Obama's itinerary since the oil spill started

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April 22: The Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, which had been burning for two days, sinks into the gulf. President Obama, after speaking in New York about the significance of financial regulatory legislation, hosts an Earth Day celebration in the Rose Garden.

April 23: The U.S. Coastguard pronounces 11 Deepwater workers dead after traveling almost 2,000 miles throughout the gulf in search of their bodies. The president and First Lady Michelle Obama travel to North Carolina for a brief vacation, where they enjoy BBQ.

April 24: Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry announces that the Deepwater wellhead is spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The president and first lady continue to enjoy their vacation in North Carolina.

April 26: A remote sub fails to stop the leak. Just four days after the explosion, the spill covers an area the size of Rhode Island. After hosting a ceremony for the New York Yankees, Obama travels to Andrews Air Force Base for a game of golf.

April 28: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) pegs the leak rate at 5,000 barrels a day — up from BP’s claim of 1,000 barrels a day. Obama leaves Iowa and spends the day in Illinois, where he speaks to the owner of a family farm. He then visits a biofuel plant where he picks up mechanical parts and pretends to be interested in them.

April 29: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declares a state of emergency, as the spill “now covers a 600-square-mile area” and “is about 16 miles off the state’s coast.” Obama delivers remarks in Washington on the importance of cybersecurity. Later in the day, he attends a FEMA meeting about hurricane preparedness.

May 1: The U.S. military lends BP two C-130 aircraft to release potentially dangerous chemical dispersants over the oil spill. Obama tells jokes at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, including one about killing the Jonas Brothers using CIA drones.

May 2: Obama makes a quick trip to Louisiana to ”get a firsthand view of the recovery efforts.”

May 3: Alabama Attorney General Troy King demands that BP stop asking fisherman to sign complicated agreements that would severely limit the amount BP would be forced to compensate them for the loss of their livelihood. Obama hosts dinner for the Business Council, “a group of current or former chief executive officers from a broad range of companies.”

May 8: BP’s containment dome, thought by many to be one of the environmentally safest solutions, fills with ice and fails to stop the leak. Obama plays golf at Arkansas’s Fort Belvoir.

May 9: The first tar balls wash up on Dauphin Island off the coast of Alabama. Obama delivers the commencement address at Virginia’s Hampton University.

May 12: Under pressure from journalists and government agencies, British Petroleum releases a short video of the wellhead, located one mile beneath the gulf surface. Using independent analysts, NPR determines from the video that at 50,000 barrels a day, the leak rate is 10 times higher than NOAA’s estimate and 50 times higher than BP’s early claim. Obama spends the morning with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. After lunch, Obama retires to the Oval Office with his advisers.

May 17: While BP attempts to siphon oil into a special tube, scientists warn that the oil is headed for the Gulf Stream, which would carry it around the southern tip of Florida and into the Atlantic Ocean. Obama hosts the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team.

May 18: Tar balls wash up on the shores of Key West, Fla. Obama tours a factory in Ohio. Later in the day, he meets with Jewish members of the Democratic Caucuses.

May 21: ABC News reports that in the course of one month, enough oil has spilled to “fill enough gallon milk jugs to stretch more than 11,300 miles. That’s more than the distance from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and back.” Obama hosts the Pittsburgh Steelers at the White House. Also signs a presidential memorandum “outlining the next steps in his vision for cleaner, more efficient vehicles.”

May 22: Wildlife officials in Louisiana tell the Associated Press that they are considering setting the state’s fragile marshes on fire in an effort to staunch the contaminating effects of the oil. White House officials announce that they are beginning a multi-year renovation project for the north side of the White House. Obama delivers the commencement address at the Military Academy at West Point.

May 26: BP announced yet another plan for stopping the spill, a maneuver called “Top Kill” that involves pumping mud into the Deepwater wellhead in order to clog it. This same day, officials begin pulling fisherman off the gulf due to toxic oil fumes. Obama hosts the U.S. World Cup soccer team and the Duke men’s basketball team.

May 28: Obama makes only his second visit to a grief-stricken Louisiana before heading on vacation.

Mind actually giving some input into what you think he should have done?

I'm no fan of Obama, but I'm unconvinced that the president has to personally visit the sites of any disaster that occurs. By the time the disaster happened, it was too late to fix any mistakes he made, anyway.

Where did you cut and paste this article from?

