What next? Naming hurricanes (the ones that make landfall) after presidents?

since everything Bush touched became a disaster, anytime Obama deals with a disaster the caustic media can make the comparison...and will -- even the new york fucking times...

Another point: Conservatives tried to use the Katrina debacle as evidence in support of their dogmatic belief that "government can't do anything right" and "only private enterprise can be trusted to solve real problems." They pointed to the failure of the Bush administration (a conservative administration, admittedly) and the relative effectiveness of private aid efforts by corporations like Wal Mart to bolster this interpretation. It'll be interesting to see what weird spin they will use to explain away the BP oil spill--an environmental disaster caused by a private enterprise!--and somehow pin it on government.

What conservatives still don't seem to get about Katrina is that the problem was 30,000 people stuck without food, water or a way out, while the government did nothing to help. That part of the equation still seems to allude the right. Probably because they don't see any inherent value in 30,000 (black) people.

"all were dealt with effectively by the administration."

Is this what conservatives hate most about Obama?
If so, i fear they are in for years more heartache.

I'm echoing Karl Weber's post above:"Conservatives tried to use the Katrina debacle as evidence in support of their dogmatic belief that "government can't do anything right"

One big problem here is that conservatives refuse to ever acknowledge what it was that Bush could have done differently. In their minds, we warned the people to leave, they didn't leave, and that's the most that could be expected of us. The people deserved what they got and Bush wasn't to blame.

And so now they think they're being clever by pointing to a disaster in which Obama wasn't to blame, not because they're trying to blame Obama, but because they're still trying to exonerate Bush. As usual, they're living in the past, fighting battles that were decided long ago, and still haven't a clue why they lost.

I go along with everything in the post here. It is not Obama's disaster in any way. On the other hand, when Obama argues for the opening of coastal waters to drilling, he is begging for this kind of catastrophe.

Obama has been a moderate to conservative Democrat since he took office. His chickens WILL come home to roost as long as he pursues the doomed efforts to appease his right wing critics. He was just lucky that this time, the rig was already up, and was not built on his watch with his approval!

Well, I'm sure that the Bush/Cheney administration would have stepped in to provide far, far more stern oversight of an oil company's operations than this.

Right?

i read the NY Times editorial a few hours ago and thought it really rather unfair and bizzare... somebody must have channeled a more literate, rational, and intelligent Rush when they wrote it...

The trouble with being right most of the time is that your mistakes(real or perceived) will seem more glaring. Strategery works!

Let them rant. All they're doing is underlining how competent -this- president is ... And how inept the previous one was.

While I agree that the Obama administration response is light years ahead of Bush during Katrina, this is my one problem with the current effort:

April 28: Federal officials realize spill was far more severe than BP led them to believe. An April 28 New York Times article reported, "Government officials said late Wednesday night that oil might be leaking from a well in the Gulf of Mexico at a rate five times that suggested by initial estimates."

An April 30 Associated Press article reported, "For days, as an oil spill spread in the Gulf of Mexico, BP assured the government the plume was manageable, not catastrophic. Federal authorities were content to let the company handle the mess while keeping an eye on the operation."

It seems that for almost a week, Obama took BP's word that everything was "manageable, not catastrophic." Past history has repeatedly shown that they should have assumed that BP was LYING.

Losing days in a situation like this can come back to haunt you.

Just a minor point, but didn't Obama just open up the offshore areas for oil EXPLORATION? Drilling comes much later, and presumably would be subject to the usual safety reviews, etc. (which likely aren't defined yet). Still, once oil may be discovered in an area, the push for drilling becomes much harder, but I don't recall anyone saying, "Yeah, let's start drilling without knowing anything is there!!"

i agree with bdop4. while it may be comical to compare this to Katrina, it is hard to say that the administration couldn't have done better. there are Northern Command resources that still have not been activated. I think the administration was slow to appreciate (a) how major this was; (b) how quickly tidal changes could change the movement toward sensitive coastline; and (c) how likely it was BP was sugar-coating its own abilities.

moreover, this overlays with what canddieinnc said: the slow response "sticks" to Obama much more easily once he threw away his environmentalist bona fides by unilaterally calling for additional offshore drilling, without getting any benefits in return. the imperfect response looks of a kind with this lack of environmental concern shown by his quickness to open additional shores to exploitation and threat.

finally, i would add that this isn't over yet. it may be premature to call this Obama's Katrina, but if oil continues to spill for another 30 days and the entire gulf shore ecosystem is destroyed, livelihoods are crushed, and air quality warnings are issued all bets are off. yes, all of the pieces of the disaster were in place before he took office, but he is far enough into his term that the buck will still stop with him.

