Gail Collins:
"Listen up! Alabama ag commissioner is one of the most powerful positions in Alabama. Responsible for five billion dollars. Bet you didn’t know that. You know why? Thugs and criminals!"
This is the start of Peterson’s campaign ad. He rides into the screen on a horse that looks increasingly worried as things progress. Brandishing a rifle, the 64-year-old farmer barks at the camera about his opponent ("a dummy"), somebody stealing his yard signs and immigrants being "bused in by the thousands." The overall effect is like being cornered at a party by an eccentric neighbor who thinks the garbage man is spying on him for the federal government. It’s extremely popular.
McClatchy:
Federal regulators complained in a scathing internal memo about "significant deficiencies" in BP's handling of the safety of oil spill workers and asked the Coast Guard to help pressure the company to address a litany of concerns.
The memo, written by a Labor Department official earlier this week and obtained by McClatchy, reveals the Obama administration's growing concerns about potential health and safety problems posed by the oil spill and its inability to force BP to respond to them.
Bob Herbert:
"Where I was wrong," said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, "was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios."
With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow "had their act together" with regard to worst-case scenarios.
Charles Blow:
There are many things at which the president is extraordinarily gifted. Emoting isn’t one of them.
Dana Milbank:
For eight years we had a president who refused to accept blame. Now we have one who seems to enjoy it.
I had to include this. It starts with a shallow main thesis, but gets to the point... how about blaming BP a little?
Harold Meyerson:
It now looks as if the efforts to keep the states from laying off between 100,000 and 300,000 teachers in the next couple months through a proposed $23 billion federal appropriation have failed. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who was promoting the measure in the Senate, has withdrawn it for lack of support, while in the House, an attempt to append it to an emergency appropriations bill looks to be somewhere between limbo and death.
For the dedicated foes of this measure, prominent among whom are The Post's editorialists, this is clearly a moment of victory. For the nation's school children, the results don't look so rosy. School districts and the states and localities that fund them are still reeling from the recession. Cutbacks are everywhere. Hawaii reduced its school week from five days to four, and summer school is on the chopping block or already history in districts across the land.
