I thought the high point of President Obama's first address to the nation from the Oval Office was his invocation of American success in producing planes and tanks in World War II, and our success again in getting safely to the Moon and back in 1969, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary. Both provide inspiring examples of our capacity to do extraordinarily difficult things, which is what we must do to recover from the BP oil spill, and make sure spills like that don't happen again in the future.
And the low point? Well, that resides in the difference between any speech, any talk, however good, and actions. Until we see evidence that the spill has been contained, that its ill effects have been reversed, that policies and technologies are in place to prevent something like that from happening again, no fine words from any President will suffice.
Obama did tell us something new and very hopeful tonight - that the capping process already in place will suck up 90% of new oil leaking. If that's indeed the case, that's good news indeed.
Meanwhile, initial media coverage, as per usual, did not do much to help. I just heard Chris Matthews, yet again, carp about the mention - this time, from Obama - that Steven Chu won a Nobel Prize in physics. I've yet understand how Chu's Nobel Prize is in any way hurting our government's response to the oil spill.
But the media, like the Presidential address, are comprised of words. America and the world are waiting for actions and results.
4 comments:
good post. I campaigned for Obama, I want him to lead us out of this mess.
As someone who also voted for Obama but have thusfar been uninspired by much of his leadership style, and without sounding too glib, he should take some advice from Yoda -- "Do or do not, there is no try." Time for less talk and more action. Results will be the bottomline by which the legacy of his presidency is judged.
In other words, talk is cheap. I won't fault him for things I wouldn't fault anyone else for. At first, I wanted him to let BP handle it, too. Unfortunately, BP is clueless about how to handle this spill. They may get the capping done, but this was really eff-ed up.
Hate to say it, but stuff like this makes even W (George) look like he wasn't that bad after all.
Difference between Obama and W, Obama can speak coherent sentences that make sense. But action-wise, no difference at all.
Lest we forget the last time a crisis happened in the Gulf (Mexico, not Persian), the government was equally as inept to fix the situation as they are right now.
Now me, I'm all about quick fixes, as anyone else would be in this case because the life blood of our economy, culture and way of life is not only spilling into the Gulf, but potentially ruining the most beautiful coast lines of our country as well, further depressing our assets.
My first feelings when I heard about this: You can't stop it--nuke it! Take a Hiroshima bomb-sized device, plant it down there and blow it sky high, er ocean high in this case. You cauterize the wound so it never seeps again and deal with the lasting effects. People currently live in Hiroshima, Japan today, around the ruins of the A-bomb, so the lasting effects may not be as bad as originally perceived.
BUT, pultonium is much more enriched today than in 1945, the process to make it less potent may be harder than perceived, and by the time you recalibrate a nuke to only encompass a 3 mile diameter rather than 300 km, build it, put it down there at 5,000 feet under intense pressure, it may take just as long as more conventional methods to stop the leak. Not to mention, just how big could this pocket of methane really be? You detonate a nuke near that, and it's HUGE, good-bye Southeastern United States. An explosion of that magnitude would make a Yellowstone Eruption a welcome event.
I'm not sure how they are going to fix it, it just needs to be fixed. But for anyone, myself included, that rode W hard for his ineptitude in the face of adversity (unless it involved oil and the Persian Gulf), just take a gander at what Obamanation is up to now.
Heck, maybe they should get W involved! That spill would be stopped and cleaned up by next week!:)
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