[Closed] Barack Obama

I found dubya much more entertaining, definitely

Yea I agree dubya was entertaining 🙂

I like Obama. I always come away feeling refreshed and relieved when he's on the radio.

He is a long legged mac daddy!!!!

At least you knew where you were with dubya...

At least you knew where you were with dubya...

wondering 'WTF???'

Well you knew he was a massively right wing nobber - with Obama, he seems pretty cool and intelligent (loooong legged mack daddy!), but is that just a pretence?

At least you knew where you were with dubya...

Yes...firmly entrenched in the 80's.

I don't think Obama is pretentious.

he has a lot of the faux-folksy tihs that drove me mental with Bush. C'mon, Barry, you're a Harvard-educated cosmopolitan lawyer, you don't need to pretend you're country!

Sadly he does or the "folks" in the merkin public will reject him as too up himself.
Not that much different from "Call Me Dave" really.

Anyway:
www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/obama-starting-to-sound-like-a-bit-of-an-arse-201006102804/

And I'm glad he is taking such a firm stance against BP when American companies have such a wonderful record in environmental issues...

I was just gonna say the same thing. Will be interesting to watch what happens the next time a US company ****s up somewhere.

If Exxon did the same thing (again), they'd get their arses kicked too. This "they're only being so horrible because we used to be British" is just BP nonsense.

konabunny - why does Obama keep calling it British Petroleum, when that's not it's name any more? He does seem to be trying to divert the blame away from America.

Not sure that is true. Didn't I read somewhere that this doesn't even rate in the Top 50 of oil spills?

And in the soundbites I've heard the merkins do seem to be making a point of saying "BRITISH Petroleum" when the company actually dropped that name quite a while ago.

Edit: grum beat me to the point. 🙂

why does Obama keep calling it British Petroleum,

Didn't I read somewhere that this doesn't even rate in the Top 50 of oil spills?

It's the biggest oil spill in US history. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37353392/

Ten biggest are here: http://envirowonk.com/content/view/68/1/

everybody is worried about the Hurricane season affecting the clean-up when I reality nature will do that for them. Case in point being the Braer Tanker spill of the north coast of Scotland. the sea was so rough there that it effectively cleaned the oil away through aeration.

Did you?

Yes. In fact a nice environment bloke on the radio pointed out that spills bigger than this happen regularly in the Niger Delta, where 1.5 million tons of oil has been spilt in the last 50 years.

Also look at the figures on the BBC graphic, this is roughly a fifth the size of the biggest spill from a well:
[img] [/img]

It's just this one is visibly affecting Americans and they are far more newsworthy than poor Africans or Mexicans.

everybody is worried about the Hurricane
season affecting the clean-up

[img] [/img]
-- http://xkcd.com/748/

As I understand it, 40% of BP ownership is American, so it's Anglo-American. Also, there is never any mention of the three American companies responsible for the actual operation, including the valve that failed. Why are they not being forced to pay up? Someone should also keep reminding Obama of Piper Alpha, Exxon Valdiz, Torrey Canyon and Bhopal. The latter caused the death of thousands of people, the ill-health of hundreds of thousands more and environmental pollution on a massive scale, but the American responsible was snuck out of India and now lives in comfortable retirement in the states. They'll blame everyone else and refuse to acknowledge their own failings.

Not sure that is true. Didn't I read somewhere that this doesn't even rate in the Top 50 of oil spills?

You probably did, but its been leaking for months now.

A bit like cutting your toe off one day, its a big deal, but you'll be back in home in time for tea and in work the next day. Cut a toe off every day, then start working your way up your leg and yer f****ed.

I guess Obama is just playing politics and that he's not the grand statesman he made himself out to be. Very disappointing, given that I thought he was a smarter guy than the two "Dubya's" put together.

Gravitas - FAIL!!

Here is an article in the independent I read the other week. makes insightful reading into red tape encountered by those trying to get the clean-up underway

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pj-hahn-bp-has-lied-to-us-from-day-one-we-could-have-stopped-the-oil-1995015.html

He has to play politics, doesn't he? Anyone expecting a crusader for honesty and decency is a bit too romantic. He has to represent the people who elected him to an extent - unfortunately.

Perhaps Obama is using this to bash the Brits because of his family history

[url= http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5276010.ece ]Read Me[/url]

thisisnotaspoon: true, but that BBC graphic gives the total barrels leaked in these months and it still is about a fifth of the biggest one. And that is only considering spills in the ocean.

