I wish people would quit calling it a spill.




  1. bobbo, can we ever learn when it is obvious in the first place says:

    Nothing to learn here from nuclear energy either, because you know oil is oil and U-235 only has a half life of 700 Million years. Big difference there.

  2. jbenson2 says:

    Where is Obama in the video?

    Oh, yeah. Just like reality, Mr. Campaign is either playing golf or running a fund-raiser for Barbara Boxer.

  3. bobbo, can a one track fixation ever be relevant says:

    #2–JB–so what should Obama have done when?

    Impress us with your Presidential skills. Saying he should have cut taxes doesn’t count.

    Hee, hee.

  4. jobs says:

    #3 You know if this happened a few years ago you libs would be blaming Bush for the spill and complaining that he isn’t doing anything. You guys even blamed him for a hurricane. I don’t see any problem with asking why obama is’t doing anything. We all know obama has super presidential skills.

    I know let’s just blame Bush.

  5. LDA says:

    #4 jobs

    I see no problem with questioning how Obama is responding, assuming you would ask the same of Bush. Bush wasn’t blamed for the hurricane he was criticized for the pathetic response to it.

    Consistency is a rare and admirable virtue.

  6. rwest says:

    #3 — Obama needs to repeal the Jones Act from the 1920’s. Bush did it during Katrina.

    This is bascially preventing ANY foreign country from helping in the clean-up, but since Obama and the Unions are married at the hip he can’t stomach it.

    http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/06/10/jones-act-slowing-oil-spill-cleanup/

  7. bobbo, can a one track fixation ever be relevant says:

    jobs==you are an idiot. If the libs aren’t complaining about Bush, then you dumb ass retarded Repuglicans will criticizes us for it hypothetically. But not without mischaracterizing the facts horribly. My god, what a worthless bunch you are.

    BTW–I do blame the Bush/Cheney Cartel for the absemce pf regulatory control/rules that directly led to this disaster. Obama too for not having fixed it in his time in office. But failing to fix is not as directly responsible as breaking in the first place.

    I can answer the following question but doubt you can: what do you think Obama should have done and when. Note: Given your retarded presentation so far, I won’t be holding my breath.

  8. Awake says:

    How anybody can defend BP at all in this disaster is beyond me. It is truly incomprehensible.

    Is it only ‘liberals’ that expect individuals and corporations to be held responsible and accountable for their actions? I thought that “Conservatives’ were all for personal and corporate responsibility and accountability.

    BP lied before, during and after the drilling platform failure. It lied about the cause of the failure, their preparedness to deal with a fully predicatble failure situation (pipe breaks and blowout preventer malfunctions), the quantity of oil escaping from the failed system, the ability to contain the damage, the actions to be taken to resolve the situation both short term and long term, etc etc etc. Nothing but lies and ass-covering before during and after the blowout.

    So we have ‘conservative’ ass-hats like jbenson2 and ‘jobs’ trying to fool the American people with a three-card-monte type distraction of ‘look over there… the president should be blamed somehow’, instead of placing the blame on those that should be truly held accountable.

    Hey ass-hats… how about focusing on the real problem (the out of control oil gusher) rather than playing retarded petty politics? My guess is that you can’t get past your partisanship and dogma to think about the real cause of the problem instead of immediately trying to shift blame.

  9. deowll says:

    #5 Actually the main person at fault for not getting more help into Louisiana/ New Orleans faster was the governor of the state who was asked do you need help and thought they could handle the situation and did not so smart things like blocking sending supplies into New Orleans and failing to provide transportation out and of course the Mayer of the city who was reluctant to remove everybody until after everything truly tanked out.

    At some point the Feds started to act even though I’m not sure they were legally allowed to do so and of course they did a poor job in part because some of the people in charge were political hacks and in part because the problem was way worse than the worst anyone living had ever had to deal with.

    I give Bush a D which is about what I give Obama on the oil spill.

    On Obama’s impact on the long term survival and prosperity of the nation I give Obama a Z. It would be lower but I ran out of letters.

    I would also have to rate the present government as being so corrupt as to be by far the worst I can remember. I don’t even think the people running the Fed Gov now even see the corruption all around them. They call it business as usual.

  10. BmoreBadBoy says:

    It’s amazing how much people rely on the government for. Astounding actually. Let’s settle on monumentally stupendous! You want the government to do so much, it’s just not fair. How do you expect the same organization responsible for educating our kids to also protect us from terrorists, protect us from home grown criminals and protect us from ourselves? Add to that, we need that same group of people to regulate business, deliver mail and get us to Mars. Instead of criticizing them for what they get wrong, maybe we should feel sympathetic for the huge boulder sitting atop their shoulders. You should all ask yourselves, what if Atlas Shrugged?