The better analogy would be to call this "Obama's Galveston". Bush didn't get much criticism about Galveston because there was at least a competent attempt at addressing the problem. New Orleans was incompetent from start to finish, so he deserved the grief he got.

Last I heard this was a oil well owned by a wildly profitable private company that has resisted regulation and pushed hard for more off-shore drilling--touting how safe it was.

The first step in this disaster charade is to ask government to bail out the private company--which has previously opposed regulating their operations.

The next step is to blame government for not responding fast enough to this private company's problems.

The Third step is to say the problem was that there was too much regulation and therefore we need more unfettered drilling.

This is the wacky parallel universe of our "deregulated" society.

While there may be resources that have not been activated, are they resources that are particularly RELEVANT to a containing or cleaning up a massive oil spill? More info would help, zeitgeist...

We should be asking the Murdochian fishermen of LA why they need government involvement in commercial disasters.

Surely they can't support a 'BP bailout'.

BP is blaming Halliburton's work on the concrete seals for the disaster.

This is nothing like Katrina, but the claim that "no one could have predicted this" is similar. It will be proven false.

This whole thing is Obama getting fleas from lying down with Republicans.

The administration-- and the traditionally* punchless democratic congress-- had best get out front in quashing this big lie.

*Three decades worth of listlessness constitute a tradition.

How can they complain about "slow government response" when, if they had their way, there would be no government to respond?

The stoopid makes the mind reel.

...within one day of the explosion at the rig, the Obama administration had dispatched officials and the Coast Guard to the scene.

Indeed. In fact I was wondering where BP, et al, were and why they were leaving it up to the government to clean up their mess.

Well, Ari Shapiro on NPR just did the top of the hour report heavily weighted towards the Katrina comparasion.

And they're off...

Mark no error… British Petroleum’s assault this week on the Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida coasts is no less an act of War than were it sitting off the coast in a boat launching rockets into downtown New Orleans.

Oh, but a wingnut commenter (on Media Matters, maybe, don't remember) was telling us how silly it was that liberals blamed Katrina on Bush when he didn't control the weather, but won't blame Obama for a man-made disaster. Apparently conservatives are capable of simultaneously holding the belief that government is incapable of doing anything right, and that it is all-powerful and should be blamed for failing to prevent any man-made disaster caused by anyone.

The main reason there can be no comparison with Katrina to any event on Obama's watch is that "Bush's Katrina" was presided over by a pResident who looked to be in a sedated stupor/just didn't give a shit, coupled with the incompetent stooges with which said pResident littered top roles in government.

Here we have an active, engaged, super-smart, compassionate President in Obama, coupled with smart, active, highly-accomplished, experienced professionals in the top levels of gov't.

"Conservatives/MSM" can dream on, but no matter come what may, "Obama's Katrina" will never happen.

The Katrina comparison kinda/sorta works at the early stages of the disaster, inasmuch as the Bush Administration was criticized for failing to act quickly immediately following Katrina, and Obama is arguably open to similar criticism for its inattention at a similarly early stage in the oil spill.

If news reports are to be believed, however, the oil will keep spurting from the well for weeks, and any efforts at containment will probably fail. Assuming this holds true, the comparisons to Katrina will become less and less effective with the passage of time -- as it becomes clear that "acting fast" wouldn't have made any difference.

I suppose there is a bit of a cache-22 here for the Administration, since critics will ask "what took you so long?", even if a brilliant solution to contain the spill is achieved. It's hard to imagine these critics gaining much traction, however, when the media has been consistently portrayed capping the well as a virtually impossible technical challenge. Indeed, if the Administration (as opposed to BP) manages to contain the spill within, say, three weeks, it won't be criticized for slowness -- it will be hailed for solving an impossible problem in less time than anticipated.

Last I heard this was a oil well owned by a wildly profitable private company that has resisted regulation and pushed hard for more off-shore drilling--touting how safe it was.

So you see the endless bombardment of TV ads from the people of America's oil and gas companies too. I particularly like the one where they tout drilling many wells from one platform to reduce the "visual impact" of offshore drilling. Safe, clean, reliable, indeed.

