"I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter," he said. "You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else. The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn't."
“I will not tolerate any more finger-pointing or irresponsibility,” he continued. “This is a responsibility that all of us share.”
On the economy, he and his Democrats sing a different tune. They actually are doing something about the economy, even though they have allowed the Republicans to dilute that effort rather badly. Their efforts are showing some results, albeit not large results and not ones which are easily identified in sound bites, which is the only way in which politicians can communicate.
Nonetheless, he and his Democrats are identifying the campaign for the fall election as a theme of blaming the Republicans for the economic poor times, hoping that voters won’t stop to realize that Democrats have been in control of Congress for three full years.
"So after Republicans drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back," Obama said on Wednesday.
“Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy and funded two wars without paying for any of it — all of which was compounded by recession and by rising health care costs,” he said recently.
...not mentioning that for, three years now, it is a Democratic Congress that has been funding those wars without paying for them, and that he and a Democratic Congress passed a massive tax cut just last year. He’s also hoping no one will notice that we are still in a recession, at least on Main Street, and that health care costs are still rising.
So when it comes to despoiling nature by pumping oil in deepwater ocean, something he advocated less than a month ago, it is time to stop blaming and “share responsibility.”
But come the elections it is time to blame Republicans for the economy.
A lot of any election will turn on how quickly the voters will forget, and how much BS they can be fed and retain. This election is no different in that respect. Challengers (of any political persuasion) and harping on dysfunctional D.C. and the incumbents are fighting back with dirt. Wait, they are all fighting with dirt. I don't really care about parties, just get someone who has a clear head and a desire to do what is right, fair and prudent, who is fiscally and socially responsible. But apparently that is too much to ask for, given most election results. Or maybe it's not the elections, it's the performance afterwards.
ReplyDeleteInsanity (in elections) is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results (from Albert Einstein?)
The line “This is a responsibility that all of us share.” is taken out of context.
ReplyDeleteHere is the full quote.
"But it's absolutely essential that, going forward, we put in place every necessary safeguard and protection so that a tragedy like this oil spill does not happen again.
This is a responsibility that all of us share. The oil companies share it. The manufacturers of this equipment share it. The agencies and the federal government in charge of oversight share that responsibility. I will not tolerate more finger-pointing or irresponsibility."
So the responsibility is clearly in terms of implementing safeguards and protection is it not?
I'm not in the habit of using unattributed quotes as I did here, and this is an excellent example of why one should not do that. I took the quote as shown. What you show does not conjoin the "finger-pointing" clause and the "responsibility" clause, which does not mean that my source did not improperly aggregate it.
ReplyDeleteMy point had more to do with his statements about not placing blame. I would have kept only the first part of the statement, but I wanted the part about not tolerating any more finger-pointing.