Obama's Oil "Battle Plan"
Jeanwah
Posts: 6,363
Anyone watch the Address from the Oval Office last night? This is a portion of what he said...
Sounds good and all, but I said after watching it that I'll believe that major changes will be made when I see them. And I'd really like to see them. What do you guys think...was he sincere? or will nothing come from this?
"Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced. And, unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it is not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.
"But make no mistake: we will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused."
"I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party."
"For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we have talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires.
"Time and again, the path forward has been blocked - not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candour.
"The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1bn of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf [of Mexico], we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude."
Sounds good and all, but I said after watching it that I'll believe that major changes will be made when I see them. And I'd really like to see them. What do you guys think...was he sincere? or will nothing come from this?
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"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
I believe the president is sincere, but I also think that the corruption of this nation has a strong hold on his actions...and he is really feeling their power....
John Boehner wants tax payers to fork out some cash to clean up this spill, which to me shows that he is in the pockets of the Oil Company's. A lot of strong forces are against Obama ..... and if he doesn't get any real help... He is done!
I'm sure the entire speech can be googled, but I got it from 2 stories on the home page of http://news.bbc.co.uk/
ETA: http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-vi ... ill-energy
I caught the immediate reaction last night on MSNBC, Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman were killing him over the vague, directionless speech. I can't imagine what Fox News was saying...
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
You don't want to know... I watch a lot of Fox News and man are they harsh ....so disrespectful .... and its all show...It's strange, but every time they actually bring on a guess who actually knows something, that guess usually rips the anchors a new one... yet the right wingers still don't give a crap! Very odd... and I always email the anchors yet none of them respond or address my comments.... I always try to play on the side of common sense ....so you would think they would at least respond with something...........
But yeah ...it was bad...... Obama might be swimming in an ocean all alone pretty soon..... if the wealthy people in power have it their way....
When the likes of Olbermann, Matthews, and Maddow (aka Tim Tebow) start calling you out, it's panic time.
Speech was a flop- especially the God-talk aimed at the South. That was like listening to Bin Laden explain the New Testament.
That is a perfect example of how the right will never be happy with anything he says or does... you guys complain about him not going to church, being a muslim, being the anti-christ, blah blah blah... and when he does mention prayer, he gets ripped for that...
The guy could go on TV and read the 1994 Contract with America, and the right would find parts of that to rip him about.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Like his birth certificate.
haha.
Who cares about the speech, what he did earlier in the day was much bigger.
Can anyone site the legal precedent/authority that gives the Prez the power to force a company to form an escrow account and fund it?
I'll save you the trouble. There is none.
Obama is SOFT TYRANNY.
disclaimer: I in no way endorse or support BP. I am just pointing out another example of this Prez subverting the Constitution.
Your problem is that President Obama got it done. $20 billion dollars is better than 25 years of court dates.
$20 billion dollars is better than having to raise taxes for you to pay for this oil disaster.
There’s no subverting of the Constitution because all affected Gulf region individuals and business and the DOJ can still purse civil and criminal action.
It wouldn’t make a difference to you or the Fox Entertainment parrots what President Obama did, you’d still shit all over yourself to find the smell before admitting smell was coming from you and your parroting skills.
To you, the ends justify the means.
Thank You for proving my point.
Who is saying "fuck the constitution"... You are losing track of your straw men I think.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
You made no point.
Katrina and BP, Two Sides of the Same Coin
By W. R. Wansley
Mississippi's Governor Haley Barbour, in the wake of hurricane Katrina, often blunted attempts of the media to goad him into criticizing the rescue efforts of President George W. Bush by stating, "Louisiana has the same president as Mississippi has." That is to say Bush's supposed inaction in the New Orleans' "come rescue me" fiasco was in sharp contrast to the boot-strap spirit of the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Now the Gulf oil spill has shed more light on the consequences of reliance on the federal government to a national disaster. In Katrina, a group of people relied on government to take them out. In the Gulf, a group of people have been trying to get in -- to apply American ingenuity to clean up the oil spill or prevent it from reaching the shore. Both groups have been held up -- by government.
In Katrina, many New Orleans people, after generations of government dependence, stayed behind, drained of initiative by their government's seeming ability to come to their aid. Those who depended on themselves rather than government did leave while those who had faith in government had no initiative to control their own destiny.
In the Gulf oil spill, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has begged for approval to put up temporary sand bars as a barrier to the oil. The EPA, worse than saying no, delayed and studied and pondered and then said no. We have seen countless stories in the news of innovation and ingenuity by Americans attempting to bring proven applications, equipment and tactics to bear on the oil. Each attempt is met with the same federal dithering, inaction and impedance.
In Katrina, energy and effort that should have been put into getting people out was instead diverted into protest, complaint and blame. Government conditioned these people to expect that government would deliver them. Regardless, the would-be rescuers were thwarted in their efforts by an ineffective Democratic governor who put politics over rescue, and an inept Democratic mayor who was just plain in over his head.
