What is it, day 54 of the fool-in-chief’s disastrous inability to do anything about that damn hole he can’t plug?
Well, the damn hold problem is officially bigger than ever.
June 10, 2010
Government doubles previous oil flow estimate for BP well
By Mark Seibel and Renee Schoof | McClatchy NewspapersWASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Thursday doubled its minimum estimate of how much crude oil was gushing from the Deepwater Horizon oil well, saying a panel of scientists had concluded that 20,000 to 50,000 barrels, or as much as 2.1 million gallons, were pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day before BP sheared the well’s riser pipe on June 3.
That action, which BP engineers undertook to fit a “top hat” containment dome over the well, almost certainly increased the flow, and Dr. Marcia McNutt, the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, said an estimate of the flow since June 3 would be available in a few days.
“Our scientific analysis is still a work in progress,” McNutt said.
The announcement that tens of thousands more barrels of oil than previously estimated have been spewing into the Gulf for weeks added to a growing sense that neither the federal government nor BP correctly assessed the size of the unfolding disaster or marshaled enough resources to meet it.
McClatchy gives us a picture of the constantly changing estimate:
The Los Angeles Times offers more on the sheer scope of the disaster Obama is doing such a terrible job presiding over:
The new figures could mean 42 million to 84 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on the night of April 20 — with the lowest estimate nearly four times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.
The flow estimates were released by Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, and do not count any increases that may have occurred since the cutting of the well’s riser pipe, a step that was expected to boost the flow.
And was it the heroic Obama administration that determined that the official estimates were wrong yet again?
No. It was a bunch of scientists who had been arguing that the official estimates – from both BP and the federal government – were complete bullpucky:
The official government estimate of the flow rate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, which means the new device should be capturing the bulk of the oil. But some scientists have said those flow numbers could represent just the lower range and that the rate could be multiple times higher.
Worst-case scenario?
Leifer said based on the data he’s seen so far, the rate of flow from the broken well has increased since the initial April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers. He believes BP’s decision last week to sever the well’s damaged riser pipe in order to install the containment cap has increased the flow by far more than the 20 percent BP and government officials had predicted.In fact, Leifer says, the well may be spewing what BP had called before the spill its worst-case scenario — as much as 100,000 barrels a day from a freely flowing pipe.He said he’s seen no evidence from BP to date that would be inconsistent from that dire scenario.
Judging by live undersea videos, “it looks like a freely flowing pipe,” Leifer said. “From what it looks like right now it suggests to me they’re capturing a negligible fraction.”
It’s unclear how much oil is still escaping because scientists don’t have access to enough data and the video feeds show a “disorganized cloud” of oil shooting out of open vents in the containment cap and between the riser and the cap, Wereley said.
Obama assured us prior to the top hat attempt which not only failed but made the crisis much, much worse that he was in charge, and that BP was answering to him.
Which means that it’s OBAMA’S FAULT that BP even attempted the top hat procedure in the first place. Everyone knew there was a risk that it could make the problem much worse by at least 20%. Obama gambled big and failed huge.
And it is readily apparent that Obama has literally assisted BP in a continual giant cover-up as to the actual extent of the damage, either by omission or comission:
From the New York Times:
Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. […]
And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well. […]
Oceanographers have also criticized the Obama administration over its reluctance to force BP, the oil company responsible for the spill, to permit an accurate calculation of the flow rate from the undersea well. The company has refused to permit scientists to send equipment to the ocean floor that would establish the rate with high accuracy.
Ian MacDonald of Florida State University, an oceanographer who was among the first to question the official estimate of 210,000 gallons a day, said he had come to the conclusion that the oil company was bent on obstructing any accurate calculation. “They want to hide the body,” he said.
Contacts in Louisiana have given me numerous, unconfirmed reports of cameras and cell phones being confiscated, scientists with monitoring equipment being turned away, and local reporters blocked from access to public lands impacted by the oil spill. But today CBS News got it on video, along with a bone-chilling statement by a Coast Guard official: “These are BP’s rules. These are not our rules.”