  11. jobs says:

    #7 Why do you libs hate so much?

  12. bobbo, libertarianism fails when it becomes Dogma says:

    #9–do-ill==well, you are coming along. Actually gave a reason why Bush wasn’t at fault, but your revert to type as you proceed to Obama. What, have you been asked TWICE NOW to state what Obama should have done and when? Tick Tock.

    #10–BadBoy==It is amazing how people rely on the government so much. Your alternative to government regulating deep sea oil drilling safety issues is what? Just let anybody drill and when they spill then individuals have their day in court? Is that your philosophy Bunky?

    #11–jobs==why can’t retards correctly phrase an argument?

  13. BubbaRay says:

    # 10 BmoreBadBoy said, on June 12th, 2010 at 2:47 pm

    >> Instead of criticizing them for what they get wrong, maybe we should feel sympathetic for the huge boulder sitting atop their shoulders. You should all ask yourselves, what if Atlas Shrugged?

    When they rape you for all the money they do, literally lose a trillion of it, spend it on bailouts and “stimulus”, pass a health care bill no one can pay for, create the useless TSA, get us into debt our grandkids can’t pay off, then they darned well better figure out how to do something about the spill. Doesn’t look like they’re doing much else except waging war and worrying about who’s getting elected.

  14. Awake says:

    #11 Jobs –
    Why are you such a hypocrite?

    Like so many conservatives, you demand smaller government, and lower industrial regulations, and more ‘personal responsibility’… but when things start to go wrong, you run to ‘mama government’ for help.

    So here you and your conservative brethren are, calling this industrial disaster “Obama’s Katrina”, smirking and pointing a finger at an outside party, while not holding the industry that caused it fully accountable.

    Make up your mind… do you want effective government (which is expensive), or do you want ‘no government’ unless you are in trouble and need some help (medical, housing, disaster relief, financial relief).

    If you are a Tea Party member or a Conservative, you should actually be applauding and cheering Obama’s perceived “inaction”… Obama should be your hero! Or are you just a hypocrite about the role of government?

  15. McCullough says:

    So what I’m hearing here is Bush was a failure as President, Obama is also a failure as president….

    I couldn’t agree more. So why are we fighting each other again? Oh right, the distraction.

    Stoopid humans.

  16. jbenson2 says:

    Bobbo asked:

    #2–JB–so what should Obama have done when?

    Impress us with your Presidential skills. Saying he should have cut taxes doesn’t count.

    Ooh boy – you left yourself wide open for a major slamdown!

    Obama knew the magnitude of the problem during the first week. Carol Browner told Obama at one of the earliest briefings in late April that the blowout would likely lead to an unprecedented environmental disaster,

    He should have flown down there immediately and setup a New Orleans White House and stayed there to work.

    He should have fired Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who went white water rafting in the Grand Canyon even though he knew about the spill.

    Obama should have called the CEO of BP into his office (or at least talked to him on the phone) during the first week. Duh! This should have been a no-brainer.

    Obama should not have sic’d the lawyers on anyone connected to the spill. The government should have worked with BP not against them. The lawsuits can always come later.

    Obama should have been a leader and not a follower. He should stop pointing his finger and blaming everyone. He should roll up his sleeves and get cracking on the problem.

    Any questions?

  17. bobbo, politics fail when it becomes reactionary says:

    Well thanks JB–more than most of your knuckle dragging chorus can come up with:

    Obama knew the magnitude of the problem during the first week. // No, he didn’t. Still today we don’t know how much oil is getting dumped. He did know oil was being spilled and it would be some time before it got capped/fixed.

    Carol Browner told Obama at one of the earliest briefings in late April that the blowout would likely lead to an unprecedented environmental disaster /// Again, no specific knowledge. Of course a blown oil well is “bad” for the environment but for the first few weeks, the oil standard was the Exxon Valdez==manageable perhaps if emergency capping proedures worked and the wind blows the right direction.

    He should have flown down there immediately and setup a New Orleans White House and stayed there to work. /// ABSOLUTELY NOT. It is damaging to the USA to have its President “captured” by any single issue, especially one so removed from what a President can actually do to affect. Someone lower down the chain ONLY. Carter should show you how ineffective a captured President is in image and effect.

