Slick Happens

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Slick Happens
By Ken Blackwell on 5.27.10 @ 6:08AM

"Push BP out of the way," says President Obama's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar. That's his recommendation if the petroleum giant fails to plug the giant leak spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. You can see it on your computer and TV screens. It's called "live streaming," but what it shows is live crude oil streaming into our precious waters.

Push BP out of the way? The Coast Guard's Commandant, Admiral Thad Allen responded to Salazar's suggestion: "To push BP out of the way… would raise the question: Replace them with what?" Adm. Allen appears to be the adult on-scene-commander for this disaster.

Adm. Allen would not be drawn into a clash with Sec. Salazar, saying only that the former Colorado senator's comments were "more of a metaphor." TV personalities were having none of it. Whoopi Goldberg of The View weighed in with a rant about its being "Day 36" of the worst oil spill in history. Why can't the government come up with something, Whoopi demanded to know. "Somebody get your a__ in gear here," Whoopi whooped. Joy Behar, always the voice of reason, said it was all Dick Cheney's fault. He de-regulated offshore oil drilling, and all for the sake of Halliburton, his former employer, Behar is sure.
What about BP's hundreds of thousands of campaign contributions to Obama, asked the show's token conservative. But Behar was off to the races. What this shows is we need campaign finance reform, she said.

Right. That would be of immediate help in plugging the leaking oil well. Maybe we could print 100 copies of another 2,000-page piece of legislation -- one for each senator -- wad them up, and stuff them into the hole. Print the bill on extra-absorbent paper, too.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is desperate to do something more practical to stop the oil from washing ashore and further damaging delicate marshlands upon which so much of the Bayou State's fishing industry depends. Gov. Jindal wants to put sand berms in the path of the advancing oil.

Jindal is being prevented by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps wants time to "study" the impact of doing that. In the old days, before we had the capacity for endless such studies, volunteers packed sand in sandbags to stop floods, and they threw up barriers to fires and oil slicks.

Gov. Jindal is another adult, trying manfully to do something immediate to meet the catastrophe. He's been quoted as saying he'd even risk jail rather than let his state's coastline be covered in sludge.

President Obama is continuing to hover over this scene. "Plug the damn hole," he growls to aides in the Oval Office, but in public he maintains Olympic calm. Newsweek editor Evan Thomas likes to say Obama is "like a sort of god." The President apparently feels that if he maintains a godlike demeanor, no one will make the obvious connection between this present crisis and that 2005 event down there. You know, the one that rhymes with "marina."

One question we need to ask ourselves: Why is BP drilling one mile down and a hundred miles offshore in the first place? Could it be that our extra-stringent government regulations have created the conditions for this first class environmental emergency?

Could anything imaginable in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have a worse environmental impact than what we are seeing in the Gulf of Mexico? Could it be more difficult to handle a blowout of an oil well up there, even in mid-winter?
Is drilling that far out and that far down necessitated because Sierra Club senators won't tolerate the sight of oil rigs closer to shore? Why don't we tell them to throw tarps over the platforms and paint them to look like historic lighthouses? Tell liberals they can collect the whole set.

In the meantime, when candidates like Barack Obama tell us their election means "we will begin to heal the planet and the oceans cease to rise," let's respond with some healthy skepticism. We can replace Bush-Cheney policies. We can even replace BP. But, as Adm. Allen says: Replace them with what?

[NCTexan]

So far, the Obama administration has responded exactly as expected...

 

Think "good thoughts"... and Hope for Change.

 

Remember... it's not what you do or accomplish that's important.

 

It's the loftiness of your thoughts, and how esoterically you can put them into words.

 

[Pepper]

NCTexan! Geee!

 

 

“No one is more upset than me.” from our humble pResident, Barack Obama on the BP oil spill

 

What empathy, what feeling. What powerful vocabulary this man holds at his disposal.

 

He is more upset than the families of those who lost their fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles, and sons. How dare they be more upset than our pResident?

 

Source:

 

Video: 'We're about to die down here!,' James Carville blasts President Obama over BP oil spill

[pollyannaish]

So, uh, doesn't anyone else in the government just gut instinct understand that sand berms or whatever they are will be less damaging than thousands of gallons of oil?

 

 

Now, having said that....I am listening to Obama shift blame to the previous administration for this because they weren't enforcing regulations...and then ironically says that the only way to fix this is to add additional regulations.

 

And now we're canceling all new oil exploration. Way to kill the economy there Obama! Don't act, don't act, don't act....OVERREACT.

 

We are so screwed.

 

 

Edited to add: He sounds like a dope in this press conference. We are going to regulate to keep this from ever happening again. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that there is already some kind of law against spilling oil.

[Pepper]

pollyannaish

 

There regulations and laws, but the people in charge of the regulation Obama's own administration, conveniently looked the other way when it came to enforcing safety standards.

 

This is a tar baby for Obama.

 

This is worse than Katrina. Katrina was a natural disaster that could not be stopped. The fact that tens of thousands of people ignored the National Weather Service warnings is never taken into account by the Left when it comes to blaming Mr. Bush. The fact that hundreds of state and local government people failed in their duties is conveniently forgotten.

 

BP is a manmade accident: some combination of failure to heed warnings, mechanicaland hydraulic failures, coupled with a lack of oversight by the company and the wink of an eye from the Mineral Management Services of Obama's adminstration.

 

Edited to add: He sounds like a dope in this press conference. We are going to regulate to keep this from ever happening again. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that there is already some kind of law against spilling oil.

[Pepper]

BP is Bush's fault!!

