Florida's Governor Crist "pleased" with Obama's response to the Gulf oil disaster!
What better indication that Gov. Crist is unsuited to represent Florida in the US Senate than his recent endorsement of Obama's completely inept handling of the Gulf oil disaster?
The consummate politician, whose only interest appears to be self-service, Florida's governor is now running for one of Florida's two Senate seats. Gov. Crist's latest shining example of his ineptness and unsuitability for the office he seeks is his act of endorsing ... no, praising ... Obama's performance in responding to the Gulf oil disaster.
Let's review the performance Crist praises:
The first response of Obama's administration to this disaster was a step that would make the problem vastly worse than it otherwise would have been. On day THREE, Obama rejected an offer from the Dutch to use resources of Shell Oil Company that included oil sucking booms to corral and load oil spewing from the gusher into large tankers that would prevent the oil disaster that has unfolded since that rejection. We are given a lame excuse that there is a regulation that prohibits dumping any water into the Gulf that contains oil and, apparently, the process Shell offered does involve removing water from the oil being loaded and returning it to the Gulf and that water contains a small amount of oil. But which is worse, removing the vast bulk of oil while allowing a small quantity to return to the water or removing none of the oil?
Obama's second response was to dispatch a bevy of Justice Department attorneys to the area to gather evidence for litigation. I'm sure that created a better atmosphere for stopping the gusher and/or containing the spreading oil.
Next, Obama bans all offshore drilling. Not just deepwater drilling, but all drilling. This action put tens of thousands of workers in the oil industry out of business and had no impact on stopping or containing the ongoing disaster.
Finally, the only other substantive action Obama has taken is to turn on his major financial donor to his presidential bid (BP oil) and treat BP as the whipping boy in this whole sordid affair.
But let's stop for a second and think about that. Did BP write the regulations under which it operated? No, the US government did. Did BP perform inspections and approve every step of their exploration in deep water? No, the US government did. Did BP require drilling in deep water more than one mile below the sea surface? No, by banning shallow water drilling, the US government did.
Certainly, there will be some fault to find with those who were in charge of the drilling operation that led to this disaster. There are serious questions about the unsuitability of the anchoring process for the wellhead, for example. However, the US government is charged with not only regulating those processes, but inspecting them as well to assure that such a disaster as has occurred will not happen.
Is it fair then, to hold BP solely accountable for a disaster that results from an operation that would never have been in deep water in the first place if it weren't for US government restrictions on shallow water drilling? Is it fair to hold BP solely accountable for failure of processes regulated and inspected by the US government?
Apparently, none of these facts concerns Governor Crist in the least. Crist sees BP as a convenient political whipping boy so he plays to those who haven't considered the full complicity of the US government in this disaster.
Had Obama accepted the Dutch offer and set aside any regulatory obstacles to the containment of the gusher from day three of this disaster, this entire episode would have been relegated to the back pages of the newspapers and none of the Gulf coast states (principally Florida) would be threatened with almost certain coastal disaster. Instead, the deepwater accident was allowed to become the greatest disaster in drilling history just so Obama and people like Florida's Governor Crist could take advantage of the situation to score political points!
Despite Obama's inept handling of this disaster from day three, Crist praises Obama's handling of this crisis as if he'd accepted the Dutch offer and averted the certain disaster for many areas of Florida's Gulf coast!
Crist's voice is a voice Florida most certainly does not need in the US Senate!
Author of "Looking Out the Window", an evidence-based examination of the "climate change" issue, Bob Webster, is a 12th-generation descendent of both the Darte family (Connecticut, 1630s) and the Webster family (Massachusetts, 1630s). He is a descendant of Daniel Webster's father, Revolutionary War patriot Ebenezer Webster, who served with General Washington. Bob has always had a strong interest in early American history, our Constitution, U.S. politics, and law. Politically he is a constitutional republican with objectivist and libertarian roots. He has faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and reason over deception and emotion. He is a strong believer in our Constitution as written and views the abandonment of constitutional restraint by the regressive Progressive movement as a great danger to our Republic. His favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and believes it should be required reading for all high school students so they can appreciate the cost of tolerating the growth of unconstitutional crushingly powerful central government. He strongly believes, as our Constitution enshrines, that the interests of the individual should be held superior to the interests of the state.
A lifelong interest in meteorology and climatology spurred his strong interest in science. Bob earned his degree in Mathematics at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1964.
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