Fifty days into the disaster, Barack Obama had still never bothered to make any contact with the CEO of British Petroleum to lay out the way things will happen, to find out what is going on, or to hold BP accountable in any way for anything. Or, I don’t know, to politely ask BP to please allow some actual measurements of the flow rate so the nation can know the extent of the disaster they are going to have to deal with.
And now it is becoming increasingly obvious that BP – not Barack – has been ruling the roost all along.
Obama is responsible? He doesn’t even have a clue what is going on.
Well, now, after 54 days – and weeks’ worth of inexcusable delay and weeks’ worth of criticism – Obama is finally “summoning” the BP CEO to mitigate the damage being done to his political hide. But it’s rather obvious that Obama isn’t meeting the BP chief to do the right thing, but rather to appear to do the right thing to avoid further legitimate criticism over why he’s taken so damn long to do the right thing.
Obama should have at least been on the phone with the BP head within the first three days of this disaster. Instead, he’s ignored his responsibilities and allowed BP to repeatedly lie, obfuscate, conceal, and even fabricate and done nothing about any of it.
What we have here is a complete failure of leadership. And the result of that failure has just officially become twice as awful as it had been.
Tags: accusing the government, allowing BP to obscure, analysis, barrels, BP, BP CEO, confiscated, contact, cover up, demand an accurate analysis, disaster, doubles, Exxon Valdez, failing, federal government, four times the size of, gallons, Gulf, Gulf of Mexico, increased the flow, million, oil, oil leak, previous estimate, resources, riser, sheared, than previously estimated, These are BP's rules, true scope, well
Start Thinking Right 
June 11, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Obama doesn’t care about the destruction done to industries, people, wildlife and the enviornment by his clueless incompetence. He cares for nothing but executing his own wacked agenda.
This is an utter nightmare.
June 11, 2010 at 1:17 pm
He’s a great campaigner (as long as the truth doesn’t matter), but a terribly crappy leader.
June 14, 2010 at 10:11 pm
That’s not all BP is doing to us, to me it appears that the British have invaded the USA, they have created the biggest economic catastrophie on American soil, they are now destroying evidence of its magnatude, they are violating work safety laws and the civil rights laws of USA Citizens, and are obstructing justice for the USDOJ; what’s worse, the EEOC, the US DOL, and OSHA, are acting as if they are powerless to enforce the laws that Congress has entrusted to them. Isn’t this treason against We-The-People-? And, is this a modern day invasion of the USA, once again, by the BRITISH-? >>> http://worldresarchnews.wordpress.com/ <<<<
June 14, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Two things:
Number one, BP is a multinational with massive US holdings. It’s hardly like the British did this to us.
Number two, however you want to cast this to “blame the British,” Obama let them do it. Obama took their campaign money; Obama gave them the permit to develop the platform that exploded; Obama issued a number of environmental waivers to the rig that exploded; Obama gave BP an award; Obama failed to do a damn thing about pretty much everything – including BP’s “destroying evidence of its magnatude.”
June 15, 2010 at 8:40 am
Yes, Yes, Yes, and there is no one who has OUR best interests in mind, not even us victims, so why don’t everyone just lay down and die tomorrow, so that all the world will come to an end. Not one person in position of power and authority can do anything to save the world without us, so we are the genuine power upon earth, (not an authority), everything is dependent upon us, and any change will hapen because we-the-people will no longer tolerate it. It these conditions are acceptable to you, so be it, sorry to have made reality appear before you. One thing is for sure, Obama will do the things that the people demand, the others WON’T, he will respond to OUR critism and our need, the others have not, so make yourself heard,……
June 15, 2010 at 6:29 pm
I might be misunderstanding you, jjoshua. But I’m going with what I understand:
First you offer a scenario which strikes of pure humanism about how “everything is dependent upon us.” In that scenario, you (and I would say correctly) maintain that political leaders are not looking out for us.
And then you mysteriously transition to Obama somehow becoming the ONE politician who ALONE will look out for us.
It’s like Obama becomes the God-substitute for secular humanists.
