Obama: Some in Congress hypocritical on spill

[kpete]

Source: Politico

President Barack Obama said Friday that some members of Congress are being hypocritical when it comes to blaming the White House for its handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an interview with POLITICO, the president said: “I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending.”

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

“Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much,” Obama said. “Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.”



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38447.html#ixzz38D8q0PyN

[nashville_brook]

1. the problem with this is that it shows that his "leadership" is a function of political polling

he's saying -- come on guys, make up YOUR mind. well, that's not their job. everyone in the whole wide world is going to find fault with some aspect of the president's actions -- he must lead nonetheless.

[Frances]

2. So it's Obama's fault

that tea baggers and GOP are hypocrites?

[HughMoran]

5. Every negative occurance is Obama's fault

[Toots]

30. But but but what about Clinton's cock????

:shrug:

[nashville_brook]

14. no - it's his fault for leading as if Teabag-GOPers are ever going to support him.

[Kahuna]

17. Oh brother...Now I've heard it all..

:silly:

[asjr]

3. This is why I love that man! He calls them

as he sees them and is not afraid to do it. It really show the stupidity of the ones he is calling out.

[polichick]

4. True - that's why it's best to stop trying to please them, Mr. President. nt

[boomerbust]

6. Not only that

But look at the states most affected by this disaster. Texas, La.,Alabama, Mississippi, Florida. The governors of these states were the biggest whiners railing against the evil federal government. Now all you hear is "Where the fuck is the federal government". A little bit of karma always seems to bite these right wing morons.

[No Elephants]

7. But, you did NOT ask for more regulation. You went for more drilling,

telling us it's much safer now.

[wordpix]

13. that is very true and that's where O himself is at fault, not to mention

he keeps that fucking Salazar in there, who did nothing about MMS for over a year, AND approved BP's permit for this well. :grr:

[Iowa]

15. Exactly.

Lies of omission. But lies nonetheless.

This guy can switch from wearing the corporate Republican mantle to a Democratic "man-of-the-people" mantle as easily we change our socks... whenever it's convenient.

[bahrbearian]

16. Word

[Kall]

21. No kidding!

"If I had done the opposite of what I did..."

[TomCADem]

24. False - WSJ - "Documents Show BP Opposed New, Stricter Safety Rules"

You say that Obama "did NOT ask for more regulation." This is false.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471204575209331720726738.html

As BP PLC defended its handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, documents show it argued against new, stricter safety rules proposed last year by the U.S. agency that oversees offshore drilling.

The British oil giant was one of several companies that wrote to the U.S. Minerals Management Service this past September saying additional regulation of the oil industry was unnecessary. In a letter, BP said the current voluntary system of safety procedures was adequate.

* * *
As BP touted the scale of the cleanup, documents showed that it was one of several companies that opposed efforts to tighten up safety procedures offshore. Last year, the MMS studied more than 1,400 offshore incidents that led to 41 deaths and hundreds of injuries between 2001 and 2007. Many of them, the MMS found, were linked to factors such as communications failures, a lack of written procedures and the failure of supervisors to enforce existing rules, and proposed mandatory requirements to reduce the number of incidents. That would have replaced a system under which many safety procedures were voluntary.

In a letter published on the U.S. government Web site Regulations.gov, Richard Morrison, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico production, wrote that while BP "is supportive of companies having a system in place to reduce risk, accidents, injuries and spills, we are not supportive of the extensive, prescriptive regulations as proposed in this rule."

[HughMoran]

8. He and other Democrats ought to beat this drum daily until November

I'm sick and tired of the hypocrisy.

[Democat]

28. Democrats should run TV ads showing the hypocrisy!

It would help to undermine any trust that voters have in Republicans.

They say one thing one day, and another the next day.

Democrats need to destroy the Republican brand at all cost.

I wish we had some really aggressive and fearless Democrats to promote this issue. It's a winner for our side!

[David Zephyr]

9. Obama needs to do more of this. All Democrats need to do more of this.

A lot more.

[Vattel]

10. He's right of course, but why didn't he go to Congress

and say that we need to "crack down a lot harder on oil companies . . ." Try leading Mr. President.

[Uncle Joe]

11. I agree, kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[Geek_Girl]

12. Obama should ignore the tea baggers. He is never ever going to win them over no matter what he does

If he is governing based on some crazy notion that he can win them over then he's a moron. These people will never agree with him or support anything he does. For them it's a bout race and the fact he is a democrat.

[Edweird]

18. Oh, well, now it's perfectly reasonable to allow oil to destroy the ecosystem.

Why didn't Obama just say so in the first place?
What's a few dead dolphins and out of work fishermen among friends? Especially when there's political posturing to be done and 'points' to be 'won'.

[Bert]

19. Wah

That's some Obama leadership for you. Maybe he should wait a year and then get in front of it like he did with health care. Way to fuck something up that should have been a gimmee for the democratic party. Good job.

[wbdunne]

20. bravo

way to go mr. O!

[bondwooley]

22. I'm glad to see him being his rational self...

... and I hope he stops listening to the people who want him to take on this crisis like a Bush-era maniac.

