You know,

I wonder how the last BOD meeting at EM went? something like this maybe:

Tillerson: " And now, before we begin the meeting, let us all bow our heads for a moment of silent prayer and thank God it was BP and not us!"

30 seconds of silence.

Tillerson: " Meeting adjourned. Break out the champagne"

No, the US does not have that equipment just lying around, BUT There were booms available, but Obama chose not to order them. The Dutch offered skimmer help, but to keep his Union pals happy, Obama declined the offered help.

Is it incompetence, or setting the scene for a political agenda?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

A few observations from me....

I seems as if the president was appealing to that oft derided, " American Exceptionalism"
to wit==
1) his reference to the Arsenal of democracy producing the ships and tanks required to win WW2. ( However, he said there was doubt that we could meet that need---untrue--Winston Churchill said that the night America declared war was the first night he slept well because he KNEW the war would be won.)
2) his reference to the challenge of landing a man on the moon and safely returning him to earth before the decade was through. ( Although again, he used it in a way that showed that American overcame doubt from all over that it could be done--This also is false--there was never any doubt that we could accomplish that goal, as far as I can remember, and I listened to every launch and mission.



Yet this very same President derided "American Exceptionalism" by remarking that German probably also felt they were exceptional, and that many countries thought that they, too, were exceptional. Well, if EVERYONE is exceptional, then everyone is really just average.


However, in both of the examples he cited, a LEADER was able to focus the attention of the American people on solving a problem without politicizing it for partisan gain.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Leave to you to politicize the issue. What did a union have to do with the original decline of Dutch help?

.Boy thats a good one. Another anti-union fable. I heard the original fire started when a union worker fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth

And a few observation from me...

BP claimed they were capable of handling an oil spill of up to 250,000 barrels a day in the gulf. It's clearly stated in their gulf spill response plan. Obviously they lied.

In the first 2-3 weeks of the gusher, BP estimated the spill to be about 1-5 thousand barrels a day. Hardly worth panicking about with the capability they "claimed" to have.

If BP had not withheld vital data about the size of the gusher and their sorely inadequate clean-up resources, perhaps the federal response would have been different. Even if so, the difference would have been minuscule at best. The reality of the situation is that a few Dutch skimmers wouldn't make much of a dent given 60,000 barrels are day are flowing. Hardly a drop in the bucket when compared to the scale of this disaster.

You can blame Obama if that makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over. But the real criminals are BP. They lied, deceived, and withheld vital information when it was needed the most to judge the seriousness if the spill.

The only action that will make a difference is shutting down the well. Barring that, everything is just a futile attempt to stop the unthinkable from happening.

This oil spill is so massive, it's gonna take many decades to clean up. I have little doubt that eventually this oil will circulate to every continent on Earth.

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Question Authority before it Questions you.

If you were submitting a plan and lied, yes, it is your fault. However, doesn't the receiving party of the said lies also bear responsibility for NOT ensuring that it was accurate? Seeing as it is part of your job?

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To some degree, absolutely yes. But this didn't just start with the Obama administration as some would like to proclaim. If anyone, I suspect that 12 years of the Bush oilmen being in charge had much to do with it, but that's just speculation on my part.

But there is no excuse for the oil companies to have doctored the books. Considering their windfall profits over the years, the cost of preparedness wasn't prohibitive nor a huge burden on their bottom line.

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Question Authority before it Questions you.

Unless you're too busy doing lines of coke off the ass of the company "executive" you're supposed to be "regulating".

Or the Bush admin as others would like to proclaim. Even if that were true, it isn't an excuse. If it is on your watch, you are responsible. If my employee shortchanged you or did something stupid, I can't sit back and say "Well, it wasn't me. It was my employee.".

What windfall profits? 10% is a windfall? Besides, whatever their profit margin is, it's pretty much irrelevant. I don't care if they make 100% profit or 1%. You have a job, you do it.

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99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
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Do all the lines of coke you want. I don't care. You are responsible.

__________________
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99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
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04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Op-Ed Columnist

Can The One Drop the Buzzer-Beating No. 23 Act?

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: June 15, 2010



Of the many exciting things about Barack Obama’s election, one was the anticipation of a bracing dose of normality in the White House.

America had been trapped for eight years with the Clintons’ marital dysfunction disastrously shaping national events and then trapped for another eight with the Bushes’ Oedipal dysfunction disastrously shaping international events. And before that, L.B.J. and Nixon had acted pretty nutty at times.

