This Oil spill in the Gulf sounds like it could be an economic catstrophe

• queencitybuckeye

  IggyPride00;390187 wrote:Henry Waxman’s war on Big Oil has begun.
  
  
  The California Democrat, along with Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), will force top oil executives to defend or condemn industry practices and profits, according to series of pre-hearing questions obtained by POLITICO, foreshadowing an intense, made-for-TV hearing Tuesday that could create an iconic Washington moment for the petroleum industry.
  
  Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38529.html#ixzz0qvpL8Ppb

  
  Far more important than actually attempting to help solve the problem is the theatre of making the "bad guys" do the congressional perp walk.
• queencitybuckeye

  IggyPride00;390195 wrote:White House: Obama ready to seize claims process
  
  
  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_obama
  
  
  How does everyone feel about the President "seizing" this process (and ultimately giving away the money of) a private (not government owned) company like this?

  
  Other than the unimportant issue of the head of one of the branches of government dropping a deuce on the constitution, I don't see the problem.
• kritzell

  

  IggyPride00;390195 wrote:White House: Obama ready to seize claims process
  
  
  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_obama
  
  
  How does everyone feel about the President "seizing" this process (and ultimately giving away the money of) a private (not government owned) company like this?

  I have no problem with it IF BP was indeed negligent as it more and more seems.
• fish82

  

  IggyPride00;390187 wrote:Henry Waxman’s war on Big Oil has begun.
  
  
  The California Democrat, along with Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), will force top oil executives to defend or condemn industry practices and profits, according to series of pre-hearing questions obtained by POLITICO, foreshadowing an intense, made-for-TV hearing Tuesday that could create an iconic Washington moment for the petroleum industry.
  
  Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38529.html#ixzz0qvpL8Ppb

  
  I try very hard not to wish ill on my fellow human beings. That said, if Henry Waxman were to be slowly eaten alive from the inside by some jungle parasite...I'd likely pour a couple fingers of Macallan and smile. He truly is a waste of oxygen.
• jhay78

  

  queencitybuckeye;390239 wrote:Other than the unimportant issue of the head of one of the branches of government dropping a deuce on the constitution, I don't see the problem.

  
  What's this "Constitution" you speak of?
  
  I think most have figured out that this spill is good for Obama and advancing his agenda, thus the paralyzingly slow response to cleaning it up.
• RedRider1

  

  Rules for Radicals...#11. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.
  
  BP is the latest target.
  
  ......and the old "never letting a good crisis go to waste" rears its head again.
• bigmanbt

  jhay78;390295 wrote:What's this "Constitution" you speak of?
  
  I think most have figured out that this spill is good for Obama and advancing his agenda, thus the paralyzingly slow response to cleaning it up.

  
  Funny you should say that. After reading this article, I'm uncertain whether this was an accident or not. http://www.infowars.com/evidence-points-to-bp-oil-spill-false-flag/
  
  Excerpt from the article:
  
  "Possible prior knowledge of the explosion is also evident via huge dumping of stocks and shares in the weeks and days prior to the incident.
  
  Goldman Sachs dumped 44% of its shares in BP Oil during the first quarter – shares that subsequently lost 36 percent of their value, equating to $96 million.
  
  Other asset management firms also sold huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter. Though the amounts pale in comparison to Goldman’s holdings, Wachovia, owned by Wells Fargo, sold 98% of its shares in BP and Swiss bank UBS sold 97% of its BP shares.
  
  Furthermore, as reported by the London Telegraph on June 5th, Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the spill."
  
  This is insider trading at the very least by the private banking cartels, but don't expect the puppets in office to prosecute them. Furthermore, the slow capping process and the push for the carbon tax make it seem pretty iffy on whether this was intentionally blown up or not. Something to think about at least.
• QuakerOats

  OBAMA: AN INCOMPETENT EXECUTIVE
  
  
  Contrary to what the Constitution says, the president does not run the executive branch of the federal government. It runs itself. Following Newton's Laws of Motion, it is "a body in motion that tends to remain in motion in the same direction and at the same speed unless acted upon by an outside force." The bureaucracy keeps doing what it is programmed to do unless someone intervenes.
  
  And that intervention is the proper job of the president. He has to step in, ask the right questions, get inside and outside advice, and decide how to intervene to move the bureaucracy one way or the other. President Clinton had an excellent sense of how to do this and when to get involved. President Obama does not.
  
