The Obama Administration - A Lesson in Misplaced Priorities

It's about time something got done to stop this oil gushing from beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The Obama administration is about to implement the "Shakespeare Kill" option to contain the spill that is now threatening the beaches of Florida after already coming onshore in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

In a bold move, President Obama has ordered Attorney General Eric Holder and a team of lawyers to the Gulf. After meeting with the Attorneys General of the affected states, they will then be lowered to the seabed at the site of the leak and will be pumped into the well to stop the leak.

What? That's not why they're there?

Then what the hell are they doing? Do they think they can stop the spill by waving an injunction at the TV monitor attached to the live camera? Yeah, that'll stop it.

Folks, this is what you get when you elect someone who has no experience in anything other than academia. .

(courtesy of Michael Ramirez at IDB, and Pajamas Media)

Obama's insistence that all things can be solved by the government is on display in this debacle. After all, Washington put a man on the moon, didn't it? There weren't any private engineers or technicians who worked on the space program, right? They were all NASA employees. So, there.

Shit, even I can't keep up this snark for very long. My Snark-O-Meter has now become a pink blur where the needle used to be.

In crafting an effective response to this ecological disaster, we've seen everything done that a lawyer knows how to do: bluster, excoriate, castigate, accuse and threaten. None of which do one thing to solve the problem of thousands of barrels of oil leaking per day. You would think, with the history of safe drilling that we've enjoyed for over 40 years, there would be someone with the expertise and equipment to effectively cap this well. Failing that, you'd think that there would be plans in place to at least minimize the effects of the oil and keep it out to sea.

Well, there was a plan. It was put in place after the Exxon Valdez spill. It involved ships with booms on them to corrall the oil and burn it out at sea. What happened to that plan and why wasn't it implemented within the first few days of the spill?

Here's another oddity. Federal plans call for sand berms to be erected to prevent the spread of oil into wetlands and marshlands. Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal is still waiting for approval to start the construction of the berms, but has yet to get the go-ahead from the government. The same government that President Obama famously bragged has been on the job since "day one."



It's not like President Obama doesn't know what to do. As Senator, then candidate Obama, he didn't hesitate to tell the Bush administration that he could do a much better job of handling natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Feels kinda funny, don't it, Mr. Obama.