printThe following is from my new, WND.Com column, “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann”:
“Republican reaction to the president’s reaction to the crude gushing in the Gulf of Mexico is a measure of how serious the GOP is about checking the spread of big government.
Every time I turn around, there’s a Republican insisting that Big “O” take over where Big Oil has (allegedly) left off. This, Sarah Palin has been demanding as loudly as James Carville; Congresswoman Michele Bachmann as urgently as clown Keith Olbermann. The consensus on both sides of the political aisle seems to be that where British Petroleum has failed to stop the spread of the oil slick, the president will prevail.
If I didn’t know Republicans better, I’d think they were making political hay out of the Deepwater Horizon leak, now in its fifty second day. …
So what does the idolatrous Idiocracy want from its Golden Calf?
The Oprah faction confuses righteous indignation with righteousness; it wants Obama to come unhinged. The Disneyland division is hoping that off-shore oil explorer, acclaimed scientist and inventor James Cameron, who “has worked extensively with robot submarines,” will help the film directors of BP to plug the oil plume. Cameron’s plan includes that liquid metal robot from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” Obama must realize that there is no way such a plan could fail.”…
What do I recommend? For the root of the environmental despoliation of the ocean and other state-controlled expanses of water—and the ultimate solution to it—read on. The column is “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann.”
Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.
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How statists view the Presidency is in Exodus 15:8-11 with a couple changes in capitals:
“And with the blast of thy nostrils the OIL were gathered together, the POLLUTANTS stood upright as an heap, [and] the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea…. Thou didst blow with thy RHETORIC, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters. Who [is] like unto thee, OBAMA, among the PRESIDENTS? Who [is] like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful [in] praises, doing wonders?”
Palin and Hannity or Obama and Maddow – just two sides of the same statist coin. I prefer Mencken’s judgment on Calvin Coolidge’s Presidency:
“We suffer most, not when the White House is a peaceful dormitory, but when it is a jitney Mars Hill, with a tin-pot Paul bawling from the roof.”
The only real role I see here for the powers at be in the federal government is to eliminate the red tape and allow the states and companies to do what they need to do to get the job done. If there is expertise in the government or its contractors make them available not to find out whose ass to kick but, to offer up potential solutions. If the feds have equipment that can help than by all means make it available. Otherwise get out of the way and let the experts do the job.
As an engineer I realize that this is an extremely difficult problem to solve. The problem almost has to be worked remotely due to the harsh environment of the leak. In order of the oil to stream out of the pipe at a rate that appears high, from the video and oil slick size, the pressure in the pipe must be very high. The water pressure at 5000 feet below sea level is approximately 2200 psi. FWIW later today I will try to do a back of the envelope estimate of just how high the oil pressure in the pipe must be for the apparent flow rate. It should be an eye opener. I hope I haven’t violated the word limit here!
I expect that lawyers would love it, but I don’t see how private ownership of the oceans is going to work. I’m happy to own, more or less, both a city home and rural acreage because I can occupy and control either or both. I say that own these properties more or less because the state taxes my property, and may seize it should I fail to pay. Also, my property rights are limited, especially in the city, where a neighborhood association (a.k.a. the Lawn Nazis) stands ready to jump all over me for any perceived violation of deed restrictions.
How does one occupy and control a patch of ocean? Would anyone want to own a patch of ocean that didn’t have an oil well? Would anyone want to pay the taxes? (You know there’ll be taxes.) What limits to private property rights would apply to a patch of ocean? Will we have seagoing Lawn Nazis, or will government fill that role? What effect would private ownership have on seaborne commerce? Considering that the feds still own a large part of America’s land mass (primarily because nobody else wants it), what fraction of our territorial waters would the federal government actually be able to sell? Who gets to sell off international waters, the UN?
There are a number of solutions that require the government to approve and Obama has sat on his hands.
Answer me this:
Why does the oil industry get a federal cap on litigation for non-economic damages yet the medical profession does not?
Seems backwards to me, just like the rest of this administration.
OK, first, keep the lawyers out of everything and we’ll probably survive this mess.
Second, the GOP wants govt. out of our lives, then demands the president to step into our lives……I’m confused.
Expecting the Republocrats to act anything other than schizophrenic is delusional.
And now they are threatening them with criminal charges even as they work to staunch the flow.
Still, it is amusing to see Obama get suckered by the vacuous intellectuals of the press into acting tough one day (effeminate rage), and pretending to take charge another (with his team of bumbling incompetents).
The only thing the idiocracy will learn from this is that they should make everything illegal in their attempts to regulate risk.