Dirty Drone Laundry

So you're an Obama supporter and you're wondering what to think about drones?

Start with this article from the New Yorker.

Last night over PBRs and some other things I had a conversation about drones with a progressive Southern hipster who came at it defending Obama. For my part, up to and including this six pack I've been fairly vocal about the current administration's hypocrisy.  But between the conversation and his whole family crashing at our place and the marathon cleaning session my wife and I did this morning to de-fratify our house, I now see clearly.

The idealism argument is slam-dunk: there should not be a secret effort to kill anyone without some sort of process, even bad guys or enemies. But the real debate is should Democrats give a shit?

If we were Republicans, we'd brazenly fall into line no matter how little evidence supported our assertion (remember weapons of mass destruction?). But Democrats love a good opportunity to tear themselves apart. Stick to ideals and lose the first opportunity in 20 years to not have to defend ourselves on national security again, or dig out our feel-good picket posters and megaphones and rip into our own party? The New Yorker knows this and that Democrats are tired of reading month after month of Republican stalwartness and that this issue will - as two arguments I've already had and a planned one for next weekend - alight with cocktail party din.

I say fuck them, and fuck the series of decisions that put us in this position. I'm going to treat this like family dirty laundry. It's a clear problem and among family I'm going to talk about the special nephew who humps the dog, but I agree with those that say we don't need to be publishing our vexation on Facebook. It's just a distraction from the real fights that the Southern hipster and I agreed upon: gutting of the middle class, corporate hegemony, and political rot.

After some consideration, I'm conceding my public anger on drones and stressing to all Democrats that if you need something to rail on, rail on the policies of conservatism that champion corporations over working people. And hope that soon we can all take a drone strike to that.

It’s Getting Real

Several cool things are converging in Washington.

1) Obama’s Executive Order in December 2009 which directs departments to make their content more “transparent, participatory, and collaborative”.

2) Stimulus initiatives – like this one on page 136 of the Stimulus Bill (HR1) that directs $40M to be “allocated at the discretion of the HHS Secretary provided, That the funding … shall be used to accelerate the development and dissemination of research assessing the comparative effectiveness of health care treatments and strategies”

3) Health Care Bill mandates (somewhere in here)

Taken together, we’re finally starting to see some of the benefits of a government working on a problem.  Today, the HHS is announcing  http://www.hhs.gov/open/ which provides a central repository for health related data sets, tools, and records including standards on health related data.

It’s not glamorous. It’s data.  But it’s government working.  And that’s cool.

Milestones

Well, we've finally made it into the history books. Just before Memorial Day weekend, when Americans near and far hit the road in pursuit of summer distractions, it was announced that – yes – BP’s offshore oil extravaganza has likely surpassed Exxon Valdez levels.

No surprise, really. Since the rupture first opened, I suspect that neither the Administration nor BP had any doubt that things would get this bad. I mean, we’re not talking about a limited supply of oil sitting in storage tanks aboard an ocean transport; we’re talking about a hole in the earth, 5,000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not like fixing the bathroom sink. As Keith always says, you’d think someone would have said, “hey, what do we do if this valve breaks?”

Unfortunately, no one did. We have oil spill containment strategies but nothing to assist with closing off a well nearly a mile underwater. BP and the government knew it from day one. So how has each party handled it so far?

The Administration, eager to PR the event to death, told media outlets that BP was responsible for the spill and would have to cover all costs associated with the cleanup. For its part, BP will continue to insist that indeed they are responsible, for they know better than anyone what will happen if they try to push this on regulators. No new drilling.

But from a PR standpoint, this puts BP in the driver’s seat. Sure, they will pay billions, but they are trying. How does this leave the Administration? Always one-step behind, having to recalculate and recalibrate every time one of BP’s containment strategies fails. The Administration becomes a passive party to the whole charade. Sure, BP receives slightly more of the public’s blame, but the Administration loses an opportunity to inspire confidence in the federal government at a time when there is none.

And so we enter the summer with the Administration playing catch up, providing cover to BP's seemingly infinite capacity to obfuscate and act surprised. Top kill has failed and so we all await the outcome of a new containment dome. If it doesn’t work?

Oil will spill until relief wells can be drilled – August at the earliest. Murmurs of “Obama’s Katrina” will grow louder. The Weather Channel, eager to fan the flames of any disaster, will buy up all the rooms in one of the new Flotels alongside the spill and hire Campbell Brown to anchor its hurricane coverage in 2010. Odd sewage/gas/rotting/mold smells in New Orleans will grow worse and residents will be urged to stay indoors.

And we’ll see how the Administration's PR strategy fares this November.