There Is No Lower Limit
According to MSNBC Rand Paul: Obama BP criticism ‘un-American’
WASHINGTON – Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul said Friday that President Barack Obama’s criticism of BP in the wake of the Gulf oil debacle sounds “really un-American.”
Tell you what, Rand, why don’t you start staging photo ops with Don Blankenship, of Massey Energy, and see how many votes that gets you in coal country. Since you obviously know nothing about the Well from Hell, maybe you should take a large dose of STFU, and talk about diseases of the eye.
The New York Times noticed something that has been obvious: Conflict-of-interest fears raised in oil spill tests
Some people are questioning the independence of the Texas lab. Taylor Kirschenfeld, an environmental official for Escambia County, Fla., rebuffed instructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to send water samples to the lab, which is based at TDI-Brooks International in College Station, Tex. He opted instead to get a waiver so he could send his county’s samples to a local laboratory that is licensed to do the same tests.
Mr. Kirschenfeld said he was also troubled by another rule. Local animal rescue workers have volunteered to help treat birds affected by the slick and to collect data that would also be used to help calculate penalties for the spill. But federal officials have told the volunteers that the work must be done by a company hired by BP.
“Everywhere you look, if you look, you start seeing these conflicts of interest in how this disaster is getting handled,” Mr. Kirschenfeld said. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there is just too much overlap between these people.”
I guarantee you that people in the Escambia County government have more than a layman’s knowledge of “conflict of interest” and they have the court records from the trials of local officials to prove it. It is a given that you don’t let the suspect gather the evidence. BP controls all of the record keeping and evaluation of evidence in the incident if locals just go along.
As McClatchy noted Low estimate of oil spill’s size could save BP millions in court. This is all about the court cases, and BP wants all of the evidence “shaded” in their favor. If BP is the largest client of the companies that are collecting the data, who do you think will get the “benefit of doubt” as the data is collected?
8 comments
The sad thing is that when you have that much money to throw around it today’s world you make your own reality. BP will do what’s right for BP and you can damn well be sure that it will be 180 degrees out from what is best for the environment and the people most badly hurt by this predictable disaster. Very little of the news is focusing on the long term effects and how long it is going to take to even assess the whole scope of this mess. Some of this deep water oil that has been treated with chemicals probably won’t appear on the surface for years and then it will be in the Atlantic somewhere.
.-= last blog ..Inside Job =-.
Tuna, shrimp, oysters, red snapper, grouper, crawfish, and the list goes on. At this point the “cure” may be worse than the “disease”, as they are conducting a chemical experiment in the Gulf.
We understand the process in the upper Gulf, but we know almost nothing about the deep Gulf. The natural processes that eliminate the oil in shallow water, may not even exist in the colder, less saline, deep Gulf.
I have to admit that Rush Limbaugh was right when he coined this spill “Obama’s Katrina” (I’m biting my tongue making that admission, but true is true). As with Katrina, the problem wasn’t what caused the disaster, but, rather, the aftermath — which has proven to be nothing but spin, obfuscation, use of Federal force to keep media and first responders out, and otherwise utterly incompetent obstructionism. I’m surprised we haven’t had a “Heckuva job, Brownie!” moment out of Obama yet, given the similarities.
Thing is, the Bushies were being evil because, well, they were evil. They weren’t doing it for the profit of a foreign corporation. Obama, on the other hand, seems to care more about the British and their precious sensibilities (and cash!) than about America and Americans here… which makes this doubly hard to swallow. I may need a new tongue in a few days…
– Badtux the Tongue-biting Penguin
Rand Paul has just this week been elected, and this is the first thing he comes out with? This was not JUST an accident as he suggests. If BP had handled the well according to good engineering safety practices, it could have been preventable. Worst case, had there been a blow up, the flow could have been cut off in something resembling a reasonable time frame. Bad enough by itself, but not this nightmare.
Not everyone understands the biology and interaction required by the smaller plankton and bacterial life of the oceans, but when they start seeing dolphins, birds, and other larger wildlife start lining the coasts, they get it fairly well. By then, Mr. Paul may wish he’d done a little tongue-biting of his own.
Ooops! I know Rand Paul is just a candidate – not elected yet. You guys know what I meant. He irritated me so much, I forgot myself. 😳
When you put it that way, Badtux, especially when I think about the Coast Guard threatening CBS with arrest for doing their job, I have to agree. The US government is interfering with the relief effort, just like Katrina.
All intelligent people get a little flustered when faced with the “Rand” level of stupid, Juanita, and considering that he is running for Jim Bunning’s seat, I won’t be a bit surprised to see a whacko win. The man doesn’t know when to shut up.
I guarantee you that people in the Escambia County government have more than a layman’s knowledge of “conflict of interest” and they have the court records from the trials of local officials to prove it.
😆 yes, we’re very good at that here.
After that sealed bid debacle they have apparently decided to walk on the path of righteousness for a while.
I am confident that after the next election it will be business as usual.