Maureen Dowd has appointed herself the one who should tell President Obama, Secretary Vilsack and the White House Staff how to hire and deal with black people to avoid racial embarrassment in the wake of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco. You see, Obama and Jarett aren’t black enough to know this, but Dowd has talked to black enough Rep. Clyburn and Rep. Lewis and her verdict is final. The West Wing is too damn white. That’s why Shirley Sherrod was fired according to Dowd. Forgive me for not accepting the world according to Dowd’s anecdotal wisdom, some facts get in the way.

First: Sherrod was ignored by her employer. Sherrod found out about the Breitbart smear from a belligerent e-mailer before the scandal erupted on 24 hour news. She alerted her HR office to the existence of this smear as she was being harassed by an e-mailer. This should have immediately alerted the USDA that they needed to get original information and debrief Sherrod on the issue as well as make sure she wasn’t at risk of being put into any immediate or future danger.

Second: Sherrod was afforded no due process. USDA Secretary Vilsack and his deputy Cheryl Cook skipped through protocol and afforded Sherrod no chance to defend or explain herself. They first told Sherrod she would be on administrative leave, then no more than 30 minutes later they demanded she resign. The trigger? Earlier in the day Fox News began smoking the race bait crack Breitbart supplied them, and they wanted her to resign before Glenn Beck got his turn at the pipe. They didn’t ask her to explain fully during the phone calls, they didn’t interview her or seek to procure the full video.

Third and most importantly: Vilsack and the White House accepted Andrew Breitbart propaganda as journalism. The majority black NAACP even fell for the same bait when they could have easily contacted the Coffee County chapter of their own organization to get the skinny on Shirley Sherrod before issuing their statement condemning her seemingly obvious racism against white farmers. Dowd may agree with Clyburn’s summation that some more of the folks in the White House and the USDA would have prevented the Sherrod fiasco, but how would they fix the lack of blackness of the NAACP? (The same NAACP which condemned Sherrod faster than the USDA terminated her employment).

The faux ACORN scandal flourished under the same type of group think rush to judgement based on a Breitbart lie. By Clyburn and Lewis’ logic, readily accepted by Dowd, 172 of their Democratic colleagues didn’t have enough black (or black enough) aides to consult when they voted aye to defund ACORN based on Breitbart’s earlier falsified propoganda. By extension, shouldn’t the congressmen be arguing for more of their Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives to hire some staff that is black enough and/or poor enough before they attempt to shame the West Wing for their insufficient blackness?

It wasn’t personal knowledge of Sherrod (as Rep. Lewis intimates) or black people in general (as Clyburn opines) that stymied the NAACP, the West Wing and the USDA. Sherrod’s wrongful termination and condemnation (as well as the bogus ACORN scandal) shows that the leadership inside our institutions of political and social power are still learning to competently distill reporting, factual analysis, propaganda, primary sources delivered through modern media. That is a huge problem for the Obama Administration, the US Congress and the NAACP.

It isn’t because Obama and Jarrett aren’t black enough people to care about the rest of us black enough people or haven’t employed black enough people in the West Wing. It’s because the administration they constructed wasn’t patient and media savvy enough to deal with serious and ultimately scurrilous accusations against one of their own appointees.

Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia:

Well before this month’s fatal explosion at Upper Big Branch, the country’s worst mine disaster in 40 years, the lack of proper ventilation had been a continuing concern among its miners. The fear of methane building while oxygen dropped preyed on their minds.

“I have had guys come to me and cry,” said the veteran foreman. “Grown men cried — because they are scared.”

But workers in the mine said they did not dare question the company’s safety practices, even when asked to perform a dubious task.

“It was all about production,” said Andrew Tyler, 22, an electrician who two years ago worked as a subcontractor on the wiring for the coal conveyer belt and other equipment at Upper Big Branch. “If you worked for them, you didn’t ask questions about whether some step like running a cable around the breaker was a smart idea. You just did it.”

via 2 Mines Show How Safety Practices Vary Widely – NYTimes.com

BP leased, Trans Ocean owned Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf Of Mexico:

A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems.

