My friends did not like what I had to say about Obama's speech last night in an opinion piece for AOL News. I have a suspicion many here won't either, but it's worth saying. I keep wanting to support Obama, but ultimately my concern for the environment trumps any political loyalty, even though many consider that short-sighted.
Having been roundly criticized on every front for not being tough enough, sentimental enough, angry enough, positive enough and schizophrenic enough, his speech writers decided to lay into the oil spill with fighting words to describe the "battle we are waging against an oil spill" that is "assaulting our shores and our citizens."
The president made it unequivocally clear that BP was going to pay. Given the war analogies, Americans were surely swept with relief, reminded of how the oil revenues in Iraq would pay for the invasion once the "weapons of mass destruction" were confiscated, the troops gratefully greeted with showers of fresh-smelling IEDs and the Iraqis "liberated" with depleted uranium and weekend spas at Club Abu Ghraib.
Excerpted from Oval Office Speech -- A Missed Opportunity
"From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation's history," Obama declared. Perhaps, then, it must be the egregious First Amendment violations that have prevented reporters from covering this remarkable coordination and collaborative effort.
and:
The third part of the president's response plan was the "steps we're taking to ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again." He also admitted that he'd approved new and limited offshore drilling based on assurances from the industry that "it would be absolutely safe." But those assurances, it turns out, weren't worth much more than the paper they were printed on.