Skip to main content

President Obama and his administration can breath easier knowing that they have a media outlet like MSNBC to carry their water and propaganda regarding their reaction and response to the BP Oil Spill and potential awards given to the very platform that exploded as well as federal officials in charge of inspection receiving very nice benefits from the oil companies. I'm not one to blame the President for those gifts for he couldn't know anything about that but in keeping consistent with disasters under the Bush Administration credit should be applied to the President for he knew or should have known "everything".

The Bad news ... There are so few people that listen to MSNBC that Obama's protection isn't very far reaching.

Be as the Bereans ( Acts 17:11 )

Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

While I'm certainly no engineer and know very little about deep sea drilling, it seems like between BP, all the people that work for the government, and all the other oil companies around the world, someone somewhere would know what to do. You'd think we could get it stopped in less than five or six weeks.

What you bet that after they do get it stopped, Congress will spend the next six months "investigating", fingers will be pointed, blame will be placed, and lawsuits will follow. This incident will be used as a political football while the people on the Gulf Coast suffer. SSDD
No argument there. You would also think as inaccessible as the area is, as far down, and as critical as the emergency measures are that they would have tested that blowout preventer before it's installation. Maybe they did. It's going to be interesting to see who, after it's all said and done, gets the actual blame. If it's BP, the blowout preventer manufacturer or installer. I'm sure that BP will be looking for some way to shed some of the cost. The total losers in all this are US ... citizens. Less drilling, more cost, less oil availability, destroyed beaches or wetlands.

The President and his Administration certainly blew this one as bad as Bush and Katrina. The only difference is the way the media covers it and how blame is assigned. What at McDonalds getting an order yesterday they had MSNBC playing on their TV and it was sickening to hear the folks there trying everything they could to make the administration look good at BP's expense. As more and more revelations, about the administrations handling and past revelations about the cooperation and protection with regards to oil companies I wonder how long MSNBC can cover for them, or will cover for them?
Blame!Who gets blamed for despoiling our beloved gulf ? WE could blame the past administrations ,Daddy Bush, Clinton,and the ever popular "Dub" Bush.The total of their reign was what, some 20 odd years,during which most of the laws concerning offshore drilling were concocted but NO let't blame a guy who has been in office for a couple of years....Actually the real blame can be placed much closer to home than any of these....If you want to see the real culprit just take along look in the mirror....By being part of our new "energy wasteful" life style we are all to blame....Our desperation for cheap oil and independence from foreign oil has driven our attitude of "drill baby drill".All the while our roads are jammed with two ton SUVs occupied by only one 90lb female with a cellphone jammed in her ear....Look on the sides of the streets,piles of discarded furniture,appliances ect.Things that would have been repaired and used for decades 30 years ago but now tossed aside.
ka-ohub. It is the fault of every so called leader that the spill is lasting as long as it has. Why do you carry a spare tire in your car? In my case I also carry a set of tools. There is nothing wrong with drilling for more oil, in the gulf or elswhere, just be prepared for sh#@#t to happen. barry obama is just as much to blame as anyone at BP, Bush 1 or Bush 2.
These liberals have nothing to do but reach back to blame Bush. You see the moment the Democrats take over, whether Congress or the Executive branch then we become under a "new" set of rules. There is no blame for anything and whatever is done no matter if is against the constitution or not is justified because they are "doing it for us", " for our own good " because we are just to simple to know what's good for us.

I hope that the electorate, especially those large numbers of independents, get to see what rampant Liberalism does when unchecked.
Once again, both parties failed US! We can argue back and forth all the time about dimwit or repulsive, but they have both failed us. Term limts would be a good start towards fixing the mess we are in. If a politician has to deal with the laws they pass, it may actually make a difference. Blame bush, obama or who the hell ever, but it is as much our fault as anyones.
quote:
Originally posted by ka-0-hub:
quote:
Originally posted by elinterventor01:
If you can blame Bush II for the World Trade Center attack after 8 months in office? And, you did! Obama can take the blame after 16 months.




No I didn't!!...But I'm pretty sure it was your fault.


My vehicle gets 36 mpg. Now, if there was a problem in Iran, I might take the blame!
quote:
Blame!Who gets blamed for despoiling our beloved gulf ? WE could blame the past administrations ,Daddy Bush, Clinton,and the ever popular "Dub" Bush.


Someone who believes in the cult of omnipotent Presidential power could blame past presidents in some matters, but not this time. The Minerals Management Service was investigated by the past administration by the OIG for malfeasance and some officials were indicted. It was this administrations job to create a new and improved MMS and they failed. I am sure that many of those bad union and federal law protected guv'ment workers were hired in previous administrations

quote:
MMS is the branch of the Interior Department that handles leases and regulation of oil drilling and mineral exploration, both offshore and on U.S. land. It has come under fire and scrutiny lately as a report from the Interior Dept.'s inspector general detailed a widespread culture problem at MMS. Companies MMS regulated took employees to sporting events, bought them meals and lavish gifts. Employees in the Lake Charles and New Orleans offices viewed porn at work. It sounded pretty bad.

