Jun 12 2010
Obama Is Flailing, Lying And Forging Over Gulf Spill
After who knows how many holes of golf since the Gulf oil spill erupted, President Obama is going to meet with the wrong leader of BP on Tuesday. He’s meeting the Chairman of the Board who has not been working the oil spill, instead of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tony Hayward who is leading the BP response efforts. It seems are young and inexperienced President doesn’t even know who in BP to talk to. Why is he avoiding Tony Hayward ? Is he afraid his teleprompter will not impress?
Worse yet, Obama is now flailing around and starting to out right lie. Initially his first tact was to take full responsibility:
He wanted to be seen as in charge, but his schedule was clear – he was focused like a laser beam on anything BUT the oil spill for the first couple of weeks.
So his claim of being in charge and being responsible is laughable. But just yesterday he did an interview where he out and out lied while dodging responsibility:
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.â€
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.
Apparently our young and clueless leader can’t distinguish from leading the fight to stop a disaster and then lead the clean up from its after math versus telling everyone what health insurance they are required to buy and what food they should be eating. Our president doesn’t understand that government wasting time on marginal and busy-body feel good projects (like building dog runs as an economic stimulus plan) is not preparing and planning for the time when it is needed to do its job.
But the lie is still there, as if his administration had NOTHING to do with the lax rules and ramped up oil drilling in the Gulf. Rolling Stone Magazine put the lie to that myth just the other day – apparently the young administration missed the memo before they went out on this finger pointing stunt:
Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world’s largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to “catastrophic†errors. In a May 19th letter to Salazar, 26 congressmen called for the rig to be shut down immediately. “We are very concerned,†they wrote, “that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis.â€
The administration’s response to the looming threat? According to an e-mail to a congressional aide from a staff member at MMS, the agency has had “zero contact†with Atlantis about its safety risks since the Deepwater rig went down.
…
And instead of putting the brakes on new offshore drilling, Salazar immediately throttled it up to record levels. Even though he had scrapped the Bush plan, Salazar put 53 million offshore acres up for lease in the Gulf in his first year alone – an all-time high.
Obama’s administration expanded offshore drilling so much it stretched thin the small pool of seasoned and safe workers and inspectors. They authorized BP to bypass innumerable safety requirements which may have prevented all of this and they HAVE NOT gone back to other drilling sites to stop those which also do not include standard safety features. And somehow this is the Tea Party’s fault?
Mr. President: the Tea Party opposes your health care debacle and unlimited deficits. It did not force you to screw up on gulf oil safety.
And this is not the only time Team Obama has lied to the public. They sent out a memo as a cover to a scientific study that made a claim the scientists never supported. They did this by having the scientists review and concur with the underlying report and memo, then they changed the cover memo before sending it to the press:
The seven experts who advised President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion are accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported a six-month drilling moratorium — something they actually oppose.
…
[Secretary of the Interior] Salazar’s report to Obama said a panel of seven experts “peer reviewed” his recommendations, which included a six-month moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using floating rigs and an immediate halt to drilling operations.
“None of us actually reviewed the memorandum as it is in the report,” oil expert Ken Arnold told Fox News. “What was in the report at the time it was reviewed was quite a bit different in its impact to what there is now. So we wanted to distance ourselves from that recommendation.”
Salazar apologized to those experts Thursday.
Tea Obama forged the results. Not just fudged or lied, but forged the lie by putting the scientists’ names to the lie. Where is Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson when a President’s team actually produces and then apologizes for a forgery?
And let’s not kid ourselves. This President is lost at sea. He is NOT focused on the crisis or the poor souls impacted by it. He couldn’t even delay his flight to a CA fundraiser so he could attend a memorial for those lost in the original explosion:
According his official schedule, President Obama did not attend the May 25 memorial service in Jackson, Mississippi for the workers who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion because he was en route to a fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, in San Francisco.
He’s so aloof he’s frigid and heartless. It fits his pattern over the last 7+ weeks. He is all pomp, no circumstance.
Hillary was right, we do not want this President and his young team of amateurs answering the phones at 3 AM. All he does in response to a crisis is look busy and point fingers – while pretending to be in charge.
