I doubt seriously that someone as openly anti-Semitic as Barack Obama could really spell “Chutzpah,”  so I used the traditional Chicago spelling.  The best definition I have heard of Chutzpah is the man who killed his parents and then threw himself at the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.  But that definition of Chutzpah pales in comparison with the Obama administration claims with regard to “Oil Gate.  

The problem with incompetent people is that when faced with a real challenge, they tend to provide positive proof of that incompetence.  When Hurricane Katrina struck, George Bush actually was on top of it from the start, but he still took significant blame for things totally outside of his control.  The initial response to a hurricane is the responsibility of the local government and FEMA isn’t even expected to show up for several days.  Unfortunately the press, addicted to Bush bashing, totally misrepresented what happened.  The reality is that federal resources, particularly the Coast Guard, responding to Katrina pulled off the most successful large scale evacuation in the history of the world.  In any other country, thousands of people would have died.

However, the BP oil rig disaster is the exact opposite.  Here the response to handle this rests solely on the federal government, because the oil rig is 48 miles off shore.  NOAA has known about this risk since the mid 1990’s and well established procedures were in place to handle this kind of situation.  One of those procedures was to immediately start a burn off of the oil.  That could have reduced the amount of oil potentially spreading by nearly 90%.  It is really quite simple.  When the oil first comes up to the surface of the water it is heavily concentrated and easily ignited.  But, if you wait, it disperses rapidly and quickly becomes impossible to contain.  Under the Bush administration, the Coast Guard had standing authorization to conduct such a burn without having to obtain prior approval, as long as the wind was blowing off shore. 

Despite plan, not a single fire boom on hand on Gulf Coast at time of oil spill

By Ben Raines

May 03, 2010, 12:09PM

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/fire_boom_oil_spill_raines.html

The simple truth is that the Obama administration sat on their buns and did nothing for 8 days.  By the time they decided to act, the opportunity to prevent this disaster was gone.  All they had to do was follow the guidelines in place under the Bush administration and this problem would have been handled by the on scene Coast Guard commander.  I noticed that Coast Guard Admiral is a woman and I would hazard a guess that the old white guys, who knew what to do, were replaced with a politically correct appointment.

Unfortunately for Obama, it is becoming really obvious that his administration blew this one big time.

By the way, when they did respond the first thing they sent out was SWAT teams, following closely by environmental attorneys.  (They also cancelled the reward for an outstanding safety record they were scheduled to present to BPP)  This would seem to indicate that the administration has reason to believe this was not an accident.  There are already bizarre rumors, including one that the North Korean’s did the deed.  That seems unlikely, but a whole lot of things had to go wrong for this to happen.  Keep in mind that this happened the day before earth day and there are a lot of environmental extremists who consider bombing things socially desirable.  This was more than convenient for the environmental lobby so violently opposed to new off shore drilling.  Coincidence? 

Obama Announces He Will Be Sending SWAT Teams To Oil Rigs

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/29/obama_announces_he_will_be_sending_swat_teams_to_oil_rigs.html

Chutzpah

TDM