Oil Not Sticking To Obama

Obama's overall approval rating continues to hold up in the latest CBS/NY Times poll.  However, he is widely viewed as a Man Sans Plan on the gulf oil spill, energy policy, and job creation.

Overall:

The president's overall approval rating stands at 47 percent, unchanged from one month ago. The percentage who disapproves of his performance has also held steady and now stands at 43 percent.

Clueless:

Most Americans do not believe President Obama has a clear plan to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll.

Just 32 percent say Mr. Obama has a clear plan to deal with the oil leak, while 59 percent (including 64 percent of Gulf coast residents) say he does not.

The numbers are not much better among those who watched the president's Oval Office speech on the spill last week, with 35 percent of that group saying he has a clear plan and 56 percent saying he does not.

The spill isn't the only issue on which the president is seen as lacking a plan of action: Just 41 percent say Mr. Obama has a clear plan for developing new sources of energy, while 45 percent say he has no clear plan. And when it comes to creating jobs, just 34 percent say he has a clear plan; 54 percent say he does not.

Comments

[Johnny D]

If Obama is keeping near 50% approval, it looks like the Dems will keep control of both houses in November. Oh well, on to 2012!

[narciso]

It's an inflated poll, he's nowhere near that, Rasmussen probably has the best measure
at 42-44% which is still surprisingly good despite his manifest incompetence

[Pofarmer]

If Obama is keeping near 50% approval, it looks like the Dems will keep control of both houses in November. Oh well, on to 2012!

Congressional approval is much lower than Obama's numbers.

[Old Lurker]

Well, today's Thomas Sowell LUN fits perfectly into this subject.

[fdcol63]

Sowell's article is frightening because it underscores the considerable change in culture that Obama has wrought.

We've now become de-sensitized to the unprecedented encroachment of the Federal government into major areas of the private sector that, before now, most Americans would not have tolerated.

[Jane]

No way dems keep the house. I want the GOP to take the house and not the senate - which will give us the best situation for ousting the president in 2012.

[Jack is Back!]

This is a barometric change. Storm is coming. Today, I received an email from a friend's daughter who is a congressional affairs rep for one of the Fed agencies. The one you try to avoid if you are a bank robber or in the mob. It was the text of letter from a Catholic priest to Obama and my initial reaction was it was a hoax but it turns out is isn't. When you are a promoter of social justice and income equality like Obama is and you start losing Catholic priests then you have a serious breakdown in the core. He is also fragmenting the left with the Olberman/Mathews/Maddow schism plus he has a long way to go to get Carville back in his camp. All of this must be elevator music to Bill Clinton's ears. No wonder he and Hillary are still together. There may be one Last Tango in DC to do.

[Jane]

What did the letter say JIB?

[ruby]

if more people knew that the administration knew about cracks and leaks in the well as early as February maybe opinion would change.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-17/bp-struggled-with-cracks-in-gulf-well-as-early-as-february-documents-show.html

[narciso]

So, it's interesting that Barton, an engineer
with a long history in the petroleum industry,
who was probably one of the only people in that hearing room, with any understanding is the one who was 'left behind' by the 'clean
toga' Republicans

[BR]

Yes, Ruby, I'll repost this from previous thread.

Narciso and Ann's links on BP:

More legs...

Feb. 2010 - Cracks, oil leakage starts.
13 Feb 2010 - White House is informed.
17 Mar 2010 - BP CEO Hayward sells 1/3 of his holdings.
20 Apr 2010 - Fatal rig explosion and environmental damage.
Jun 2010 - BP stock falls 50 percent.

Good grief, is Waxman covering for insider trading? See below from Ann's Bloomberg link:

"BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward and other top executives were ignorant of the difficulties the company’s engineers were grappling with in the well before the explosion, U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said today during a hearing in Washington.

“ 'We could find no evidence that you paid any attention to the tremendous risk BP was taking,' Waxman said as Hayward waited to testify. 'There is not a single e-mail or document that you paid the slightest attention to the dangers at this well.'

"BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles and exploration chief Andy Inglis 'were apparently oblivious to what was happening,' said Waxman, a California Democrat. 'BP’s corporate complacency is astonishing.' ”

------

How can an exec be oblivious to the coming disaster and yet prescient enough to sell one-third of his holdings.

Makes me wonder who in the WH and Congress knew about it in February and what financial gains they've made out of this.

And did Hayward warn his buddies at Goldman-Sachs? They also sold prior to the rig explosion.

I'd like to see a list of who shorted BP.

Fits in with Obama comparing it to 9/11. There were "prescient shorts" on airlines before 9/11.

