Barack Obama promised…….oh hell, watch the video:
“Transparency will be the touchstone of this administration”
And the obsequious press tingled endlessly.
“For a long time now there’s been too much secrecy in this city,” Mr. Obama said at a swearing-in ceremony for senior officials at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House. He added, “Transparency and rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”
United States President Barack Obama announced today that his administration will roll back the secrecy that has ruled during the Bush Administration and implement a new era of government openness and transparency.
So what does one do when things aren’t going well? One pulls out the Chicago politics card. Mr. Transparent is making it very difficult to properly inform the public of how bad the Gulf is suffering and how poorly a job Obama is doing:
H/T Instapundit
You’re got a real problem when you lose Anderson Cooper.
Barack Obama has mis-managed a bad oil spill into an absolute catastrophe. Three days after the spill the Dutch offered the use of four oil skimmers.
Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.
Of course, Obama said no.
Aside from his painfully obvious efforts at union protection, Obama hid behind the EPA:
The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
So in Obamaworld it’s better to have 100% of the oil in the Gulf than it is to have 99.1% removed. This is stupid on a galactic scale.
The skimmers have the capacity to collect 146,000 barrels of oil per day. As of June 9, 64,650 barrels had been recovered.
Another giant ship converted for sucking oil out of the water sits idly in a Mississippi port awaiting EPA testing. The same stupid rules apply. And we still have the same stupid President sitting around with his head up his ass when he’s not playing golf.
The plight of Kevin Costner’s centrifuges is well documented here.
Obama’s response to all of this is to make reporting of the consequences of his screaming incompetence more difficult. Obama should be making every effort to remove obstacles in the way of all of these oil cleaning efforts. Instead, he does nothing.
Apparently incompetence is the key to being a great President.
If you like the way Obama has handled this oil spill, you’re going to love health care.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
House deems 2011 budget passed
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37893
Let’s examine one disturbing difference between states like Arizona, which stands up for itself as evidenced by the Arizona immigration law, and states like Mississippi, which evidently doesn’t support the 1st Amendment. While both houses of Arizona’s legislature are controlled by Republicans, both houses of Mississippi’s legislature are controlled by Democrats who are probably scared of Obama.
The media went nuts over the mere perception of the Bush administration influencing the media. Yet, those same people willfully accept the censorship and control of the Obama administration.
Media bias is glaringly evident in the acts and omissions of the media under the Obama administration.
WE must be on PHASE 2 . NATIONALYSING all aspect of AMERICAN economy
CREATING ,MOBILYSING private army….DISCREDIT AND INTIMIDATE dissenter…
CREATE a CRISIS in order to declare emergency MARTIAL LAW…CREATE VIOLENT civils unrest
and blame it on dissenter.
Never let a crisis go to waste…
A spot of uplifting news. I heard today on radio blurb updates that the Taiwan monster skimmer was either headed to the GOM, or was in the GOM, undergoing testing for the cleanup. I consider that good news. And, of course, all skimmers of all sizes were absent from the GOM for days because of Hurricane Alex, churing up the waters from a’distance.
Now… one has to wonder if the EPA is going to sit back and wait until skimming is completed, and then assail the out of compliance skimming/discharge vessels with fiscal penalties… Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
BTW, I wanted to mention that, if the State department record of int’l offers are correct, the Netherlands did not offer their actual ships, but they did offer one storage capacity vessel, and their skimmer equipment that the US could retrofit on other ships.
According to the State department docs, the latter was accepted late May, and the US purchased three of the sweeping arms.
This, of course, makes the Instapundit information technically incorrect. Maybe they ought to spend a bit of time visiting some other sites for more current info. This stuff morphs minute by minute, hour by hour. i.e. Take into consideration that claim that there were “no skimmers in sight”. Well yuh… in that particular time period, that’s because of Hurricane Alex.
