From Powerline blog yesterday:
As with what many have called his inept handling of the Gulf oil spill, I think Obama is just fine with the deterioration of the situation on the border, for it may provide him exactly the opportunity you mention: a chance to enact sweeping "amnesty" legislation that will put a few million more Democratic votes in his pocket.
One thing bothers me about a lot of recent commentary, and that's the repeated assertion that Obama is incompetent. I don't think he is incompetent at all when it comes to the issues that matter to him and his inner circle. He is all about transforming the country and perpetuating the power of his administration and its ideological allies.
When one considers what he's done and is doing in that light, then it's not too hard to see how he and his allies may think that they are making steady progress and, more often than not, surmounting what they knew would be formidable public opposition.From Paul Driessen at Townhall:
To top it off, in the face of an environmental catastrophe largely perpetrated and perpetuated by a deliberately incompetent and intransigent federal government, rabidly anti-drilling Congressmen Waxman, Markey and Stupak have now introduced HR 5626, the Blowout Prevention Act. The bill requires that any company seeking a drilling permit must first guarantee that it could prevent any future blowouts; promptly stop any blowout, even if the blowout preventers and other measures fail; and drill a relief well within 90 days of any blowout.Some fool commenter on another blog accused me of promoting a "conspiracy theory". Nothing of the kind. It is no "conspiracy" when Obama, Pelosi, and Reid pass monster bill after monster bill, "responding" to one made-up or actual crisis after another with only BIG GOVERNMENT solutions. Nothing they have done needed a "conspiracy". It is the Collective acting as it does.
The Obamic Gulf oil manipulation is hardly illegal (so why a "conspiracy"). It is immoral, disgusting, and horrific that any member of our nation would act in this way, but it isn't even out of character for Obama. Why, he is simply remaining passive as his agency heads execute their legal and regulatory mandates. He...and they...are simply following the law...and applying every inch of red tape.
Obama has demonstrated he is either; A) perfectly capable of manipulating peoples' fear of death as a whip for support of health care, or B) if he believed what he was telling Americans about more of us dying from lack of care, sanguine about letting many thousands of us die before ObamaCare kicks in, all for political expedience.
Obama is incompetent in MANY areas. The Gulf response is not an example. It is an example of raw political gamesmanship by a man without scruple, and with no notion of "America" as most of us understand her. Think on that this July 4th.
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I'm with you most of the way here, but have a little problem with it. Sure, the "never let a good crisis go to waste" is in play, and using the Gulf disaster to promote the greenie weenie economy is absolutely in play - as evidenced by Barry's message last week. But the cost of looking like an impotent idiot has to outweigh the advantage. Real people are suffering - real people are losing their livelyhood, and a pristene natural resource is being devastated. Winning a green battle here by letting it get out of control could lose the war if he looks incompetent. Your case is compelling but I'm thinking if he really was this ingenious, he would find a way to capitalize on the crisis without looking like a dipschistenkaka.
ReplyDelete"Blowout Prevention Act. The bill requires that any company seeking a drilling permit must first guarantee that it could prevent any future blowouts; promptly stop any blowout, even if the blowout preventers and other measures fail..."
This is loony toons. Any engineer with a realistic and honest assessment will tell you the concept of "Fail Safe" is a myth. Aircraft are designed with redundant backup systems five levels deep for most critical components - backups to backups to - x5 - yet systems fail and planes crash with disturbing rugularity. If a company could "guarantee it could prevent any future blowouts", why would the measures to deal with bolwouts be necessary? No company could possibly meet these standards, so the bill effectively bans offshore drilling - which is obviously its intent in the first place.
Swede, I hear you. I can only point to the press blockade in the Gulf as an indicator that they know they were taking some hits on incompetence, and, instead of changing course, just decided to shut off some of the coverage. Notice how well they do that...perversely well.
ReplyDeleteAlso, notice the "dog who did not bark in the night". The enviros are essentially silent. Why? Because they know the thief. He's with them, and is working the plan.
As to the bill, yeah, another exampled of legislation passed by people who literally have no clue about the subject. Note that these guys are three of the most anti-energy, anti-American critters in Congress.