As to his attending the memorial service, I tend to agree with what I have read elsewhere that as long as he had spoken with the relatives it serves little purpose for him to intrude on their service and turn it into a media photo op.
It is a time for the families and their friends to gain closure and not be part of a dog and pony show.
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[…] Rudy Giuliani takes on Obama’s schizophrenic absence of leadership. And AJ Strata (with some help from Rolling Stone), points out the reality behind the crazy man’s rant. […]
It is surprising that there has been no outcry about giving BP the contracts to drill oil in the gulf. When Salazar jumped up production the administration gave these contracts to BP, a foreign corporation. The Obama administration also went to court to clear the way for the Deep Horizon production so they are cullpable as BP. Hallibuton testified they recommened 21 safety measures but BP only implemented 6. Why? Why not give theswe contracts to American companies who would hire American citizens and have the revenue from this oil production stay in the US?? Mainly because of the donations BP made to Obama’s campaign. and who knows how much that was since he has not been forced to publish a list of donors of any kind. When he enforces this 6-month moratorium, will BP be exempt? What is all this but eliminating BP’s competition? Well worth the money spent is my opinion.
The time has come for all of us to realize this has been deliberate. It is not a case of imcompetency. No one is this stupid. He refused all help. He has done absolutely nothing to stop the oil from coming to shore. He was given all sorts of solutions but used none of them. He has definitely not implemented the plan put in place after the Exxon Valdez tragedy. He has done absolutely nothing but party and play golf and go to fundraisers, just another kind of party. Have you noticed the media is silent about his non taking responsibility. Their boy is on the ropes and they are still protecting him.
I knew he would be a disaster for this country but even I am appalled at his effort to destroy this country. Does he not want to do anything on the gulf because he regards it as a white rich man’s vacation spot? Or is it a case of he wants to bankrupt the states on the gulf in order to have his “boot on their necks” as he described about BP? States rights is the only thing stopping him from taking over the whole country and if he bankrupts all the states or even most of them, he can put strings on any help the feds give the state forcing them to give up their rights.
AJ, I’ll put up with frigid and heartless. Obama could make strengths of those. I know I could.
But Obama is weak, dishonest, corrupt, and incompetent. If he IS competent, it’s in wrecking the country.
Never let a crisis go to waste…….
The media and Dems exploited the crisis that was Hurricane Katrina to their political advantage, as they always do. now, when he has his own crisis he, and the media will exploit it again. To the informed the double standard is obvious…but what makes this so much worse is something I heard the other day…..
When Katrina happened it was a State disaster, to be handled by the State with assistance from the Feds as requested by the State….which of course the informed knew then. The oil spill occurred in federal waters which makes the response from day one required from the Federal level…which makes this entirely King Obama’s problem. But he will use it to further his political agenda and socialist remaking of America. And of course, blame Bush.
When the libs and the media (sorry for being redundent) turned the tables and used Katrina to bash Bush they set the tone. One was a natural disaster and the oil spill was an accident…..but they set the precedent…..this one is ALL Obama’s.
“…Obama is weak, dishonest, corrupt, and incompetent. ”
And those are his good qualities.
Barbara, I am agreeing with you on this post and the previous post by AJ on “Failure”. It all seems very deliberate…and “stealthy”, imho.
Imho, this administration is going to suffer the wrath of Alinsky’s Rule #13 now: highlight, isolate, ridicule, destroy. And it will be of it’s own doing. As they say, every dog has it’s day.
And I want to know who are the 31% in the Rasmussen polls who continue to support the hard Left policies?
[…] The Strata-Sphere – Obama Is Flailing, Lying And Forging Over Gulf Spill […]
“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.
My jaw just hit the ground when I read the above.
What on earth is Obama thinking??? Is he going to try the same blame game when a cat 5 hurricane hits the east coast? Or a successful act of terrorism occurs? Does he NOT know that the oil spill is a National Emergency, like an earthquake or hurricane, and everyone (including conservatives) would expect the federal government to respond??!!
You’re right, AJ. Obama is a big FAILURE!
There is the small matter of the U.S. Constitution – Article 1 Section 9
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Congress can’t do too much to change current law that will affect BP regarding the Gulf.
Thanks to Obama’s jawboning, virtually anything that even vaguely looks punitive will scream “Bill of Attainderâ€.