[narciso]

Well there are parallels to 9/11, but not those, these emails are like the Phoenix and the Rowley memos about flight training in Arizona and Minnesota respectively, there was
a 'failure to connect the dots. Then again, Waxman being the author of the cap and trade
bill, does raise doubts as to 'who knew what
and when did they know it" Similarly, BP is
like Enron, another corporation with Goldman ties (Rubin selected Ken LAy to run the merger of HNG and another firm)

[Janet]

Obama image defaced in firehouse LUN via Drudge

So an image of Obama with the word Hustler painted over it. Hustler is a pretty good description of Obama in my opinion.

[MWR]

I don't get it. How can the man still have an approval rating near 50%? Are we polling hedgehogs or something? I know there's the 20% of hard leftifts who will always support a liberal regardless of that liberal's ruinous agenda (and often because of it), but where are the other 30% coming from? Pluto?

[BR]

Yeah, I read somewhere that Hayward had worked in or was on a board of Goldman Sachs. Can't find it now.

Goldman Sachs Sold 44% Of BP Stock 3 Weeks Before Blowout.

Contains list of the institutional owners of BP stock.

[Rick Ballard]

"if more people knew"

Then the Demedia wouldn't be doing their job of disseminating maladministration propaganda correctly. The response to the "right direction/wrong direction" question indicates that BOzo has lost a lot more ground than the oil spill responses indicate. He's holding his ground among parasites but he's lost the muddle - and the muddle decides elections.

[BR]

Now we need a Climategate caper on those "missing" e-mails at BP and one on the WH and any congressional members or staff who knew in February and then gained financially.

[Old Lurker]

"There is not a single e-mail or document that you paid the slightest attention to the dangers at this well."

The insidious downside of that remark is why nobody is shocked that a Waxman can have access to those internal communications long before any sort of judicial discovery.

Not very far back it was considered bad form to demand emails from other government employees...they never would have thought about getting them from private companies.

[Danube of Thought]

GOP leads by 8 on the generic congressional ballot.

All other polling news leaves me wondering who my countrymen are.

[MarkJ]

"I don't get it. How can the man still have an approval rating near 50%?"

Here's how: "LATEST WAPO POLL: OBAMA 65% APPROVAL......ON NEPTUNE."

[BR]

Old Lurker, the more I re-read Waxman's quotes, the more it looks to me like code for: Hayward, don't say a thing. You're covered. Paid. Paid. We've cleaned out our e-mails, so just shhhhh in your upcoming testimony, while I "bash" you some for the cameras.

[memomachine]

Hmmmm.

Probably the reason why Obama hasn't completely tanked is due in part to management by the media and the enforced no-fly zone over the oil spill area.

i.e. we don't really know how bad it is.

[glasater]

Incredible photos from the oil spill

[Wayne]

I am proud to say that I refused to take that poll. I want nothing to do with the lame street media and their bogus polls.

[narciso]

So BP is a British firm, but the largest institutional holder of stock, is JP Morgan
Chase, so as usual Obama is going after an
American firm

[jimmyk]

BR, I'm repeating my reply from the previous thread as well:

How can an exec be oblivious to the coming disaster and yet prescient enough to sell one-third of his holdings.

BR, let's not go overboard with 20-20 hindsight. Even a week after the accident BP stock had only fallen from roughly 60 to 57. So the idea that back in March they knew this was going to be a disaster doesn't ring true to me.

What we don't know about the February developments is (a) how common they were; (b) to what extent BP thought they'd fixed the problem. We also don't know how common it is for CEOs to buy or sell their holdings and for what reasons. Hayward would have still been heavily invested in BP even after the sales. I think some of us may have watched too many Law & Order episodes.

[jimmyk]

We've now become de-sensitized to the unprecedented encroachment of the Federal government into major areas of the private sector that, before now, most Americans would not have tolerated.

We'll see in November to what extent Americans have "tolerated" this. The question is whether the Republicans have the cojones to undo the damage once they have the power to do so. If not, then we are screwed, unless take things in our own hands.

[narciso]

Actually no, we saw Lehman, Goldman's chief competitor, melt down 60 days before an election, we've seen AIG and the friends of Angelo, chief among them Dodd, Geithner, clueless at the NY Fed?? rising up from the
wreckage. WE know about the CCX and Fannie
Mae's Franklyn Raines

[Neo]

Most Americans do not believe President Obama has a clear plan to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf

Add me in this group

[PD]

Oil-spill-payout czar Feinberg seems to be performing well, at least by government standards.

[Barbara]

"I want the GOP to take the house and not the senate - which will give us the best situation for ousting the president in 2012."

Good plan, Jane. Control of the house will tie Obama's hands fiscally. I'm just hoping for enough GOP senators to prevent any of Obama's lame-brained court appointments from being approved.

