Carrying Obama’s water
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and part owner of The Nation writes the most partisan piece in the Washington post in recent days, in the WaPo’s “Post partisan” section entitled “Where’s Dick Cheney on the BP oil spill?” Um, who cares, Katrina? He’s not the Vice president anymore. You can’t tie it to him. you can’t blame him for the eruption, you can’t blame him for this administration’s inability to react in a timely manner to spill, or their ineptness in beginning the clean up. So what’s your stupid point?
For eight years, of course, Cheney played dual roles as vice president of the United States and as unofficial at-large congressman for the petroleum industry. The former vice president’s murky ties to Halliburton, the Houston oil services company he once ran, are well documented, and he continues to face ridicule for having allowed executives from oil companies to dictate American energy policy during the George W. Bush presidency.
At Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard looks extensively into the potential cause-and-effect relationship between Cheney’s infamous 2001 energy task force and the gulf catastrophe. “The task force’s final report,” Sheppard writes, “…presented a rosy picture of the offshore drilling industry. Newer oil and gas drilling methods, it said, ‘practically eliminate spills from offshore platforms’ and ‘enhance worker safety, lower risk of blowouts, and provide better protection of groundwater resources.’”
Yeah, all of that stuff happened before 2009 and even if it was at all related to anything Cheney did, why wasn’t it fixed in the first quarter of the Obama Administration? “Murky ties to Halliburton”? Really? What’s murky about being retired from a company? And “practically eliminates spills from offshore platforms” doesn’t mean “completely eliminate spills” does it? One in how many years? Despite the horrible consequences of this one, it’s still a pretty good record, given the potential of hundreds, isn’t it?
But i guess since the President decided to blame a decade of mismanagement at MMS for the eruption (who was president a decade ago, by the way?), vanden Heuvel thought she ought to carry some of the President’s water for him.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Politics
They’ll never stop blaming Bush and Cheney, because if they did, then it would mean they would have to take a SERIOUS look at their own faults, and they sure as hell wouldn’t like what they see…
John, if you want to really get depressed, just read a few of the comments to see how ridiculously widespread the agreement is with vandel Heuvel’s crap. In spite of the fact that the first few comments correctly wonder the same thing you do (“Who cares?”) the lefties swing into action oh-so-quickly. Thanks for keeping us informed about this stuff, as I have by and large given up reading The Post, and NYTimes (never did read The Nation). cheers chuck
The statute of limitations hasn’t come close to elapsing on the crimes, treachery, and skullduggery of the Bush\Cheney administration. They didn’t get a free pass the second Obama got elected. If you know a thing about complex systems, you know that big or little inputs can have reverberations that last a long, long time. The gulf oil spill is one of those little reverberations.
Not that he’s done such a great job, way too far to the right, but when Obama took office he had to prioritize and perform triage among teensy problems like a global economy that was cratering, two wars, including one unnecessary 3 trillion dollar war, huge unemployment, balooning deficit, and on and on. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to even you rabid idealogues that he didn’t focus on blowout preventers. The fact that you cannot see the causal link between Bush/Cheney’s regulation (or, rather, lack therof) of the oil industry, among other industries, show just how blind you are, or pretend to be.
Sorry, that was me again typin’.
Joe’s Ass, aka Jonn? Youguys slay me, and I bet you’d like to…..
‘I bet you’d like to…..’
Honestly? Nope, as you’re too ammusing, and not worth the effort. 🙂
Joe…my god. Do you ever have an independent or new thought?
Jason–I think we’d be happy if he had a thought at all. So please, Joe, tell us all–what crimes have actually been committed? We’ll be here, waiting.
Sparky, I hope you aren’t holding your breath on Joey Boy. He just likes to do his drive-by “It’s all Bush’s fault” post, then scurry back to kos or du.
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The only connection Cheney has with this is that Halliburton did a study on the well & advised some equipment and procedures that BP chose to ignore as implimenting said advice would cause delays & costs. If anything this clears HB of anything and paints them in a rosey picture. I don’t think the MSM or the lefties can stomach that.
Jonn,
I caught that “the last ten years”, also. Doesn’t anybody ever proofread his teleprompter files?! Geez, this administration is a gaff a minute.