American President Tries Hand at Mother Nature

Tonight at 8pm EST, American President Barack Obama will address his nation for the first time from the Oval Office.

Oval Office speeches are nothing new to American presidents. They have been used to give calming messages of action, during times of crisis.

American President Ronald Reagan was famous for his slick orations from the Oval Office. They even started the Jelly Bean Meter, where journalists joked that the bigger the crisis, the more Jelly Beans filled the jar which always sat on President Reagan’s Oval Office desk.

The speech tonight by President Obama is going to be mostly about the British Petroleum (BP) oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, sliming its way along America’s southern coastline. The oil has penetrated the shorelines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, since an explosion released it from the BP Deepwater drilling site on April 20.

The people that live and work along the coastal areas now submerged in dirty, black crude oil, are in a state of panic. Their lives are literally threatened, as drinking water tables are becoming contaminated. Their food stocks are threatened, as fish and wildlife die off from being buried in the thick black goo. Businesses are at risk, as outsiders aren’t venturing in, so tourism is at an all time low.

The BP oil leak, is the worst corporate-caused environmental disaster since another famed oil company released its liquid gold into the environment – the Exxon. Back in 1989, Exxon’s oil tanker the Valdez, ran aground dumping 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

According to the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there are approximately 98 m³ (26,000 gallons) of Valdez crude oil still in Alaska's sand and soil today.

But that’s not going to happen, because American President Barack Obama – the former Chicago Senator, turned President – is now tackling a new role – Mother Nature.

In tonight’s live address from the Oval Office, President Obama is going to lay out his plans for cleaning up the Gulf Coast.

Should be quite a show, seeing as Mother Nature herself is still struggling with the oil left in the Alaskan sands left over from the Exxon Valdez.

It will take billions and billions – if not trillions of dollars – to clear most of the crude oil. And it will take several years – decades – before the environment is completely recovered from BP’s leaking oil well.

President Obama should leave the recovery of the planet to Mother Nature, and use his political power as it was intended – politically. President Obama has the political power to force his citizens to adopt a lifestyle less dependent upon oil.

Crude Oil – a slimy, highly toxic substance, is formed as fossil remains from plants and animals are crushed between the layers of the Earth and sea over thousands of years.

We human beings consume about 30 billion barrels of crude oil year. Crude oil is the building block for almost everything – it forms the basis for toothpaste, plastics, and chewing gum. We use it to heat our homes, power our cars, and keep our world in order – most of the parts in a computer are made out of petroleum products.

Yet in its natural unaltered state, crude oil is one of the most dangerous substances on the planet. It is highly flammable – even the slightest spark can – and has – cause disaster. Its viscous thick goo clogs the pores of living things, slowly suffocating them. If taken orally, it poisons the body, causing a slow and painful death, as your vital organs shut down one-by-one.

Processing this stuff is no safer. One of the side effects to its many uses are the many toxins produced when it is manipulated. Petro chemical by products toxic to any and all life such as benzene, chlorine, carbon dioxide and many others are by-products of oil production.

Our society has become too dependent on a highly toxic substance. If crude oil was directly administered to us, it would be no different than being addicted to cocaine.

Instead of trying to do the impossible, American President Barack Obama should do the possible – create laws, policies and procedures which move his country away from the dependency on crude oil.

If he can do that, he’ll really make a world of difference – America is the largest consumer of crude oil in the world, using 24 percent of those 30 billion barrels consumed annually. Canada on average uses about 16 percent of those 30 billion barrels of crude annually, while other countries trail far behind.

So if the largest consumer of crude oil – The United States of America – starts to wean off of our drug-like dependency, the rest of the world will follow.

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Public Transits Canadian Iron Curtain

It’s been almost 23-years since American President Ronald Reagan’s famous foretelling words: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” yet an Iron Curtains till abounds. President Reagan was speaking in front of the Berlin Wall, in an address targeted towards Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in an attempt to end Communism.

With the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union collapsed and so did many of the Communistic societies that were once part of that regime.

However, after witnessing a so-called public meeting to discuss public transit in Canada’s largest city, one may think the Iron Curtain is still very much alive.

Toronto’s transit system has taken much bad press the past several months. A YouTube video of a Toronto transit subway taker sleeping on the job was followed not too long after by another video of a bus operator taking an unscheduled stop at a local donut shop. Numerous events since have further eroded the public’s view of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) which operates and manages public transit in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The most recent event occurred last week, when a TTC bus driver attacked a young adult over what appears to be a fare dispute. Allegedly, the bus driver tossed the young man so hard against the bus, a bus window was shattered.

To alleviate the bad press, the TTC’s union, Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, representing the bus, subway, streetcar, wheel transit operators and support staff, has been holding public town hall style meetings throughout Toronto.

The notion of these town halls is to provide an opportunity for the public to voice their comments, concerns and questions to the TTC’s union.

