'Obama's Katrina': an Illustrated Timeline

21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.

22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness.

23 April 2010: President Obama blasts the Arizona governor, state legislators, police officers and residents for backing federal laws that prohibit illegal immigration.

24 April 2010: The president delivers his weekly radio address, which focuses on further regulation of Wall Street. He also calls upon certain segments of his original supporters -- African-Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, and women -- and asks them to mobilize for political action.

24 April 2010: Efforts to contain the spill are hampered by lack of resources and difficult weather.

25 April 2010: President Obama interrupts a weekend getaway to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham in North Carolina.

25 April 2010: Oil spreads across the gulf and heads toward the Louisiana shoreline.

26 April 2010: President Obama appears in a "Vote 2010" video, distributed by his political action wing Organizing for America, which serves as a stark appeal to blacks and Latinos -- specifically -- for their votes in November.

26 April 2010: The Coast Guard warns that the spill could become one of the worst in United States history.

28 April 2010: The President holds a rare, impromptu press conference on Air Force One, addressing "questions on the Arizona immigration law, the financial regulation bill and other issues." Obama also prepared to make his second nomination to the Supreme Court and warns of a "'conservative' brand of judicial activism in which the courts are often not showing appropriate deference to the decisions of lawmakers."

28 April 2010: large pools of oil are spotted close to the Louisiana shore line.

29 April 2010: the White House Flickr Feed is updated with a photo of the President meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and senior administration officials, including National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, which indicates that they are urgently working the issue of the oil spill.

29 April 2010: Meanwhile, local officials, the Coast Guard and private citizens continue their efforts to prevent damage to the Louisiana coastline.

Perhaps if the oil breached the Louisiana levees, then caught on fire, and then turned New Orleans into a Dresden-like inferno, the President would stop campaigning for a couple of days and actually pay attention to his own, personal Katrina. Even The New York Times has noticed, decrying the President's lackadaisical response. But I'm guessing that somehow, someway, it's all President Bush's fault.

My post is here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2667719/posts?page=26#26

Judge Holds Interior Dept. in Contempt Over Ban
Judge in La. holds Interior Department in contempt over offshore oil drilling moratorium

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12827405
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS February 2, 2011 (AP)
The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling after the Gulf oil spill held the Interior Department in contempt Wednesday, and ordered the federal agency to pay attorneys’ fees for several offshore oil companies.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman chided the department for its “dismissive conduct” after he overturned the agency’s decision to halt any new permits for deepwater projects and suspend drilling on 33 exploratory wells after the Deepwater Horizon blast, which killed 11 workers and triggered the massive spill.

After Feldman overturned the government’s moratorium in June, the agency issued a second nearly identical suspension.

“Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt of this court’s preliminary injunction order,” he wrote.

A magistrate will consider how much the companies’ attorneys should get.

An Interior Department spokeswoman wouldn’t comment. A lawyer for the companies hailed the ruling.

“We’re obviously delighted with the court’s recognition of the government’s manipulation of the judicial review process,” said Carl Rosenblum, an attorney for Hornbeck Offshore Services and other companies that sued over the first moratorium.

Rosenblum said the companies haven’t asked for a specific amount and aren’t trying to profit.

“The end game has always been to put people back to work,” he said.

Feldman also is presiding over a separate case challenging the Interior Department’s second drilling moratorium. That suspension was lifted in October, but the agency was sued by other offshore oil companies that want the permitting process to be quickened.

Last month, however, Feldman refused to order the government to move faster. The judge said it’s unclear whether the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management must approve or reject drilling permit applications within a specific time.

JUST WONDERED THE OTHER DAY: Whatever happened to the $20B Obama and friends extorted from BP............. described as the largest campaign contribution the Dems ever got?

APPOINTED BY OBAMA TO DOLE OUT BP’S $20 BILLION Pay Czar Ken Fineberg is a plus-perfect example of Ohaha’s foxes guarding the hen house. This guy Fineberg kept blabbering about “trying to decide” what to do with the $20B.....and did not ever provide exact details about who gets money and who doesn’t. Feinberg kept saying he was trying to “bend over backward to help eligible claimants.” The key word: “eligible.” Feinberg kept saying he’d come up with “an expansive” definition in the weeks ahead.

But when he appeared before the House Committee on Small Business, Feinberg said he would use “Florida law’’ as one measure of eligibility. Feinberg noted “some discretion’s going to have to be exercised.”

QUESTION So, How did the Ohahas arrive at $20 billion without the benefit of a full investigation of the causes and without a final solution for the problem? How come the $20B agreement between Ohaha and BP was not published?

[]

WH Meeting with BP executives in the Roosevelt Room; taken and released June 16, 2010.
(L-R): BP CEO Tony Hayward, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP General Counsel Rupert Bondy, BP Managing Director Robert Dudley, Senior Obama Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Labor Secy Hilda Solis, Attorney General Eric Holder, Biden, Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Rahm Emanuel also attended.

The buzz is Joe Biden was tapped as the point man——and reportedly told BP-—”you give us $20B or we’ll take it from you.” Biden is the person to watch like a hawk w/ $20B floating around.

Keep in mind Ohaha put Biden in charge of the $2 trillion stimulus pkg (and that millions in stimulus are being hidden in the states for endangered Dems——unused portions then wire-transferred offshore to numbered accounts?) Read on.

Offshore fraudster had links to fund run by relatives of Biden
Reuters on Yahoo.com | 2/23/09 | BY Ajay Kamalakaran
EXCERPT -— A fund of hedge funds run by two members of VP Joe Biden’s family was marketed exclusively by firms controlled by Texas financier Allen Stanford, charged by regulators with an $8 billion fraud, the Wall Street Journal said.

The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens’ Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity, and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund, the paper said.

Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors and also invested about $2.7 million of their own money in the fund, the paper said, citing a lawyer for Paradigm.

Paradigm Global Advisors is owned through a holding company by the vice president’s son, Hunter, and Joe Biden’s brother, James, according to the paper. Paradigm’s attorney, Marc LoPresti, who represents Hunter Biden and James Biden, as well as Paradigm, told the paper he did not know which Stanford entity invested the roughly $2.7 million. He told the paper the Bidens never met or communicated with Stanford.

“Luckily” mayoral candidate Rahm, and dwindling Dems, have the $20 billion “campaign donation” that Ohaha, Rahm, and Biden extorted from BP. 3

Federal judge: Feinberg not independent of BP (0bama’s oil czar)
Sun Herald ^ | Feb 2, 2011 | By HARRY R. WEBER and BRIAN SKOLOFF
http://www.sunherald.com/2011/02/02/2830251/federal-judge-feinberg-not-independent.html
Posted on Thursday, February 03, 2011 4:09:32 AM by Islander7

NEW ORLEANS — The embattled administrator of the $20 billion compensation fund for Gulf oil-spill victims is not independent from BP and must stop telling potential claimants he is, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, just hours after the fund czar released details on how final payments would be determined.

(Excerpt) Read more at sunherald.com ...

Lead attorneys in hundreds of lawsuits filed over last year’s rig explosion and massive oil spill had asked Barbier to intervene in the communications between Feinberg and fund claimants. The attorneys general in Mississippi and Louisiana have expressed support for the motion, and Florida joined in Wednesday. Among other things, they expressed concern with the requirement that people who accept final payments from the fund sign a form giving up their right to sue any party deemed responsible for the disaster. The lawyers have argued those claimants should still be able to sue BP for punitive damages and other companies for compensatory and punitive damages. 1

bttt

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