Today, in his speech, Obama pimped the Gulf disaster in order to sell his political snake oil of cap-and-trade. Newsflash, jjoshua: cap-and-trade will NOT cap the oil leak. If taking advantage of a terrible disaster to sell a boondoggle that has nothing to whatsoever to do with solving said disaster is “doing the things that the people demand,” then Obama is truly a hero.
June 16, 2010 at 2:34 pm
You are correct, democracy is a tyranny of the majority, and Obama WILL respond to OUR demands, and that’s why we need to WORK TOGETHER to make Obama bring about “changes.” This is the KEY to USA SUCCESS, so exploit it as best as you/us or we can take it.
June 16, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Obama is at 42% approval right now, and he’s been that low before. Nearly 2/3rds of the American people didn’t want ObamaCare to pass, and continue to want to have it repealed – but Obama rammed it home anyway.
Obama could give a damn about the will of the people. He is our imperial tyrant majesty. He thinks he can do whatever the hell he wants, and then sucker us with another speech.
The will of the American people can’t be felt until November.
June 17, 2010 at 1:37 pm
You know, Obama just obtained $20 Billion dollars in Gulf Relief, $500 million in health relief funds, and $100 million in laid off workers compensation for the Gulf oil rig workers, and you have DAMNED him for it, even though this is acknowledged as an UNPRECEDENTED accomplishment, in the history of past Presidents. So your disdain is only racism, and that is why the USA will be davasted by 2012 extinction level events. So Sad,… you are fighting your own better future, and it’s a good one,… LOL,… I guess you don’t deserve it,….
June 17, 2010 at 9:55 pm
I see. If I’m not a big-government socialist, I must be a racist.
What an idiotic and racist thing of you to say, you morally stupid racist bigot.
The funny thing is that the leaders who usurped all power and spending into their giant bureaucracy – Stalin, Hitler, and Mao – were the most racist leaders in history who literally murdered millions of helpless people under their control in their racism. So if there is a link between massive government spending and racism, it works against you, not against me.
As for Obama’s “accomplishment” being “unprecedented,” you’re entirely right. Spending the United States of America into bankruptcy IS an “unprecedented accomplishment.”
Let’s see. Under Obama and his never-before-seen-in-human-history spending, US debt will overtake GDP in just two years. And YOU WANT THAT!!! Let’s see, under Obama, Social Security now has a negative cash flow, which means we are in real trouble. And that’s the first time this has ever happened. Obama’s policies have completely failed. Just today we find out that unemployment claims rose sharply.
And – in addition to Obama’s abject failure in the Gulf – I’m supposed to be a racist for opposing all that, huh?
June 18, 2010 at 3:26 am
You’re doing great work, Michael.
These Liberals are so idiotic and they don’t even know it.
June 18, 2010 at 4:19 am
The USA has been in bankruptcy since the 1936, when gold backed certificates was removed, and when the value of dollar bills no longer represented the USA gold treasury. Since that time, INFLATION has compounded itself 1000 times, and Inflation became the national debt because Federal Reserve Banks created money out of thin air, and imposed a debt on the entire nation, with every loan dispensed since 1936. YOU and everyone were born with a debt that can never be paid, all you falsely believed was yours did not belong to you until Obama came along and put it to an end. So, you blind yourself to every Obaman benefit, you hate Obama for giving your property rights back, and you attack Obama for reversing a TREASON against the USA, Just because he’s a BLACK Man. Your irrational hateful mind has no value to a human civilization, and the subhuman irrational mind is what must become extinct, after 2012, so that the human rational mind can advance. Either you what to believe a lie, or you’re a racist, either way you have no future. So, See Ya, and I don’t want to be ya,….
June 18, 2010 at 4:50 pm
I would put it this way, jjoshua.
1) It was FDR who put us into the situation, even as you describe it. FDR was the guy who imposed that crap in 1936.
2) It is Obama, the reincarnation of everything that FDR did wrong, who is putting us in a situation that everyone – even leftwing economists – recognizes is unsustainable. Do you not recall that Time Magazine cover joyfully depicting Obama as FDR???
