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I understand your point of view, but I disagree. The Chief Executive puts the resources in place - whether through direct order or through delegation. No one is saying that Barack Obama should be scooping oil out of the water himself. What we ARE saying is that Barack Obama dragged his feet in directing action.
Read Sanrene's thread with the Rolling Stones article. If you come away with the same opinion that you have now, then i'd reconcile its YOU that is the political hack.
The Rolling Stone article is just a bunch of whining, it is saying that the federal government should have made the Mineral-Management service regulate the oil industry more, and then there would never be another oil spill ever again! Wouldn't that be nice if that was the truth.
Oil spills are going to happen as long as we drill for oil. The oil spills from hurricane Katrina spilled about 2/3rds as much oil as from the Exxon Valdez.
There are oil rigs right now in the gulf spilling oil because of damages they had taken from hurricane Ivan.
The deepwater horizon had plenty of systems to try to keep the oil under control. Human error caused these systems to be damaged but still functional. I highly doubt the workers on the platform that died are very happy about what happened either.
If you think some over-involvement by the mineral-management services is going to prevent all future oil disasters, you are wrong. The only way to prevent oil spills is to stop using oil. Which sounds wonderful to me, then we can stop fighting about things like ANWAR also, and stop pumping massive amounts of cash to the middle-east, whose economies would be non-existent without oil. If you ever wanted to talk about a fix to a great number of the problems today, getting rid of oil would be it. Are you doing your part?
As for Obama, the only thing he can really do is shut down and/or place a moratorium on off-shore oil drilling. Obama isn't exactly qualified to do anything about the oil spill at all. All he can do is green light the ideas/plans of other people that actually are qualified to deal with this kind of disaster. When he is running around huffing and puffing and demanding and acting all angry, it means absolutely nothing and it is just political theatre. And the president also has absolutely no control over the eventual court cases against BP for damages. He can't personally make BP pay for anything, and the supreme court already ruled basically in Exxon's favor back in the Exxon valdez oil disaster, and so BP will only be able to be sued for actual damages, there will be no punitive damages.
"Personally, I think he should put on fins, a diving mask, and a snorkel and swim out and see if he can fix it.
I mean, that sounds about as likely to work as anything else Obama is qualified to do. It's not just that he doesn't know anything about the subject, but he doesn't know anybody who knows anything either. Who's he going to call up whom he knows is likely to give him good advice on deep sea oil drilling? Martha Minow? Elena Kagan? Jeremiah Wright? Laurence Tribe? Bill Ayers? Cass Sunstein? David Axelrod? Emil Jones?
If we are going to expect Presidents to know things, or at least know people who know things, we should probably worry about that before the election."
It is still a bunch of whining about the mineral-management service and Obama's consistent calls during the election to do something about the mineral-management service and off-shore drilling. I mean, Obama ran on the clean energy/alternative energy ticket, but he has instead spent all his time focusing on social matters such as healthcare, bailing out corporations, and don't ask don't tell, and mostly ignored the energy situation.
Sure you can say that Obama didn't do what he pledged to do during his campaign about the MMS and off-shore drilling. But it still doesn't mean that this disaster wouldn't have happened. And it still doesn't mean there will never be disasters in the future. The president knows we need oil, and so he had to join the "drill baby, drill" crowd. It is in our national security and economic interests to drill for as much oil as possible.
I honestly don't even know your political motivation anyway. I know you are a right-wing conservative hack, so I don't understand why you would even refer to this article at all. It isn't like the Rolling Stone article puts Republicans in any better light. It attacks the policies of the free-market/deregulation advocates under Bush. There is even mention of Halliburton in the article. If you believe that anything better would have come under a Republican president, you are just absolutely wrong.
We really only have four options from here.
A) We can sue and fine BP so hard that they go bankrupt and have to sell off their oil wells. Which will scare the hell out of the other oil companies, so they will be more likely to take the proper steps to prevent accidents in the future(but would still not be a guarantee that no accidents will ever happen).
B) We can shut down all off-shore oil drilling. Thus guaranteeing oil shortages and more reliance on the middle-east.
C) Increase regulation on and limit the expansion of off-shore oil drilling. Thus guaranteeing a much slower expansion of oil production in the United States, thus guaranteeing oil shortages and more reliance on the middle-east.
D) Stop using oil, which would prevent all oil accidents. Would end all the talk about global warming, would help our economy by keeping more money here. Would stop supporting our "enemies" in the middle-east. Which I can guarantee would have prevented everything from the gulf war, to the Iraq war, to the Afghanistan war, countless acts of terrorism, and it would greatly reduce the tensions in the middle-east regarding Israel. And would help stabilize these middle-eastern countries themselves.
I can guarantee you that the very presence of oil across the world and the totalitarian states that inevitably arise in every one of these countries has cost millions of lives. The US government in the war on terrorism has personally killed between 200,000 to a million people all across the middle-east.
