both! He’s oin Big Oil’s pocket and he wants to put them out of business!

    4. he rigged it so he can get another $20B out of them in a Chicago-style shakedown!

    (always important to smear America’s 3rd largest city)

  17. 17.

    Mark S.

    OT–Zen Master Jon Kyl:

    You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to — if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

  20. 20.

    beltane

    @Mark S.: I read that FIVE times and it still fails to make any sense. The GOP is the Palinese-only party now. English is for so-shulists.

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne

    @feebog:

    One wonders what would happen if drilling continued and there was another catastrophic blowout.

    Obama would be impeached for not stopping it.

    I wish I were kidding.

  23. 23.

    Sly

    If I held a drastically oversimplified view of taxation, I wouldn’t have a much of a quibble with Kyl’s remarks. If you treat taxation as one giant process that hits everyone equally, it makes no sense to reduce taxes in one area and raise them in another. It isn’t like that, obviously. Taxes hit different groups of people at different levels of severity, and the goal is to ensure that the people who drive economic growth (lower and middle-class consumers) carry the least weighty tax burden and are not saddled with massive levels of private debt.

    But that’s just being a filthy Keynsian, and what the fuck have they ever done?

    Of course, even if you do think of it as a single process, taxation still isn’t a zero-sum game, especially with income taxes, because they take a percentage of a pool of money that can grow or shrink. I had previously thought that this was the one thing the GOP learned from Arthur Laffer, but they aren’t even being consistent with their own bullshit anymore.

  24. 24.

    El Cid

    @Sly: I don’t think the GOP or the modern conservative movement in general has ever felt a responsibility to be consistent.

    Fuck, Newt Gingrich led every god-damned day up until the first House vote on TARP calling it horrible and ruining the economy and robbing the citizenry, etc., and then the very fucking morning of the vote, when all of a sudden all sorts of rich GOP figures were shitting themselves that the vote would fail, he started advocating its passage, because he’s a ridiculously over-rated lying shit.

  25. 25.

    Mark S.

    @Sly:

    That’s how they get away with this bullshit (well, that and the fact our idiot media almost never call them out on it). Raising LeBron James’ taxes is the same as raising taxes on the guy selling popcorn at Heat games.

  26. 26.

    Bob L

    @cleek

    :(always important to smear America’s 3rd largest city)

    That’s right, REAL Americans(r) live in middle class neighborhoods; gated community with million dollar homes and a country club. Chicago is full of gangster elitist who only value money and refuse to deal with common Americans.

    Question: how many servants does Obama have? Answer: None, unlike the voice of the people Limbaugh. So how can Obama know what the common man thinks if he doesn’t let the common man wash his body? Obama is an elitist snob.

  27. 27.

    Mark S.

    @El Cid:

    I can’t remember what the issue was, but I once saw Newt argue one thing on a morning talk show and then heard him argue the exact opposite position on Hannity’s radio show two hours later. But Joe Klein and one of Nate Silver’s co-bloggers think Newt is just brimming with great ideas and will be a real force in 2012. The rest of the country sees him for what he is: a bullshit artist who makes Mitt Romney seem like a principled statesman.

  28. 28.

    Bubblegum Tate

    @Bob L:

    Chicago is full of gangster elitist who only value money and refuse to deal with common Americans.

    Also: Black people

  29. 29.

    lamh32

    OT, but last week, I posted the link to Tim Wise’s diary over on DKOS titled: “Collateral Damage: Racism, the Economy and the High Cost of White Ambivalence”.

    Mr Wise is up with another post over at DKOS, and it’s another good one.
    Black Power’s Gonna Get You Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism

    Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism.Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad.

    What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past?

    Was it the research indicating that job applicants with white sounding names have a 50 percent better chance of being called back for an interview than their counterparts with black-sounding names, even when all qualifications are the same?

    No.

    Was it the study that found white job applicants with criminal records have a better chance of being called back for an interview than black applicants without one, even when all the qualifications are the same?

    No.

    Was it the massive nationwide study that estimated at least 1 million cases of blatant job discrimination against blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans each year, affecting roughly one-in-three job seekers of color?

    No.

    Is it the fact that black males with college degrees are almost twice as likely as their white male counterparts to be out of work?

    No.

    Is it the data indicating that Chinese-American professionals earn less than 60 percent as much as their white counterparts, even though the Chinese Americans, on average, have more education?

    No….

    (lamh: there are more to this list, check out the rest at the link)

    It is none of this. Neither the evidence of systemic discrimination against people of color in every walk of American life, nor the repeated examples of blatant racism directed towards people of color individually moves them.
    But they’re angry nonetheless about racism in America…

    He’s goes on to list the alleged “reasons” for their anger (i.e. bullshit reasons)…

    This is a very good read. I highly recommend following the link an reading the entire diary. Mr Wise doesn’t disappoint.

    I’m gonna post it in the next open thread, once we get a new one. It’s that good a read.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @beltane:

    I read that FIVE times and it still fails to make any sense.

    Shorter Kyl: Paygo should only apply to spending increases, not tax cuts.

  33. 33.

    Sly

    @Roger Moore:

    I’m sure Kyl would be in favor of certain spending cuts to go along with tax cuts. Those spending cuts are probably in the social safety net and public good areas. He’s likely just using the “don’t raise taxes to offset lowering taxes” as a dodge to avoid detailing to the public what those cuts would be.

    Remember how fast they ran away from Paul Ryan.

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