To my surprise, there are a large number of commenters here who don't understand how anyone could be so outraged about the Obama Administration's reaction to the Oil Volcano Crisis. They say "What can Obama do? Obama doesn't know how to fix it! No one in the Federal Government knows how to fix it! Not even BP knows how to fix it so how could the Government? We don't have the equipment! Obama doesn't have magic powers!"
I don't expect, and I don't think anyone else who is as royally, epically pissed off as I am expects, Obama to have a magical solution to stopping the oil flood and making everything perfect again.
Here is what I do expect:
I expect the Administration to have required BP from the beginning to provide video of the flow and exact measurements of how much oil is gushing out. As has been pointed out, the story that it’s impossible to measure the flow is grade-A bullshit. From day one the Administration should have been fact-checking anything and everything that they were told by BP.
I expect Administration to TAKE CHARGE of the clean-up and oil recovery operation. Don't tell us, BP - we'll tell you.
- This includes not allowing BP to use shit-tons of dispersant to hide the oil and protect their image while wreaking untold destruction on undersea wildlife.
- This includes requiring BP to provide proper safety gear to the people collecting and cleaning up the oil.
- This includes requiring Fucking Proper Fucking Booming. The word is that the Coast Guard knows from Fucking Proper Fucking Booming. They should be giving the local fishermen assisting with the clean-up a crash course on Fucking Proper Fucking Booming techniques. If they were doing this, we might have actually saved some of those beaches and marshes on the Louisiana Coast that are now destroyed.
I expect the Administration to hire whatever third parties are necessary to assist with the clean-up/recovery, and send BP a daily bill (due in full upon receipt) for the costs.
I expect the Administration to tell BP to sacrifice their access to the oil to shut off the flow. BP forfeited their right to that oil when they violated safety procedures and cut corners. As far as I’m concerned that magnificent oil deposit should sit under there untouched, as a monument to BP’s greed and stupidity. They do not get to lolly-gag around figuring out ways to get back control of the flow and preserve their own access to the well to make their shareholders happy. FUCK their shareholders. SHUT IT OFF. The problem isn’t even just the oil, it’s the massive quantities of methane that are dumping into the Gulf too. Two more months to wait for BP to finish the kill-bore is not an acceptable answer.
I expect the Administration to strong-arm BP into complying with all of these requirements in any way they need to: threatening to shut down their US operations or to pull all of their off-shore drilling leases, anything. Hell, call in the Navy and tell BP that compliance is the price for not being shot at, I don’t care. DO WHATEVER IT TAKES.
I expect the Administration to assemble a huge team of scientists, smartypants engineers, and general brainiacs from NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers, etc, to brainstorm ways to shut off the oil in case BP can’t figure it out. This team should also be trying to figure out if we have any chance in hell of cleaning up the colossal underwater oil plumes.
I know that we don’t have the equipment. Guess who does? BP! Fucking commandeer their shit. BP can have it back when we're done, if they have a problem with that they can take it to court. In the meantime they can pound sand.
Here’s what I don’t expect:
- Obama to fly in on a golden unicorn and wave a magic wand and make this go away.
- The utterly pathetic "Well, whatever BP wants, I guess...." response that we’ve gotten so far.
This is an incredible threat to the United States. It’s a threat to our economy, it’s a threat to our national security, it’s a threat to our global standing. It’s a threat to our health, our livelihoods, our food supply. It’s a threat to our wildlife and our natural resources and will have repercussions beyond our imagining. It is a massive crime that is being perpetrated against us and against the world. We deserve no less than an organized, coordinated, highly visible, ass-kicking response from the Obama Administration. We deserve to know, even if all attempts to stop or mitigate this disaster fail, that the Administration did EVERYTHING they possibly could. Right now I do not know that.