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The so-called liberal mainstream media is a funny bunch; ridiculed so frequently by the right, they bend over backwards in pursuit of false equivalence. Enter the B.P. Spill. The “Obama’s Katrina” theme did not have a long shelf life in the liberal mainstream, but the coverage maintains all of the same tones, asides, and recriminations that Katrina coverage created for Bush. And this friends, is completely ridiculous.
Let’s put this in context again; Katrina (and her full potential scope) was forecast some 10 days prior to the event. Competent management by the Presidential appointee in charge of FEMA, should have begun preliminary assessments and identification of the assets needed for a worst case scenario. Katrina (and her full probable scope) was predicted 72 hours prior to landfall. At this point, knowing that the Gulf Coast between Eastern Texas and Pensacola were going to be hammered, competent management by the Presidential appointee in charge of FEMA, should have begun assigning assets to teams, and begun the assembly of relief equipment and supplies at transshipment centers in range of the likely disaster areas. Katrina (and her actual scope within order of magnitude) were known by everyone watching the Weather Channel 24 hours prior to landfall. Competent management by the Presidential appointee in charge of FEMA would have the full mobilization of all assets, and reports to the President for mobilization of Guard units and other National Security assets should have been sent.
None of this happened.
When the Deepwater Horizon blew up on April 20, the fears were in regards to the 700,000 gallons of diesel on-board. Two days later, the world still thought that the wellhead was secure. Later, B.P. refused for several weeks the release of video monitoring the wellhead. Even so, assets of the U.S. government were on scene the day of the disaster. Their primary mission was the lives of the workers, with the secondary mission being the security of the environment. But this isn’t what the “liberal mainstream” is telling us. Obama, we are told, is ambivalent to the disaster. The President, we are informed, is refusing the help of foreign nations. He is every bit the elitist professor that we were warned about in the election. The story linked here, is a good example of the kind of libelous bullshit the media has been reporting. Read it carefully; under a headline and bullet describing Obama’s refusal of aid, and well past further descriptions of Obama’s refusal of aid, we find that OBAMA DID NOT REFUSE AID. The ability of some conservatives, and ALL conservative media outlets to lie is amazing to me. But, unfortunately, only slightly less amazing than the ability of the “liberal mainstream” to go with the theme. How hard is it for someone in the media to do this:
Should these two clauses be in the same story?
First paragraph;
Four weeks after the nation’s worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.
Later;
In the past week, the United States submitted its second request to the European Union for any specialized equipment to contain the oil now seeping onto the Gulf of Mexico’s marshes and beaches…In late May, the administration accepted Mexico’s offer of two skimmers and 13,779 feet of boom; a Dutch offer of three sets of Koseq sweeping arms, which attach to the sides of ships and gather oil; and eight skimming systems offered by Norway
Its all part of the same disingenuous line of thinking that has dominated the last few years in U.S. politics. The President has not been perfect, and some of his tactics are a mystery to me, but most of the headlines scream about stories with no basis in fact. And now we have a real disconnect between those who criticize the President, and the critics’ own motives. I have no problem with liberals who choose to complain about the President’s inability to fix the regulatory regime in his first 18 months. I think it is unrealistic and naive, but there is an integrity to the complaint that can’t be denied. Liberals, after all, WANT the government of we the people, to intervene in the marketplace. Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t want Big Brother in their business.
Conservatives need to shut their friggin mouths!
This disaster is the result of conservative philosophy. “Stay out of the market!” they screamed; for years. They fight regulations (at the federal level at least; conservatives love, as a rule, regulations at the state and local level), and when they can’t beat the regulations, they make sure the rules have no teeth. How many fines did Massey Energy either stall on appeal or pay out of petty cash? How many regulations did SEC and Fed regulators let slide leading into the collapse of the housing bubble? How much porn were regulators watching instead of inspecting the work done on Deepwater Horizon? No, I refuse to accept the bullshit that conservative talking heads are tongue-shoveling these days. Enough is enough!
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Michael Chase publiishes The Rational Middle
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Very well written. Kudos to you!
You keep confusing the issues, check all sources. Obama has been asking help since day to stop the oils pill, with no avail, but he has refused 13 countries for assisting in the cleanup (Mexico, the only one accepted to aid IN the CLEAN uP. Since nobody knows how to stop the OFF SHORE drilling, an impositions by extreme extreme libs.
