I just don’t understand why Obama doesn’t strap on his scuba suit and stop the leak himself. Why is he such a selfish bastard? 
Well, both incidents raise serious concerns, shall we say.
I suspect Obama, like other politicians, supported offshore drilling in part because he was encouraged to believe that it could be done reasonably safely and cleanly.
This disaster should make us reevaluate the whole industry with the new information in mind.
If we can ever get this one sorted, first.
In fairness, the oil spill is clearly not Obama’s fault. It happened on his watch, and now it is his responsibility, at least as far as federal response is concerned. Perhaps he could turn up the heat on BP a little, but that burner is damn near maxed out now. I understand there is a federal investigation looking at both civil and criminal liability. Perhaps he could encourage a little more vigorous damage mitigation efforts. I don’t think we need a new government agency–Department of Oil Well Disasters. I do not expect Obama to put on a skipper’s hat and go drive a boat, or put on diving gear and grab his toolbox to go work on this thing.
Overall, I think he’s looking at a solid “C” for his efforts related to the oil spill so far.
I don’t think that this oil spill is Obama’s responsibility anymore than Katrina was Bush’s responsibility or the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was McKinley’s responsibility.
As far as I remember the issue with Katrna wasn’t Bush’s direct actions, but the fact that he had appointed an incompetent man to the head of the responsible agency for political purposes? For that he deserves his share of the blame for the poor response.
I find it difficult to believe that Obama’s administration isn’t doing everything the they can think of to mitigate the disaster, it’s not exactly good for them politically.
No, but you seem to be in the minority whether left or right. Most people seem to be blaming him for not doing Something™. Personally, I think he’s handled this problem about as well as a president COULD handle it, and I’ve been very impressed.
It’s controversial, but my feeling both at the time of Katrina and after was that this was mainly a local government failure that was compounded by poor communications, huge disruptions in infrastructure (i.e. you couldn’t actually GET to the area very easily due to the damage path), logistics problems and, lastly, poor planning for this event at the Federal level. It was a perfect storm of fuck-up, with Bush only being a bit player in the mess.
In THIS case, I think that mainly the rage over this event is driven more by ignorance of the challenges, and ideology (the right wingers are simply looking for ANYTHING they can lash out at Obama over, and the lefties are, well, clueless about anything technical or realistic, plus many of them hate oil and offshore drilling with a blue passion, not to mention how they feel about Big Oil COMPANIES). There was an accident. BP has made a good faith effort to try and fix that problem. There are huge technical challenges associated with that problem, and no magic wand to simply wave at it. Obama is aware of the problem, has experts following events, and isn’t using it as a means for photo ops, but instead has stayed in the background, letting the experts deal with it. He hasn’t called out the National Guard, or the Corp of Engineers to stand shoulder to shoulder and prevent the oil spill (or whatever they were supposed to do), instead his responses have been measured and logical. Refreshing in a politician.
Both sides are doing the same, but yeah…it sounds a bit strange coming from the right wingers. My guess, however, is that they are doing it more for effect and to try and illustrate (in the minds of the clueless) how Obama has failed. Or something.
-XT
Actually, although I understand why he did it I would have respected Bush a lot if he’d had cut through the Katrina red tape and broke laws left and right with authority to get the job done and save lives. Then when it was all over he could walk in front of the camera and admit he went beyond the bounds of law to do his best to help to those in need. He would then cooperate completely with the Judicial and Legislative branches punishing him and his office if they thought it necessary.
Thats how a leader with bravery and integrity would act.
The OP must have missed the other thread.
Actually, wasn’t it Gates who said the military shouldn’t have a bigger role because they didn’t know what the hell they were doing in regards to an underwater oil spill?
There are certainly things which the feds could be doing better, ie. answering the requests by the governors for waivers from federal regulation. The local people have already proved useful being commissioned by BP to assist in the efforts, but for some reason the feds are dragging their heals responding to the governors.
Big O could be more engaged but he’s not responsible for this mess. It’s BP’s job to clean it up. One helpful thing he could do would be to send a strong message to Congress to enact legislation removing the caps on BP’s liability and require them to clean up their mess.
Oil technology is not part of the expertise of the government. We don’t drill, don’t build submersibles or erect off shore platforms. When one explodes ,we rely on those in the business to know how to fix it. We have to. The fact that BP and the others involved are lying like hell and covering up makes it all worse.
Obama has troops helping with the clean up. That is probably all he can do besides pressuring BP with public criticisms. His hands are pretty well tied.
Nobody is on BP’s side in this. Stepping in to facilitate the cleanup in no way stomps all over corporation rights. The US response [to date] has not kept up with the spread of oil. As President, he is the face of that response.
IMO, we should be building skimmers like they were landing craft for D-Day. If there was ever a better reason to spend stimulus money on infrastructure I can’t think of one. Go back to last spending frenzy that Congress had the nerve to call a stimulus bill and cut out all the bullshit for use on this project.
That’s the problem. Yes, it happened “on his watch”, but he’s not responsible for it; it was an accident of timing. What he is responsible for is running his yap and interfering with BP’s efforts to contain the situation, and that I absolutely blame him for.
The parallels are not quite valid. There is a nice big shiny government agency (FEMA) whose job is to respond to natural disasters. As it happens, during Katrina it was being run by an inept political crony.
On the other hand, it is not the government’s job to fix industrial accidents. Yes, they can coordinate, and clean up the shoreline. But the feds are not equipped to cap the well – that’s BP.
Oddly, I think the loudest screaming to “do something” come from the same people who are yelling for smaller government and against wasteful spending.
In what way has Obama or anyone from the federal government interfered with BP’s “efforts to contain the situation?”
But stepping in to prevent this disaster would have been. People would be screaming loud about socialcommunomuslims if he had decided to become tougher on drillers. And really that was the best thing he could have done to avoid/mitigate this situation.
Again, nobody is no BP’s side. If the government doesn’t step in to oversee the industry then everybody will scream bloody murder. That doesn’t mean we stop drilling, it means the BOP is verified to be in good shape and that all drilling procedures are followed. It doesn’t make sense to fine BP $300 million dollars and not use that money to buy regulators to verify compliance. Boots on the ground.
Nobody cares if there’s a leak as long as it can be cut off in a timely manner. Month’s is not a timely manner.
Running his yap and interfering with BPs efforts?? CLOTHAHUMP you are amazing.
NOW, they’re not. Before this, it was Drill, Baby, Drill!
It’s still drill baby drill. That doesn’t mean doing it irresponsibly. Nobody want’s a Chernobyl disaster but nuclear power plants are still desired.
Ummm no, sorry, try again. ANY regulatory attempts before the spill would be met with stiff resistance from all republican and many democratic members of Congress. Even the regulations that made sense.