- really? “obama’s katrina”?

 

Pundits and “fair and balanced” newspeople need to stop blaming President Obama for the BP oil spill.  Do you really believe that something Obama has or has not done either caused or is making the spill worse?  Do  you really expect Obama to be an oil expert with full knowledge on how to cap, contain, and clean up the situation?  Of course not.  That’s why he has a cabinet of people empowered with either the knowledge of what to do and/or the resources to find out what to do.  Beyond that, what about the oil industry’s responsibility? 

If my home is heated with oil, and I have an oil tank beneath my home, is it the mayor’s job to know how to clean it up?  Of course not.  It’s MY job, as owner of the house, to either clean it up or pay someone to do what I am not capable of doing.  What is the mayor’s job is to make sure I’ve cleaned it up and paid any necessary reparations to restore the land to what is was before the spill.

Let’s also stop referring to the spill as “Obama’s Katrina” because there’s a very big difference.  Although President Bush did not and could not cause the death and destruction brought by Hurricane Katrina, he did make a few mistakes in public relations, band-aids, and over-estimation.  Hurricane Katrina was on the way, giving people time to prepare and evacuate.  Bush could not force people to evacuate, nor could he provide protection from the coming storm.  However, just like 9/11, he could have taken the forecast more seriously instead of waving a hand and dismissing the potential.  After the storm, Bush basically flew over Louisiana, waved, and dropped in to tell everyone what a good job “Brownie” (ex-FEMA head Michael Brown) was doing.  Afterward, when the real damage was coming to light, he threw cash cards and trailers at the homeless and hoped they would go away.

Did Obama have a forecast on the oil spill?  Did anyone hand the President a report warning of the likely failure of the oil rig and a projection on the environmental damage?  Did he have a chance to take action before the danger occurred? 

I don’t recall that, but feel free to educate me if i missed something.

unemployment

shhhh. the president doesn’t want you to know this, so don’t tell him i told you.

every month, the white house gets all giddy when the labor department gets ready to announce how many new jobs were created that month. however, there’s a problem: no matter what they say, they have no idea what the real numbers are. here’s why.

first, you must know how they get those numbers. you might think they can somehow collect the numbers from each state, total them up, and say, “hey, a million new jobs were created last month.” they want you to believe that, but it’s not how it works.

each month, a certain number of people are on the unemployment roles. each month, some of those people have used up their unemployment benefits, so they’re removed from the role. for the white house, this is a good thing for two reasons. first, it means those people are no longer getting money from the government. second, it allows the government to pretend that those people have now gotten a job, which is how they come up with the number of new jobs.

so next month, if the white house announces that 500,000 new jobs were created, you’ll know that the truth is really that 500,000 people are no longer eligible for unemployment. yes, it’s true that some of those people actually did get jobs, which would be great. but too many of them didn’t.

and you know how sometimes congress calls for an extension of unemployment benefits, and the white house always vetoes it? yes, you guessed it. they veto the extension because it means that more people will stay on unemployment, thus taking away some numbers from the total new jobs created that weren’t really new jobs anyway.

also, about a month or two ago, the president had to answer as to why the unemployment numbers had increased. he said it was because colleges had just held their graduations and there were a great many new graduates trying to crack into the job scene. unfortunately, that’s not possible, and again president bush shows his ignorance of reality. you can’t collect unemployment unless you’ve been working for roughly a year, give or take a few months. if these people just graduated college, then they haven’t been working. and if they haven’t been working, they’re not eligible for unemployment benefits. therefore, it’s impossible for the rise in unemployment to have been caused by college graduates.

way to go, idiot.

eating his cake and having it too

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/washington/14prexy.html?th&emc=th

there he goes again, the spinmeister general. president bush is bowing to the pressure of the rest of the nation in protest to his unjust, despicable war. everyone, including some dead relatives of mine, have called on the president to start bringing the troops home while, instead, he’s been sending more. but what’s a jackass to do? he, or someone in the puppet room, figured out that he can create a win-win situation. he can submit, and start bringing troops home to alleviate, placate, and shut up the american people. but he can do it under the guise of proclaiming that the recent troop surge was successful, thus allowing the opportunity to bring some troops home.

damn genius.

