-
Obama Should Put Biden in Charge of Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup
Tweet Share on Facebook May 28, 2010 Comment (7)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Yesterday’s Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans believe the president is doing a “poor or very poor” job of responding to the BP oil leak. He held a press conference yesterday, and today he’s heading to the gulf, which may help.
Here’s an idea: President Obama should appoint the vice president as the top guy in charge of overseeing the Gulf Coast clean-up. Make Joe Biden the Gulf Coast point man--the go-to guy--from now until the end of the administration in 2012. It’s a far better use of Biden’s time than flying to South Africa for the American soccer team’s opening game at the World Cup on June 12, which is his next big assignment. -
Gulf Oil Spill is Obama's Hurricane Katrina
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2010 Comment (27)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
If you haven’t had your morning coffee yet, the video posted below the jump will get your blood moving. It’s Phillippe Cousteau Jr. and an ABC News reporter donning hazmat suits and diving down below the surface to see the “toxic soup” that is now the Gulf of Mexico. CBS News spent nearly half its show last night on the spill; NBC devoted much of its show, too, including Brian Williams reporting that if left unfettered, the well could give off oil for the “rest of our lives on Earth,” which the former CEO of Shell confirmed. (If that’s true, that’s truly shocking.) As I write this, two of the “hot searches” on Google Trends are “top kill” and the live feed of the BP oil leak and Twitter has “oil spill” and “gulf” as trending topics. At the gym, in the grocery store, on the sidelines at the kids’ games, everybody’s talking about it.
-
Time to Boycott BP Over Gulf Oil Spill Disaster
Tweet Share on Facebook May 25, 2010 Comment (53)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Over the weekend, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar threatened BP with a government take-over of cleanup operations in the gulf: “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.” That’s not what the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Thad W. Allen, said. Admiral Allen stepped back from government threats to take over: “To push BP out of the way, it would raise a question: Replace them with what?” Admiral Allen, speaking at the White House yesterday, said he wouldn’t recommend that the government take control, and the Wall Street Journal today reported that Allen said the government doesn’t have any more technology or expertise than the oil company does to deal with the leaking well.
-
Obama's Oil Spill Hypocrisy--Where's the Outrage?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 24, 2010 Comment (37)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Yesterday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said to reporters outside of BP’s Houston offices, “I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has been unable to stop this well from leaking and to stop the pollution from spreading ... We are 33 days into this effort, and deadline after deadline has been missed.”
Angry and frustrated that BP has missed “deadline after deadline”? Yes. Surprised? No. That’s because there isn’t much pressure from the administration to fix the situation. Sure, Secretary Salazar has been saying that BP really, really, really needs to fix this. And sure, President Obama announced on May 14 that he was imposing a moratorium on drilling new wells and granting environmental waivers. But since then, take a look at what the administration has actually been doing, according to today’s New York Times.
-
Republicans Must Stay Out of the Fringe
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2010 Comment (13)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There’s a lot of commentary out today about the future of the Tea Party and Republicans. The biggest danger to Republicans is that if they pander too much to angry voters, they’ll sound anti-government. Small government is mainstream, but anti-government is fringe.
-
The Rand Paul Lesson: Stick to Spending Issues, Not Social Ones
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2010 Comment (22)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Thank God it’s Friday. It’s been a cringe-worthy few days for Republicans. As my middleschooler would call it: “awk!” (As in “awk-ward!”) As in Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul when he went on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show the day after his primary win, and was less than clear about whether he actually supported the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed segregation.
-
5 Reasons Why the Primaries Bode Well for Republicans
Tweet Share on Facebook May 19, 2010 Comment (3)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Miss the old “Point/Counterpoint” segment on 60 Minutes with James J. Kilpatrick and Shana Alexander? (Or, if you’re not old enough to remember that, do you miss the old Saturday Night Live skit lampooning it, with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd?) No worries ... Here at Thomas Jefferson Street, we’ve got the next best thing. Robert Schlesinger and I are doing our own version--so here are my 5 Reasons Why Tuesday’s Primaries are Good for Republicans:
-
Don't Make the Kagan Supreme Court Fight About the Mommy Wars
Tweet Share on Facebook May 17, 2010 Comment (8)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Does the Supreme Court need more moms? Ann Gerhart asked the question in yesterday’s Washington Post, and the live Q&A that followed today online opened up a whole can of worms with readers.
In the Sunday opinion piece, among other things, Gerhart wrote that there is a lack of data examining the decisions of female judges who are mothers compared to those who are not mothers, to determine whether they come at legal questions differently. That’s a good thing, she says, because “examining mothers vs. non-mothers would open a whole new front in the mommy wars; the Ph.D.s who conduct research on gender difference are often women themselves, with little appetite to pick that fight.” She’s got that right--as evidenced by the fired-up reader comments in the online discussion today, which turned into a mommy war, big-time. -
Let No Child Sit Behind: Exercise Helps Struggling Students
Tweet Share on Facebook May 14, 2010 Comment (11)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Here’s where “Let’s Move” meets “No Child Left Behind”: The Naperville, Illinois’ “Learning Readiness” PE program, in which kids who are struggling with math and science go to gym class first. According to ABC News, Naperville students’ standardized reading scores are drastically higher, and math scores are up by a factor of 20, as a result of walking or running on a treadmill for ten minutes immediately before class. Apparently exercise releases all kinds of chemicals in the brain which help sharpen your ability to learn. (I’ve heard a lot lately about a book called Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, which goes into more detail on the success of the Naperville program and the latest brain/exercise research.)
-
Michelle Obama's Childhood Obesity Plan Too Much to Swallow?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 13, 2010 Comment (30)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Here in Washington, D.C., the local Department of Health estimates that 40 percent of children are overweight or obese, which is the highest rate of childhood obesity in the United States. At Children’s National Medical Center, an organization I’m very involved with, the Obesity Institute sees the what doctors there call the “metabolic weight on every cell” that obesity causes: painful and deformed joints, Type II diabetes, fatty liver disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, sleep apnea and depression--to name only a few. One doctor told me that obesity affects every organ in a child’s body, including the brain. Here in Washington, childhood obesity is a health crisis.
