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By the close of business yesterday, several conservative voices were pretty worked up about President Obama’s response to the mid-Atlantic earthquake yesterday. In fact, much of the right at least pretended to be outraged.
For the record, the president was briefed on the developments during his vacation, and was available to act if needed.
President Barack Obama was just starting a round of golf when the East Coast earthquake rattled the ground around him.
He put the foursome on hold and, within the hour, was on the telephone and getting updates on the temblor’s aftermath from top aides, the White House said. Told there had been no major damage reported, Obama resumed one of his favorite pastimes and stayed at the public Farm Neck Golf Club for several more hours. […]
The White House said he asked for regular earthquake reports. He also was updated on Hurricane Irene.
So, there was an earthquake. The president was made aware of it. There was no serious damage, no casualties, nothing for emergency response teams to do, and nothing for Obama to do. He was kept apprised and went about his afternoon. I don’t know why this is supposed to be interesting.
I realize conservatives are a creative bunch, and can manufacture outrage out of whole cloth, but even for the right, making a fuss about this is just childish. Indeed, at a certain level, it’s counter-productive — shouldn’t the right be more selective, going on the attack when Obama actually messes up, so it would have a greater impact?
In the case of the earthquake, if there’d been an actual disaster, and Obama sat around reading a children’s book while Americans were dying, I could see conservatives getting upset. If Obama had been told a month ago that a serious disaster was poised to happen, and he told the geologists, “All right, you’ve covered your ass now” before ignoring the warnings, the right would have plenty of room for criticism.
But this is weak tea. When pundits are reduced to wanting to see the president “pretend to do something,” you know the discourse has badly gone off the rails.
Indeed, if we’re going to have a substantive discussion about politics, policy, and natural disasters, perhaps the better place to start would be with Republican efforts to cut funding for the U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors earthquakes, and mocking investments in studying seismic activities.
Given the circumstances, this seems far more interesting.
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Walker on August 24, 2011 8:03 AM:
The party who cried wolf.
c u n d gulag on August 24, 2011 8:06 AM:
There was a fender-bender on I-95 yesterday.
Police were called out.
Where was that SOB Obama? Huh? HUH???
You know that in their heart of hearts, the Right is doing everthing, including praying, for a terrorist attack.
Yesterday's Conservative news coverage was a dry run.
blondie on August 24, 2011 8:06 AM:
I know much has been made of the earthquake's epicenter being in Eric Cantor's district. Even more poetic is that it was just outside the hamlet of ... Cuckoo!
How perfectly reflective of today's Republican Party.
Danp on August 24, 2011 8:08 AM:
The party who cried wolf.
And cries and cries and cries. Why do Americans keep electing cowards and think they are experts at security?
hells littlest angel on August 24, 2011 8:09 AM:
Obama was chillin' with his posse of thugs while all over the Eastern seaboard knick-knacks were falling from shelves, shattering on America's floors. It's an outrage, and it stabs hearts.
jdb on August 24, 2011 8:12 AM:
And then we get this ludicrous comment from King Krugman: "People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage." https://plus.google.com/100094747939867300298/posts/QJUXU19sPws
One wonders if Mr. Krugman is aware that it is the poor who suffer the most from serious natural disasters.
Hedda Peraz on August 24, 2011 8:14 AM:
It is telling that this tragic disaster occurred in Obama's first term. George Bush NEVER had an earthquake, and he was in office for eight full years.
berttheclock on August 24, 2011 8:15 AM:
Or he could pull a VP Cheney "Thirty Seconds over Seattle" move. Cheney showed up over Seattle with Bullet Head Joe of FEMA after the Nisqually Earthquake of early 2001 and, from 10,000 feet, declared retro fitting had not worked. For months prior to that earthquake, the Seattle area had been part of a 7 city Federally funded retro fitting seminar program. Many, either learned how to retro-fit or what contractors could do the work for them. Saved many a home, but, Cheney, prior to the earthquake had decided to cut the funding. Therefore, his high level flight of fantasy over the Emerald City.
delNorte on August 24, 2011 8:23 AM:
I know much has been made of the earthquake's epicenter being in Eric Cantor's district. Even more poetic is that it was just outside the hamlet of ... Cuckoo!
So, following the logic of the religious right that Katrina was was sent by God as an omen or as a punishment for America's alleged sins, was this earthquake God's smackdown of the TeaParty?
