the 'get rid of the trash' day of the West Wing. So, if you're in T.G.I.F.
mode, put it away til you can relish this brilliance, and leave time
for adding your own thoughts. -Ed
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37760186/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/
'The Rachel Maddow Show'
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
MADDOW: President Obama's BP oil disaster speech, re-imagineered -
re-imagineered into something that I find more satisfying. The should've,
would've, could've version, direct from the not even remotely official Oval
Office of my mind. That's coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: You know how sometimes after you get into an argument or a
confrontation with somebody, you can't help afterwards thinking of all the
things you wish you'd said. You run it over and over in your mind, imaging
the perfect comeback or the perfect way to have made your point.
Well, last night after the president's big Oval Office speech on the BP oil
disaster, I had a version of that experience. I hadn't, of course, been in
an argument with the president or anything, I just couldn't stop running
tape in my head of what I wish that speech had been like, what I wish he'd
said.
An Oval Office address is a priceless chance to get the nation to stop what
it's doing, to stop every other TV show in the country, to get us all to pay
attention, all at once, to this crisis and to what the president has to say
about it.
What if he had started off by saying, "Good evening"? OK, actually, he did
start off by saying, "Good evening." But what if right after he said, "Good
evening," he said, I'm here to announce three major developments in the
response to the BP oil disaster that continues right now to ravage the
beloved gulf coast of the United States of America.
I wish I could tell you that the first development is that BP has capped the
well, stopped the leak. They haven't. They can't. They don't know how.
And no one else does either. Their best hope is a relief well, which poses
its own risks and challenges and which, even in a best-case scenario,
affords no relief until August.
All this, the might of this, the mightiest nation on earth and the combined
expertise of the richest, most technologically ambitious corporations the
world has ever seen cannot, it turns out, cannot cap an oil well when it
breaks 5,000 deep in the ocean.
It's something that mankind does not yet have the technological capability
to fix. And that brings us to the first development in this disaster that I
am announcing tonight.
Never again will any company, anyone be allowed to drill in a location where
they are incapable of dealing with the potential consequences of that
drilling.
When the benefits of drilling accrue to a private company, but the risks of
that drilling accrue to we, the American people, whose waters and shoreline
are savaged when things go wrong, I, as fake president, stand on the side of
the American people and say to the industry, "From this day forward, if you
cannot handle the risk, you no longer will take chances with our fate to
reap your rewards."
Our nation's regulatory oversight of the oil industry has been a joke in
many ways for decades, from the revolving door of industry apparatchiks
taking supposed oversight jobs in the government in which they just rubber
stamp the desires of the industry to which they were loyal, to energy
industry lobbyists themselves being allowed in secret meetings to write our
nation's policies.
In light of the state of the gulf right now, my fellow Americans, the
details of how industry has infiltrated and infected the government that was
supposed to be a watchdog, protecting the American public from them, those
details are enough to turn your stomach.
But no detail tells you more about the corroding power of the industry
against the interests of the American people than the simple fact that they
have been allowed to drill in American waters without being forced to first
prove that that drilling is safe.
That will never happen again, as long as I am fake president. When I
announced in March that my administration's energy policy would include
expanded offshore drilling, that policy change was predicated on our
acceptance of the oil industry's assurances, our acceptance of their
assurances that they knew how to do that kind of drilling safely.
They were lying. It cannot be done safely, not when no technology exists to
cap a blowout on the sea floor. Offshore drilling will not be expanded in
American waters. The moratorium will be held firm and in place, unless and
until this industry conclusively demonstrates major advances in safety.
Oil industry jobs are important and I will work with industry to mitigate
the impact on American families who survive on oil company paychecks. But
in the 21st century and in the name of the 11 oil workers who were killed
when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew out, we will not play Russian roulette
with workers' lives and we will not play Russian roulette irreversible
national environmental disaster for the sake of some short-term income.
The second major development I'm announcing tonight, my fellow Americans,
concerns another oil industry assurance we can no longer believe. The
industry has long assured us that they were capable of handling spilled oil.
In BP's own disaster response plan for the Gulf of Mexico, they claimed they
were perfectly capable of containing and cleaning up to 250,000 barrels of
oil a day, that no significant of amount of oil spill of even that size
would get to shore, would foul beaches, would kill wildlife or destroy
wetlands. They were lying when they gave that assurance.