This is my video response:

http://www.pledge-drive.com/lestercharlieseries/toochillforthespill.html

[Shining Jack]

23. K&R

What an absolute fiasco.:(

[flyarm]

25. Takes one to know one!!

Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf
Source: McClatchy



By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama's vow that his administration would launch a "relentless response effort" to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling.

The exemptions, known as "categorical exclusions," were granted by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, or MMS, and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a British Petroleum exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.

"Is there a moratorium on offshore drilling or not?" asked Peter Galvin, the conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration's continued approval of the exemptions. "Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred, and nothing appears to have changed."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/07/9376 ...




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.....remember Dashle who pushed Obama during our primaries..and was one of his top advisors...........working with Whitman..the lady who lied about the air quality at Ground zero in NY?? Can i tickle your memory..she lied and people died and keep dying!! And that is just one example..

Spill, Baby, Spill
By Michael Isikoff, Ian Yarett and Matthew Philips | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 10, 2010

BP has been trying hard to burnish its public image in recent years after being hit with a pair of environmental disasters, including a fatal refinery explosion in Texas and a pipeline leak in Alaska. One major step was to announce, in 2007, that it had hired a high-powered advisory board that included former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and Leon Panetta, who were each paid $120,000 a year. (Panetta left when he became President Obama's CIA director.) Two years ago the oil giant's chief executive, Robert Malone, flew board members out to the Gulf of Mexico on a helicopter to demonstrate the safeguards surrounding BP's advanced drilling technology. "We got a sense they were really committed to ensuring they got it right," Whitman told NEWSWEEK.

Now BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, finds itself blamed for what could prove to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. And only weeks after Obama announced an ambitious plan to open up more U.S. offshore waters to oil drilling, shunting aside environmental concerns from his own Democratic Party, his administration is facing a comeuppance from hell. "There was a lot of wishful thinking, I guess," says Villy Kourafalou, a scientist at the University of Miami's Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "The new technologies were said to be so wonderful that we'd never have an oil spill again." Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who had sought to block the expanded drilling, says the oil and gas industry was pushing this idea hard. "They said, 'We'll never have a repeat of Santa Barbara,'?" referring to the 1969 rig explosion off the California coast. Both the Bush and Obama administrations "were buying the line that the technology was fine," Pallone adds.

BP pressed hard to make that point in D.C. Its PR efforts included payments of $16 million last year to a battery of Washington lobbyists, among them the firm of Tony Podesta, the brother of former Obama transition chief John Podesta. Last fall, after the U.S. Interior Department proposed tighter federal regulation of oil companies' environmental programs, David Rainey, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico exploration, told Congress that the proposal was unnecessary. "I think we need to remember," he said, that offshore drilling "has been going on for the last 50 years, and it has been going on in a way that is both safe and protective of the environment."

Read the full article at:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237298

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and never forget this..we Floridans won't!!!


YouTube - Barack Obama on Offshore Oil Drilling ( to Florida voters while asking for their votes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8fkbEuCQss ...


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Obama: “Oil Rigs Today Generally Don’t Cause Spills”


Obama Repeats Katrina Oil Spill Myth To Defend Offshore Drilling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm8gLmuTvJ4 ... ...


By: David Dayen Thursday April 29, 2010 1:42 pm

snip:

What a difference 18 days makes. Here was Barack Obama, on April 2, before the BP oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming that oil rigs are safe to justify his position on offshore drilling:

I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

Not only does this quote look ridiculous in hindsight, it wasn’t true at the time, as Brad Johnson points out:

Obama’s claim that oil rigs did not cause any spills during Hurricane Katrina is simply false, as the Wonk Room reported in June, 2008, when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other conservatives made the same false claim:

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused 124 Offshore Spills For A Total Of 743,700 Gallons. 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused Six Offshore Spills Of 42,000 Gallons Or Greater. The largest of these was 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a “major spill.”

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/04/29/oba ... ... ’t-cause-spills/


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Government to Oil Plume Discovery Team: Shut Up


Government to Oil Plume Discovery Team: Shut Up | The Seminal

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/48816 ...

Government to Oil Plume Discovery Team: Shut Up
By: Jim White Tuesday May 18, 2010 6:06 am


The research vessel Pelican. (photo: Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium)

On Saturday, the New York Times brought the world’s attention to the discovery by a team of researchers on the the vessel Pelican that there are large underwater plumes of oil emanating from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Remarkably, the response of the government to the attention focused on this discovery has been to tell the researchers to stop granting interviews with the press. At the same time, the blog on which the researchers had been providing updates has also fallen silent since Saturday.

Pensacola television station WEAR filed a report (video at the link) on the oil plume and broke the news about the scientists being muzzled by the government:

Over the weekend, a research crew from the University of Southern Mississippi found evidence that there are 3 to 5 plumes… About 5 miles wide, 10 miles long and 3 hundred feet in depth.

But after giving that information to the press, the lead researcher now says he has been asked by the federal government… Which funds his research… To quit giving interviews until further testing is done.