However, it was clear from the very start of yesterday’s town hall that this was anything but a public meeting.

Oh the public was there, seated in the auditorium of Stephen Leacock Collegiate. And a microphone was paraded around, allowing people to stand up and have their say.

But the answers were obviously spun to send one message and one message only to the TTC’s management – we need more public funding.

Although the TTC needs more public funding – all transit systems require public funding, and the amount of this funding in Canada over the years continues to drop -- the point of the town hall was to provide an opportunity for public voices to be heard. Not for the union to use the public to bolster its position against management.

But that’s exactly what happened. Every question from the public was used to forward the unions specific concerns with management – they never really acknowledged or accepted responsibility for anything, placing most blame on management’s shoulders.

It wasn’t until the very end, where one of the TTC’s operators on stage publicly apologized on behalf of her fellow bus drivers, for the physical assault of the young man by one of her colleagues. Not that this incident is a representation of her, or her co-workers typical behavior – it is a rare occurrence -- but instead of spending time addressing the causes which may have lead to this incident, those representing the union on stage kept sweeping the blame onto management’s shoulders.

Wait a sec . . . isn’t it the union which represents bus drivers – like the bus driver that attacked a young man over a bus fare?

SLAM went the Iron Curtain of the TTC’s union. All the TTC’s problems smeared across the globe via the mass media and social networking sites like YouTube come down to a lack of government funding.

Or at least that’s what they want you to believe. And they have been holding public meetings to use you to get that message out.

Pretty sneaky. Maybe they got Gorbachev to teach them how to run these things?

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Canadians Were Played by their Prime Minister

Isn’t it ironic that during Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harpers thrown speech, sparking another session of Parliament, that he chose that moment to re-ignite an on-going debate to change the lyrics to the Canadian national anthem Oh Canada?

It is ironic if you take note that his thrown speech was delivered amidst all the hoopla surrounding International Women’s Day – which is today.

Last week, many private and government organizations made announcements about events and programs to coincide with the annual day promoting the economic, political and social achievements of the women’s movement.

Canada’s Governor-General, Michaelle Jean, said herself that she’s timed her visit to her homeland of Haiti to coincide with International Women’s Day, because wants to send a positive message to the women of her earthquake battered land, to empower them on their rebuilding efforts.

Many workplaces are also having special seminars, cultural, and social events, as part of International Women’s Day.

So why were we Canadians so blind-sided by the prime minister’s announcement last week by his government’s intent to investigate whether or not parts of the national anthem are sexist?

Maybe we were still in awe from the just concluded Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games which rapped up a mere days before the prime minister’s controversial announcement.

Or maybe that was the whole point?

Perhaps the media-savvy public relations handlers for Prime Minister Stephen Harper saw no harm in tossing a proverbial bone to the Women’s Movement, as they could bury it within the Thrown Speech, at a time when most of us were still being blinded by the numerous gold, silver and bronze medals our Canadian Team took in this year?

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has never really been very progressive when it comes to catering to special interest groups. He’s talked the good talk about reducing carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases, even setting realistically achievable targets and deadlines – but so far they are nothing more than words on a page, as his government has failed to implement these policies into action.

It appears the Canadian Prime Minister is acting much like an American president known as “the Great Communicator” for his ability to spin messages.

During the 1980’s American President Ronald Reagan – AKA “the Great Communicator” – spun his way through his administration’s major changes to American economic spending, militarization (the Cold War was still going strong), foreign policy, and education. Had he not been so slick and media savvy, instead of being one of the most respected American leaders of all time, he may have gone down in history as being one of the most controversial.

His economic policies were so radical at the time, opponents to his policies nicknamed them “Reaganomics” which the Reagan administration then turned on its head, spinning the negative out of the term so that “Reaganomics” actually made the American leader’s economic policies more palatable to those against it.

Just as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has used the cloak of a thrown speech, on the heels of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, President Reagan used distractionary tactics to diffuse attention away from the real agenda of his government.

The image of American President Ronald Reagan standing along the Berlin Wall, in his silky smooth broadcast-movie-announcer-type voice saying: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” was one of the most memorable moments of his administration. Yet, around the same time as President Reagan was asking the then Soviet President Mikael Gorbachev to end the Cold War, the American leader was working on his “Star Wars” plan, which was an automated system of satellites and nuclear weapons which would be used to protect America from a nuclear attack by Russia.

Oh Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is nowhere near as slick as the former actor, turned American President. But make no mistake about it; Prime Minister Harper knows how to play us.

He certainly played us for a fool last week when he announced his intentions to investigate sexist lyrics in Oh Canada – just in time for International Women’s Day.

Prime Minister Harper has a habit of making such broad sweeping announcements around very public events, only to have done something completely different later on. He’s using the women’s movement to distract us from his real intents and purposes.

So the natural question to ask now is: so what is Canada’s Prime Minister going to do this session of Parliament?

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