G-d bless Michael Steele

You gotta love that Michael Steele:

************************************************************************************

EXCERPT FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: 

Tues,  June 15

WASHINGTON – Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele is accusing President Barack Obama of exploiting for his own political gain the crisis created by the Gulf oil spill.

Responding to Obama’s Oval Office address to the nation Tuesday night, Steele said in a statement that the president’s actions demonstrate his inability to lead the nation out of a disaster and show an “appallingly arrogant political calculus.”

************************************************************************************

Explain how the President, our nation’s CEO at the time of this disaster, can exploit the disaster for political gain?  This crisis threatens to sully his political future. 

And what did the President say that is so problematic?  He said we need to fix this and we need to decrease our dependence on oil. 

Michael Steele:  Do you disagree with those sentiments?

I hope the GOP keeps loose-lips around for a loooooong time.

President Obama’s Speech

Am I the only one in the country who thought that the speech showed a strong and resolute President? 

Don’t look for passion — that is not his character.  Look for determination and a view toward the future. 

I thought he did a fine job.  Did anyone think that he could speak away the problems?  Did you think the oil was going to go back into the hole in the earth whence it came?

Let’s be real.

Please, please, please, let’s all stop expecting miracles or easy answers.  Let’s be as easy on the President as we are on ourselves.  Because we are soooo good at blaming others and limiting our own culpability in anything and we are so good at complaining but so unwilling to do our part — either through tax dollars or consumption reduction.

We are in the fight of and for our lives and livelihoods. 

PRESIDENT OBAMA IS CLEANING UP DISASTER UPON DISASTER THAT STARTED PERCOLATING SINCE NIXON — HEALTH CARE, OIL DEPENDENCE, AMERICAN COWBOY-ISM AS FOREIGN POLICY.

Anyone else willing to stand up and say that the speech was fine, that speeches won’t fix the Gulf problems and that we are lucky to have a clearheaded and intelligent leader? 

And, the $20 billion fund was a big coup since, under GOP leadership, liability was capped at $75 million. 

BP — Beyond Pathos

Today, there was a fire on the BP ship that is siphoning the oil from the half-capped gushing breach.  Just add this to the ever-growing list of bad and greedy decisions and botched and mismanaged corrective efforts.

Sometimes people are so recklessly stupid and ineffectual that they deserve to go to prison just for these reasons alone.   Criminal stupidity and inefficacy in the first degree should be punishable by life imprisonment.  And the entire management of BP should be shackled right about now.  And the people who didn’t fire them when their stupidity and inefficacies were evident also deserve orange jumpsuits.

And now we have to rely on the government workers led by different party machines in the various gulf states.  These are the individuals who, according to popular wisdom, didn’t qualify for the private sector jobs at companies like BP.   Give up all hope.

If President Obama could plug this hole, he would.  If they try another top kill, I am sure he will insist on jettisoning BP’s CEO, the director of the MMS (and other government officials who allowed the oil companies to write their own rules) and maybe even Rand Paul, as part of the junk blast into the hole.

Going Nuclear with Dr. Strangelove

How do you get someone’s mind off a headache? A strong punch to the stomach.

How do you take someone’s mind off the environmental disaster caused by the massive oil leak? Detonate a nuclear warhead.

Really? Detonate a nuclear bomb to melt the ocean floor onto itself to stop the leak?  It is ok to try new things, like shooting debris in the hole to plug it, because what’s a little more pollution when millions of barrels of oil are gushing into the ocean each day. But a nuclear bomb? Yeah, let’s compound one threat to our future with an almost certain apocalyptic coda.

Someone said this nuclear fix is safe.  Someone also said deep water drilling is safe.  Someone said the Russians exploded nuclear bombs to stop pipeline leaks, but they never did it with oil, underwater and one mile down.  Oh, yeah, just like top kill was never tried underwater and one mile down.  Gee, I wish Anyone thought through how to fix something, let’s say an oil pipe, that far down below sea level before the accident.  Boy, I never met this Someone or Anyone, but Someone sure is crazy and Anyone should be fired.

