Spill Here, Spill Now, Three Weeks Too Late Dept. (Updated) 3
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the British company had missed “deadline after deadline” in its efforts to seal a blown-out oil well.
I cannot join those criticizing the federal government harshly for not moving in this direction sooner; the government made the mistake of assuming that an oil company knew something about wild oil wells and would act in good faith in so serious a situation.
Silly government. Tricks are for oilsters.
Furthermore, much of the sincere criticism, as differentiated from the political theatrics, seems to assume that the government has a battalion of oil well operating engineers it can scramble like a fighter squadron for one of those “surgical strikes” (which always turn out not to be all that surgical when the full story comes out). I don’t think that “roughneck” is a civil service job category.
Criticize, yes, me do that thing; harshly, no. I wish President Obama and his staff had realized sooner that BP was blowing (blowing out?) smoke and waving mirrors. Looking back we can see that BP clearly had no idea what to do or even what was going on there down under the sea. Hindsight 20/20 and all that.
We do not have a President Criswell.
Addendum:
May 24, 2010 at 4:07 pm
with all due respect, i CAN join those criticizing the federal government harshly for not moving in this direction sooner, for a variety of reasons.
1) when the plumber who was supposed to fix the toilet makes the problem worse, you don’t call that same plumber in to fix his mess. You call a DIFFERENT plumber, and sue the guy who messed up to begin with.
2) “I wish President Obama and his staff had realized sooner that BP was blowing (blowing out?) smoke and waving mirrors.” So what you’re saying the the president is wholly ignorant of the history of the oil industry? i don’t know if i believe that.
3) Even if the previous statements were true, it has been MORE THAN A MONTH.
4) “But there’s no doubt, at least in the language of relevant federal law; President Obama not only has the authority, but the obligation — however politically risky that might be — to take ownership of efforts to stanch the flow.” http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/if-top-kill-fails-obama-must-take-reins/
It is THE PRESIDENT’S <I>OBLIGATION</I> TO TAKE OVER. Any idiot could see two weeks ago that BP was flailing.
May 24, 2010 at 10:20 pm
(Grin) Criticize away. I’m not you and you’re not me. Something for which we are probably both thankful.
Joking aside, just please don’t go all Firebagger. Criticize all you want, but do not desert to the enemy which is already proven itself worse.
I’m too tired and it’s too late for me to take on your points one by one and it won’t change either of our minds. I think Obama screwed up by not acting faster and not being more cynical about Bumbling Phools Oil Company. I do not think that makes him evil. It makes him human, like the rest of us.
I’m old. I’ve had lots of bosses. And there was one common fault amongst all the good bosses I had. They tended to be too trusting. They were fundamentally good people and they expected the folks that they dealt with also to be fundamentally good people; they dared those folks to prove them wrong.
Sometimes they were proved wrong; more often they were proved right.
Obama is IMO fundamentally good people. He has the faults of fundamentally good people.
There is no one anywhere who is fundamentally perfect people, and to apply a standard of perfection is to be fundamentally unfair and fundamentally unreasonable.
Hindsight 20/20 and all that.
There is one thing I miss from up there. Tuesday nights.
May 25, 2010 at 2:34 pm
[…] Tomasky in the Guardian echoes what I said yesterday about their being no federal apparatus for taking over attempts to contain the BP’s wild […]