Sen. Dianne Feinstein lambasted the oil-spill response effort of the past week, saying Sunday that it revealed a disturbing lack of readiness for disasters in the Bay Area – and that the full weight of the federal government will now be brought into a rigorous investigation to find out what went wrong.
Now that the “full weight” includes Mukasey, Feinstein also noted she’d waterboard the shit out of anyone, anytime to get to the bottom of it.
Helena Montana
Once the shipping line owner pays her off, she’ll be talking out of the other side of her mouth.
jake
Dear San Francisco Bay Area Residents:
You’re fucked.
Sincerely,
Your Fellow Americans.
p.s. Were you expecting any cash for the clean up? Bwahaha!
As threats go these days, “full weight of the federal government,” ranks up there with “Do that again you son of a bitch, and I’ll give you a million dollars and a hand job!”
yet another jeff
Dianne…New Orleans is calling on line one, saying something like “did you think you’d get better service because your town is gay-friendly and white?!”
Jill
Who is Michael D.?
Rudi
Let me say first hand that I’m a certified Liberal. But at this time how does this rate a national response. The latest fire and NO – OK, but not this isolated incident.
Bob In Pacifica
Feinstein’s comments didn’t go over well here in the Bay Area either. The righties hate her because she’s a Dem, and the Dems hate her because she flushed the Constitution. She apparently noticed the oil spill three days after the Coast Guard did, so no one’s happy about that either. And showing faith in any federal agency that’s supposed to protect the general welfare? Ha!
Meanwhile, the fishing industry is fucked. Salmon, crabs. There are these huge globs of coagulating oil the size of basketballs floating around out there. I wonder if the sludge has reached our beaches down here in Pacifica yet.
Bob In Pacifica
Jill: Michael D. is the new guy.
bago
The worst part is that volunteers are being given loyalty pledges and then are told to go home.
Pb
An industry is fucked? No wonder she noticed.
Dumbo
What a disaster. But Dianne is right on top of it. And fortunately for us, there is new technology that might be used to assuage the problem.
Dianne has been in the forefront of research to mop up unsightly oil spills using the bodies of dead soldiers killed in Iraq. As unlikely as it sounds, dead American soldiers turn out to be an ideal oil-sponge for keeping California’s coasts pristine. And it’s good news, too, because with Dianne’s work in Congress, there are lots of dead soldiers to use! In fact, there is a growing supply of them.
Dianne Feinstein — on top of all the major issues of the day.
Michael D.
Founding member of the Beastie Boys.
Teak111
And don’t forget about immunity for the shipping company because they “should’nt be punished for helping secure America.” Yep, as a long time supporter from LowCal, I’m completely done with DF.
Dennis-SGMM
Well, Diane, you had to find out sooner or later that your bestest Republican buds are way better at talking about preparedness than they are at doing it. And, how does it grab you that there’s a 98% chance that none of the cargo of that ship has been or will be inspected?
But hey, we do have to take our shoes off at the airport and that’s dealing a deathblow to terrorism world wide, isn’t it?
Don’t worry, Diane, when a ship loaded with who knows what sort of chemical or biologic cargo is finally detonated in one of our ports you can sit by and nod agreement as the administration intones, “No one could have anticipated that the terrorists would use a ship as a weapon.”
Zifnab
Seriously, can she and Lieberman just start their own party – Republican Lite – and be done with it already? Does she vote Dem on anything that isn’t already a forgone conclusion?
I still remember back in ’02 how Feinstein war-cheered for Iraq. How this woman holds a Senate seat in such a solid blue state – the state of Barbara Boxer, for goodness sake – is beyond me. It’s like California is bipolar or something.
capelza
Pb…the fishing “industry” is a lot of individual boat owners as well as some companies..it isn’t “Big Fish” (which was a great movie)…
The Dungeness season has been delayed or may not open at all (and ths is OUTSIDE the bay)…it really sucks. A friend called last night, his crab season is the money maker, the one that keeps him going all year.
If this spill is anything like the Exxon Valdez spill, you’ll be able to scrtach the surface of a beach years later and find remnants of the spill.
Rudi
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/09/sanfrancisco.bay.spill.ap/index.html
http://www.epa.gov/oilspill/exxon.htm
58,000 versus 11,000,000, I don’t see the scale to merit BDS, now Arnald did screw up compared to the fires. Billo and Robertson will be happy, the Spaghetti god puts some Leviticus justice on these heathens. Maybe luffa sponges could help clean up the mess.
Incertus (Brian)
It’s take a lot of money to run in California, and Feinstein not only has a lot, but she has friends with even deeper pockets, and has for a long time. It’s not Feinstein who’s the surprising one–it’s that Boxer managed to raise the money to win and hold her seat in the face of such odds.
Tom Hilton
Yeah, exactly. Feinstein has also been terrible on a lot of environmental issues, so she doesn’t have a tremendous amount of credibility there.
Punchy
Sings for the Beasties…
Bob In Pacifica
Rudi, it’s true that this spill is nowhere as big as the Exxon Valdez. The problem is that it occurred in the middle of the Bay and is endangering a lot of delicate ecosystems. I think it won’t cause anywhere near the damage that the Valdez did, but you’ll probably get more damage per gallon with this spill.
Plus, there’s a lot more people in the Bay Area, residents and tourists, who don’t like their beaches looking like the La Brea Tarpits, covered with dead sand cranes and otters and seals.
Bombadil
California? The home of Jerry Brown and Richard Nixon? The home of Jerry Garcia and adopted son Arnold Schwarzenegger? The home of Alec Baldwin and Ronald Reagan? Bipolar?
That California?
Bubblegum Tate
Woo-hoo! Tax cuts and faith-based initiatives for everybody! Sure, we can sit around cleaning oil off of seagulls, but if you use your tax cut to buy a seagull a Bible, then you teach that seagull to clean oil off itself.
Tax Analyst
Let’s see…Feinstein beat appointed incumbent, John Seymour 54%-38% in a 1992 Special Election, a not-yet-out-of-the-closet Michael Huffington, 47%-45% in 1994, Tom Campbell, 56%-37% in 2000, and caveman Richard Mountjoy, 59%-35% in 2006.
A pretty amazing run of stiffs, eh?
She USED to be a reasonable moderate, but I guess 911 changed everything, because ever since then it’s been hard to tell her from Joe Lieberman.
Delia
Hey, taking your shoes off at airports, chucking your water bottles and hair gels is keeping us safe from terrorists, don’t you know? We should just be thanking the Chinese they didn’t drop millions of gallons of date-rape drugs in the Bay.
And Dianne’s got to try to win a few brownie points before she sells the rest of the Constitution to the telecoms, so give her a break. Since it looks like she’s killing off the fishing season in California, maybe she can get together with Gordy Smith of Oregon. He killed off the salmon in Oregon when he and Lord Cheney sucked the Klamath River dry a few years back.
ninerdave
Fuck Feinstein. I’m sorry I ever voted for her.
Rudi
Bob in P – When Arnaldland can’t handle the situation or it spreads to other states then call in the Cavalry. NO lost all power and communications. The 1990 Upper Mississippi floods covered states. These two situations demanded Federal assistance.
Where is Arnald on this one? Hannity had homo-erotic love for Arnald after the SD fire, will he condemn the Terminator for inaction this time?