After 58 days of spill, 13 countries offering help, after not knowing what to do with the Jones Act (pls ask Bush and lower the ego trip; He did it and worked during Katrina whose first response was to come from the state) and pressure from all around the world, he keeps the blame game going, this time to BP, and believes that by imposing a fine, he can fix this immense disaster, which happened in his watch.
Grow up all fools who do not check sources.
Forgive me, but that last post is incoherent. I really would like to understand what you are saying. Would you mind sleeping on it and then giving it another try? I think you may have some interesting perspective.
It’s hard to assess your comment, whoever you are, as you have a demonstrated inability to express your views with the written word. Perhaps you should consider that fact, before labeling a group “fools”. And since you write like a grade-school child with poor marks, you might steer clear of telling others to “grow up”.
Literacy aside, I cited a source in the article. In fact, the source I cited, in the article, was one hostile to the President. That source confirms what exists in the public record; the Obama Administration accepted help from foreign countries very early in the process. They continue to accept help to this day.
President Obama is asking (and pressuring) B.P. to set up an escrow account to allow for the timely repayment of damages caused by that company. Typically, such funds are delayed for years while cases work their way through appellate courts. The fines, incidentally, that B.P., Halliburton, and Transocean will have to pay are assessed per code, not by the President.
This disaster did not happen on Obama’s “watch”; it was a disaster caused by rampant corporate negligence. These companies have fought government involvement for years. Now…go get a dictionary and look up all of the longer words, so you can be sure to understand what I wrote before responding.
You wouldn’t want to look any more ignorant than you already do…trust me.
Well said, Michael! I too believe that one should do the homework before spouting off incoherent words! I just pray for all those affected by this man-made disaster and I hope that the money comes quickly from BP, etc. to help those left destitute of a living.
I believe libel is a very strong word which requires extensive proof. Only a court of justice should determine or adjudicate it.
Adjudicating conservative information as “libelous” is the main point in your article. It tells us, the reader, not to believe everything we read or said.
I presume then, this two articles are in the “libelous bullshit” reporting?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012118082_oilforeign15.html
http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/news-0614101.html
Do these articles mentions some of the information you deem as libelous?
I am sending this two articles since the link the article you deem as libelous in its nature takes you to a Faulty link or page not found .
Since I could only read your 2 paragraph cite, only a “snippit” of something I can’t read completely, I took the liberty of searching for articles with the approach or information I think you deem as false.
This gulf spill, has not been one of Obama’s most expeditious endeavor nor his most transparent effort his 18 months admin.
His speech,or at least half of it, was spent on explaining generalities, no details.
Never would he mentioned the Jones Act gaffe, which maybe could have been the major factor to the wasted time in accepting some that help.
“This disaster did not happen on Obama’s “watch”.” So Katrina did not happen on Bush’s Watch?. Both are responsible. this is not the “Twilight Zone”.
I have no contentions anybody telling me about my defective grammar. English is not my vernacular language, and I accept my ideas were hastily written for I was pressed on time. Yet I thought it strange,that you dedicated so much time in whipping “ignorance”. Usually, the reader, or the writer lets go and doesn’t waste time on words of no value (less poorly written) unless there is another issue involved.
You can tag anybody as ignorant, and write an extensive proof of your correctness , but your subjective approach on your article with hardly no outside sources, and a faulty link, makes your article “in pari passu” to my grammar.
If, in your comment, you had not chosen to call me (and others) fools and told us to grow up, I would not have responded. I don’t make it a habit to allow personal attacks to pass. I made it clear that the response to Katrina DID happen on Bush’s watch (the Hurricane was not his fault); a fact which stands in contrast to the oil spill (an oil spill is not a natural disaster). The federal government has been pushed out of these operations. Would you, after sending the security guard home, call him the next morning to complain about your home being robbed?
The notion is ridiculous. So onward we go. Libel must be accused, gentle reader, before it can be “adjudicated”. The Seattle Times article claimed that the Obama Administration had refused help; it also stated that the Administration RECEIVED help…in the next paragraph! Perhaps libel is the wrong word; a better description would involve a series of descriptive adjectives aimed at a pair of second-rate journalists. They, my friend, are not the point of this narrative.