But, this is America, where Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels.  So, if we look at everything ass backwards and upside down, it should work.  From that perspective, the nuclear option looks like a plan.  How about if all of the BP executives and the government officials who oversaw deep-water drilling put on some of Ginger’s old outfits and then tried to figure out what to do?  No, it wouldn’t add any brain cells (so still a zero sum game) but it would sure provide needed comic relief in the aftermath of the biggest threat to the safety of all living beings since the Ice Age.

Of course, no disaster is complete without the accompanying political grandstanding and fiascoes.  Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wrote to the President enumerating the number of jobs that will be lost because of the moratorium on off-shore drilling, even as he decries the despoliation of his state’s shorelines and criticizes the administration’s slow response.

Maureen Dowd, who is becoming pathetic, says we got the President we voted for, as if that is a bad thing —  a clear-headed leader who doesn’t lead by his gut.  The President constantly overestimates our intelligence and ability to understand the important things.  And President Obama has to stop what he is doing to go on Larry King so that we are reassured he can feel our pain.  Because we need him to hug us and feel our pain while he is protecting us from our own stupidity.

We deserve to choke on the oil slick.

This is the media’s Hurricane Katrina

I believe the Gulf disaster defies analogy.  

But we need to pigeon hole this one for the 24 hour news re-cycle.  Hmmm.  Hurricane Katrina.  Yeah, that’s it!  Let’s exploit another episode of human suffering for the sake of ratings.  That’s why the media asks, “Is this Obama’s Hurricane Katrina?”.  Because that was the most recent large scale disaster.  We can’t remember back almost 10 years to ask if this is “Obama’s 9/11”.

And it feeds our need, in a situation out of control, for symmetry with past events so we can pretend to understand the event and its ramifications and then go back to watching Britney Spears.   The pathology of fear symmetry.

Let’s not make this about President Obama, although it would make it easier if it were.  It is about greed and reckless indifference to our earth.  It is about a problem of unimaginable scope causing imponderable calamity for all living beings.

We elected President Obama because he is unflappable, at least in public.   Now, we are pissed because he doesn’t express constant outrage to satisfy CNN, FOX, and MSNBC and our own fear symmetry pathology.

Everyone, listen up:

Rule 1 of disaster reaction:  If the only people with the machinery to solve the problem are the ones who caused the problem, don’t piss them off.  If you make it so they can never get out from under the liability, they will take their marbles and go home and then all is lost.   Sometimes it feels good to yell at a given moment, but it hurts you in the long run (ever hear the old saw, “don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”?).

Rule 2 of disaster reaction:  There is no easy resolution to this problem because no one prepared for this disaster.  Not BP and not the United States.  Preparation would have required years of research and development by top scientists and hundreds of millions of dollarsSo, blame Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II.  Even throw Carter, Ford and Nixon under that bus while you’re at it.

Rule 3 of disaster reaction Everyone wastes time pointing figures at othersAnd take out the mirror.  All of us.  We are the problem, too.  Consume too much?  Vote for the Drill, Baby, Drill ticket?

Rule 4 of disaster reaction: DON’T TELL THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH.  WE CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH (Jack Nicholson was right in “A Few Good Men”).  We also expect that everything will get fixed for us, preferably within a day’s trading session at the New York Stock Exchange.

Rule 5 of disaster reaction: The media feeds our ridiculous expectations and our hubris.  So, Anderson Cooper, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Maureen Dowd, Jack Cafferty, Wolf Blitzer and whoever else:  stop with the comparisons and come up with ways to heal our earth, ways to help our fellow Americans, our wildlife, etc.  Set up a disaster relief fund.

Reality No. 1 of Disasters:  The man in charge — President Obama — wanted this gusher plugged the minute it happened.  You think he wants to go down as the president who screwed up this disaster response?

Reality No. 2 of Disasters: Everyone is an armchair quarterback.  If you can help, then help.  If you can’t, then shut up.

Reality No. 3 of Disasters: If there weren’t a disaster, the media would create one. So, for the 45th President of the United States of America, what will be your Gulf Oil Spill Disaster?

This Blogger’s No. 1 Fear: If it is ever over, we will forget about it in a New York minute.