No He Did Not!

[bpwallace49]

Perch . . . what if Obama granted immediate building of sand berms . . and it destroyed the marshlands behind them? Would you be praising him for taking immediate, poorly thought out actions? Or would you be crucifying him for acting without thinking first? I understand that the US is not used to a president that thinks before he acts. Now we have a president that deliberates before making a decision, and you just cant wrap your heads around it.

 

Your help comment from foreign nations (that is constantly repeated by the right) is flat out wrong. No one offered to help without a hefty price tag first.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37785640/

[westvirginia]

Perch . . . what if Obama granted immediate building of sand berms . . and it destroyed the marshlands behind them? Would you be praising him for taking immediate, poorly thought out actions? Or would you be crucifying him for acting without thinking first? I understand that the US is not used to a president that thinks before he acts. Now we have a president that deliberates before making a decision, and you just cant wrap your heads around it.

 

Your help comment from foreign nations (that is constantly repeated by the right) is flat out wrong. No one offered to help without a hefty price tag first.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37785640/

 

Who cares about the price tag? Won't BP foot the bill? This is the one thing I absolutely don't understand here - why we turned down ANY help from countries with experience in this.

[alexgaddis]

That is a great link Az. I just signed up for a subscription so I could take advantage of the free copy of Rush Limbaugh's new book as a bonus.

 

.

Fair and Balanced...

[bpwallace49]

Who cares about the price tag? Won't BP foot the bill? This is the one thing I absolutely don't understand here - why we turned down ANY help from countries with experience in this.

 

Please post where any help was turned down. TIA

[rattsass]

Please post where any help was turned down. TIA

Its called Google. Learn it. Know it. Live it.

[westvirginia]

Please post where any help was turned down. TIA

 

Right here.

 

[SEC=UGA]

Here's another BP, this time from a different country

 

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/busine...fy/7043272.html

 

From what I can tell off of google, he also turned down an offer from the Norwegians.

Edited June 21, 2010 by SEC=UGA

[SEC=UGA]

Forum on democratic undergorund about Obama not accepting ships from Japan, Norway, etc...

 

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=389x8575645

[rattsass]

Forum on democratic undergorund about Obama not accepting ships from Japan, Norway, etc...

 

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=389x8575645

Takes a lot of time out of ones day to find the truth. Real tough stuff.

[SEC=UGA]

Wow, even the Canadians are giving him diaper dirt... If youread just one to get insight into this, this is probably the article

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Obama+fav...8731/story.html

Edited June 21, 2010 by SEC=UGA

[Perchoutofwater]

Perch . . . what if Obama granted immediate building of sand berms . . and it destroyed the marshlands behind them? Would you be praising him for taking immediate, poorly thought out actions? Or would you be crucifying him for acting without thinking first? I understand that the US is not used to a president that thinks before he acts. Now we have a president that deliberates before making a decision, and you just cant wrap your heads around it.

 

Your help comment from foreign nations (that is constantly repeated by the right) is flat out wrong. No one offered to help without a hefty price tag first.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37785640/

 

Yeah a sand berm is a lot more devastating than a little oil BTW, they've been built in the past.

[rattsass]

Wow, even the Canadians are giving him diaper dirt... If youread just one to get insight into this, this is probably the article

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Obama+fav...8731/story.html

My Pc responds to this link as unsafe. Must be a plot...

[SEC=UGA]

My Pc responds to this link as unsafe. Must be a plot...

 

 

Truthiness.

 

It's an adorable word that U.S. television host Stephen Colbert created as a means of denigrating then-president G-eorgeW. Bushandhisdeci s-ion to invade Iraq. Accord ing to Colbert, that decision was based more on Bush's gut instinct than actual facts. Consequently, truthiness came to mean, "something that seems like truth -- the t-ruth we want to exist" with out any factual basis.

 

W-ell, guesswhat? "Truthi ness" is now invading the w-ordsofthegreatoratorhim self, President Barack Obama.

 

The president spoke to Americans on Tuesday, a-ssuring them that his ad ministration was in charge of the Gulf oil spill, strictly holding BP to account and doing all it could to mitigate t-he spill's impact on the en vironment and livelihoods of the Southeastern U.S. As a-lways, the words were spo ken with great conviction, b-ut they were overwhelm ingly based on 'truthiness.'

 

Obama boldly claimed, "We will fight this spill with everything we've got . . ." but the real truth is that the U.S. isn't using all the expertise and technology at its disposal. Expert resources -that don't fall under its pro tectionist union rules are being politely declined and exasperated Americans are finally starting to ask, why.

 

This week, Foreign Policy magazine reported that the U.S. has turned down offers of cleanup assistance and technology (including ships, skimmers, workers and t-echnology) from 13 coun tries, including Canada.