@ Mata
I don’t know the particulars of the whole Dutch and oil skimmer saga, but I do believe that Obama and his admin have been particularly inept at leading the cleanup/capping in the gulf.
As for cleanup, one has to look no further than the frustrations of Gov. Jindal in LA. He has asked for help, clarifications, and permits for skimming actions and sand island building, yet has been stonewalled, or fed empty promises since day one. I certainly understand his current feelings of telling the feds to just stay the heck out of the way if they aren’t going to actually help.
As for the capping, Obama’s incompetence showed from day one of the spill when he virtually ignored things from the outset, then when pressure from the media became to hot for him, his only words were to find out who’s a** to kick instead of actually offering help, equipment, etc. to stop the spill and worry about the financial ramifications later.
Compared to Obama’s handling of the oil spill in the gulf, Bush’s handling of the Katrina aftereffects is perfection personified (that’s sarcasm for you lib/prog dunces who don’t know the difference).
Because I point out a few pesky facts, it doesn’t mean I don’t believe that this O’admin has been shameful in their response, johngalt. I just like to keep the criticism to factual points. That’s all. There’s too much Enquirer style headlines rolling around, muddying up the truth of the matter.
According to the State Dept docs that I linked from Gateway Pundit, we did indeed purchase rigid skimming arms from them late May. However they take awhile to deliver, and then mount onto any ships. If it’s 6-8 weeks, and assuming delivery of the arms in just a couple of weeks, these arms won’t even be mounted and ready until mid July or so. Could this have been accelerated? Doesn’t seem likely, based on time to retrofit the ships. Could they have ordered them quicker than the end of May? Sure… there’s a beef you can argue, and I’m with you there.
Should it have been within days of the explosion? Well, that’s convenient political rhetoric, I guess. Fact is the seriousness of the leak wasn’t made known until April 28th, eight days after the original explosion. The drillship didn’t even sink until two days after the explosion. At that time, the amount of the oil flowing still wasn’t known. Remember we had to get the ROVs down there to assess the situation at the seabed, and they had to clear away the drillship debris as well. All of that takes time. The oil didn’t start hitting the shores of LA until near the end of May. The blog, I bleed Crimson has a good timeline of the events.
Should it have been contained further out at sea before getting to the shorelines? Absolutely. Was is somewhat feasible to get the heavy duty skimmers out there in that time frame? Hard to say… depends on if you could get ships with big skimming arms on order quickly and retrofit the ships, and if the EPA waived regulations for the Oil Water Separators (OWS). Fact is, we are not like the Dutch or Belgium. We don’t have this equipment standing by, ready to go. We were always behind the eight ball. Did Obama and his EPA bozo-ette make it worse? Without a doubt. If we had tossed EPA regs overboard immediately, we may have been able to assemble the big, deep sea skimmers faster. But hang… there was no booms and emergency equipment standing by, as per a suggested plan from back in the 90s.
As far as Jindal, that’s a battle he will have to have with Fish/Wildlife and EPA again. The sand berms engineering needed to be approved. It’s more than just digging up, and moving a bunch of sand. You can’t just plop in a few sand barrier islands and not have it affect the tidal action and subsequent action of the oil on other shorelines. Is it wise to build the berms, only to find the oil then shifted to the Mississippi Delta instead? In other words, shove off the impact on LA to MS? So I’m not sure I disagree with the evaluation requirement, but I may criticize whether it was pushed thru the bureaucratic channels fast enough. However I fully understand Jindal’s frustration.
INRE capping, I have no idea why you bring up Obama in this aspect. Unless, of course, you’re falling for his rhetoric that he and the feds are “in charge”. The feds (ala USCG, MMS, etal) are consulted and decisions are made with input from all involved. However Obama and his merry band of lawyers and community organizers are clueless to this stuff, and shouldn’t be allowed within two centimeters of the task of capping this well. Can you say “beyond his paygrade”? Obama needs to stay out of the way of the technical experts at work on this problems, and start capping his ego instead.