All of these ethical failures happened during the previous administration. The report examined MMS employees' activity prior to 2007, though the porn viewing occurred from 2005-2009.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...rvice-resigns/57344/

quote:
A Culture of Ethical Failure

The single-most serious problem our investigations revealed is a pervasive culture of exclusivity, exempt from the rules that govern all other employees of the Federal Government.

In the matter involving Ms. Dennet, Mr. Mayberry and Milton Dial, the results of this investigation paint a disturbing picture of three Senior Executives who were good friends, and who remained calculatedly ignorant of the rules governing post-employment restrictions, conflicts of interest and Federal Acquisition Regulations to ensure that two lucrative MMS contracts would be awarded to the company created by Mr. Mayberry - Federal Business
Solutions - and later joined by Mr. Dial. Ms. Dennet manipulated the contracting process from the start. She worked directly with the contracting officer, personally participated on the evaluation team for both contracts, asked for an increase to the first contract amount, and had
Mayberry prepare the justification for the contract increase. Ms. Dennet also appears to have shared with Mr. Mayberry the Key Qualification criteria upon which bidders would be judged, two weeks before bid proposals on the first contract were due.

In the other two cases, the results of our investigation reveal a program tasked with implementing a "business model" program. As such, Royalty in Kind (RIK) marketers donned a private sector approach to essentially everything they did. This included effectively opting themselves out of the Ethics in Government Act, both in practice, and, at one point, even explored doing so by policy or regulation.

Not only did those in RIK consider themselves special, they were treated as special by their management. For reasons that are not at all clear, the reporting hierarchy of RIK bypassed the one supervisor whose integrity remained intact throughout, Debra Gibbs-Tschudy, the Deputy Associate Director in Denver, where RIK is located. Rather, R1K was reporting directly to Associate Director Dennet, who was located some 1500 miles away in Washington, DC, and to whom the unbridled, unethical conduct of RIK employees was apparently invisible (although the Associate Director had been made aware of the plan by RIK to explore more formal exemption from the ethics rules.)

More specifically, we discovered that between 2002 and 2006, nearly 1/3 of the entire
RIK staff socialized with, and received a wide array of gifts and gratuities from, oil and gas companies with whom RIK was conducting official business. While the dollar amount of gifts and gratuities was not enormous, these employees accepted gifts with prodigious frequency. In particular, two RIK marketers received combined gifts and gratuities on at least 135 occasions from four major oil and gas companies with whom they were doing business - a textbook example of improperly receiving gifts from prohibited sources. When confronted by our investigators, none of the employees involved displayed remorse.

We also discovered a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity in the RIK program - both within the program, including a supervisor, Greg Smith, who engaged in illegal drug use and had sexual relations with subordinates, and in consort with industry. Internally, several staff admitted to illegal drug use as well as illicit sexual encounters. Alcohol abuse appears to have been a problem when RIK staff socialized with industry. For example, two RIK staff accepted lodging from industry after industry events because they were too intoxicated to drive home or to their hotel. These same RIK marketers also engaged in brief sexual relationships with industry contacts. Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length.

Finally, we discovered that two of the RIK employees who accepted gifts also held inappropriate outside employment and failed to properly report the income they received from this work on their financial disclosure forms. Smith, in particular, deliberately secreted the true nature of his outside employment - he pitched oil and gas companies that did business with RIK to hire the outside consulting firm - to prevent revealing what would otherwise, at a minimum, be a clear conflict of interest.
http://www.doioig.gov/upload/S...h%20transmittal1.txt
quote:
Originally posted by mad American:
Once again, both parties failed US! We can argue back and forth all the time about dimwit or repulsive, but they have both failed us. Term limts would be a good start towards fixing the mess we are in. If a politician has to deal with the laws they pass, it may actually make a difference. Blame bush, obama or who the hell ever, but it is as much our fault as anyones.


Actually the original Constitution had the best idea when it limited that the House would be elected by the people but the Senate would be appointed positions, appointed by each state legislature. Today the electorate has the ability to more greatly influence the Government than what was conceived and recommended by the founders of this nation. As for term limits, while I agree somewhat, it could be argued that the founders envisioned a much different electorate and felt that the people would be their own limiting factor. I doubt that they could have seen how entrenched some of our leaders would become because people vote, without question, for the incumbent over and over.
quote:
Originally posted by mad American:
Once again, both parties failed US! We can argue back and forth all the time about dimwit or repulsive, but they have both failed us. Term limts would be a good start towards fixing the mess we are in. If a politician has to deal with the laws they pass, it may actually make a difference. Blame bush, obama or who the hell ever, but it is as much our fault as anyones.


Amen!
I'm not saying term limits are bad but if people would vote intelligently or at least think about who and what they are voting for then possibly it would be a moot point. Each Representative comes up every two years and every Six Years we can elect a new Senator. Personally I think the 17th Amendment screwed us up when it put the election of Senators in the hands of the electorate rather than allowing the individual State Legislatures to appoint both of them. Thankfully the President has a term limit of two terms but hopefully the voters will give the current one the boot for his Actions while in office.

Add Reply

Post

Untitled Document
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×