Why can't Obama plug the damn hole?

I just blew my lid after hearing a US Government spokesman on TV saying that the BP boss had committed a PR gaffe by being seen on a boat with his son. "I think we can all conclude what his priorities are" said the spokesman.

Point 1 - f*** you Mr Spokesman, and don't presume to speak for me. "I think we can all conclude...?" f*** you.

Point 2 - What exactly do they want him to do in the moments he has with his family? Tossers. Maybe they'll say time spent taking a shit could have been time spent at the well-head.

Arsehole.

Interesting to see what infuriates people in this crisis. Personally me it's the environment being ruined by the planet's inhabitants' (most of them) greed, but to each their own...Personally I can't see the details, they're all covered in oil. But if you want to focus on them, feel free.

Noone is ever going to question what the exploitation of oil costs this planet. Noone's going to talk about the waste of resources we were supposed to use wisely, because they're not renewable. Noone is ever going to question their lifestyles. Noone is ever going to question why we still allow this to happen and greedy cretins to be in charge of the world's direction. Most of them male, incidentally.

When the wiseman points at the spill, the idiot looks at the yacht.

No offense but there might be bigger reasons to be upset...If I had kids, that's not Obama's handicap I'd be thinking about. ("Black AND handicapped? Jesus".)

Also, I can totally see how being seen on a boat could be seen as a touch insensitive by the many people who can't go sailing for pleasure anymore and even by the people who depend on the sea to make a living and feed their family. If you can't see that Peter, it's that Morrissey has really had a bad influence on you...:lbf: And I laugh, but it's not really funny.

Have a nice w.e with your kids.;)
 
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I just blew my lid after hearing a US Government spokesman on TV saying that the BP boss had committed a PR gaffe by being seen on a boat with his son. "I think we can all conclude what his priorities are" said the spokesman.

Point 1 - f*** you Mr Spokesman, and don't presume to speak for me. "I think we can all conclude...?" f*** you.

Point 2 - What exactly do they want him to do in the moments he has with his family? Tossers. Maybe they'll say time spent taking a shit could have been time spent at the well-head.

Arsehole.



Which BP dude do you mean?

Do you mean the one who ridiculously said the people getting sick, collapsing, and being ambulanced to the hospital (apparently from BP's dispersant chemicals) might just have some food poisoning?

[youtube]<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/T1m36-_iY3w&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/T1m36-_iY3w&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/youtube]

(See the link upthread in one of my posts -- BP is using dispersant chemicals that are banned in the UK. Also, these people did not have the symptoms of food poisoning at all.)

Or do you mean the one who went on about the "small people"?

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Apology not accepted, British Petroleum. *SPIT*

I guess Skinny's referring to this story? (It speaks for itself.)

Gulf residents outraged by BP CEO's yacht outing

Just when it seemed Gulf residents couldn't get any more outraged about the massive oil spill fouling their coastline, word came Saturday that BP's CEO was taking time off to attend a glitzy yacht race in England.

Tony Hayward's latest public relations gaffe didn't sit well with people in the U.S. who have seen their livelihoods ruined by the massive two-month oil spill.

"Man, that ain't right. None of us can even go out fishing, and he's at the yacht races," said Bobby Pitre, 33, who runs a tattoo shop in Larose, La. "I wish we could get a day off from the oil, too."

***

"I don't think he has any feelings".... "If I was in his position, I think I'd be in a more responsible place. I think he should be with someone out trying to plug the leak."

***

Hayward was watching his 52-foot (16-meter) yacht "Bob," made by the Annapolis, Md.-based boatbuilder Farr Yacht Design. It has a list price of nearly $700,000.

The outing is one of a series of missteps by Hayward in recent weeks. He suggested to the Times of London that Americans were particularly likely to file bogus claims over the spill, then later told residents of Louisiana that no one wanted to resolve the crisis as badly as he did because "I'd like my life back."

Even the British press, much more sympathetic to the company's plight, has expressed disbelief at its media strategy.

"It is hard to recall a more catastrophically mishandled public relations response to a crisis than the one we are witnessing," the Daily Telegraph's Jeremy Warner wrote Friday.

That was before news about the yacht race broke but after the chief executive made his appearance before a U.S. House investigations panel in which he dodged question after question, claiming he was out of the loop on decisions surrounding the well that blew when the Deepwater Horizon exploded.

