Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Just Go Play With Your Balls and Get out of the Way!

Posted by Diogenes Sarcastica
July 13,2010


The present administration has more than shown it’s inability to co-ordinate any action in the face of a major disaster. For all of you arm chair second guessers who blamed George W. Bush for the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, now you can stand up and say you're sorry,  given the even more pitiful performance of the Obama Government concerning the Gulf Oil Spill. (We can’t hear you, can you say that a little louder?)


Local government and private citizens have done more down here on the Gulf Coast, and could have done a lot more, if they weren't prevented from trying by the Feds. Cleanup would have been more efficient had the Feds accepted all the offers of international help, and had not been beholden to the labor unions. Dispersants and certain other cleanup measures would have been in place, and doing useful work, if it wasn't for the Environmentalist’s influence on the levers of power, and OSHA dictating 20-minute work hours. BP would probably have been more forthcoming on the how's and why's of this spill, if the Justice Department hadn't been screaming “LAWSUIT!" for political purposes, and the Administration wasn't trying to shake them down before letting BP take care of it's primary responsibility: stopping the leak, and cleaning it up.

Yes, BP f**ked up, but the Federal Government f**ked up more, only faster, more-expensively, on a grander scale and in front of the video cameras. It's time for a booster shot of Federalism, and a new dose of State's Rights. When it becomes the job of the Federal Government to do everything, it manages to do nothing, only spectacularly and with ruinous expense. If we've learned anything after 9/11, Katrina and now this Oil Spill, it's that the federal government functions, more often then not, on about the same level as a retarded Irish Setter. Totally detached from the issues/problems of the people who pay for it, and so many competing bureaucracies involved in every aspect of our lives that meaningful and effective action on most subjects is next to impossible.

BP, more as a result of the Obama Administration's attempts to publicly punish the company in an effort to cover it's own ass, has sent the company to the brink of bankruptcy (this Administration is really good at that). Recent word on the street is that Exxon-Mobil is poised to scoop up what's left of BP, creating an even bigger, richer and less accountable corporate entity. 

It would have been better had someone reminded President Obama that the main thrust of "government action" should have been cleanup, preventing the destruction of beaches, shorelines and marshlands, protecting and helping American citizens, and he left BP to the task of actually stopping the leak. But that would have meant no Congressional Hearings, and no Golf, I guess. Instead, we got a lot of talk about "Relief Funds", lawsuits, and the Savior of the Universe being unable to suck the oil up with a straw.  

The election of Barack Obama at first appeared to be a sign that America was finally beyond race; Americans had finally elected a  black man to the highest office in the land. The future looked bleak in November of 2008.  In hindsight this now appears not to have been an exercise in fairness and equality, but an act of desperation. That desperation gave us a President who was thoroughly unprepared, lacking common sense or knowledge of how the government actually works, a background sufficiently muddled so that even he can't explain it, and who somehow managed to graduate Harvard with a degree in Constitutional Law without apparently ever having read that document. In office, President Obama seems more interested in playing golf and enjoying the perks of office, rather than in actually doing the job for which he was hired. When he actually does it, the results are about what you would expect from a four year old, with a hammer and a chainsaw.

And if I couldn't swing a golf club any better than he does, I'd take up painting.

3 comments:

  1. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how it is done.

    Fantastic post, Diogenes, I enjoyed every well-turned phrase and every well-placed word.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well-said, DS.

    DS for President!

    Nevermind. You can get more done--and better--right where you are.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank You Ladies!

    Looks like Obie took my advise. I hear he is taking the tribe up to Maine for holiday and a little golf. As FAR away as he can get from the gulf.

    ReplyDelete