As I’ve said all along, I have my problems with the big Zero’s handling of this. There is no disagreement there. But it isn’t with some of the hyperbole headlines I’ve seen too often. They deserve full blame for not cutting thru the red tape to expedite what is important and needed immediately. They deserve being shot for not waiving EPA regulations at the onset and allowing any and all OWS systems to be at work immediately. And they deserve serious criticism for simply making this a political agenda and legal free for all. But much of the criticism is political point scoring instead of factually based, and doesn’t examine the realities of how skimming is accomplished, and the different needs when done close to the shoreline, and further out in the GOM towards the well head. The smaller vessels of opportunity (VOOs) can only gather so much oil before needing a place to dispose of what they have. Thus the value of the Costner centrifuges on barges as a central processing station deep in the Gulf. Otherwise these vessels just load up to capacity, then have to go find a place to dispose of what they gathered. Very inefficient.
Ms. Bees, the O’admin deserves much criticism, but not for the event’s timing. The explosion happened the end of April. It took a week or two to really suss out what was going on. Again, I say, remember that the drillship didn’t sink for a few days after the explosion, complicating getting to the wellhead because of the debris covering the site at the seabed.
However hurricane season knows no politics. It runs every year, from June thru October. This means that there was always only about a month after the explosion to get the relief wells and any capping efforts underway, as well as the skimming operations. Capping has nothing to do with Obama since these efforts lie primarily with BP and the industry technical wizards… as it should be. I, however, still am praying for the right hurricane to be effective mother nature clean up.. a hefty tropical storm or barely cat 1 storm that hits between the Florida Panhandle and Tampa Bay, or even Ft. Myers area, driving the oil offshore and out to the main body of the Gulf, and breaking up the spill on the waters. A well placed hurricane can be a godsend, not a disaster.
MATA: hi, by waiting so long, they are getting thing started on cloose hurricane season, that is another reason for the urgency to having it done from the first few days,which was possible by the
offer they receive on the first few days also, : NOW we can expect more delays and owners ‘s
equipments problems because of the bad weather , bye 🙄
http://truthandcommonsense.com/2010/07/03/obama-pulls-the-control-the-message-technique-used-by-mao-anderson-cooper-is-confused-again-useful-idiots-awake/
I used your link for my post. Anderson Cooper could be playing a role but it does look like this “useful idiot” is getting a clue.
Like I say in my post.
“Here is Anderson Cooper, stupidly confused, wondering why his daddy don’t love him no more.”
In my book I have the government sealing off an entire county and town from the MSM, not that they were looking anyway. Some people who have read it wondered if that was possible or not.
Question answered.
If by “transparent” he means we will know him by his actions and deeds then, yes, it is perfectly clear to anyone with a brain cell left just who this man is and what he stands “fore.” (No, that last word was not a typo. It’s a reference to his favorite pastime.)
@ Mata
I understand you points perfectly, and I am guilty of a little sensationalism in my opinion that I posted. I do believe, though, that Obama and his admins response has been nothing short of incompetence. After all, when their first real actions regarding the spill is to start in on the blame game(a typical response to anything and everything by this WH) instead of seeking out the best plan of action regarding the cleanup and capping of the well, they show us they are more interested in continuing to campaign instead of lead.
Happy Fourth, Mata. 🙂
Can anyone think of any promise Obama has kept?
My guess is that Obama wants only American union workers or people CONNECTED in the Chicago way to have anything to do with the cleanup. The worse it gets, the more money it will take to clean it up. If it gets bad enough he might have to declare a national emergency and take over more control than he has already.
Have any of the companies who offered help donated to Obama’s campaign? The way I understand it, that is the first step in getting his attention. The more money, the longer his attention span.
@plainjane31: I wonder if the “deemed as passed” budget will work for me and my budget.