    He should have fired Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who went white water rafting in the Grand Canyon even though he knew about the spill. /// No. He should still fire Salazar for not reinstituting a broad range of regulatory controls==like requiring resubmission of actual plans that could possibly be used to respond to spills. We all know Bush Co f*cked up everything he touched, so the mandate should have been to get fixing it.

    Obama should have called the CEO of BP into his office (or at least talked to him on the phone) during the first week. Duh! This should have been a no-brainer. /// I agree. But would still ask: “and say what? recommend what action that BP wasn’t undertaking already?” ((There are answers to that==get skimming/oil extraction boats out into the Gulf in numbers much larger than are present even now.))

    Obama should not have sic’d the lawyers on anyone connected to the spill. The government should have worked with BP not against them. The lawsuits can always come later. /// I agree.

    Obama should have been a leader and not a follower. /// Those on the scene say he has done alot==just doesn’t get photo ops as much as we might all like. His “kicking ass” statement was about the dumbest thing he has ever said. He’s feeling pressure from left and right extremes.

    He should stop pointing his finger and blaming everyone. /// I agree–time for that later.

    He should roll up his sleeves and get cracking on the problem. /// Like any aircraft accident, the time to apply yourself is before the crash.

    Any questions? /// No. Bottom line is you don’t have much and I offered more of a specific than you have. Still==JB, better done than I had expected.

    A major problem here is the infantile suggestion that the President of the USA is supposed to have all the answers, to be a miracle worker, to be able to walk into the tide and roll the ocean back or to cleanse it of oil. He’s only human and he deserves our support until, like Bush, he proves himself too much an idiot/liar to deserve it. I do think he is tending that way, too much the politician, but not on the oil disaster just yet.

  18. BmoreBadBoy says:

    @bobbo
    My alternative to government regulation is freedom in every case. Allow individuals the freedom to drill on property they own. And if they screw up, allow them the opportunity to rectify it by paying the appropriate damages to those they have wronged. It’s really quite simple. Why shouldn’t individuals be allowed to have their day in court? Are you opposed to that señor bobbo? Of course, without government, courts would not only be fairer, but they would be much more expeditious and cheaper.

    @bubbaray
    I agree w/ every word you said. (As señor bobbo knows all too well, I’m very pro liberty. I was being heavily sarcastic in the post you quoted.) So, I only have 1 question for you: if government has failed in all the areas you mentioned, what makes you think they can successfully resolve this whole oil spill situation? Or do anything at all to ameliorate it?

  19. bobbo, politics fail when it becomes reactionary says:

    Harvard Law Presenter Mr Jeffrey Miron “Libertarianism in the USA” says that the limited liability corporation by structure avoids full exposure when they engage in risky behavior such as the Gulf Oil Spill. He suggests a different approach when risky endeavors are undertaken is for the Company to POST A BOND against future damages. He says that would cause a shift that could have unintended consequences but is an alternative.

    So, he has too many crackpot liebertardian ideas==like healthcare is a commodity that would benefit from greater competition ((whats he smoking?)) but as any good college professor and book author on the subject, he shows libertarianism can offer alternatives to improve the status quo.

    Given the failure so far to get our military home, stop having gays as scapgoats, failure to re-regulate Banks, introduce any true transparency in government and on and on, I don’t expect Obama to pick up on such an idea.

    BadBoy==you have yet to tell us what color the sky is in your admittedly imaginary world. Simple? Yes indeed.

  20. BmoreBadBoy says:

    @bobbo
    You just listed many issues on which the government has failed, and your lack of faith that the president would take an alternate, off the beaten path solution to a problem he has no solution to. Yet you continue to defend his actions and have faith in the cult of his personality. That is truly mind boggling.

    The sky is still blue in my imaginary world. The only reason it is not actuality is most people believe the lie that we need leaders aka masters to tell us what to do and when to do it. When that lie is fully exposed, we will finally be able to live as free people.

  21. bobbo, libertarianism fails when it becomes Dogma says:

    Awh BadBoy==just how old are you? Permanent Larval Stage?

    Grow up.

  22. bobbo, libertarianism fails when it becomes Dogma says:

    So, I pop a beer and watch whats on Tivo and up comes John Stossel with Milton Freedman’s “Free to Choose” who famously warned us all of the dangers of big government bringing us a failed welfare system and now he asks why is government getting even bigger?

    I consider MYSELF a libertarian. I consider YOU, Freedman, Stossel as but demonstrable clowns. Your absolutist libertarian school yard bumper sticker positions are acceptable as a youthful infatuation but disgraceful to hold on to as adults.