President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, called Hayward's decision to attend the yacht race a public relations fiasco and told ABC's "This Week," that Hayward had "got his life back."

"I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting," he said in an interview taped Saturday.

Obama has also struggled to counter criticism of how his administration has handled the disaster. Up to 120 million gallons of oil has already gushed into the Gulf.

***

[T]he buzz Saturday on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook was all about Hayward's yacht outing, with many noting that Gulf residents want their lives back too.

***

Meanwhile, environmentalists and local officials along the Gulf were infuriated by Hayward's weekend plans.

"I'm glad Mr. Hayward is on a yacht, because he certainly hasn't been helping us," said Robert Craft, the mayor of Gulf Shores, Ala. Officials on the Alabama coast estimate tourism is down about 50 percent because of the spill.
 
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BP is Kerry ally on cap and trade

As BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies — including BP, according to the Washington Post.

Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP chief executive Tony Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican co-sponsor Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., repudiated the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the drawing board.

But the Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media — that BP’s lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

Full story here:
Two patterns have emerged during Obama’s presidency: 1) Big business increasingly seeks profits through more government, and 2) Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his intervention as industry shills. BP is just the latest example of this tawdry sleight of hand.

Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool.
 
Folks, make sure you go back upthread and read Theo's very important posts from last night. The post by BP apologist, Skinny, may have caused you to miss them by causing them to be left back on a previous page of the thread. Those posts contain some pretty damning stuff about Obama's leadership in all of this.

See here.

And here.

The state media (ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, etc) are still trying to cover for Obama. And they now want Americans to forget that the leak has not yet been plugged. Furthermore, they are keeping stories about Obama's poor leadership in all of this on the downlow as much as they can. Don't get me wrong. I despise and resent the evil, lying, disgusting British Petroleum. The head dudes from BP should be hanged from the nearest tree if you ask me. But we cannot let Obama's spinning of the Obama-fawning mainstream media get him off the hook. I think the American people are waking up to the truth of this awful President, as the polling data is revealing. But the mainstream media are working hard to cover for Obama on this one. It is obscene. Barack Obama is a buffoon of a President and he's in way over his head.


And I'll leave you once again with my dude, Rudy Giuliani (also giving us another chance to gaze at the lovely Mika Brzezinski - lovely despite being just another MSNBC Obama-fawner):

[youtube]<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5nPJ5Ofh4Ck&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5nPJ5Ofh4Ck&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/youtube]

Rudy is right again, of course. Too bad Rudy's not Prez. :(
 
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Folks, make sure you go back upthread and read Theo's very important posts from last night. The post by BP apologist, Skinny, may have caused you to miss them by causing them to be left back on a previous page of the thread. Those posts contain some pretty damning stuff about Obama's leadership in all of this.

See here.

And here.

The state media (ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, etc) are still trying to cover for Obama. And they now want Americans to forget that the leak has not yet been plugged. Furthermore, they are keeping stories about Obama's poor leadership in all of this on the downlow as much as they can. Don't get me wrong. I despise and resent the evil, lying, disgusting British Petroleum. The head dudes from BP should be hanged from the nearest tree if you ask me. But we cannot let Obama's spinning of the Obama-fawning mainstream media get him off the hook. I think the American people are waking up to the truth of this awful President, as the polling data is revealing. But the mainstream media are working hard to cover for Obama on this one. It is obscene. Barack Obama is a buffoon of a President and he's in way over his head.


And I'll leave you once again with my dude, Rudy Giuliani (also giving us another chance to gaze at the lovely Mika Brzezinski - lovely despite being just another MSNBC Obama-fawner):

[youtube]<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5nPJ5Ofh4Ck&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5nPJ5Ofh4Ck&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/youtube]

Rudy is right again, of course. Too bad Rudy's not Prez. :(
Rudy for Prez is what I wished happened.
I can't help wonder what the reaction would be if say for example Amoco had oil gushing into the North Sea and the CEO says sorry small people we have no way of stopping it. Then have a live cam of oil pumping into sea on BBC,the UK shellfish industry come to a halt and shorebirds, mammals and leatherneck turtles wash up on the beaches covered in oil.
 
