Obama: “I Can’t Suck it Up With a Straw”

“my powers are not limitless” Obama said, ….which one of you is hiding the kryptonite???

mablanco
Maybe now he will take his ball and go home.
This is a President of the USA? I think you are giving the high school presidents a bad name.

“He made a stupid comment.I agree,and I am a supporter of the president. How many comments do you make that you wish you could take back? Let’s stop reporting every little thing he does. if we did that with every president we would have realized a long time ago just how like us they really are. he’s gonna say dumb things from time to time.”
Shall we agree to limit President Solid B+ to 2 stupid comments per day? I think that even with this agreement we who oppose Capt. Kick-Ass will still have plenty of material…(“Cinco de Cuatro”, the “Austrian language”, your employer would save “3000%” on healthcare premiums, “I don’t know the facts, but the Cambridge Police acted stupidly, etc., etc., etc.).
BTW, the Amnerican people don’t expect Super-O to dive 5000 feet to the ocean floor and “plug the damn hole.” What we do expect is competent disaster response and leadership, neigher of which has occurred.
But hey, The One is having great time on vacation, singing “Hey Jude”, fundraising for Democrats, bashing AZ’s immigration law (which (a.) he hasn’t read, (b.) if he has read indicates he is a lousy lawyer, or (c.) he is blindly pandering to Hispanics and Left), chillin’ with various athletic teams at the WH, etc., etc., etc. Royalty is not expected to actually DO anything, right?

Insert Larry Sinclair joke: here.

You guys are pathetic. Did you even see the video, did you see anyone walf off in the video? No, because unlike you bloggers they are the ones that are affected. So keep blogging, and saving the world. SNARK stops now

The self pity party continues.

Such Pathos.
Obama’s “powers” may not be limitless, but he has done little to help the gulf, has empowered few others to help, and has had plenty of fun while not doing it.

Why doesn’t he lift the Smith mandate so that Canadian and Mexican oil skimmers can assist???? Bush lifted the mandate for help with Katrina…but Obama WONT DO IT !!!! BECAUSE HE IS PROTECTING THE UNIONS OVER OUR ENVIROMENT !!!!

He sucks at everthing else, he should try!

He is able to suck all sorts of money out of America’s wallet for his pet ideologies!

Actually, his powers are expressly limited by the Constitution but he wouldn’t know that.

This has been our weakest leader. Instead of taking responsibility for his inactions, as he has promised, Mr. Obama is trying to miniscule and mask his ineffective work by using the straw comparison. He will blame someone else after all this is over.

Shut up and get it done.

It seems that every day we are seeing really stupid statements from this man and his associates.This statement is insulting and full of self pity while still not addressing why things are not getting done.What should he do?Act like he gives a damn!Obviously if a reporter from ABC knows more about containment boom supplies that the admiral directing the Federal response there is a serious problem.Maybe Allen isn’t the right guy for this-it doesn’t seem that he knows what is going on; he put the President in a helluva spot with this request for a BP meeting-a meeting way overdue but still a week away.The whole affair is spinning out of control.Total incompetence.

Posted by: progressive mama | Jun 11, 2010 11:42:13 PM
Thank you for that (eyes glazing over)…!
But seriously… you are a real +++ to this blog…

Mr. Obama, please move out of the way and let the Governor’s and people of Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi
and Florida clean up the gulf and continue drilling. Don’t stand in the
way of the residents in the gulf, give
them a hand.
John Adams – one of only two signers of the Bill of Rights – declared: “Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist” [15] and that “[i]t is agreed that the end of all government is the good and ease of the people in a secure enjoyment of their rights without oppression”

“I Can’t Suck it Up With a Straw”
—
Nope. But he could’ve had a line of barges that’d reach to Cuba and a couple hundred 6″ vacuum pumps attempting to fill them. So, YES, you could’ve at least tried.
Was he worried they might kill a few carp?

