Posted on 06/06/2010 6:24:57 AM PDT by harpu
Personalized email ('keep your friends close but your enemies even closer') from OBozo...
Yesterday, I visited Caminada Bay in Grand Isle, Louisiana -- one of the first places to feel the devastation wrought by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While I was here, at Camerdelle's Live Bait shop, I met with a group of local residents and small business owners.
Folks like Floyd Lasseigne, a fourth-generation oyster fisherman. This is the time of year when he ordinarily earns a lot of his income. But his oyster bed has likely been destroyed by the spill.
Terry Vegas had a similar story. He quit the 8th grade to become a shrimper with his grandfather. Ever since, he's earned his living during shrimping season -- working long, grueling days so that he could earn enough money to support himself year round. But today, the waters where he has worked are closed. And every day, as the spill worsens, he loses hope that he will be able to return to the life he built.
Here, this spill has not just damaged livelihoods. It has upended whole communities. And the fury people feel is not just about the money they have lost. It is about the wrenching recognition that this time their lives may never be the same.
These people work hard. They meet their responsibilities. But now because of a manmade catastrophe -- one that is not their fault and beyond their control -- their lives have been thrown into turmoil. It is brutally unfair. And what I told these men and women is that I will stand with the people of the Gulf Coast until they are again made whole.
That is why, from the beginning, we have worked to deploy every tool at our disposal to respond to this crisis. Today, there are more than 20,000 people working around the clock to contain and clean up this spill. I have authorized 17,500 National Guard troops to participate in the response. More than 1,900 vessels are aiding in the containment and cleanup effort. We have convened hundreds of top scientists and engineers from around the world. This is the largest response to an environmental disaster of this kind in the history of our country.
We have also ordered BP to pay economic injury claims, and this week, the federal government sent BP a preliminary bill for $69 million to pay back American taxpayers for some of the costs of the response so far. In addition, after an emergency safety review, we are putting in place aggressive new operating standards for offshore drilling. And I have appointed a bipartisan commission to look into the causes of this spill. If laws are inadequate, they will be changed. If oversight was lacking, it will be strengthened. And if laws were broken, those responsible will be brought to justice.
These are hard times in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast, an area that has already seen more than its fair share of troubles. The people of this region have met this terrible catastrophe with seemingly boundless strength and character in defense of their way of life. What we owe them is a commitment by our nation to match the resilience they have shown. That is our mission. And it is one we will fulfill.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
Id like to know which ones of those people mentioned in this article voted for Obama. Hows that hopeychangey working out for ya?
What, no call to riot outside American BP offices and homes of BP employees?
Once again, cold fish Obama can only relate to lost jobs and struggling communities: the environmental devastation doesn’t move him at all.
I am sure these are being scheduled even as we post.
I got this email, months ago I got on their mailing list by sending a sarcastic post to their book congratulating Zero. Know your enemy.
As usual I replied to their email
“Great Phoney baloney, you went down there and postured for the cameras and did your “I feel your pain” BS and then tried to make points browbeating BP.
Everyone knows you didn’t “order” them to pay claims, it is what they are required to do by law, passed long before your time and which they have stated they would honor.
Stay in DC and play your socialist Chicago gutter politics and stay out of the way of BP, the Governors, the CG and the Corps ( that is pronounced CORE since you don’t know) who are competent and motivated to do everything possible to address the problem.
They do not need the community organized.”
True believers love it when this Nero plays the tiniest violin in existance.
Debbie Stupidcow is demanding that Canada stop drilling under lake Erie.
Out of the 431,000 newly employed last month - with 411,000 census workers jobs counted - is that where the other 20,000 jobs came from?
And yet he has legal Executive Branch authority to take over the cleanup, first hand. Posted elsewhere on FR. He’ll “stand” with the people hit by this?? Ridiculous. He needs to get off his high horse and STOP standing around. Incompetence personified by someone who has never run ANYTHING in his life, but his mouth. Useless twit.
How about releasing some of that sandbagged stimulus dollars to help these people out????!!!!! Ya can’t save it to finance your re-elections like you planned.I would not protest if my already collected/purloined tax dollars were spent to help these people out and save our coastlines. BUT HE’S SITTING ON IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On a related note, has anyone seen the footage of the cleanup “workers” strolling along the beaches? They’re dressed in ill-fitting contamination suits with dust covers over their mouths, and safety glasses on. They have rubber gloves on, and appear to be working in loose teams, but also just as much in gangs. One member of the team has a shovel, the other a trash bag. The bags were all barely full, just a few small scoopfuls of dark sand. One wonders whether BP staged this, or the government did. Regardless the small gangs of cleanup crews aren’t going to be anywhere near enough.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.