President Obama went to Capitol Hill and talked with the Senate Republicans and, of course, got nowhere:
“The more he talked, the more he got upset,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said. “He needs to take a valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans and just calm down, and don’t take anything so seriously. If you disagree with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re attacking their motives — and he takes it that way and tends then to lecture and then gets upset.”
…Republicans came away believing Obama wants to do too much, too fast.
“He wants to do immigration, climate change — all before we go home — he’s a very ambitious guy,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.). “I think he needs to step back and see where the country is at.”
Given the list of problems the president is facing and the grade-school bullshit he has to put up with from Republicans, I agree, he should take some valium.
So lemme get this straight.
We’ve got 2 wars cooking, possibly a third one in Korea, and possibly a fourth one in Pakistan the way things are going.
There’s a massive oil geyser that’s been spewing crud for a month.
Europe’s coming apart financially.
Immigration looms.
Oh yeah, and the economy and unemployment rate.
The GOP responds to this by saying “We need to step back” and slow down, and of course not do anything…
And people wonder why Republicans in Congress have an approval rate in the teens.
I agree…
If there ever was a time where it might be for the best to lock the meeting-room door and start yelling & throwing things, we may be approaching that time….
In addition to all of the above, I blame Obama for making himself upset.
touché
And in the meantime we have the lefty contingent nonstop yelling that he ain’t done a damn thing. Do you think in his deepest, alonest thoughts he wonders why the hell he had to go and run for president?
indeed! according to the left blogosphere he’s especially not doing anything about the oil geyser which BP is trying to pawn off on him
They all just want to yell… take it all away from BP! They don’t seem to have any ideas of what to do then, with whom and what!
Matthews has been about the worst. At least today, the segments that I managed to watch of his show, he didn’t insist that divers should be down there with blow torches to close the hole.
What would a diver look like at 5,000′ down? Does a blow torch work in water? Sheesh!
indeed, I love those underwater blow torches, not to mention humans at the pressure of 5,000 ft. of water. maybe this is the result of years of rejection of science. (although I must admit personally I don’t know how 5,000 ft of water would affect a human).
although I’m pretty sure one cannot light a blow torch under water – in my own defense, I was always one for the abstract mathematics
You might be surprised what they can do with these newfangled inventions nowadays.
http://artikel-software.com/blog/2008/02/20/underwater-cutting-and-welding-manual/
Someone said that it would feel like a car was on top of the tip of your thumb. So…splat!!
2000 psi. That’s about right, a 4000 lb car on two square inches of thumb. Perhaps more like 2500 psi. Basically, the pressure is caused by the weight of the water column. I used water at 60 lbs per square foot. That’s low, I’m just too lazy to look it up. I used to know the density of fresh and salt-water and Atlantic and Pacific too. They’re different because of salinity differences. But I haven’t used that stuff for forty years.
According to my back of the envelope calculations, the water pressure should be around 2000 psi. Then I wonder what kind of pressure could force 4,000 barrels an hour through a not very big hole against 2000 psi of back pressure!
One idea I had was to sit on the hole with a submarine, then another mechanic had the thought of the submarine sitting on the 100 ton box to force it to scrunch through the frozen methyl hydrate. Are these practical? I sure wouldn’t want to go to extreme depths under sonar alone to sit on an oil leak for sixty days, but then you can only get me into a submarine when she’s in drydock. If the problem is handed over to my old employer, the Naval Sea Systems Command, I’m confident their engineers and experienced submarine officers will come up with something. Hopefully not blowing it to kingdom come with a nuclear torpedo or nuclear mine, which would be impressive but probably a VERY BAD idea.
link
This is 5,000 feet deep.
A LOT deeper than 800 feet, but as quoted, the actual depth is classified.
Although we could get down there. But we wouldn’t be able to do anything that the robots aren’t already doing.
As I said, these were off the top of our heads talk.
The impression from TV is that the robots aren’t doing anything, but ABC in particular spend a whole lot of noon air time on recipes and exercises. It’s a sad state of affairs when FOX News has more news (slanted about ninety degrees rightward) than other channels.
Slightly more professional, CNN has a very good segment this morning showing the robots working and all.
btw, very impressive use of that technical term “scrunch”
???? snark or not? Common word, a combination of “screw” and “crunch”. We use it almost every day in the shop.
not snark – I really liked it and it conveyed vividly what you meant, so it seemed like a technical term, but I wasn’t sure. should have phrased my comment differently!
and interesting to know that it’s screw + crunch
I can say that the response seems inadequate, not in size or effort but in ownership and effectiveness.
I don’t mean Obama or Chu should personally have found a way to stop the gusher, obviously – I understand the depth (no pun intended) of the problem.
But the Gulf Coast distrusts teh goverment, and the feds needed to be out front and visibly capable with a national-emergency level, visible, communicative, transparent response. They haven’t been.
The administration keeps reminding us BP is responsible, and I don’t dispute that. However, the government is accountable, and only the federal government can protect something the size of the Gulf Coast. Until I see them on top of the response at the surface and on shore, and owning their responsibility to protect this country from disaster, I won’t think they’re doing a competent or adequate job.