The spill is not about you .
Posted by: Paarth
—
Nope. But his response is flirting with becoming criminal.

t’s hilarious to hear the Republicans blather that their enemy, big government, isn’t doing enough to contain the spill. Hey party of polluters, let’s see your free enterprise “can do” spirit clean it up yourselves. After all it’s you who were yammering “drill baby drill.”
Even if the full weight of government did step in, they couldn’t do anything. That’s because oil can’t be cleaned from marshes, oceans and beaches–duh. If you don’t like toxic sludge, you should have thought about that before you tirelessly worked to gut environment regulations. Let’s see whether beaches hip deep in toxic sludge is the winning issue for the Republicans, party of polluters, come November. LOL

Bryan (or whomever you are), please don’t stop posting. Please.

Obama seem’s to be in a desperate situation whith this oil leak, I mean is true he can’t suck it up in with a straw, but the more time we waste the bigger the dammage is…. and the more animals that will die cause of the toxic waste!

Lydia, what new federal regulation would’ve prevented that explosion?
Which existing federal regulation(s) were skirted, causing that explosion?
Answer to the above is- NONE.
You’ve jumped onto the regulation bandwagon but, in this case, regulation is being confused with procedure. A freak event combined with a mammoth ego’s decision to forego a standard procedure caused that explosion.

This proves that Obama has no personality or leadership and is clueless on how to proceed. The reason he waited so long to say anything about the initial geyser is because he needed to see how the country would react then he would get his cue from that and then try to race in front to look like he was the leader. Obama is a follower and shifts his position when the country shifts. That is his weakness.

Obama is a follower and shifts his position when the country shifts. That is his weakness.
Posted by: NoName | Jun 12, 2010 2:30:33 PM
No, the President is a pragmatic politician willing to make adjustments and concessions to get legislation and activities moving forward.
Had the previous president had these skills, he might have been able to institute reform of Fannie and Freddie and immigration reform. Instead he accomplished nothing in those areas.

How was George Bush going to reform Fannie and Freddie when their chief cheerleaders Barney and Maxine were senior leaders in the majority party?
Posted by: Nephron | Jun 12, 2010 3:40:50 PM
Bush began attempting to reform Fannie and Freddie when the Republicans had a majority in Congress. Even then he was unable to negotiate a deal. It’s important to study history if you want to understand the present.

He “can’t suck it up w/ a straw.”
Oooooooh (how do I restrain myself!)
OK, if that’s his understanding of his job he and we are in deep trouble.

Task
—
Tierra, you’re President has finally realized he’s going down in flames and is trying to put the fire out with lighter fluid.

“Those “reforms” worked pretty well,didn’t they!”
I wasn’t commenting on how well anything worked, I was just refuting the bogus claim that the Republicans wanted to reform Freddie and Fannie but the Democrats somehow stopped them when in reality the Democrats did more to actually legislate regulations than the Republicans did…and loudly flows the baloney.

Gee, comedy at this time is not funny.
I’d like to know what the strategy is and how this will be fixed. It seems at this time that the government is just wringing its hands on this one.
We have National Labs and other great technical expertise in this country, yet no word from our “Leader “ on a strategy to attack this.
Maybe the reason is that the fix is not simply making another law- actual “hands-on work” has to be done.

“not one single Democrat supported Chuck Hagel’s legislation, S 190, a sure indicator that the legislation would be filibustered on the full Senate floor”
No Woody, the standard parrot line is that the Democrats actually stopped them, not that the Republicans wimped out because they were afraid the Democrats would stop them. The Republicans never even passed it out of committee because of “a sure indicator”?…sound pretty weak to me, surely not much of an effort. Bottom line is it never came to the floor for a vote, there was never any filibuster.

Maybe the reason is that the fix is not simply making another law- actual “hands-on work” has to be done.
Posted by: Jeff
—
Someone needs to tell our President to pound sand, gather up some equipment and go down there and get to work.
Don’t check their calender.
Don’t wait on some &^%$#@!& Commission.
No “volunteers”. People capable of getting something done!!
NOW.

