Barack Hussein! Why hasn't you stuck your finger in the hole yet?

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Nearly two weeks after the oil rig exploded, Obama appears at the site of a disaster not yet under control. Heckuva job, Mr. President.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=532122

Rush Limbaugh, conservative pundits call Gulf Coast oil spill, 'Obama's Katrina'
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/05/03/2010-05-03_rush_limbaugh_conservative_pundits_call_gulf_oil_spill_obamas_katrina.html

Is Oil Spill President Obama's Katrina?
In the past few days, some of the focus has shifted to the White House and whether it sprang to action soon enough to make a difference. Some critics are calling this "Obama's Hurricane Katrina."
http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/03/is-oil-spill-president-obamas-katrina/

---

The three articles above are just a sampling of the current "Obama ain't sprung to action fast enuff" bullshit. This is a wonderful opportunity for the right-wing media, left-wing media, environmentalists, and a host of others to milk a story and bend it to their advantage.

Unfortunately, most of what I've heard in ALL the media - other than comments by people actually IN the oil business - is pure BS. BP is the only non-BS so far. They've accepted responsibility (but not blame) for this god-awful mess, and are doing everything they can to fix it.

This is the fault of a blow-out preventer not working. It was either faulty equipment, wasn't installed properly, or was trashed by tons of platform landing on it. Making the disaster political is asinine.

Comments

[anyusa0030.livejournal.com]

the last i checked there are no people stuck on the roof tops or crowded in a football stadium with no food or water, or even working bathroom .calling this katrina is being insensitive to the poor men and women who lost everything they owned,not even picture for memory.have people forgotten those images of katrina that soon? i suggest they review the images before they compare the two.

[http://users.livejournal.com/aviation_/]

Not really. Two situations don't have to be exactly the same to compare them. What is being compared is response time proportionate to what would have been appropriate.

[drcruel.livejournal.com]

This. Besides, as has been pointed out, Obama has done everything that he can-the fact that it took him 2wks to arrive there for a photo op is a good thing, not a bad thing. To compare it to Bush's thoroughly incompetent handling of Katrina is disingenuous, even for talk radio.

[sizequeen.livejournal.com]

BP is the only non-BS so far.

Bullshit. These fucknuts are trying to buy off fisherman for $5,000 and have then sign contracts that would prevent them from suing in the future.

And while they are now trying to clean up this epic disaster that will have ramiifications for years to come, what did they or didn't they do to prevent this from happening? From my understanding, they actively fought safety regulations:

BP, the company that owned the Louisiana oil rig that exploded last week, spent years battling federal regulators over how many layers of safeguards would be needed to prevent a deepwater well from this type of accident.


***

But according to aides to Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has followed offshore drilling issues for years, the industry aggressively lobbied against an additional layer of protection known as an “acoustic system,” saying it was too costly. In a March 2003 report, the agency reversed course, and said that layer of protection was no longer needed.


“There was a big debate under the Bush administration whether or not to require additional oil drilling safeguards but [federal regulators] decided not to require any additional mandatory safeguards, believing the industry would be motivated to do it themselves,” Carl Pope, Chairman of the Sierra Club told ABC News.

BP can go fuck itself. They don't get credit for doing the right thing after the fact.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Bullshit. These fucknuts are trying to buy off fisherman for $5,000 and have then sign contracts that would prevent them from suing in the future.

And this is bad because...?

I mean, it's an offer. No fisherman is forced to take it, and they might actually come out further ahead than they would in a class action.

BP can go fuck itself. They don't get credit for doing the right thing after the fact.

No, they get credit for doing the right thing before and after.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

BP has decided not to follow the advice of their lawyers - they have dropped the "no sue" requirement from the fishermen. I guess the BP public relations team trumped the legal team on that one.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

From my understanding, they actively fought safety regulations:


I am not suprised...
"British Petroleum is not an ethical oil company - just the least UNethical one", to quote one activist I met recently. Seems to me like they were right.

One of the things I have against libertarianism is that it says that regulation isn't needed so much - incidents like these tell me that iis isn't used enough.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Like I said, it was an equipment failure. Is there anyone who is naive enough to think that drilling an oil well a mile deep is without hazards? If EVERY safety measure possible was in place, it could still happen.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Oh c'mon. And Bush was responsible for decades of neglect in the New Orleans levee system and failure to plan for a hurricane by New Orleans and Louisiana officials?

Blame works like that. It has a shotgun effect. Your guy is in the barrel so expect it. Whether he is responsible for the incident is not the issue. The response always will be. And any response can be critiqued to hell.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Comparison of Katrina to the oil spill = comparison of apples to lamprey eels

[dukexmachismo.livejournal.com]

And Bush was responsible for decades of neglect in the New Orleans levee system and failure to plan for a hurricane by New Orleans and Louisiana officials?

Of course. He was also the stupid shit who decided to build a city below sea level.

Whether he is responsible for the incident is not the issue. The response always will be. And any response can be critiqued to hell.

Agreed.

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

Making the disaster political is asinine.

wait. you know how this works...

[ytterbius.livejournal.com]

Your title sums it up beautifully, actually.

Obama basically did what he could. Get the best people on it that he can, Coast Guard, Military, Civilian, and then put the onus on BP to do something about it.

No matter how many Obama beach pictures are posted on the internets, he is completely unable to actually do much of anything about the situation (Ok, maybe Putin could swim down there...).