You tell me that FDR caused all this mess. But that Obama has heroically reversed it. And that now all the property that the government has taken has been restored to me. Are you mad? What has Obama done to do anything more than push psychotic spending with borrowed money to new heights? How are we going to repay all this debt, other than by massively inflating our currency, which is the very bogeyman you point to? How could you be more idiotic?
So there are two components to your utterly ridiculous argument:
1) Our disastrous economic condition was created by monumental liberal stupidity. And the solution to monumental liberal stupidity is even MORE monumental liberal stupidity.
2) Your view is, “We’re already going bankrupt, so let’s go bankrupt faster.” We are about to completely implode, and we’re not doing it fast enough to suit you.
I don’t give a damn what color Obama’s skin is. That’s what separates me from you, and makes me your moral superior. I’m with Martin Luther King. You despise everything Dr. King stood for. ALL you care about is the color of Obama’s skin. Racism consumes you. And then you go on to say if I am not similarly consumed with entirely by race, as opposed to the content of one’s character regardless of race, and unless I dare not criticize Obama just because he’s black, then I must ergo sum be a racist. When that very argument makes YOU the racist.
I responded to one of your fellow liberals on who the real racists are. The same stuff applies to you also:
Let us never forget that Democrats were the party of slavery. And that Democrats were the creators of the Ku Klux Klan. It literally took a war in which Democrats had to be militarily crushed to keep them from enslaving people based on the color of their skin. And thank God for the Republican Party and a Republican president for freeing the slaves from Democrats. Let’s not forget that Woodrow Wilson – Democrat president and the father of the progressive movement – RE-segregated the military after Republicans had DE-segregated it. Let us not forget that Wilson cheered the racist propaganda film “Birth of a Nation.” Let us never forget that the national party convention that was so directly tied to the Ku Klux Klan that it was called the “Klanbake” was the 1924 DEMOCRAT convention. Let’s not forget that FDR’s New Deal directly attacked blacks and kept them from getting jobs.
As we move into the 1950s we find that a Democrat Governor, Orval Faubus, called out the National Guard in 1957 to prevent black children being integrated into white schools. And again, a Republican president had to rise to the occasion, with Dwight D. Eisenhower sending in US Army airborne troops to enforce racial equality that had once again been opposed by Democrats. And of course Alabama Democrat Governor George Wallace would fight for racist segregation all over again in 1963. It was Democrat John F. Kennedy who sent in the troops this time. But that same John Kennedy had previously voted AGAINST the Civil Rights Act.
And let us not forget that both the famous Martin Luther King, Sr. and his even more famous son were both registered Republicans. It’s a shame that the pseudo civil rights leaders of today aren’t fit to carry Martin Luther King’s shoes, much less criticize his party affiliation.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Frederick Douglas BOTH fundamentally opposed the quotas and preferential treatment that Democrats have employed to create the equivalent of the “house negro.” Jack Greenberg of the NAACP said in the 1950s that “The chief problem with quotas is that they introduce a potentially retrogressive concept into the cherished notion of individual equality.”
Let’s listen to Frederick Douglas, escaped slave and greatest of all champions of civil rights, has to say:
So we’re now racists for agreeing with Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King, Jr and against you vile liberals and your vile pseudo values?
Richard Nixon, whom Democrats love to make the poster boy for Republican racism, was the first president to introduce the racial quotas that Democrats have been trying to implement and expand ever since. Democrats have been swimming in Nixon’s racism ever since.
You liberals are biblical – and never in a good way:
History proves that YOU are the racists, and we have stood for genuine equality again and again.
June 18, 2010 at 4:58 pm
It’s not that they’re dumb people. It’s that they have a vile and perverted worldview. They cannot even possibly see the world as it is. Instead, they view the world through often quite sophisticated but nevertheless completely false theories. For instance, it doesn’t matter how many times Marxism or whichever form of socialism fails, because they will never be able to understand the real world to SEE that it has failed. The keep returning to the same completely warped theories over and over again, because warped theories are all they have.