We’ve chronicled Obama’s war on the oil industry and its effects on those the left deem to champion. The effects being wrought on the economy are also growing and with the release of Obama’s duplicitous oil commission report (while all eyes were on Tucson), things are likely to get much worse if he and his minions have their way:
In life, facts constitute reality, and perceptions are negotiable. The reverse seems to be true in politics. And the conclusion of President Obama’s National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling exemplifies that observation.
In the commission’s report made public Tuesday, conflicting notions are revealed that represent a textbook example of cognitive dissonance. In theory, this condition provides a motivational drive for individuals to change conflicting (aka “faulty”) attitudes, beliefs or actions. However, people can also alleviate dissonance by justifying and blaming, a method employed by politicians all too often.
On the one hand, the commission faults BP and its contractors for the April 20, 2010, explosion, citing “incredible incompetence” in at least nine specific decisions, most of which “can be traced back to a single overarching failure, a failure of management.”
Commission members then use BP’s bad decisions to claim “systemic failures” on the part of the entire petroleum industry. Yet, these are two irreconcilable positions. The fatal flaws individuals committed on the Macondo well stand out because they so starkly contrast with the standards and processes to which those in the industry on other wells so rigorously adhere.
In other words, the commission’s report is about ideology and politics as much as it is about facts.
Obama’s panel fails to reconcile its broad conclusions about all firms in our offshore exploration sector and the fact that between 1969 and last spring operators drilled more than 50,000 offshore wells without a serious production accident.
Though opponents attempt to trivialize the successful track record by noting firms have drilled only 43 deep-water wells in the Gulf, the figure grows to more than 14,000 when including deep-water projects around the globe.
These facts are further evidence that BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster stands as an exception rather than a rule.
I filled up yesterday and paid $3.13 per gallon, the pump actually shutting down when my total hit $75 despite not having quite filled my tank. What should instead be shut down is Obama’s attempt to shutter the oil industry, an attempt steeped in deceit and purposed in furthering an extremist agenda.
If the Republicans don’t start fighting back and soon, Americans will boot them out of office as quickly as they did the Democrats in November. And rightly so. They ought to be using this commission’s whitewashing of BP’s culpability as a springboard to attack the whole of his fossil fuel policies and as a means to actually do something about lowering the unemployment numbers in this country.
The opportunity is golden. What in hell are they waiting on?
