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05-30-2010, 07:07 PM
FOR Barack Obamaâs knee-jerk foes, of course it was his Katrina. But for the rest of us, thereâs the nagging fear that the largest oil spill in our history could yet prove worse if it drags on much longer. It might not only wreck the ecology of a region but capsize the principal mission of the Obama presidency
Before we look at why, it would be helpful to briefly revisit that increasingly airbrushed late summer of 2005. Whatever Obamaâs failings, he is infinitely more competent at coping with catastrophe than his predecessor. President Bushâs top disaster managers â the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, as well as the notorious âBrownieâ â professed ignorance of New Orleansâs humanitarian crisis a full day after the nation had started watching it live in real time on television. When Bush finally appeared, he shunned the city entirely and instead made a jocular show of vowing to rebuild the coastal home of his partyâs former Senate leader, Trent Lott. He never did take charge.
The Obama administration has been engaged with the oil spill from the start â however haltingly and inarticulately at times. It was way too trusting of BP but was never AWOL. For all the second-guessing, itâs still not clear what else the president might have done to make a definitive, as opposed to cosmetic, difference in plugging the hole: yell louder at BP, send in troops and tankers, or, as James Carville would have it, assume the role of Big Daddy? The spill is not a Tennessee Williams play, its setting notwithstanding, and itâs hard to see what more drama would add, particularly since No Drama Obamaâs considerable talents do not include credible play-acting.
But life isnât fair, and this president is in a far tougher spot in 2010 than his predecessor was in 2005.
When Katrina hit, Bush was in his second term and his bumbling was not a shock to a country that had witnessed two-plus years of his grievous mismanagement of the Iraq war. His laissez-faire response to the hurricane was also consistent with his political DNA as a small-government conservative in thrall to big business. His administrationâs posture toward the gulf region had been telegraphed at its inception, when **** Cheney convened oil and gas cronies, including Enronâs Ken Lay, to set environmental and energy policy. The Interior Department devolved into a cesspool of corruption, even by its historically low standards, turning the Bush-Cheney antigovernment animus into a self-fulfilling prophecy and bequeathing Obama a Minerals Management Service as broken as the Bush-Cheney FEMA exposed by Katrina.
Obama was elected as a progressive antidote to this discredited brand of governance. Of all the presidentâs stated goals, none may be more sweeping than his desire to prove that government is not always a hapless and intrusive bureaucratic assault on taxpayersâ patience and pocketbooks, but a potential force for good.
He returned to this theme with particular eloquence in his University of Michigan commencement speech 10 days after the Deepwater Horizon blowout. He reminded his audience that under both parties the federal government helped build public high schools, the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway system, engineered the New Deal and Medicare â and imposed safety and environmental standards on the oil industry. Quoting Lincoln, Obama said that âthe role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.â
We expect him to deliver on this core conviction. But the impact on âthe peopleâ of his signature governmental project so far, health care reform, remains provisional and abstract. Like it or not, a pipe gushing poison into an ocean is a visceral crisis demanding visible, immediate action.
Obamaâs news conference on Thursday â explaining in detail the governmentâs response, its mistakes and its precise relationship to BP â was at least three weeks overdue. It was also his first full news conference in 10 months. Obamaâs recurrent tardiness in defining exactly what he wants done on a given issue â a lapse also evident in the protracted rollout of the White Houseâs specific health care priorities â remains baffling, as does his recent avoidance of news conferences. Such diffidence does not convey a J.F.K.-redux in charge of a neo-New Frontier activist government.