I used to think Obama was ok, just what the US/world needed, and maybe he is. But regardless, now I think he's a tosser who is acting like a t1t in his attempts to politically cover the arse of America!

Of course where he still needs to convince the electorate of his suitablity, is in Hicksville USA, which is why I am guessing that he is acting like he is. He knows fine what BP stands for - w@nker!

Unless of course he's looking at investing heavily in BP when the share price is at rock bottom!

I now sit here and wait for the FBI to intercept this and inform Special Branch who will come and "Kick my" British "ass"......

[chuckling at "roiling, alligator-filled wall of flame] 🙂

But regardless, now I think he's a tosser who is acting like a t1t in his attempts to politically cover the arse of America

Elaborate on this?

I now sit here and wait for the FBI to intercept this and inform Special Branch who will come and "Kick my" British "ass"......

[url= http://http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/10319053.stm ]You may jest...[/url]

let them turn on BP properly i bet the chinese are dead keen to buy into oil from the mexican gulf and probably not just to sell it to the yanks for a profit.

We 'aint not gonna take it no more 😀

Molgrips

Energy consumption, in particular oil, is something that the US has had no bones about defending in recent years - their gas guzzling reputation is not without solid foundation.

IMHO the US's insatiable need for oil implicates them as much as BP, or any of the other (US/multinational) companies involved. OK it wasn't planned that such an incident should happen, but surely it was predictable that one day it was bound to.

I would therefore suggest that there is more than we know to Mr Obama's apparent irrational attack on BP (he is surely too intelligent to be so irrational), and I would go so far as to say that by diverting all the flak onto BP and attempting to implicate the "British" part of it is an attempt to dilute the blaim that can be attributed to the US - even if it is only in the moral sense.

Coyote

Can't get your link to work, but I'm guessing it refers to the chap on Facebook who got intercepted after hinting that he was going to "kick some serious ass"!

That's why I'm waiting for the sirens 😀

Bigdonx, you won't hear sirens, you'll hear a whistling noise as a Reaper drone fires a couple of Hellfire missiles through your window... 😯

That Pastor is Hilarious! 'we aint gonna take it no mo!'

Bigdonx,

While it is true that we are ALL culpable indirectly for this and other oil spills, the point Obama is trying to make is that IF BP are directly responsible for this actual spill for techcnial reasons then they deserve to be made to pay. It does seem that BP have been taking risks that other companies would not take, and possibly breaching safety regulations too. Possibly.

I would caution against being defensive of BP purely on nationalistic grounds - I've been trying to stop myself thinking like that this whole time.

Molgrips

I agree with you, if BP are to blaim, then they should have to pay, but until the accident is fully investigated blaim should not be dumped soley at the feet of BP, as several other companies involved - most notably Transocean who operated the rig, and Haliburton whose equipment failed in the first instance as I understand things.

But I am certainly not being nationalistic, my point is that Obama in pointing the finger firmly at BP and by his tactical "slips of the tongue" inferring that they are British, is IMHO making a cynical attempt to divorce the US from the debacle - this is what I have a problem with!

I didn't read it that way. At first, the public were complaining at Obama for not being forceful enough, when he was saying 'we'll see whose fault it is'. So he had to act like a hardass for the sake of his popularity rating. Now we can all sneer when politicians pander to the electorate's whims but that's what their entire position is built upon, unfortunately.

Molgrips

Maybe my initial wording regarding Mr Obama was a little bit childish, flippant and not fully informed, but I can't help but feel that this is how he has reacted to the situation. I agree he has to pander to the expectations of the electorate to a certain extent, but he should also be applying maturity and rationality to the situation.

Like I said, I think he is generally a good thing for the US/world, but only if he stands up for the non-Bushist principles that got him elected in the first place.

He has a difficult job to do, is stuck between a rock and a hard place, but I feel he has, in the rest of the worlds "perception" of the US, reverted to type a little.

So apologies if I didn't explain myself very well in the first instance, but i am not being anti-US or pro-Brit, just a bit disappointed with Mr Obama.

Oval Office speech?
[url=

It's just this one is visibly affecting Americans and they are far more newsworthy than poor Africans or Mexicans.

Your argument is basically "they're being horrible to be BP because they're British so they should STFU and stop complaining, and there have been bigger leaks in the past so they should MTFU and stop complaining".