In the Gulf oil spill, there are presently dozens of individuals and small companies that have the ability to solve the oil clean up problem. After they show their process to the media, the inevitable question is asked, "Have you shown this to BP or the EPA?" Their all too familiar and depressingly consistent reply is, "yes, and they are considering it" or "yes, and they said they would get back to us". They have been "considering it" for over 50 days now.
In Katrina, the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast were hit by the brunt of the storm surge. Total devastation. This wasn't just some flooding caused by the breach of a Democrat Parish maintained levy. The people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast are for the most part a mixture of industrious workers and former industrious workers called retirees. Their ability to make do and to utilize the outpouring of basic supplies of ice and water from individuals and corporations from upstate and around the country was a resounding success.
In the Gulf, one company has a fiber mat (Fibertect) that absorbs oil. Another company has a machine (the Voraxial Separator) that seperates oil from water. Several folks have demonstrated the incredible effectivness of plain ol' hay to absorb its weight in oil. Then there are Peat moss mats and hair mats that do the same. Again, people standing by waiting for the go ahead. BP says they have to get cleared from the Obama Administration and the Administration saying they are talking to BP - nothing happens.
Another company has a proprietary "molecule mat"; another has a "hydrophobic sand" and many have their on concoction of natural oil-eating microbes. One Florida Company has a soap made of plant extracts another has a type of dry ice that sticks to the oil and lifts it off the then clean sand. One man has tons of an airplane dispensed natural earth material that is extremely lipophilic (oil loving) which traps, holds and sinks the oil to be destroyed by oil eating bacteria. His reply from the EPA: "it is against regulations to intentionally sink oil".
One thing all these solutions have in common: they are private enterprise endeavors showing ingenuity from inventors and innovators who, yes, want to do good but you see they, gasp, may also want to make a buck in the process. Never mind that all these things were invented and developed long before the current crisis. One poor fellow -- the one with the hay solution -- actually was shown on the You Tube video wearing overhauls. While the man who came up with a floating hair mat after the Prince William Sound spill is from north Alabama. Now we really can't have that sort of thing going on, now can we?
Milton Friedman once asked why people assume that political self-interest is somehow nobler than economic self-interest. "Just tell me, he said, where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us?" Why, from a community organizer, of course. The private sector cleaning up the oil spill; private charities feeding people; Private gun owners protecting their family and property; now we really can't have that sort of thing going on, now can we?
Government PC pressure causes misallocation of resources into bad investments. Over the past couple of years, BP has spent millions of dollars publicizing its green initiative. Who can forget those disingenuous commercials, like the one of a teenage boy holding up some pathetic plant saying something like, "we can grow our own renewable fuel." BP also gave heavily to the Obama presidential campaign. It would seem they have not had a good return on these investments.
Bush didn't cause the hurricane and Obama didn't cause the oil spill but Obama did say that the federal government was best suited to deal with such disasters. Bush had a state and local government to deal with. But the oil spill is 100% federal -- or at least it was -- for now the oil has made its way to shore, protected all along its slow malevolent journey by Obama's federal government. It is his seeming inability to deal with private enterprise by allowing them to rescue the shoreline that is at issue here.
Touting windmills and solar panels instead of developing our 400 year supply of domestic natural gas while also discouraging relatively benign on shore and shallow water drilling are designed to do one thing: maintain a made up problem that government claims itself to be indispensable in solving -- but never does. It has no intention of solving problems but only "managing" them.
Katrina and the Gulf oil spill prove that, at best, government can only get in the way. But at worst -- like so-called global warming, lack of border security and unfunded Social Security -- they are all part of the same thing: government created problems that government prevents from being solved. The resultant discourse leads to weakening the resolve of the people to resist the "helping" heavy hand of government.
Put another way, government has an incentive to not solve problems, the Arizona immigration law being a perfect case in point where government has really shown its hand. Problems are its fuel -- fuel needed to empower itself and enslave its subjects. In the now infamous words of Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel: a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Only time will tell just how much of Obama's ineptitude and impotence is by design -- for it would seem no one -- not even an unqualified community organizer -- is this pathetically incompetent. As with the Afghanistan troop deployment, once again, Obama dithers and the situation festers. Photo ops on the Gulf are to paper over his supposed ineptitude. Brave words are to gloss over his supposed impotence. If he is looking for someone's "buttocks" to boot, maybe he should look at the one whose rear end is up in the air in a notorious picture bowing to the Saudi King.
http://www.aladding.com/newsDetail.cfm?postid=496714
peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
We will make... inform him that he is to set aside....
The thing is, BP said they would pay for clean up, damages and compensation a long time ago. No disrespect to Obama, but this is just a bit of 'tough talk' for the general public. He is not making BP do anything. BP are doing it already.
This does give the states/residents some protection though... there was some panic (even by the LA Attorney General I think) that with the diving stock prices, and all of the trouble BP is having, that they would declare bankruptcy and try to get out of paying or to string it along with court battles for decades like Exxon did with the Valdez.
It's not like BP's word is worth all that much with how they've lied about the volume of the leak, and the size of the spill.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Fear mongering. Just have to look at how much money BP has. There is absolutely no way they would have been able to declare bankruptcy.
No, but they could have strung out payments for years and years and years.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
:(
+1