Rudy for Prez is what I wished happened.
I can't help wonder what the reaction would be if say for example Amoco had oil gushing into the North Sea and the CEO says sorry small people we have no way of stopping it. Then have a live cam of oil pumping into sea on BBC,the UK shellfish industry come to a halt and shorebirds, mammals and leatherneck turtles wash up on the beaches covered in oil.

Yeah, the country would be in better hands if they had listened to Theo and Devils. Ah well. It's too bad Rudy probably can't ever be Prez because the social conservatives don't like him.

But here's more of Rudy making lots of good points.

[youtube]<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fYZUjxE5dX0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fYZUjxE5dX0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>[/youtube]
 
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Possibly spending his "family time" attending a yacht race wasn't the smartest move, you know, since it gives this crystal-clear image of him enjoying a rich man's activity on the ocean in an area that BP hasn't yet devastated.
 
Possibly spending his "family time" attending a yacht race wasn't the smartest move, you know, since it gives this crystal-clear image of him enjoying a rich man's activity on the ocean in an area that BP hasn't yet devastated.

Exactly. It's grossly insensitive.

Potential answer to thread title question: too skinny?
 
Exactly. It's grossly insensitive.

Potential answer to thread title question: too skinny?

But we can't overlook that it was the Obama administration that put BP in charge. The criminals in charge of the crime scene, it would appear. That's Obama's doing. He could've assembled a team independent of BP to take charge, and to ensure that he knew what was really going on. Obama didn't even have any idea how much oil was pouring out of the leak for many, many weeks, and he now tries to tell us that that's just BP's fault? He also rejected the help and expertise of several of our allies who were trying to tell him they could provide a lot of assistance, and he did so apparently because he didn't wanna anger labor unions by waiving the Jones Act (see upthread for info on that).

ObamaHayward-800x355.jpg


Everyone is rightly attacking Hayward for the yachting (well, everyone except Skinny). But Obama spent the weekend golfing. The Obama abministration's spokespeople actually attacked Hayward's yachting while simultaneously defending Obama's golfing.

obamacleanup2.jpg


On his first day in office, January 20, 2009, President Barack Obama issued a statement on the White House Web site promising Gulf Coast residents that his administration would not fail them like he accused his predecessor President George W. Bush.

Eighteen months later, those arrogant words are coming back to haunt Obama as the Gulf Coast is facing the third month of failure by Obama to marshall sufficient resources to protect the region from the massive BP oil spill.
Link

I see that the pop singer who made a joke of himself pushing Obama has fled America and is apparently now into celebrity-press photo-ops with the latest trendy MTV stars (Lady Gaga).

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I think I can see what's going on with Morrissey.

But what of all the SoLowers who, in 2008, made this forum into an Obama For President campaign site? All their silly threads with the Obama as Superman pics, and where they were literally forming reading groups to read "Dreams of my Father" together as if it was some great work of literature. I would've found that all rather pathetic directed at any politician, but it was especially pathetic directed at a politician who was so obviously a bunch of pop culture hype. But, I guess he did whip up the emotions of the simple minded, like Morrissey and many of his fans.

Intelligent people tend to try and guard themselves from allowing politicians to whip up their emotions like we saw on display from the Obama fawners. There were actually threads in this forum from the Obamatrons where they were posting pics of Obama without a shirt on and declaring that they were gonna be using their vibrators that evening while looking at those pics. I found it all very disturbing and now my country is suffering because of it. But I hope those people learned a lesson. Some of us tried to tell them.
 
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Don't worry, Theo. Obama probably plans to invite Hayward and all the people whose lives have been devastated to the White House to have a beer together when it's all over. It worked with the policeman and the professor, didn't it?
 
This article sort of explains Obama's lack of response. It's been suggested before that whoever is trying to fix this problem owns it, and will be associated with the problem as well as the solution. Even if they capped it tomorrow, it's too late for anyone to look like a hero, so Obama is distancing himself from it and shedding his responsibility to the people. British Petroleum seems to be going out of their way to help him by coming across as insensitively as possible!


Home Equity
How the Gulf crisis made BP British again.


In the ordinary course of events, big firms—even the most authentically American ones—like to present themselves as citizens of the world. And why not? For multinationals based in developed countries, most sales and virtually all growth now comes from outside their home market.

