Oil spill crisis? Just an opportunity for O to stop drilling 'n' stuff

Pix from Australian news site

Some comments from 30-Apr-2010 lead me to think the Obumbles regime thought this week's Gulf 'oil spill crisis' was merely a great opportunity to promote their alternative 'green' energy & bulls**t technology... like wind farms!

Per law, Federal Government was SUPPOSED to ACT and help OVERSEE CLEANUPS in any large oil spill. Did they act right away? It appears they DIDN'T.

From PowerLine: "Is it Obama's fault?"

"The Obama administration failed to respond promptly to the oil spill in the Gulf, and that its belated response was inadequate.

Is that a fair charge? Normally, I would be slow to blame government at any level for a natural (or, as here, man-made) disaster. But the basic facts are curious: the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 21, nine days ago. This was no minor event; at least 11 workers were killed. The resulting oil slick has been evident, covering many miles, for some days now. Yet the federal response lagged.

There is a basic difference between this incident and Hurricane Katrina, to which it is being compared. In the case of Katrina, the primary responsibility for disaster response lay with the local and state governments. The local response was very poor; among other things, the governor of Louisiana was slow to call out the National Guard. Here, responsibility lay with the Obama administration from the beginning. State and local governments have no jurisdiction and no ability to deal with an oil spill miles out to sea. Only the federal government can act. It didn't, until, perhaps, it was too late.

Should more have been done, sooner? It is way too early to tell. The facts will emerge over the next several years. But the Obama administration's response does seem to have been oddly slow."

From the New York Times 30-Apr-10 "BP Is Criticized Over Oil Spill, but U.S. Missed Chances to Act":

"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. 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 Ms. 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.

HERE'S THE KICKER:

...But it is still the government, in this case the Coast Guard, that has the final say. A law passed a year after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster makes the owner of a rig or vessel responsible for cleaning up a spill. But oversight of the cleanup is designated to the Coast Guard, with advice from other federal agencies."

From Rush Limbaugh "Obama Pays Oil Slick Lip Service; He's Interested in His Agenda, Not His Job":

"What a teachable moment! Obama had a press conference today, the original purpose of the press conference -- not a press conference, he had a ceremony outside the Oval Office in the Rose Garden -- and the purpose of it was to tout a nonexisting economic growth rate. The actual growth rate's about 1.6%. I'll explain how that happens in mere moments. But something got in the way of this. That damn oil slick. Obama's Katrina. That damn oil slick just got in the way so he had to give some lip service to the oil slick, (imitating Obama) "It's all British Petroleum's fault, they gotta clean it up, I'm sending some czars down there. Now let me tell you what I really came out here for," and look at these people, and he had seven or eight props up there disguised as human beings to tout new jobs in the so-called clean energy sector and so forth.

It is clear this guy does not really want to be president. He doesn't want to deal with the country's problems. He does not have any desire to manage. He can't be bothered with the responsibilities of his office. He simply is wanting and is imposing his ideology without distraction. He wants to make sure that he gets this transformation of the country done. That's what he's doing. He's getting even with his country for all of its transgressions in the past. So we got an oil slick, added benefit, now he can cancel offshore drilling. It's an amazing thing to watch. The amount of time he spent on the oil slick today versus the amount of time he spent on those props disguised as human beings and their jobs was fascinating. So there you have it."