Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 11, 2010

So, if you want the government to do more in this situation, I have one word: nationalization.

Whoa, let’s not go nuts here …

the Gulf will still be there, even if it is no longer in a form useful to humanity or the other creatures living in, and around it. it’s like saying global warming will destroy the planet. it may destroy us, but the planet will continue quite nicely.

You’re doing great, Duke; BP is coming up with one great idea after the other. Unfortunately, the only great thing about each idea is the clever name; it would be more impressive if any of them worked.

Hmmm….trading barbs with the White House doesn’t seem to be fixing the leak, though.

Depends on which leak you’re trying to fix…

Interesting. While not attacking Obama per se, GT certainly has his finger on the pulse of the public’s perception that Obama’s behind the scenes meetings have less than stellar effectiveness.

Are we hardwired or conditioned to think that photo op “action” is more effective or is it physical action is so much easier to “spin”?

I will say though that I wish he would be much more assertive on insisting on getting at the true facts. He has allowed BP to stonewall reporters, scientists and regulators from accessing data, samples and other info that might make BP look bad. Such as the videos from the underwater cameras to discredit the ridiculously low estimate of the flow rate to BP current refusal to allow samples of the oil to compare to the huge underwater plume [and that BP is in total denial]! It shouldn’t strain the powers of the presidency very much to remove some of the complacency and arrogance that seems to be BP’s m.o.

We should plug the leak with spammers.

And speaking of “spin”, the NY Times (06-09-10) has completely destroyed their credibility. In reporting on the Republican primary here in Calif, reporter Carl Hulse wrote:

”Ms. Whitman … had invested[!] a small share of her personal fortune to prevail in the governor’s race over Steve Poizner … who put $24 million of his own money into his primary campaign.”

Although the statement is factually true it is highly misleading. It leaves out a “minor” little fact: Billionaire Whitman’s “small share” was $71 million! Almost three times what Poizner threw in! A much different picture than what was published. It is sad when a supposedly unbiased news reporter becomes a spin doctor.

And note - this was only the primary. Who knows how much she will ”invest” in the actual election.

Something to think about: Usually one “invests” in something hoping to get a positive return on that investment. Since the governorship only pays a $100K or so, where is the “return” coming from??? What is her motivation for seeking the office??? She has not previously exhibited any altruistic or civic minded tendencies. Quite the contrary. (She hasn’t even voted in 30 - 40 years!) Hmmm. Hang on to your wallets California!!!

^Paraphrasing the Notebooks of Lazarus Long: “Power is a powerful aphrodisiac; flowers work almost as well.”

IIRC, the original was ‘Money’, which we are seeing, is interchangeable with Power. Much like Matter and Energy. So, E=MC^2 is analogous to P=$C^2.

Except, somehow, PG&E’s money hasn’t bought them a 2/3-vote monopoly (CA-Prop-16). Watch for their next trick, soon!

Not so sure what you expect Obama to do. He is not a drilling engineer; and he is pushing BP (who initially downplayed the potential destructiveness; then recanted when they saw with their own little piggy eyes that it could not be denied.) But BP aside, Transoceanic was the contractor, and we hear almost nothing about their liability in all this. Stop pointing fingers as to who wanted offshore drilling, why & which administration (“drill baby drill” is a Palin comment…) and work together to help the stop the leak & clean up the mess!

Sulker, the NY Times publishes everything that’s “fit to print”, as their motto clearly states. This refers to the organization’s discernment and discrimination in choosing what to present to their readership, and how. It”s nothing new.

I don’t know anything about the recent California political races, but I do know that their legislature is stuffed with feel-good “altruists” and union thugs, all bloodsuckers who have driven what should be the most viable state in the nation into backruptsy. Arnold gave it a good try at first, but he was over his head and decided it was easier to swm with the current after all. Whoever’s going to save that state can’t worry about giving sweet “altruistic” speeches… they need to give that state’s infrastrucuture a forced enema.

My My The New York Times might distort a news story? Say it ain’t so Joe. Why that paper is so intent on the truth, they fear a comic page that might question the liberal gospel. If they say it’s fit to print, they print it in a manner that the public can believe. Why I can’t think of another paper so truthful in NY, ‘cept maybe that tabloid, the—-.

