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Obama's Katrina!

portlandatheist said:
I'm curious of what people think that Obama should have done that he hasn't done. I'm not saying he has done a good job or a bad job, I'm just curious of where you think he hasn't stepped up to the plate. I think both with the Katrina situation and this current crisis, people tend to have an unrealistic expectation of what the POTUS can actually accomplish. It is sometimes humbling to realize that our government isn't as capable as we would like to think.
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According to this story Obama: U.S. in Charge of Oil Spill Response, Pres. Obama is creating some of this unrealistic expectation himself.
 
Skeptic said:
I don't understand why anybody thought that Obama was going to be competent for the job of POTUS. His meager record and lack of any significant managerial or political experience, certainly not on the level needed for the job, was a big warning sign about this.

This was pointed out before the election, but there is no arguing with the "sophisticated" and "progressive" class once they got into one of their tizzies of genuflection and hailing of The One.

There is something rather religious, in the fundamentalist religious revival-tent style, in the whole Obama phenomenon.
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I remember lots of speeches, to huge crowds chanting his name, about how great America is and how he came from humble backgrounds and whatnot. Apparently that's still all it takes.
[/godwin]
 
It's nice to see that the irony of Republicans throwing around the term "Obama's Katrina" and free-market capitalists demanding the government step in and fix this problem on the taxpayers dime isn't lost on everyone.
 
I don't blame Obama, but somehow I just don't see how he can escape unscathed.

Nothing is working. BP's new plan risks worsening oil spill. Given how badly everything has gone so far, you just know it's going to be the worst-case scenario. It's going to be a long, angry, disastrous summer. The well leak probably won't be fixed until August or later. The president isn't going to be able to focus on his agenda. Instead, he's going to have to be seen "keeping his boot on the neck" of BP for the whole summer and it's just going to get worse and worse, and he'll look ineffectual because he doesn't have magic powers to do anything about this.

The problem he does share the blame for is with MMS. The government hasn't been doing its job regulating these companies, and that more or less continued unchanged when Obama took over from Bush. The government continued to grant permits and waivers even after Obama announced a moratorium on new Deepwater drilling.

It's just a slow-moving disaster for Obama, even though the event that caused it isn't his fault. And then there's the economic impact just as the country is recovering from a recession. The headaches and problems just go on and on.
 
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Puppycow said:
I don't blame Obama, but somehow I just don't see how he can escape unscathed.

Nothing is working. BP's new plan risks worsening oil spill. Given how badly everything has gone so far, you just know it's going to be the worst-case scenario. It's going to be a long, angry, disastrous summer. The well leak probably won't be fixed until August or later. The president isn't going to be able to focus on his agenda. Instead, he's going to have to be seen "keeping his boot on the neck" of BP for the whole summer and it's just going to get worse and worse, and he'll look ineffectual because he doesn't have magic powers to do anything about this.

The problem he does share the blame for is with MMS. The government hasn't been doing its job regulating these companies, and that more or less continued unchanged when Obama took over from Bush. The government continued to grant permits and waivers even after Obama announced a moratorium on new Deepwater drilling.

It's just a slow-moving disaster for Obama, even though the event that caused it isn't his fault. And then there's the economic impact just as the country is recovering from a recession. The headaches and problems just go on and on.
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I don't blame Obama for the initial event either. However, if he's going stand up and announce just prior to the top-kill attempt that he takes full responsibility for ending the leak -- and you know he would have taken at least some credit if it'd been successful -- then he can share in the blame when it all goes to ****.
Edited by LashL: 
Edited for Rule 10 re: autocensor.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ility-for-ending-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-flow.html
 
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You know

lax regulation of the financial markets led to a financial catastophy

lax regulations of the oil industry led to an environmental catastophy

I wonder if at some point people will stop believing that the neo-liberal creed of letting the markets/private sector sort themselves out is actually a good idea....

Probably not.
 
I heard one commentator discussing the big difference between Katrina and this.

In the case of Katrina, what needed to be done was simple and obvious, and it didn't get done. In this case, what needed to be done is neither simple nor obvious, and it isn't getting done.

I wouldn't give President Obama high marks for his handling of this crisis, but this crisis is a lot tougher than the one that caused people to realize the incompetence of President Bush. At least he isn't telling the head of BP that he's doing a heckuva job.
 
I'm sorry. I'm not a huge fan of Obama, but I think this is overboard.

