When Barack Obama was running for President, his supporters said that he was smarter than George W. Bush and talked about how good it would be to have an intelligent man at America's helm after Bush. Now, less than two years later, Obama's supporters are stuck saying that Obama couldn't have been prepared for the mess George W. Bush left.
Micromanagegate again!
But yep. It takes a LONG while to clean up Republican messes.
Take the Gulf Coast oil spill, for example. After over 40 days, even a number of his supporters are starting to wonder if he's on the ball. When James Carville starts openly questioning you, you know the Left isn't happy with you. This has left Obama's supporters asking, "Well, what would you have Obama do?" The question is designed to show that not even Obama has all the answers and that the people who are questioning him are hypocrites because they don't have answers.
Allow me to fill that void, my fellow Obama critics.
1) Send down the Environmental Protection Agency after the spill happened. One of Obama's first actions after the Gulf Coast oil spill happened was to dispatch people from...the Department of Homeland Security. What were they going to do? Arrest the oil spill? Set up a color-coded system to let people know the threat level of the spill? Maybe the best thing to do would have been to send down people whose job it is to address ecological matters. Maybe a government group like...oh I don't know...the Environmental Protection Agency? I know it's a stretch, but maybe Obama could have send them down first thing.
To do what? Rescue the workers? Plug the hole? Because that's not their fucking job.
Why isn't EPA the lead for this environmental disaster?
Typically for off shore environmental incidents the U.S. Coast Guard is the lead agency for a response. As this oil slick approaches and reaches the shoreline, EPA has been preparing to ramp up its efforts as necessary to respond to a broad range of environmental impacts.
2) Spend some Super Fund money. Part of the EPA' s budget is a little thing called Super Fund, a fund designed to help clean up ecological disasters. I'm sure some Super Fund money could be released to buy clean-up equipment that should have already been bought and in place. And I'm pretty sure an oil spill constitutes an ecological disaster.
Superfund: Contracting Opportunities in the Gulf Oil Spill
But yeah, the EPA isn't doing anything.
Obama does what he can and he gets lambasted for whatever it is. He takes a hands off approach and lets the experts handle something, he gets lambasted.
Make up your minds, you right-wing idiots.
The EPA doesn't matter anyway as a retroactive solution for Obama. Do you know why? Because even if the EPA jumped in the middle of the explosion fire, waved a magic wand, and cleaned the spill... one third-level EPA member may not have been there. Then right-wingers would say "Hurr hurr so much for all hands on deck!" while eating a deep-fried Shetland pony.
So, no. That plan wouldn't work. Next?
3) Encourage BP. Since the beginning, Obama and his supporters have attacked BP at every opportunity, saying, "It's their spill." That has yet to be discovered in full, but that hasn't stopped Obama from laying the blame at BP's feet. Yet, who is doing most of the work in the Gulf Coast? BP. Instead of criticizing BP, the President could show some leadership and become BP's biggest fan. Being negative at this stage doesn't help the situation.
Good god. It's THEIR responsibility. BP more than deserves criticism (and a criminal investigation).
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30rig.html?pagewanted=all
BP causes a spill, and your solution is to have Obama say "BP is great!" That's the same moronic right-wing thinking that gave us hilarious soundbites like these:
"Bush is great because he stops terrorist attacks! We've only had ONE during his presidency! So what if it was the worst in history?"
No, "BP rules!" wouldn't work to win the hearts and minds of Americans.
Next?
4) Listen to the states impacted by the spill. Is there a reason Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is being ignored by the federal government? Because of the length of time for the oil spill to get clean, Jindal wants to build sand berms designed to protect Louisiana's wetlands. Yet, the Obama Administration hasn't seen fit to give the green light? With hurricane season just starting, the more the Administration drags its feet, we could be seeing the Gulf Coast oil spill spread out a lot more. Jindal's request isn't out of the ordinary, nor is it out of the question. Obama would be well-served to listen the people like Jindal and not to his Leftist base.
Leftist base? What TF ever.
Mr. "anti-socialism" Bobby Jindal, who lied about a high speed train between LA and Las Vegas on national TV, is whining that the government isn't doing enough. No, Bobby, you failed. There is nothing about protecting shore lines in the Constitution, so that is a "states rights" issue. Thus, you should have already had the infrastructure to deal with it in place. No, Bobby, you didn't act fast enough if we are to judge you by the political ideology you profess.
Regardless:
White House approves Louisiana berm project-Jindal
But that doesn't matter. No matter if it's approved through the proper channels. You right-wingers would just say it "took too long" just like you did with the health care reform. So nope, that plan wouldn't work either. Next?
5) Be a visible leader. One of the biggest knocks against Obama's handling of the oil spill is that he doesn't seem to be all that engaged. He does small, meaningless things, but usually in private and far away from the media's eyes. Obama may think this makes him look deliberate and thoughtful, but in truth, it's made him look distant and thoughtless. With America being fans of visual media, it's increasingly important that leaders actually appear on them. Obama didn't even mention the oil spill for nearly 10 days after it happened. That's far too long in this media environment. A lot more visibility could have helped him appear more like a leader and less like a President in a bubble.