Long before Obama took office, the public was plenty skeptical that government could do anything right. Eight years of epic Bush ineptitude and waste only added to Washingtonâs odor. Now Obama is stuck between a rock and a Tea Party. His credibility as a champion of reformed, competent government is held hostage by video from the gulf. And this in an election year when the very idea of a viable federal government is under angrier assault than at any time since the Gingrich revolution and militia mobilization of 1994-5 and arguably since the birth of the modern conservative movement in the 1960s.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30rich.html
Before we look at why, it would be helpful to briefly revisit that increasingly airbrushed late summer of 2005. Whatever Obamaâs failings, he is infinitely more competent at coping with catastrophe than his predecessor. President Bushâs top disaster managers â the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, as well as the notorious âBrownieâ â professed ignorance of New Orleansâs humanitarian crisis a full day after the nation had started watching it live in real time on television. When Bush finally appeared, he shunned the city entirely and instead made a jocular show of vowing to rebuild the coastal home of his partyâs former Senate leader, Trent Lott. He never did take charge.
The Obama administration has been engaged with the oil spill from the start â however haltingly and inarticulately at times. It was way too trusting of BP but was never AWOL. For all the second-guessing, itâs still not clear what else the president might have done to make a definitive, as opposed to cosmetic, difference in plugging the hole: yell louder at BP, send in troops and tankers, or, as James Carville would have it, assume the role of Big Daddy? The spill is not a Tennessee Williams play, its setting notwithstanding, and itâs hard to see what more drama would add, particularly since No Drama Obamaâs considerable talents do not include credible play-acting.
But life isnât fair, and this president is in a far tougher spot in 2010 than his predecessor was in 2005.
When Katrina hit, Bush was in his second term and his bumbling was not a shock to a country that had witnessed two-plus years of his grievous mismanagement of the Iraq war. His laissez-faire response to the hurricane was also consistent with his political DNA as a small-government conservative in thrall to big business. His administrationâs posture toward the gulf region had been telegraphed at its inception, when **** Cheney convened oil and gas cronies, including Enronâs Ken Lay, to set environmental and energy policy. The Interior Department devolved into a cesspool of corruption, even by its historically low standards, turning the Bush-Cheney antigovernment animus into a self-fulfilling prophecy and bequeathing Obama a Minerals Management Service as broken as the Bush-Cheney FEMA exposed by Katrina.
Obama was elected as a progressive antidote to this discredited brand of governance. Of all the presidentâs stated goals, none may be more sweeping than his desire to prove that government is not always a hapless and intrusive bureaucratic assault on taxpayersâ patience and pocketbooks, but a potential force for good.
He returned to this theme with particular eloquence in his University of Michigan commencement speech 10 days after the Deepwater Horizon blowout. He reminded his audience that under both parties the federal government helped build public high schools, the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway system, engineered the New Deal and Medicare â and imposed safety and environmental standards on the oil industry. Quoting Lincoln, Obama said that âthe role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.â
We expect him to deliver on this core conviction. But the impact on âthe peopleâ of his signature governmental project so far, health care reform, remains provisional and abstract. Like it or not, a pipe gushing poison into an ocean is a visceral crisis demanding visible, immediate action.
Obamaâs news conference on Thursday â explaining in detail the governmentâs response, its mistakes and its precise relationship to BP â was at least three weeks overdue. It was also his first full news conference in 10 months. Obamaâs recurrent tardiness in defining exactly what he wants done on a given issue â a lapse also evident in the protracted rollout of the White Houseâs specific health care priorities â remains baffling, as does his recent avoidance of news conferences. Such diffidence does not convey a J.F.K.-redux in charge of a neo-New Frontier activist government.
Long before Obama took office, the public was plenty skeptical that government could do anything right. Eight years of epic Bush ineptitude and waste only added to Washingtonâs odor. Now Obama is stuck between a rock and a Tea Party. His credibility as a champion of reformed, competent government is held hostage by video from the gulf. And this in an election year when the very idea of a viable federal government is under angrier assault than at any time since the Gingrich revolution and militia mobilization of 1994-5 and arguably since the birth of the modern conservative movement in the 1960s.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30rich.html
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05-30-2010, 08:35 PM
LOL. :igiveup: Now you want to blame Obama for the oil spill mess. How did I know that you people would turn the "Drill baby Drill, or should I say "Spill baby Spill" mantra into Obama's fault?
