Chris Matthews Admits “The President Scares Me,” James Carville Laments Obama’s “Lackadaisical” Response and Kevin Costner to the Rescue on the BP Oil Spill
By Anita Finlay ("Ani") on May 22, 2010 at 6:00 PM in Bush/Cheney, Current Affairs, Dick Cheney, Huffington Post, James Carville, Obama Administration, Obama's Broken Promises, Obama-Barack & President Barack, President Barack Obama
The Huffington Post, of all places, carried two surprising news items critical of The One. The first as reported by Danny Shea tells us Chris Matthews…
The MSNBC anchor, once so enamored with Barack Obama that he admitted a campaign speech sent a thrill up his leg, has now told Jay Leno that Obama scares him.
“The President scares me,” Matthews said of Obama’s response to the Gulf oil spill disaster. “He’s been acting a little like a Vatican Observer here. When is he actually going to do something? And I worry; I know he doesn’t want to take ownership of it. I know politics. He said the minute he says, ‘I’m in charge,’ he takes the blame, but somebody has to. It’s in our interest.”
Mr. Matthews described the BP oil spill as “the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.” He likewise lambasted Rush Limbaugh and former VP Dick Cheney, as he lamented years of various administrations looking the other way on safety precautions for off shore drilling. But no matter how much he spread the insults around, the fact remains that the bloom is off the rose between him and his Prez.
Matthews was forthright in condemning our backdoor deals with oil companies and no oversight re drilling – but the Dems have been the majority in Congress since 2006 and Obama has been President for 16 months – could safeguards not have been put back in place before the BP disaster? Matthews does not mention that Obama received large campaign contributions from BP.
And while Chris figures out he is scared of a man who leads from the rear, or leads by waiting, that is to say, not at all, we figured this out 2-1/2 years ago. I will admit to being likewise scared of someone who constantly says “I didn’t know” to inconvenient truths about his associates and dances quickly away from responsibility. I am also worried by someone slow to act on this oil spill but quick to jump down the throats of Arizonans, passing immigration law in desperation when the federal government was and is a no show. Our President is quick to race bait and pander to the Hispanic vote for his own benefit. Taking charge on the oil spill… not so much.
Laura Bassett of HuffPo reports that James Carville, a democratic stalwart, finally voices his frustration, too:
“He’s ‘Risking Everything’ With ‘Go Along With BP Strategy’”
Carville, the famously outspoken Louisianian who was a chief political aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday that the administration’s response to the spill has been “lackadaisical” and that Obama was “naive” to trust BP to manage the massive clean-up effort.
“I think they actually believe that BP has some kind of a good motivation here,” he said. “They’re naive! BP is trying to save money, save everything they can… They won’t tell us anything, and oddly enough, the government seems to be going along with it! Somebody has got to, like shake them and say, ‘These people don’t wish you well! They’re going to take you down!’”…
“I’m as good a Democrat as most people, and I think this administration has done some good things. They are risking everything by this ‘go along with BP’ strategy they have that seems like, lackadaisical on this, and Doug is right, they seem like they’re inconvenienced by this, this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another, if you let BP handle it, it’ll all go away. It’s not going away. It’s growing out there. It is a disaster of the first magnitude, and they’ve got to go to Plan B.”
Most damning is this little tidbit…
Not until yesterday, critics note, a full 30 days after the oil rig explosion, did federal officials establish a technical team to measure the full extent of the spill.
Until now, the vast bulk of clean-up responsibilities have been left to BP, which isn’t much closer to capping the oil leak now than it was weeks ago. The oil has already affected nearly 50 miles of sensitive marshlands on the Louisiana coastline, according to estimates by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, and federal authorities have increased the no-fishing zone to 45,728 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP has consistently downplayed the severity of the spill despite growing evidence that suggests otherwise, and their strategy to clean up the spill has involved the use of a toxic chemical dispersant that EPA officials warn may cause lasting damage to coastal ecosystems.
The EPA has now given BP 24 hours to begin using a less toxic dispersant, but Carville says the government’s primary failure was trusting BP to handle the clean-up in the first place.
“Right now I wouldn’t trust BP to do anything,” he said. “And nobody does”
So much for ready on day one. It would have cost BP all of $5 million dollars to install the safety equipment to prevent this disaster. This Administration had plenty of time these past 16 months to put such safety precautions back in place.
The Administration may have been slow to act, but here’s a bit of news that may surprise you. Guy Adams of The Indpendent/UK reports that BP calls in Costner’s $26m vacuum cleaners to mop up huge oil spill.
[Mr. Costner] has spent 15 years developing device to separate oil from sea water and it is now being put to work.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. So with hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day, and its corporate image starting to resemble the tar-covered sea creatures now washing on to Louisiana’s fragile shoreline, BP has called on Kevin Costner to help stave off environmental Armageddon.
The Hollywood star has been bobbing around the Mississippi Delta helping representatives of the British oil firm and US coastguard test-drive a stainless steel device called the Ocean Therapy. In a claim which sounds as unlikely as the plot premise of Waterworld, he says it can quickly and efficiently clean oil from tainted sea water.
Bizarrely, Costner may be on to something. The actor has spent 15 years and roughly $26million of his personal fortune developing the patented machine with the help of his elder brother Dan, a scientist. It works like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up dirty liquid and then using a high-speed centrifuge to separate it into oil, and heavier water.
When he allowed the local media to see Ocean Therapy in action – albeit on dry land – it appeared to work as advertised. Yesterday, six of the devices were attached to boats and floated into the Gulf, so the organisers of the clean-up operation could see whether they might also be capable of functioning on the high seas.
“This is a technology that we know works, and has worked for a long time,” Costner said, adding that 26 of the machines are now in Louisiana ready to be put into action. “I’m just really happy that the light of day has come to this, and I’m very sad about why it is. But this is why it was developed, and like anything that we all face, as a group, we face it together.”
Costner, 55, has quietly been developing Ocean Therapy since the mid-1990s when he founded the Costner Industries Nevada Corporation, a company which funded eco-friendly research by his brother and a team of scientists. Aside from the water cleaning device, the firm has also invented a non-chemical battery.
Each of the 26 Heath Robinson-style machines now in Louisiana waiting to be deployed can clean between 5 and 200 gallons of water a minute, depending on its size, said Costner’s lawyer and business partner, John Houghtaling, which means they could in theory mop up oil at the rate it is currently gushing into the Gulf. Polluted sea water which passes through them comes out 97 per cent clean.
“Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill, and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn’t have separation technology,” said Houghtaling. “Kevin wrote all the checks for this project. This was one man’s vision. Sometimes it takes a star to come in with their money and time to make a difference.”
I appreciate someone who is willing to put their money where their mouth is and hope Mr. Costner’s invention will be of assistance in this horrid situation. Odd however, that we might have to pin our hopes on a private citizen rather than our Government or the oil company that caused this disaster in the first place.
The LA Times also reports on Costner’s invention:
If all goes according to plan, he said, “We could have as many as 26 machines dispatched throughout the gulf. Our largest machine is 112 inches high, weighs 2 ½ tons and cleans 210,000 gallons a day of oily water. We are hoping to have 10 machines that size out there — meaning we could potentially clean 2 million gallons of oil water a day.”
Godspeed.
So, um, what’s the Administration doing?
by Ronald Scott
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