Let's play Thursday Morning Quarterback... What would YOU have done, or what would YOU do...

Personally, I think the podium with the Presidential Seal that gets toted around on Air Force One could be used more effectively, and I thought so when the Katrina disaster was in our faces, just to make sure we're all on the same page.

What would I have done differently, had I been in charge on the day the Deep Horizon platform exploded?

In hindsight, hindsight always being 20-20, I'd have cajoled ALL the major oil companies that do business in the United States to get involved. Privately. If that didn't work, I'd have been on TV from the Oval Office doing the same thing, and naming those who didn't JUMP at the opportunity to help by name so as to subject them to the always popular boycott. Of course, I would have notified them that in the absence of their 100 percent cooperation, that's what I'd be doing.

I'd have been on TV every day since the spew started promising any able bodied individual who could wade into waist deep water and scoop oil in buckets these things: twice the federal minimum wage, free transportation to the gulf and back home again, food, a sleeping bag, cover to sleep under, protective clothing, and bug spray for as long as it took to defend the marshes of Louisiana and points east.

I'd have been on TV every day since the spew started, offering tax breaks and future contracts to every boat owner who could tow boom, every manufacturer who could make it, and every transportation company who could get it to the gulf. I'd offer the same deal to each and every boat capable of vacuuming oil off the surface. I'd make sure they new the US Government would pay for their fuel and labor costs.

They call the podium that bears the Presidential Seal and travels with Air Force One "The Bully Pulpit". In my lifetime, which has spanned 49 years now, I see it as "The Buffy Pulpit".

A bunch of oil executives surrounding Obama, while "Doing" us a favor,
and if they couldn't have stopped the leak like now, then Obama would be buried
under the oil executives. I can just see it now!

and then having Pres. Obama promising folks taxpayers money on television, to clean up an oil company's mess? They'd call that a bail out in a New Orleans' minute.

Yep. That would have gone over really well!




















not.

that very first week, and would have put NON-BP scientists in charge to avoid any conflict of interest issues. I also would have insisted that expert booming coordinators get that stuff into place well before the oil could get anywhere close to shores or estuaries. And I would have kept the people informed daily.

I'd like to know about that.

As for putting non-BP scientists in charge, remember that not many knew how bad this was till a few days out. I'm not sure if putting other folks in charge of a Corporate mess would have played as well as it might sound on hindsight. To get the skill set needed, it may have been scientists employed by other oil companies. I'm not sure if the President, that early on, would get to choose other companies' scientists for BP. The liability involved and so on. My understanding is that there are scientists conferring for some time on this, but to have directed them to run the whole show? Wondered if they'd been any of them willing to volunteer to just take charge of someone elses catastrophe just like that?

Daily updates from the President? Well, I don't know....but yeah, maybe a website and some press releases would have been good. Looking back, it sounds like communication could have been much better, as was done with the H1N1 flue outbreak.

But I say that if the leak was still going, as it is, it doesn't matter what this President would have done, I think he would still be in the same place that he is in now, which is that people would be blaming him, period. Cause I think at this point the issue is that this leak hasn't stopped, and folks are just frustrated and not able to comprehend how it is that we are some much more skilled at the oil out, but yet cannot control it once the shit breaks all out loose.

Started hunting for and rooting out all the obvious party line loyalists in government positions that Bush hired instead of keeping them on staff and "reaching across the aisle".

That would have been at the top of my list.

Not the oil execs who started this mess. Not the elected officials of the states directly affected by this. Not even local "do-gooders" who want to improve their images on the backs of this disaster.

No, this is something that you think that the PRESIDENT should be doing. That he should be on tv offering tax breaks to boat owners. For real?

...ANTIMATTER