    I had the faint whisper of the notion that Stossel would question the libertarian free market Freedman ideas as its my understanding that Freedman and his group are the poster clowns of our failed economy: the authors of the Banking Collapse of 2008. Freedman said in front of Congress that “I was wrong thinking the market could regulate itself.” but the liebertards go on as if that too late reality was never the fact of the case, nor publicly admitted by its guru. Brooksley Born should be given 6 months to bulk up and given an shovel and a hatchet and 10 minutes alone in a room with Freedman and his retarded crew.

    Have we gone too far into a welfare state? Thats debatable and changes can always be made. More/less, thats the debate.

    When you make the argument that any welfare is a strike against your personal freedom==you have left the market place of ideas, or rather stay in the market selling poisonous goods.

    When reality does not inform one’s philosophy, the stupidity reaches the depth of something truly evil. I suppose as long as you stay a minority, your evil can be tolerated. But here is Stossel interviewing another liebertarian quoting with approval Milton Freeman. Seems your freedom demands another market failure with appropriate catcalls for the efforts made to save the system. How can you be so confident of your position when your guru admits he was over optimistic?

    Experts? Philosophers? ===Fools!

  23. bobbo, libertarianism fails when it becomes Dogma says:

    Holy Crap! The liebertarian (David Boaz) wants a Milton Friedman Noble Prize for Freedom for his financial expertise. “because freedom is atleast as important as the other prizes and is the pre-condition for progress in those areas.” Yea–like health, education, and general welfare is not at all necessary for progress. What dopes.

    Friedman and half the Cato Institute should be in jail.

    A bright line separates dogma from reality. Sad how mental illness when surrounded by like minds can continue its bastards ways without correction.

  24. Awake says:

    The truth finally starting to seep out, and it is not good news. Don’t expect to hear this from BP directly… they have been hiding the truth since before the platform collapse.

    There are strong indications that the well has collapsed about 1000 feet below the sea floor, and that oil is shooting out sideways at that depth, eroding the seabed and starting to seep out through the seafloor itself. The efforts to cap the well were halted because the mud being injected was shooting out the sides of the well at that depth, causing further erosion, and that plugging the well would result in the currently gushing oil just building up pressure elsewhere and shooting up in multiple places directly from the seabed.

    The oil currently gushing sideways may start seeping up from the floor at any time, deeply adding to the already incredible ‘leak’ from the main bore, possibly more than doubling the leak.

    So they can’t plug the well because that would just result in oil coming up uncontrollably from other locations. Any plug that they install will have to be at over 1000 feet of depth, beyond any fracture in the main bore. The nuclear option of collapsing the well several thousand feet below the sea floor may be the only option.

    And in other news from BP, there are no oil plumes. The leaking oil is being collected at a rate that may approach bring the leak back to the worst case level that was happening before the latest fix. Hurray!

    Drill baby drill. Keep liability for problems at $75 million to allow small businesses to do oil exploration. Expect the government to stay out of the way but fix the problems if there are any.

    On a side note, there are legal reasons why President Obama should not be speaking directly to the CEO of BP. Should the US have to seize the assets of BP to seek remedy, any direct interaction of the President with the company CEO prior to the seizure can have legal consequences. That is why Obama has not spoken directly to the CEO of BP… the US government may have to seize BP’s American assets and use them to pay for the costs of dealing with this disaster.

  25. bobbo, libertarianism fails when it becomes Dogma says:

    I’m no geologic engineer but I wonder if its possible to check radar/sonar scans of the ocean floor to see if its suitable for drilling in the first place?

    If such tech is available, I wonder if it was ever even used?

    I heard a month ago that what blew the well was an overpressure of the well hardware caused by of course the pressure of the oil deposit they drilled into==way bigger than they thought and BP knew this from day ONE because that is what caused the well to blow in the first place.

    Nothing but “drill baby drill”/make money while we can and screw the consequences.

    I won’t bet money that Obama will use this to push thru a real green initiative/jobs program for america based on renewable energy and the national security benefit of getting off foreign oil. No, I haven’t seen Obama really trying to push the establishment. Even healthcare is not an exception to that depending on how you define the relevant issues. The “change” would have been single payer.

    Drilling the hole until it blows up.

    Stossel had an opponent of libertarian philosophy on for a segment. He destroyed Stossel et al. It highlighted the lib theory is based on maximum profit as the maximum good. “If BP had been over regulated and had to drill two safety wells at the same time to advert this disaster, then gas would go up by 5 dollars a gallon!”===Good. Then we would use less gas and get on with energy independence.