I notice you’re using information broadcast by a part of the media regularly labels as liberal–especially when their opinion doesn’t agree with right wing positions: CNN
Also, if this was China, the government would know exactly what to do. But, unlike the claims of some ultra-conservatives, it’s still a democracy, which give certain right to all people–even BP. Unfortunately, this situation often makes the wheels of action turn more slowly–with lots of approvals required–http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/13/AR2010061304232_2.html?sid=ST2010061305087. Would you prefer the Obama assume dictatorial powers?
Like most radical right-wing sites, this one does not dig deep enough–rather, giving their readers what the want to hear.
prescienceblog.com
To smorgasbord: Check out http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ for 119 promises that Obama has kept.
prescienceblog.com
Would you prefer the Obama assume dictatorial powers?
Like he hasn’t already?
Bush waived the Jones act in three days. Obama took over 50 days even to consider foreign assistance. I’d prefer Obama do something, and there is much he could do to expedite actions. But I do not believe he wants this mess cleaned up any time soon.
The truth, a version of the truth, presented here at Flopping Aces (the title of a new, gay Viagra video) is highlighted on an essay: What is the truth about Glenn Beck. It’s longer than a paragraph or two, so many of the commentors here may struggle with it.
It explains how reactionaries can claim that this President is “incompetent” while better informed historians rank Obama in the middle of effective Presidents and George Bush is ranked in the bottom five presidents of all time in part due to his incompetence.
How many here know that Bush is a direct descendant of Franklin Pierce, another one of the bottom five presidents? The fruit didn’t fall far from that family tree.
@tadcf: The USA is not a democracy. It is a republic. Each time the propaganda media hears someone call it a democracy they know their brainwashing is working. Let’s call it the republic that it is.
The propaganda media calls it a democracy to remind us of democrats. You can tell which news media is liberal by them calling the USA a democracy.
@tadcf: He has kept some promises. It isn’t 119 because most of those are just things he has done, not thing he promised ahead of time that he would do, but I can’t say he hasn’t kept ANY promises. Thanks for the update.
Smorgasbord, I’d be ecstatic if the Zero hadn’t kept any of his promises of socializing America. However I don’t see where you can say he hasn’t kept *any* promises since the US is now on the path to socialized medicine with O’healthcare which, as he has stated, may take 10 years or more (after they’ve driven private insurers out of the marketplace). Then, of course, there’s the promise he kept to “help” the economy by passing the big spending ARRA/stimulus. He’s still working on his climate change/cap and trade and his wall street reform. Then, there’s his promise of making a nation more social justice equal, so he and his AG figure that the Black Panthers don’t need prosecuting.
All these are promises to “remake America” that he’s kept. The problem is, of course, is that any conservative who values the Constitution and Bill of Rights didn’t want those “promises” of Euro-socialism. And now many who did vote for the Zero are now not so thrilled with the promises they thought sounded great.
TADCF: hi, if this was CHINA… WELL THE UNITED STATES WILL never be CHINA and the like. will also never steal a country and kill his peacefull people and prevent the DAHLI LAMA from living peacefully with his people, and threatening free countrys leaders to have him discussing his side of the story which happen to be true. bye 🙄
@MataHarley: You and tadcf have ruined a good Tea Party poster I made. I feel just like the Statler Brothers felt when the lights went up in Wrigley Field and it ruined their song “Count On Me.”
You know our King-In-Chief is doing bad when even The New York Times, CNN, and other propaganda media are complaining about him, although, they didn’t start complaining until they couldn’t get answers or interviews from him
tadcf, perhaps it is you who does not dig deep enough. If you would go thru even the recent archives, you’ll find I have posted quite extensively… and fairly… on the problems with bureaucracy and the Gulf oil spill. This blog is made of up many author voices, and also allows reader posts… of which this is one. Therefore your “one size fits all” mentality is not only inappropriate, it is indicative of your narrow mind.
And, if you went thru even the recent archives, you would find your final assessment, based apparently on the WaPo link you choose to provide as your mentor, is completely wrong.
