On January 2009, a new U.S. President was inaugurated. I, along with a majority of the American and world-wide public, lauded the election of a man who had so much promise for hope and change. Now, 15 months after the momentous elevation of a man of color to the highest office in the land, we are discovering that the man who spoke so brilliantly about a New America is very good at talking, and not much else.
The other day I listened as Obama took to the airwaves to speak, from the White House Oval Office, about the Gulf oil spill and his proposed plan of action. A nation, devastated by the worse ecological disaster in U.S. history, eagerly awaited for its Commander in Chief to lead his countrymen. We expected to hear Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor or John F. Kennedy during the Cuban MIssile Crisis. Instead, what we got was a man who is very good at speaking with great rhetorical flourishes but whose words are hollow and empty.
As I listened to Obama speak to the nation I realized one thing: the Emperor is wearing no clothes, the Emperor is naked.
What a disappointing performance by the man who was elecged ont he promise of Hope and Change.
(NOTE: The following is from article that originally appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, issue No.: 1107.)
THE SPILL, THE SCANDAL AND THE PRESIDENT
By Tim Dickinson
Jun 08, 2010 4:30 PM EDT
On May 27th, more than a month into the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, Barack Obama strode to the podium in the East Room of the White House. For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak. "They have the technical expertise to plug the hole," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said only six days earlier. "It is their responsibility." The president, Gibbs added, lacked the authority to play anything more than a supervisory role – a curious line of argument from an administration that has reserved the right to assassinate American citizens abroad and has nationalized much of the auto industry. "If BP is not accomplishing the task, can you just federalize it?" a reporter asked. "No," Gibbs replied.
Now, however, the president was suddenly standing up to take command of the cleanup effort. "In case you were wondering who's responsible," Obama told the nation, "I take responsibility." Sounding chastened, he acknowledged that his administration had failed to adequately reform the Minerals Management Service, the scandal-ridden federal agency that for years had essentially allowed the oil industry to self-regulate. "There wasn't sufficient urgency," the president said. "Absolutely I take responsibility for that." He also admitted that he had been too credulous of the oil giants: "I was wrong in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios." He unveiled a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, discussed the resignation of the head of MMS, and extended a moratorium on new deepwater drilling. "The buck," he reiterated the next day on the sullied Louisiana coastline, "stops with me."
Meet Obama's sheriff, Ken Salazar.
What didn't stop was the gusher. Hours before the president's press conference, an ominous plume of oil six miles wide and 22 miles long was discovered snaking its way toward Mobile Bay from BP's wellhead next to the wreckage of its Deepwater Horizon rig. Admiral Thad Allen, the U.S. commander overseeing the cleanup, framed the spill explicitly as an invasion: "The enemy is coming ashore," he said. Louisiana beaches were assaulted by blobs of oil that began to seep beneath the sand; acres of marshland at the "Bird's Foot," where the Mississippi meets the Gulf, were befouled by shit-brown crude – a death sentence for wetlands that serve as the cradle for much of the region's vital marine life. By the time Obama spoke, it was increasingly evident that this was not merely an ecological disaster. It was the most devastating assault on American soil since 9/11.
Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down on MMS, as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency's culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years. He calibrated his response to the Gulf spill based on flawed and misleading estimates from BP – and then deployed his top aides to lowball the flow rate at a laughable 5,000 barrels a day, long after the best science made clear this catastrophe would eclipse the Exxon Valdez.
To read the entire article, please go here:
OBAMA FIDDLES
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