Obama’s Sins During the Gulf Oil Spill Revealed
Obama was criticized today by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling for a destructive ”sense of over optimism” regarding his response to the BP oil spill.
Hey, wait , wait! Let’s not jump to conclusions here about this. Everyone just calm down before you launch into a bash Obama therapy session. Let’s give him a chance and look at this positively.
The Wall Street Journal goes on to say that the Administration’s outlook on the crisis “may have affected the scale and speed with which national resources were brought to bear.”
Ok…was I a little too optimistic there? I tried it out as an exercise just to see the logic behind the thought process. It actually makes you feel kind of good about yourself….except, I guess its not really comparable since Obama’s over optimism sort of caused millions of people to lose their livelihoods.
But, ok, when over-optimism fails to make you feel good about yourself, I actually found out there’s another defense mechanism you can use to counteract it. It’s called overreaction:
While Coast Guard personnel told the commission in interviews that they had enough equipment by the end of May, the president announced around that same time that he would triple the federal manpower responding to the spill.
Oh, ok, right so once he realizes he’s wrong he just overcompensates for his own inadequacies as the leader of our country by spending unnecessary resources on the situation. Resources, which by the way, we don’t actually have. Because we’re trillions of dollars in debt. Right.
Let’s go through some of the more heinous sins of omission by the Obama Administration as described by the report. Bear in mind, this material is pretty ugly so you might want to have something smashable near.
The papers fault the administration for taking “an overly casual approach” in calculating, during the spill’s second week, that between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil were flowing into the Gulf.
Overly casual. Hm. Ok. Well, that estimate must have had some basis, right? Well, it did, and it was a scientific source. Unfortunately, this is what you really don’t want to hear, according to a White House staff paper:
Despite the acknowledged inaccuracies of the [government] scientist’s estimate and despite the existence of other and potentially better methodologies for visually assessing flow rate…5,000 bbls/day was to remain the government’s official flow-rate estimate for a full month until May 27, 2010.
I’m starting to think maybe this over-optimism thing isn’t really such a healthy way to cope. I mean I guess it makes since if you’re in denial about reality, but if the President of the United States isn’t willing to accept reality…..fill in the blank.
The paper adds that it is “possible that inaccurate flow-rate figures may have hindered the subsea efforts to stop and to contain the flow of oil at the wellhead.”
Yeah. Because, by the way, the government changed their tune on the seepage estimates to between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels. That’s a little bit more than the 5,000 flawed logic suggested to them. I wrote a piece on the lack of transparency regarding oil spill research yesterday. It seems as though my concerns had some support:
The commission staff also takes the administration to task for having characterized a federal report on the fate of oil in the Gulf as having been subjected to “peer review” by independent scientists.
In fact, the commission staff paper says, it is unclear whether any independent scientists actually reviewed the paper prior to its release in August.
The paper said that about three-quarters of the oil spilled by the well had broken down or been cleaned up. Those estimates have been challenged as overly rosy by some independent scientists.
Overly rosy. Well, hey, as long as its in the name of “over optimism” it’s all good right? Seems like transparency might have helped out a little bit had those independent scientists really been given a chance to review the information. But, no, let’s just give some underestimations about the aftereffects of the spill. That way it’ll come back to bite Louisiana industry for years to come. That’s mature.
And then there’s this, which just about sums up the Obama presidency:
Together, the inaccurate statements created the impression the government “was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid” about the accident.
The Obama Administration has never been even a little bit competent, let alone fully competent.They’ve lied to the American people throughout the entire past two years about their “effective” stimulus and health care reform legislation. And now there’s this report, showing that the Administration essentially ran from reality when faced with the most devastating disaster this country has seen since Katrina.
Not only is this embarrassing to Obama, but quite frankly, everyone should be embarrassed about the state of our country and the borderline insanity that pervades our state leadership. That’s who we elected to be our President. A guy who ran a Presidential campaign on “hope and change,” but had neither the competency nor the mental fortitude to serve this country in a way that provided either standard to his citizens. A man who has consistently deceived his citizens and then leaves them hanging out to dry when they are in their greatest time of need. Thank you, Barack Obama for ruining our country.
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First, there is no way that I see that NOAA had any clue on the rate of flow into the GoM. It is highly likely that the flow was pretty close to that low end initially BEFORE various choke points in the riser (where much of it was actually collapse) restricting the flow were removed in the “capping stack” efforts.
