'Obama's Katrina': an Illustrated Timeline

21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.

22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness.

23 April 2010: President Obama blasts the Arizona governor, state legislators, police officers and residents for backing federal laws that prohibit illegal immigration.

24 April 2010: The president delivers his weekly radio address, which focuses on further regulation of Wall Street. He also calls upon certain segments of his original supporters -- African-Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, and women -- and asks them to mobilize for political action.

24 April 2010: Efforts to contain the spill are hampered by lack of resources and difficult weather.

25 April 2010: President Obama interrupts a weekend getaway to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham in North Carolina.

25 April 2010: Oil spreads across the gulf and heads toward the Louisiana shoreline.

26 April 2010: President Obama appears in a "Vote 2010" video, distributed by his political action wing Organizing for America, which serves as a stark appeal to blacks and Latinos -- specifically -- for their votes in November.

26 April 2010: The Coast Guard warns that the spill could become one of the worst in United States history.

28 April 2010: The President holds a rare, impromptu press conference on Air Force One, addressing "questions on the Arizona immigration law, the financial regulation bill and other issues." Obama also prepared to make his second nomination to the Supreme Court and warns of a "'conservative' brand of judicial activism in which the courts are often not showing appropriate deference to the decisions of lawmakers."

28 April 2010: large pools of oil are spotted close to the Louisiana shore line.

29 April 2010: the White House Flickr Feed is updated with a photo of the President meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and senior administration officials, including National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, which indicates that they are urgently working the issue of the oil spill.

29 April 2010: Meanwhile, local officials, the Coast Guard and private citizens continue their efforts to prevent damage to the Louisiana coastline.

Perhaps if the oil breached the Louisiana levees, then caught on fire, and then turned New Orleans into a Dresden-like inferno, the President would stop campaigning for a couple of days and actually pay attention to his own, personal Katrina. Even The New York Times has noticed, decrying the President's lackadaisical response. But I'm guessing that somehow, someway, it's all President Bush's fault.

Sunday, May 16, 2010
http://exposingtheleft.blogspot.com/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-update.html

Gulf Oil Spill (Updated)

My confidential informant/relative working on a support vessel in the Gulf says that the “siphon tube” is in place and they could begin pumping the oil spewing from the leaking riser within the next few hours.

Keep your fingers crossed folks as confidence remains guarded but high that this is going to work.

UPDATE: BP Succeeds in Inserting a Tube to Funnel Oil From Leaking Well

Bloomberg
BP Succeeds in Inserting a Tube to Funnel Oil From Leaking Well
May 16, 2010, 1:32 PM EDT
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-16/bp-succeeds-in-inserting-a-tube-to-funnel-oil-from-leaking-well.html

By Kim Chipman and Jordan Burke

May 16 (Bloomberg) — BP Plc said it made a breakthrough today in its attempts to control oil leaking from a damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico, successfully inserting a tube that will funnel oil to a ship on the water’s surface.

It was BP’s second attempt to insert the tube to capture oil gushing from a well 5,000 feet below the water’s surface. A first attempt failed when the frame that holds the tube shifted, Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said yesterday.

The tube will capture only some of the spillage. “While not collecting all of the leaking oil, this tool is an important step in reducing the amount of oil being released into Gulf waters,” the statement said.

After the tube was successfully inserted and working to funnel the oil, it was dislodged, halting the test. Technicians inspected the system and have reinserted the tube, BP and government authorities said today in a statement from the oil spill’s Joint Information Center.

The tube is made from a 4-inch (10.2 centimeters) pipe wrapped with a rubber flange and inserted by remote-operated vehicles into a larger pipe leading from the leaking well.

The idea is that undersea pressure will force the oil into the pipe and up to the surface, where a drill ship will separate and store the oil for processing at a refinery. After it was in place, the tube was successfully capturing oil and gas and funneling it to the ship, BP and government officials said in the statement.

Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, leased to London-based BP, exploded April 20 and sank two days later, taking the lives of 11 crew members. BP attempted to divert the flow using a 40-foot steel box, which didn’t work. It also failed in an attempt to use remote-operated vehicles to engage a device that would shut the well.

—Editors: Susan Warren, Theo Mullen.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kim Chipman in New Orleans, Louisiana at kchipman@bloomberg.net’ Jordan Burke in New Orleans at jburke29@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net

Question for Team Obama
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/55626/question-team-obama/greg-pollowitz
May 14, 2010 8:30 AM By Greg Pollowitz

From today’s New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.

Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.

If this is the case, then why didn’t any of these issue come to light when the Obama administration was debating whether to allow more offshore drilling? What type of review of offshore-drilling procedures, if any at all, was conducted by the Obama administration?

