More on (Moron) the Oil Spill...

Eric Bohlert of MMFA had a great piece today, comparing today's coverage of Obama in the Gulf spill, to the coverage of President Bush ('41) following the Exxon Valdez spill.  I'd like to vent a little more about that.

I’m getting a little bit tired of the criticism being leveled at Obama over this spill. Not because I think he’s been perfect, or because I think he above criticism, but because the criticism has largely been completely lacking in any substance at all. More and more, for both sides, I’m hearing pundits whine about the tone he’s taking, the priority he’s giving it, whether or not he should have called for prayer… basically BULLSHIT. Not one person, that I’ve heard, has come out and said, “He should have done [this]” or “He should be DOING [this].” Well, there’s one: Gov. Bobby Jindal and his damned sand burms. But in that case the Army Corps of Engineers deemed the plan to be an ineffective waste of a scarce resource they’d need to deal with the disaster later on. Now… I had no idea that SAND was so fucking precious, but I’m not about to argue with the Army Corps of Engineers, and Governor Jindal is certainly in no position to. (The day I start asking lawmakers for engineering judgments, I’ll start asking engineers for legal advice!)


And don’t get me wrong: Chris Mathews and Keith Olbermann and both entitled to their opinions and are paid to give them. If nothing else, their comments show that MSNBC is hardly just the liberal version of Fox. Remember: They were willing to criticize the President here, just as they were willing to criticize the Democrats during the health care debate. Despite their unwillingness to adopt the Right’s love of the far Right and blind hatred of Obama and the Democrats, they’ve shown themselves to be more objective politically than Fox has ever done.

But I’m still sick of this “His TONE wasn’t stern enough.” WTF?! Is there some tone of voice he can use to plug the hole? Do really think that him ranting and raving (and threatening?!) like a lunatic would somehow “motivate” BP to get its act together? That’s nonsense! BP is TRYING. It’s not that I like BP, right now I hate them, but there’s no doubt in my mind that THEY’RE DOING ALL THEY CAN at this point! Yes: Obviously they could have done more last month, last year, 5 years ago and 10 years ago. But they’re not sitting on some magic cure all at the moment! They simply do not have the technology to deal with this, because it DOESN’T EXSIST. They’re already running around, Apollo-13 style, trying to make the cap for [this] fit onto the pipe for [that] using [this stuff.] They’re not going to make up for 30 years of the industry’s use of inadequate technology in a week just because Obama found the right tone. And his tone is all they got, because there is nothing more, that I’m aware, that Obama can actually DO here. The coast guard was mobilized on day one. The National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers has been involved from day 1. If there’s something OBAMA is supposed to be doing, WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?! (And if you say “sand burms” I’m going to punch you, and the refer you to an earlier piece I wrote, with a lot of capitalized expletives in it.)

But they HAVE to make this BAD for Obama. The oil lobby cannot afford for this to be “Obama’s 9/11” (for energy policy) so it’s got to be “Obama’s Katrina.” And they’ll find any way to MAKE IT that. Yeah… I’m finding the analogies to be getting a bit moronic as well. You know what this is? It’s Obama’s GULF OIL SPILL. That’s it. It’s not 9/11 (sorry, Mr. president) it’s not Katrina (sorry pundits) and most ironically of all, consider the source, it’s certainly not “Obama’s Iran Hostage Crisis.”

That last one came from Rush Limbaugh, IIRC, presumably because constantly calling it “Obama’s Katrina” keeps reminding people of BUSH’s Katrina. So… better to find a Democrat’s debacle to compare it to. I think it’s telling that they had to go back over THIRTY YEARS to FIND one, but even so they couldn’t have picked a worse example. Because the LAST THING the pro-oil conservatives really want here would be for a well respected newscaster, today’s “Walter Kronkite” (though I’m not really sure who that would even BE) to be counting the days, and reminding people, on a nightly basis, what a huge disaster this is. Not that is would make much of a difference, I think most people have a pretty shrewd idea anyway, but “today marks the umpti-fifth day since the oil started flowing into the Gulf” would NOT help their cause any.

I’ll judge Obama’s "performance" on this based on the legislation that comes out of it. If he can get up to start to leave the path were on, and start to embrace clean energy and sustainable behavior? Then he’ll get top marks from me, regardless of the tone he uses.