 

Just three days after BP's oil rig went down, the Dutch government offered to provide ships with oil-skimming booms and a plan to build (within three weeks) a 96.5-kilometre-long sand barrier (i. e. dike) that would protect the sensitive marshland on the Louisiana coastline. No one knows how to protect a coastline like the Dutch but, according to the Netherland's Consul General in Houston, they received a "thanks, but no thanks" from Obama's administration.

 

In the meantime, as much as 60,000 barrels of oil per d-ay spewed into the Gulf un abated for almost six weeks. Since then, BP's partial fix has enabled it to capture about 18,000 barrels of that each day. There have been a steady stream of reports about a lack of expertise in laying boom and a scarcity of oil skimmers -- all of which has been offered to the U.S., and refused. Some of the best oil cleanup ships in the world are not being used.

 

This week, U.S. resolve finally weakened and it accepted some foreign t-echnology (such as skim m-ingboomsfromtheNeth erlands) to be outfitted on American ships. But each pair of these booms has the potential to remove 20,000 tonnes of oil and sludge a day -- enough to have made a significant impact over the past eight weeks.

 

Why is Obama -- who has made such a point of striving f-or international co-opera tion -- so reluctant to accept foreign assistance that could save the Gulf coastline?

 

B-ecauseofa1920protec tionist, pro-union law, called The Jones Act. It insists all vessels carrying goods in U.S. waters be U.S.-built,-owned and -crewed. Former president Bush waived this l-aw just two days after hur ricane Katrina to ensure that oil and natural gas reached Louisiana but, despite a host o-f growing demands by poli ticians, Obama steadfastly refuses to do so.

 

The reason? In his own words, "I owe those unions" because their support "proved critical to my campaign."

 

It's rather short-sighted for the unions to hold Obama to the Jones Act since the disorganized and inefficient cleanup could ultimately cost unionized A-mericans tens of thou sands of jobs. But, to the unions, the symbolism of the Jones Act is more impor -tant than the workers or the fragile Gulf environment. Apparently, Obama agrees.

 

N-otetoBP'sPublicRela tions Department: Obama himself is impeding cleanup attempts by not allowing non-union workers. In other words, there's plenty of blame to spread around. Why not bring this to the b-road attention of Ameri cans? Just a thought.

 

Another bit of truthiness to mull on: Obama told Americans that, "From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge . . . "

 

Yet MSNBC reported that Obama met with Tony Hayward, BP's CEO, for the first time on June 8 -- a full 59 days after the Deepwater Horizon went down.

 

Truthiness. This president knows how to offer tough words, but his actions show he is out to protect union interests first, not those of his fellow Americans or the environment.

 

Susan Martinuk's column runs every Friday.

 

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Obama+fav...l#ixzz0rWvo7RvV

[rattsass]

Truthiness.

 

Truthiness. This president knows how to offer tough words, but his actions show he is out to protect union interests first, not those of his fellow Americans or the environment.

 

Susan Martinuk's column runs every Friday.

 

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Obama+fav...l#ixzz0rWvo7RvV

Wow. Money over environment. Political allies over the environment. And political agenda over environment.

 

What a tangled web we weave...

[caddyman]

Please post where any help was turned down. TIA

So where is your I am sorry to these guys? They have posted these links for your lazy ass and you disappear. Can't you stop bussing tables long enough to admit you are wrong?

[bpwallace49]

Right here.

 

 

Doesnt work . . . .

[SEC=UGA]

Doesnt work . . . .

 

The end is near... The admin has started blocking all sites and stories critical of them....

 

Kinda funny/sad. Last time I was in Turkey, went to CNN.com, clicked on the "politics" tab, a page came up saying that the site had been blocked by order of the Turkish Court. Never figured out what CNN put on there that pissed them off so bad.

[SEC=UGA]

I do think that the answer rests here:

 

Many in the U.S., including the president, have expressed frustration with the handling of the cleanup. In the Netherlands, the response would have been different, Visser said.

 

There, the government owns the cleanup equipment, including the skimmers now being deployed in the Gulf.

 

“If there's a spill in the Netherlands, we give the oil companies 12 hours to react,” he said.

 

If the response is inadequate or the companies are unprepared, the government takes over and sends the companies the bill.

[Ursa Majoris]

I do think that the answer rests here:

 

Many in the U.S., including the president, have expressed frustration with the handling of the cleanup. In the Netherlands, the response would have been different, Visser said.

 

There, the government owns the cleanup equipment, including the skimmers now being deployed in the Gulf.

 

“If there's a spill in the Netherlands, we give the oil companies 12 hours to react,” he said.