Haley Barbour has said that not one campaign check from BP has bounced, so, they have done no wrong.

yes, all of the pieces of the disaster were in place before he took office, but he is far enough into his term that the buck will still stop with him.

Zeit - Your analysis here is completely flawed. Nobody was blaming Bush because he didn't do more to secure the levies or other long-term issues that he might have fixed earlier. They blamed him because he ignored a major hurricane approaching a vulnerable city, and did nothing for days while people suffered. In fact, he was entirely oblivious that a major problem was even happening, and had placed incompetent lackies in charge of major operations. Most of America knew more about what was going on in New Orleans than the president did.

That's why Katrina isn't remotely comparable with this oil disaster. Could Obama have done more? Sure. But Bush's problem wasn't that he wasn't perfect, but that he was systematically incompetent at every level. Particularly as Katrina was a much more easily managed situation than this oil disaster. We knew how to handle hurricanes, but we still don't have any great answers for this one.

When the problem became more acute, the president dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to the area to help oversee efforts with federal, state, and local officials. President Obama will himself visit the coast tomorrow.

Bush, on the other hand, ate some birthday cake, dispatched Michael Brown to the scene, and put Karl Rove on the case. Condalezza Rice went shoe shopping.

Question? If this is Obama's Katrina does that mean he gets re-elected after his Obamatons swift-sled Half-Governor Palin?

How can they complain about "slow government response" when, if they had their way, there would be no government to respond?

The stoopid makes the mind reel.
Posted by: karen marie on May 1, 2010 at 12:58 PM

Perfect!

While bdop4 and zeitgeist are right that someone should have realized that BP was lying, weather conditions it impossible to conduct oil recovery or evaluation efforts for two days just before the scale of of the problem became apparent.

- April 20, the explosion occurs at 10PM.
- April 21, President Obama and heads of all relevant agencies briefed on situation, Deputy Secretary of the Interior sent to region to assist with coordination and response.
- April 21 to 23, the primary focus of the response is a search for missing crewmembers and firefighting efforts.
- April 24 to 26, weather conditions interrupt containment and cleanup operations.
- April 26, oil slick is up to 48 miles by 39 miles, BP acknowledges that there is a lead at the wellhead and estimates rate at 1000 barrels per day.
- April 28, Federal officials determine that the leak is at least 5000 barrels a day.
- April 29, Janet Napolitano declares the disaster a "Spill of National Significance". Federal response efforts stepped up significantly and the heads of DHS, Interior and EPA are dispatched to the region.
- May 1, expected first landfall of parts of the oil slick.
- May 2, President Obama scheduled to visit the region.

Also keep in mind that BP and all of the other oil drilling firms have spent millions of dollars and decades of effort lobbying against a greater federal role over spill response and prevention efforts. They haven't wanted to pay fees to support such efforst and haven't wanted to face increased inspections, higher safety and enviromental standards for equipment and procedures, mandates to maintain equipment and ships on standby to respond to catastrophic events, etc.

If this is "Obama's Katrina," then aren't we saying that Bush was a failure and incompetent in how he handled the Hurricane response? It seems that a comparison with Bush is painting Bush as a failure, too?
On another note, aren't the states direclty affected by this spill the same ones that refused federal "bailout money?" They are opposed to Big Government and think Private Enterprise is the answer. Will all the oil companies pitch in to support BP's imminent failure, or will the Federal Treasury be opened? What about the British government's role in all of this? Isn't BP a British corporation, or is their name a fiction? I wonder how the fishing industry feels about taking government aid? Where are the Tea Partiers on the intrusion of Big Government in their business? Also, are any "illegals" being employed in this effort at clean-up? So many questions with no answers.

I saw where CNN was using Limbaugh as their source in questioning the political fallout of the oil spill.

Enough for now!

Excuse me, but y'all are mostly being led down a rathole by the conservative crooks and the media idiots:

#1. Compare body counts. 12. 1800. I think we're done there.

#2. Private disaster. BP should compensate all the affected parties. WTF happened to all the free-market zealots who moan and groan about gummint interference with the economy? This is not a national disaster, if these morons had any brains and consistency they would be complaining that Obama DID address the problem at all. BP should suffer for this in court, good and hard. Technically speaking, helping to mitigate a private disaster is interference in the economy, though it is of course a good idea, as interference in the economy sometimes is.

