Regarding Obama's oil spill speech.
From Hot Air:
Things I learned tonight from watching Keith Olbermann’s and Chris Matthews’s post-speech wrap-up: (1) Obama’s rhetoric is gassy and notably short on specifics; (2) renewable energy is much harder to develop than certain prominent Democrats would have us believe; (3) government bureaucracy may be contributing to the slow federal response in the gulf.
The short answer is: the feds.
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.”
Is it just me, or does it seem like the Obama administration is moving very fast to launch a Justice Department investigation of the gulf oil spill, but dragging its feet regarding Joe Sestak's claim that the White House offered him a job to drop out of the Senate race against Arlen Specter?
Hmm. The oil spill's been going less than 40 days and it gets an investigation. Joe Sestake first claimed the White House offered him a job in February, yet there's no investigation of what would clearly be a violation of federal law.
Nah, no conflict there, right?
Some of my left-leaning friends are really outraged about the BP gulf oil spill and the fact that they aren't paying yet. Well, I guess that's not really true. I mean, BP is paying, trying to stop the spill. And the spill is costing the company billions in lost revenue. but that's not really what these people are so exercised about. What they want is...a boycott!
Now, right-thinking people know how ridiculous boycotts are. They are ineffective and rarely result in action by the boycotted. Personally, I'm all for people spending their money where and how they want, and if you choose Product "X" over Product "Y" because Product "Y" is created using too trees or baby parts or whatever, I have no problem with that. Just don't call it a "boycott" because that's just silly.
The problem with boycotting oil producers is that whatever you decide not to buy just frees it up for somebody else to buy it instead. Remember the people wanting to boycott Citgo because Hugo Chavez might profit? It's the same problem with boycotting BP over the gulf oil spill. If the U.S. suddenly stopped buying oil from BP and started buying it from someone else, BP would just sell its oil to somebody else. Worse, prices for Americans might actually go up because of such a boycott.
Even if that argument isn't enough to make you sane about boycotting oil companies, there's this: oil is used for a host of things other than powering your Prius. Just look at BP's site where it talks about oil for fuel and lubricants. And that's not even talking about the many products made from oil, including things like wax, plastic, and Kevlar for bulletproof vests. In short, trying to "boycott" an oil company is like boycotting breathing. It's impossible and makes you look stupid.
Tough to feel sorry for Teh One after he said he would roll back the oceans (or some such bullshit) during the 2008 campaign. Charles Krauthammer's column points out this inconvenient fact, plus the fact that we drill in iffy places because environmentalists won't let us drill anywhere else.
I've been told we had 30 years to get off oil, but practically speaking, there's never been a replacement for all the things we use petroleum for, not the least of which is fuel. The risks vs. rewards has been substantially weighted in oil's favor, and until the renewable sources folks can pony up something comparable, we'll continue seeking oil anywhere we can.
Some complain that President Obama isn't emotional enough about the situation, while others claim that nobody cares whether the president cares.
It reminds me a bit of the movie The Queen, where everybody's up in arms because Queen Elizabeth wasn't broken up about the death of her ex-daughter-in-law Diana (actually, this was a real life crisis, as well). As the daughter of a British woman raised during WWII, I can tell you that that generation just didn't show a lot of public emotion (unless it was anger), unlike we Americans who bawl over dog movies.
The point is that showing outrage or fear or whatever over the gulf oil spill isn't going to fix anything and I'd much rather BO do something about it rather than beat the podium. I don't need an empathetic president; I need an effective one, and so far, this president has shown such a lack of leadership as to be downright dangerous.
The White House is taking some heat over its mishandling of the oil spill in the Gulf.
Until this week, the Obama administration had largely managed to deflect responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon disaster onto others — vowing to keep a “boot on the throat” of BP, while slamming lax oversight on the part of federal regulators during the Bush administration.
But now, with crude lapping into the bayou, even Obama’s defenders have turned critical. A White House that prides itself on operational competence and message discipline has been frustrated by an environmental catastrophe it can’t predict, can’t control and can’t out-message — and the strain is showing.
A majority of Americans, by 51 percent to 46 percent, now disapprove of Obama’s handling of the crisis, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll.
The president's timidity comes from his fear that he will be held accountable for a failure to stop the disaster --that this will become his Katrina. It already is, except that President Bush stepped up only two days after the locals failed to execute their evacuation plans. Here the crisis has been a federal responsibility from day one minute one and the president has watched and hoped that BP would figure something out.
If you were wondering why it took President Obama so long to do anything about the oil spill in the Gulf, look no further than his relationship with BP, the owner of the spewing well. Apparently, Barack Obama has been the biggest recipient of BP money.
BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals.
On top of that, the oil giant has spent millions each year on lobbying — including $15.9 million last year alone — as it has tried to influence energy policy.
During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.
From Hugh Hewitt. But they sure do want to let you know that BP will be paying for it. That's reassuring. Of course, I'd be more reassured if the feds had been prepared for it.
Can you imagine what would have been in the press had GWB been president when this happened?
President Obama did something I agree with today.
Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time
The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.
They told me if I voted for John McCain the rape of the environment and kowtowing to oil interests would go on, and they were right!...
You know, if he’d just ditch the socialism, fiscal irresponsibility, America-bashing, ally-bashing/abandonment and half-to-3/4 measures vs. terrorism,* I could actually start to like this guy. The weird part is how the candidate who was all about being better liked has made it his business to try to piss off as many people as possible.
Someone should have told the Iraqis.
Those who claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to get control of the country's giant oil reserves will be left scratching their heads by the results of last weekend's auction of Iraqi oil contracts: Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction of contracts that will shape the Iraqi oil industry for the next couple of decades. Two of the most lucrative of the multi-billion-dollar oil contracts went to two countries which bitterly opposed the U.S. invasion — Russia and China — while even Total Oil of France, which led the charge to deny international approval for the war at the U.N. Security Council in 2003, won a bigger stake than the Americans in the most recent auction. "[The distribution of oil contracts] certainly answers the theory that the war was for the benefit of big U.S. oil interests," says Alex Munton, Middle East oil analyst for the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, whose clients include major U.S. companies. "That has not been demonstrated by what has happened this week."
The liberal advisor to Joe Biden and John Kerry stands to reap millions off the Kurds.
As Tom Maguire notes,
If this had been an advisor to Dick Cheney, libs would be leaping from tall buildings.