 

If the response is inadequate or the companies are unprepared, the government takes over and sends the companies the bill.

[perchandco] Total waste of taxpayer money, private enterprise is so much more efficient than government, etc, etc, etc..... {/perchandco]

[rattsass]

The end is near... The admin has started blocking all sites and stories critical of them....

Just another coincidence I'm sure. Blocked virus in one link. Another link missing altogether. I am finding that more and more. Yeah, it's happening.

[bpwallace49]

-sigh-

 

The White House has "refused" international help in dealing with the oil spill.

George LeMieux on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 in an interview on CNN and a posting on Twitter

 

White House refused international oil spill aid, Florida senator says

 

Florida Sen. George LeMieux continues to be a leading critic of President Barack Obama's handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

 

LeMieux, who was appointed to the Senate last year by Gov. Charlie Crist, has described Obama's response as "dereliction of duty," and said Obama appears more interested in photo-ops than solving the crisis growing in the Gulf. LeMieux also has pressed the federal government to add more skimmer boats off Florida's coast to collect encroaching oil.

 

Now, LeMieux claims that offers of assistance from foreign governments are going ignored by President Obama and his administration.

 

LeMieux let out his frustration in a posting on Twitter.

 

"State Department reports today 17 countries have offered 21 times to send aid, including skimmers," LeMieux wrote on June 15, 2010. "Why has the White House refused help?"

 

He repeated the same claim in a CNN interview on June 16.

 

With such a scramble to contain the oil and prevent it from damaging Florida's beaches, we wondered if the federal government has been refusing offers of foreign aid.

 

Since LeMieux says his information comes from the State Department, that's where we went to look.

 

In a press briefing on May 19, reporters asked State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid of the possibility of international aid (The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20). Duguid said that, at that time, 17 countries had offered some form of assistance.

 

A reporter then asked why none of the offers had been accepted.

 

"I don’t know that none of them have been accepted," Duguid said. "I know that BP has accepted some directly without going to the U.S. The offers were mostly for booms and dispersants. There are some offers of support which come in the form of 'If you let us know what you need, we'll be happy to see if we can provide that.' There are others that were for equipment that the U.S. or BP had in supply at the time and was not running short. So there were different types of offers, and I have an understanding that BP may have accepted one or two. I don’t have the details of that."

 

So it was up to BP earlier? It’s not your decision?, a reporter asked.

 

"The decision on what to accept is being done for the U.S. Government by the Coast Guard," Duguid said. "They are the authoritative agency to make those decisions. BP, being a private company, can accept the help that is offered to it directly. We don’t control that. However, the expertise that is there in the Gulf is working very hard to try and contain this spill and to cap that – cap the well."

 

Another exchange between the State Department and reporters came a week later. State Department spokesman T.J. Crowley said 17 countries were still offering aid, as were four other entities -- the European Maritime Safety Agency, the European Commission’s Monitoring and Information Centre, the International Maritime Organization, and the Environment Unit of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the United Nations Environment Program.

 

"My understanding is that two offers of assistance have been accepted thus far – I believe it's Mexico and Norway," Crowley said. "Those offers were actually accepted by BP as part of this Unified Area Command. But we also are working internationally. I think there's assistance flowing in through private as well as public sources, so this is something that we continue to evaluate. But I would defer probably to the Coast Guard in terms of explaining the process."

 

A reporter then noted an apparent disconnect, with some governors calling for more booms while the federal government appears to be refusing some internationals offers for help.

 

"Let me be clear, we are grateful for the assistance that we have been offered internationally," Crowley said. "It is something that we evaluate every day. But again, I would defer to others, particularly the Coast Guard, to go through where they are in the process of evaluating particular offers."

 

Another series of questions followed June 9, and then again on June 14 and 15.

 

On June 14, the State Department reported that booms from Canada had arrived in Alabama. Crowley then was asked to explain why it took weeks for some foreign offers of assistance to be accepted, and why others still hadn't.

 

"First of all, the offers came in. Some of those offers were specific; some of those offers were general," Crowley said. "Secondly, the United States Government was looking to see what are immediately available sources of relevant equipment and technology there in the Gulf region."The State Department on June 14 released a list of the countries that offered to help -- Canada, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. That's 17 countries. The State Department also detailed what offers had been accepted.

 

From Mexico -- Two skimmers and 13,780 feet of boom (accepted in early May).

 

From Norway -- Eight skimming systems (accepted in early May).

 

From Netherlands -- Three sets of Koseq Rigid Sweeping Arms, which attach to the sides of ships and gather oil (accepted on May 23).

 

From Canada -- 9,843 feet of boom (accepted on June 4).

