I've been busy for a few days and haven't gotten back to this until now. I wanted to check some facts before I made a response...
Laelia wrote:
The government doesn't have monitoring equipment at the well, while BP does. Unless it were paid for by the oil companies, it would be pretty expensive for the government to have all of the equipment and expertise to deal with oil spills just sitting around until such a rare event happened.
If the oil companies are already paying to have monitoring equipment anyway, paying for it for the government to run said equipment instead wouldn't create any additional expense for anyone. My point stands, you can't set up a system where the inmates run the asylum then complain when things get crazy.
Laelia wrote:
The federal government's budget is something like $3 trillion dollars. $20 billion is peanuts compared to that. Even if there was a motivation to steal such a small amount, they would have voters and the courts to answer to.
I get two things out of this comment:
#1: You believe that unscrupulous individuals don't bother being unscrupulous if all they're getting is a measly $20 billion, which is patently absurd.
#2: You previously complained about Exxon "running to the courts," then suggest that the courts are not an unreasonable recourse here. Make up your mind.
Laelia wrote:
#2 Obama and BP have both said the $20 billion is not a cap. You can choose not to believe them, but that isn't the most likely scenario.
You can't pass judgment on BP for fudging numbers in previous posts and then deride anyone for doubting their claims.
Pushing Obama out of the center of the picture just a smidge, I'm going to say that the government isn't entirely deserving of anyone's trust, either.
Laelia wrote:
#3 The guy administering the fund is a lawyer who is experienced in running compensation, and who runs his own law firm. He isn't a part of the administration, except in the sense that he's worked for them on previous similar jobs (as he did for past administrations).
I'm going to cede that point after hearing Charles Krauthammer, no fan of the administration, gave Kenneth Feinberg a glowing recommendation.
Laelia wrote:
#4 There's no evidence that Obama did anything other than talk to BP to get them to set up this fund. I believe the constitution allows presidents to talk to people. I understand you don't like Obama, but if you're accusing someone of doing something illegal you usually need evidence to back it up.
There's no evidence that Obama didn't do anything underhanded, either. The "most transparent administration in history" keeping this conversation, among other things, away from the public's eyes and ears doesn't do anything to lend them any credibility.
Laelia wrote:
Oil companies drill in deep water because there's oil there, and they're in the business of obtaining oil. I don't know where you get this idea that sightline concerns are forcing them into deep water - there are nearly 4000 oil rigs already in the Gulf, almost all of them in shallow water. Here's a map - the yellow dots are oil rigs, the approximate location of the Deepwater Horizon is the red dot.
I highlighted the key words in this paragraph. "In the gulf" pretty much sums up our offshore exploration. In my own personal search of offshore drilling locations, I found the map you linked on two sites, both of which appeared to be cliché left-wing and/or environmentalist sites. There's a reason they didn't wrap that map on around America's dangling penis of a state: Florida.
I found my own nutty short-sighted environmental site. This one specifically for
nutty Floridian tree-huggers.Note my nutty tree-hugger's rendition of your pic:

Notice how all those derricks stop spawning off the coast of Florida. Now I'm no expert on off-shore Florida (despite having lived, boated, and scuba-dived while I lived there for over half a decade--fans of sarcasm, take note), but I'm pretty sure there's a lot of shallow water there. In fact, it's so shallow off the eastern coast that I used to have to travel around six hours on the sub I served on before we dived.
As much as I like your "that's where the oil is"
assertion, here's another little pic from my nutty tree-huggers:

Those locations denote proposed locations where localities passed resolutions against those proposed locations.
Looks like you're right about me just passing gas about rich people bitching about being able to see oil derricks off the coast. It looks like my nutty tree-huggers, who as we all know have denounced all worldly goods as they reach out and touch the divine soil of our mother, also have a problem with seeing the evil machinery of capitalism off the coast.
Apeshit Crazy Earth-Humper wrote:
Big Oil and their hired hands in Tallahassee have sworn that drilling Florida’s coast would be “invisible” – that there would be no unsightly rigs just a few miles off our coast. We know different –
Never mind what I said about the piety of our environmentalist friends...I was being sarcastic. In most cases, the only difference between an environmentalist and a developer is that the environmentalist has already built a house in the woods. These dillholes are exactly the people I was talking about when I said "rich people." They seem to think they deserve all the perks of modern society without any of the detriments that go along with them.
Did I mention that here in Virginia, they recently voted to allow drilling off-shore for the first time in the state's history?
Laelia wrote:
If they were equally profitable, would they not drill in both? More importantly, where do you think these big deposits on land that are off-limits to drilling are? There are some in the ANWR, but the majority of on-land deposits are available for drilling, and most of the unexploited oil in the US is offshore.
Doing just an initial search on just moratoriums and not outright bans, I found several states:
Pennsylvania:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/pennsylvania_governor_reported.html
Texas, of all places:
http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/06/08/2249850/flower-mounds-gas-drilling-moratorium.html
New York:
http://www.shaleshock.org/tompkins-co-legislature-passes-resolution-supporting-drilling-moratorium/
All stories list moratoriums or proposed moratoriums on oil and/or natural gas drilling/exploration...most of which were unsurprisingly instigated by nutty environmental groups.
I also think it's absolutely hilarious that you try to pass off the idea that we're just sinking wells all over the place here on dry land
and then bring up ANWAR. Most people don't know this, but ANWAR was specifically set up, pre-The Worst Republican Ever, specifically for oil exploration and recovery, yet we'd be terrible people to fuckerize that shitty arctic tundra by popping holes in it.
So, in short:
BP Sucks.
The President: Sucks
Congress: Sucks
Environmentalists: Suck
Most of what you've said: Sucks and is provably wrong.
I still love you anyway. One day, I will come to Canada to wear flannel, drink Molsen, eat that ham you guys refer to as bacon, and watch a hockey game with you and Kamguh and whoever else here lives in the fine country of Canada.
Your Pal,
Jubber