[narciso]

So a judge has blocked the moratorium on oil drilling, according to Rush

[Clarice]

The Administration is appealing but really since all 7 scientist Salazar cited said he misstated what they said, I think the Administration's position is not strong.

[daddy]

Clarice,

Just something worth thinking about.

1) Salazar is Secretary of the Interior.

2) Salazar and Obama misunderstood/misconstrued/lied about what the 7 Scientists told them about the OIl Spill.

3) The Bill that Begich introduced yesterday placed sole authority in determining the potential damage and amount of money demanded of Oil Companies into Escrow accounts in the hands of The Secretary Of The Interior.

Nice scam, eh?

[Stephanie]

"Indeed, while
the government makes light of the fact that several of the experts
disagree with the recommendations in the Report by noting that they
do not disagree with the findings, of greater concern is the
misleading text in the Executive Summary that seems to assert that
all the experts agree with the Secretary’s recommendation. The
government’s hair-splitting explanation abuses reason, common
sense, and the text at issue."

Footnote on the the .pdf of the ruling

[Stephanie]

Shu in 2007: BP is gonna save the world...

LUN

[And of course, there is special exhibit in my museum of ironies for this one.]

Whoa, you got some good links, S. This close relationship that BP has with the administration and those pushing carbon controls is what leads some to think that the leak was deliberate, as in cui bono.

Personally, I don't think they deliberately sabotaged the well, but I do think that their close relationship with those seeking a transnational solution to an exaggerated problem made them more careless in drilling than other oil majors. They thought they had cover with the poobahs.
============

[daddy]

Thanks for both those comments and links Stephanie.

I don't trust these guys as far as I can throw them and obviously neither does the Judge.

[cathyf]

I don't think that logic really flies, kim. On the other hand, the notion that the actual oil producing part of the company was neglected by an upper management far more interested in butterflies and unicorn farts -- yeah, that sounds quite plausible.

[Really, though, I think we agree.]

I know it's iffy, cathyf, but BP has a much worse safety record than other oil majors and they have a much closer relationship with the tranzi poobahs than other oil majors. I think that they felt so politically protected by those relationships that they were willing to take safety risks.

Else why were those safety risks taken?
================

[We are touching different parts of the same elephant, cf.]

And about the cui bono. If oil is encumbered and we are forced into a green energy future, BP will do better than any of the other oil majors. Perhaps that's the source of their carelessness about their oil producing.
============

[Stephanie]

BP will do better? They will be milked dry and the carcass will be proffered to GE who will try their hand at bottling unicorn farts and generating power with them.

The problem with using other people's money... yada yada.

The last cow into the shute still faces the same outcome.

[Stephanie]

There was some scuttlebutt on twitter that Obama and BP want the Gulf dead so that they can convert it to an algae farm.

Anyone have any links to that scuttlebutt? Sounds farfetched, but then so did a Pres Zero in 2007.

[daddy]

Breaking:

">http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/22/interior-secretary-seeks-renew-drilling-stay/"> Salazar (in effect ignores Judge) and says he will issue a new drilling Moratorium.

[daddy]

"There was some scuttlebutt on twitter that Obama and BP want the Gulf dead so that they can convert it to an algae farm."

No, but I'm confident Obama want's Alaska's economy dead so he can turn it into a Polar Bear Park.

[narciso]

In that light, there's yer another attack in Rolling Stone, probably by Dickinson, on Arctic Drilling by BP

[Stephanie]

Found the scuttlebutt. Tin foil hats optional. But then if you had predicted Pres O back in 2006, we would have been looking for yours then, too.

LUN

[narciso]

Here's that other piece, he didn't get the bulletin about the Arctic moratorium, in the LUN

[Ann]

Stephanie:

Here is one: Startling Revelations More Going on In the Gulf of Mexico than an Oil Spill

We should ask Melinda if stocks on Algae production are up.

After Climategate, moratoriums on drilling, confiscation of private companies, appointment of czars, etc. who needs a tin foil hat?

[Stephanie]

Ann, that article is incorporated into the one I found and linked above.

If Clarice can have the pitchfork and pikes concession, we should start the Tin Foil hat concession.

[What Obama wants is even worse.]

Interesting, Steph, but I doubt it. Can't engineer the gulf. It's too big.
===================

[Stephanie]

And it's not a closed loop system like a pond or lake. Besides, first hurricane in and downtown Birmingham, Jackson and/or Atlanta are gonna be painted green from the algae upflow into the hurricane.

You know they find sea water plankton on land hundreds of miles inland after a hurricane and in the clouds and rainwater in the Rockies after cyclones.

Like I said, this is just some scuttlebutt making the rounds.

[BR]

Serpent's Kiss.