St Thomas:
“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
I have heard this quote used many times, frequently by politicians who find themselves in trouble. They respond by saying that: “to people who know me, no explanation is necessary, and to those who hate me, no explanation could possibly be acceptable.”
Obama began handling this with his normal method of just doing nothing and blaming everything on Bush, Republicans, big oil, or just business in general. But this time finger pointing isn’t going to work. Even his supporters are not satisfied with this approach. Ok, we get it that BP is responsible for the problem, now we want to know what you are going to do to fix it. Unfortunately for Obama, he has never had to manage anything in his life, so he doesn’t have a clue with regard to how to handle this.
In all fairness, I doubt that any President would be able to fix this problem. But, the liberal left really believed that Obama was the answer and they are bitterly disappointed to find out he not only doesn’t have the answer, he is having trouble figuring out the question.
Every day Obama tries another way to explain why he is doing a good job in handling the BP oil leak. But, that in itself is indicative of the problem. If Obama really was doing a good job, he would not need to explain. His leadership would be obvious to everyone. My past experience is that anyone who has to explain why he or she is in charge isn’t really in charge at all. Real leaders don’t talk about taking charge, they take charge.
All Obama is doing now is focusing more and more focus on his failure. Today he literally tried to show he was in charge by saying “kick ass” as if this would somehow really impress people with his anger. It was pathetic. In the meantime, BP is out there trying to seal the leak. We may not like them, but two things are really clear. BP will continue working on finding a way to fix this problem and Obama will continue to focus on fixing the blame.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7145866.ece
There is one thing that is quite obvious. I looked at the pictures of the oil leak when they first became available. Maybe it’s just me, but it looks to me like there is more oil leaking now than before. Perhaps that is just an optical illusion, but that’s the way it looks. This is unfortunately consistent with some of the export reports. They said that cutting the pipe would increase oil flow by 20%. Dr. Steven Werely, PHD from Purdue, analyzed the video using a technique called “particle image velocimetry” and estimated the oil flow, before cutting the pipe, to be 95,000 barrels of oil per day or approximately 5,225,000 gallons per day. Everyone hoped he was wrong.
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Oil-Spills/Just-How-Much-Oil-is-Leaking-into-the-Gulf.html
BP is now sucking up 500,000 gallons of oil every day. They estimate they are getting about 1/3 of the oil. However, if Werely is right, they are getting less than 10% of the oil. In any event, this is far from over.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/07/95467/bp-well-may-be-spewing.html
Boone Pickens was on CNN and he said the earliest they are going to get this fixed is late August and that will be only if they are lucky. The last previous time this happened, in 200 ft of water, it took them three relief wells before they finally got one that worked. If that happens this time, we could still be talking about this leak in December.
He also said something very important. He said that only a fool would think that BP wasn’t doing everything possible to stop that leak. He said the government blame game only makes the problem worse, because the BP executives now have to worry about endless lawsuits and claims, when they should be concentrating on fixing the problem.
Several things are now certain. First, we are going to be getting more and more angry speeches from Obama trying to show he is in charge. Second, the oil leak will not only continue, it will get worse. Third, while Obama is concentrating full time on fixing the blame for the oil leak, he is ignoring serious problems elsewhere. Ultimately, we will all pay a price for that.
But, I can see November from my house.
TDM