Why There Is A Looming Shutdown/ Default

If you want to hear extremist ranting you can listen to President Obama's Tantrum press conference Oct 8; one should be asking if using words like "hostage," "bomb thrower," and "extremist" is really the beat path towards a negotiating with the GOP. The fact is one never knows which Obama is going to show up.

 The fact is one never knows which Obama is going to show up. Is it the 2006 Senator "'The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure...  

Is it the 2006 Senator "'The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here." Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.' 

Or the President on January 12, 2011 "It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds. Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face the challenges of our nation."

 Or is he the 2013 President "Tea Party Republicans flirted with the idea of default, a nuclear bomb."

Or is he the 2013 President "Tea Party Republicans flirted with the idea of default, a nuclear bomb." The President is governing against the will of the people, which explains his 37% approval rating. The reason Obama was re-elected had nothing to do with ObamaCare or Gun control, it was the economy and the GOP's failure to present a cohesive plan.

The issue is President Obama and the Democrats have refused to include the Republicans in enacting any major legislation, including ObamaCare. At no time in the history of our country has one party completely locked out the other party in this manner. Least one forget, even though the Iraqi war had bipartisan passage,it was the law of the land but the Democrats then tried to defund it later, just like now but the shoe is on the other foot.

Obama misrepresented his healthcare plan at every turn and broke every promise that he made about his health plan (in a non-politically correct world, ObamaCare is a pack of lies)

What we are seeing is President  that has no leadership qualities or ability;a basic quality being trust. President Obama will say what ever he thinks will forward his agenda, regardless if there is any truth or not and the American people are staring to catch on. The best example is ObamaCare.  President (and Candidate) Obama misrepresented his healthcare plan at every turn and broke every promise that he made about his health plan (in a non-politically correct world, ObamaCare is a pack of lies) and the result being a law that nobody wants. America is not about just accepting what an overreaching government forces on the people; it is about the people taking control and self rule. That is why there ia a looming Shutdown/ Default; it's America trying to take back it's country.

More on President Obama and the BP oil Disaster

This is a follow-up on my previous posting A Note On How President Obama Can Really Take Ownership of the BP Oil Disaster . The posting was about how the President is failing to take responsibility and ownership of the BP Oil Disaster. One issue is the Exxon Valdez agreement that with future spills, the company responsible will handle the clean up. In order to facilitate that, all oil drilling and transporters are required to submit a regional spill response plan. AP recently reviewed and released this response, which it turns out is hopeless flawed. The report included BP’s “go to” wild life specialist Peter Lutz, a research professor from the University of Miami; unfortunately he’s been dead for five years. The BP plan was criminally optimistic. It claimed that all the beaches would be safe, using computer models that there would only be a 21% chance that the oil would reach the Louisiana coast within a month; it took 9 days. BP said they would be able to suck up or remove 20 million gallons a day from the water; an amount 40 times what is leaking from the damaged well, and “The vessels in question (will) maintain the necessary spill containment and recovery equipment to respond effectively.” The BP plan to protect, ”sensitive biological resources”, listed walruses, sea otters, seal lions and seals; none of which exist in the Gulf. This has best been described by Sen. Bill Nelson (FL) who said, "The AP report paints a picture of a company that was making it up as it went along, while telling regulators it had full capabilities to deal with a major spill.” This plan was blindly signed off by the federal office of Minerals Management Service, run by an Obama appointee, Silvia Baca who was previously a senior manager for BP.

BP is obviously lost here and threatening to kick their ass is not going to clean up the oil. All BP can say is nothing like this has ever happened before, which is not true, but BP has no plan B. Forget BP for the moment; the President needs to take ownership to save the Gulf Coast. He could ask for help from those that have faced similar oil disasters, such as the Saudis; they are the world experts in this area and one of the few post Obama friends we still have.The President is fond of saying his expert, “Nobel Prize” winning Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, is on the job, keeping an eye on what is going on. The problem is Chu knows absolutely nothing about what he’s doing there. From the Department of Energy WEB site, "Prior to his appointment, Dr. Chu was director of DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and professor of Physics and Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California. He successfully applied the techniques he developed in atomic physics to molecular biology, and since 2004, motivated by his deep interest in climate change, he has recently led the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in pursuit of new alternative and renewable energies. Previously, he held positions at Stanford University and AT&T Bell Laboratories." What is strangely missing is Chu's previously receiving a $500 million grant from Koonin when Koonin was at BP. Koonin then followed Chu to the Department of Energy. When BP was able to attach the containment cap on the damaged well, there was considerable oil flowing out of the pressure vents of the cap. Chu was dumbfounded asking, “Why is there still oil coming from the well?” Chu had no idea how the containment cap would work.

From inhabitat.com "So for argument's (and BP's) sake, let's say that when BP charters the necessary tankers (and they will have to, eventually), the tanker broker makes them a deal for $450,000 a day. And let's say that BP orders up six tankers, and for a problem the size of the one they've created, these supertankers and their pumping and storage capacity are needed for six months. At that rate, six supertankers for six months comes to $494,100,000. Round up and call it a half-billion dollars; that will be the best half-billion BP every spent. But but former Shell Oil executive Hofmeister said he's been repeatedly turned away, and, once, a lawsuit was even threatened. Hofmeister thinks BP is turning a blind eye to their solution because they don’t want to tie up their supertankers in the cleanup efforts."

