There was much less propaganda in last night's Oval Office speech given to the nation by our President.The hype about making the gulf region better than it ever was got cut out and thrown away as it should have been.
The Deepwater Horizon episode is seen as what it is, a great loss for that region, for our entire nation, for our planet, and for world civilization.
The history of our addiction was described as giving mostly lip service to the addiction, while we increase the addiction, which really is the state of the nation in terms of our energy history, wisdom, and mastery of the wrong things.
All that is happening to us while other nations are making "going to the moon in ten years" progress in alternative energy, even as we lag behind on a national scale.
I am glad so much of the bloviation was removed and the speech was closer to the reality we can attain at the moment.
Which is closer to nothing than we like to admit.
So much of the impact is psychological, in the form of debilitating depression, because we can't seem to shake this terrible addiction, economic woes, nor being a divided nation.
Obama pointed out that many are fighting for the addiction, and thereby fighting against those who want to get rid of this fossil fuel addiction, which slows us down considerably.
I would only ask that he admit his mistake of embracing offshore drilling 21 days before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe began, and that he admits what a colossal mistake that was, so others will grasp that reality.
UPDATE: President Obama orchestrated a $20,000,000,000 fund, which comes from BP, with an independent overseer to distribute it to those in need in the states damaged by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The BP stockholders will have to wait for their dividends.
He obtained an additional $100,000,000 for those who are hit by the moratorium on deep water drilling pending the ongoing investigation.
How much has your republican politician done for you folks lately, besides calling for more drilling?
Sorry Dredd, all I heard was platitudes. Nothing of substance, like how BP, a publicly held for profit firm whose only goal is to make its shareholders wealthy will be made to pay for all this over the next 30-50 years or more, whatsoever. Nor did I hear proposals for a tax on gasoline to pay for the so called "green economy", which would clearly indicate he was serious about breaking our addiction. This speech was only about digging out from under the mountain of criticism he's getting and saving his flagging poll numbers. It's as minimal of a start as he could possibly make, so we'll see where he goes from here, but color me entirely sceptical. Obama's really shown a stunning lack of depth of character throughout this whole episode IMO, and coming on the heels of his growing list of other failures or near failures (health care, don't ask don't tell, Gitmo, Afghanistan. etc.), I'm sorry I wasted a vote on him. I damn sure won't be wasting another one.
ReplyDeleteDredd is too easy on Obama ... ;)
ReplyDeleteAl liked it:
ReplyDelete"I applaud President Obama's call for a comprehensive legislative solution to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil gusher is just the latest and most tragic reminder of the environmental, economic and human consequences of our addiction to oil and other dirty sources of energy." (Al Gore)
So back off buckaroos ... :-|
We'll see how it all eventually pays out, however both BP and Obama are up against some hard limits. As the costs of this thing mounts - and the monetary costs may eventualy be the least of it - BP is going to be under pressure to either declare bankruptcy and/or otherwise reorganize so as to compartmentalize or rid themselves of these obligations altogether. Empathy for the people affected by this event is at an all-time high now while the spill still continues. In a few years the world will have moved on and the true costs of living with the effects of the spill will be back on the backs of those who live in the region, or, just as likely, have to leave it. And then there's the possibility of this, a prospect that has received a lot of discussion all across the net lately. If this comes to pass, it ain't really gonna matter who's in charge.
ReplyDeletedisaffected,
ReplyDeleteEvent "x" need not be linked to what color of shoes your grandmother was wearing at her wedding to determine the nature of that Event x.
Obama ought not to be demonized, nor should Al Gore, nor should anyone else, since that is shit for brains reasoning.
When Obama had money set aside for victims that was good in and of itself, period.
When Al Gore took it upon himself to increase the knowlege of global warming / climate change and receive a Nobel Prize for it, that too was good too, period.
Disagreements between the experts tend to arise everywhere, all the time, as any competent trial lawyer will tell you.
The reason for the Deepwater Horizon disaster or why the flow is not being stopped are not exceptions to that tendency.
Your citation to "this" is offset with a citation to "that", and so the beat goes on.
Experts explaining how they see it, and readers functioning like a jury trying to get to the real facts, is the nature of this blog.
The comment policy of Dredd Blog is to not suffer foolishness lightly, if you know what I mean.
Honest, considerate, and well prepared discourse is the preferred norm.
Since I am not trying to impress anyone, nor am impressed by anyone in that sense, seeing as how the facts are more important than anyone, we must follow that road.