ExRx.net

yeah the politicians suck. They are trying to glom onto the tea party. So if you say a "tea party politician" sure your point applies. but I really don't see the TP as a political advocacy group, but more of a general rage against the machine. And a heck of a lot of Rino warhorses got surprised when they came to rallies and got their asses booed.

BP definitely is to blame for the oil spill. They have by far the worst safety record of any oil company by an exponential factor. I think it is something like 70 times as many incidents as all the other companies combined. This is just in the US though.

They have shown they cannot run a business responsibly. Their corporate charter should be revoked so they can no longer operate in the US.

However it was lax regulations that allowed this to happen. So the government is also responsible. they allowed this to happen. This is what you get when you fail make and enforce safety regulations.

1. I think we all appreciate the dangers and difficulties of deep drilling a lot better now. As with nuclear power, there is a possibility of devestating accidents (Chernobyl, TMI, SL3) and as such high standards of engineering discipline are needed.

2. BP seems to have had poor procedures and a lack of interest in technical matters. Reminds me of the social dynamic of NASA with the Space Shuttle crashes (both times).

------------------

Dick Feynman said it best: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. "

Ive never heard of him referred to as Dick before, but none the less, its a great quote.

BP was shockingly unprepared and they're paying dearly for their abject stupidity.

I'm still not clear as to why Ironman thinks Ron Paul is not libertarian. Every network he's on describes him as libertarian, as well as every article I've ever seen on him. Goldwater is, as well, and I'm not aware of any libertarian issue they disagree on.

Can anyone tell me how much more unprepared BP was as compared to any of their competitors ?

I'm not pro BP, but I don't see the need to completely Bash them either. This has NEVER happened before and Noone truly knows how to best handle it and stop the Flow of Oil. I'm just not completely convinced that BP is doing anything any different than their competitors.

As previously mentioned, the regulators were not keeping a watchful eye, nor were the regulations up to task by requiring a second "failsafe" Device. Nor is it known if the second "failsafe" Device would have actually worked in this situation.

Cliff

I dont think I can handle another one of these threads

LOL. This was meant to be an American History thread. I saw it was veering towards contempoary issues so I went along with the flow!

I am actually curious as to whether Abraham Lincoln is viewed in the same light as the founding fathers by non-americans...if he is even studied at all I guess.

Just because BP was shockingly unprepared doesn't mean others aren't ALSO shockingly unprepared. They might all be.

However I've seen several news reports that indicated BP's historic safety record was one of (if not the) worst in the industry for the US. So at this point I would tend to suspect they were probably less prepared than others.

BP has a poor engineering culture. this is well known in the petrochemical industry. They have swallowed the image and MBA koolaid a bit too much. Yes, the subcontractor should have saved them, but it is evident (read the WSJ articles) that BP has a history of sending poor managers out in the field and of pushing their contractors to make unsafe judgment calls. It's NASA over again.

I click on the thread mostly to make the yellow flag go away.

effing with you...

That's because he calls himself a libertarian. He could call himself a pink gorilla if he wanted, but it doesn't make it so.

I gave you the reasons why he is not a libertarian. You don't seem to understand why those reasons make him too authoritarian to be a libertarian. You also did not seem to understand the issues themselves.

If you don't know the difference between Ron Paul and Barry Goldwater, than you don't know crap about conservatism.

Maybe you have watched too much Fox propaganda. The semi-conservative authoritarians in the mainstream of the Republican party are more authoritarian than anything else.

Are you even aware of the old rift between Goldwater and the social conservatives that started back in the 1980's? He was against everything socially conservative until the day he died. Ron Paul is not.

Let me try to put this simply. There is a spectrum between total authoritarianism and a total anarchy. If you are in the middle, you are not a libertarian, because that's not what the fv(k1ng word means. This is reality, words mean what they mean. This isn't conservative fantasy land where words can mean anything you believe they mean.

I think the problem is you think libertarian is anything that is not leaning towards authoritarianism. However that is not the case. I think this lies with your difficulties understanding subtle differences.

All libertarians are non-authoritarians, not all non-authoritarians are libertarians. It's kind of like how an apple is a fruit, but not all fruit are apples.

I don't think it can be explained any better than that.

You can go on thinking Ron Paul is a libertarian all you want. You can think he's your fairy godmother for all I care. That's all I'm going to say about it. You believe lots of things that are demonstrably false, and there is nothing that anyone can say to convince you of that. The reasons Ron Paul is not a libertarian are among these things. So I am not going to repeat myself.

No it's not going to be another one of those threads. I've answered and that's all I'm going to say about it.

Firstly Hoose, i'm no BP fan and i agree with you that they have a shocking safety and dubious political history.

But those shares that are owned by American and British investors are tied into penion schemes and savings. In short, the profits that BP make are intrinsically linked to millions of Americans. Add to that the 29,000 Americans that BP employs and i fail to see how BP can have no business in your country.