out of gas

president bush makes me laugh.

recently he had to answer a question about regulating the price of gasoline and setting a price ceiling. he said that it would be a bad idea because, if we lower gas prices too much, then people will fill up a lot more and that would increase the great demand we already have for gas.

does anyone realize how stupid that answer is?

how would people possibly fill up with more gasoline? the car’s tank only holds a certain amount. where would we put it? does he think we have huge vats in our garages, and we’ll fill upu the car, then bring the gas home and siphon it into the vat, then go fill up again? does he think that we’ll fill up, then we’ll take the long, scenic route to work just to use more gas?

bush is experiencing the lowest approval rating of his career, possibly the lowest of any president every. he’s certainly in the running for the dumbest president ever. one question i’ve asked to republicans – a question they can’t answer – is this: tell me one, just one way that your life is better in direct cause of something that bush has done while in office? just tell me one thing that he did that has improved your life? and you can’t include tax breaks or anything that is basically “buying and bribing,” like when he sent everyone a check for about $300 a couple of years ago. in case nobody noticed, that check had to be deducted from your tax refund that year. so it was just a loan that had to be paid back.

all good presidents are remembered for something great. clinton created a $500 billion budget surplus and a flourishing economy. reagan influenced the changes in the soviet union. nixon made great strides with china and was a brilliant foreign policy maker, so much so that all presidents after him would regularly consult with him. kennedy, the space race.

all bad presidents are remembered for their folly. i’m no expert, but i think johnson had something to do with vietnam. king george I unfortunately is more remembered for breaking his “read my lips, no new taxes” promise.

if i had to find the folly with which to remember king george II, i would have too much to choose from.

bush’s answer to gas prices

big news – gas prices are climbing again. why? because the oil companies want them to. what’s the president going to do about it? more importantly, what is he not going to do about it?

things he’s doing:

1. first, he’s relaxing the environmental rules on cleaner fuel additives. by allowing oil companies to not use additives that help keep the air cleaner, bush thinks that the oil processing will be less expensive (and it will be) and that will translate to lower fuel prices (and it won’t make a difference).

2. he’s telling people to drive less. oh, as if we have a choice. as if we can suddenly change the location of our home or our workplace in order to drive less. brilliant so far, eh?

3. he’s dusting off that ” see, i told you we need to drill the hell out of alaska” plan.

4. he’s going to investigate price gouging by oil companies. who runs the oil companies? republicans. who paid big money into the republican campaigns? oil companies. where does the bush family make it’s billions? oil companies. here’s a transcript from the investigation:

bush: “did you guys raise prices unfairly?”
big oil: “nope.”
bush: “ok. let’s hit the buffet.”

all just plain brilliant.

now, things he’s not doing:

1. he’s not telling the auto industry that they must increase the average miles per gallon that cars are currently getting. keep in mind that president clinton had instituted higher miles per gallon standards. one of bush’s first actions in office was to trash that. mpg standards have not changed in more than 20 years. maybe it’s about time to do something about that.

2. he’s not doing anything to encourage the use of solar power. at this point, i’d even go for expanded use of nuclear power. seriously.

3. he’s not rolling back on the billions in tax cuts he gave to the oil companies under the guise that they needed those billions for research and develoopment of new fuels, and also to drill the hell out of alaska.

and now the summer approaches, and there’s the traditional raising of the prices for the summer driving season, another sham. did you know that there’s no such need for the summer price raising? it’s not as if there’s a sudden seasonal shortage. they raise the prices because they want to. they don’t have to. and why do they get away with it? because we let them.

grrrrrr

i just typed a bunch of stuff, and it disappeared when i went to publish it to the site. i do not feel like typing it all again.

it basically said that bush is exposing himself as an arrogant fool in the cia leak case by claiming that he declassified that information before it was leaked, therefore there was no classified information that was leaked. however, that happened three years ago, so why didn’t he tell us this during the past three years while everyone was scrambling around trying to figure out what happened?

it just demonstrates his arrogance in that he will do and say what he wants and expect the american people will shut up and take it. he truly is a dictator on a throne.

i typed this in a much more eloquent and create way the first time, but as i said, i don’t feel like trying to type it all again. too pissed off that it was all lost when i tried to publish it.