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The pressure is mounting on the Obama administration to get this thing fixed.
Five weeks after the beginning of an oil spill in the Gulf Coast, President Obama is poised to announce strengthened, new inspections of offshore drilling on Thursday — a heightened response that his critics say comes too late and with too little force.
Although Obama has responded to the disaster from the start, he has chosen his words carefully in criticizing BP, the oil firm in charge of the site. On Tuesday night, he said at a fundraiser in California that the government needs to “revisit how these oil companies are operating.”
Obama will hold a news conference — a rarity so far in his administration — at the White House on Thursday morning to discuss the spill, officials said.
This is a tough one for the President. His opponents have been relentless in trying to lay the blame his way. Actually, the criticism is coming from all quarters. James Carville…
“The President of the United States could’ve come down here, he could’ve been involved with the families of these 11 people” who died on the rig after an explosion, Carville said on ABC’s Good Morning America. “He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now. He could be with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard…doing something about these regulations. These people are crying, they’re begging for something down here, and it just looks like he’s not involved in this.”
“Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving! We’re about to die down here!”
There is a crisis at hand and it is unsure what more the President can do. The best scientific minds in the country are trying to devise a means to plug the leak. That said, perception is everything in politics. Obama needs to gear up the emotion machine and look more concerned than he has. This is one time when his Mr. Spock-like cool and reasoned approach is not allaying the anger and emotion being felt out there.
Look tough. Be tough. And send a clear message that BP and whoever else is responsible for this disaster will get what they deserve. As someone noted, there are times when Mr. Spock is not enough. What people need now is to know that their anger is not only justified but that that White House feels exactly the same way…and that requires Obama to display the raw emotion of Captain Kirk.
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“The best scientific minds in the country are trying to devise a means to plug the leak.”
“The best scientific minds” that are actually making the decisions about what methods to use are employed by BP.
They are trying to devise a means to plug the leak that will protect BP’s investment in the well. They are working their way up a decision chain of solutions, trying to do the least amount of damage to the well itself, preferring to continue to spill oil rather than lose their investment in drilling and future revenue from the well.
Warm fuzzies will not fix this catastrophe. The hard truth is that no one knows how to fix it and it is quite possible that it can’t be fixed, will get worse, and will have untold consequences. At last count, the administration had 20,000 people working on this thing in multiple areas, from the scientific to the shovel wielding.
The gusher has been gushing for over month, not because of inaction, but because it has been thus far impossible to stop. People are at a fever pitch now that they can stand on shore and see the oil and smell the oil. Do they really have a case that not everything that could have been done to keep the oil away from the shores was in fact done? Maybe.
As bad as the situation on shore is, the situation in the Gulf is magnitudes worse. It’s a toxic soup of oil, water and mystery chemicals. The sea floor is in real danger of collapsing. This is looking like a catastrophe that is beyond our capabilities to control or fix.
People can blame Obama if they want to, but it’s not like he’s been sitting idly by. If he’s been pussy-footing around BP it’s because THEY are the only people who have half a chance of stopping this thing and we have little choice but to work with them. Never mind why they didn’t go for the Junk Shot from the beginning – maybe they hoped that the well wouldn’t be a total loss (read: greed). Now that they’ve waited this long, trying ridiculous methods, the well might not have enough structural integrity to withstand a Junk Shot.
And somehow I feel that as bad as things look, it is likely that it’s way worse.
In a blog on Truthdig today, Chris Hedges says this -
“His (Obama’s) administration gutted regulatory agencies that permitted BP to turn the Gulf of Mexico into a toxic swamp. The refusal of Obama to intervene in a meaningful way to save the gulf’s ecosystem and curtail the abuses of the natural gas and oil corporations is not an accident. He knows where power lies. BP and its employees handed 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 (http://www.opensecrets.org/).”
So why would he give this disaster more concern than lip service. Just hand it over to the flunkies at the MMS.
And Mario, I have to disagree. Cool heads must prevail in situations such as this. Remember that Capt. Kirk always succeeded because it was in the script.
President Obama was at one point being criticized for talking too much from early on in his presidency… After he heeded that advice, now he realizes that if he were to jump into this without something solid, he will appear to have nothing. This is why NO ONE has been able to offer any solutions other than Kevin Costner for God’s Sake! Why is pressure mounting on Obama to stop something that the Experts CANNOT STOP? Because editors and authors of articles about this keep laying the blame on Obama without properly quantifying the severity of the issue along with the fact that NO ONE CAN STOP THIS. The only solution is to drill a relief well, which they are doing. Otherwise, every time the President speaks, the GOP/Teapublicans will be there saying “He has no solutions – He’s ineffective” which is WHY they have obstructed him since the day he was sworn into office. President Obama is just a Man. He cannot solve everything like Bush did – with bombs and wars. And even Bush did nothing but create more problems. So perception is in OUR HANDS. Obama can only say ‘I have no idea how to fix this’ so many times before the nation deteriorates into panic. It would help if there was ONE single news outlet that wasn’t trying to tear Obama down like FOX Noise. It takes little thought to blame and panic. It takes intellience and patience to understand and maintain. Something in short supply these days.
