On 05/26/2010 02:26 AM, Dave Drum -> Ed Hulett wrote:
 -=>> Ed Hulett wrote to Dave Drum <=-

 WC>>> *Dick* Cheney was the cause for these devices no longer
being required
 WC>>> on U.S. offshore drilling rigs while the rest of the thinking world
 WC>>> largely requires them.

 EH>>> Really? How? Explain how a mere VP can cause such a thing.

 DD>> Cheney was hardly a "mere VP". More like one of the
main operators of
 DD>> the hand puppet, George III.

 EH>> Keep telling yourself that.

 DD> Just keep burying your head in the sand and ignoring things that you
 DD> feel are
 DD> "inconvenient".

Unless you have some real evidence other than your silly theory, you have nothing.

 DD>> As to how he could cause such a thing - why by having the requirement
 DD>> for such removed during his sub-rosa "energy" meetings in 2001.
 DD>> Or when/after he had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's (then)
 DD>> chief executive.

 EH>> It couldn't happen. He had no authority to do any such thing.

 DD> Keep telling yourself that.

Show me how he had the authority. The Constitution clearly outlines who
makes the laws and who carries them out. Besides the point that the federal
government has been trying to erode the authority of the Constitution since
it was ratified, just once, try to show how Cheney was capable of making
any law.

 DD>> Those things are well-documented. Where have you been?

 EH>> If they are so well documented, I'm sure you will have no trouble
 EH>> giving a citation as to where that documentation can be found.

 DD> Left, Right, and Center ...

This ought to be good...

 DD> "Almost immediately after taking office, Vice President Cheney began
 DD> meeting
 DD> with more than 100 oil executives, compiling a wish list of things they
 DD> wanted," Olbermann expounded. "One thing the industry did
not want was
 DD> mandatory acoustic switches, which can shut wells remotely when blowout
 DD> preventers fail. The administration knew preventers fail because the MMS
 DD> [Materials Management Service] found hundreds of incidents in which they
 DD> did.
 DD> But it reversed a Clinton era decision requiring the essential acoustic
 DD> backups, calling them too costly, and those faulty blowout preventers a
 DD> fail
 DD> safe."

 DD> www.businessandmedia.org

Kieth Olbermann? You think Olbermann is an authority on this issue?

 DD> .. this disaster should rightly be determined Cheney’s
"Katrina" if it
 DD> is to
 DD> be anyone’s "Katrina", though it’s distressing that both
the media and the
 DD> Right are obsessed with finding another President to be as incompetent
 DD> as Bush
 DD> -- both for different reasons; one to grab eyeballs and one to make a
 DD> desperate
 DD> false equivalency in order to justify the scathingly horrific Bush/Cheney
 DD> administration. At the very least, the Bush regulators need to explain
 DD> how they
 DD> determined that the cost of the valves was not justified, in light of the 6
 DD> million dollar a day clean up cost of the Gulf Spill.

 DD> www.politicususa.com

You'll have to do better than an obviously biased opinion followed by a broken url.

 DD> Bill Galston makes a very convincing case that the Bush Administration's
 DD> pro-oil disdain for environmental regulation, starring Dick Cheney,
 DD> prevented
 DD> the government from requiring a remote control backup device that would
 DD> have
 DD> prevented the spill. The device costs $500,000 per well. The spill will
 DD> cost
 DD> billions.

Again, you give someone's opinion AFTER the fact and then cite a left leaning blog.

 DD> swampland.blogs.time.com

 DD> What we do know is that unfettered oil drilling was to Dick Cheney’s
 DD> domestic
 DD> concerns what the invasion of Iraq was to his foreign policy—a core
 DD> objective,
 DD> implacably pursued regardless of the risks. Is there a connection
 DD> between his
 DD> infamous secret energy task force and the corrupt mindset that came to
 DD> dominate
 DD> a key program within MMS? Would $500,000 per rig have been regarded as an
 DD> unacceptably expensive insurance policy if a drill-baby-drill
 DD> administration
 DD> hadn’t placed its thumb so heavily on the scale?

 DD> www.tnr.com

And then you cite an opinion from someone at the left leaning New Republic.

If that's all you can do to support your silly theory, there is no reason
to believe a word you say.

Ed

-- 
"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the
ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty." --Fisher Ames,
speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788

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