Why Obama deserves the gulf spill criticism

Every now and then you get someone who tries to defend Obama over the gulf spill.  It's not hard to make an effective argument to refute them, but having examples like this really makes the process that much easier:

After making a brief stop in Norfolk for refueling, U.S. Coast Guard inspections and an all-out publicity blitz intended to drum up public support, a giant tanker billed as the world's largest oil skimming vessel set sail Friday for the Gulf of Mexico where it hopes to assist in the oil-cleanup effort.

The Taiwanese-owned, Liberian-flagged ship dubbed the "A Whale" stands 10 stories high, stretches 1,115 feet in length and has a nearly 200-foot beam. It displaces more water than an aircraft carrier.

Built in South Korea as a supertanker for transporting oil and iron ore, the six-month-old vessel was refitted in the wake of the BP oil spill with 12, 16-foot-long intake vents on the sides of its bow designed to skim oil off surface waters

The vessel's billionaire owner, Nobu Su, the CEO of Taiwanese shipping company TMT Group, said the ship would float across the Gulf "like a lawn mower cutting the grass," ingesting up to 500,000 barrels of oil-contaminated water a day.

But a number of hurdles stand in his way. TMT officials said the company does not yet have government approval to assist in the cleanup or a contract with BP to perform the work.

Ed over at HotAir points out a lot of interesting facts and makes a few key points, such as how this ship can basically do what's taken us 2 months time in one day, and that there's no reason the government shouldn't of known about this ship before day 66.  He's absolutely right, and there is no valid reason why this monster shouldn't of been in the gulf as soon as possible.  This is where the President comes in.  ThePresident has the ability to pound on tables and make things happen without all the bureaucracy, but instead of actually doing what he can to fix the problem, he's tried to pass the buck off on whoever he can.

Even more proof that Obama is a legislator at best, but certainly not a leader.

Drill, Baby, Drill

The Oil Spill has been called Obama's Katrina, and I've already touched on why that is and isn't a valid argument.  Who gets blame and how this potentially hurts Obama has been the big theme of the spill, but what conservatives need to be worried about is how this is killing "Drill, Baby, Drill.".  A year ago the argument was a winner, hands down.  Only the Greens and rabid leftists opposed it.  A few weeks into the oil spill, however, and we're below water.

Does anyone else find that ridiculous?  There are several large reasons for why this was a preventable disaster.

A good place to start would be with the location of the leak.  As Charles Krauthammer asks, why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water?

Here’s my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production.

And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we’ve had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

We shouldn't be drilling in such deep waters to begin with, but because environmentalists are doing what they do, we end up drilling in places that just aren't safe.  The picture below does a fantastic job of showing just how much of the US coast is unavailable for drilling.

On this same note we have to wonder why we're drilling at depths that prevent us from plugging the leak.  Wouldn't it of made sense to open up shallower waters elsewhere, and ban drilling at certain depths until we have the means to quickly and efficiently stop leaks?  Call me crazy but it seems far more harmful to the environment to stop safe drilling, but allow the more risky drilling, especially when your "efficient method" to stopping the leak is dumping mud on it.

Which brings me to the next point:  Regulation.

The idea of a conservative talking about regulating is something may seem hypocritical, so before we continue I want to point out that (most) conservatives don't advocate removing all regulations.  We simply believe that there is too much regulation in some areas, and that too much regulation strangles economies.  But some regulations are just common sense, and some limited government oversight can be a good thing.  Safety regulations for things like explosions or blowout leaks are generally things that fall into that good category.  The problem isn't that those regulations aren't in place - they are -the problem is that BP was exempt from those rules:

Petrochemical giant BP didn't file a plan to specifically handle a major oil spill from an uncontrolled blowout at its Deepwater Horizon project because the federal agency that regulates offshore rigs changed its rules two years ago to exempt certain projects in the central Gulf region, according to an Associated Press review of official records.

The Minerals Management Service, an arm of the Interior Department known for its cozy relationship with major oil companies, says it issued the rule relief because some of the industrywide mandates weren't practical for all of the exploratory and production projects operating in the Gulf region.

