@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Quote:
You are misstating the facts and confusing the issue. I'm not aware of any Republicans who hailed Obama as the answer to our problems.
Of course not, George. C'mon. Instead, what you did was characterize the support of the Democrats as illogical and quasi-religious in nature; even though the vast majority of us never had any such opinions about the man at all. You are attacking a fantasy projection that YOU created - not any real opinions held by Dems about the guy.
Cyclops, I was in Grant Park in Chicago on election day. Many things that evening reminded me of a evangelical church session (when I used to attend). People (20-30% of the crowd at least) were bawling, or on their knees, or singing actual church songs in support of Obama, or actually saying things like their lives are going to be so much better because Obama was elected. Instead of thank you Jesus, there were many shouts-outs of thank you Obama.
Maybe the majority of 'you' didn't feel that way, but I have a hard time believing it was a vast-majority.
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:What more, I just heard on the news that BP is indeed setting aside 20 Billion into an ESCROW account today. So it looks like the Feds are getting something done there.
I think BP has tentatively agreed to the $20B (to be paid out over several years), but what the AP article pointed out is that the Feds
may not have the power to
force them.
Quote:THE FACTS: An independent arbiter is no more bound to the government's wishes than an oil company's. In that sense, there is no certainty BP will be forced to make the Gulf economy whole again or that taxpayers are completely off the hook for any of the myriad costs associated with the spill or cleanup. The government can certainly press for that, using legislative and legal tools. But there are no guarantees.
We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. $20B seems like a drop in the bucket compared to what will be needed in the long run.
@maporsche,
maporsche wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Quote:
You are misstating the facts and confusing the issue. I'm not aware of any Republicans who hailed Obama as the answer to our problems.
Of course not, George. C'mon. Instead, what you did was characterize the support of the Democrats as illogical and quasi-religious in nature; even though the vast majority of us never had any such opinions about the man at all. You are attacking a fantasy projection that YOU created - not any real opinions held by Dems about the guy.
Cyclops, I was in Grant Park in Chicago on election day. Many things that evening reminded me of a evangelical church session (when I used to attend). People (20-30% of the crowd at least) were bawling, or on their knees, or singing actual church songs in support of Obama, or actually saying things like their lives are going to be so much better because Obama was elected. Instead of thank you Jesus, there were many shouts-outs of thank you Obama.
Maybe the majority of 'you' didn't feel that way, but I have a hard time believing it was a vast-majority.
Shrug. Even 20-30% of the crowd at the Grant Park place means that the
vast majority of those there weren't in fact matching the description the Republicans created. And you are discussing what was arguably the height of excitement time for the Democrats - people who had specifically gone out to party and celebrate the man's election.
Cycloptichorn
@Irishk,
Irishk wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:What more, I just heard on the news that BP is indeed setting aside 20 Billion into an ESCROW account today. So it looks like the Feds are getting something done there.
I think BP has tentatively agreed to the $20B (to be paid out over several years), but what the AP article pointed out is that the Feds
may not have the power to
force them.
Quote:THE FACTS: An independent arbiter is no more bound to the government's wishes than an oil company's. In that sense, there is no certainty BP will be forced to make the Gulf economy whole again or that taxpayers are completely off the hook for any of the myriad costs associated with the spill or cleanup. The government can certainly press for that, using legislative and legal tools. But there are no guarantees.
We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. $20B seems like a drop in the bucket compared to what will be needed in the long run.
I'm not surprised that they are paying out over several years, nobody has that much cash just sitting around. And I agree that it will likely cost more than that in the long run.
I don't think people realize just how bad the Gulf coast is fucked. And that they don't realize yet how big an impact this could have on our energy plans for the future.
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
Yeah, maybe so.
Bunch of loonies still if you ask me though.
@maporsche,
Very cool that you were there that day, though. Something to tell your grandchildren.
@maporsche,
maporsche wrote:
Yeah, maybe so.
Bunch of loonies still if you ask me though.
No shortage of that on either side, look at some of the righties here who insist that Bush was an honorable man and a great president.
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
Yeah, you won't see me disagreeing with you here . They have more actual religious loonies too, which is even scarier.
@Irishk,
It was very cool. I am glad I went.
@H2O MAN,
That image was ******* retarded the first time you posted it.