The righties that are jumping on Obama's initial response are ignoring the fact that even if Obama had jumped up and down alot on day one, and brought the entire US Government into focus on this problem, the same amount of oil would still be floating towards shore right now. This is not like Katrina. There was a HELL of alot of support that could have been usefully provided in the early days that would have made a real difference to the overall results, but wasn't. In this case, the Government simply doesn't have the tools required to do the job, and are dangerously dependent on Private Industry to fix their booboo.

Obama is at risk, though. This thing isn't as ugly as it's going to get. Cross your fingers that this dome solution works, because if we have three months more of this, the gulf coast is going to be close to dead. If BP fails, then Obama could get blamed.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'There was a HELL of alot of support that could have been usefully provided in the early days that would have made a real difference to the overall results'

Such as?

Coast Guard? Naval support? Those were there. FEMA is not a rapid response force and are meant to help recovery. They failed in that regard but the shear magnitude of Katrina was the reason why people needed to be airlifted out.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

On Star Trek, it's always the captain who's the most capable...

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

I know people are concerned about the coast, but the entire gulf is in danger of suffocating. The entire gulf.

[bord-du-rasoir.livejournal.com]

This is the fault of a blow-out preventer not working. It was either faulty equipment, wasn't installed properly, or was trashed by tons of platform landing on it. Making the disaster political is asinine.

That's not a well-constructed argument. You could say the same for Katrina: rather than a blow-out preventer, it was the levees not working.

The question is WHY didn't they work. Levees = U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed, local levee board maintained

As for the blow-out preventer, I haven't been following the story closely, but I'd assume BP is in charge of constructing it, while the government is in charge of regulating its use.

I heard that media matters responded to the "Obama's Katrina" meme. I'll find the link...

http://mediamatters.org/research/201004300053

It seems to center on the speed of the administration's response - which was the main criticism of the Bush Administration. But also, there was ineptitude, i.e. no one could've foreseen this, the response is going well when it wasn't, etc. Again, I haven't followed this closely enough to see if comparisons in ineptitude can be made.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

People criticized Bush for his response to the disaster, not for the disaster happening.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Chernobyl: Comrade, no one could have foreseen this...

Three-Mile Island: Citizen, this was simply a perfect storm, we could not have predicted this.

Exxon-Valdez: The chances of this occurring were far too remote to justify the cost of double-hulled construction.

Katrina: Sure, sure we knew it would happen sometime, but now? No one could have foreseen this!

Horizon oil-rig spill: The chances of this occurring were far too remote for any sort of reaction to be sufficient.

The only thing I take out of this is the continued belief that the world is run by idiots.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

After all, blowout preventers have worked fine on the other 4,000 Gulf rigs. And we have one of the premier names in the oil business installing this one... Halliburton.


What could go wrong with that?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Note that it was the Left that started saying he hadn't acted fast enough.

[drcruel.livejournal.com]

That's because the left, unlike the right, has the courage to criticize our leaders while they're still in office.

[acesspadesdice.livejournal.com]

whatever happeneded to that indian chap a bunch of racists tried to torch to death in melbourne a couple of months ago?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Eh. Presidents take hits for disasters on their watch. This is not new.

What is interesting to watch is the new crop of experts on deep ocean recon and operations that appear to have sprung up to demand that Obama should have deployed the Navy immediately to shut off the oil.

Not sure exactly how, mind you -- I supposed we could have ordered a Los Angeles Class attack sub to have torpedoed the well head.

Or perhaps an uncontolled gusher a mile down is unprecedented and there are no good contingencies for it.

[montanaisaleg.livejournal.com]

The main reason that Katrina was such a blow to Bush's reputation was that he had carefully built himself up as The President Who Knows How To Respond To Major Disasters. We went for 3 or so years after 9/11/2001 without a 9-11/Katrina type disaster, so there was no test of his disaster-handling abilities. Lots of people just took him at his word. Then Katrina happened and Bush handled it terribly. He had wanted us to believe that he would make us safe. It was the self-promoted definition of his presidency, and lots of people bought it. He sold it so well that when things went wrong, he was guaranteed to take a hit, and his PR response to Katrina was so bad it almost seemed calculated. From the appearance of business-as-usual as the disaster started to "Heckuva job, Brownie," all with the backdrop of a city under water, he kept sending messages that were at odds with the image he had carefully crafted for himself. So the main thing he had going for himself was shown to be a sham, and people held him (rightly) accountable.

Whatever Obama's response to the current disaster, he hasn't tried to define himself as the disaster-response president. He may take a hit in his public support, and some of it may be justified, but it's almost impossible for this to be "Obama's Katrina" because he hasn't built up the fake image that Bush did.

Some analogies: Katrina is to Bush as Being outed is to an anti-gay crusader. Oil spill is to Obama as Being caught on film kissing a guy is to an openly gay elected official.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

The whole notion is a purely partisan attempt at point-scoring.

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

It's amusing how the Bush haters have suddenly discovered the virtues of apolitical disaster response and recovery.

(I should add that this is aimed at some of the comments and not the OP.)

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Criticizing Bush for a severely botched recovery campaign and even more severely botched PR campaign actually isn't political, as much as you try to excuse it as that. He fucked up, period. Stop pretending he didn't.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Making the disaster political is asinine.

LOL. Nowwwww you tell us. How very convenient.