Last updated on June 14th, 2010 at 03:55 pm
Obama is stll cleaning up the messes of others
As the disaster in the Gulf continues, President Obama has said the buck stops with him, which is refreshing because Obama is actually man enough to step up to the plate in the midst of it all and in spite of the criticism for the sake of the country. Obama has become the Cleaner in Chief.
This is a horrible tragedy including the loss of life and livelihood with no real end in sight. It is disturbing that the media can’t seem to find a single place on the Gulf that demonstrates any people working on the clean up. That’s really hard to believe. Americans need to see something that shows there’s intent for resolution to this nightmare. Why aren’t there interviews with scientists and engineers that have spoken to Obama during this long process? And where is the research and investigative reporting of how all this mess was really created? Where is the investigation of the back room deals by Dick Cheney with the oil execs? Where is the investigation of Cheney and his connection to Halliburton who is also involved in this disaster with BP?
Where is the investigation of the MMS staff that was previously and conveniently put in place by Bush and Cheney? Where is the conversation about the risks involved that were known under the Bush/Cheney administration? Where was the regulation that allowed “big oil” to create the rules and put our country at risk? Bush and Cheney were the oil men who put these policies and people in place to create an ecological disaster of unknown proportions. And Liz Cheney has the audacity to make the rounds blasting Obama on his response to this crisis!
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Obama has ordered the breakup of the MMS department to prevent more corruption. There will be no more sleeping with big oil execs by the people hired to patrol them as was discovered at the end of the Bush Cheney administration. Obama has also called for a full investigation to the explosion that caused this hole in the floor of the ocean as the oil continues to poison our waters and shores. Obama and his administration are under huge pressure to do something quickly to stop the leak of an industry created by greedy and irresponsible oil men who refused to safeguard our country. And though the media and America doesn’t like Obama’s steady and methodical way of handling a crisis, he’s smart enough to know that rushing and forcing actions to respond to the pressure of the angry cries could actually cause an even greater catastrophe. This is not a quick or easy fix. It’s a painful and ongoing process.
This is very much like the 2008 economic crash prior to Obama’s election (the GOP and the media project to the nation that it’s Obama’s deficit as if Bush/Cheney had nothing to do with it). The economic crash was created by the Cheney/Bush administration prior to Obama’s election. They created it! Obama had to fix it. It’s been a painful and ongoing process.
Big business was given huge tax cuts by the Bush/Cheney administration which was suppose to trickle down to create jobs. Instead Obama is left to fix another nightmare of that administration because no one paid for those tax cuts. They just left the country the bill. And they didn’t create jobs; as a matter of fact it was quite the contrary, but now Obama has to create and save as many jobs as possible.
To add salt to the wound of one of the most difficult beginning presidential administrations in history, the media and the American people don’t feel that Obama shows enough emotion especially in the form of anger. They don’t like his style. They don’t like his cool. They don’t like that he operates by handling more than one thing at a time. No one seems to want to promote a cool head in the course of a major crisis. Obama is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
Here is Jonathon Alter from Newsweek pointing out that the oil spill is a metaphor for the Obama presidency, “The BP Oil Spill is the perfect metaphor for Barack Obama’s presidency so far. His first 500 days in office have been – with the significant exception of healthcare reform – consumed in cleaning up the messes left by his predecessors in the financial sector, the auto business, Afghanistan, and now the oil and gas industry, where “regulators” in the Denver office of the Minerals Management Service under President Bush were literally sleeping with the industry reps they were supposed to be licensing.
Obama’s fate is to head up what Donald Regan (Ronald Reagon’s chief of staff) called “the shovel brigade” – the crew cleaning up the dung when the elephants leave the circus. Obama’s response has been to shovel diligently at the Wall Street-GM-Kandahar-Gulf Coast cleanup sites. But having properly stripped all emotion out of his behind-closed-doors decision making, he has neglected to add it back in for the public parts of the job.” – Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and author of The Promise (on President Obama and the 1st year of his administration).
Now we have, the greatest oil disaster in the history of this country with no real fix, no real estimate of the actual cost, and no real estimate of the range or extent of damage to wild life, plant life or the livelihoods of those living and working along the Gulf or the rest of this country. Obama vows to make BP pay the cost of cleanup and the impact on the people of the Gulf. The GOP in congress wants to keep the pay out by BP to a minimum $75,000,000. That’s a crime in of itself to America. The laws, the risks, and the politics involved are frustrating.
The fact of the matter is this is a catastrophe of enormous and unknown proportions. Obama does not just jump into things without weighing options and gathering as much knowledge as possible. It just makes one wonder, is this oil disaster being seen or used by the GOP to try to destroy the current administration while Obama brings in the coast guard, scientists and his cabinet secretaries, etc. to resolve this tragedy while establishing an independent commission to investigate this tragedy and to prevent anything like this from happening again. Obama has called for a moratorium on any new deep sea drilling until this is under control and all the proper preventive technology is in place.
This is much more complicated than the media is projecting. Can this disaster become more of a disaster by trying to fix it? There are high risks involved no matter what happens according to the experts. Cheney’s gang had not approved the mechanism to prevent a catastrophe such as this from happening so that information fades into the darkness because the crime is now so disastrous the concern of the moment is simply to stop the damage! Again, the crisis is now the concern of President Obama and those who are the first to suffer.
Obama’s style is to study the crisis, the cause, the options, who must be involved and then to proceed with the best solution. Ultimately, Obama will push for the new energy legislation. These disasters are not of Obama’s creation but they are his to fix. So Mr. President, as a nation, the media begs you to demonstrate your anger, passion and commitment on an emotional level that can be understood. Mr. President, we need you to raise our spirits by showing us yours!!! All this must be extremely heavy on Obama, but in the midst of all this despair, be it the economy, jobs, immigration, energy, financial reform, etc. … take us to our higher sides. In the midst of all these disasters and painful processes to resolution, we need to experience hope again!
