British Petroleum has 48 hours to identify containment strategies. 48 hours or else ... what? The point of a deadline is to have some sort of consequence. Does the Coast Guard think that they are going to take over? After all, they have soooooo much experience stopping oil leaks.
Perhaps it is 48 hours or else we will beat them in soccer? Nah, that couldn't be it, we just tied them (besides, my guess is that most of the workers for BP in the Gulf are actually Americans - you know the whole multinational corporation thing).
What's the point of the unmentioned threat anyway? It is not like BP is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Usually, Obama saves his "or else" for crazy dictators bent on the destruction of the US. BP, well, they just want to sell us oil. It's not like they have been sitting on their butts doing nothing. Its not even like BP wanted to have a 100 million barrel oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico to begin with. Unfortunately, that is what we have.
Empty ultimatums (while at the same time trying to smooth things over with the homeland's head of state) won't stop the spill. It took 9 months to put out the oil fires and cap the wells after the first Iraq war, and that was on land. I don't seem to remember any ultimatums being given to speed up the process.
If one ever needed to go from zero to fully understanding the narcissism at the very core of Our Glorious President's mentality, this oil leak situation would provide all of the insight one needed.
ReplyDeleteTurning down other country's offers of help.
Threatening to "kick asses".
Making threats in general.
Staging photo-ops at the scene of the incident.
Ignoring the incident for a while before doing anything.
He has done damned near everything possible in this situation except actually lead, and there are no indications that will be forthcoming any time soon. Me, I will bet that the ultimatim is either kicking BP out of the States, or socializing them (which will hopefully result in the same outcome as the former)... assuming there is an ultimatim.