I figured it was only a matter of time before it cropped up in comments and now that I have received a few emails I might as well put up a post about it. The Cult is now comparing President Obama's response to the oil spill to President Bush's "response" to Katrina.
Setting aside the fact that they are two completely different situations (see: people died in Katrina and act of nature as opposed to act of a private corporation), I have to wonder what all the fuss is about. I was under the impression that when it came to private industry, the government shouldn't interfere. This accident was the fault of BP and shouldn't they shoulder the responsibility free from government meddling? Perhaps they (along with the Cult) should use their free market ideals inspired by Ayn Rand and clean up the spill. After all, the government only fucks things up more and will eventually enslave us in re-educations camps.
In fact, I remember a commenter over at TSM by the handle of Unix-Jedi who told me that the federal government shouldn't be expected to do anything. What could they possibly do anyway?
12 comments:
I haven't heard The Cult make any such statement. But if you play She Sells Sanctuary backwards, I hear "Decide to smoke Marijuana". Freaky.
Anyway, I am not wasting time comparing presidential responses. I'm giggling over the mirror image media portrayal of Bush (who hates black people) vs. Obama's response. Much like Bush didn't cause a hurricane, Obama didn't cause the oil spill.
Oh, and your near-debilitating sarcasm aside, private industry will clean up the spill. Just like the Exxon Valdez disaster. Free market ideals at work.
dw
Why are you asking questions of the party that is out of power? Why don't you tell us what should be done. You sure seemed to have all the answers when Bush was president.
Apparently Rush Limbaugh has variously called the oil spill Obama's Katrina, an act of sabotage by environmentalists, and a naturally occurring event that we should just ignore. According to zap2it.com, Limbaugh said:
"The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there. It's natural. It's as natural as the ocean water is."
Apparently we should allow all fires to burn themselves out and allow all people who contract cancer to die because these are also natural events. After all, cancer cells are just as natural as muscle cells.
Another intersting tidbit: Halliburton was involved in the construction of the oil rig, and their work may have been directly responsible for the explosion, according to the Wall Street Journal. They were involved in cementing the rig, a process that's supposed to prevent the escape of oil and gas and prevent an explosion. They finished their work just before the rig burned and sank.
No one should be so sanguine about the Exxon Valdez spill. There was a lot of rancor, a lot of people lost their jobs, many animals were killed, huge sections of shoreline were sterilized and the court cases and lawyers' fees went on for decades. And it caused the creation of the first modern credit default swap when Exxon got a loan to pay off the punitive damages (a case that Samuel Alito had to recuse himself from because of his ownership of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Exxon stock, and which raised serious questions about the serious tilt of this Supreme Court towards gigantic corporations and against the little guys).
Now now. It's unsightly to whine when the the same bogus criteria used to indict Bush w.r.t. Katrina is used to indict Obama w.r.t. the oil spill. Call it the "why didn't the president wave his magic wand and make everything better??" criteria.
@blk, I read that same wikipedia entry today. 8^)
Who's Rush Limbaugh? The GOP chair? That senator from Montana?
Can't we just agree that Obama hates black people?
dw
Apologies... I blew you off as soon as you quoted a radio entertainer, but I have to agree with Limbaugh's quote. The ocean would take care of this on its own if the oil stayed offshore. Unforunately, it is headed inland, and the potential wildlife damage is catastrophic.
Ironically, if you do a little research on forest fires, you'll see that controlled burns are a vital part of woodland management.
Also, cancer cells are a mutation, and are therefore, not 'natural' like muscle cells at all.
And as an aside, did you really mean sanguine? It's a great word, but not necessarily correct in this context.
dw
And of course you haven't noticed that the majority of the "silly, silly Cult" attacking Obama over the oil spill is on the left rather than the right. The right is mostly using this to point out how stupid the Katrina accusations were and are.
people died in Katrina and act of nature as opposed to act of a private corporation
So if the Gulf oil leak had been caused by an earthquake, and was killing people, you'd be just as irrational about this as you are about Katrina?
people died in Katrina and act of nature as opposed to act of a private corporation
If that's the standard, I guess that means Nashville is Obama's problem, right?
Yes! I'd like a detailed timeline showing the federal response to Nashville. He better start printing those $2500 debit cards folks in New Orleans got right away! Has Obama visited Nashville? If not, he must not care about those people.
last in line, do you think that Nashville is at the same level as Katrina? If so, how?
And how does the supposed lack of government response in Nashville excuse the response to Katrina?
I never said Nashville was on the same level as Katrina. They're both natural disasters though. Not trying to excuse anything, just seeing where the buck stops in 2010. As rld said, you folks had all the answers when you were out of power...now you're in power and you keep asking questions to those who are out of power.
Katrina was a humanly made disaster too. The potential for this sort of catastrophe was known years before it happened. Indeed, the feds, under Bush/Brown, denied a few tens of thousands of dollars to local officials to help them finish a planning exercise based on a scenario very like Katrina.
The difference is that, under the law, FEMA is responsible for coordinating federal disaster response. The Bush/Chertoff fuckup made FEMA completely unable to do anything. Brown didn't help much. Under the law, BP is responsible for its oil spill. Frankly, as bad as this spill is, at least BP seems to be making an effort--a claim that is preposterous when applied to the Cheney regency.
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