  When the spill started, he and his campaign staff - now transplanted to the White House - reacted the way a Senator or a candidate would, blaming British Petroleum, framing an issue against the oil company, and holding it accountable. But what he needed to do was to review the plans for coping with the disaster and intervene to move the bureaucracy in untraditional but more appropriate directions. Instead, he let business as usual and inertia move the process.
  
  The president's tardy requests for international assistance and his government's bureaucratic response to their offers demonstrates his lack of command and control. The Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration initially "saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills." Arrogantly, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19th "we'll let BP decide what expertise they do need."
  
  Two weeks after the spill started, the State Department and the Coast Guard sought to figure out what aid they could use from abroad. On May 5th, the Department reported that thirteen international offers of aid had been tendered and the government would decide which to accept "in the next two days." Two weeks later, it said that it did not need any of them.
  
  Now, when it is too late, the U.S. has finally accepted Canada's offer of 10,000 feet of boom. In late May it took 14,000 feet from Mexico, two skimmers from Mexico, and skimming systems from Norway and the Netherlands. Too little too late.
  
  Why didn't the Administration act sooner?
  
  Bureaucratic obstacles stopped it and the president was not involved or active enough to sweep them aside.
  
  Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr Christopher T. O'Neil said that "all qualifying offers of assistance have been accepted." But this bureaucratic-speak did not mention that the Jones Act - an isolationist law passed in the 1920s that requires vessels working in American waters to be built and crewed by Americans - disqualified many of the offers of assistance. But Obama could have waived the Jones Act whenever he wanted to.
  
  A Norwegian offer of a chemical dispersant was rejected by the EPA - more bureaucracy.
  
  When Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sought to create sand berms to keep oil away from the coastline, the Washington Post reported that he reached out to "the marine contractor Van Oord and the research institute Deltares...BP pledged $360 million for the plan, but U.S. dredging companies - which have less than one-fifth the capacity of Dutch dredging firms -- objected to foreign companies' participation."
  
  An activist, involved chief executive would have swept aside these impediments and demanded immediate action. He would have ridden roughshod over bureaucratic and political objections and gotten the cleanup underway.
  
  But this president is no executive. He is a legislator - he is now pushing new environmental legislation. He is a lawyer - his Attorney General is investigating criminal charges against BP. He is a populist - he is quick to blame BP. He is a big spender - he wants a fund to pay the spill's victims. He is all of these things. But he is no chief executive and that, unfortunately, is the job he was elected to do.
  
  
  By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
  
  Published on DickMorris.com on June 14, 2010
• jhay78

  

  How can anyone argue with this part of the article?
  

  But this president is no executive. He is a legislator - he is now pushing new environmental legislation. He is a lawyer - his Attorney General is investigating criminal charges against BP. He is a populist - he is quick to blame BP. He is a big spender - he wants a fund to pay the spill's victims. He is all of these things. But he is no chief executive and that, unfortunately, is the job he was elected to do.

• j_crazy

  

  bigmanbt;390335 wrote:Funny you should say that. After reading this article, I'm uncertain whether this was an accident or not. http://www.infowars.com/evidence-points-to-bp-oil-spill-false-flag/
  
  Excerpt from the article:
  
  "Possible prior knowledge of the explosion is also evident via huge dumping of stocks and shares in the weeks and days prior to the incident.
  
  Goldman Sachs dumped 44% of its shares in BP Oil during the first quarter – shares that subsequently lost 36 percent of their value, equating to $96 million.
  
  Other asset management firms also sold huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter. Though the amounts pale in comparison to Goldman’s holdings, Wachovia, owned by Wells Fargo, sold 98% of its shares in BP and Swiss bank UBS sold 97% of its BP shares.
  
  Furthermore, as reported by the London Telegraph on June 5th, Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the spill."
  
  This is insider trading at the very least by the private banking cartels, but don't expect the puppets in office to prosecute them. Furthermore, the slow capping process and the push for the carbon tax make it seem pretty iffy on whether this was intentionally blown up or not. Something to think about at least.

  
  
  in a related story, i just sold my nabisco stock. tomorrow the poison ritz crackers start to pop up. mark it.
• IggyPride00

  

  Government officials raise estimate of oil spewing from a well in the Gulf of Mexico to 35,000-60,000 barrels per day.