Those coastal parishes went 70% for McCain. They are reaping what they sowed and trying to blame the black guy as usual.
Why don’t they organize a lynch mob on the NOLA bridge again and see if that fixes the oil leak?
He’s president of the whole country, not just the part that elected him or the parts that have addressed energy responsibly.
He had a few good quotes about that before the election.
He seems to be trying. I’m just not convinced that the anger of people who were shooting n__gers on the bridge a couple of years back is automatically justified. And Bobby Jindal can kiss my ass.
They wanted low regulation white government – and with Bush they got it. Now Bush’s destruction of the regulators has come home to haunt them.
Sucks for everyone who loves the gulf, but my sympathy for David Vitter and Mary Landrieu’s constituents is somewhat tempered by their complicity.
Um, Rootless, call me ultrasensitive if you want but I wish that you would can it with the lynching talk and the ” n” bombs. You can make your point without being stupid or crass. Lynching is not a Joe and neither is the “n” bomb. No. I will not write the word.
Liberals.
I meant joke not Joe.
to me, seeing photos of that armed mob on the Gretna bridge, it was clear what was going on. I don’t think it was a joke.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/racist-police-blocked-bridge-and-forced-evacuees-ba
ck-at-gunpoint-506371.html
These are the people who are supposedly losing faith in the President. I have my suspicions why.
Do you have any reason to think more could be done now? It’s not like people are made homeless (yet) or land infrastructure is destroyed (yet). It’s also not like there’s some solution that the government is refusing to implement, far as I know. It’s sheer agony to face it, but all the indications are that the disaster has happened and nothing anybody does will reverse it. If you know something other than that everyone would be eager to hear it.
using “lefty” as a pejorative.
Well, as a long time lefty let me say that Obama HAS done something. Unfortunately it was throwing his support to offshore drilling.
If I used lefty as a pejorative I pejorified myself. I was referring precisely to stuff flooding the leftyshere like your next sentence. I’m not happy with Obama’s acceptance of offshore drilling, but that had absolutely nothing to do with the present disaster. What’s in it for you to try and spin it otherwise?
Do you really think he could have just shut down thousands of offshore with a snap of his fingers? If not, how was he supposed to prevent this? All you’re accomplishing is helping enable the real bad guys to claim, “see, Obama is just as bad as Bush was with Katrina.” How does that serve your cause?
While Obama’s endorsement of offshore drilling may have had “nothing to do with the present disaster”, it absolutely GUARANTEED a similar disaster at some point down the road.
Did you even read the story? There’s a quote in there about Obama saying that he feels like he has pissed off his base. I’m not clear if that means he’s done it to work with republicans for the good of the country or because pissing off the base is good for the country.
Sounds like Obama treated these fine upstanding Christian men to a “Come to Jesus” meeting.
And they didn’t take kindly to being churched.
Seems like they didn’t like the Waterloo being thrown in their faces.
It was an insult to Obama.
The Repubs didn’t like what they heard and you notice that they aren’t saying what was said to them about the affairs of the country. Oh, no, they are trying to undermine the president. This is serious.
They know they have a lot to answer for the some of the large problems we have.
Obama has done the right thing with the oil disaster. The media is ignorant. And the people who are the loudest are too lazy to find out what is being done.
22,000 people in the Gulf area working on this.
Can’t Obama just stuff that gusher with all those ponies he has yet to hand out?
LOL.
better not throw my pony in the gusher!
what about American Speaking Out? I guess Cantor’s Pizza Parlor roll out branding has already died.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/25/new-gop-initiative-stumbl_n_588748.html
Can you imagine if Democrats used tax payer money for this kind of crap? I love how Republicans always talk smack about private meetings with the President but get their A$$ smacked in front of the cameras like in Baltimore.
We’re only trying to sabotage your agenda, regardless if it hurts the unemployed and the uninsured, while simultaneously calling you a socialist, Marxist, illegitimate usurper bastard son of Malcolm X with an unamerican wife? Sheesh! Take a chill pill there, Hussein.
“You know how emotional those people are”. I’m sure that’s what their subtext is.
damn, I wish we had the transcript. You know Obama got the best of them which is why they are all pissy about it. “…he’s a very ambitious guy…” What an asshole you are Johanns. Yes, we elected him to get shit done.
Last I checked 538 still had us at -8 senate seats.
What a bunch of whiny ass titty babies. Rand Paul is their perfect spokesman, complaining that he hasn’t had a honey moon period.
painting Bo’s toenails would be more productive than talking to those clowns.
At least, the pictures would be more entertaining.
Did Pat Roberts just inadvertently explain why Bush II’s language skills went so rapidly downhill after he became president in 2000? He was over-medicated with Valium!
And, “Jeebus, dude, we’re doin’ everything we can to destroy the federal government but don’t take it so seriously, don’t get upset about it.”
Some days I do a 180 in my mind and think Obama should start fulfilling these idiots worst nightmares, that he should start arresting Republicans for sedition and treason, just go ahead and lance this boil, cauterize it while we still have a chance to have a benign dictator.