With you on that one pbarnrob. But what is scary is that 48% of the voters bought PG&E’s “right to vote” spin.

Speaking of money though, why would a person who is neither altruistic nor civic-mined “invest” $71 million of her own money to try buy a governorship that pays about $100K per year? Ego? Revenge?

Avolunteer, No I wouldn’t want Obama to play engineer. I do believe that the oil company engineers are far more skilled and better equipped to handle the technical aspects of stopping the leak than our government or military. The front line engineers and workmen are truly doing the best they can to quell the leak. It is the people at the top of BP and Haliburton with their cozy relationships with the Bush era regulators (here, here and here), who cut safety corners and are more concerned about PR and CYA than ethics or ecology, that I don’t trust or respect.

What I had hoped for and do want Obama to do is to walk the talk of transparency and stand up to BP’s stonewalling and denials of the scope of the problem. I also want him to aggressively cut through bureaucracy and remove roadblocks getting in the way of the problem solvers.

The presidential office ought to have enough power to force BP to disclose the true size of the leak (we now know it is upwards of 30,000 barrels per day which was known or suspected weeks ago but denied by BP), to allow access to oil samples by scientists, to fund and facilitate the study of the huge undersea oil plume resulting from the leak, to make sure that it is the affected fishermen that get the jobs to skim the oil rather than pleasure boat owners, to prod the agencies to expedite the analysis of building sand bars to protect the marshes, etc.

I appreciate his idealism but right now I want decisiveness and leadership. Is this too much to ask???

“paralysis of analysis”

so if the president allows for free enterprise to fix their own problems …as libeterians are constanly shouting should happen…he is a slow, inadeqaute responder.. if he steps in and takes comand he is a faciest dictator… This was not a natural disaster. it was man made. it was made by a forgin country. no one is demanding England to step up and do the right thing. Insted England is washing their hands. BP is acting like a victim. .and all poloticians in the US forget they passed lax regulations that would have prevented the spill in the first place.

A little light reading from an investment publication ……………

The U.S. government is set to kill offshore drilling… and hand a gift to a niche group of energy producers.

For more than a month, people all over the world have watched the Deepwater Horizon debacle develop into one of the worst environmental disasters of all time.

BP, the oil giant operating the rig, has tried several methods to plug the hole. Thus far, none have worked. Its next step is to drill two “relief wells” on the sides of the existing well to intercept the oil. Once the oil is intercepted, the leak will be plugged.

There’s a high probability the relief wells will work. By August, the leak should be contained.

However, looking ahead, I see terrible times for the offshore industry. That’s great news for Canada’s oil sands.

On May 27, the government suspended offshore exploratory drilling for at least six months. After that ban is lifted, costs will surge as new mandatory safety measures are implemented. Oil producers may have to drill relief wells next to existing wells, also resulting in increased costs.

Offshore drillers will see huge tax hikes. Insurance for rigs will skyrocket. It may not be worth it (based on costs and politics) for Big Oil to allocate tens of millions of dollars into offshore drilling. It’ll be too risky to put money to work in this space.

And for this to happen in the U.S., it’s especially problematic… According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. consumes 20% of the world’s oil. It only has 2% of the world’s reserves, including deposits in the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. is the largest consumer of oil in the world, using about 6.8 billion barrels annually. Earlier this year, the EIA predicted expanded areas for U.S. offshore drilling will yield up to 63 billion barrels of oil. With the new moratorium in place, we know that drilling won’t happen for a long time. That means more than nine years of U.S. oil production could be in jeopardy (63 billion barrels/6.8 billion barrels a year = 9.2 years) due to an increase in offshore regulation.

To feed our appetite for oil, we must tap another source. Sure, we could import more oil from the Middle East. We can also try to increase imports from Mexico and Venezuela. However, the easiest solution is to tap reserves in Canada’s oil sands.

Most Americans don’t know it, but Canada is already our largest supplier of foreign oil. They have monstrous deposits trapped in layers of silt and sand. Canada’s oil sands region holds over 173 billion barrels of oil reserves… second in the world behind Saudi Arabia.

That oil is right on our doorstep, in a country much more politically stable than our other oil suppliers (Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, the Middle East). We already have pipelines in place to transport oil into the U.S. And it’s cheaper to get oil from the oil sands than to get it from deepwater oil areas.