The blowout rule, the fact that it was lifted in April 2008 for rigs that didn't fit at least one of five conditions, and confusion about whether the BP Deepwater Horizon project was covered by the regulation, caught the attention of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

The Deep Horizon was an expensive rig, and the article says it was the "most advanced in the world.".  So do alarms go for anyone else when a supposedly super advanced rig has the worst possible scenario possible after every single safety feature fails, and after it's been granted exemption from regulations intended to prevent that disaster?  Somebody was cutting corners here, and someone else failed to find out that said corners were missing.  This wasn't a disaster and warning against offshore drilling, this was a disaster and warning against corruption and stupidity.

At the end of the day I just never understood the Oil Spill = Offshore Drilling is Bad reaction.  Yes, I'm fully aware of what's happening and what it will do to people's livelihoods as well as the environment.  I understand the devastation and the threat, but I also recognize that this disaster was entirely preventable, and that the benefits of offshore drilling outweigh the costs.  There will always be problems and complications when you're doing something, regardless of how positive that thing is.  This shouldn't deter us from doing that.

Besides what is the alternative, exactly?  Do people actually think this helps?  We can stop offshore drilling and purchase our oil from other countries, but how do you think Brazil, Mexico, and other nations get their oil?  Do you think their safety regulations come close to ours?  If offshore drilling is so dangerous that we risk completely destroying the oceans and ourselves with it, does it matter who does it?  Or is it only American oil rigs that explode, despite our higher safety standards?

The Deepwater Horizon was a terrible thing, but we shouldn't create another terrible scenario by attacking drilling in America.  Before we all start getting hysterical we need to take a step back and look at this for what it really was - a preventable disaster caused by a mixture of corruption and greed - and remind ourselves that we have the power to make offshore drilling safe, where other nations won't.  We also have to remind ourselves that the planet is a durable thing, and with our help it will recover.

The Oil Spill: Another reason to ignore the media

When Hurricane Katrina struck the US Gulf Coast in 2005 it left 1,836 people dead and did 81.2 billion dollars in damage.  We saw the images of a flooded New Orleans with people stranded on roofs, read the stories about the chaos of evacuation, and were told horror story after horror story.  And then we were given one message from the media:  It's all Bush's fault.  There were no shortage of reasons why either.  Some were just angry at the lack of response, and others attributed it to race or the lack of conservative support for global warming.

The left, in typical leftist fashion, decided to politicize something that had no business being politicized to begin with, and then proceeded to scream about it to anyone who would listen.  It was a dishonest, manipulative, and remarkably successful strategy that Democrats used throughout the Bush administration.  Continually raving like a lunatic may not work in the short term, but if enough people do it long enough eventually a negative atmosphere spreads until you begin to associate someone with negative things.  In Bush's case this was failure, incompetence, stupidity, and a lack of compassion.

Once you recognize that it's easy to understand the media's portrayal of Obama during the oil spill.  In an article titled "A month after oil spill began, Obama begins taking charge" we're shown an Obama that is at worst trying and, at best a hero trying to fix the problem and punish those responsible:

Facing a growing furor over the monthlong Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the White House Friday named two environmentalists to lead a presidential commission investigating the disaster.

The appointments of former Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and William K. Reilly , who led the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush , came as the Obama administration tried to defend its handling of the spill against critics who charge that the oil giant BP has been dragging its feet in measuring how much oil the company's ruptured well is spewing.

A month after the spill began, the Obama administration also appeared to be distancing itself from BP, forming a task force this week to measure the spilled crude that includes an engineering professor who's told Congress that he thinks the spill is far larger than originally thought, but not a representative from BP

The article focuses heavily on what Obama is doing, while at the same time placing blame squarely on the shoulders of BP.  To be fair that's exactly where the blame needs to go.  BP messed up, and their response to the disaster has been poor to say the least, but there are legitimate points to criticize Obama on.  We can't forget that this spill happened in the federal jurisdiction, and Obama's behavior has been similar to that for which Bush was criticized for, such as not spending enough time in the areas affected.  Don't expect the AP, CNN, or MSNBC to talk about that anytime soon though.