Also, I may be pro-drilling, but I’m also pro-accountability. Halliburton, Transocean, and BP need to be held accountable for their roles in the disaster.

05/14/10 08:30 AM

Comments:

HeavyHokie 05/14/10 13:24

heck of a job, birnbaum

Obama’s Tireless Efforts On the Basketball Court and Golf Course Cause BP to Successfully Insert New Pipe to Siphon Oil to Surface
By Doug Powers • May 16, 2010 03:06 PM
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/05/16/obamas-tireless-efforts/

I’ll leave it to Chris Matthews to find a way to link the two, but first, the potentially good news:

Engineers trying to stop an oil leak deep below the surface of Gulf of Mexico have successfully inserted a mile-long pipe to siphon oil from the disastrous spill, British Petroleum said Sunday.

BP says they are now capturing some of the leaking oil, and hopfully all of it eventually.

President Obama was notified, but only after bees swarmed his motorcade on the way to chur… er, I mean, on the way to play basketball:

Keith Olbermann has dismissed the swarm as racist “Beebaggers” upset at the health care bill.

Congressman Clyburn was in the car and claims to have heard at least two of the bees buzzing racial slurs, though news footage doesn’t as yet support that claim.

As luck would have it, smoke has a calming effect on bees, so all the president had to do was roll down the window and the bees slowly headed back to Michelle’s garden.

And if shooting hoops wasn’t enough, yesterday Obama spent majority of his Saturday trying to plug up the oil leak by jamming golf balls into every hole in the ground he could find:

And it might have worked!

If BP’s latest effort doesn’t go as well as expected, the administration’s going to offer the stubborn leak a Medal for Courageous Restraint and see if that’s enough to get it to stop.

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Miami Herald
Posted on Sun, May. 16, 2010

White House message machinery spinning faster than ever

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/16/1632037/white-house-message-machinery.html
By STEVEN THOMMA
McClatchy Newspapers

In the days after an oil rig exploded last month in the Gulf of Mexico, the White House faced not only a looming environmental catastrophe but also a potential public relations disaster.

Aides feared a story line would take hold that President Barack Obama had responded too slowly to the spreading oil slick, damaging him politically much as the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 discredited former President George W. Bush.

So while the federal government began reacting to the spreading oil, the White House message machine swung into action.

Within hours, it was cranking out a sustained barrage across the broad spectrum of modern communications - statements, reports, e-mails, tweets, photos and videos - all punctuated by a high-profile presidential visit to the Gulf followed by an incendiary speech at the White House and a video recap with exclusive behind-the-scenes views of Obama in “West Wing Week,” the White House’s new online program at www.whitehouse.gov.

Whether it’s Obama sitting with one reporter or a statement sent via Twitter, nothing happens by accident. The White House message machinery is a crucial element of the ever-expanding presidency. .......

To break through, he’s assembled a vast team to promote his agenda, whether it’s selling a policy such as his health care overhaul, providing information about government programs such as the H1N1 vaccine or simply making him look good - or less bad than others might.

“Because we are in such a hyper-partisan, polarized media environment, a lot of what we do is correcting misinformation. That’s part of implementing his agenda,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director.

THE MESSAGE

On April 29, press secretary Robert Gibbs rolled out Obama and a gusher of Cabinet officers to tell the news media about all the things the administration was doing to combat the oil spill.

TWITTER

That day, Gibbs sent his first oil leak message via Twitter, announcing that Obama had received a 20-minute briefing on the spill.

Others would follow.

“Our comprehensive look inside the aggressive response,” boasted one from deputy press secretary Bill Burton on May 5, with a link to an 11,500-word report from the White House detailing the “around the clock” response from the government. It included 73 mentions of the president.

“A busy day here, but the president has not taken his eyes off the BP spill,” said a May 10 White House tweet, complete with White House photos of Obama meeting with top aides in the Situation Room.

Twitter is just one of the new media tools White House officials use to deliver their messages. It allows them to reach voters directly without filtering or commentary from the news media. Gibbs alone reaches 60,000 people who receive his Tweets; White House Twitter messages reach 1.8 million.

PHOTOS

An hour after his first oil spill tweet, Gibbs used Twitter again to send a picture of Obama getting briefed. Message: The president is personally engaged. The shot was taken by official White House photographer Pete Souza, whose office sends out a steady stream of flattering, behind-the-scenes shots of the president, distributed via Flickr and posted on www.whitehouse.gov.

Souza and his colleagues, who include former McClatchy-Tribune Information Services photographer Chuck Kennedy, are respected former journalists. However, their work can be controversial when the White House uses it to replace independent journalism.

