Category Archives: Evironment
President Obama Legacy
Aside from ObamaCare, most of President Obama’s legacy was achieved through executive fiat.
Except for the Nobel Peace Prize. And even the guy responsible for that has had second thoughts.
The Iran Nuclear deal would have had staying power as a treaty with two thirds U.S. Senate approval. But Obama couldn’t get that. So he settled for the authority of a narrative by aspiring novelist Ben Rhodes.
Here’s Dan Henninger in the WSJ:
The Iran nuclear deal is just that—a deal Mr. Obama did with the mullahs, Russia, Germany, France, the U.K. and China, with no formal instrument of ratification.
And the same goes for the Paris Climate Accord:
The Paris climate agreement is an “accord” with so little domestic support that even some Democrats would have voted “no” if Mr. Obama had submitted it to the Senate for approval.
President Obama Legacy
Not that Trump has any better luck getting the approval of Congress. But then, he doesn’t need it. He’s unraveling the Obama Legacy with the same pen and phone Obama used to create it.
Shoe Storm
So far there haven’t been any ” heck of a job, Brownie” moments in the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Harvey. In fact he’s gotten good marks.
Shoe Storm
So some critics have raised a shoe storm about Melania’s footwear. As she boarded Air Force One, headed for Texas, she was spotted wearing extremely high heels. Seemed reasonable to me. I would have worn floodwater pants. Anyway, by the time she landed in the disaster area she was wearing white sneakers
War on Coal
Trump ended Obama’s war on coal, as promised. Come to think of it, I don’t know why Obama declared the war in the first place. Or why Hillary signed on for it. The natural gas industry went to war against coal for them. Gas is cheap, clean, and – despite President Obama’s efforts – plentiful.
So, looks like a rout.
Standing Rock Unhappy Campers Threaten Missouri River Watershed
Standing Rock Pipeline protesters became the most immediate threat of pollution to the Missouri river they sought to protect. They had braved the North Dakota winter by camping at the construction site of the North Dakota Access Pipeline.
Standing Rock
But in the end it was trash from the humans, not oil from the pipeline, that immediately threatened the river. Gov. Doug Burgum told The New York Times that melting snow could wash their “garbage and human waste” into the river. Last week authorities forced the campers to leave.
Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, which has been active here, said in a statement that the evacuation was a “violent and unnecessary infringement on the constitutional right of water protectors to peacefully protest and exercise their freedom of speech.”
Here’s the story in the Washington Times.
Showing Up In Louisiana
According to CBS News, thirteen people have died and 30,000 have been rescued from homes and cars due to flooding in Louisiana.
President Obama doesn’t want to get in the way of the relief effort so he’s staying put on the golf course at Martha’s Vineyard. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards obliged by asking him not to come.
But the Baton Rouge Advocate doesn’t see it that way. The paper invited the president to come on down. A lead editorial was titled Vacation or not, a hurting Louisiana needs you now, President Obama:
Sometimes, presidential visits can get in the way of emergency response, doing more harm than good. But we don’t see that as a factor now that flood waters are subsiding, even if at an agonizing pace. It’s past time for the president to pay a personal visit, showing his solidarity with suffering Americans.
The press and politicians weren’t so cautious either when President Bush did a Katrina flyover in 2005. The Washington Examiner quotes Senator Barack Obama on the 2008 campaign trail:
“We can talk about what happened for two days in 2005 and we should. We can talk about levees that couldn’t hold, a FEMA that seemed not just incompetent but paralyzed and powerless, about a president who only saw the people from the window of an airplane instead of down here on the ground.”
Speaking of the campaign trail, Hillary can’t very well make a Louisiana appearance if Obama says he’d be in the way. So she’s visiting Martha’s Vineyard too.
80% of Success is Showing Up
All that island hopping left a flood victim vacuum. Donald Trump wasted no time filling it. Trump and Mike Pence were soon photographed helping unload a relief truck for the flood victims. And they didn’t seem to be in the way.
Now Obama says he’ll show up Tuesday.
