OBAMA BUNGLES GULF OIL SPILL: Deliberate?

SPECIAL POST

I’ve criticized only BP/ARCO so far because they are a known polluter of the environment and their safety record is abominable. But, the time has come to call a spade a spade: the Administration has totally screwed-up its response to this international calamity. And yes, it IS an international disaster; Mexico will be affected, Cuba may be affected, Belize and Honduras may be affected. We have yet to determine what the affect on weather will be, but it’s not likely to be good.

The Administration has been spinning that it is the responsibility of the oil company to deal with the situation. “The oil company is the expert,” they have insisted. Well, you might lend that thought some credibility with respect to the leaking wellhead itself; nevertheless, we are two months down the road on that issue alone and BP/ARCO is now saying they may not be able to reduce the problem until August. In the interim, they lied about the volume of oil leaking and they lied about what little they have been able to siphon to a tanker on the surface.

Just speaking about the theory that BP/ARCO should be the one in charge of the wellhead, they have stonewalled and mishandled the matter from the very beginning, when they allegedly told everyone just after the rig exploded that they had everything under control.  The fact that the federal government sat on its tush and waited for BP/ARCO is reminiscent of how they handled the crumbling financial crisis and how they are handling the jobs crisis. They either don’t know what they are doing, or it’s all deliberate.

Let’s get to the environmental impact. Once again, the feds have said that the oil company has the responsibility to deal with it. Tell that to the Louisiana fishermen. Tell it to the people who live along the coast and have their boats in the water. Tell that to the fish and other wildlife. If BP/ARCO and all of its resources can’t stop the damned leak, how can they handle the environmental disaster in addition?

The government has every right and every authority to take immediate steps to mitigate the environmental impact. It should be there in full response, proactively beginning cleanup of the beaches and doing whatever it can to contain the damage. Hurricane season starts in a few days; what will happen if another Katrina comes rumbling through the Gulf? Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal wants to at least construct temporary additional barriers to augment the barrier reefs; the Corps of Engineers refuses to grant the permits.

Allegations abound that Obama accepted large political donations to his election campaign from BP/ARCO; that the EPA has been too close to the oil company, and that Obama is exercising a political trump card against the Republican Governor. If any one of those scenarios is correct, Obama is guilty of deliberately sabotaging the process.

At the very least, the administration has again proven itself to be incompetent. The oil disaster continues to grow and the economic and jobs disasters continue to grow. Where’s Obama? He’s having a nice little closed-door chit chat with the Republicans about Cap &Trade and the Immigration problem.

What a raft of bullshit. 

That's MY AMERICAN OPINION, respectfully submitted.  

P.S. (As if we needed one...) Federal auditors are saying this morning that government officials responsible for monitoring oil operations could have spotted troubling indications in advance of the disaster, had they not been busy viewing pornography on their computers.  Shades of the SEC!