"Mr. President, What Took You So Long?"

Anne Leary linked a new RNC ad on her blog and in response to a great post by Sherry Antonetti over at Potluck.  Sherry had a few things to say after reading Obama's speech.   Here is a sample:

Remember the miles of boom offered early on, sitting in warehouses in Maine? It’s still there. Again, we don’t know why.

Raise your hand if you remember the Governors and legislators of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama were all begging for the Federal government to lift restrictions which they had not so that the states could act. Me. I remember that.

Those national guards that the Federal government mobilized? They’re hampered by the lack of a chain of command. So far only 1400 of the 17,500 authorized have been engaged. Why? The Coastguard and BP have to okay the missions. So because there are bureaucratic layers, the mess sits and the resources both causing the problem and capable of solving it, lay idle, wasting.

Now. Raise your hand if you remember Ken Salazar doing anything.

What? No hands?

Name three things you remember the President did do since April 20th.

Bet they weren’t 1) meet with BP 2) authorize personnel and equipment for the Gulf 3) mobilize the American people to help deal with the crisis.

Bet they were 1) Vacation in Chicago or North Carolina, 2) Golf and 3) Party with Sir Paul.

From Sherry's keyboard to the RNC's ears - so to speak - here is the ad:

Oops, looks like the Gulf is Obama's Katrina

Louisianans polled by left-leaning pollster PPP answer the lingering question, is the Gulf of Mexico oil spill Obama's Katrina yet:

Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama's handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else- a majority of voters there think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama's done dealing with the spill.

50% of voters in the state, even including 31% of Democrats, give Bush higher marks on that question compared to 35% who pick Obama.

Overall only 32% of Louisianans approve of how Obama has handled the spill to 62% who disapprove. 34% of those polled say they approved of how Bush dealt with Katrina to 58% who disapproved.

 Brutal, just brutal.   Perhaps another speech, scheduled to start any second now will cure Obama's Louisiana blues though I tend to doubt it.    There was one winner according to the poll, you can see the newly crowned king of the approval polls in action here. 

Live blogging the speech (aka misery loves company) over at Potluck.

Never Again

Via Hot Air

The NRSC's latest web ad hits Obama hard, using his own words about George W. Bush to highlight the failed leadership of Obama's presidency. The criticism intertwined from the White House news network MSNBC and James Carville reinforces a suggestion even the left can't deny his failures any more. Peggy Noonan made a similar point in today's Wall Street Journal:

What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama's standing with Democrats. They don't love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the president's Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations.

The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy. It's not good to have a president in this position—weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support—less than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of "the indispensble nation" be so weakened.

Noonan can't see a way for Obama to recover.  I am not ruling out the media rallying to his defense when the reality of a GOP takeover becomes a little too much for them to contemplate.  The lesson for Noonan and the rest of the media should be obvious, however.  You can't cheerlead a political lightweight to competence.  Never Again, indeed:

James Carvillle: 'We're About to Die Down Here!'

It's starting to look a lot like Katrina to me. It seems James Carville agrees while Stephanopoulos spins like a top:

Oil plumes in the Gulf of Mexico

Via Memeorandum
The New York Times reports disturbing evidence the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may be much worse than originally reported:

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Scientists studying a video released this week of the leak at its' source suggest that as many as 3.4 million barrels of oil could be leaking into the ocean:



The latest efforts to contain the leak have failed.  The application of dispersants has made the surface water clearer but it appears the problem areas deep in the ocean waters is much worse than expected.  BP plans to reinsert the tube that could contain the oil as it leaks right away.  Nevertheless, oil has been leaking at high rates for nearly a month now and there doesn't appear to be a solution available that will certainly fix the problem at its' source.  The Exxon Valdez disaster seems dwarfed in comparison to this leak.

If you read the entire article by the Times, take note there is one word missing from the lengthy article.  Not once do they mention the President, not once.  Dare I say it?  What if Bush?  The chances the Times would run an article on a disaster of these proportions without mentioning Bush are slim to none.Every picture of an oil-covered bird would have Bush somehow associated with it.  I am not suggesting the same should be done because it is inherently unfair to hang an entire disaster on the sitting President.  At some point however, the failure to contain this disaster along with mounting evidence the White House colluded with BP to keep the extent of the disaster from the public leads to the inevitable question:  "Is this Obama's Katrina yet?"