Obama and HIS Oil Spill

Obama has an environmental and political disaster on his hands.

At the moment, he seems to be in denial.

The Obama administration's inexcusably slow response to the oil pouring out of British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil rig into the Gulf of Mexico reminds me of the sloppy way it responded to the Christmas Day Flight 253 bombing attempt by TERRORIST Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

It was no big deal. Everything was under control. No reason for Obama to interrupt his vacation and make a statement about an ATTEMPTED BOMBING OF A U.S. FLIGHT.

It seems that Obama tends to ignore crises until he starts being criticized for his inadequate response. Maybe it's the community organizer in him. He has his radical Leftist agenda and he doesn't want to be bothered with things that aren't on his to-do list.

He needs to learn that he doesn't have that luxury.

I expect the inexperienced and unqualified Obama to screw up like this. And I also expect the Leftists, the hypocritical, deranged Bush critics, to continue to give Obama a pass.

Obama has displayed a disturbing pattern of failing to act in a timely and decisive fashion when a crisis occurs.

From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama said no new offshore drilling leases will be issued until a “thorough review” of the BP Plc oil-well spill in the Gulf of Mexico determines whether more safety systems are needed.

Obama directed Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to report in 30 days on whether more steps are needed to prevent another leak like the one that began with an April 20 explosion and fire on a drilling rig off the Louisiana coast.

“We’re going to make sure that any leases going forward have those safeguards,” Obama said at the White House yesterday.

The administration also stepped up pressure on BP, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calling for the company, which is responsible under law for the response and the cost, to deploy more resources to fight the spill.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said the accident will have “huge ramifications” for offshore energy exploration around the world.

Oil has been gushing from the damaged well at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day and it may rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst-ever U.S. oil spill. The leak has complicated Obama’s plans to allow more oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and off portions of the East Coast as some Democratic lawmakers call for the administration to reverse course.

It's as if Obama is viewing the crisis from afar, detached. He's quick to blame and make demands; but he remains aloof, declaring that this environmental disaster is BP's responsibility.

Obama shouldn't be focusing on a "thorough review" or safeguards. That should come later. All his efforts should be directed toward dealing with the environmental crisis at hand.

He has to address the growing disaster rather than diddling.

The lib media's response to the crisis is predictable.

They aren't blaming Obama at all.

From the New York Times:

As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast and fears continued to grow that the leak from a seabed oil well could spiral out of control, officials in the Obama administration publicly chastised BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP.

The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.

The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful.

By Friday afternoon, she said, the Defense Department had agreed to send two large military transport planes to spray chemicals that can disperse the oil while it is still in the Gulf.

Officials initially seemed to underestimate the threat of a leak, just as BP did last year when it told the government such an event was highly unlikely. Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, the chief Coast Guard official in charge of the response, said on April 22, after the rig sank, that the oil that was on the surface appeared to be merely residual oil from the fire, though she said it was unclear what was going on underwater. The day after, officials said that it appeared the well’s blowout preventer had kicked in and that there did not seem to be any oil leaking from the well, though they cautioned it was not a guarantee.

In the entire article, the word "Obama" appears only once. And even in that case, it's used to refer to the Obama administration, not Obama himself.

In another New York Times article, the argument is made that there is no comparison between this crisis and Katrina.

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.

Sorry, libs.

That won't cut it.

Of course, the massive oil spill isn't a hurricane. No kidding.

That's not the issue. The issue is Obama's way of handling a crisis.

How does he do it?

He blames others. That's not a solution to the problem.

This is yet another misstep by Obama.

This is obvious, but I'll say it anyway: If this happened on George Bush's watch, it would be an entirely different matter. It would be Bush's fault.