Actually Mr. President, you could have sucked it up with a straw had BP not frantically applied dispersants to hide the amount of oil and damage that was coming. Dispersants are a cosmetic (lipstick on a pig) thing to do. It resulted in unmanageable dispersion of multiple slicks at varying depths; most of which are out of sight; which was what was intended. On the beach you can at least pick it up. On the ocean surface you have the chance to suck it up using tankers capable of this procedure and salvage usable oil and or burn it off. But dispersed in every direction; horizontally and vertically it can’t be managed; and it now may be even be more toxic and easier for marine life to ingest through filter feeding and distributed throughout the various trophic levels of the food chain. Spurious claims by BP and government hacks that dispersed oil is easier for microorganisms to effectively break down . . . give me a break (maybe in 25 to 250 years). The food chain across various depths is being broken, the end result of which, cannot be quantified, in just a few years; it will take generations; and those pending liability settlements will never be around long enough to make the determination nor will those responsible be held accountable for the real long term destruction. These dispersants worked just as the short-sighted and cleaver had hoped . . . dispersants kept the accumulated oil and true pending magnitude of the impending damage off the beaches for a while to buy time. Dispersants drove and continue to drive the majority of the oil throughout the Gulf at depths that keep it out of site. However, this “Silent Spring” will be a submerged subjugation of the oceanic food web from the benthic communities to those of the surface and those in the scattering layer ecosystems. The effects are ominous. Coral Reefs and even the Sargasso Sea are threatened; and with them, countless species; and the balance of life in the world ocean. All this because short-sighted narrow minded thinkers were so focused on the beaches; beaches being their highly visible, direct money producing, politically active and visible habitats, instead of safeguarding the deep blue reservoir; the less visible source of life and true wealth. So glad the beaches are relatively free and the spill is broken up into a thousand of hard to picture pieces, dispersants sure put a lot of lipstick on this pig, even if it is smearing a bit on the shores. At a bare minimum the government should have acted immediately building barrier islands to at least protect the marshes where life on shore is more dependent. If the oil had just been allowed to stay congealed; even though it would have provided a immediate and horrific visual; if the oil had been allowed to accumulate intact on the surface, and had all available skimmers been brought from all other nations after the first day (to hell with the Jones Act) the oil could have been more easily withdrawn and a quantified recovery might have been possible in time. The solution to pollution is not dilution, especially when it intersects with the hundreds of millions of eggs of unborn generations of untold species and the fragile larva of future generations. It’s over… but keep pumping all that oil; you will need it for all those colorful plastic fish needed to replace the real ones once they are gone; a final cosmetic fix. The cameras won’t know the difference!

If this Amateur Hour Oracle tries to politicize this tragedy by forcing his Cap and Trade SCAM down our throats, there will be hell to pay!

Americans are to blame for the Gulf oil fiasco. How could this be? Corporations only sell what we want to buy!
Republican leaders vehemently support corporate takeover of American democracy whlle Democrat leaders put on a performance of being on the side of American citizens but ultimately side with the corporate takeover model, and then theres the dismal Supreme Court that is clearly bought off by corporate America. But it will always boil down to Americans being brainwashed and manipulated by corporate America to consume more, just as Bush encouraged immediately following 9/11/01, when he should have been telling Americans to cut back. But Bush’s administration WAS the oil industry, and profits were more important than our soldiers lives. Now oil profits are more important than our food sources. Corporate politicians and ceo’s will always tell Americans what they want to hear while burying all truth and democracy in profits. Housing, banking, and energy sectors are clear examples of this anti American model, and these thieves will walk scott free with billions of hardworking Americans dollars, simply because Americans lack introspection of behavior and consumption.
The most effective vote cast today is NOT cast at the polls, but at the cash register. This is the American citizens only hope, but we must remember Milton Friedmans economic theory that all American politicians support. Milton says “regulation creates distortions in the markets”, and “deregulated markets will police themselves naturally”. What an idiot!!! Man ALWAYS fails when presented with such lucrative and profitable “moral hazards”. So again, the American citizen is to blame because we dictate what is sold to us by what we purchase, and corporations only supply what we want to buy. Drill baby drill!