Fair and balanced?
Bensblurb #555 6/22/10
Fair and balanced?
Here’s some perspective on Obama‘s proclaimed “worst oil spill in history"
(from: www.gerrycharlottephelps.com, via "Horrible accident but we'll survive" by Norman Carter at heraldnet.com/)
“This is not the worst oil leak ever. The total effect of this oil leak will be like one one-millionth of an ounce of oil in a bathtub of water. The BP oil well leak into the Gulf of Mexico is...not the end of the world. The gulf is huge, covering 615,000 square miles and containing 660 quadrillion gallons of water. Assume the BP well is leaking 20,000 barrels per day and does so for 120 days (four months). That would be about 100.8 million divided by 660 quadrillion and would be one gallon of oil for every 6.6 billion gallons of water in the Gulf. That would be roughly equivalent to one-millionth of an ounce of oil in a typical bathtub of water.
Second, there has already been a worse oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We recovered. So did the Gulf. The Mexican Pemex (The Mexican government's oil monopoly) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979 was far worse than the BP well: 140 million gallons poured out of the Mexican well. After four months, an oil slick had covered about half of Texas’ 370-mile gulf shoreline, devastating tourism.
Finally, Saddam's deliberate oil spill of over 400 million gallons into the much-smaller Persian Gulf in...Desert Storm was much, much worse...Yet the environmentalists and international media did little to condemn Saddam in 1991 for his deliberate...spill at that time...”
Now, concerning Obama’s (illegal?) arm-twisting...
Here’s columnist Ben Stein: “The same [resort to extra-legal action by the White House] goes for Mr. Obama's demand that BP pay the lost wages of oil and gas workers suspended from work because of the moratorium on Gulf of Mexico underseas drilling. There simply was no legislation allowing this kind of specific demand. Mr. Obama's demand was in the nature of a threat, more than a Constitutional act. ... [T]o create specific enactments and actions without any authority -- now Mr. Obama's specialty -- is so at odds with the law of the land that it terrifies me. These are not the acts of a teacher on Constitutional law. These are the acts of a big city boss or a third world dictator."
Also, economist Thomas Sowell: “American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington...The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies. Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere. And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill...”
--Ben Blankenship
Fair and balanced?
Here’s some perspective on Obama‘s proclaimed “worst oil spill in history"
(from: www.gerrycharlottephelps.com, via "Horrible accident but we'll survive" by Norman Carter at heraldnet.com/)
“This is not the worst oil leak ever. The total effect of this oil leak will be like one one-millionth of an ounce of oil in a bathtub of water. The BP oil well leak into the Gulf of Mexico is...not the end of the world. The gulf is huge, covering 615,000 square miles and containing 660 quadrillion gallons of water. Assume the BP well is leaking 20,000 barrels per day and does so for 120 days (four months). That would be about 100.8 million divided by 660 quadrillion and would be one gallon of oil for every 6.6 billion gallons of water in the Gulf. That would be roughly equivalent to one-millionth of an ounce of oil in a typical bathtub of water.
Second, there has already been a worse oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We recovered. So did the Gulf. The Mexican Pemex (The Mexican government's oil monopoly) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979 was far worse than the BP well: 140 million gallons poured out of the Mexican well. After four months, an oil slick had covered about half of Texas’ 370-mile gulf shoreline, devastating tourism.
Finally, Saddam's deliberate oil spill of over 400 million gallons into the much-smaller Persian Gulf in...Desert Storm was much, much worse...Yet the environmentalists and international media did little to condemn Saddam in 1991 for his deliberate...spill at that time...”
Now, concerning Obama’s (illegal?) arm-twisting...
Here’s columnist Ben Stein: “The same [resort to extra-legal action by the White House] goes for Mr. Obama's demand that BP pay the lost wages of oil and gas workers suspended from work because of the moratorium on Gulf of Mexico underseas drilling. There simply was no legislation allowing this kind of specific demand. Mr. Obama's demand was in the nature of a threat, more than a Constitutional act. ... [T]o create specific enactments and actions without any authority -- now Mr. Obama's specialty -- is so at odds with the law of the land that it terrifies me. These are not the acts of a teacher on Constitutional law. These are the acts of a big city boss or a third world dictator."
Also, economist Thomas Sowell: “American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington...The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies. Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere. And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill...”
--Ben Blankenship
posted by Ben Blankenship at
9:54 AM