Recently we have discovered that BP wants to burn the 500,000 gals of oil it is capturing because it says it would be too dangerous to put it in tankers. From Foxnews.com "Oil and gas siphoned from the well will flow up the rig, where it will be sent down a boom, turned into a mist and ignited using a burner designed by Schlumberger Ltd. BP opted to burn the oil because storing it would require bringing in even more vessels to the already crowded seas above the leaking well."

Two things seem brazenly clear here; First, BP has the super tankers to suck up the oil, but would rather sue then let the public know. Second, as I said in my previous blog, the direction BP is going with this oil leak disaster, is based on economics. BP does not appear to care what damage is done to the Gulf Coast. They continue to react with a criminally flawed plan, and the belief that nature will eventually take care of the problem on it's own. After all it was the Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, who said, the spill is not going to cause big problems because the gulf “is a very big ocean” and “the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.”

We now know how our President reacts to a problem. First he blame-lays, so he will bear no responsibility (if all else fails blame Bush). Then he delegates a person to be responsible for the problem with little accountability. That way he can take credit if the problem is properly handled, but insulated enough so he will not be blamed for any failure. This may be the Saul Alinsky management style, but it is not leadership. And leadership is what is the US needs right now.

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A Note On How President Obama Can Really Take Ownership of the BP Oil Disaster

The emerging story on the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is President Obama turning over all aspects the relief efforts to BP. This is not inconsistent with what Congressman Ron Paul called the Presidents corporatism. President Obama’s connection to BP oil runs deep. Interestingly enough while the oil industry gave twice as much money to the Republicans as Democrats, BP oil gave twice as much to Obama over McCain during the presidential election. President Obama also appointed BP senior manager Silvia Baca to the federal office of Minerals Management Service and BP’s chief scientist Steve Koonin as undersecretary of science to the Department of Energy. Then, when the President created a commission to look into the BP Oil Disaster, he chooses William K. Reilly as a commissioner, who is currently on the payrolls of both ConocoPhillips and Dupont.

Former Shell oil executive John Hofmeister has said while discussing BP relief efforts, “I think that (they) are still relying upon old techniques for the control of the surface oil. I think we have to change our mindset, put a new paradigm in place. And instead of dispersing and burning and booming, what about collecting? What about collecting that oil, setting up a row of barges, a wall of barges with high-volume pumps, or use of supertankers that could drift back and forth in the sea, sucking in huge volumes of, yes, water and oil, but get the oil off the sea to start with?” The use of the supertankers sucking oil off the surface of the sea was used successfully in Saudi Arabia in 1994 (yes 16 years ago) to suck up 80% of a 700 million gallon spill. The reasons this is not being attempted is varied, but Hoofmesiter states it is most likely the result of NIH (Not Invented Here syndrome). The dispersing and booming is the easy and cheap way the handle the problem. The end result is to hide as much oil as possible under water and let nature take it’s course as the remaining oil on the surface slops up on the beaches. This tragically ignores that the use of dispersements is likely to magnify poisoning the rich fishing grounds in the Gulf. You see BP knows that unlike the Alaska’s Exxon Valdez spill, the combination of tropical heat and storms in the Gulf of Mexico, will eventually scrub the beaches relatively clean, so there’s really no cost effective means to protect them. Using sand berms, supertankers and bacteria is considered to be inefficient, not because they won’t help clean up the ocean, but they are too expensive. By not leaving the oil on the surface, it can not evaporate or be treated with bacteria, plus using dispersement is the moral equivalent of spraying agent orange over the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The President has mistakenly lumped the leak and clean up into the same camp. This is the area were President Obama can clearly take a leadership role. While the government should rightly turn over the plugging of the leak to BP, but if BP is unable or unwilling to properly conduct the cleanup, then the federal government needs start making some decisions for BP. But just taking responsibility for the clean up and falling on his sword is not what’s needed now, because we don’t have time for it. The President needs to take ownership, not just responsibility. First, let BP stop the leak; but don’t micro manage BP either. Instead, we have the White House saying they’re going to direct BP to drill two relief wells, not just one and then a week later say, we are now ordering BP to drill three relief wells. This is the action of an Autocrat, not a leader. We need more than President Obama’s statement, “things seem to be getting better”.

Much has also been said that the BP Oil Disaster for President Obama, is akin to President Bush’s “Katrina”; but it’s equivalent is more like President Carter’s Hostage situation in Iran. Like the Hostage situation, this is an ongoing crisis, where the anger and frustration of the American people continue to increase every day; there is even a day ‘count’ going on. To stem the anger and frustration President Obama needs to take ownership of the relief and cleanup. Can you imagine the reaction of the American people if they saw a line of supertankers in the Mexican Gulf sucking up the oil? When the Department of the Interior told BP not to use a certain dispresement, they told the US to “pound sand” and continued to use what they wanted. The President should have stood up and said,"We've got some work to do. I don't mind, by the way, being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I'm the president…but I don't want the folks that created the mess -- I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess". This is what he told the Republicans Aug 6, 2009; why can’t he say the same thing to BP.

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