The White House shut out photojournalists and instead sent out Souza’s photos when Obama signed an executive order on abortion this year, and when he restaged his inaugural swearing-in last year with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.

“Pete Souza is a fantastic photographer, but he works for the White House,” said Ed Henry, a CNN reporter and the secretary of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

“A photographer on the White House payroll is going to release one photo out of the hundreds he takes. It’s going to be the one that casts the president in the best possible light.”

E-MAIL

From the time the Obama White House decided to launch its coordinated push on the oil spill, it bombarded the news media with e-mail reports on the federal response, emphasizing words such as “aggressive” and “immediate.”

“Administration-wide response,” said one e-mail on May 1, introducing a phrase that would be used repeatedly.

“President Obama visited the Gulf Coast to inspect response operations firsthand, underscoring the administration’s all-hands-on-deck response,” said another on May 2.

VIDEOS

The White House also produces its own video. Obama’s trip to the Gulf Coast on May 2 was covered not only by the news media, but also by the White House’s video team.

By May 4, whitehouse.gov had posted a video recap. By May 6, it showcased a new version on its “West Wing Week” webcast, “Your guide to everything that’s happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”

“It’s packaged like a hybrid between a week in review program and a documentary version of the old entertainment series ‘West Wing,’ “ said Gerald Jordan, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Arkansas. “Ultimately, there will be an audience that is so accustomed to fragmented media ... that they might meet at some point.”

THE LEADING MAN

The highest-profile White House messenger is the president himself. As the oil spill grew, so did Obama’s public role, from the May 2 visit to the Gulf to an appearance Friday in the Rose Garden.

Obama plays his role as public messenger much as his most recent predecessors did. In his first 15 months, he gave 620 speeches, very similar to the 15-month totals for Bush and for President Bill Clinton, according to Kumar.

For all the outreach via Twitter and other new media, Obama himself prefers the old media, which still aggregate the largest audiences. He uses the old media very differently, however.

He takes fewer questions from reporters in open sessions and gives many more one-on-one interviews, particularly to The New York Times, which the White House uses to deliver its message to the nation’s cultural and economic elite, starting with network and cable television news producers.

In 15 months, Obama took questions in formal news conferences or short sessions 83 times. Bush did it 205 times over that period; Clinton 367 times.

Obama gave far more interviews, however: 184 in his first 15 months, compared with 56 for Bush and 61 for Clinton. Of Obama’s interviews, 108 went to TV, 52 to newspapers and magazines, 11 to radio, 11 to mixed media and two to online organizations.

“The reason he does interviews is he likes to explain things like a professor, with all the buts and wherefores. He doesn’t like short Q and A’s,” Kumar said.

“The ideal interview is a cross platform,” she said, meaning talking to someone who can deliver his message on TV or online to “get into the bloodstream fast” and then reinforce it with an article in a prestigious newspaper or magazine.

Thus, she noted, Obama has given multiple interviews to John Harwood of CNBC-TV and The New York Times. The Times is the favored White House outlet, getting 20 percent of all print interviews last year. One of the official White House photos displayed on a West Wing wall shows Harwood exchanging high-fives with Obama during one of their interviews.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2514899/posts

Obama Admin Hid the BP Video for Three Weeks
May 17, 2010 10:30 AM By Greg Pollowitz
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore

Firedoglake:

The White House allowed BP to hide its video feed of a gushing oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico from the public for three weeks, all the while that same video played live in the White House Situation Room, ABC reports.

This startling revelation comes just as Obama prepares to get really angry in public about the spill just in time to cover up his administration’s collusion with BP to hide the true extent of the massive disaster in the Gulf.

Brian Ross and John Soloman of the Center for Public Integrity discussed ABC’s quest to obtain the video of the oil pipe and revealed that the White House consented to the release of a 30 second clip of the pipe.

“At the end of the day, the White House finally acquiesced to the 30 second piece because they understood the political and media pressure,” said CPI’s John Soloman. “Why not sooner? It’s been going on for three weeks. People have seen this internally within government almost every day. Why can’t the American people see it?”

The rest here. http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/47660

There’s also some discussion on whether or not adding oil dispersants directly to the leak is a good idea. Again, BP isn’t doing this on their own and has the backing of NOAA and the EPA. When the eventual Congressional commission investigates this, it will be interesting to see what exactly Team Obama is trying to cover up. I would think the questions the administration asked regarding safety issues prior to President Obama announcing his new drilling policy will prove embarrassingly lacking, at the very least.

05/17/10 10:30 AM

White House Allowed BP to Keep Video of Gushing Pipe from Public for Three Weeks
By: Michael Whitney Friday May 14, 2010 6:51 am
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/47660

This startling revelation comes just as Obama prepares to get really angry in public about the spill – just in time to cover up his administration’s collusion with BP to hide the true extent of the massive disaster in the Gulf.

