Whose Ass To Kick
by Big Dog on Jun 9, 2010 at 04:27 Political
Barack Obama is taking a beating over the Gulf oil spill. He is facing the same accusations that Bush did when everything Katrina was blamed on him. I don’t think Barack Obama could have done anything to fix the problem any more than Bush could have done anything to fix Katrina. Bush mobilized FEMA and, all the politics aside, the federal response was challenging but not nearly as bad as depicted. The major problem is that few understand the role of FEMA and the federal government in these kinds of things.
Obama claims he was engaged from day one. I doubt this and there is little involvement right now. Katrina involved a state but the oil spill is already in federal territory. The feds could have ramped up immediately and quite a bit by now but booms still sit unused. Certainly BP is responsible for the spill and has the expertise to fix this, expertise the feds do not have. But Obama took responsibility. He told us that BP does not make a move without the government approving it. He said this was the case from the start.
The problem is that the appearance is Obama is not leading in this issue. The perception of Bush (painted by the Democrats) was that he was not engaged but the Lessons Learned from Katrina shows this not to be the case. It is all about perception and Obama does not appear to be leading, whether he is or not. The perception is that he is not in charge.
Obama has been beaten up over his engagement because it looks like he is not involved and that he is aloof. Perhaps this is because he lacks the executive experience to handle these kinds of emergencies. He has never led anything and he has never been in charge during an emergency and now his inexperience is showing.
So what is the cool Obama to do?
He loses it on TV and says he needs to know “whose ass to kick.”
I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers — so I know whose ass to kick Yahoo News
Looks like Obama is getting his script from Spike Lee.
Exactly what is Obama going to do and exactly how will he kick any ass? How can he kick any ass when he has his boot on their throats? Will he kick his own ass for the failures of government?
Obama is expressing himself in a not so presidential manner because he knows that as each day passes he will lose more seats in Congress. Though he might benefit from losing Congress (look what a Republican Congress did for Bill Clinton), he certainly does not want to be the record holder for lost seats.
That is a distinct possibility because he is looking more like Jimmy Carter during the Iran Hostage Crisis and less like the Hope and Change dreamer people voted for.
Mr. Obama, I know you need to know whose ass to kick but many of us already have that answer. We are going to kick your party’s ass in the next election.
And by doing that we will also be kicking your sorry ass.
As an aside, imagine what it would have been like in the MSM had someone said that Obama needed to have his ass kicked. I bet they would have been howling like scalded dogs and someone might have been visited by the Secret Service.
Obama reminds me of the scene from My Cousin Vinny:
Vinny: Hey, Vincent LaGuardia Gambini–
Lisa: His name’s J.T.
Vinny: J.T., I believe you and Lisa played a game of pool for two hundred dollars, which she won; I’m here to collect.
J.T.: How ’bout if I just kick your ass?
Vinny: Oh, a counteroffer. That’s what we lawyers, I’m a lawyer, call that a counteroffer. Let me see, this is a tough decision you’re giving me here. Get my ass kicked or collect two hundred dollars. Hmm, let me think. I could use a good ass kicking, I’ll be very honest with you. Nah, I think I’ll just go with the two hundred. [more]
Yep, in November Obama is going to find out what an ass kicking really is.
Related:
Sarah Barracuda [Big Dog Salute to Brutally Honest]
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: ass kicking, bp, Bush, katrina, Obama, oil spill
“It is all about perception and Obama does not appear to be leading, whether he is or not. The perception is that he is not in charge.”
I think this is exactly right. He’s tried talking tough and pandering with his statements but Americans see through that the same way we saw through Bush talking tough on…pretty much everything.
I’m not sure what Obama can do to recover the PR aspect of the disaster in the gulf but whatever it is he needs to figure it out. If he’s doing everything he can he needs to find a way to make the public know. If he’s not doing everything he needs to figure out what to do and do it and then make sure the public knows what’s different.
I still feel like he’s done everything he can short of a few things of little consequence in the end. Yet a failure to make that clear harms his entire agenda going forward.
In addition, nearly every poll on the subject of energy points to disapproval of Obama and/or the Federal government handling of the oil spill. We can debate if Obama’s response is or was good or bad but the bottom line is Obama has lost control of the message here and it’s going to be costly for his agenda.
This is not to say I think Obama should be worried about his agenda. I think he should focus only on doing what’s right in each thing he approaches no matter the cost to his presidency. I’m just saying as an indirect result this message failure harms his agenda.
Far from flailing in his response to the environmental disaster, Obama has been way ahead of the curve all along. As early as a month ago, he assures us, he was facing the elements down in the Gulf, gaining first-hand intelligence from local fishermen on “whose a** to kick.”
The nation should rejoice in being led by such a diligent a**-kicker in chief in this time of crisis.
KG- I am not sure jusst WHERE you are getting your info, but Barrie has been abysmal in his response- granted, he cannot do it all, but he did NOTHING for eight days, before making a statement aboutit.
And where, might I ask, is the organization that SHOULD be taking the lead on this, FEMA?
Noone’s heard a word about them in ALL of this and now its day 55-
In addition, Barrie could have suspended the Jones Act, and brought in skimmers from other countries, WHO VOLUNTEERED THEIR SERVICES ON THE THIRD DAY, but he doesn’t want to go against the unions- a very partisan move that is COMPLETELY un presidential.
Further, let’s discus just WHO is truly at fault here.
Is it the president? No- his admin was (and is) negligent but not culpable- was it BP?
Yes AND no- it IS their rig, but they outsourced the BOP maintenence to another company.
This, when you come down to it, is a product of worker apathy- someone inserted a bad battery in the BOP, someone else “assumed” thatthe prior person had done THEIR job, therefore they did not have to do theirs, and so on, each compounding the other’s error(s).
But the TRUE culprits are the Eco- Nuts who insisted that the oil companies drill a mile below the surface of the ocean instead of in shallow water- in shallow water, this well would have been plugged by the third day, for sure, so the onus for this goes to the Greenie weirdos.