05-30-2010, 08:58 PM
TheRealVille Wrote:LOL. :igiveup: Now you want to blame Obama for the oil spill mess. How did I know that you people would turn the "Drill baby Drill, or should I say "Spill baby Spill" mantra into Obama's fault?Pathetic. The lease was let under the Obama regime, the drilling rig was given a safety award under the Obama regime, the spill occurred on Obama's watch, the slow reaction happened under Obama, and the Interior Department official who was responsible for overseeing the safety of offshore drilling operations was appointed and then fired by the Obama regime as a sacrificial scapegoat.
Yet, in your opinion, the Obama regime is faultless in the spill and its aftermath. Please, tell us, do you agree with Nancy Pelosi's position that the spill was Bush's fault? :lmao:
05-30-2010, 09:09 PM
Hoot Gibson Wrote:Pathetic. The lease was let under the Obama regime, the drilling rig was given a safety award under the Obama regime, the spill occurred on Obama's watch, the slow reaction happened under Obama, and the Interior Department official who was responsible for overseeing the safety of offshore drilling operations was appointed and then fired by the Obama regime as a sacrificial scapegoat.:igiveup: Of course we all know that there is "50 times more natural oil drifts from natural secretion into the ocean per year than what man has created in a lifetime." You people kill me, LOL. At least, this catastrophe might kill the "Drill baby drill" BS.
Yet, in your opinion, the Obama regime is faultless in the spill and its aftermath. Please, tell us, do you agree with Nancy Pelosi's position that the spill was Bush's fault? :lmao:
05-30-2010, 09:13 PM
When a Democratic president's incompetence riles James Carville, then he has some real problems within his own party. Watch James' rant on Obama's mishandling of the BP spill.
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05-31-2010, 01:05 PM
Hoot Gibson Wrote:Pathetic. The lease was let under the Obama regime, the drilling rig was given a safety award under the Obama regime, the spill occurred on Obama's watch, the slow reaction happened under Obama, and the Interior Department official who was responsible for overseeing the safety of offshore drilling operations was appointed and then fired by the Obama regime as a sacrificial scapegoat.
Yet, in your opinion, the Obama regime is faultless in the spill and its aftermath. Please, tell us, do you agree with Nancy Pelosi's position that the spill was Bush's fault? :lmao:
He didnât run the rigs,
Oversee the plans,
Grant the licenses to drill,
or write the rules that govern the granting of those licenses.
Saying this is Obama's fault is like blaming everything that happened in the Bush regime on bush (9/11 etc..)
Stuff happens and nothing can change that.
05-31-2010, 01:45 PM
Wildcatk23 Wrote:He didnât run the rigs,
Oversee the plans,
Grant the licenses to drill,
or write the rules that govern the granting of those licenses.
Saying this is Obama's fault is like blaming everything that happened in the Bush regime on bush (9/11 etc..)
Stuff happens and nothing can change that.
Obama didn't operate the rig, but he granted the licence, he granted several waviers to BP to side step the regulations during the drilling process. By being Commander and Chief he is responsible for the actions or lack of actions his adminstration makes.
Plans have been in place since the Exxon disaster several years ago, to clean up such spills. Why weren't these plans implemented when the blow out occured?
05-31-2010, 03:20 PM
Wildcatk23 Wrote:He didnât run the rigs,I agree with the bolded. My point is that anybody who is trying to blame a president for the spill needs to understand that Obama is much more closely connected to this disaster than Bush. Liberals were determined to give Bush 100% of the blame for every disaster that happened on his watch and 18 months later, they are trying to blame him retroactively for things to which he has absolutely no connection.
Oversee the plans,
Grant the licenses to drill,
or write the rules that govern the granting of those licenses.
Saying this is Obama's fault is like blaming everything that happened in the Bush regime on bush (9/11 etc..)
Stuff happens and nothing can change that.
