The Occasional Observer

Apparently I'm not the only one who is into my namesake. HBO is airing a documentary on the too-short life of John Cazale, who died in 1978 at age 42.

But check this out:

The documentary, which airs on HBO Tuesday night, shines a light on the actor and his times. Cazale...was at the heart of the '70s film golden age, despite appearing in just five films -- "The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II," "The Conversation," "Dog Day Afternoon" and "The Deer Hunter." Every one was nominated for a best picture Academy Award.

Remarkable.

to all those who served and paid the ultimate price for our freedom.

I really try to understand the left's point of view. I even read some of their blogs. I read this really articulate article about Socialism's Inevitable Downfall, and happen to also run across this article titled The Case for Socialism. Both writers seem to truly believe what they are writing. The former article uses examples of how socialism has been tried and failed repeatedly. The latter just uses statistics without any logical connection to capitalism, and states as if fact, that business owners steal the fruits of laborers work. There's no acknowledgement that the business owner creates the opportunity in the first place, assumes all the responsibility for generating revenue, and assumes all the risk.

DHS unclassified memo claims that "...the number and pace of attempted attacks against the United States over the past nine months have surpassed the number of attempts during any other previous one-year period."

It goes on to state that: terror groups are expected to try attacks inside the United States with "increased frequency."

Now, there are many aspects of this information worth discussing, such as appropriate prevention strategies and tactics, but for now I just want to focus on one. This nine-month period they refer to was under Pres. Obama.

I bring this up for one reason--to counter all the naifs out there who claimed that terrorism only existed or was exacerbated because of Pres. Bush and his policies. Such a ridiculous argument should of course have been rejected on its face given the existence of the '93 WTC bombing, USS Cole bombing, and especially the fact that the 9/11 terrorists lived and trained in the US for 3 years under Pres. Clinton. Yet somehow people still advanced the flawed premise that terrorism existed as a response to Bush's policies, and not the reality that they exist because of flawed Islamic societies.

What will their response be to this information, that attacks are at an all-time high despite the Great One and Hope & Change being in office?

Any thoughts on Kagan as SCOTUS nominee? I'm surprised Fredo hasn't weighed in yet. I guess the key question is this: while she clearly isn't aligned with our conservative views, how does she rank compared to the other possible nominees we could have gotten from a very liberal president and a dominant Dem Congress? I suspect we could have done much worse, but having not paid much attention to other possibilities I don't know if we could have done better.

An obvious and legitimate knock on her is a lack of judicial experience. Seems like this should be a solid pre-req to be on Supreme Court, although she wouldn't be the first to not have any.

If the media doubted wing-nut claims that they should be judicious with what sensitive information they should report, they'll have a hard time denying this one. Al-Awlaki says that he got some of his intelligence from the Washington Post.

Because I can't figure out the GOP strategy of NOT holding the administration's feet to the fire on this BP mess.

Napolitano is out there with this "We're watching BP" garbage. Holding them accountable and what not.

Like if BP fails to stop the leak, and the entire fishing industry in the Gulf goes under, the appropriate response is merely to give BP's effort the thumbs down, and sue or jail some folks in the corporation. That will make it all better.

If Manhattan was ablaze because a power plant exploded, would the Mayor stand down the fire department and say, "We're watching Con Ed to see whether they respond appropriately. We will hold them accountable."

What's that? The whole city burned? That's it, Mr. CEO, you failed! We're taking you to task!

I mean, isn't emergency response generally the raison d'etre of government on any level? I have a hard time believing the engineers in the military had no plan for dealing with this. That FEMA and homeland security have never considered the possibility of how to deal with this kind of situation, either as an accident or terrorism strike. Or that, even if this had never been planned, bringing the resources of the military, FEMA, and state authorities to bear wouldn't have drastically improved the outcome.

Why, from week 1 of this catastrophe, was the federal government not intervening and taking the lead on the response, rather than merely watching BP fail and shaking its finger?

This seems to me to be a failure of leadership on the highest level, with deep ramifications for the livelihoods of many Americans down there.

I hope the Congress and the GOP is planning on conducting investigations, slowly dragging the story out with low level staffers testifying about how the administration was concerned about "damage control," "not looking like Bush," and being entirely political, when they should have been jumping into the breach to solve the situation.

I really hope the GOP inaction right now is merely designed to let the Administration think that, with the Dem-friendly press at their sides, they will not be held to account. That they can dither and discuss amongst themselves, and hopefully leave a large and damning paper trail.

Of course, better than that would have been some courageous political leadership on either side of the aisle, that forced the government to do more, sooner.

If you hadn't heard, Mexican President Calderon came here and gave a speech to Congress denouncing Arizona's immigration law. Thankfully, there are still a few reasonable men in the House. Here's Congressman McClintock's response.

Heavy Metal Vocalist Ronnie James Dio Dies

I have to say I am disgusted at the seeming ineptness in responding to this oil leak. I understand that deep-well oil drilling is a dirty business with a lot of risks, and I'm definitely not advocating that we stop doing it.

Rather, I am absolutely amazed at the fact that oil companies were allowed to drill without having suitable emergency plans in place. For example, last week they tried to contain the flow by lowering a huge dome over the top, only to find that ice crystals instantly formed and prevented that option. Are you seriously telling me that they had NEVER tested this low-tech approach before? How could this accident be the first time they've actually tried this out? Amazingly they seem to have no other ideas, claiming it could take months to stop the leak.

In most other industries, you are required to have emergency response plans--that are tested in advance--in place before you begin operations. The "fail-safe" shears that were claimed to be the last defense and highly reliable in fact failed 3 out of 6 trials previously. It's just amazing to me that the first time they are thinking through how to respond to a crisis seems to be in the crisis, rather than before.

Surprisingly blunt criticism of Obama administration by WaPo.

And on a separate but related topic, when are Congress (Dems and Repubs) and Obama going to get together to confirm a TSA head? How is it that we still don't have a chief for what would seem to be a very important agency? Republicans do not have entirely clean hands on this issue and need to bear some responsibility as well.

Now this is quite the record.