After April 26th he should have canceled or rescheduled a lot of the more formal or ceremonial events, except for the white house correspondents dinner, the business council dinner, and the meeting with Karzai. He would just be in the way if he was at the gulf coast the whole time but he should have left more time open to handle the crisis, and more importantly, actually use it to send government resources to aid in the situation.

At this point he needs to either send in the navy and woods hole or just go away, but what he's doing isn't working.

The federal government has neither the equipment nor the expertise to plug a blown well. That the drilling company does not either is now apparent, but their equipment and expertise for that job are still better than the federal government's. What do you think the Navy is going to do that will help - blow up the well?! The only subs (that I know of) that we have suitable for that depth are Navy nuclear subs, which (afaik) don't have the robotic handling arms needed to manipulate exterior objects at depth, and research subs, which are tiny and weak.

That said, Obama's administration is partially responsible for the lax approval of drilling permits for this project and the continued drilling in the region. Ken Salazar should be made to resign.

It really wasn't fair the grief Bush got for flying over the destruction Katrina brought to New Orleans so I don't read much into what Obama is doing now. There is very little he can personally do right now and the scary reality is that there is very little anybody including the military or BP can do to stop that well. I do think the government should be taking a more control over the situation tho than just let BP run things.

See, this is why we need a system that falls between capitalism and communism. And by communism, I mean Soviet state-control communism. Sure, let BP run their business, but if they have a f**k-up that endangers the lives and welfare of millions of citizens, start executing their top execs. Not all of them, just one per day. Now who's gonna tell me that well wouldn't be plugged by now under such a system?

Wow, is Obama just unaware of this, or was he aware and didn't care, or aware and didn't know what a president could/should do?


You know, even if Obama were absolutely pure evil, nobody would have to be the least bit afraid of him... since he wouldn't know what to do other than absorb publicity for having a slightly higher melanin concentration than Lieutenant Commander Data.

Levrenti Beria would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. Do you know what would happen. No one would voluntarily take a position of authority, at least no one technically competent. All you would have left would be the hacks and aparatchiks. In short order our standard of living would descend to that of the Soviet Union during the Stalin days. Spending four to six hours a day standing in line for the few and poorly made goods available. You suggestion would lead us rapidly to the squalor suffered by the Soviet Union not so long ago and the starvation of North Korea which is here and now.

ruveyn

I'm not supporting executions but how would you propose to hold people responsible? Tort reform is nice when there is a solid monetary figure but with such damages like is being seen here and the future damage that is guarenteed both directly from the spill and indirectly from the death of wetlands here....how can one define any solid monetary figure? Should BP simply be property of Louisiana and retain all profits due to the nature of the damage and its lasting effects for decades after?

You need to understand something: the wetlands weren't just a nice little bit of nature. It was what was holding in the land from coastal erosion and it also served as a buffer to weaken hurricanes before they hit land in many cases. Coastal erosion has been a scream from down here for decades and nothing has been done and this spill will only serve to turn the engine into overdrive. That's damage that's a direct result of a problem made exponentially worse.

How do you put a price on that? Especially with an economy that is ever worsening so that the money given out today may not be worth half its value in a decade.

Actually, I like that idea....turn BP into LP.

BP is a multinational corporation, no US court would have the jurisdiction to nationalize it and hand control over to Louisiana (and you aren't the only state affected, you know). Another possibility would be to bar BP from US markets, but that would be a purely retaliatory measure and would do nothing to clean up the mess.

Then, how about appropriating US properties via WTO to the state?

How much are other states affected by it? It's not really news I hear a lot here...

I'd still remove their protection from bankruptcy. <.< I don't see why companies that screw up and cost lots of $ for the federal government (or any governement) to fix should be left to its own devices. <.<

Oh and, you can be sure that while this happens, the price of oil has gone up. <.<

About Obama, i'm rather unsure he could do anything worthwhile, damage control or cleaning up operations would probably clean up his image a bit.

Since the Event, the price of gasoline has dropped in New Jersey. Go figure.

ruveyn

It amuses me that your summary of your President's activity fails to include his embargo on the issue of new drilling leases, or any of the administrative steps taken by your Government to get BP to deploy further resources to this disaster.

It is a truism to state that the life of the country goes on. We are all deeply concerned by what has occurred in the Gulf, and we will all (regardless of where we reside) live with the consequences. But the life of the country does not stop because of a single disaster--not even one of this magnitude.