    Yes, there is a reality beyond the bumper stickers.

  26. ECA says:

    for those that dont know..

    About 2 weeks before a tremor..Dogs and cats ACT strange or disappear.

    A few persons watch the Kennels and MISSING pets add’s..

  27. B. Dog says:

    I’m with Awake on this one. It’s time to nuke it.As long as we’re at it, lets bring out a six pack of nukes. We might want to nuke some other places, too.

  28. Mr. Fusion says:

    #18, BmorbadBoy,

    My alternative to government regulation is freedom in every case. Allow individuals the freedom to drill on property they own. And if they screw up, allow them the opportunity to rectify it by paying the appropriate damages to those they have wronged. It’s really quite simple. Why shouldn’t individuals be allowed to have their day in court?

    So if my neighbor decides to drill a well that explodes, kills all my livestock, injures me and my family, and ruins my farm? I will have to find a lawyer, wait for a trial, live somewhere else, and hope he can afford to pay. What happens when he can’t afford to pay?

    In OUR world, we would, through the collective we call government, regulate my neighbor. He would need plans to show he has safety procedures. He would need adequate insurance. He would need to use materials and procedures suitable for the job. We wouldn’t regulate him to satisfy some need to keep people subjugated, we regulate to PROTECT the rest of us.

    As the BP oil spill shows, the ignoring or repeal of regulations in order to make a free society isn’t freedom. We have structured our society upon the respect of others rights. Unrestricted “free market” isn’t respecting the rights of others. It is just the tea bagger mantra of letting the next person in line pay.

  29. Mr. Fusion says:

    #16, benson,

    Ooh boy – you left yourself wide open for a major slamdown!

    Obama knew the magnitude of the problem during the first week. Carol Browner told Obama at one of the earliest briefings in late April that the blowout would likely lead to an unprecedented environmental disaster,

    OK, but you don’t tell us what he could have done. BP signed a permit 580+ pages long where they categorically stated they could handle a spill much larger than what happened.

    He should have flown down there immediately and setup a New Orleans White House and stayed there to work.

    And do what? Look over the Gulf at the pretty sunset? The fact is ANY oil spill is devastating. The President is responsible for the country, not just one incident.

    He should have fired Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who went white water rafting in the Grand Canyon even though he knew about the spill.

    You don’t say why. Did you expect Salazar to get a scuba tank on his back, swim down, and plug the leak by himself? Would staring at a TV screen watching oil come out of a pipe a mile under the surface have fixed anything?

    Obama should have called the CEO of BP into his office (or at least talked to him on the phone) during the first week. Duh! This should have been a no-brainer.

    And said what to the CEO? This is an oil problem. The CEO is an oil man. Only a right wing nut hypocrite would suggest telling an expert how to do their job.

    Obama should not have sic’d the lawyers on anyone connected to the spill. The government should have worked with BP not against them. The lawsuits can always come later.

    Lawsuits are always part of the problem, especially when it is something this size. Maybe you could be more specific though and suggest what the government did to hinder BP. Remember, BP’s permit stated they could handle a spill several times larger. They stated they did not need the government’s help.

    Obama should have been a leader and not a follower. He should stop pointing his finger and blaming everyone. He should roll up his sleeves and get cracking on the problem.

    Again, you don’t tell us what he should/could have done. Generalities don’t tell us anything. Face it, the US government doesn’t have the material or equipment to handle an oil spill. They do not own ANY submersibles that can operate at these depths. They do have any engineers that can cap a wildcat well.

    As an example, after the Kuwait War the government called in several private firms to cap the damaged and burning oil wells. Bush I and the military knew well enough to leave it to the experts.

    Any questions?

    Did you think about what the President is capable of before you started suggesting he be there? It wouldn’t have mattered if it was Obama, or Bush II. The government is not equipped to deal with oil wells that blow up. There are many examples of this across our nation.

    When a State or city decides to build / rebuild / pave a highway, they hire a paving company to do it. Even though they may own thousands of miles of road, they leave it to the private sector to do the actual work.

    When the government needs a new ship for the Navy, they hire a contractor to design and build it.

    When there is a disaster with government property, for example the I-35W Bridge collapse in Minneapolis, they hire private contractors to clean up the mess and build a new bridge.

    BUT, here you want the President to move to New Orleans and personally plug the leak. Your disconnect to reality is noticeable.

  30. bobbo, libertarianism fails when it becomes Dogma says:

    Hey Fusion–thanks. You aren’t confused about everything==not even most things. (smile!)


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