In the survey, commissioned by the rig’s owner, Transocean, workers said that company plans were not carried out properly and that they “often saw unsafe behaviors on the rig.”

Some workers also voiced concerns about poor equipment reliability, “which they believed was as a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over planned maintenance,” according to the survey, one of two Transocean reports obtained by The New York Times.

“At nine years old, Deepwater Horizon has never been in dry dock,” one worker told investigators. “We can only work around so much.”

“Run it, break it, fix it,” another worker said. “That’s how they work.”

via NYT: Workers on doomed rig voiced safety concerns – U.S. news – The New York Times – msnbc.com

EOG Resources natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale Natural Gas reserve near Harrisburg, PA:

A natural gas drilling company failed to use a proper backup pressure-control system last month when hooking up a well to a pipeline, leading to a major blowout in Pennsylvania that spewed gas and wastewater for 16 hours, a state investigation has found.

EOG Resources Inc. of Houston, which operates nearly 300 wells in Pennsylvania, cut corners by not using a second set of pressure-control devices, a consultant hired by the state concluded in a report issued Tuesday.

EOG took similar safety shortcuts on at least some of its other wells in Pennsylvania, where about half of its drilling operations are in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale reserve, a lucrative source of natural gas that has drawn scores of companies to the state.

“I don’t know any company that would cut corners like this on this kind of well,” said consultant John G. Vittitow, a Texas-based petroleum engineer. “This was just a bad decision and it caught up with them.”

In signed papers released Tuesday, EOG and its contractor, C.C. Forbes Co. of Texas agreed to maximum fines of more than $400,000 combined and to take corrective actions. But they also were allowed to resume all activities in Pennsylvania after the state had shut down some operations since the June 3 blowout.

via Natural Gas Blowout Caused by Safety Shortcut | Chem.Info.

Anything seem familiar?

When will the Democrats learn? When the school bully says your shoes look like shit and punches you in the face the solution isn’t to run home, throw out your shoes, yell at your mom for buying you crap shoes, drop 100 dollars on some new kicks and hope the bully won’t punch you in the face the next day. When you roll into school the next day, new shoes squeaking…the bully knows that he’s got you. Acting out of fear and self doubt won’t stop the bully.

Until yesterday: Democrats 1, Brietbart 1. Because of Breitbart’s heavily edited videos ACORN (later cleared of all wrong doing) was forced to shut down after being de-funded by congress, but Senator Landrieu stood up to Breitbart smears and exposed his in house propaganda team led by James O’Keefe.

Today, another Breitbart win. 2-1 Breitbart. Government looks like a big mess where people aren’t fired for being incompetent, delinquent or unqualified. They are fired due to the irresponsible, dishonest accusations of a right wing blow hard. The Obama Administration becomes an even more unattractive place for talented appointees who may be in the private sector. The honor of being nominated to serve the President’s administration comes with invasive vetting and anonymous holds all to be rewarded with a lower salary and an administration that will gladly throw you under the bus.

Shirley Sherrod, a now former USDA Official, whose father was murdered in the Jim Crow south by a white farmer who was never brought to justice, was actually advocating racial reconciliation. She was telling NAACP members assembled that day that race can’t be used to judge people’s fortunes and that when we are in positions of power we should be working on behalf of the poor. She was using her experience from 1986 with white Georgia farmers as a parable for those assembled to honor her at the NAACP of Coffee County’s 20th annual Freedom Fund banquet. It’s a simple, powerful story.

Sherrod says her comments were taken out of context. And the white farmer she helped, Roger Spooner, credited her with helping save the family farm.

“I don’t know what brought up the racist mess,” he told CNN’s Rick’s List. “They just want to stir up some trouble, it sounds to me in my opinion.”

Spooner’s 82-year-old wife, Eloise, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Sherrod “kept us out of bankruptcy.”