  Just saw this on the AP.
  
  Kind of amazing (note the sarcasm) that the original estimate of 1-5,000 barrels happened to be just a little off.
  
  At those flow rates, and a potential fine of between $1,000-$4,3000 per barrel (that would be billions of dollars by now) leak imposed by laws that govern such things, one can understand why BP did everything possible to downplay and avoid ever getting an accurate estimate of the flowrate.
• BoatShoes

  caught the last beat of BHO's speech from the oval office and I personally thought he spent waaay too much time talking about the new environmental policy goals but I only saw the last bit of the speech.
• majorspark

  

  Here is an article that exemplifies my problem with Oboma and the feds response to this oil spill. While they dilly around preparing their legal and political assault on BP oil pours into the gulf. Governors of Louisiana and Alabama are expressing frustration with the federal bureaucratic hurdles they are fighting to overcome. In this article oil cleaning barges were halted by the coast guard because some minor regulations (proper fire extinguishers) may not have been up to snuff.
  
  Here is where Obama needs to step in and remove these bureaucratic hurdles. More federal government is not needed, instead we need Less and more efficient federal government. Obama needs to take an ax to the bureaucratic mess and free the governors from it and let them do what they can within the resources their state has. Work as a team instead of continuing with the who has more authority pissing matches. Utter bullshit.
  
  http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-gov-bobby-jindals-wishes-crude/story?id=10946379&page=1

  Eight days ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters. Today, against the governor's wishes, those barges sat idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.
  Louisiana Governor Jindal frustrated over decision-making red tape.
  
  "It's the most frustrating thing," the Republican governor said today in Buras, La. "Literally, yesterday morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges."
  
  Watch "World News" for David Muir's report from Louisiana tonight.
  
  Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP's oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.
  
  "These barges work. You've seen them work. You've seen them suck oil out of the water," said Jindal
  
  So why stop now?
  
  "The Coast Guard came and shut them down," Jindal said. "You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, 'Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.'"
  
  A Coast Guard representative told ABC News today that it shares the same goal as the governor.
  
  "We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.
  
  But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.
  
  Louisiana Governor Couldn't Overrule Coast Guard
  
  The governor said he didn't have the authority to overrule the Coast Guard's decision, though he said he tried to reach the White House to raise his concerns.
  
  "They promised us they were going to get it done as quickly as possible," he said. But "every time you talk to someone different at the Coast Guard, you get a different answer."
  
  After Jindal strenuously made his case, the barges finally got the go-ahead today to return to the Gulf and get back to work, after more than 24 hours of sitting idle.
  
  In Alabama today, Gov. Bob Riley said that he's had problems with the Coast Guard, too.
  
  Riley, R-Ala., asked the Coast Guard to find ocean boom tall enough to handle strong waves and protect his shoreline.
  
  The Coast Guard went all the way to Bahrain to find it, but when it came time to deploy it?
  
  "It was picked up and moved to Louisiana," Riley said today.
  
  The governor said the problem is there's still no single person giving a "yes" or "no." While the Gulf Coast governors have developed plans with the Coast Guard's command center in the Gulf, things begin to shift when other agencies start weighing in, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
  
  "It's like this huge committee down there," Riley said, "and every decision that we try to implement, any one person on that committee has absolute veto power."

• David St. Hubbins

  

  When President Obama last month announced his six-month deepwater moratorium, he pointed to an Interior Department report of new "safety" recommendations. That report prominently noted that the recommendations it contained—including the six-month drilling ban—had been "peer-reviewed" by "experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." It also boasted that Interior "consulted with a wide range" of other experts. The clear implication was that the nation's drilling brain trust agreed a moratorium was necessary.
  
  As these columns reported last week, the opposite is true. In a scathing document, eight of the "experts" the Administration listed in its report said their names had been "used" to "justify" a "political decision." The draft they reviewed had not included a six-month drilling moratorium. The Administration added that provision only after it had secured sign-off. In their document, the eight forcefully rejected a moratorium, which they argued could prove more economically devastating than the oil spill itself and "counterproductive" to "safety."

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704198004575311033371466938.html?KEYWORDS=crude+politics
  
  Turns out the moratorium was only added after the review by industry experts. Meanwhile, all the safest, most modern rigs will be the first to head overseas where the government isn't this stupid.
• jhay78

  

  David St. Hubbins;394278 wrote:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704198004575311033371466938.html?KEYWORDS=crude+politics
  
  Turns out the moratorium was only added after the review by industry experts. Meanwhile, all the safest, most modern rigs will be the first to head overseas where the government isn't this stupid.