#3. Of course this could be predicted, something moderately similar happened in 1979-1980, in the Gulf of Mexico. Till the first Gulf War, largest oil spill ever, 10 times as large as Valdez. "Ixtoc I". You can Google it.

Excuse me, but y'all are mostly being led down a rathole by the conservative crooks and the media idiots:

You mean because we think the comparison is "comically flawed"? Most of the folks here are saying the same things you said, so how are we being led down a rathole?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Katrina was such a disaster in New Orleans because of the long-predicted failure of the levees. It was primarily a *man-made disaster*--a "federal fuckup of epic proportions" (Treme). What happened to the Mississippi Gulf Coast was natural.

I agree with what St. John said above. Let them continue to call this "Obama's Katrina". This is an implicit admission that Bush screwed the pooch with Katrina, something staunchly denied by people on the "right" side of the political spectrum at the time. Fox viewers will be duped, of course, but they have been so propagandized for years that dupery is their way of life and unlikely to change. But independents and middle-of-the-roaders won't be fooled. Calling this "Obama's Katrina" will just drive the point home about Bush's failure.

I hope Obama will use this as an excuse to say that while he continues to support exploration of offshore areas for possible drilling, any actual drilling will have to be in the context of greatly increased safety regs, BP be damned.

dr2chase, you are of course right that, despite what the oil companies wanted us to believe, it was virtually inevitable that an accident like this would happen sooner or later. What was impossible to predict, right up to the time of the explosion, was when and where it would occur.

As opposed to Katrina when it was likely that it would make landfall somewhere along the gulf coast nearly a week ahead of time, and it was virtually certain that it would land at or near New Orleans and would be a major Hurricane (type 3 or above) about 3 days in advance.

That offered more than enough time for the federal government under Bush to start activating disaster response teams and pre-positioning assets so that they would be as near to the disaster area as possible without being impacted by it during the storm. Obviously not an option in the case of a sudden event like an explosion or earlier, the Haiti earthquake.

I guess my gripe is that the return argument should be blunt, factual, and unnuanced as possible. None of this "if this is Obama's Katrina" nonsense. So far from true, it's worthless as a snarky hypothetical introduction. The right wing should be addressed with rhetorical 2x4's to the face, whenever possible.

Sometimes it's better to ignore than refute baseless nonsense.

No. This is Obama's oil spill, something not even close to a hurricane.

Hurricane's don't fuck up the food chain.

Hurricanes don't cause mass biological tragedy.

This oil spill is beyond what you can imagine.

I suggest we stop Katrinatizing this event and put the best heads on the planet together to FIX IT.

What if we lowered a tanker on cables, complete with flexible well casing? Then cut a hole to fit over the oil geyser.

Something has to be done at the seabed.

Surely there is a solution to the unthinkable!

Nay, Tom, the only practical solution went out the window with Michael Chrighton's fearmongering and Hugo Chavez' insane accusation that that is what we (the US) did to cause the Haitian earthquake.

I think we should shoot the looters.

In 2005, Bush failed to take seriously warnings of an imminent natural disaster, and was slow to act after the devastation had begun. The storm killed more 1,500, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and destroyed much of an American coastline.

As a former resident of LA, allow me to correct you as politely as possible: the state and local governments are more to blame for the Katrina debacle in LA than Bush is. The state and local governments assured the federal government, as well as the citizens of LA that things would be OK. Not really, as it turned out. The feds were ready to intervene even before the storm hit and they were told no, we (LA gov't) have it under control. The city of New Orleans told FEMA they were OK.

Compare the debacle in LA to MS, where state and local authorities were much more prepared. They actually had a plan and implemented it, as well as worked hand-in-hand with the feds from the beginning.

A tale of two cities, as it were.

Excuse me, but y'all are mostly being led down a rathole by the conservative crooks and the media idiots:...#1. Compare body counts. 12. 1800. I think we're done there.

I think that really does sum it up.

Not that the administration has been blameless WRT this oil disaster. For one thing they ought to have been less ready to accept BP's version in the early going. And there's the awkwardness of the president's recent decision on offshore drilling. And there's the simple political realty that Obama's opponents will do everything in their power to use this crisis to hurt Obama, to the extent they're able.

But at the end of the day, an environmental disaster created by a giant corporation that usually supports the GOP agenda simply doesn't have the same political impact -- for a Democratic administration, at least -- as a natural disaster causing massive loss of life and limb, and widespread misery for millions.*

*I don't mean to downplay the horror of what's going down on the Gulf -- especially for non-humans. And the impact will be felt by several million people in the region. But unless one makes one's living by fishing or tourism, the impact will be mostly one of temporary inconvenience as opposed to, well, the misery that is losing one's home or employment to a violent storm, or having a loved one killed by the same.