Maybe it's the engineer in me, but WTH is he gonna do? Hire experts. Who are they? BP and the people BP is hiring.


What he can do is help getting the cleanup going and help with the blocking.


I've seen some burning of the oil at sea, why not a lot more? And where are these oil-eating bacteria?
 
MattusMaximus said:
Well, this is likely to help Obama on the PR front...

BP oil spill: Obama administration opens criminal investigations

It will be interesting to see his detractors try to find criticism with this move, which I think is more than necessary, but I'm sure they'll try :popcorn1
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"Obama the Muslim Socialist is trying to pull a government takeover of the oil industry!"

Not too hard to see it coming. And they'll simultaneously- sometimes in the same sentence- say he's not doing enough to stop the leak.

If there's one thing about Teabaggers, it's that they don't need no stinkin' consistency. They say whatever, whenever, as long as they think it scores them points (see Palin, Sarah and thee Bridge to Nowhere).
 
DavidJames said:
Yup - Obama's fault for not fixing BP's problem and Obama's fault for trying to see if BP did anything wrong.
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You forgot that it is Obama's fault for not having the regulations in the first place that would have avoided the issue in the first place AND it is his fault that government is too intrusive into business, preventing the oil companies from being the Free Market white knights that they are supposed to be.
 
dudalb said:
The public anger seems to be directed at BP rather then Obama.
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Agreed. This despite the lame ass attempts by his political opponents to label this as his "Katrina" and similar nonsense.

What I'm waiting to see is how some of those same opponents (read: conservative Republicans + some Dems) react when legislation comes up in the Congress tightening up regulations on offshore drilling and whatnot. You just know it's coming.
 
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-...il-by-carol-browner-on-how-bad-bp-spill-was-/

Critics have bashed President Obama for being slow to seize the political initiative in combating the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast, now widely believed to be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The White House has battled back, releasing a timeline of events showing that Obama was briefed—and deploying the Coast Guard—within 24 hours of the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

What has not been previously disclosed: The president was not only briefed on the real-time events of the spill, but also on just how bad it would be—and how hard it would be to plug the hole.

Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, told Obama at one of the earliest briefings in late April that the blowout would likely lead to an unprecedented environmental disaster, senior White House aides told The Daily Beast. Browner warned that capping a well at such depths had never been done before, and that they ought to expect an oil spill that would continue until a relief well was drilled in August, the aide said.
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So if they knew this was going to be an environmental disaster of unprecedented proportions, why did the Obama administration essentially do nothing for weeks (months) and instead spend the time pointing fingers and taking vacations? Seems to me they should have acted immediately to contain, disperse, vacuum and burn the oil, and build barriers to protect the coastlines, as numerous experts were suggesting be done at the time. Why isn't the MSM calling this Obama's Katrina, instead of defending him over it, as in the above article? Afterall, Obama got on TV and declared (at a time when he apparently thought the oil well might have been successfully plugged) that "from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort." He said "make no mistake: BP is operating at our direction. Every key decision and action they take must be approved by us in advance." He tried to take all the credit. Why not take the blame too?

And here is what is not mentioned in that "excuses,excuses" article, as far as blame is concerned. First, the well in question didn’t exist before Obama took office. It was Obama's MMS (under an Obama appointee) that issued the drilling permit in 2009. In 2006 the Bush administration instituted safety regulations for a wide area of the gulf in which the drill site is located. It was Obama's MMS that waived several of those regulatory requirements on petition by BP. One of those requirements was that BP submit specific emergency response plans. Since BP has stated that their emergency response is in "uncharted waters", doesn't that imply they had no plan? Why isn't THAT Obama's fault? Enquiring minds want to know if there really are any Obama supporting skeptics here at JREF. :D

 
Juniversal said:
"The original sin in my view is that as soon as the oil rig accident happened the president tried to maintain distance between the gusher and his presidency. He wanted people to associate the disaster with BP and not him."

When your most creative thoughts in the middle of a disaster revolve around protecting your position, you are summoning trouble. When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way.
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The Shrub left Obama with no resources with which to do anything significant.

To accept blame for the spill would actually give the Republicants a wedge issue on which to regain power and continue not to regulate in a way that prevents further such disasters. If the government does not have tge capabilities to deal with a situation, and you have a couple million shrieking lunatics saying that government can't do things as well as private industry can, it is best to make it clear that industry has nore resources and stiill can't pour gravel out of a boot.
 
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