Nowadays, one has to take anything the folks at FIredoglake have to say with a grain of salt. It’s a bit of a Jane Hamsher cult, and she seems to be a bit over the top in her criticisms of Obama. Even allowing for that, this post appears to be cogently argued. If it’s true, or even close to true, the Gulf Coast is in for big trouble.
Senator Nelson of Florida, who should know, implies that the well casing and well bore are compromised. This may make stemming the leak impossible until the relief wells are dug, and its a direct result of BP’s use of substandard materials, all of which must be known by the Administration.
If, in fact, BP used so many shortcuts in the drilling process, and who can doubt it at this point, it does seem rather strange that the Obama administration, as the Firedoglake post points out, is so willing to put the best face on what they are doing out there. They seem to be buying into failure, to the point where BP’s eventual failure will be their’s as well, even though their actual responsibility for the disaster, and the failure to stem it thus far, is almost non-existent. It would seem that from both a PR and policy standpoint, it would make more sense to take a hard line with BP, publicize its failures, past and present, distance yourself from them at the same time you ride herd on them with regard to the present efforts to stop the leak, and be brutally frank about the likely results. It only makes sense to get out in front of the bad news and keep blaming BP in advance of actual events There is no logical reason why the Administration needs to cover up for BP in order to get their best effort out of them; in fact, it may be the case that adopting a critical position might work better.
Yet another example of Obama’s tendency to unnecessarily align himself with the loathed (see, e.g. Goldman Sachs). Bush was an oil man through and through, but he was ready to throw one under the bus when it was politically convenient (e.g., “I didn’t know Kenny-Boy Lay“). Obama could do the same with more political consistency, but he seems constitutionally unable to draw blood.
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