The Big Zero admin delays have nothing to do with the rights of BP, or even foreign equipment they could utilize. It has to do with that quiet agency in the background, not getting the heat they should… the EPA. EPA has delayed the Costner centrifuges, and that same EPA may be prohibiting the most efficient clean up of “A Whale”, that is now in the Gulf. Why? Because their arrogant stubborn enviro arses are determined to hold any Oil/Water Separators (OWSs) to an idiotic bilge water discharge requirement.
What Obama could have, and should have done, was tell that enviro nazi, Lisa Jackson, to waive those regulations as soon as these big skimmers were available to use. Even now, there is no final EPA determination on what to do with the water discharge from these OWS systems. Obviously peak efficiency demands that the OWS do the job, and the water discharge is processed back into the Gulf. Otherwise that tank has to hold not only the separated oil, but the water dischange as well. And that will mean it cannot operate as long before having to head off to dump it’s load.
@MataHarley: “…having to head off to dump it’s load.”
Obama is dumping his load on us all the time. You reminded me of this picture: http://www.bluecanvas.com/view-pic.php?photo_id=6006
Obama has been in there for a long time with a bad case of diarrhea.
From what I gather, the United States Of America has suspended the 1st amendment.
The Right to FREE SPEACH
The Right to FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY
The Right of FREEDOM OF RELIGION
The Right of FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.
And all I hear is the oil spill. ARE YOU STUPID!!!!!
What the HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are you MORONS or just Brain DEAD?
The Oaths to UPHOLD AND PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION is a joke!
Where is the outcry??????
What was the purpose of the DEAD American’s in uniform during the 1st and 2nd WORLD WAR???
You allow a man to remove your right’s and you arn’t upset in the least.
A man has removed those rights listed above from the entire United States and not a peep!!!
Morons!!!!!!!
Not sure why you feel the need to assail FA with your verbal abuse, “non American”. If you bothered to go thru the archives of author and guest posts, you’d find we are raising quite the outcry INRE this POTUS and his thugocracy. But even our anger at that attack on our Constitution doesn’t mean we will ignore the effect of the oil spill on this nation.
NON AMERICAN: hi, you know you have a right to be so angry but you dont seem familiar with this blog FA, and we have all kinds of POST by the AUTHORS here who tackle all different subject, and this comment of your’s also. this is of course unconstitutional to do for the leader and he has no cause to do it, and I cannot comprehend the whole SENAT and CONGRESS to allow this to happen: it would now take the military to dismantel the whole government by a complete take over. bye keep your hope. 🙄
@Non American: You need to go to the conservative blogs, conservative talk radio and TV, and Fox News (the one Obama told you not to listen to) and you will see and hear us. Didn’t you hear about 1-2,000,000 of us going to Washing DC on 9-12-2009 protesting the taking over of our government, or on 12-15-2009 and 3-20-2010 against ObamaCare, and 4-15-2010 on Tax Day? Those are just the ones I made it to. I was one of the specks in those pictures.
I was released from the hospital on 9-11-2009, the day before our first protest in Washington DC. I had two stints put in an artery that was 90-95% blocked and wasn’t supposed to do much exercise, but I thought of the troopers who have lost body parts and that I have set back all of my life and let this country get in the mess it is. I figured I could take a chance of an artery in my leg springing a leak and I marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and around The Mall in my burlap “Bag Of Tea” outfit with big signs on my hat that said, “Throw me in Boston Harbor Again.” I had good natured offers to be thrown in the pond at the east end of The Mall as I walked around it.
At the ObamaCare protest on 12-15-2009 I had a big PINK 22″ X 28″ sign on my hat that said, “LIBERALS. HERE IS YOU PINK SLIP.” Earlier I mailed all three of my liberal Federal politicians a letter size PINK SLIP. I suggest everyone send their liberal politicians their PINK SLIP. Print it out on PINK paper.
