Quickie Analysis: Barry’s Gulf Oil Spill Speech

Or: It's Still All About Barry.


It is fitting that Barack Hussein Obama’s first speech from the Oval Office will go down as the speech that precipitated his final slide into complete and utter irrelevance.

This will be because he couldn’t help but make it all about Barry. The problem for him is making it all about Barry is what got him into this hole in the first place. Not being able to even recognize the root problem, he is incapable of observing the first rule of standing in holes – stop digging.

He couldn’t bring himself to make even the slightest admission that the government could have done anything better, or faster, in the containment response. In fact, he had the chutzpah to start off with the big lie that the federal government was calling the shots from day one: “we directed BP to assemble teams and equipment…” Even while you were turning away offers of skimmers from foreign governments, Barry? Something doesn’t add up about the “in charge” part of your narrative.

He also gave the federal government a belated pat on the back for deploying booms, assigning national guardsmen, issuing permits to build sand berms, and bringing in skimmers – precisely the containment tools and methods local jurisdictions have been screaming for at the tops of their collective lungs for eight weeks now! Government can do no wrong in the statist’s mind. And Barry is nothing if not a statist. It’s all about Barry.

He then pivoted easily into a so-called “Long Term Gulf Coast Restoration” program – making the unrealistic promise to give Gulf Coast residents anything and everything they need, at no cost to US taxpayers, completely underwritten by the evil BP corporation. If you believe this, I’ve got a bridge in … well, you know the rest. Make no mistake – this is just the old Community Organizer’s trick of promising something for nothing to people in need, in exchange for voting loyalty. It’s all about Barry. This program will cost the American taxpayer untold gazillions of dollars – you can take that much to the bank. Speaking for BP’s open-ended commitment before meeting with BP’s CEO for even the first time could prove to come back and bite Barry, too – we’ll see.

He then moved on to defending the drilling moratorium he reflexively imposed (like a good statist will) – on the specious grounds that he was misled about the risks on a somewhat related decision a few weeks before. Make no mistake – this was a sop to his political left wing. Does the FAA ground every airplane for six months whenever any single airplane crashes? Of course not – it would be a stupid overreaction. But Barry has an agenda to push here. It’s all about Barry.

And Barry smells an opportunity to impose more government control, like any good statist would. He announced still another phony commission – this one with the transparent mission of building out denser (read economically straight-jacketing) regulations for an industry that already deals with reams upon reams of regulation. Barry the statist used the opportunity tonight to make his clarion call for scorched earth regulation of another industry. It’s all about Barry.

Then came the big pitch for Barry’s true agenda - Cap and Tax. We got the old Progressive meme stating the US uses 20% of the world’s fossil fuel even though we’re 2% of the world’s population. No shit, Sherlock – we have the most prosperous society! If Kenyans would like to consume more fossil fuels and raise its standard of living, and change the ratios, they are welcome to have at it!

Notice he did not mention “Global Warming,” err I mean “Climate Change,” err I mean whatever the hell they are calling it now. That’s because the science is discredited. Instead, he engaged in the big lie that resources are running out closer to shore and on shore. Yeah, we’ll have that argument in the coming days and weeks – but just for starters; let's review this map of the status of coastal US off shore drilling areas (courtesy of Reuters).

Then he predictably got into wind and solar, surely knowing they are incapable of meeting even a pathetic percentage of demand – while failing to even mention nuclear, which does indeed have the ability to scale up to meeting significant portions of demand right now. But when the truth doesn’t fit Barry’s agenda, it cannot be mentioned. It’s all about Barry.

Then came the explicit mention of Waxman-Markey (aka “Cap and Tax”), without actually saying its name. This was the big sop to his political left wing we all expected. It’s all about Barry. We then heard the oblique reference to there being “costs” involved – but no specifics. Yeah, economically crippling costs! Make no mistake – when the statist is non-specific about costs, you can be sure the final bill will be astronomical.

Then he made another disingenuous promise to entertain all ideas in the Cap and Tax debate – just like he did right before the phony Blair House Summit that kicked off the last act of the ObamaCare tragic comedy. My personal favorite tonight was Barry the Wise wondering aloud why energy companies don’t spend as much on R&D as high tech companies. No shit, Sherlock – energy companies are already regulated to death! More regulation means more dollars for compliance and fewer dollars for everything else, including R&D. But of course more and more regulation is precisely what the statist always calls for. The only surprising thing here is he didn’t take the opportunity to call for more regulation of the high tech industry in the next breath. An amazing show of restraint, if you ask me. It’s all about Barry.

Finally came the hopey changey platitudes and insincere nods to prayer and patriotism.

It was all about Barry when the Progressive machine foisted this Empty Suit upon the republic, and sold him on false premises, using the compliant and biased MSM. It still is all about Barry, and that’s precisely the problem that presently plagues the republic.

For now, it’s as if these guys were running the country, and we’ll just have to muddle along with the checks and balances bestowed upon us by the American Founding Fathers ….