"Obama's Katrina"

So speaks Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, with regards to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

I must take exception with Mr. Rove for this pronouncement, if only because being a political operative, it's his job to paint the opposition in the most negative light he can, and let's face it -- it doesn't get any more negative than evoking the nightmare visions of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Rove, if given the opportunity and the confluence of different circumstances, might as well have made the point that this spill is "Obama's Holocaust" or "Obama's 9/11", if he could get away with it.

What Rove, and many on the political right seem to overlook is that Katrina, and the government response to it, doesn't lend itself to the same sort of political pretzel logic that this oil spill does. To begin with, this isn't a natural disaster; it's a man-made accident (or as Man-et Napolitano likes to say, "Man Caused Disaster"). Katrina was unavoidable, beyond the ability of man to predict and control. This spill probably was, or at least might have, been less-likely had major mistakes not been made. I say this with the full admission that I am not an expert on the oil industry and off-shore drilling, but from what's been reported thus far, there's a lot of "fell-asleep-at-the-switch" crap out there to give one this general impression.

Secondly, what Rove and the political right fail to recognize is that, unlike Katrina, there are no images of African-Americans too stupid to get out of the path of a hurricane they knew was coming, and watched on television as it crossed the Atlantic for two weeks -- before it finally made landfall. There are no heartbreaking images of children slogging through waist-deep sewage, no reports of gang warfare in the streets, no elderly folks left to die in abandoned nursing homes. There are no "victims" for Chris Matthews, Geraldo Rivera and Katie Couric to sermonize upon and to club a Republican President over the head with. The "outrage" is mostly coming from the predictable precincts: the environMENTAL fringe, James Carville, and the Gulf Tourism Industry, aided by Bobby Jindal (governor of Louisiana) and Mary Landrieu (Senator) who see it as an opportunity for even more federal funding to their state.

(As if FEMA air-dropping Krugerands in buckets into Louisiana post-Katrina -- there's a reason why New Orleans is 30' below sea-level and sinking ever-deeper, you know -- and Landrieu's $300 million Health-Care bribe wasn't enough? Look, you need to clean up that spill for obvious reasons, but dammit, when does the Federal Spigot get shut off?).

I defy any government, no matter how efficient, to deal with these sorts of issues, whether a Katrina-like storm, or a massive oil spill 5,000 feet under water. The problem for GWB post-Katrina is that the "victims" were mostly part of a supposedly-oppressed class which was reflexively trained to believe that "The Government" is supposed to "do something", and upon the discovery that "The Government" (starting with the Mayor of New Orleans and Governor of Louisiana) was unequal to the task, and when the Victim Class found itself stripped of even the simple self-preservation instinct, their resulting plight was that much easier to attribute to a lack of leadership and outright racism. Obama, personally, will not be tarred by this brush in the way that George W. Bush was; he will largely skate -- aided and abetted by the media which has an emotional and ideological investment in the man -- on the worst of the Katrina comparisons.

Where Obama will have problems with this situation is in some aspects of the federal response, such as it has been, and most of those will disappear as soon as a few heads roll. Obama is very good at deflecting criticism by throwing his friends under the bus, you'll remember. As for what that Federal Response has been, and why it's been so dismal, I postulate the following:

1) In this, as in most things, Obama is simply in over his head. Then again, when you present yourself as the Messiah, making such grand pronouncements as "This is the Moment When Global Warming Ends" and "this is the Moment When The Oceans Cease to Rise", well, you get what you deserve. I never expected Obama to part the waters -- or in this case just separate the oil from the water -- because I never had the sort of investment in the Cult of Personality that most Lefties do.

To be fair, it's difficult to expect Obama himself to have the answers to every problem, but you would think that he would at least have access to the best-and-brightest with the expertise to advise him in these situations. It's becoming clear that his best advisers are probably also infected with the same ideological stupidity as their leader; the initial response has been to find a way to make certain everyone knows BP is responsible, especially financially, and then reignite the dormant debate on the need for Green Energy programs. Some have said this has been the goal all along; that the government was going to do it's least so as to further justify the Green Boondoggle.

There's many reports of Obama and BP campaign cash, and the federal regulatory agencies involved with the oil industry being stuffed with to the rafters with porn-surfing, drug-taking, ticket-punchers who want an oil industry gig after their government "service" is ended. This is the modus operandi of every federal regulatory agency, by the way, and it's something that needs to stop. And I thought Obama was against giving Big Business the ability to sway elections and policies with huge campaign contributions? After all, he did call out the Supreme Court on just this notion. If so, how did BP's cash wind up in his wallet? Corruption -- all the way down the line, but mostly within government -- seems to be the common thread that runs through most major disasters (Oil Spills, Financial Crisis, etc.), nowadays.

2) The Greenie Meanies in the Administration may have disrupted or interfered with initial spill responses because of competing environMENTAL agendas; The initial NOAA-approved plan for a controlled burn may have been halted because the EPA was concerned about elevated air pollution levels, or the effect on fisheries. The ability to build sand berms to keep the oil from reaching shore are hung up in EPA red tape over impact statements. In no small part, certain aspects of this disaster are a direct result of The Greenie Meanies and their dumbass Global Warming Cult; they have advocated for tougher regulations for decades (which apparently aren't enforced by the masturbating junkies in government "service", or which can be side-stepped with a campaign contribution), which has pushed the oil industry to drill in ever-deeper waters, further from the coast (because we don't wish to inconvenience caribou, or a few dozen Eskimos, or ruin some summer-vacationers ocean view), so that when disaster strikes, the conditions under which present-day off-shore drilling is conducted make it impossible to swiftly respond.

If you think an oil spill is already hard enough to contain and clean up on dry land or enclosed waters, try containing one 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. BP may be in deep shit, as it were, but it was the Tree Huggers, in part, who forced them into deeper water, into taking greater risks, and into pushing the boundaries of modern engineering to this extent. The Green Assholes will never admit their complicity in this disaster, but to them responsibility is always something for other people to exercise and accept, isn't it? This spill is (almost) a direct result of paying Tree-Hugging Retards far too much attention, and exempting government from the same levels of accountability that hold sway in the Private Sector.

Some have gone as far as to say that the Federal Government has conspired NOT to act, so that the Oil Industry can be demonized in much the same way as Wall Street was.

As I write this, President Odickhead is back on television -- and the first words out his mouth are "The Government has been in charge since Day One" and "BP is responsible for this mess". He's already saying that off-shore exploration is being halted, and is setting the case for further government intervention in the industry. The last 37 days belie the "Day One-assertion" made by the Obama Administration, and the rest of this speech is simply the setting-up of the legal framework which will explode into the rationales behind a further restriction of freedoms and commerce. New regulations, Blue-Ribbon Panels and government organizations are on the way -- because this is the solution to every problem on Earth, you know -- which will raise energy prices and hurt an already-anemic economy. These but make Lefties feel better about themselves but will do nothing about reducing American dependence on foreign oil, or meet the energy needs of the country. We're about to further destroy economic progress for the sake of a few thousand windmills that won't work (and which the Greenie Meanies will cry to shut off because they kill birds in the thousands).

You know, none of this would have happened if they were just drilling in ANWAR, already.

Our country is being micromanaged by complete and utter retards who haven't got a clue. On anything. Worse, they are being directed by even bigger retards with agendas. If this disaster hasn't driven that home to you, I don't know what will --short of another 9/11.