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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Gulf Oil Spill is Barack Obama’s Katrina and Halliburton All Rolled Into One

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  May 5th, 2010 at 10:44 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

There was the delayed response. There was the worrying about the image. There was the lack of resources. No, I’m not talking about Hurricane Katrina, but the Obama Administration’s handling of the British Petroleum oil spill.

But it gets better. It is not only like Bush’s Katrina, but like Halliburton too.

Turns out Barack Obama has gotten more money from British Petroleum than any other American politician. Not just that, but BP spent $15.9 million lobbying the Democrats and Obama last year.

The result of all that money to Obama? The Obama Administration exempted British Petroleum from an environmental drilling study.

Oh, and while the oil was spreading, the Interior Department Chief of Staff was white-water rafting on the Grand Canyon as part of a “work-focused” trip.

That’s like Obama’s Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who stayed on a ski vacation post-Christmas instead of returning to deal with the panty-bomber.

These guys remain amateurs. They run a good campaign, but they can’t govern to save our lives.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    it was horribly unfair to blame everything on Bush, and guess what? it is also unfair to the Obama administration. It is not at all clear that much could have been done right away by the federal government, nor have I seen any comparison to the response times of other disasters.

    I know it might be fun to “give it like we got it” but It can also get overblown and there would be a backlash.

    There is plenty enough to blame on Obama already we don’t need our own version of Obama derangement syndrome.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    This is politics.

    Obama claimed when he won the nomination that he would alter the seas.

    Let him own it, the jerk.

  • throwback59

    games. Till somebody gets hurt. Or blown up.
    There is nothing funny about this administration’s incompetence.

  • Richard Mullins

    Just simple facts. This adminstration will use it as a reason to shut down oil exploration in the gulf. I believe that our president is going to do a Yassar Arafat on this issue. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems to be more right than usual.

  • Hugh

    his resume would not have been considered because he is not qualified for the job. He will not ever be qualified even if he serves two terms. In addition, he is not able to surround himself with anyone that is qualified either. I for one am not surprised at his lack of judgement. His lack of credible experience will keep him in trouble. That means that we are in trouble also.
    British Petroleum is a very large company but is ill equiped to respond to the magnitude of this oil spill. The only entity that was is the resources of the US Government. We can discuss woulda, shoulda, coulda from now on but the simple fact is BHO was slow to react.
    The big trouble though is our vulnerability to attack on our soil by people that want to destroy us. That is a far greater danger than the mishandled oil spill. This all because we have an unqualified person in the CEO job.

  • smitch61

    I will never forget the feeling I had watching the people being put into that silverdome like catle. I said to my husband, ” what the hell are they putting the people in there for? How in God’s name will they get them out of there? ” My husband said, I have no idea…… George Bush never put those people in that dome.. never would have, he would have gotten them the hell out of there instead of dithering and waiting until it was too late… That was when I really and truly knew beyond a reasonable doubt that the media was in fact bias and untruthful.

  • http://xmmlbchat.blogspot.com katesmith

    From environmental reviews by Obama in 2009 and BP lobbied until at least 11 days before the explosion. That information is in the WaPo report by Eilperin, which is a different one than linked above by Fahri. This is full of import for anyone, right or left. BP has been in on “green” payoffs since the beginning, now they were given a pass on environmental studies by Obama. This borders on criminal. The EPA has been given enormous power over all lives now, free reign by Obama, yet the BP event shows EPA is qualified to do nothing. The left should not be given a pass on the slightest thing, least of all a scandal like this. The right and left are not playing on level playing fields. The left has the media and Soros. The right is in no position to give the left a pass on anything.

  • grandma

    You all must know he’s doing every lousy thing on purpose. Remember his job is to dismantle the United States of America and liquidate all of our resources.

  • cabanon

    About 2,000 people died as a result of Katrina, a tremendous loss of life and while the explosion on the rig tragically killed 11 workers the resulting spill will only kill a bunch of birds and fish, hardly comparable to Katrina.

  • http://www.libertytreehugger.com reverelth

    produce useful things and pay huge taxes and employ people. When they screw up, they fix it.

    All Obama and his regime and his whiny sycophants do is bitch when they can’t have their utopia.

