Thought of the Day!

I didn't see President Obamas' address last night, but I didn't have to. I've seen it coming from day one of the Deepwater Horizon spill. As his COS Rahm Emanuel stated during the 08 campaign, "Never let a crisis go to waste"! Understand, I don't wish for our President to fail. I hope some of his policies fail, because I think they are bad for my country. I disagree with the media starting to call this Obamas' Hurricane Katrina. There are vasts differences.

Did Bush fail during Katrina? Yes! But the local governments of New Orleans and Louisiana, failed to follow their own Hurricane response plan, the media conveniently left that part out. Has Obama failed in his response to the spill? Yup! But, for a different reason then has been reported. The feds can't stop the spill and shouldn't, that's BP and Transoceans job, the government doesn't have the expertise to stop it. Nor should it try. It's a matter for the parties responsible to take care of. That being said, the President IS responsible for protecting our borders, the same borders currently under assault from the spill. He has been inept at doing the things HE is responsible for and has yet to focus on those responsibilities. He needs to take off the ideological gloves and protect the coast.

I'm no scholar, I'm just a commonsense kinda guy. But it would seem to me that if you're offered help from countries that have experience in dealing with these disasters, you would lift the Jones Act (I think that's the act, I need to do some research) and allow them to help. Three days after the rig sank, the Dutch and a company here in the states offered "skimmer ships" with the capacity to skim 20,000 gallons of oil from the surface per day. It wouldn't have stopped it but, would have stemmed the flow, as it were. Louisiana Governor Jindel was asking for permission to construct berms in the gulf to protect the fragile marshlands that are now immersed in oil. He was told that he could not put them in place until the Army Corps of Engineers did an environmental impact study! WHAT?? Let's do an environmental study on the impact of something designed to protect from an environmental catastrophe. That's about as screwed up as a "football bat"!!

As a citizen of this great country I do not blame the President for not being able to stop the flow of oil, I blame him for not being engaged enough to understand that he needed to do everything in his vast power to prevent it from reaching our gulf coast. On this he gets an epic FAIL! His moratorium on drilling and push for Cap and Trade in his address last night, lead me to believe that his agenda is more Ideological driven then leading and protecting this great country.