Cashman,How can you possibly say they are both equally guilty of this catastrophe.? What did Obama have to do with the tower that blew up?Just because he's the President means he's responsible for it. That's plain ignorant. Are you going to give him credit for the Lakers winning the NBA or the soccer teams tie game? As I stated earlier you can blame him for the response but to give him equal blame for the spill shows where your really at. You hate the man it's plain and simple and your hatred gets in the way of any true dialogue. Your previous post is a disgrace.

You really aren't this dense, are you? The oil companies are the most highly regulated industries in the U.S. Just weeks before the explosion the oil rig was given passing grades.
After the explosion the government did nothing to help in the aftermath but jump up and down like you.
What part of the "buck stops here" don't you understand?

I'm only being personal in this post because that's seems to be the way you respond to others.

Then I'll say the same to you. If you want to get on Obama for the reaction to the spill that's fine. But to say he shares responsibility with BP for the spill is both ignorant and untrue. You take it from here. hate does strange things to people.

And about being dense,never mind.

Your friends at the Daily Kos are blaming Bush and Regan !

No, Obama probably didn't cause the spill, but he sure hasn't done anything to try and contain it. Other countries offered help immediately and he refused. He seems intent on interferring, as much as possible. As Rahm says, never let a crisis go to waste.

Ignorant is not being aware of the facts. When are you going to find out what the facts are? I will tell you: "not until you do your research using more indepedent sources
than you do.


Even then you will still not be aware if your ideology keeps your mind closed.


PS.you are the first person in my life to call me "ignorant" which makes you a very special person.

Here is the fact plain and simple. An oil rig owned and operated by BP blew up and is causing what may be the worst ecological disaster in American history. That's the FACT. Indisputable,undeniable....everything else you and others say is opinion,hearsay.... Here is another fact..To defend BP in any way is being ignorant of that one fact and showing your true hatred of one man. You don't even care what happens tp the people along the Gulf as long as you can blame Obama for it.

I do not defend BP. I defend the rule of law, not the thugocracy.

Yoda

Yoda,you call it a thugocracy,I call it helping Americans whose way of life is threatened. Obama is insisting on is responsible conduct and a responsible response to something THEY caused. Again putting aside 20 billion to meet the needs of real people who have mouths to feed and bills to pay is against no law I know of. These people need help NOW. If you call this thugocracy you have no feelings for suffering Americans. But if we do it your way BP keeps this in court for 15 years before paying anything.(Remember the Valdez) and the law is served. Unfortunately most of these people in 15 years will not survive. So,I'm for thugocracy except I call it doing what government is supposed to do HELPING AMERICANS WHO CANNOT HELP THEMSELVES through NO FAULT of their own.

You do not get it
 

Very sad.

Yoda: I apologize for the way this will sound. But does this mean that you think the way that the Exxon Valdez situation was handled was proper? That is, Exxon fought the court award tooth and nail all the way through the courts and got it reduced to 10% of it's original value. It took YEARS for people to see so much as a penny.

Say what you will about BP and negligence or whatever.. But I know this about myself. If I screw up, I admit it when I realize it and try to make amends. I'm not perfect, nobody is. But I don't sit on my ass screaming "innocent" until "proven" guilty - not if I know I did something wrong. BP, at least in this measure, for whatever reasons, is saying "we screwed up" and aren't forcing shrimp boaters to go 5 or more years dragging things through the courts making nobody but lawyers more wealthy before letting them see a dime.

I don't give a sick dingo's kidney if BP feels 'forced' to do it because they have the legal right to fight it IF THEY SO CHOOSE. They chose not to. Again, for whatever reasons, they're doing the right thing. Some people thought they would declare bankruptcy to avoid paying for this - which would have been difficult since no judge would accept it given they have $3T (yes, trillion) in sales and $30B in profits per year.

I don't think anyone believes that BP should be let off the hook, but there are laws and legal procedures that have been specifically drafted and passed for this sort of situation and occurrence.
The ends justify the means, I guess, in your view. I can't wait for the next obamanation that occurs and see if the incremental eroding of rule of law and our American values affects you or the people who believe as you do.

I process the facts quite well. But I don't drink the same Kool-Aid that you do.

RichieLion: Yes, there are laws. But I'll ask you this - and I hope I don't sound condescending - but even with the laws, what prevents government and industry getting together voluntarily to expedite the handling of aspects of this disaster?