  • Michael Dugas

    But there are glaring differences in that Bush TRIED to assist during Katrina but was hindered by the LA Governor and Mayor Ray “Chocolate City” Nagin.
    And there’s NO WAY the MSM will attack Obama like they did Bush over any
    factual or fictional acts of incompetency.

    Lets see if any news media other than Fox points out, on TV NOT between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. only, where Obama stands on the list of BP Campaign donations or how much money BP has spent pushing Dem issues.

    Our Representatives better eb circling the wagons and gearing up for a fight because the Dems aren’t going to go down with out getting as much of their agenda crammed through as they can and we have to slow them down as much as possible so we don’t have to spend an entire cycle trying / fighting to undo the damage they have done.

  • http://www.libertytreehugger.com reverelth

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/05/04/ST2010050405322.html?sid=ST2010050405322

    seems to point to a story other than the Obama exemption of BP from the drilling study.

    There are plenty of others, though….

    FWIW

  • jaxinbotox1

    That he can found to be at fault for. The federal government is responsible for heading oil spill efforts in the gulf, Obama appointed those who should have been heading the oil spill efforts. They failed, Obama failed.

  • http://www.libertytreehugger.com reverelth

    Mary Landrieu stabbed in the back by anti-oil Senators in her own caucus.

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36832.html

    Is it too late to take her health care vote back?

  • northernva316

    Just a heads up, the link up there for Obama exempting BP from the EIA goes to a different story.

    This is the right one:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404118.html

  • http://www.redstate.com/tnjim TNJim

    on how much BP could be fined by the government might they be shooting their fund raising in the foot? After all, the more BP might have to pay the less they’ll have to spend on campaigns, including those of Democrats.

    But then again this thugocracy is more interested in image than real solutions. As for the possible loss of campaign funds from BP, I’m sure GM and Chrysler will step in to fill the gap.

  • http://thesandsinstitute.org Vassar Bushmills

    But to stack on it cynical hubris quite another. I’m happy to say we were first with breaking this aspect of this man-made environmental disaster, going back to May 1st, DAY 10.

  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    Bush was indeed responsible for the aftermath of Katrina.

    You cannot have it both ways.

  • DefendUSA

    You know education is important. The state of LA was responsible for governing the people and getting them to evacuate for Katrina. It was not the President’s job. What part of that do you not understand?

    If that is how you want to view natural disasters and unintended consequences, then it would suck to be you.

    You see, The Pied Piper must have caused the deaths that happened in the winter due to an ice storm in 2009 by your logic…and what about the flooding in Nashville? Was that not the job of the Pied piper to stop that natural disaster from killing people? Seriously, you want a Nanny state but you don’t want your Messiah held respeonsible? Get a grip on reality, boy.

  • txgho1911

    By who’s definition is this failure?
    Cannot let a good crisis go to waste.

  • DefendUSA

    The funny thing is, he knew he could not afford to make the deal happen and conveniently enough, an oil spill. Voila.

    Now they stop the intended drilling for lack of funds and Landrieu doesn’t get her bribe money.
    As the church Lady would say…”How Conveeenient!”

  • Ausonius

    There will be no jokes from Comedy Central or SNL or Letterman or anything like that about MAObama’s slow response time, the donations from BP to his campaign being their biggest political outlay, etc.

    You are quite right: don’t expect any 60 Minutes tsk-tsking or gotcha journalism to keep the current regime honest.

    Setting forth the truth today one must go AGAINST the MSM. They have no interest in reporting obvious facts detrimental to BIG BRObama.

    The traditional media is in that famous circular firing squad formation by refusing to be truly objective.

    But wait: look for news items on how wonderful BIG BRObama was in handling the crisis, once somebody else fixes the problem! :)

  • Ausonius

    There will be no jokes from Comedy Central or SNL or Letterman or anything like that about MAObama’s slow response time, the donations from BP to his campaign being their biggest political outlay, etc.

    You are quite right: don’t expect any 60 Minutes tsk-tsking or gotcha journalism to keep the current regime honest.

    Setting forth the truth today one must go AGAINST the MSM. They have no interest in reporting obvious facts detrimental to BIG BRObama.

    The traditional media is in that famous circular firing squad formation by refusing to be truly objective.