 

Question on Birnbaum to Obama from Chip Reed at presser, May 27, 2010

 

Chip Reed: Should other heads roll?

Chip Reed: Is is fair to blame the Bush administration?

 

 

Obama:

 

"When I came in, Salazar came in and started cleaning house. But there wasn't sufficient urgency about the pace about how those changes that needed to take place.

 

There is no evidence that some of the corrupt practices uhh, that took place earlier took place under uhh the current administration's watch."-- Obama

 

BP is Bush's fault!!

[Pepper]

Obama: The administration pushed BP to release figures of flow calculations sooner. We were misled 'cause we only used satellite imagery etc.

[Argyle58]

Obama: The administration pushed BP to release figures of flow calculations sooner. We were misled 'cause we only used satellite imagery etc.

 

Interesting choice of words. "Misled" by definition has connotations of deception. Is he inferring that BP purposely withheld information?

[Pepper]

Obama: The administration pushed BP to release figures of flow calculations sooner. We were misled 'cause we only used satellite imagery etc.

 

Interesting choice of words. "Misled" by definition has connotations of deception. Is he inferring that BP purposely withheld information?

 

Of course, no slick on him.

[pollyannaish]

Good grief. This is a nightmare.

 

It will be interesting to see what impact this has on the economy. Couldn't have come at a worse time. I think I agree with the guy who said we won't recognize the country at the end of the year. WOW.

[SrWoodchuck]

I heard that, during the first Gulf war, when Saddam left the oil fields burning, he also blew wells offshore. Super tanker oil container ships were sent to the spot and took in both oil & seawater, which they were able to separate. They saved the oil for use later, and limited the damage done by the leak. This should be done right now, just to mitigate damage, until a solution is found.

 

Weren't they going to drill relief wells to lower the pressure, too? Why hasn't that been done?

 

This is a huge fiasco, from Inferior Secretary Salazar [not even a useful idiot-& from Colorado-I am so sorry] and the Weasel-in-Chief, Oylbama.

 

Besides, they were able to completely ignore a major flood that caused loss of life & billions in damages, by using this spill.

 

Second visit to Louisiana in almost 40 days & first press conference in close to a year....what a pip!

[Pepper]

Weren't they going to drill relief wells to lower the pressure, too? Why hasn't that been done?

 

 

 

August is the target date for two relief wells. It is being done now, SrWoodChuck.

[pollyannaish]

I heard that, during the first Gulf war, when Saddam left the oil fields burning, he also blew wells offshore. Super tanker oil container ships were sent to the spot and took in both oil & seawater, which they were able to separate. They saved the oil for use later, and limited the damage done by the leak. This should be done right now, just to mitigate damage, until a solution is found.

 

Weren't they going to drill relief wells to lower the pressure, too? Why hasn't that been done?

 

This is a huge fiasco, from Inferior Secretary Salazar [not even a useful idiot-& from Colorado-I am so sorry] and the Weasel-in-Chief, Oylbama.

 

Besides, they were able to completely ignore a major flood that caused loss of life & billions in damages, by using this spill.

 

Second visit to Louisiana in almost 40 days & first press conference in close to a year....what a pip!

 

 

(Well, at least he is more engaged, more responsive and less stupid than dubya)^sarcasm.

[Guest AnneV]

The BP spill/leak is awful...but please people...let's not lose sight of the fact that while we are all watching this...the Obummer administration is up to no good elsewhere...they are masters of illusion and deception...watch the military spending bill, it contains $23B worth of teacher bailouts...

PLEASE, with this "administration" *choke/chuckle* we must ALWAYS watching the other hand.

[pollyannaish]

The BP spill/leak is awful...but please people...let's not lose sight of the fact that while we are all watching this...the Obummer administration is up to no good elsewhere...they are masters of illusion and deception...watch the military spending bill, it contains $23B worth of teacher bailouts...

PLEASE, with this "administration" *choke/chuckle* we must ALWAYS watching the other hand.

 

 

Amen sister!

[SrWoodchuck]

The BP spill/leak is awful...but please people...let's not lose sight of the fact that while we are all watching this...the Obummer administration is up to no good elsewhere...they are masters of illusion and deception...watch the military spending bill, it contains $23B worth of teacher bailouts...

PLEASE, with this "administration" *choke/chuckle* we must ALWAYS watching the other hand.

AnneV! Well said!

Pollyannaish!

 

I pity our new Presidents & Congress when these yokels & ne'er-do-wells get thrown out on their keesters. They'll have to serve as the founding examples served, for love of country, not love of power & wealth....as citizen statesmen.

 

We'll,hopefully, be too smart to accept these dark shadows of the ideal.

 

I pray to God [every day at 7:00PM-MST] that He grants us our chance.

[pollyannaish]

The BP spill/leak is awful...but please people...let's not lose sight of the fact that while we are all watching this...the Obummer administration is up to no good elsewhere...they are masters of illusion and deception...watch the military spending bill, it contains $23B worth of teacher bailouts...

PLEASE, with this "administration" *choke/chuckle* we must ALWAYS watching the other hand.

AnneV! Well said!

Pollyannaish!

 

I pity our new Presidents & Congress when these yokels & ne'er-do-wells get thrown out on their keesters. They'll have to serve as the founding examples served, for love of country, not love of power & wealth....as citizen statesmen.

 

We'll,hopefully, be too smart to accept these dark shadows of the ideal.

 

I pray to God [every day at 7:00PM-MST] that He grants us our chance.

 

Amen Sir! I try to also pray everyday that His will be done. It's the only way I can find peace!