But like most of the world’s large oil patches, anyone interested here will have to compete with China…

On May 13, a subsidiary of China Investment Corporation (CIC) gave Penn West Energy Partners $1.8 billion to develop its oil sands assets in Alberta.

This followed two other major deals over the past 12 months. Sinopec and PetroChina, two of the largest oil producers in China, invested a total of $6.5 billion in Canadian companies Athabasca Oil Sands and Syncrude.

Nemesys, I have no quarrel with the NY Times publishing articles anywhere on the political spectrum. What I did and do take issue with is the unmitigated misleading spin that was published. Leaving out Whitman’s actual dollar expenditure is an intentional falsehood disguised as fact.

This is no different than the story of the Russian reporting on a race saying that the Russian came in second and the American came in next to last. The mental image from that statement alone gets an abrupt turnabout when one learns the missing “minor detail” that it was only a two car race!

Yes, I agree that Sacremento is dysfunctional. I had high hopes for Arnold but even the Terminator was no match for entrenched politicians who’s prime focus is on getting re-elected.

Unfortunately much if not most of the financial dysfunction is locked in the state constitution or citizen propositions. It was mind boggling and unreal to read the tortuous shifting of funds from one account to another in last spring’s to rob Peter to pay Paul attempt to balance the budget. I defy anyone to read these (current) hardcoded laws and be able to truly understand which dollars go where! The vast majority of our spending is dictated by these laws. Anybody who thinks they are going to go in and kick a$$ will find they are whistling Dixie.

Today’s posters seem about equally divided between those who decry the impotence of Obama and BP, and those who blame the media for shielding us from knowing the worst.

Both viewpoints reflect our fears about the future–fears that GT can’t relieve by his satire. Duke’s spin, after all, is merely a parody of our own hopes that the oil spill won’t prove as catastrophic as it looks.

Uh … people …… the technology to fix the problem in the Gulf MAY* be developed in 200 years …. 150 years after developed nations (I would not include the US in that category anymore) have stopped using oil and coal.

What do you morons expect Obama to do? Our nuclear submarines can’t operate beyond 20% of that depth.

THERE IS NO EASY SOLUTION!

My uncle worked on an oil rig, but that’s hardly a reliable source I know. He claimed most of the oil we produce is sold overseas since we have pricing regulations on domestically produced oil. There are no such regulations on imported oil so they can pass the price along to the public.

Of course he also said most of the oil from the Alaskan Pipeline is sold to Japan, and we get most of our oil from Canada, both verifiable facts. You can decide for yourself if you believe it or not. Personally I think we need a law that all oil produced in America or American territory must be sold and used in America, though I agree we use far too much. A lot of that is used by industries like plastics though. They are petrochemical based.

As for stopping the gulf leak, there are hundreds if not thousands of ideas, and it’s hard to know which is best. Marc Steiger in his novel Earthweb had a novel idea for that. How to determine which idea is good? To detailed to explain here but check it out.

We do already have oil eating Algae and Bacteria that die and sink after the oil is eaten though. Is anybody aware of any negative results from using them? I don’t know of any but there must be some since they aren’t being used. Of course the answer to that question could be sheer stupidity, after all they were only demonstrated on National TV. Why would anybody know about them? ^_~

I think the reason Obama appears not to be doing much is there is not much he can do.

The best assets to solveing the prolbem are in the private sector and they are being used.

The Obama administration is looking into prosecuting BP, since it is evident they were negligent since they didn’t have a plan for this type of mess. If they can be prosecuted I am sure that they will be prosecuted. The wheels of justice don’t turn very fast but they can turn. Also, the folks who lost their lives didn’t deserve their fate. Legal action investigation is what they can do and it is what they are doing. Beyond that, the prez can’t put on a superman suit and dive in and fix everything.

http://shockdom.com/open/carl/

I rarely coment on these pages becaue the views are too biased and not worth it. Plus, it provides me the opportunity to listen to these arguments on a subjective level. However, no one addressed that administration is not taking responsibility for anything - which this arc seems to suggest.