The point is this whole exercise of attacking the President for the actions of private businesses, then attacking the President for not quickly correcting the actions of private businesses.
Now…your knowledge of the Jones Act (its actually called The Merchant Marine Act of 1920) is commendable, but (and I say this with the greatest respect) misguided. The Act is a 90 year old piece of legislation whose only relevance is to the clean-up efforts; efforts ruled largely academic by the simple fact that the well is still flowing. A newspaper in Belgium has reported that European ships could reduce the end clean-up by several months, but foreign-flagged ships could not normally operate in U.S. coastal waters. While I don’t normally stand on the science of Flemish newspapers, I will go with this for the sake of argument.
There are any number of administrative solutions to the issue of foreign flagged vessels that can be effected long before it becomes a real problem. There is precedent, at any rate, for re-flagging vessels temporarily (as in Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf) It is not immediately clear to me how a law passed 43 years before Obama was born, and relevant only to a final clean-up which can’t happen yet, can be called a “gaffe”. But labeling is, apparently, everything to some people.
I really do apologize for confusing a language barrier for ignorance; but you could avoid the issue by not telling the writer of a column and his readers to “grow up fools”. I stopped attending mass some years ago, and do not, I am afraid, turn the other cheek.
Michael, as always, your writing is polished, thoughtful, well-researched and to the point! I would also add that some ships from foreign nations did not need to be “re-flagged”. Obama has accepted ships from Mexico, Norway, and several other places. Another tanker is heading there from the North Sea.
What I also don’t understand is how much people don’t understand the current timeline of events. Obama went to the Gulf on the very first day of the spill, has been back there repeatedly and the Coast Guard was on sight in the very first hours! There are over 30,000 people from government assignment currently operating in the Gulf. A Nobel Prize winning Physicist is at the helm (Stephen Chu) along with Thad Allen, a man with over 40 years experience at fighting against and handling disasters at sea with the Coast Guard and a former Federal Prosecutor and Inspector General at the helm of the investigation of what went wrong and how to make sure it never happens again. BP and the government are being careful of the number of civilians allowed to help in the immediate area of the Gulf, not because they just don’t want their help, but rather, because there was too much risk of illness and death and long term injury and disease to be contracted from exposure to those elements. As it is, the “first responders” did not have proper safety gear or hazmat suits at first because it was not realized just how strong the toxicity was until a few hours into the spill. Then it was realized that there were not enough hazmat suits for every person that might want to serve in the most affected zones. This was brought home for me when Rachel Maddow came down sick just from a day or two in the area during her reporting. She suffered nausea, headaches, vision disturbances, dizziness, light-headedness, etc. just from walking along the shore and being out on a boat in the area.
This spill does need to have as quick a clean up as possible, but not at the risk of killing a lot more clean up crews from hasty and poorly planned rushes into the toxic zones. Let’s do this smarter not harder. The government is doing an admirable job considering the limitations of law, safety, and the foolishness of BP! Pres. Obama needs our prayers for him to receive wisdom from on high and for all those working in the area to have all the knowledge they need, the resources to do the job and, most of all the support and compassion of the American people for all those citizens affected by this disaster.
Things are not perfect but, once again, Pres. Barack Obama is giving service almost above and beyond considering that this man took office with our country in the worst shape of it’s long history since 1933 and the Great Depression! A crashing economy (Wall Street), death threats to himself 5 x the normal level for presidents, foreclosures and housing problems, horrible job losses, 2 wars both costing trillions of dollars badly needed at home, attempted terrorist attacks on our home soil, trade imbalances, states nearing bankruptcy, and world and domestic confidence in our country at an all time low.
In just 18 months, Obama has slowed the job losses considerably, stimulated the economy and created and saved jobs all over the country, passed historic health care legislation affecting 40 million people, has started the process of ending DADT, has pushed for immigration reform, clean energy, rounding up of nuclear materials, restored our dignity and reputation in the world and now is taking on the disaster made by others that was aided and abetted by the legacies of Bush and is making headway already and will not stop until it is fixed! Wow! How much more do you expect from a President in just 18 months? Want him to wear a red cape and put an S on his shirt??