We need to be drilling more, not less, and in shallower water, not deeper. We also need to be drilling in the northern corner af ANWR and we need to be mining more coal, not less. Obama and the other socialists currently in charge of our government will deserve all of the blame for the severe energy shortages that will occur in the next few years - regardless of who is president at the time it strikes.
06-01-2010, 09:28 AM
TheRealVille Wrote::igiveup: Of course we all know that there is "50 times more natural oil drifts from natural secretion into the ocean per year than what man has created in a lifetime." You people kill me, LOL. At least, this catastrophe might kill the "Drill baby drill" BS.
I can agree with the last statement. I have been on the fence with off shore drilling. I hate it but i seen the need for it. However after this disaster it shows how bad it can be. The cost does not even come close to being equal to the risk. I still think our energy demand needs to be filled by the development of alternative sources. I do believe Obama's response was horrible and slow. However i do not believe anyone else's response would have been better. It has just exposed how unprepared we were for this. Just like Katrina exposed us to be prepared to deal with such a large natural disaster.
06-01-2010, 12:11 PM
Obama could have easily fixed this situation.
All it would have taken was for him to do what they do in the middle east when spills happen, and they get em cleaned up fast, quick, and with little ecologic impact.
The fact we have had ships in there sucking up this oil shows how little they care about this, and how serious they are about fixing it. Obama is letting this get as bad as possible for political reasons, he opposes these types of things and its in his political interest to let this get worse. He can act like a hero as he champions for cleaner sources of energy, of course that sounds great till we are all getting our 800 dollar energy bills every month.
All it would have taken was for him to do what they do in the middle east when spills happen, and they get em cleaned up fast, quick, and with little ecologic impact.
The fact we have had ships in there sucking up this oil shows how little they care about this, and how serious they are about fixing it. Obama is letting this get as bad as possible for political reasons, he opposes these types of things and its in his political interest to let this get worse. He can act like a hero as he champions for cleaner sources of energy, of course that sounds great till we are all getting our 800 dollar energy bills every month.
06-01-2010, 01:00 PM
Beetle01 Wrote:Obama could have easily fixed this situation.
All it would have taken was for him to do what they do in the middle east when spills happen, and they get em cleaned up fast, quick, and with little ecologic impact.
The fact we have had ships in there sucking up this oil shows how little they care about this, and how serious they are about fixing it. Obama is letting this get as bad as possible for political reasons, he opposes these types of things and its in his political interest to let this get worse. He can act like a hero as he champions for cleaner sources of energy, of course that sounds great till we are all getting our 800 dollar energy bills every month.
Seriously dude?
06-01-2010, 07:55 PM
:notworthy
BillyB Wrote:Seriously dude?
06-02-2010, 03:13 PM
BillyB Wrote:Isn't the same happening with Obama?
No. I don't believe people are blaming Obama. I think they are disappointed with his ability to do anything. However I do not think its completely his fault. We were just unprepared. That could be blamed on alot of people. The reality is the government is illequipped to handle this. I believe Bush would have been fighting off angry villagers storming the White house. The media would have butchered him. They seem to be digusted with BP. However Bush was a big supporter of oil. Obamas recent support of offshore drilling could'nt have came at a worse time.
06-02-2010, 07:55 PM
nky Wrote:hey let's use a nuclear bomb to seal it off
I heard that Russia did this in the late 60's, to seal a leaking well. They drilled a hole in to solid bedrock close to the leaking well and then set of a nuclear bomb in the new hole. According to the report it worked.
06-02-2010, 08:37 PM
Matman Wrote:No. I don't believe people are blaming Obama.
hh:Beetle01 Wrote:Obama could have easily fixed this situation.
All it would have taken was for him to do what they do in the middle east when spills happen, and they get em cleaned up fast, quick, and with little ecologic impact.