Actions are what matter, not words. For you people who HATE Obama so much, you sure do want to see him!
When he does make a visible speech (and he has), you would say it's a photo-op. So no, that wouldn't work.
See? Five suggestions on what Obama could have done, and I'm not even a graduate of Harvard Law. Then again, given some of the bozos that have come out of there, I might have been able to come up with these suggestions because I didn't graduate from Harvard Law.
At least a Harvard Graduate usually can get a decent dental plan. Take the hint.
The GOP is The Party of Personal Responsibility! In particular, poor people should take personal responsibility to being a burden on society. They get to shoulder the responsibility of rich people's and giant corporation's fuckups too, since they need the practice.
Obama knew that the MMS was in the pocket of the oil industry and that he probably should have reviewed the lackluster safety policies prior to like... now. I mean hindsight is 20/20 and who knows what other surprises a deregulated US has in store for the world.
But the underlying issue is very basic: we don't know how to fix problems a mile under the surface. And for that reason, we shouldn't be doing this.
These companies have been flying below the radar in regards to regulation for decades...paying off inspectors, cutting corners, anything they can do to keep the oil flowing and their profits high.
Did you see the story on ABC News the other night about major safety violations among the oil companies over the last three years?
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-safety-record/story?id=10763042
BP had 760 violations over the last three years.
The next highest number of violations over the same period?
EIGHT!
We cannot allow companies to ignore safety/environmental violations and just pay the fines as a course of doing business. They are/were violating regulations at nearly 100x the rate of the next worst offender in the industry. That shit cannot stand. There must be a reckoning.
Obama's accepting more blame than he needs to be accepting. But whatever.
Is Obama a Business hating socialist, or in bed with big oil ignoring regulating business?
Republicans don't just ignore the problems, they actively work with anti-environmentalist sentiment. See Reagan's hiring of James Watt and Anne Gorsuch for the DoI and EPA respectfully, Bush putting out a "Clean Skies" law which actually rolled back portions of the Clean Air Act, ect, stopping Superfund, worked on cutting EPA enforcement branches.
In life words matter, but deeds matter far more and the results of those deeds matter the most.
But the best you fucks can come up with is Ted Kennedy and WindFarmGate.
As president, Jimmy Carter installed solar panels atop the White House. He championed coal and nuclear power. He taxed oil company profits. He created the U.S. Department of Energy. He introduced America to ethanol.
Oil imports plummeted during the Carter administration. Renewable energy research skyrocketed. Cars got more miles per gallon of gas. Thermostats were lowered to 55 degrees at night.On Feb. 2, 1977, Carter donned a wool cardigan and asked a national TV audience to conserve energy. Two months later, he likened America's struggle to reduce Middle Eastern oil imports to the "moral equivalent of war.
Reagan reversed it all. He even tore down the solar panels.
With Katrina, the government had an agency, FEMA, that was suppose to respond adequately to the disaster, which it didn't. Whereas this disaster was man made, thus the fault of a corporation and it is the responsibility of that corporation, not the US government, to clean up the mess. The US Government should simply be there to prod BP and make sure they actually do fix it.
The simple fact is that Carter's ideas were largely right, they just were difficult and not popular. If we had stuck to Carter's energy policy we would be much, much better off. But Americans don't want to hear that things are hard, that we have to make changes and sacrifices.
Now, let's reiterate that Energy Task Force, shall we?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Task_Force
"The Washington Post reported on November 15, 2005 that it had obtained documents detailing how executives from major oil corporations, including Exxon-Mobil Corp., Conoco, Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corp., and the American subsidiary of British Petroleum met with Energy Task Force participants while they were developing national energy policy. Vice President Cheney was reported to have met personally with the Chief Executive Officer of BP (formerly British Petroleum) during the time of the Energy Task Force's activities."
BP wrote the policy!
Here's another little gem from the small government Conservatives:
GOP Blocks Oil Spill Liability Bill
The Republicans want TAXPAYERS to pay, not the oil companies at fault. Again, it's all about the corporate anarchy.
Now, you tell me:
Did Bush increase or decrease the likelihood of an accident?
Did Obama increase or decrease the likelihood of an accident?
There are a couple of things Obama did wrong:
About a year ago, Obama admitted that he had expected to be able to explain issues to the American people, and that they would understand. in other words, he expected Americans to be informed adults. He was wrong.
Now he trusted the oil industry to be responsible adults. He was wrong.
I would not blame him if in 2012 he said "I did not sign up to babysit a bunch of retarded kindergartners. You idiots are on your own." But I seriously doubt he will do a Palin. He loves his country far more than teabaggers do, obviously.