 

On June 15, Qatar, the 18th country, offered chains of containment boom and Sweden followed up on an earlier offer to provide skimmers. State Department officials also started making a distinction about the aid -- it wasn't coming for free.

"There have been some questions about these offers of assistance. For the most part, they are offers to sell supplies," Crowley said. "And in determining whether to accept these offers, we look at the availability of domestic sources and also compare pricing on the open market. So that may be one of the reasons why, in some cases, we’ve been able to accept these offers and pursued them. In other cases, we’re holding them in abeyance as we continue to identify sources of important equipment that will be needed for this -- to handle this over the long term."

 

The Washington Post reported about the decision to accept or decline foreign aid in its June 15 edition, noting that the decision to accept foreign aid came after weeks of delay, and that foreign governments were unsure if they should contact the government or BP.

 

In some cases, the Post reported, the administration rejected offers because they failed to meet U.S. specifications: For example, the private consortium that serves as Norway's spill-response team uses a chemical dispersant that the Environmental Protection Agency has not approved.

 

Japan was offering protective booms and the Swedish Coast Guard was prepared to send three ships that can each collect 370 barrels of oil an hour. The Norwegian Coastal Authority, the Post reported, has approved sending nearly a third of the nation's spill response equipment to the gulf if asked.

Let's tie this all together. The State Department has received official assistance offers from 18 countries and another four groups. Some of those offers are vague, others are specific. Most all of them are offers to sell equipment or use the equipment.

 

The State Department has accepted the offers of four countries -- Mexico, Norway, Netherlands and Canada -- and says it is reviewing and considering other offers.

 

That's in contrast to LeMieux's statement, which is that the White House has "refused" international aid.

 

But it's also clear the United States has either struggled to act on offers of foreign aid, or that processing the requests has been delayed. Japan, Sweden and Norway are all prepared to send resources or manpower to the Gulf should the U.S. sign off. Other countries also are willing to help, but have been kept on the sidelines. Taking that into account, we'll rate LeMieux's statement Barely True.

 

So there is a clarification. You guys were right, and other countries have offered us aid . . at a price. Some of this help wont meet US standards, some help is vague. Some help was accepted. To say that help was flat out refused is disingenuous at best.

 

The part that is exactly right is the confusion on the point person to go to. Not having a unified point person to have immediately for handling the situation was a major blunder by the US.

 

Zeke . . . shoo fly. Head back to your dung heap where you belong.

[bpwallace49]

Wow, even the Canadians are giving him diaper dirt... If youread just one to get insight into this, this is probably the article

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Obama+fav...8731/story.html

 

An Op-ed from Canada opines that it because of some shadowy union payback Z O M G . . rattsass just creamed himself in conspiracy delight.

[rattsass]

An Op-ed from Canada opines that it because of some shadowy union payback Z O M G . . rattsass just creamed himself in conspiracy delight.

No I think it is quite sickening. You think I take delight in these atrocities? Do you?

 

Because the alternative to believing this line of thinking is that the administration is just incompetent. Conspiracy or incompetence bordering on criminal. Take your pick.

[SEC=UGA]

An Op-ed from Canada opines that it because of some shadowy union payback Z O M G . . rattsass just creamed himself in conspiracy delight.

 

 

Just three days after BP's oil rig went down, the Dutch government offered to provide ships with oil-skimming booms and a plan to build (within three weeks) a 96.5-kilometre-long sand barrier (i. e. dike) that would protect the sensitive marshland on the Louisiana coastline. No one knows how to protect a coastline like the Dutch but, according to the Netherland's Consul General in Houston, they received a "thanks, but no thanks" from Obama's administration.

 

This sounds like a pretty concrete offer of help by the Dutch and a pretty concrete turndown by the administration and seems to contradict your post. Just sayin...

[SEC=UGA]

Japan was offering protective booms and the Swedish Coast Guard was prepared to send three ships that can each collect 370 barrels of oil an hour. The Norwegian Coastal Authority, the Post reported, has approved sending nearly a third of the nation's spill response equipment to the gulf if asked.

 

From your article... Then why the F isn't it here? Why haven't we asked for it? This is a freaking environmental catastrophe the cost of ewhich is going to be passed on/abosrbed b y BP who cares what it costs, get it here quickly, don't freaking shop around. ANd the tool w. the state department, "were looking for long term..." F the long term, there isn't a long term if you don't get the messed cleaned up. Finally, whatever you pulled that excerpt from, to describe the assertions as "barely true" is an absolute freaking farce. You want me to tell you the truth as most people see it... There is not enough equipment here, we had the opportunity to get equipment here and even failed at that because it "wasn't clear" who needed to be contacted in order to get the relief that is needed. If this is not a break down of epic proportions, I don't know what is.