“Her husband told her, ‘You’re spending more time with the Spooners than you are with me,’ ” Spooner told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She took probably two or three trips with us to Albany just to help us out.”

She said she called Sherrod — “a friend for life” — this morning. “She’s very sad about it,” Spooner said. “She told me she was so glad we talked. I just can’t believe this is happening to her.”

via Storm rages over ousted black Ag official accused of racism – USA Today.

Here is video of Tony Harris interviewing Sherrod and also Eloise Spooner, the farmer who Sherrod helped. (By the way kudos to CNN, Harris and later Rick Sanchez who actually did a solid job interviewing Sherrod and the Spooners).

As you can see in the clip above, Ag Secretary Vilsack’s deputy pressured Sherrod to retire while she was no doubt returning to her office in Athens after working to save more farms. The NAACP is ashamed and has admitted their mistake in vilifying Sherrod on Breitbart’s word and according to NAACP President Ben Jealous, has contacted Sherrod directly to apologize (no doubt after Sherrod was interviewd by Harris or Sanchez). They have vowed not to trust Breitbart and Fox News. (Ask George W. Bush about fool me once). All this is a smart move and yet little comfort for a woman who was tireless worker on behalf of Georgia’s farmers. The damage has been done and the most dissappointing thing is that Obama’s administration has been set up to save face.

This week, the Obama Administration has failed the bully test miserably. In keeping Sherrod fired, Obama and his Administration are basically saying: Breitbart’s got a point there. Sherrod wasn’t sufficiently not racist in her speech against racism. As of this posting, she will remain fired.

“When I saw the statements and the context of the statements, I determined that it would make it difficult for her to do her job as a rural development director,” Vilsack said.

via USDA’s Shirley Sherrod: I Helped White Farmer – CBS Evening News – CBS News.

After this fiasco, it’s safe to say Breitbart, Beck, Carlson and the right wing smear mongers just saw Obama and Vilsack walk into the cafeteria with their new shoes on.

Ezra Klein wonders if Politico’s description of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) as a “wonk” makes sense:

But maybe I’m missing something on Cantor and my readers can enlighten me. Is he known for mastery of a particular issue? Does he have some really smart policy initiatives that he’s promoting in the House? What’s the deal here?

via Ezra Klein – Is Eric Cantor a policy wonk?.

Prior to Ezra’s musings, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough came right out and said he heard from all his Republican friends on the hill that House Majority Leader John Boehner is known to be “lazy” and then he attempted to force Politico’s Jim Vandehei to admit he’s heard the same about Boehner from GOPers on Capital Hill as well. Vandehei demures and instead claims that the younger members of the GOP caucus just don’t feel Boehner’s ideas are fresh enough. Watch Vandehei awkwardly dance around Scarborough’s assertions:

As she often does, Rachel Maddow says it best.

Rolling Stone gets McChrystal to give his honest opinion of members of the Obama Administration.

Gen McChrystal also appears to joke in response to a question about the vice-president.

“Are you asking about Vice-President Biden?” McChrystal asks. “Who’s that?”

An aide then says: “Biden? Did you say: Bite Me?”

Another aide refers to a key Oval Office meeting with the president a year ago.

The aide says it was “a 10-minute photo op”, adding: “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was… he didn’t seem very engaged. The boss was pretty disappointed.”

Gen McChrystal himself says: “I found that time painful. I was selling an unsellable position.”

Another aide refers to national security adviser, James Jones, as a “clown stuck in 1985”.

Of an e-mail from US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, Gen McChrystal says: “Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke… I don’t even want to open it.”

Last year’s Afghan strategy review by the new president was detailed and drawn out, with Gen McChrystal finally getting an additional 30,000 US troops from Mr Obama.

Analysts say Gen McChrystal disagreed with the pledge to start bringing troops home in July 2011.

Meanwhile the US congressional report says that trucks carrying supplies to US troops allegedly pay the Afghan security firms to ensure their safe passage in dangerous areas.