Does anyone think that Obama should, at the least, do more than Bush did with the Hurricane in the same region? This was a man made disaster that could have been avoided or that could have been prepared for. Someone should be doing something other than frowning, saying they are not happy about this, but still have time to go to hockey games, family retreats and spend holidays putting off important and pressing time sensetive unresolved issues. Obama is “in charge” of this country, not Palin, not McCain, not Clinton, not Bush, not Regan, not Rush, not Fox news, not BP.

du55, what’s more, our president has told us repeatedly that he is in charge, not BP, and they he has his boot on their neck. Well, if you’re in charge, you need to take responsibility.. being an executive is more than giving orders.. You need to make timely decisions. You need to lead others in finding a solution to shared problems. That is the function of a leader, but what we’re seeing is the response of a senator at best (form a committee) or a community organizer at worst (let’s see how much we can milk out of playing the blame game).

Today’s articles on how the White House manipulated the conclusions on experts’ reports on the oil spill to support their agenda sounds a lot like the second possibility. To them, it’s become simply another Ron Emanuel “You never let a serious crisis go to waste” moment. The irony is that Garry is reporting on BP’s spin factory, which cannot be denied, and yet it’s childish compared to the real spin experts at work on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I could swear I heard the President say he takes full repsonsibility for this since it happened on his watch.

Anyone else hear it or did I have my first senior moment?

Nemesys and some of the other posters seem to equate taking responsibility with producing results.

If President Obama’s pledge to “take responsibility” means anything, it’s a pledge to do whatever he can to ameliorate the condition of the electorate who put their trust in him.

The operative words here are “whatever he can.” Second-guessing his actions looks downright silly unless you’re able to prove there’s something specific–and demonstrably EFFECTIVE–that he’s failed to do.

One thing I’ve wondered…could BP have tapped into the same oil pocket by slant-drilling from shallower waters - and if so, would the environmentalists let them?

palin drome, if our president has taken responsibility, then he is responsible for the results of the decisions he’s made. That’s not to blame him for not getting the situation under control yet, which may not be humanly possible, but it hardly allows for the shifting of the blame to BP alone, who is following his direction and instructions. He simply cannot have it both ways. As they say (or at least used to say), the buck stops here.

As for second-guessing, wasn’t that a national media pastime in the aftermath of Katrina? I agree that logically it makes little sense here, either, except in those situations where states desperately asked the federal government to implement their own sandbars/dredging barriers solutions, and were stonewalled with red tape until it was too late. I do hold our POTUS responsible for that, and deservedly so.

^ My understanding is that there were concerns that these berms might actually cause more damage than they would prevent. I’m in no position to evaluate that concern, but perhaps the problem wasn’t just red tape.

lonecat, here’s what a dear friend of mine on the Florida coast just sent me. This is in their local papers, but you’ll never hear it from the national news networks:

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/command-29917-unified-counties.html

They’re watfching the oil roll in and they’re not seeing anyone do anything about it. What could possibly make it worse?

It’s not reasonable or fair to shift all the blame onto BP, but from the facts that are emerging (unfortunate pun, I know) from the spill, I’d rate their blame somewhere upside of 90%.

For starters, BP either bent or ignored the rules for deepwater drilling and had no plan to cope with a disaster of this magnitude (it was deemed “low probability”). Now that the disaster is here, BP still won’t admit its scope (lawyers’ advice) and has deliberately lied about the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf.

Meanwhile, President Obama is doing something much more effective than just blaming BP. He’s asking the Justice Dept. to impound BP’s $44 billion yearly payout in dividends. British stockholders, who rely on BP for one-seventh (almost 14%) of all their dividend income, are crying foul. This can’t be the same Obama whose election they wildly cheered.

Now if he’d just use the same forcefulness to stiff the banks.

So, Obama should have looked into his crystal ball, and he should have known ahead of time that BP would not act responsibly. If he had expected that they would act in such a way and tried to keep them from doing so, we would never hear the end of it from the laissez-faire business crowd. Get real. Cheney did have direct involvement in Halliburton, which didn’t do what they should have done to keep this from happening. Do you see the difference? Hello?

BP - 49% owned by the USA.

Funny how we want the govt to get involved in this mess, when just a few weeks ago, we wanted smaller govt that stayed out of business interests. Can’t have it both ways.

keenanthelibrarian said, about 2 hours ago

BP - 49% owned by the USA

Is that 49% of the common stock held by US citizens? So who owns the majority 51%?

Hi Sluffo,

From what I gather, it’s mostly owned by Britain - as it should be.