Last edited by Redshadowz; 06-10-2010 at 08:40 AM..
What's Obama supposed to do? Literally what on earth can be done now after the fact? Some of the top scientists on earth can't figure it out. Why is the president, whom is a lawyer, held to a higher standard?
If anything this is just rightwingers hoping this is Obama's Katrina.
The people who seem to have not suffered any bit from this are blaming Obama. One person who actually has takes the other perspective.
Top scientists? What do they know? There have been many posts here on CD about how to clean up this spill, donch know? (Sarcasm intended)
What's Obama supposed to do? Literally what on earth can be done now after the fact? Some of the top scientists on earth can't figure it out. Why is the president, whom is a lawyer, held to a higher standard?
If anything this is just rightwingers hoping this is Obama's Katrina.
The people who seem to have not suffered any bit from this are blaming Obama. One person who actually has takes the other perspective.
Hey smartypants, why is there miles and miles of boom sitting in a warehouse when Jindal asked the feds for millions of feet of boom to contain the spill? Why wasn't there an aircraft carrier or some othe big navy ship out in the gulf with the needed boom ready to go in a moments notice? Who's job is that? I'll give you a hint, his initials are BARACK OBAMA!
I understand you are one of these posters that will want to blame Democrats for everything. But please stop with this revisionist History.
Bush declared Louisiana a Federal Emergency under the Stafford Act - 2 days before the storm hit. Did you not know this?
Homeland Security Chertoff at the time basically admitted the monumental screwups of his Department in the Aftermath. Despite the "good job Brownie" speech.
And aside from your conviction that "Obama needs to get leaders in place!!" "he needs to do something!!" to take care of this oil spill. It is completely different relative to scope of difficulty.
I do agree that we have all seen this is another important reminder that stronger more effective government regulation and oversight is needed, in this industry as in many others.
It is still a bunch of whining about the mineral-management service and Obama's consistent calls during the election to do something about the mineral-management service and off-shore drilling. I mean, Obama ran on the clean energy/alternative energy ticket, but he has instead spent all his time focusing on social matters such as healthcare, bailing out corporations, and don't ask don't tell, and mostly ignored the energy situation.
Sure you can say that Obama didn't do what he pledged to do during his campaign about the MMS and off-shore drilling. But it still doesn't mean that this disaster wouldn't have happened. And it still doesn't mean there will never be disasters in the future. The president knows we need oil, and so he had to join the "drill baby, drill" crowd. It is in our national security and economic interests to drill for as much oil as possible.
I honestly don't even know your political motivation anyway. I know you are a right-wing conservative hack, so I don't understand why you would even refer to this article at all. It isn't like the Rolling Stone article puts Republicans in any better light. It attacks the policies of the free-market/deregulation advocates under Bush. There is even mention of Halliburton in the article. If you believe that anything better would have come under a Republican president, you are just absolutely wrong.
We really only have four options from here.
A) We can sue and fine BP so hard that they go bankrupt and have to sell off their oil wells. Which will scare the hell out of the other oil companies, so they will be more likely to take the proper steps to prevent accidents in the future(but would still not be a guarantee that no accidents will ever happen).
B) We can shut down all off-shore oil drilling. Thus guaranteeing oil shortages and more reliance on the middle-east.
C) Increase regulation on and limit the expansion of off-shore oil drilling. Thus guaranteeing a much slower expansion of oil production in the United States, thus guaranteeing oil shortages and more reliance on the middle-east.
D) Stop using oil, which would prevent all oil accidents. Would end all the talk about global warming, would help our economy by keeping more money here. Would stop supporting our "enemies" in the middle-east. Which I can guarantee would have prevented everything from the gulf war, to the Iraq war, to the Afghanistan war, countless acts of terrorism, and it would greatly reduce the tensions in the middle-east regarding Israel. And would help stabilize these middle-eastern countries themselves.
The bolded part:
That's precisely where the limits of your ability to decipher between partisanship and pragmatism ends obviously. I have not - repeat, have not - absolved Republicans or the previous Administration. You will not be able to find one single utterance along those lines. What you WILL find are a plethora of posts and threads that attempt to absolve Democrats and Barack Obama. Just because you can't decipher between partisanship and pragmatism doesn't mean we should listen to you. Only AFTER you read the article were you able to step back from your position and insert some sort of sense. Me, on the other hand, I have been pragmatic about the entire situation. I knew from the outset that the Obama Administration was complicit. I have stated so openly, numerous times, on this forum. The Rolling Stone article only serves to vindicate my position, whereas it also solidifies the inability of the Left to see past their own noses.
I am happy to point these things out. Not because of partisanship. But because there's a real purpose in pointing out that mindless, blindless support for Barack Obama has to stop.
Why would you refuse help? This is his Katrina and IMO he's making the situtation a long dragged out process. I could go on and on but the article spells it out. I recieved this from the Heritage Foundation in e-mail today.