Mark my words: if Hurricane Irene hits Washington DC we will hear the same Katrina claims from the religious right regarding God punishing DC.
Harvest on August 24, 2011 8:31 AM:
I live less than 30 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake. A glass of water fell off my nightstand, and alas, it broke. Where's the Red Cross? Why has my president foresaken me?
Seriously, the right wing simply looks at the day's news, whatever it is, and tries to blame anything remotely negative or controversial on Obama. Doing this day in and day out is losing its punch. It's childish, tiresome, and, I believe, increasingly ineffective. The few Fox News watchers I know even think this is just plain silly.
Kathryn on August 24, 2011 8:36 AM:
Interestingly (to me, anyway), Sen Chris Coons (D.Del) was conducting the pro forma session of the Senate to keep that body from officially recessing. The reason this charade is being carried out is to keep the president from making any recess appointments so favored by "no earthquakes on my watch" (so what?) Bush. Why are Democrats aiding in this endeavor? The GOP is holding up record numbers of appointments for Treasury, Judicial needs etc. for no good reason other than to put another wrench in Pres. Obama's governance, why supply Democratic senators to aid that effort? Am I missing something here?
Danp on August 24, 2011 8:39 AM:
Hedda Peraz - I can't stop laughing. Thanks.
MSHuiner on August 24, 2011 8:39 AM:
@ Blondie and DelNorte
I am new here, so I am not sure if it is OK post a link, but Andy Borowitz has a great take on this!
Earthquake Does Less Damage to Washington than Eric Cantor
Majority Leader's Devastation Felt Across Nation
http://www.borowitzreport.com/
Anon on August 24, 2011 8:40 AM:
It's a distraction from the events in Libya.
Daniel Kim on August 24, 2011 8:43 AM:
Why would conservatives want the socialists to swoop in and take over Virginia on the pretext of earthquake relief? Shouldn't the people of the affected areas turn to their churches and neighbors for help? I'm sure they can muster enough lasagna and casseroles to fix things up.
Grumpy on August 24, 2011 8:47 AM:
Y'know the scene in the first "Superman" movie where Superman flies under the San Andreas Fault and bench-presses California? Well, Obama's got a red cape, right?
stevio on August 24, 2011 8:49 AM:
Blame it on the Bossa Nova...
In reality journalism has become third rate and falling faster than the the Market after news of a fake/premeditated downgrade of phony credit ratings.
Never thought I'd relish a return to the Nixonian era where crooks were exposed by a competent form of what passes for journalism today.
Nauseating...
ComradeAnon on August 24, 2011 8:52 AM:
"Pretend to do something." W did set the bar pretty low didn't he?
blondie on August 24, 2011 8:57 AM:
@MSHuiner - perfectly appropriate, and perfectly apropos! I laughed out loud at the truth of it.
SW on August 24, 2011 8:58 AM:
The larger political question is, "Did hydraulic fracturing in neighboring West Virginia and Pennsylvania destabilize once stable fault lines in Virginia and indirectly lead to the quake in Virginia"
This is a legitimate scientific question that it appears no one wants to discuss because of the fear that it is too politically charged. I find the media's failure to address this issued head on either a case of corporatism or worse.
slappy magoo on August 24, 2011 8:59 AM:
Republicans wanted Obama to be front and center in the earthquake relief efforts...so they could complain he was using the earthquake as a photo op and getting in the way of relief efforts. It's Obama's fault they're making these assertions by not behaving the way they wanted him to behave. Stupid Obama, ruins everything...
Kathryn on August 24, 2011 9:01 AM:
lol Daniel Kim, Sen. Tom Coburn would approve, he couldn't say it better.
Josef K on August 24, 2011 9:01 AM:
I put it down to poor parenting. The right wingnuts all seem to want a big father-figure to protect them from everyone else. Not big on emotional maturity, them.
berttheclock on August 24, 2011 9:03 AM:
@Hedda Peraz, yes, funny line, but, did you know the day of the Nisqually Earthquake in early March, 2001, Bush announced he was cutting funds for Project Impact, the Clinton based plan to retro-fit homes and buildings and move residents to safety. Shortly after this event, Michael Brown replaced Bullet Head Joe as head of FEMA and remarked that government was not in the business of providing direct support, but, to assist people in finding such support, ergo, privatization of emergency help. Imagine if Obama told folks that he was not sending aid, but, he was going to conduct air drops of yellow pages for the populace.