President Obama was supposed to be a soothing change. He had a rough childhood. Michelle once told a friend that “Barack spent so much time by himself that it was like he was raised by wolves.” But he seemed to have come through exceptionally well adjusted. “His aides from the Senate, the presidential campaign, and the White House routinely described him with the same words: ‘psychologically healthy,’ ” writes Jonathan Alter in “The Promise,” a chronicle of Obama’s first year in office.

So it’s unnerving now to have yet another president elevating personal quirks into a management style.

How can a man who was a dazzling enough politician to become the first black president at age 47 suddenly become so obdurately self-destructive about politics?

President Obama’s bloodless quality about people and events, the emotional detachment that his aides said allowed him to see things more clearly, has instead obscured his vision. It has made him unable to understand things quickly on a visceral level and put him on the defensive in this spring of our discontent, failing to understand that Americans are upset that a series of greedy corporations have screwed over the little guy without enough fierce and immediate pushback from the president.

“Even though I’m president of the United States, my power is not limitless,” Obama, who has forced himself to ingest a load of gulf crab cakes, shrimp and crawfish tails, whinged to Grand Isle, La., residents on Friday. “So I can’t dive down there and plug the hole. I can’t suck it up with a straw.”

Once more on Tuesday night, we were back to back-against-the-wall time. The president went for his fourth-quarter, Michael Jordan, down-to-the-wire, thrill shot in the Oval Office, his first such dramatic address to a nation sick about the slick.

You know the president is drowning — in oil this time — when he uses the Oval Office. And do words really matter when the picture of oil gushing out of the well continues to fill the screen?

As Obama prepared to go on air, a government panel of scientists again boosted its estimate of how much oil is belching into the besmirched gulf, raising it from 2.1 million gallons a day to roughly 2.5 million.

The president acknowledged that the problems at the Minerals Management Service were deeper than he had known and “the pace of reform was just too slow.” He admitted that “there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done.”

He appointed a “son of the gulf” spill czar and a new guard dog at M.M.S. and tried to restore a sense of confident leadership — “The one approach I will not accept is inaction” — and compassion, reporting on the shrimpers and fishermen and their “wrenching anxiety that their way of life may be lost.” He acted as if he was the boss of BP on the issue of compensation. And he called on us to pray.

Testifying before Congress on Tuesday, Rex Tillerson, the chief of Exxon Mobil, conceded that the emphasis is on prevention because when “these things” happen, “we’re not very well equipped to deal with them.”

Robert Gibbs on Tuesday continued the White House effort to emote, saying on TV: “It makes your blood boil.” But he misses the point. Nobody needs to see the president yelling or pounding the table. Ronald Reagan could convey command with a smile; Clint Eastwood, with a whisper. Americans need to know the president cares so they can be sure he’s taking fast, muscular and proficient action.

W. and Dick Cheney were too headlong, jumping off crazy cliffs and dragging the country — and the world — with them. President Obama is the opposite, often too hesitant to take the obvious action. He seems unable to muster the adrenalin necessary to go full bore until the crowd has waited and wailed and almost given up on him, but it’s a nerve-racking way to campaign and govern.

“On the one hand, you have BP, which sees a risky hole in the ground a couple miles under the sea surface and thinks if we take more risk, and cut some corners, we make millions more. In taking on more risk, they’re gambling with more than money,” said Richard Wolffe, an Obama biographer. “On the other hand, you have Obama, who is ambivalent about risk. What he does late is to embrace risk, like running for president, trebling troops in Afghanistan and health care. But in deferring the risk, he’s gambling with his authority and political capital.”

By trying too hard to keep control, he ends up losing control.

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Are you unaware of the Jones Act?
That act requires all ships in such a situation to be USA flag and crewed ( UNION!!).
After Katrina, GBW quickly suspended the Jones Act in order to accept foreign aid to the victims. This President is unwilling, or unable to react.

The ridiculed GWB performed better.

So who REALLY politicized this issue?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Yes, I'm aware of the Jones Act. How does that relate to your statement-
"The Dutch offered skimmer help, but to keep his Union pals happy, Obama declined the offered help."
The Jones Act was not passed by Obama. He was abiding by it.
Now you're claiming George "you're doing a heck of a job Brownie" Bush did better? Only a hopeless Republican bimbo would think that.
Republican Rand Paul said Obama's criticism of BP was "un-american".
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hcWDDpnvzUBPOjd-av800lfTR8AQD9FRBTF83

Checkmate.

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