And the industry is lying when it says it takes seriously its
responsibilities to contain and cleanup disasters that they cause. The same
low-tech ineffective equipment and techniques are being used to respond to
this oil disaster today that were used in the 1960s and '70s to respond to
spills back then.
That's because the industry has not invested in any new containment and
cleanup technology in all of these decades, because they haven't cared too
much about it as an issue and it shows. It shows both in the inept
technology that we have to deploy, to contain, to clean up a spill like
this.
And it also shows in the lackadaisical, uncoordinated, unprofessional way
this inept technology has been deployed by BP. Beaches have been fouled.
Wetlands have been destroyed. Wildlife has been killed that should have
been saved. Pensacola Bay in Florida, if properly boomed, should never have
been breached by oil. Perdido Pass of Orange Beach, Alabama should never
have been breached by oil.
Queen Bess Island, the pelican nesting ground and Barataria Bay in
Louisiana - Barataria Bay itself - none of these areas should have been
breached by oil even given the sad state of existing technology to stop it.
But the fact that those areas were breached is BP's human error.
And tonight, as fake president, I'm announcing a new federal command
specifically for containment and cleanup of oil that has already entered the
Gulf of Mexico with priority of protecting shoreline that can still be
saved, shoreline that is vulnerable to all that has not yet been hit.
I've asked the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to assist me in the
diplomatic side of this, in soliciting, green lighting and expediting all
international offers of help, from experts in booming and skimming all over
the world.
We will bring in the best experts and the best equipment from anywhere on
earth to dramatically increase our efforts to get the oil out of the water
and off the coast. Oil industry workers are often trained in booming and
skimming.
I'm hereby directing BP to fund booming and skimming crash academies for all
available oil industry personnel anywhere in the world to radically overhaul
what has been a haphazard, halfhearted, totally unacceptable protection
effort starting immediately.
No expense will be spared and no excuses will be brooked. Even if the oil
leak is capped today, the oil in the water will continue to surge towards
shore for weeks if not months. As fake president, I will personally issue a
public update on cleanup and containment efforts every single day until this
disaster is under control.
And finally, the third development I have to announce to you tonight in the
response to this oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is about how we got here
and how that will change.
Every president in the modern era has complained that America must get off
oil. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W.
Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now, I, fake President Obama - we
have all intoned solemnly that we must get off oil.
Now that we have, at the hands of the oil industry, experienced the worst
environmental disaster in American history, the time for talk is over. The
world is different now. Our country is different now. The scales have
fallen from our eyes.
People say we're not ready. They're right. We're not ready. We also
weren't
ready to fight in World War II before Pearl Harbor happened. But events
forced that upon us and events have forced this fight upon us now.
I no longer say that we must get off oil like every president before has
said, too. I no longer say we must get off oil. We will get of oil and
here is how. The United States Senate will pass an energy bill this year.
The Senate version of the year will not expand offshore drilling.
The earlier targets in that bill for energy efficiency and for renewable
energy sources will be doubled or tripled. If senators use the filibuster
to stop the bill, we will pass it by reconciliation which still ensures a
majority vote.
If there are elements of a bill that cannot procedurally be passed by
reconciliation, if those elements can be instituted by executive order, I
will institute them by executive order.
The political cowardice that has kept politicians from doing right by this
country, finally, on energy - finally, standing up to the oil industry -
that cowardice has been drowned in oil on Queen Bess Island.
There is a new reality in this country that has been forced on us by this
disaster. As president, I pledge to you that the land and sea and
livelihood and lives of American people will be put first as with the other
thing that is humanly possible to stop this disaster.
We will never again let the oil industry put America at this kind of risk.
We will save what can still be saved that is directly at risk in the gulf
and we will free ourselves as a nation, once and for all, from the grip of
this industry that has lied to us as much as it has exploited us, as much as
it has befouled us with its toxic affluent.
The oil age, America, is over. If you are with me, let your senator know
it. I will next speak to you about the BP oil disaster tomorrow with my
first public update and the cleanup effort in the gulf. God bless you and
God bless the United States of America.
Oh, and one more thing. I've also decided I'm not a White Sox fan anymore.
I'm a Red Sox fan and I'm closing Guantanamo. Thank you. Bye.
So in my mind, last night, that's what the president said which is why I
will never run for anything because I say stuff like "toxic affluent" and I
get all weepy when I'm mad. Also, when I'm mad, I get blotchy and nobody
likes a blotchy president.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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