Some how I just can't see the Obama administration quibbling over the equivalent of breaching levees vs. overtopping levees as TV news shows human bodies floating past.

Or Obama personally flying over a burning casino screaming "put it out, put it out" as human bodies float down the streets of the equivalent of New Orleans.

Tom N, this is in no way "beyond what I can imagine", because something quite similar happened 31 years ago, in the Gulf of Mexico. It's going to make quite a mess. It's not the end of the world. They will most likely fix this by drilling in from the side, relieving pressure, and/or blocking the pipe itself with concrete or by crushing the hole with a large explosion. This will take months.

sublime33
The better analogy would be to call this "Obama's Galveston". Bush didn't get much criticism about Galveston because there was at least a competent attempt at addressing the problem. New Orleans was incompetent from start to finish, so he deserved the grief he got.

Galveston gives a good teachable moment, at least realtive to Bush Administration pre-action to Katrina.
Galveston has for most of the last century evacuated the entire island across the one bridge to the mainland several days prior to landfall.
There is a medical school and teaching hospital on Galveston island that has to be evacuated, etc.
The island gets slammed sometimes twice a summer but has minimal problems because it has a plan, it uses the plan, and it evolves the plan through the years.
That's why Rita didn't become Bush's second Katrina, at least as far as Galveston was concerend. Not because of anything Bush did but because there was a plan, and the plan had been rehearshed for 100 years.

But Rita did become Bush's second Katrina every where else along the Gulf Coast.

I am amazed the press wants to bring up Katrina and remind people what a total screw up the State's and US's governments made of it.

So, the "government that can't do anything right" and which just gets in the way of private enterprise, is to be blamed for not having gotten in the way?

With some proper messaging this will be Obama's Waterloo, where he'll be playing the part of Wellington, not Napoleon.

Cheney helped the oil companies resist the call for acoustic switch well seals (they cost money, you see). It is insanenely irresponsible to be poking holes into high pressure oil strata, while suspended 5000 feet above the bottom of the sea, without such seals.
Foreign oil companies complain about all the regulation they encounter when drilling outside the coast of Norway. That regulation is there for the explicit purpose of introducing a semblance of safety into the equation.
In the U.S., private enterprise is allowed to get away with practices that actively endanger the public safety.

Obama has a tremendous teaching moment in hand, where he can make the need for government involvement and regulation explicitly clear.

Just being able to refer to the shelves and shelves of efforts by lobbyists to prevent government mandated use of seals must be the equivalent of ICBMs in this debate.

Geez, I can't tell you how many times in almost 5 years that I've heard conservatives yell that Katrina was something that should have been handled by the locals. This in spite of the fact that it was larger than 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Northridge California earthquake and the San Diego firestorms combined.

Now these same folks, many led by Rush Limbaugh are saying that the oil spill, which is the fault of a PRIVATE corporation IS suddenly the responsibility of the Federal Government. How hypocritical can they get? And to think in 2008 how many right wing media members lied that Katrina didn't cause any oil spills and therefore we should be expanding oil drilling in the Gulf.

Paul Harris
Author, "Diary From the Dome, Reflections on Fear and Privilege During Katrina"

This is the same British Petroleum that with the CIA overthrew Iran's legally elected, secular government. And we see how well that turned out. Oil companies and corporations have been calling the shots for years.... we overthrew their govt back in 1952.

this is very interesting reading:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

One day citizens will march on Washington and throw out both sides since both are owned by corporations.

"[Bush] was entirely oblivious that a major problem was even happening, and had placed incompetent lackies in charge of major operations." - Dr. Biobrain

The Katrina event really exposed the Bush government for what it really was: uncaring and incompetent. He never really recovered from that, in spite of previously high approval ratings while (unsuccessfully) prosecuting two wars. The one thing the Bush administration specialized in was controlling the message. It's hard to do that with bodies in the streets and people stranded on their houses for days.

Bush's Katrina will always be Bush's Katrina. Nobody else gets a "Katrina", unless they prove to be just as uncaring and incompetent.

You have to believe in your self. That may be the secret of success. We should insist on no matter what we meet. Possess a very good mood every day.