The fact we have had ships in there sucking up this oil shows how little they care about this, and how serious they are about fixing it. Obama is letting this get as bad as possible for political reasons, he opposes these types of things and its in his political interest to let this get worse. He can act like a hero as he champions for cleaner sources of energy, of course that sounds great till we are all getting our 800 dollar energy bills every month.
06-02-2010, 09:50 PM
Old School Wrote:I heard that Russia did this in the late 60's, to seal a leaking well. They drilled a hole in to solid bedrock close to the leaking well and then set of a nuclear bomb in the new hole. According to the report it worked.did it at least five times with minimal oil leakage now those three eyed fish that's something else
06-03-2010, 02:19 PM
Matman Wrote:I can agree with the last statement. I have been on the fence with off shore drilling. I hate it but i seen the need for it. However after this disaster it shows how bad it can be. The cost does not even come close to being equal to the risk. I still think our energy demand needs to be filled by the development of alternative sources. I do believe Obama's response was horrible and slow. However i do not believe anyone else's response would have been better. It has just exposed how unprepared we were for this. Just like Katrina exposed us to be prepared to deal with such a large natural disaster.
The thing liberal democrats don't understand is that, as of now, alternative sources are non-existent. If & when they are developed, if they are cleaner/safer, and if they provide jobs I'm all for alternative sources, too.
Until that time, put our miners back to work, both surface & underground, clean that mess up in the Gulf & then "drill baby drill"!!!
06-03-2010, 03:17 PM
BoondockSaint Wrote:The thing liberal democrats don't understand is that, as of now, alternative sources are non-existent. If & when they are developed, if they are cleaner/safer, and if they provide jobs I'm all for alternative sources, too.
Until that time, put our miners back to work, both surface & underground, clean that mess up in the Gulf & then "drill baby drill"!!!
I agree. When i hear drill baby drill i think people mean drill till its gone then worry about it. I agree i don't see a way around oil and coal. I just think we should develop other sources while employing the resources we have available.
06-03-2010, 03:19 PM
BillyB Wrote:
I'm sorry i thought by "people" you meant "the people". Or even a large group of people. Maybe a media source. Not a few internet forum peoples. However i do not believe the general public are blaming Obama. Just not happy with his performance.
06-03-2010, 09:10 PM
Very interesting reports on the Obama, BP, Goldman Sachs connection. GS dumped all their stock in BP the day before the explosion. Obama is highly and closely connected to both companies.
Why hasnt he ordered ships to come in and suck up the oil? No reason for that not to happen, get it done and send BP the bill. They dont wanna pay? They no longer operate in our country.
Bottom line is our govt should have something in place for these events. What if a hurricane came through and caused a handful of leaks? IMO I would be okay if it is a natural disaster for America to help foot the bill. However, if we are prepared for that, we go and we clean it up with those same resources we would use in a natural disaster scenario to clean up a spill that occurs by accident. We just hand the bill over to the company responsible. That way it gets cleaned up faster, and the people involved will receive hands on experience so if a ND does occur they will be better suited to handle it.
Why hasnt he ordered ships to come in and suck up the oil? No reason for that not to happen, get it done and send BP the bill. They dont wanna pay? They no longer operate in our country.
Bottom line is our govt should have something in place for these events. What if a hurricane came through and caused a handful of leaks? IMO I would be okay if it is a natural disaster for America to help foot the bill. However, if we are prepared for that, we go and we clean it up with those same resources we would use in a natural disaster scenario to clean up a spill that occurs by accident. We just hand the bill over to the company responsible. That way it gets cleaned up faster, and the people involved will receive hands on experience so if a ND does occur they will be better suited to handle it.
06-04-2010, 01:38 PM
Beetle01 Wrote:Very interesting reports on the Obama, BP, Goldman Sachs connection. GS dumped all their stock in BP the day before the explosion. Obama is highly and closely connected to both companies.
So, Obama told Goldman to sell their stock the day before the explosion because he knew it was going to happen and he's not going to make BP pay for the cleanup?
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