What an interesting change of course for the government. Even the government’s website on the Deepwater Horizon response had been touting the mission of the Pelican as recently as May 6:

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Wackenhut in the Gulf guarding BP & US 'Command ' Center - (The Nation, Jeremy Scahill, 5/29)

Edited on Sat May-29-10 09:54 PM by chill_wind


BP and US Government 'Command Center' Guarded by Company From Afghan Embassy Hazing Scandal
Jeremy Scahill

I just got off the phone with my friends Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," and her husband Avi Lewis, host of al Jazeera English's popular program Fault Lines. They are traveling around the devastated US Gulf reporting on the horrific disaster caused by BP's massive oil spill. They described to me a run in that they just had with the private security company Wackenhut, which apparently has been hired to do the perimeter security for the "Deepwater Horizon Unified Command." The "Unified Command" is run jointly by BP and several US government agencies including the US Coast Guard, the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security.



Wackenhut, of course, is the notorious private security company that operates in the US and around the globe. It recently became part of the huge British mercenary network G4S. Most recently, Wackenhut gained global infamy for the conduct of guards from its subsidiary Armor Group after it was revealed by whistleblowers that the company created a "Lord of the Flies environment" at the embassy "in which guards and supervisors are 'peeing on people, eating potato chips out of cracks, vodka shots out of cracks... brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity." According to the Project on Government Oversight, "Multiple guards say this deviant hazing has created a climate of fear and coercion, with those who declined to participate often ridiculed, humiliated, demoted, or even fired. The result is an environment that is dangerous and volatile. Some guards have reported barricading themselves in their rooms for fear that those carrying out the hazing will harm them physically."

In other words, Wackenhut is the perfect choice to "guard" the joint BP-US government-US military operation in the Gulf.

Lewis told me that for two weeks his crew has attempted to interview officials from the Unified Command's Joint Information Center. "We had been shut down or dodged for 2 weeks of official requests," he said. Finally, Lewis and Klein, who is on assignment for The Guardian, decided to go to the information center in person "to try to nail something down."




the rest: http://www.thenation.com/blog/bp-and-us-go ... ...

" It is completely sci-fi. It's a corporate state." -- from the article
Klein, who spent extensive time in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina documenting the widespread disaster profiteering and privatization that endures to this day said the fact that Wackenhut is guarding a joint operation of the US government and BP is not surprising given what is happening in the Gulf right now. "The whole Gulf Coast is a corporate oil state," she told me. "It's like BP broke it, so now they own the entire Gulf Coast." She added: "We might accept the premise that BP is best positionioned to know how to fix the blow up at 5,000 feet, but that also seems to mean they think they should control media access and the entire clean up of a massive national emergency. BP is in charge of everything. We were on the water in open seas the day before the Wackenhut incident and a boat pulls up next to us and asked if we worked for BP and we said, "No," and they said, 'You can't be here.'" It is completely sci-fi. It's a corporate state."

[saracat]

26. Obama is right on this. However that doesn't mean he has displayed the leadership necessary.

The fact he is correct about their hypocrisy doesn't explain why he doesn't fire Salazar and bring competent folks into interior and M+M and let the public know about it. Salazar "promised" to clean up M+M a year ago. and the WH admits the contracts continued AFTER the spill. This situation was an accident waiting to happen and everyone knew.

[flyarm]

27. BP's Gulf spill plan outdated, error-filled

"Lutz is listed as a go-to wildlife specialist at the University of Miami. But Lutz, an eminent sea turtle expert, left Miami almost 20 years ago to chair the marine biology department at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He died four years before the plan was published."
BP's Gulf spill plan outdated, error-filled

BP's Gulf spill plan outdated, error-filled

By JUSTIN PRITCHARD, TAMARA LUSH and HOLBROOK MOHR
The Associated Press

Published: June 9th, 2010 10:32 PM
Last Modified: June 12th, 2010 11:38 AM

VENICE, La. - Professor Peter Lutz is listed in BP's 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.



Under the heading "sensitive biological resources," the plan lists marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals. None lives anywhere near the Gulf.

The names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are no longer in service.

BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig are riddled with omissions and glaring errors, according to an Associated Press analysis that details how BP officials have been making it up as they go along. The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one.

"Look, it's obvious to everybody in south Louisiana that they didn't have a plan, they didn't have an adequate plan to deal with this spill," said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. "They didn't anticipate the (blowout preventer) failure. They didn't anticipate this much oil hitting our coast. From the very first days, they kept telling us, ‘Don't worry, the oil's not going to make it to your coast.' "

In the spill scenarios detailed in the BP's exploration plan, fish, marine mammals and birds escape serious harm; beaches remain pristine; water quality is only a temporary problem. And those are the projections for a leak about 10 times worse than what has been calculated for the ongoing disaster.

There are other wildly false assumptions in the documents. BP's proposed method to calculate spill volume judging by the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.

The Gulf's loop current, which is projected to help eventually send oil hundreds of miles around Florida's southern tip and up the Atlantic coast, isn't mentioned in either plan.


Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/06/09/1315823/bp-c-plan.html

[tavalon]

29. Um, Pot, meet Kettle

You've been all over the map, Mr. President.