Doubtfully any administration would have had any clue as what to do. The spill was actually in INTERNATIONAL WATERS, though the source was in our Economic Exclusion Zone.
There has been a LOT of misreporting on the whole thing to the extent that almost no one has an idea how massive the response was (BP’s response that is).
Having “Thud” Allen who actually had no clue about anything other than skimming and placing boom was not a great idea, but just plain old “Peter Principle” in action.
Okay, now that I have beat around the bush, the fact that Transparency was not there, as claimed, Zero should be called out on this.
Are you serious? No administration would know what to do? Thats no excuse at all. And clearly, there was evidence that the leakage would be more than flawed, outdated evidence suggested. Lack of transparency: “Zero should be called out on this?” What? The lack of transparency was on the part of the federal government who refused to release estimations about oil left in the Gulf after the cap……they wanted to downplay the severity of the damaging effects that were still out there and they knew that if they released information to peer review before publication they would be proved wrong. You don’t make a good argument at all.
I have absolutely no liking for Zero.
here are some real facts that have gone unreported.
Almost every available commercial offshore water craft was even pulled out of mothballs to work on the spill.
Foreign flagged vessels were all over the Macondo Blowout location AND some like “Might Servant 1″ a Dutch ship was out there with special ocean skimmers by mid June after coming over here and having the Dutch owned skimmers fitted to here in Galveston at a shipyard. I do not know this exact ship, but I’ve loaded jack up rigs on the older class, “Super Servant” ships, 3 out of the 4 of them to be exact.
Now about response at shore, BP hired close to 100 contractors who specialize in this. One was a former employer of mine (who single handed handled the largest spill that no one ever heard of in the Andes Mountains). BP did not pay standby rates for all of that equipment from across the Gulf Coast which converged.
Also, MSRC, which was created to handle super tanker (not the little ones that can come to docks along the rivers here) spills was on the scene. They also brought in open ocean type skimmers from the East & West coasts.
As far as what whackos like the “Watchmen” and that shrimper gal at the Communist Church in New Orleans were saying, I do not think that they were credible at all.
There most definitely an argument about Jones Act but it did not apply being outside territorial waters. Dumb Zero did not know enough to even say that and neither did his dumb staff.
On the Berms and working to clean out the marshes, SHAME on the Pres for not issuing an executive order.
Shame on the “Ah” Chu and “Thud” Allen bunch for not knowing squat about subsea and holding things up from progressing. As far as the worry about storms, it was overkill. That is everyday occurence in the North Sea, all of what the stopped for did not need to stop.
Remember that Liz Birnbaum head of MMS at the time has been a longtime enviro whacko and headed an org similar to RFK Jr’s.
Thats all valid and true. I’m not sure its true to say that none of that was reported because some of it– especially the points about foreign vessels– was, but thats neither here nor there. I especially like the point about Birnbaum, thats good incite. But I want to make it clear I would make this same criticism of the President if he were a Democrat or Republican. The fact of the matter is that I pay taxes for government protection, and these types of “unforeseen” disasters are exactly the kind of things the government should have provisions to deal with. Especially after the Valdiz spill there should have been a greater effort to pepare for disasters like this. It was not as though it was unforeseen. So, I don’t buy the argument that the administration gets a free pass because they “couldn’t have known what to do.” Yes, they could have.
One last thing, regarding the disperant from NALCO. It IS approved all over for use in open water. However, like most dispersants it is not approved for shallow water and near land here in the U.S. just like UK and Brazil and elsewhere.
Of course I don’t give this admin a free pass. The fact remains that such “infrastructure” to respond to a spill of this type (deepwater) supposedly existed beforehand mainly via MSRC. Unless there is a major catastrophe, such as Macondo, such deficiencies are not really investigated and thus not funded.
The lack of transparency, in this case, is most likely due to complete bedlam in an administration with no expertise in any field other than PR & spin.
Bottom line- Damage not nearly what was feared. Response effective. Gulf relatively fine. Beaches fine. Seafood industry coming back strong.
Yep, I’d say that was an effective response and one that was far from inept.
Another RW meme dies.
Why don’t you head down to Houma or Morgan City or Lafayette, where the entire economy is being destroyed as a result of this administration’s stupid policies, and tout the administration’s response? Let’s see if you can do that and get out alive.