I had 750 PINK SLIP letters printed up where people could put in their politician’s name and the item they were complaining about and their name and address. I should have printed up a lot more because I ran out quickly. A lot of the people were going into the Senate office building after the protest to visit their politicians office and they wanted to leave the PINK SLIP at both of their senator’s offices.
I had been in the Senate building offices several times and stayed outside with my sign on my hat. I saw Senator Spector walking towards me from Congress to the Senate building. I had sent him his PINK SLIP earlier and couldn’t resist asking him, “Did you get your PINK SLIP?” He walked so close past me that I could have reached out and touched him, but I didn’t want to, and he wouldn’t even look at me and didn’t say anything to me. He lost his bid to be the democratic senator at the next election, but I wish he would have won. With him running again I know he wouldn’t be elected. Now I don’t know how it will go.
If you haven’t signed up as a Tea Party Patriot, please do so at
The Tea Party Patriots doesn’t support any political party, but it does encourage support of individual candidates that show a record of obeying the US Constitution.
Sorry for the long post, but I got started and couldn’t stop. I am stopped now.
To non-american…….be careful there hombra, there is a move on its way that will enforce our way of life, it’s called the TEA Party, taxed enought already. Fact is we have done no such thing (s) as you suggested.
Just because our leadership is ruderless, the repukeagain party, does not mean We the People do not intend upon kicking their asses to the curb, because we fully intend upon this action. We have no lost a bit of anything, matter of fact the finest example of this is that We The People still have a hold of our simplest of tools, it’s called the Second Amendment Rights, we are in fact gearing up for some major trouble, if you have been watching the debate and response, you would know We The People have bought up more ammunition and black rifles in the past two years than in any time of our most recent history, what does this tell you. You are welcome to yopur opinion it’s just too bad you don’t know what the hell you are opining about. God Save this Republic. Semper Fi.
@Tiff, aka ‘The Glenn Beck Review’
I seem to remember something about you stating you were going to take your ball and go home, since we wouldn’t play nice with you or something. I guess you couldn’t resist poking your head back in here to make another ignorant comment.
Better informed historians? Who are you talking about, the ones we discussed in a previous topic? And why do we care what a bunch of liberal elite “scholars” think about Obama? They are seriously wrong though, on all accounts that they rate him. History itself, when far enough removed from his presidency, will in all likelihood bear out that he was actually one of our worst, just as it will, more than likely, bear out that Bush wasn’t nearly as bad as they claim. What you promote is that anyone with liberal ties is inherently more prescient about presidential matters than similarly educated conservative scholars. Would there be bias among a group of two hundred plus conservative historians about the rankings of presidents? Probably. Would you discount it as a ‘lie’ or ‘falsehood’? I believe so.
You have outed yourself as nothing more than a liberal with left-wing ideology in your previous rants about Mr. Beck, so we are not surprised one iota that you display it again here, however, your attempts to paint Mr. Beck as something he isn’t was proven wrong there, and your attempts to paint Obama as better than he is will be proven with time. In the meantime, we here at FA, a collection of conservative voices with some friends from the left(Greg, Gaffa, Cary) can discuss the current happenings of Obama and his admin with interest and concern where warranted.
Were I an independent gonzo journalist producing media coverage of the effects of the oil spill, I would first, get some constitutional lawyers interested, and perhaps the ACLU onboard, hire a local fishing boat, then ignore this unconstitutional regulation, go in and get the footage and let them arrest me and my crew. Then I’d press counter charges of violation of our constitutional rights, naming the Coast Guard, BP, the Obama administration, or any and other agency who tries to stop us from getting said footage on public beaches and waterways. Heck, I’d even tip-off Fox news and the other MSN companies so they can film the event and our arrests from the “safe zone”. (Unfortunately I’m still acquiring the equipment to set up a small independent video studio system, and I don’t have staff or field cameras yet. I have one “National Geographic Quality” documentary camera and recording unit but no batteries or charger for it.)