    But wait: look for news items on how wonderful BIG BRObama was in handling the crisis, once somebody else fixes the problem! :)

  • eheassler

    The abuse heaped upon Pres. Bush after Katrina was deplorable, especially the race bating and accusations that FEMA’s response was slow because of N.O.s being a predominantly black city. However, as POTUS and CIC, the buck stops with him. To his credit, he took ownership and did not demonize his criticizers unlike the current POTUS. The current POTUS is probably at this moment trying to figure out how to blame the BP oil spill on President Bush. The truth of the matter, is that this event happened on Obama’s watch and he owns it. As this event unfolded, I think that Obama and his socialist progressive friends figured it was a win-win situation for them. The Coast Guard was on site almost immediately and if the situation was resolved quickly, the administration could say they were on top of things. If the leak continued as it has, the situation could be declared a “crisis” and the administration would have one more “crisis” to exploit and a new “Big Business” to vilify. It is important to note that this administration can’t govern without having a villain to turn the public against in order to justify more massive government control and over-regulation. This president’s foreing policy and defense posture is at best incompetent. His domestic policy is ruinous and he will be deserving of being run out of office for it.

  • suzyq

    most people will never know or hear about any of this. The MSM has the administraions back, if this story gets told, it will be very little. There won’t be the pictures endlessly raging all over TV for weeks and weeks.

    Hate to be so cynical, but them’s the facts and the way it is now. It’s really scary.

  • earlgrey

    They should have evacuated New Orleans and had the abilitly to do so. To me, it was a great loss that we failed to focus on the importance of electing competent leaders for our state and local government rather than focus on the Feds.

    It was a great opportunity to educate the people that elections do in fact have consequences — even the little ones.

  • gwalt

    …why don’t we call them British Petrobama.

  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    If as jaxinbotox said, Obama is entirely to blame for the aftermath of the BP spill because of the people he appointed, then by the same reasoning Bush has to also be responsible.

    Look, I am just trying to be right here. If we say, and we all said it, that it was unfair to categorize Bush in that way, then we have to also say the same about Obama.

    It is so easy to jump up on your political opponent and try to pin the blame for everything on them, but that is no different than what the left routinely did to Bush.

    I say let’s criticize him on things we can prove. If it comes to light that someone in his cabinet said “We ought to do such and such because this is an emergency” and Obama said “No, Let’s wait” then he is open to legitimate criticism.

    I suspect that he instead, asked those who had critical knowledge of what to do for recommendations and then followed them. Maybe he had bad advice, maybe things were worse than the experts thought. But we have no evidence to the contrary right now.

  • RedBeard

    Another example of the irresponsibility of Obama’s people.

    http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/05/while-oil-slick-spread-interior-department-chief-of-staff-rafted-with-wife-in-grand-canyon-.html

    These people, whatever the crisis, seem to behave more like Alfred E. Newman than serious public servants.

    Or is is Bluto from Animal House? Serious crisis? Yeah, choose the toga party over actually attending to the job you’re supposed to be doing.

  • goferit

    I am sure the family members of those 11 who died would view your crassness as utterly devoid of compassion despite the use of phony words (not sincerely meant in my opinion) such as “tragically killed.” Considering the deaths of those 11 workers along with the damage done to southern coastlines, the environment, and the fishing industry, this disaster is ever bit as much of a tragedy as Katrina. Shame on you!

  • goferit

    Stop being such a softy. I think we can agree that BOTH Bush and Obama caved to special interests and government response inefficicies. However, since Obama is the current President, it is HE who should be admonished and severely. Say, when are Obama and the Democrats going to give back the BP campaign and lobbying money or apply it to our outrageous national debt? Same could be said for any other politician who accepted money from BP which allowed this company to skirt normal government regulations, cut corners, and put our nation at risk. Somehow you don’t seem to fully appreciate the fact that the gulf oil accident will damage our environment and economy for years to come.

  • cabanon

    of the rig operators and so are the deaths of the workers, I don’t see how it could be otherwise. The resulting spill and the response is something that is open to discussion. During Katrina, some of those deaths were the result of people dying of thirst because the response was either slow or disorganized, some of that is local government and some of that is federal government’s fault. Bush declared a state of emergency even before the hurricane made landfall so I don’t think he was slow to act but there were a lot of other agencies that needed to follow suit and probably didn’t. This however is not comparable to Katrina.

