Oil Spill Video:

by Glenn Littrell

in response to a video post and comments on FaceBook comparing the BP Oil Spill to Katrina:

The timeline in the video is a ‘little’ misleading. 
Leadership from Day 1/3am phone call:

“The fire occurred at 10pm, the NEXT day: Day 1, after overnight explosion: April 21: Deputy Secretary of Interior, Coast Guard dispatched to region… following a briefing with President Obama, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen*, Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe, and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, "Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes was dispatched to the region yesterday to assist with coordination and response."   

Adm. Thad Allen is the man it took Bush 8 days to put in place because of the appointment of “Brownie”, the horse judge. Brownie’s appointment was probably the single most contributing factor in Katrina becoming Bush’s Katrina.

The references to the offer of the Dutch ship on day 3 was refused supposedly because of the Jones Act?
At that time the Jones Act waiver was not as crucial as it became later because on day 3 it was still believed that the well was not leaking. The only oil in the water was believed to be that directly related to the fire and the sinking of the rig. The Dutch ship and others probably would not have arrived in time for what was erroneously believed or being portrayed by BP as manageable spill. 

Day 3: April 23: Coast Guard "focused on mitigating the impact of the product currently in the water." The Coast Guard stated:

“The Department of the Interior, MMS [the U.S. Minerals Management Service], and the Coast Guard continue to support the efforts of the responsible parties to secure all potential sources of pollution. Both federal agencies have technical teams in place overseeing the proposals by BP and Transocean to completely secure the well. Until that has occurred and all parties are confident the risk of additional spill is removed, a high readiness posture to respond will remain in place. 

Although the oil appears to have stopped flowing from the well head, Coast Guard, BP, Transocean, and MMS remain focused on mitigating the impact of the product currently in the water and preparing for a worst-case scenario in the event the seal does not hold…”

  Day 5:April 25: Response team implements plan to contain oil spilling from source, weather delays cleanup.
“The unified command is implementing intervention efforts in an attempt to contain the source of oil emanating from the wellhead at the Deepwater Horizon incident site Sunday.

The unified command has approved a plan that utilizes submersible remote operated vehicles in an effort to activate the blowout preventer on the sea floor and to stop the flow of oil that has been estimated at leaking up to 1,000 barrels/42,000 gallons a day.”

Day 6: April 26: Response crews "to resume skimming operations." On April 26, the response team stated, ”…Following adverse weather that went through the area, response crews are anticipated to resume skimming operations today," including 1,000 personnel, 10 offshore vessels, 7 skimming boats and more than 14,000 gallons of dispersant. At that point 48,384 gallons of oily water had been collected.

Day 8 April 28: Federal officials realize spill was far more severe than BP led them to believe. An April 28 New York Times article reported, "Government officials said late Wednesday night that oil might be leaking from a well in the Gulf of Mexico at a rate five times that suggested by initial estimates."

  The video cites Obama being on vacation, and of course golf, but lets remember Bush’s flyover was on his way back from vacation. So is that a wash? I hope so because The whole whose on vacation, who golfed the most is getting tiresome. We’re even attacking the family for going on vacation? Same situation has occurred before, so lets all get over it.

As far as statements on the campaign trail let’s remember that his opponent, and all the nominees from that party proclaimed the safety of off shore drilling, including deep water drilling. Remember “Drill, Baby, Drill”. Unfortunately Obama decided to drink some of that cool-aid shortly before the explosion. So if we’re going to dump everybody on the campaign trail for those promises I’ll go along with that.

If you want to paint this as Obama’s Katrina go ahead. He muffed some things. There were mistakes, both technical and political. But I would like to point out two things:

1.   No one saw this coming, not even the ‘Drill, baby, drill” proponents. It was an isolated incident that barely made the news at first. We were all banking on the so called ‘safe’ and secure industry to handle it. Personally I was a little surprised it made the briefing list the next day. It happened without warning, the deaths occurred immediately, the damage was impending but unlike Katrina people were not in immediate and ongoing danger of more deaths and injuries. This is why the young lady in the video was careful not to compare this to Katrina. The makers of the video seem to miss that point, but it is a political video, and apparently an implication of accuracy is not required in politics In the long run though, absent of any other information, the waiver of the Jones Act should have come sooner.
2.   The Obama bashing is just so perfuse, so saturating and in many cases so trivial that it is becoming so irrelevant. Can anybody in this country debate an issue anymore without it degrading to a shouting match of talking points without substantial arguments, or heaven forbid someone should have to defend against a counter argument, because they aren’t allowed. With Clinton we spent 4 years and $40 million dollars to prove a man would lie about having an affair. And to what end? Now for political points we deny employment benefits during the worse [and yes inherited] recession ever. We create fear with cries of imaginary ‘death panels’ and socialism! In a country where we claim to be a Christian nation we criminalize hard working people, blame the poor for being poor, condemn an acquisition of racism while ignoring acts of racism, and deny benefits to 9/11 first responders to protect off shore investors. All to score political points. I’m tiring of the whole thing, I should of shutdown and become a hermit when the guy I backed turned out to be a total sleazebag. It scares me that we are becoming a nation where only one side can be right, that disagreeing and dissent are no longer considered part of a republic.

NOW let’s look at the opposition’s response to the oil spill:

by Glenn Littrell