Yes, Mr. President, It Was Your Katrina - Three Weeks Ago. Now it May Be Your Chernobyl

Yes, Mr. President, It Was Your Katrina - Three Weeks Ago. Now it May Be Your Chernobyl

by Robert Redick
Dear Mr President,

You’re a man of vision, intelligence, stamina and nerve. And you’re blowing it. A hemorrhage of poison is sickening the Gulf of Mexico. And has been, for a month. What action have you taken? What direct response have you made?

Friends, enemies, drillers’ families, fishing families, anyone and everyone who has been appalled by the ecological horror show: we are all asking you this question. At first you gave us a rhetorical performance, a promise to be tough, while BP invested as much effort in limiting information and liability as it did in limiting the extent of the spill, and coast guard vessels continued to monitor plankton drift on the far side of the Gulf. We don’t deserve the insult of your obfuscation. No law allows you to intervene? Rubbish. Did that ever stop a president from pursuing his notion of national security? Did it ever stop you? And if a crippling blow to the Gulf ecosystem and economy doesn’t constitute a national security threat, what does?

You have every freedom to act. The heartbreaker is that you’ve chosen not to. Maybe your usually-flawless political senses told you this was a losing bet. Maybe you were overworked, overtired. Maybe your daily briefings from the Gulf produced a spike of denial--“it can’t be as bad as they say.” I don’t know, or deeply care. I couldn’t do you job. But you, Mr President, spent eighteen months and countless millions of dollars telling us you could.

What you did not do was soberly and responsibly decide to leave BP in charge of the disaster response. Of that I’m certain, because no such sober, responsible conclusion could possibly be reached. A child (or a fiction writer) could have told you that BP had long ago--weeks ago--proven themselves duplicitous and inept. They are naked, and so is your failure. We have cringed before this farce, even as we cringe before the sight of oiled beaches, dying birds and fish, dying hope for a way of life.

Every day hundreds of thousands of gallons are belched from that open wound on the sea floor. This is a vast, underwater chemical burn, a massive trauma incident, a body blow to America. You’re treating it like a tickle in the throat. You offer stern words and stoic looks and a carousel of indignant underlings on the talk shows. Today it’s a blue-ribbon commission. Bipartisan, of course. The better to protect you and your circle, if nothing much else. The insults accumulate. The denial marches on.

This isn’t about spin or power or next fall’s elections or the predictable sleaze of a largely-above-the-law behemoth like BP. It’s not about you or your legacy--though the latter may well be written on the poisoned waters of a marsh. IT’S ABOUT THE GULF OF MEXICO. Period. It can’t wait. You cannot, must not wait. Don’t let another day go by.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/24-5

I hope Mr Redick feels a bit calmer now.

"Don't let another day go by." There's the solution we've all been waiting for.

drilling experts and their magical drills in secret detention until Day 40.

Just the way he rolls.

with someone in the government who has more experience than BP in underwater drilling.

Which is no one.

Really the complete lack of common sense at places like common dreams is as bottomless as that well.

It's fucking OK to let the Oil Companies write the rules???

You really don't comprehend how we got in this mess???

Where in the fuck have you been?

Cause sounds like not only do you not comprehend
that a majority of the American people have been
drowning the Government in the bathtub since Reagan,
but you are reacting as clueless considering all of them question marks!

I mean, who better to handle such things as the people who fucked them up in the first place?

Blimey, I don't know whether some of you are operating out of utter naivete or political cynicism.

Hyperbole falsely pointing a finger at the President plays into the hands that caused this disaster.

I don't think we've yet seen the anger that this President is about to display.

Thanks for your sensible comments, rooted in reality and truth, not emotion.

I see a trend.

I don't blame the President for the fact that all the regulatory agency staff appears to enjoy watching pornography rather than working (well who doesn't). However I think maybe firing a few people for not working and watching porn or maybe blocking porn from government computers might make them...work.

.... it's a separate, VERY SERIOUS issue .... but it's still not to that level.

When you start seeing this.....







... get back with me.

up with anything better than Katrina or chenobyl to describe BP's tragic oil gusher.

As in, I don't actually know what the writer was saying.

Sylvia Earle:



Also, if the author believes the complexity of plugging a gusher at the depths of the ocean is the same as a failure to address the food, water and shelter needs of Katrina victims is the same thing, then he is an idiot.

the know how and ability to stop this relentlessness disaster?

Coming soon, DU: BP Group, because it's hard for BP supporters on the general boards...

That's all you've got.

operators.

or maybe obama can name all the experts working on this so that the heritage foundation can get their names on limbaugh's desk in the morning so he can get dittoheads to hassle them for having had abortions when they were in their 20s.

imagine your water line breaks and you can't shut off the water. how do you stop it. now increase the pressure 1000 times, coming out of a much larger pipe/hole and put it a mile under water where only robots can operate. and only a few countries/companies have robots like that (not US because we spent our treasure developing better nukes instead of exploring the depths), and few are trained to operate them. and have that pipe coming out of mud. and so on.

the problem is stopping the flow and it's a problem that IS NOT EASY to fix. hopefully it is possible. and fuck all those republican deregulator cheerleaders that enabled this disaster and are now saying it's obama's katrina. fuck them.

are they so desperate to attack someone politically that they disregard all those humans that died MISERABLY and survivors are still suffering to this day in America and the Ukraine.

"This is Obama's Auschwitz" coming up next?

Redick nails it.

Yay for unlimited presidential authority! What could possibly go wrong?

Like what is happening in Arizona? etc etc

There is no absolutely no comparison.

its way out of this. I don't think the Katrina comparison is entirely accurate, either, (Chernobyl might be more appropriate, though) but this situation and the President's lack of direct involvement in addressing the crisis does not reflect well on him. At all. And it won't be possible to cover that up, not in the short or long term.

I don't think anyone wanted bluster and photo ops.....

The fact that this occured in a communist country meant that
the plant was government owned.

Although there were lasting effects to this devastating accident,
there was not one single man blamed for it.

And that's saying alot considering my husband just showed me his recipe for something called 'Golden Syrup pudding.'
:scared: