I’ve been remiss in not blogging about this; I was simply quite taken aback about the President baiting the Supremes in that setting, and in that way. Ilya Somin points out the obvious.
But the repeal of DADT is overdue. (For the sake of my husband, and some of my other SoCon readers, I’d like to reiterate that the Brits and the Israelis have figured out some practical ways to do this in their own elite forces. Furthermore, this move, should the President actually follow through, may actually help with unit cohesion, as it will depoliticize the fact of being gay. This will, I think, paradoxically help the military weed out any old-school passive-aggressive queens of the type that actually hurt unit morale.)
The President has already set gay rights back a few years; he owes us this one.
And for the President to advocate domestic drilling is a very. Big. Deal. I am reminding myself that Obama does like to say things, and a lot of the things he says—most of ’em, actually—don’t happen.
But a push to develop domestic energy sources could save his Presidency, and leave a true, lasting legacy that could transcend his failings in a vaguely Nixon-in-China fashion.
What does domestic drilling look like in a populated area? Good question: let’s take a peek at how we do it in California:
One of the THUMS islands in Long Beach Harbor, administered by Oxy Petroleum.
At least, that’s how we did it in the 1960s, after we recovered from the hangover of seeing what the rigs off the Santa Barbara coast looked like. With a little imagination and some political will, the THUMS approach to camouflaging could be duplicated in other populated areas. The impact of these islands cannot be overemphasized: they contribute huge amounts of money to the California budget, to the city of Long Beach, and to individual property owners whose land is over the “tentacles” thrown out by the oil wells. (Think of an offshore drilling facility as a sort of octopus, with little hoses going out from it. In Long Beach the oil that is extracted is compensated for by water that is injected back into the ground, to prevent sinkholes. Once they figured out how to do this, the system worked for decades. And it works now.)
Where do you think the Long Beach Harbor got the nickname “Rainbow Harbor” from? That’s right: it’s from those colored lights off of the THUMS islands.
Previously: More on the THUMS Islands in Long Beach Harbor
Petro-Islands!
Talk to the Minerals Management Service! / Countering the Surfrider Foundation Propaganda
Black Gold in the Golden State
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