POSTAGE STAMP UPSIDE DOWN

I begin this post with an ominous thought. Back in the early days of our country, when people were coerced into writing things they did not wish to write but wanted to convey a situation of distress, the practice was to paste the stamp on the envelope upside down. So it is that today, I began pasting my American flag stamps on my mail upside down because we are, most assuredly, a nation in distress. I urge you, too, to follow the practice until we get our country turned back to the correct direction.

Now, as to the President’s speech last night…. It was too little, too late. You get the feeling that they only reason he made it was because the Democrats in Congress are sick and tired of hearing about the oil spill from their constituents. There was nothing new in it. There were no alternatives offered to either fix the problem or clean up the mess; rather, he indicated to me that he wants more money for some other commission to be formed to look into it and resolve it. AND, of course, he wants his Cap & Trade Energy Bill passed and he doesn’t care if we can afford it or not.

That’s basically what I heard. There was nothing new, just the same old shoulder shrugging and finger wagging that I have seen for the last 18 months. His reactions are to point blame and seize assets. Frankly, if I was Tony Hayward with BP, I’d be inclined to tell the President to “buzz off.”

BP is solidly to blame here, and I agree with that. I was one of the first, if not THE first, to wag MY finger and proclaim BP/ARCO as being the villain.  They have misled everyone involved from minute one. As I have said since two or three days after the rig blew, BP’s traditional cost cutting and lack of safety was the direct cause of the disaster. Mark my words, BP will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into many Courts of law before this story is over and people get paid.

One has to wonder why this President didn’t arrange to meet up with Hayward and tour the rig site and Gulf by chopper together, to then sit down with top government and BP officials to have an eyeball-to-eyeball discussion. The "hide behind your Oval Office desk and teleprompters, spewing forth confrontational ass kicking comments routine" is no more likely to draw cooperation and a spirit of urgency than does lying through your teeth and cramming a health care plan down people’s throats that they do not want. 

This was just another day of audacious Presidential pomposity, as far as I’m concerned.

I believe that our President came into office with an agenda to firmly place in action a series of events that would centralize every last drop of power in the White House before the November elections, and he has been distracted from his objective several times. He just can’t bear to turn his back on those objectives and to deal with the more pressing issues of the nation. Every day that goes by where his events don’t kick in as he planned gets him one day closer to November, and that seems to be relentlessly gnawing at him.

The momentum that carried him into office is now eroding. The polls reflect that the pendulum is starting to swing against him. His political capital is now confined to just a handful of Congress; the rest are doing their best to distance themselves from him in such a manner that it doesn’t amount to outright rebellion.

The fact that Obama didn’t even have the courtesy to respond to an offer from Royal Dutch Petroleum, (Shell), made in the beginning days of this disaster to send help speaks volumes about his in ability to function when he is not in control of his own diabolical agenda. 

Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.