In other words, why wait for the courts to demand good intentions when BP was ready to go immediately. I mean, even if the justification from BP is "Well, we might avoid some of our people going to jail and we'll save a bundle, perhaps billions, in legal fees and it's the best way to get our stock price back up (to get this in our rear view mirror) - let's do it". So what?

In this case, perhaps it's BP seeing ghosts of Exxon past and they don't want any of that. Even from a purely BP-selfish point of view, the sooner they get ahead of this, the sooner their stock price rebounds and the sooner they pay dividends.

djplong: That sounds lovely; only I don't think so. It's seems more likely BP was threatened with the seizure of their assets or something quite similar in the "Chicago" style as was and is being encouraged by some in Congress and the progressive/socialist base of Obama's party.

you have not one shread of proof on your side. That is total speculation.But please lets not let the facts get in the way.

If' I'm BP and the goverment is threatening my assets with seizure, then my PR machine goes into high gear. Remember, I have three trillion in sales per year and I can eat a one-time $20B his and still make $10B in profits. Here's what I say:

"We're prepared to set up a multi-billion dollar fund to pay claims in the Gulf so that the residents of that area won't have to go through what the people of Alaska had to endire - but the government is threatening an unconstitutional seizure of assets (see Ammendment 5 of the Constitution) which would prevent us from focusing on these efforts."

Now, if there were threats that were not nearly as drastic, I'm guessing we wouldn't hear of them. But nationalizing foreign assets? That would get the government of the UK involved and I can't imagine the kind of furball that would start happening.

Here is an article professing the President has informed BP the US Govt. would do exactly like I iterated.
http://www.connecticutplus.com/cplus...87648764.shtml

Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs says the President has the power to compel BP to hand over it's funds.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...l-spill-claims

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich advocates the takeover of BP's stateside interests
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...l-spill-claims

I've got more stories to back up my "total speculation". I know you won't admit you could have been mistaken. I'll just wait for the usual denigration of my links and my state of mind.

We Are Being Confused by Straw Puppets and
 

the puppet masters could not be happier.

A wise man once said, “When the tiger escapes from his cage and kills, it is not the fault of the tiger but rather the zookeeper.”

We have focused far too much on the tiger, BP, and not enough on the zookeeper, the United States government. This does not excuse BP from damage caused by the spill, nor allow us to blame government agencies most of us have never heard from before.

These are easy targets for those actually responsible to hold up and say, “Here are the evil doers, let’s tar and feather them and run them out of town on a rail” What is does say is that this spill along with our hemorrhaging of money to the oil states will continue until the United States Government accepts that it is the primary actor in this tragedy. Our lack of a coherent, rational energy policy has set up these problems and allowed them to continue since the days of Jimmy Carter. This is neither a democrat nor a republican problem, a problem created solely by the Congresses or the Presidents. – It is a failure of will on the part of the people of this country and our elected representatives.

So, what should we do? There are several things that need to go one immediately: (1) cleanup the mess and plug the leak; (2) get gulf oil back on-line, this is thirty percent of the nation’s oil supply and eliminating it will not only cripple the economy of the gulf states but the county; (3) start building nuclear power plants immediately – we need legislation to prevent the ‘environmentalists’ from blocking this action; (where did the idea come from that there were people who cared about the environment and those that favored pollution come from?) (4) Open Yucca Mountain for the long term storage of high level nuclear waste – every study by DOE scientists has shown is the safest way of disposal; (5) make a quick cost benefit study of the ways of producing electricity; (6) shift existing oil fired plants to coal; (7) begin a crash program to shift OTR trucking from gasoline to natural gas, even if it means shutting down natural gas fired plants and converting them to coal – coal is our bridge to the future; (8) kill ‘cap and trade’ legislations, if cap-and-trade is not killed, everything else will be in vain, we will become a third world country.

read your 2 posts and found them quite interesting.From your first post
"What the White House would do if BP refused..."the White House has the LEGAL AUTHORITY to create an escrow account"
from the second..the U.S.will handle damage claims"IF NECESSARY"."We have to get an independent claims process." Doesn't seem heavy-handed or dictatorial to me.

"Incrementalism"; you're getting used to ignoring law and procedure to gain a goal little by little by little ................