This really isn't an issue beyond partisanship. For better and for worse, conservatives are pro-market, anti-regulation. Liberals, as compared to conservatives, are much more pro-regulation. They won't say so in so many words, but liberals would like to see *more* red tape, and more bureaucracy, just so events like these are less likely to happen, even at the cost of some inefficiency.

You can debate the merits of each position until the end of time, but you need to be honest with yourself: this is the cost of letting business do what it wants, relatively free of oversight. Multinational corporations have no concern for the welfare of a town, city, state, or even country, save for what will cost them actual business. As the Exxon Valdez incident proved, you can cause a horrendous environmental catastrophe and still remain in profitable business, so there clearly isn't enough of a bad PR disincentive to actually put in place the expensive safeguards to better prevent these occurrences.

Given that you can't count on BP, or any corporation, to look out for your best interests, you have to have another body step in and fill that role. That's the role of big government, which liberals support, and conservatives do not (with exceptions, like the military).

Obviously voting won't help *right now,* but a shift in the political map today would very likely reduce the chances of this happening 10 years from now, and so on.

*kill

(dupe)

Ha, I was tempted to ad that. I'll do so now.

I felt bad for both of them. I'll bet Olbermann didn't think he'd get through nearly so many questions in so short a time. Judging from his responses, I'm not sure that Greene thought he'd be encountering questions at all.

I wish I could get his voice on my GPS

That teleprompter reading is awful, it's just like watching SNL. (and I generally like Tim Meadows)

The blood bank?

>> ^Lann:
Sounds just like my redneck neighbors fighting.


Sounds just like my neighbors f*cking.

If anyone is interested in rewarding a good act for its awesome actions, you can buy here, and learn more about them here.

^ That's why they invented Futurama!

Wearing a mask != savvy.

Wearing a bandanna, pirate hat, and beads in both your dreads and beard = savvy.

WP, while you're busy blaming the liberals for preventing levee repairs with their silly love for the wetlands, recall that it was the human erosion of the wetlands that allowed Katrina to hit so forcefully in the first place.

WPP, QM - It's pretty simple. America spends more per capita on healthcare than pretty much any other industrialized nation.

Either A. Americans citizens are significantly more sickly than those from other countries, B. American doctors are significantly more inept than those from other countries, or C. The system is flawed.

Do you have a conceptual counter-argument for Weiner's point, that a private insurance company's first priority is profitability, not the health and wellbeing of its customers? If you do, I'd love to hear it.

>> ^EndAll:
100 people choke to death on pens each year.


I dearly hope you get another star for that!

That trooper is clearly a reincarnated turtle.