  
  Pretty much summarizes where Obama's coming from:
  

  All of this matters because it offers proof the moratorium was driven by politics, not safety. The drilling ban was not reviewed by experts, and was not necessary to satisfy most of the safety recommendations in Mr. Salazar's report. It was authored by political actors so Mr. Obama could look tough.

• IggyPride00

  

  Chief of BP drilling partner Anadarko says oil rig explosion resulted from "BP's reckless decisions and actions."

  This just was posted by the AP.
  
  The process of throwing BP under the buss has now officially commenced that those in the industry are now jumping on the government's bandwagon.
• j_crazy

  

  IggyPride00;394551 wrote:This just was posted by the AP.
  
  The process of throwing BP under the buss has now officially commenced that those in the industry are now jumping on the government's bandwagon.

  
  to be fair, Anadarko is on the hook for 25% of the spill's costs and I'm 100% positive this statement is just the 1st in what will be a lengthy battle that is sure to end up in court over exactly how much of these costs Andarko will have to pay.
  
  most oil companies not affiliated with this calamity are trying to do just that, stay the fuck away. you think Exxon's CEO wants to answer questions about what BP's Standard Operating Procedures are? Now when the investigation is over and we know exactly why this happened (obviously poor well design led to the blowout, but why wasn't it contained?) I'm sure the oil industry will throw whoever is liable under the bus. Cameron, Halliburton, BP, Transocean, and Weatherford need to be on notice, because at least 1 of them will be made into a pariah when this thing shakes out.
• majorspark

  

  Here we go again, the federal beaurocracy standing in the way of efforts to contain the spill and protect the coastline in the gulf. Like I said before, the president should be clearing out the idiotic beaurocratic hurdles and needless pissing matches. Now is the time to let the people who care most about the gulf and have the most at stake (those that live there) have a little freedom to do what they think needs to be done to save their coastline and livelyhoods.
  
  http://www.wdsu.com/news/23997498/detail.html
  

  The federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.
  
  The berms are meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department has concerns about where the dredging is being done.
  
  Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who was one of the most vocal advocates of the dredging plan, has sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the work to continue.
  
  Nungesser said the government has asked crews to move the dredging site two more miles farther off the coastline.
  
  "Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil," Nungesser wrote to Obama. "Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil.
  
  Nungesser has asked for the dredging to continue for the next seven days, the amount of time it would take to move the dredging operations two miles and out resume work.
  
  Work is scheduled to halt at midnight Wednesday.
  
  The California dredge located off the Chandelier Islands has pumped more than 50,000 cubic yards of material daily to create a sand berm, according to Plaquemines Parish officials.
  
  Nungesser's letter includes an emotional plea to the president.
  
  "Please don't let them shut this dredge down," he wrote. "This requires your immediate attention!"

• Tiernan

  An unmanned submarine bumped into the top-cap containment mechanism early this morning and the well has increased its discharge in the Gulf once again. BP & Coast Guard officials are saying it could be 48 hrs before they can re-position the top-cap again.
• ptown_trojans_1

  

  Tiernan;398727 wrote:An unmanned submarine bumped into the top-cap containment mechanism early this morning and the well has increased its discharge in the Gulf once again. BP & Coast Guard officials are saying it could be 48 hrs before they can re-position the top-cap again.

  
  That has fail written all over it.
  Ugh.
• cbus4life

  Wow. Brilliant.
• IggyPride00

  

  
  
  NASA just released this picture of the Gulf and it is really sad to look at.
• fish82

  

  Damn...that's pretty creepy.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  Yet more proof that Obama and the federal government have been all but criminally negligent in getting all resources into the Gulf as quickly as possible to clean things up.
  
  http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/27/day-68-why-isnt-the-a-whale-in-the-gulf-yet/
• ptown_trojans_1

  

  Writerbuckeye;403858 wrote:Yet more proof that Obama and the federal government have been all but criminally negligent in getting all resources into the Gulf as quickly as possible to clean things up.
  
  http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/27/day-68-why-isnt-the-a-whale-in-the-gulf-yet/

  
  This whole debacle is showing bureaucracies at their very worst. Awful.