  • rightwingmom52

    claimed they’d do things differently. Everything was going to be transparent and quick response and Kum Bah Yah, etc.. So much for keeping his promises.

  • cabanon

    Local government is responsible first, if it fails or is overwhelmed than state and if they fail or are overwhelmed then federal. Federal doesn’t need to jump in immediately for every little thing.

  • Scope

    this isn’t even about being a softy or squishy hearted, it is dangerous when any Republican starts pointing the fingers at other Republicans because they call a spade a spade. If you don’t have information for response time to other disasters, then why are you so willing to give Obama a pass. To this day Obama keeps the name Bush rolling around in his mouth until the moment he can spit it out with attacks. Bush has been blamed for things he never did or said. Are you just as willing to give Obama a pass on the daily lies that come out of his mouth? Are you willing to go easy on Obama because he is destroying the country, and every American institution? Are you willing to forgive Obama for creating high unemployment and then keeping it there.

    Didn’t Obama traipse across the globe, during his campaign, telling all that would listen that he would walk on water, or part the seas? I guess that’s another campaign promise he reneged on.

    Tyrants, Dictators and Marxists should never be given the benefit of the doubt, or a pass on anything. It is delusional to think otherwise.

  • Scope

    You’ve been on the wrong side of the issue once again.

    You’ve defended DC voting rights and representation, you’ve defended the EPA’s endangerment finding, you’ve attacked Rubio, you’ve questioned the necropsy findings of the sea turtles, and now you are ready to defend Obama with his slow response to the oil spill, and agree that it isn’t any Katrina.

    Does anyone else here see this persons posting pattern, and not believe cabanon to be a troll?

  • blooch

    and so was the rig. Who has jurisdiction over that part of the ocean, cabanon? Who could have mitigated the disaster before it reached other jurisdictions? I could go on asking questions *I* know the answer to, but I tire of these teachable moments. If you’re lucky, Vladimir will set you straight soon.

    I swear Scope, flyerhawk got another IP or something. At least this guy is not as long-winded.

  • Scope

    fools opening their mouths and removing all doubt of their government education.

  • blooch

    and he keeps grabbing them bare-handed.

  • Scope

    the stench of burning flesh wafting up from the basement about now.

  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    I warn against excess and you want to go full attack mode, I complain about Republicans who are not really conservative and you attack me for not being a yes man.

    Well guess what? I am not going to change, I will continue to point out defects in our own arguments, and people who are only giving lip service to conservatism.

    Unlike you I see no advantage whatsoever in extremism. Extreme or hateful rhetoric only makes us like the Democrats and wins us no converts.

    Like I said before, there is plenty to attack Obama for that we have proof and evidence, we don’t have to make crap up.

  • cabanon

    So please tell me who was responsible for New Orleans during Katrina.

  • cabanon

    I haven’t defended the EPA. I haven’t attacked Rubio. And I never questioned the necropsy findings on sea turtles and I’m not defending Obama on anything.

    You are making baseless claims, try backing them with some facts for once.

  • earlgrey

    It has bothered me a lot that we did not use that issue to remind Americans that our state and local officials/elections are important too.

    First they shape debate, and policy. Electing the right local leaders allows for more discussion of issues that are important to conservatives (a bully pulpit of sorts). Secondly, these people go on to lead us in state and national offices. However, the most important lesson to learn from Katrina is that you need to have competent people in charge in issues of natural or “man-made” disasters :) .

    Who would you rather have leading your city in time of crisis Rudy or Ray Nagin?

  • Common_Cents

    Who thinks BP or any other driller WANTS to drill in over a mile deep of water? It’s expensive and risky.

    But govt and NIMBY’s rope off much of the sites on land and in shallower waters where is it MUCH SAFER and if something happens MUCH EASIER to fix.

  • Leopard1996

    You hit the nail on the head. Too many gov’t rules either set up people to fail most times or set up programs that can be collapsed by a Cloward-Piven strategy.

  • Common_Cents

    A win for big govt.

    Same goes for big tobacco. Big Govt demonizes big tobacco to extract more protection money.

    and for big health care

    and big autos

    and big banks

    and big internet

    what’s left?