Kathryn on August 24, 2011 9:09 AM:
@ berththeclock Having read Hedda Peraz's comments before, I don't actually think she was kidding, as hard as that might be to believe.
Carlos on August 24, 2011 9:20 AM:
Michele Bachmann promises, no earthquakes if she's elected president.
FRP on August 24, 2011 9:21 AM:
BTC , I for one am sort of shocked I missed that one . I thought it fairly plain old Hedda was playing the part , and amusingly so .
Any way thanks for the overdue update on The Chinless overflight of Seattle , and the Booschie privatization action Jackson knee jerk . Something to read about today .
Schtick on August 24, 2011 9:35 AM:
Please, we had eight years of a President pretending to do something and look where that got us.
crapcha is getting really crappy
rrk1 on August 24, 2011 9:37 AM:
In the mid-late 1960s, a series of mysterious earthquakes struck an area of Colorado not known to be seismically active. The earthquakes stopped just as mysteriously as they began, and revealed a non-natural pattern. Several years later it turned out that the Department of Defense had been injecting highly toxic waste from chemical weapons research (from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, if I remember correctly) deep into the ground at high pressure. Not unlike fracking. The earthquakes stopped when the pumping stopped.
While the pumping was kept secret, seismologists of the day were able to pinpoint the epicenters very accurately, and finally the military boys had to 'fess up. They had some 'splaining to do. The liquids had found their way to stable fault lines and lubricated them to the point where they moved. Voilla! An earthquake. This wasn't revealed until 1969 when the geological community effectively figured it all out, and our government admitted the activity.
Yesterday's earthquake was very shallow, as these events go, and it's entirely legitimate to ask whether fracking activity played a role since fracking takes places at relatively shallow depths as well. I'm sure the media response will be deafening silence.
JPH on August 24, 2011 9:44 AM:
It's another illustration of the differing views of government responsibility and capability between the parties. Republicans fundamentally believe that government cannot really do anything and only plays a symbolic role - hence to the extent that they were critical of Bush over Katrina the criticism is that he should've done more symbolic things to soothe the media and the stupid masses. They fundamentally don't believe that an effective federal response was even possible or desirable. So, in this case, when there was really nothing for the White House to do, they think it is equivalent to Katrina and Obama blundered for the same reasons they think Bush did - symbolism.
arkie on August 24, 2011 10:01 AM:
Ref the attack on Paul Krugman at 08:12:
Well, this is interesting. I hear that the not-so-good people at National Review are attacking me over something I said on my Google+ page. Except, I don�t have a Google+ page.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
NOAA on August 24, 2011 10:02 AM:
There is no way to determine the SITREP in that short of time or dismiss the threat from aftershock or addt'l quakes.
Fore !
NOAA on August 24, 2011 10:04 AM:
There is no way to determine the SITREP in that short of time or dismiss the threat from aftershock or addt'l quakes.
Fore !
Eeyore on August 24, 2011 10:06 AM:
Mitt Romney solemnly called out President Obama for his lack of decisive Presidential leadership in not preventing the earthquake. Michele Bachmann said that if elected she would make it a 2.9 earthquake. Ron Paul said the free market would magically fix all earthquake damage. John Boehner blamed the earthquake on uncertainty over future tax rates. And Rick Perry's hair is still swaying hours after the event.
troglodyte on August 24, 2011 10:10 AM:
Dear rrk1
The hypothesis that fracking might have something to do with yesterday's earthquake seems unlikely, but is worthy of someone hunting down the records of past fracking activity in the area. Especially the depth of the wells. The quake was too large to be a good candidate for human-induced seismic activity, and there have been no precursory tremors reported so far. If there were precursory tremors, we will hear about them in the next week, at least. The USGS guys will swarm over the data.
ceilidth on August 24, 2011 10:51 AM:
But you've missed the point: Obama causes everything bad that happens in the US. The very fact that he was elected has caused the God of the Tea Party to reign destruction upon us.
al856 on August 24, 2011 11:06 AM:
Actually, I think this utterly misses an important point: Politics is not just about being right on the facts and policy. If it were, we Democrats would win every damn time. The problem is that this President has an aversion to using the benefits of his office that every other President has used and, quite frankly, that the American people expect. People were unnerved up and down the East Coast (especially here in the northeast) after the largest earthquake in this region in over 100 years. It's a golden opportunity for the President to get before the TV cameras, show that he and his administration are fully in charge (maybe score a few points on the GOP for wanting to get ride of seismic monitors) and reassure the public that everything is fine. That's what people expect of a President. Substantively, it makes no difference. Politically, it makes a huge difference.