How the White House is Making Oil Recovery Harder
Five weeks ago Escambia County officials requested permission from the Mobile Unified Command Center to use a sand skimmer, a device pulled behind a tractor that removes oil and tar from the top three feet of sand, to help clean up Pensacola's beaches. County officials still haven't heard anything back. Santa Rosa Island Authority Buck Lee told The Daily Caller why: "Escambia County sends a request to the Mobile, Ala., Unified Command Center. Then, it’s reviewed by BP, the federal government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. If they don’t like it, they don’t tell us anything."
Keeping local governments in the dark is just one reason why the frustration of residents in the Gulf is so palpable. State and local governments know their geography, people, economic impacts and needs far better than the federal government does. Contrary to popular belief, the federal government has actually been playing a bigger and bigger role in running natural disaster responses. And as Heritage fellow Matt Mayer has documented, the results have gotten worse, not better.
And when the federal government isn't sapping the initiative and expertise of local governments, it has been preventing foreign governments from helping. Just three days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the Dutch government offered to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms and proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands. LA Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) supported the idea, but the Obama administration refused the help. All told, thirteen countries have offered to help us clean up the Gulf, and the Obama administration has turned them all down.
According to one Dutch newspaper, European firms could complete the oil spill clean up by themselves in just four months, and three months if they work with the United States, which is much faster than the estimated nine months it would take the Obama administration to go it alone. The major stumbling block is a protectionist piece of legislation called the Jones Act which requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens. But in an emergency this law can be temporarily waived as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff did after Katrina. Each day our European allies are prevented from helping us speed up the clean up is another day that Gulf fishing and tourism jobs die.
And then there are the energy jobs that the Obama administration is killing with its over-expansive ban on offshore energy development. Experts--who were consulted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar before he issued his May 27 report recommending a six-month moratorium on all ongoing drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet--now tell The New Orleans Times-Picayune that they only supported a six-month ban on new drilling in waters deeper than 1,000 feet. A letter from the experts protesting the use of their names to support a ban they actually oppose reads: "A blanket moratorium is not the answer. It will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation's economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill. We do not believe punishing the innocent is the right thing to do."
And just how many innocent jobs is Obama's oil ban killing? An earlier Times-Picayune report estimated the moratorium could cost Louisiana $2.97 billion in revenue and 7,590 jobs directly related to the oil industry. President Obama still has the power to save many of the jobs. He could reverse his decision and lift the ban. But political considerations make that impossible. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the President was the largest single recipient of campaign contributions from BP and its employees over the past twenty years. Therefore, the President has to put distance between himself and BP, which may be why President Obama has not spoken with BP CEO Tony Hayward one single time since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April. The problem is, vilifying BP's corporate leadership does nothing to stop the spill or quicken the cleanup.
After the Obama administration refused help from the Netherlands, Geert Visser, the consul general for the Netherlands in Houston, told Loren Steffy: "Let's forget about politics; let's get it done." It's sound advice, Mr. President. Let's free local governments to clean up their shores, waive protectionist laws that keep out foreign help, and let the oil workers who can safely do so get back to work. Let's get it done.
I understand you are one of these posters that will want to blame Democrats for everything. But please stop with this revisionist History.
Bush declared Louisiana a Federal Emergency under the Stafford Act - 2 days before the storm hit. Did you not know this?
Homeland Security Chertoff at the time basically admitted the monumental screwups of his Department in the Aftermath. Despite the "good job Brownie" speech.
And aside from your conviction that "Obama needs to get leaders in place!!" "he needs to do something!!" to take care of this oil spill. It is completely different relative to scope of difficulty.
I do agree that we have all seen this is another important reminder that stronger more effective government regulation and oversight is needed, in this industry as in many others.
And I also know that Nagan would NOT allow the feds in until after Katrina hit. He wanted to be a hero and screwed it up.
You are wrong about me. I go after rep who screw up. Bush messed up a lot and I still go after him. If you have read my post in this thread I said he did not handle some of the things the way he should have.
As far as the dems, do you ever wonder why people go at them? This current group of misfits including Obama could not run a popcorn stand with screwing it up.
All we are asking for is LEADERSHIP and this admin and this dem controlled congress has ZERO leadership abilities.
Face the facts, Obama has dropped the ball on this oil spill. Like it or not, this is federal controlled waters and is the responsibility of Obamas to find someone or something to fix the issue.
Again, leadership and decision making are not something he has been known to do well.
A national disaster isn't in their playbook. They don't have the coordination and/or leadership they need.
The man at the top seems to be holding back from making decisions or giving states the fast track approvals they need to try to proactively do something to save their shorelines.
There seems to be paralysis at the top..what is causing that ? Fear of making the WRONG decision or just fear of making a decision and having your name next to it ?
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(Sarcasm intended)