The convoys are attacked if payments are not made, it is alleged.

via BBC News – US general McChrystal sorry for Rolling Stone ‘error’.

Sound familiar? Remember McChrystal’s speech in October 2009 speech in London?

An adviser to the administration said: “People aren’t sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn’t seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly.”

In London, Gen McChrystal, who heads the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces, flatly rejected proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against al-Qaeda.

He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to “Chaos-istan”.

When asked whether he would support it, he said: “The short answer is: No.”

He went on to say: “Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support.”

The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House.

via White House angry at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan – Telegraph.

It seems the White House aide may be the naive one and McChrystal is an upstart who understands Washington politics well enough. Or maybe McChrystal is the angry guy who vents every smoke break. Either way, his disdain for the strategy he has been tasked to execute needs to be dealt with by the Administration since he cannot deal with it himself.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s being dealt with.

An angry President Obama summoned his top commander in Afghanistan to Washington on Tuesday after a magazine article portrayed the general and his staff as openly contemptuous of some senior members of the Obama administration.

An administration official said the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, would meet with President Obama and Vice President Biden at the White House on Wednesday “to explain to the Pentagon and the commander in chief his quotes in the piece,” which appears in the July 8-22 edition of Rolling Stone. General McChrystal was scheduled to attend a monthly meeting on Afghanistan by teleconference, the official said, but was directed to return to Washington in light of the article.

via McChrystal Is Summoned to Washington Over Remarks – NYTimes.com.

Courtesy TPMtv.

At least five were found by the congressional report.

‘Questionable Decisions’

BP, the biggest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, made five “questionable decisions” aimed at cutting costs and speeding completion of an overdue project in the days and weeks preceding the disaster, U.S. Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Bart Stupak of Michigan wrote in a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward that was released yesterday.

via Exxon Distances Itself From BP’s `Dramatic Departure’ in Gulf – Bloomberg.

And it looks like BP’s management was directing all the corner cutting.

BP also apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton’s recommendation to use 21 “centralizers” to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. Instead, BP used six centralizers.

In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: “It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this.” Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: “Who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.”

via Documents reveal BP’s missteps before blowout – Disaster in the Gulf- msnbc.com.

This is directly contrary to the claims of BP’s CEO on the Today Show (video below) in early May where he blames TransOcean (who owned the rig, not the well which is what failed) and left the window open to further spread blame to well construction subcontractor Halliburton.

Areas the government could be probing include whether the companies violated any regulations, whether they subverted the regulatory process by seeking favors with Minerals Management Service or other Interior employees, or whether BP acted criminally by keeping away cameras that could have revealed earlier the extent of the spill, Green said.

“They’re going to be looking for evidence of criminal malfeasance,” Green said.

via BP, Halliburton, Transocean Build Legal Teams – NYTimes.com.

At the bottom of all this, I agreee with Joan Walsh when she says that the Obama Administration substantially associated themselves with offshore drilling by lifting the ban on new offshore drilling without truly reforming MMS.

– from delays in cleaning up the Minerals Management Service, distrusting scientists who correctly reported the spill was much bigger than BP said, and waiting more than a week to declare the crisis “an Oil Spill of National Significance,” which corralled new services. Maybe the most damning section of Dickinson’s piece comes when he quotes the president proudly announcing he’d reversed his stand against offshore oil drilling. “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” the president said. “They are technologically very advanced.”

via Protecting the Obama brand – Joan Walsh – Salon.com

We know now, that explode, spill, gush, leak is exactly what oil wells can do when run by irresponsible leadership cultivated by CEO Hayward’s BP and deregulated by an understaffed and business friendly MMS. The lesson here is pro-economy is not exactly pro-business. Pro-business is allowing companies to do what they want to make the most money as they exist. Pro-economy is promoting a business environment that is safe and fair to workers and able to grow and fail without destroying other sectors of our economy. The Obama Administration trusted BP’s guidance during the early weeks of the spill and that was more pro BP than pro US economy.