"A COMICALLY FLAWED COMPARISON"..Tragic really..

[Cha]

".... For quite a while now, the president's detractors have been anxious to label something, anything, "Obama's Katrina." Various media figures have used the phrase in covering everything from the H1N1 flu virus to the Fort Hood shootings to the earthquake in Haiti. All of them were labeled "Obama's Katrina" at some point, but all were dealt with effectively by the administration.

And in the wake of the deadly explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig, and the ongoing oil-spill disaster, we're hearing the phrase again. Even for our stunted discourse, this is absurd.

It was, to be sure, inevitable that the usual suspects would try to connect the oil disaster to president somehow. But it's already pretty silly -- Limbaugh, Fox News, Drudge, and the Washington Times are all running with "Obama's Katrina" nonsense, no doubt hoping it'll be more effective that previous attempts to get the phrase to stick.

Today, even the New York Times alludes to the connection, while conceding that the comparison itself is baseless.

There's a world of difference between the impact of an oil spill and a deadly hurricane. And the White House hopes it stays that way.

As President Obama stepped up his administration's response to the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, ordering a moratorium on new offshore drilling leases and dispatching cabinet secretaries and cargo planes to the region, the White House is also trying to avert the kind of political damage inflicted on former President George W. Bush by his administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina.


I'm trying to think of the similarities here, and very few come to mind. Both the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Hurricane Katrina involve disasters in the Gulf of Mexico. Both put Louisiana in peril. There's also ... well, that's about it for the similarities.

In 2005, Bush failed to take seriously warnings of an imminent natural disaster, and was slow to act after the devastation had begun. The storm killed more 1,500, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and destroyed much of an American coastline.

In 2010, BP was responsible for a disaster that wasn't natural at all. The company didn't warn government officials of an imminent threat; it did the opposite, assuring agencies that this was a manageable problem that BP was equipped to deal with.

Nevertheless, within one day of the explosion at the rig, the Obama administration had dispatched officials and the Coast Guard to the scene. When the problem became more acute, the president dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to the area to help oversee efforts with federal, state, and local officials. President Obama will himself visit the coast tomorrow.

Everything that can be expected of government officials is being done. Media Matters published a timeline of events http://mediamatters.org/research/201004300053 , and if there's evidence of the administration taking a misstep, it's hiding well.

—Steve Benen 10:50 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (44)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

[Cha]

1. " LEARNING THE APPROPRIATE LESSON" The Hard Way..

".... We know a few things for sure about the still-unfolding BP Oil Spill disaster in the Gulf. For example, we know it was initially considered a limited accident, but BP's original assessment was wrong. We know the media appears anxious to blame the White House, for no apparent reason. And we also know the ecological, environmental, and even economic consequences of this disaster are likely to be pretty devastating for the Gulf region.

Jonathan Alter, meanwhile, is looking ahead -- after the spill reaches the shore, after the inevitable clean-up, and after all the finger-pointing -- and pointing to a truth that we should also know.

After the immediate crisis passes and the cleanup is well underway, we should look to the larger cause of this disaster as well as the recent coal-mine explosion in West Virginia: our dependence on fossil fuels.

This sounds like a platitude amid human and environmental fiascoes, but there's no reason that over the course of this century we should have either coal mines or oil rigs. To begin to move toward a clean energy future -- the best hope, by the way, for the global economy -- we need a new energy policy.

So the question is whether the disaster might give new life to efforts to pass comprehensive energy legislation. Such a bill wouldn't have prevented the gulf spill, but it would put us on a path toward moving away from fossil fuels over the next few decades. Lindsey Graham's announcement that he wanted to shelve the energy bill because the Democrats had the temerity to raise immigration issues is looking a bit petty.

Obama now has an argument on both energy and immigration: these long-festering problems, exploding before our eyes, must be dealt with in a "comprehensive" fashion.... The Arizona immigration bill and the coal-mine and oil-spill disasters are examples of what happens when we don't move away from old ways of doing things that do nothing to solve long-term problems.

It's ironic, in a way, that the BP Oil Spill disaster has put the climate/energy bill's future in further doubt, in large part because expanding drilling opportunities was considered a prerequisite to getting even marginal Republican support. With new offshore drilling leases on hold for the foreseeable future, it's hard to know what Dems can put in the bill to generate bipartisan support. Indeed, many Republicans are still saying "drill, baby, drill," even this morning.

But that's what makes Alter's point all the more compelling -- the disaster in the Gulf shouldn't make stall climate/energy efforts on the Hill, it should strengthen those efforts. The ongoing spill should give advocates more momentum, not less.

—Steve Benen 11:50 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (1)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

Hopefully, this tragic spill of BP's will be the first step on the way to implementing alternate energy sources that have an indefatiguable supply..like the Sun, Wind, & Water.

[sandnsea]

4. Also our dependence on corporate liars

This is partly about fossil fuels and partly about deregulation.

We had a corporate ceo guarantee us that wave machines couldn't break loose from the ocean floor too. The amount of oil and toxins in them is miniscule. Don't worry. Well thank goodness we've got people in this state who worry and demand answers.

These corporations have proven there isn't anything they can't fuck up.

[Cha]

2. 'WILL IT BE ENOUGH?"

".... The Washington Post's Michael Shear considers the politics of the BP Oil Spill disaster, and the suddenly-ubiquitous media efforts to compare the Obama administration's response to the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

" Unlike Katrina, there has been no obvious failures of government, no images to compare to the Superdome or the flooded streets of St. Bernard Parish. And unlike Katrina, there is an easy target for blame in the current oil spill: the oil giant BP, which by law is the "responsible party" and must pay for all of the costs of the cleanup.

It is also the case that the oil rigs in the gulf today were not approved by Obama's administration, and are the result of regulations and oversight that long predated Obama's arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. <...>

Officials point out that Coast Guard and Navy vessels were on the scene of the explosion almost immediately. By the time the scope of the possible devastation was clear, they say, more than 16 agencies were involved in helping the company and state officials try and plug the leak and confront the environmental damage.

Obama sent several Cabinet members and other top officials to the Gulf to coordinate the effort. His EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were supposed to attend Saturday's White House Correspondent's Association dinner but will stay in the gulf instead to attend to the incident.

Will it be enough?

Enough to prevent the oil spill from reaching the Gulf Coast? No. The Obama administration has some talented, competent folks, but they're not superheroes.

Enough to respond to the bizarre political coverage of this disaster? It seems to me the first four paragraphs here answer the question in the fifth."

—Steve Benen 12:45 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (4)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

[ismnotwasm]

3. I just saw a thread about that

Total disgusting bullshit. Why in God's name would anybody want to compare this to Katrina? Or President Obama to that homicidal maniac bush? Fucking gravedancers. Makes me sick. Literally.