With operations in 50 countries, Deutsche Telekom is no longer quite so Deutsche. And for even the most irrevocably American companies, cosmopolitanism is a way of life. Coca-Cola's CEO is Muhtar Kent, the son of a Turkish diplomat, who was educated in England and spent much of his career overseas. Coke today gets about 75 percent of its sales from outside North America. The typical company in the S&P 500 relies on non-Americans for about half of its sales. "Today, very few large companies actually have a national identity. Instead they have a composite global identity," notes David Rothkopf, CEO of Garten Rothkopf, an international advisory firm based in Washington, D.C.
Companies frequently abbreviate their names in order to present a more generic, less nationalistic face to consumers around the world. It's AT&T, not American Telegraph & Telephone. Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation presents itself to banking customers in Washington, D.C., as HSBC. Swapping specific city and country names for generic abbreviations makes sense for globe-trotting companies. Even in an age of globalization, nationalism can be a powerful influence on consumer behavior. And in times of crisis, national biases can come to the fore quickly—and harshly.

That's what BP, the company formerly known as British Petroleum, has learned the hard way. Like other multinationals, BP has in recent years tried to present itself less as a colonial conqueror and more as a citizen of the world. Through international expansion and mergers with American firms, including Amoco, it has become progressively less British. On its Web site, BP, which operates in 100 countries on six continents, notes, "The BP group is the largest oil and gas producer and one of the largest gasoline retailers in the United States." But ever since oil began gushing from the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, BP has become as British as Wimbledon, as foreign as football played with a round ball. As a result, it's possible the company will suffer harsher treatment at the hands of consumers and lawmakers.
When things go bad, it turns out, multinationals turn into homebodies. Since they can't rely on all the nations in which they have outposts to come rushing to their aid, they're effectively re-nationalized. In the financial crisis, multinational banking firms rushed to domestic capitals for bailouts and asset guarantees. Deutsche Bank and Société Générale weren't eligible for TARP funds, and GM has had difficulty getting aid from Germany.

Politics also plays a role in the re-nationalization of global companies. At times, President Barack Obama and members of his administration have referred to BP as "British Petroleum," a verbal slip some observers view as an effort to shift anger and blame across the Atlantic. That has aroused the patriotic fervor of British politicians like London Mayor Boris Johnson, who expressed concerns "about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America" and fretted that "a great British company is being continually beaten up on the airwaves." (Um, Boris, old chap, don't you think BP's greatness should be coming under question?) British analysts have also expressed alarm that BP's move to cut its dividend, as part of a larger effort to fund a $20 billion relief pool to help Americans, could disproportionately harm British investors. BP is perhaps the most widely held stock in the United Kingdom. One wonders if the famous British restraint would be in evidence if, say, ExxonMobil were to spill huge volumes of oil in the English Channel, turning the white cliffs of Dover brown.

But it is communications—and not politics—that frequently hinder companies from presenting themselves as local citizens. When crises hit, there is a tendency to centralize the response at headquarters, notes Irving Schenkler, director of the management communications program at New York University's Stern School of Business. From the Perrier benzene scare of the early 1990s to Toyota's quality issues last year, public relations efforts frequently fail to take local customs and peculiarities into account. Says Schenkler, "There's a systemic problem in these situations in communication flow, and how sensitive communication is calibrated and delivered." As a result, foreign executives frequently place the wrong foot forward—or into their mouths, as when BP's Swedish chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, emerged from marathon meetings at the White House on June 16 and reassured the American public that he and BP were concerned about the "small people." (How do you say "oops!" in Swedish?)

At the congressional hearings, BP CEO Tony Hayward's English accent jangled uncomfortably against the animated Southern drawls emanating from the House Energy Committee. His precise use of language, measured tone, and refusal to get too emotional marked the CEO of BP as indisputably British, and in the early part of the crisis, the glib substance of his remarks—an assertion that the spill was small relative to the vast Gulf of Mexico and a complaint that he just "wanted his life back"—reinforced the sense that Hayward wasn't fully engaged in the effort to clean up a mess far from his corporate home. Several years ago, Hayward's company trotted out an ad campaign suggesting that BP should stand for "Beyond Petroleum." Today, BP can't get beyond parochialism.
 
Alan Carr recently joked, they go to Afgan and have a war over oil, but do shit about all their precious oil leaking into the sea...Is he right?
 
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