@Frances: Read again. I did not say that the President should abandon his reasoned and logical approach in handling this environmental and economic disaster.
“…Mr. Spock is not enough”
What I’m suggesting is that he needs to add some emotional fuel to his public persona. On top of everything else he’s dealing with here, the political element should not be ignored. The masses don’t always get what’s happening. There’s a superficiality to politics which, as distasteful as it might be, is very real and to not address it is political suicide.
What made Kirk special was that beyond his smarts, he had a human quality which made him appealing. A little Kirkness would not be a bad thing for the President to show at this time.
@ritterrific, How about a direct link to the blog article you are referring to. I couldn’t find it. But I did see a lot of ranting and conspiracy theorizing. It’s a free country, that’s a little too far in the radical left spectrum even for me.
Here’s a link to where the oil money went in the 2008 campaign: http://oilmoney.priceofoil.org/federalRaceGraph.php
Captain Kirk is too trigger-happy. We need Captain Nemo. After all, he’s the one with a submarine and an abiding love of the sea. “Mobilis In Mobili”, remember?
Mario, this whole situation sucks, and your criticism of Obama is mild indeed. Not worth arguing over. :)
Very interesting! The Chris Hedges article and access to Truthdig.com is completely gone this afternoon. The article was “The Greeks Get It” – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig – http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/the_greeks_get_it_20100524/
I saved the file as a PDF so I know I didn’t imagine it.
The Center for Responsive Politics link -
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000000091&cycle=A
Well everyone of these posts are depressing especially you Frances, I think i’ll go outside and kick my 3/4 ton truck.
I like your Captain Kirk analogy Mario and I’m going to
pretend like I made it up, if thats cool with you.
@Greg, don’t kick your truck. It will hurt.
A solution BP has not thought of: Scotty can beam up the oil.
What? why are we even having this conversation? I thought we were not supposed to get involved in private sector matters? make your minds up people.
I think the president is doing what he thinks is best, this guy at least tries.
I wonder if the thought has crossed the President’s mind to call Bobby Jindal and say, “Hey buddy, fuck you! You were doing all the bitching about the Federal Government intruding on the States. So there you go! Clean it up yourself! Maybe you can get the help of some of your buddies in some of those Red States.”
Maybe he’s thought that, but yeah, I agree, it wouldn’t be nice. :-)
defaults I was indeed talking about kicking my truck which is
indeed a private sector matter —– for this I am sorry.
One hazard of showing lots more emotion, Mario, is that most people expect that if Obama has a temper tantrum at BP and then nothing still happens, he will look even more ineffectual. Sometimes, even emotion isn’t the best solution. Sometimes, there may be things Obama is trying to do that none of us see. Don’t forget that in this day and age of technology, Obama doesn’t need to be everywhere at once in order to be doing things to help get this thing fixed. He’s already been to the Gulf Coast right after the spill happened. He has been kicking people’s behinds already about this and the MSM even reports that he has “been furious” with BP and has been known to say to “get this thing fixed!” already! What more can he do until the relief wells are dug? Meeting with the families is a nice thought….I read that he has already called all of them! He is on the phone every day and meeting with his advisors and talking to Stephen Chu just about every day! He is being kept apprised of the situation. He does know what is going on. There is nothing else he can do. All that can be done is being done. You can’t rush the digging of relief wells! It takes time. I have a cousin who used to work for THUMB (Texaco,Humboldt,Union,Mobil,British Petroleum) Consortium and he worked out on those rigs. I have heard him talk about the difficulties and how hard it is to fix things if a disaster happens. We know that this is a major disaster and that this is horrible. We know that fixing it will take time. Unfortunately, all we can do is a few things. Breathe, pray, love, donate, give service (for those with appropriate skills), and use our voices with our neighbors and at the ballot box in November and in Letters to the Editor and to BP to vent our frustration at their greed and lack of preparedness to handle this disaster. Beyond this, overly extreme emotion by our President will result in nothing helpful. I think Obama being Spock is wonderful as I remember that in so many cases, it was Spock’s cool thinking that many times saved Kirk’s bacon and the Enterprise! Let’s stay cool, people! Remember Spock’s retort to “Bones” about a bad situation! Bones: Spock, do something! Spock: I am…I’m thinking. Then later…Bones:(Kirk) means that he would rather trust your thinking than most people’s facts! Spock’s response: Then I will give him the best thinking I can! I like how Obama thinks! Go Spock!
I respect our president very much for his cool. But I do sometimes wish he would channel my Dad just for these situation and scream, “What the hell are you idiots doing?!”
My answer to James Carville’s rant is that at this point, wouldn’t a presidential appearance and all that that entails be a great deterrent to the clean up efforts that are going on along the coast?
Perhaps Carville is still having a little burn because Hillary didn’t win. Don’t get me wrong: I like Carville. I’m just a little surprised at his outburst.