But to answer the question, yeah, I miss Bush. I just ache with melancholly when I think of how he would have handled the oil spill. Because lord knows the Bush family isn't friendly with the industry. I chuckle when I imagine what blundering mliquetoast he would have assigned to head the recovery effort. The premature pat on the pack. And then Bush himself, posing on the coast with a roll of duct tape in a masterful P.R. move.
Our president appears more comfortable addressing abstract and conceptual issues than the actual problems and challenges that face us (and him) in the real world in which we live.
Thus his emphasis ,when confronted with a major deep water petroleum drilling catastrophe in the Gulf, is to blame the Oil company (BP); fault his predecessor for bequeathing him an inept oversight bureaucracy; and lecture us on our over dependence on petroleum (this in a world that as yet offers no feasible alternatives). No mention is made of the fact that he appointed the now departed head of the MMS bureaucracy, or that his administration turned down very early offers from the Netherlands & Norway of skimming ships & rigs that could have significantly reduced the volume of the contamination, and instead endorsed the widespread use of dispersants which made isolation and collection more difficult (in effect they made an ill-advised early bet that the release would be small and of short duration).
Prersident Obama has failed utterly in his executive responsibilities in the matter. The fact is we have a major disaster on our hands; his administration has already made serious mistakes in handling it; and he has offered us only vapid generalities about cheap green energy (that doesn't yet exist) as a distraction from his failure to deal with the issue at hand. We have a largely inept amateur at the helm who appears more inclined to lecture others about their failures than to accept responsibility for his own and even attend to the basic elements of his job.
It is also ironic to note that after the long-term failures of the SEC to catch Bernie Madoff; the contributions of the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, the Treasury dept. and Congressional oversight committees to the financial crisis of 2008; and the recent failure of the MMS (after 16 months of OBAMA direction) -- Our amateur president is putting so much emphasis on the supposed efficiency and efficacy of government regulation of ever increasing areas of our lives and economy. I thought the final chapters of that book had been written in the demise of the centrally planned economies of the now departed and unlamented Soviet Socialist empire. (Even the more restrained European top-down administrative model is now showing its own inherent defects and failures.)
Thus we have the unusual combination of a leader who not only retreats from real issues by passing the buck and lecturing us about abstract issues, and who, in addition, gets the abstract issues wrong as well.
Obama is WEFT !
@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:Obama is WEFT !
Nice acronym, "WEFT". Is it a Navy-ism?
@georgeob1,
I'll tell you what....Obama is damn lucky this happened after he got his so called "health Care Reform" passed, because this failure of Government can not help but to seriously diminish what remained of the Citizens faith in Government to get things done right. It also is another huge gash in the public's faith in Corporate America, and in the Elites in general.
Obama seems tone deaf on America's anger level, and on what drives it. His being fully in the head has now completely separated Obama from the people he wants to lead. This is not going to end well for Obama, and more importantly for America.
@Thomas,
Thomas wrote:
georgeob1 wrote:Obama is WEFT !
Nice acronym, "WEFT". Is it a Navy-ism?
Yes. It was Landing Signal officer (the guy watching & grading landings on carriers) shorthand, for "Wrong every ******* time".
@georgeob1,
That's how I expanded it---and how I got the hunch it's from the Navy.
@Gargamel,
Blaming Bush was ******* retarded the first time you and Obama trotted out that dead horse of an excuse.
@Thomas,
I guess I'm more transparent than I sometimes think.
@H2O MAN,
I suppose the Tundra Twit has the relevant experience. God, I wish she would stop wearing wigs and seven inch heels. She's beginning to look like a drag queen.
There was an interesting piece on NPR yesterday afternoon. I tuned in after the speaker, a professor of political science, had begun his discussion and missed a bit of it, but, he suggested that we need citizens' councils to act as a third leg in the discussion between regulatory agencies and industries.
His point is that in a di-polar system, such as the regulatory agency-industry system, after several years of familiarity, there is less regulation and more similarity. With several loci of discussion, there is more apt to be greater safety and more stringent regulation.
As he said, the fishermen would never have allowed the Deep Horizon rig with its lack of safe guards to have been put in place.
Of course, the right hates safety and regulation, so why did this poor deluded man bother opening his yap?