Everyone stop the complaining and start saying thank you for a Herculean task done with almost no gratitude given to him by anyone! All this with no Republican support, constant threats of filibuster by them, and even his own base doesn’t think he’s perfect enough! Give me a break! It’s amazing if we even give the guy a chance to eat breakfast, hug his kids, kiss his wife and pet his dog at least once a day! He’s only human but he is light years better than what we have had in many a year! He is intelligent and trying his hardest to do what he can under these trying circumstances.
Let’s do more to be supportive Americans and let’s all pitch in and do what we can to be better citizens ….like let’s vote with more than 25% of the population! Let’s raise test scores, clean up neighborhoods, teach our children to read and write, practice the Golden Rule. Let’s grow up and get busy doing our own side of the fence! We might not have so much time to complain!
With all respect, anybody who does not check the sources or facts that lead to a subjective analysis, precisely on the facts, is a fool, for reading something unsubstantiated.
I don’t ponder on the journalist responsibility, which is totally different from the readers view, for it falls on the legal field, I am just a reader.
The term I used is a mild term compared to all the “verbal whipping” that you posted, not on my post, but on the original blog, on conservatives and even some liberals writers who believe that imposing fines is not the aim nor the best alternative to this disaster but a TRUE and expedited coordination between BP and Feds.
Thank you for your explanation about the Jones Act. What you explained, coincides with what I have already known though other posts, Wikipedia, etc. You too should know that The Constitution is the oldest “legal document” for us Americans, yet it dos not disqualify her because of “old age”.
You responded;”It is not immediately clear to me how a law passed 43 years before Obama was born, and relevant only to a final clean-up which can’t happen yet, can be called a “gaffe”. But labeling is, apparently, everything to some people.”
If you refer to my statement as Obama’s gaffe, I was referring to Obama’s Administration gaffe.
By it’s definition, the emergency in a disaster starts immediate to the explosion and/ or the knowledge of the spill. The Jones Act was the obstacle for all of the vessels from foreign countries,present and future cleanup. The administration did not know or forgot there was an earlier precedent so the cleanup vessels were authorized 1 month later.
Also, since, we, the readers, did not have the benefit of reading the entire article you deemed as second rate article, and compare information with other posts, could you be so kind as to send us the correct link for comparison?
“With all respect”….Who are you really, Ricky Bobby? Saying, with all respect does not minimize the effect of calling someone a fool. That you repeatedly call me a fool because you have decided that I don’t check sources is ridiculous, tiresome, and incorrect.
“If you refer to my statement as Obama’s gaffe, I was referring to Obama’s Administration gaffe.”
The above quote demonstrates what the readers and publisher of this blog recognize as the “new conservative wisdom”. If you are wrong, just keep rephrasing until enough people think you are right. The Merchant Marine Act was passed in 1920, and has not precluded any relevant activities in the Gulf. How is it a gaffe of the Administration? Do you, and please don’t take this the wrong way, know what the word “gaffe” means?
“What you explained, coincides with what I have already known though other posts, Wikipedia, etc. You too should know that The Constitution is the oldest “legal document” for us Americans, yet it dos not disqualify her because of “old age”.”
It took me a while to figure this monstrosity of a paragraph out. I think I am there now. First, a note on research; Wikipedia is a nice tool for FINDING sources, but is itself a poor source. Secondly, the age of the Jones Act doesn’t have anything to do with its enforcement (and nowhere did I say that the Act was unenforceable), it is still the standing law of the land. Which is why labeling its effect on the current situation a “gaffe” of the Administration is, well, a gaffe.
Finally, the handful of ships from foreign nations that could not press the 12 mile international boundary was insignificant to the cleanup (very little oil was inside the boundary until mid-May) and secondary to the leak itself (which is in international waters).
Do yourself a favor…sit down and figure out what YOUR original point was for your first comment. You keep stumbling over attacking me, my writing, and my research. Quite frankly, “a latina”, you aren’t ready to debate me over this.
Right on, Michael! I too am wondering who this person “really” is!
I would advise against arguing with an ideologue: it is a waste of fine resources. Better to allow them to hoist themselves upon their own petard, which, in this case, they do an unusually splendid job (and in full view of the public no less).
You speak wisdom Denny…but I always have enjoyed pulling on the rope (so to speak).
Yea, tweaking ReRe’s is fun for a while, but then I get bored.
Keep up the good fight my friend (your tip-ins on the clueless are priceless moves worthy of the ol’ Celtics with Larry Bird).
I enjoy your posts immensely.