Similarly, what are the odds that Obama will give a national address when Qadaffi is finally dislodged, pointing out that his policy has removed a threat to American national security, coming on the heels of the elimination of Osama bin Laden? Or will he press secretary just claim credit and then the SCLM will give the time to McCain and Leiberman?
When will he ever learn? When will he ever learn?
TCinLA on August 24, 2011 11:14 AM:
Three words for the (F)righties:
"Heckuva job, Brownie!"
Oh, right. IOKIYAR
navamske on August 24, 2011 11:59 AM:
@Carlos
Bachmann doesn't know much about earthquakes. Given her marriage to "Marcie," she's probably never felt the earth move.
berttheclock on August 24, 2011 12:19 PM:
Blaming fracking is an interesting theory, but, how does that explain the Madrid Earthquakes in Missouri in the 1811-12 period, plus similar shocks later on in the 1800s?
Mnemosyne on August 24, 2011 1:24 PM:
People were unnerved up and down the East Coast (especially here in the northeast) after the largest earthquake in this region in over 100 years.
Oh noes! You were unnerved!
Call me when your freakin' freeway breaks in half like it did in the Northridge quake, okay? Then you can talk about how horrible it was that the president didn't take any action.
Oh, and that stirring speech that you want Obama to make about Libya? He made it two days ago. Himself, not a press secretary. Why is it that whenever people ask why Obama hasn't made a statement about something "yet," it always turns out that he said what they wanted to say days ago?
bardgal on August 24, 2011 2:09 PM:
Fracking confirmed near epicenter -
http://www.zocial.tv/today/Education/25382408/breaking-fracking-operations-confirmed-near-virgina-59-eq-epicenter
bardgal on August 24, 2011 2:12 PM:
omfg.
5.9
seriously? we sleep through those out here. the east coast needs to grow a vagina and stop whining.
I’m seriously grateful it happened to everyone on the east coast – now you know what we go through for breakfast. THAT WAS NOTHING, I repeat – NOTHING, like what we have out here.
If you can wrap your head around what “exponential” REALLY MEANS when it comes to earthquake magnitude… and how much bigger a 6.3 can be from a 5.9….. or a 6.9 which is what the Northridge Quake was.
It also matters how far you are away from the epicenter, and what kind of EQ it was…… those of us Native Cali-ians have been through so many at this point, we can tell how big/how far away they were most of the time.
5.9 Is NOTHING. Now think about Japan, and an 8.9 EQ, and what that would do to YOUR neighborhood, and power stations, dams, HOMES (we don’t use brick here – it crumbles into DUST), etc….. In my old neighborhood after Northridge, there was no power for 24 hours, no water for a week. And lots of natural gas fires… We had THREE freeway collapses – two very close, and one about 15/20 miles away in Santa Monica.
This little 5.9 was the BEST WAKEUP CALL to every GOP ASSHAT who wants to defund FEMA, and the USGS (the earthquake people), and the Nuclear safety board or whatever they call themselves, that just approved extending the nuclear power licenses on all those 40 year old power stations to 60 years (from 40.)
Yes. It CAN happen there.
Anonymous on August 24, 2011 2:19 PM:
@ Mnemosyne
exactly.
And don't forget, there were THREE FREEWAYS that fell that day - the 5, the 14, and the 10.
captcha - seriously? eckagoo əuo
that's right. upsidedown text. boohyah.
yellowdog on August 24, 2011 3:09 PM:
If Obama mentions the earthquake at all, it should be to encourage a major commitment to infrastructure funding, seismology studies, and security reviews around our nuclear facilities. We cannot prevent earthquakes, but we can certainly foresee their worst consequences. We need to make sure a crisis like Japan's does not happen here. It was not "supposed" to happen there either. It did. Let's learn from their tragic experience.
Cha on August 24, 2011 5:16 PM:
bush was eating cake with john mccain when New Orleans was drowning and finished reading a goat story when 9/11 went down and these stupid republicons are whining about President Obama? Where was it when bush was awol?
captcha is a big time waster. And, it erased my original post so it wasted even more time for me. I hate it. Please get rid of it, WashingtonMonthly.
Try again. That's two..