The release of even the 30 second video clip showing the oil spewing uninhibited into the ocean immediately led outside observers to conclude the disaster was far worse than the 210,000 gallon estimate of the NOAA and Coast Guard. One scientist predicted to NPR that the rate is more in the range of almost 3 million gallons a day based on an analysis of the video released by BP.

The revelation that the White House and BP kept the true extent of the oil disaster from the public coincides nicely with last night’s news that Obama plans to get “angry” in front of the White House press corps tomorrow about BP’s role in the disaster and its clean up. Don’t be fooled, though. The evidence is mounting that the White House is working in concert with industry to hide the truth about the extent and cause of the spill.

Morning Bell: Did the Federal Government Enable the Gulf Oil Spill?
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/17/morning-bell-did-the-federal-government-enable-the-gulf-oil-spill/
Posted May 17th, 2010 at 9:53am

An “angry” President Barack Obama lashed out at those he feels are responsible for the Gulf oil spill Friday, telling reporters in the Rose Garden: “You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else. I will not tolerate any more finger-pointing or irresponsibility.” But as CBS News‘ Chip Reid points out: “Mr. Obama’s been president for nearly 16 months. Does he get at least a little piece of the blame?” Pointing to President Obama’s staunch defense of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Reid answered his own question: “Not a bit. … He portrayed his administration as valiantly fighting the good fight against the oil companies from day one. …So while the president is pointing the finger of blame, he’s also working hard to make sure that over time the finger doesn’t do a 180.”

In the President’s mind the federal government apparently can do no wrong. The leading answer to every problem our nation faces is bigger, stronger, and more intrusive government regulations. But a closer look at the facts surrounding the spill shows that it was an already overly oppressive regulatory legal framework, coupled with lax enforcement, that created the mismatched incentives that led to the disaster.

The federal government is the owner of the waters where drilling takes place and bears ultimate responsibility for what happens on its property. Energy companies seeking to develop our natural resources must survive a phalanx of federal regulations before any action can be taken. For starters, any action taken by the federal government, including offshore drilling leases, requires a detailed environmental impact analysis mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). But NEPA is such a draconian law, and the process can be so slow thanks to litigation, that to get anything done the federal government often grants waivers to the NEPA process. Which is exactly what happened with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in question.

Regulations also require the Interior Department to inspect rigs at regular intervals, and the Deepwater rig was supposedly inspected less than two weeks prior to the accident. The rig’s emergency shutoff valve, which reportedly had a dead battery, also passed inspection just 10 days before it failed. In addition to these intrusively written but leniently enforced regulations, the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990 set a $75 million liability cap beyond direct cleanup costs for any offshore oil spill. The net result of all of all these policies is a situation where nobody is responsible for safety because everybody is.

The answer to the Gulf oil spill is not a new ban on domestic energy production or more intrusive regulations. The best way to make sure future spills do not happen is make energy companies responsible for safety but to then also hold them fully responsible for any accidents. Combining liability with a responsibility for safety maintenance should minimize the likelihood of accidents by directly connecting profit motives to safe operations. It is also high time the entire NEPA process was reformed. NEPA’s pervasive application makes it highly burdensome and difficult to follow, which drives the need for waivers. As waivers become the norm, they become easier to attain even when, perhaps, they should be denied.

If the Obama administration insists on micromanaging every aspect of energy production then it should also be prepared to have the finger pointed at itself when things go wrong.

“Those idiots at CNN found an obamabot park official at the Dry Tortugas 0 miles west of Key West who claims he has tar balls floating in. Hardly news,happens all the time...” ~ rodguy911

Exactly.

Here is the story that Rush mentioned a little earlier today:

SkyNews
Updated May 18, 2010
BP Chief Predicts ‘Very Modest’ Oil Spill Impact
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/18/bp-chief-predicts-modest-oil-spill-impact/

The British oil giant has risked outrage along the Gulf Coast by predicting a far smaller environmental impact than has been feared by experts.

The chief executive of BP tells Sky News he believes the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill will end up having only a “very, very modest” environmental impact.

Experts had feared the Deepwater Horizon disaster could have led to one of the worst environmental catastrophes in U.S. history.

But the British oil giant has risked outrage along the Gulf Coast by predicting a far smaller impact.

“I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest,” Tony Hayward said. “It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment but everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact will be very, very modest.”

Click here to see video of Tony Hayward’s statement. VIDEO BP Chief: Oil Spill Impact ‘Very Modest’ http://tinyurl.com/33tpnh4

BP has begun capturing some of the leaking oil after inserting a suction tube into the fractured riser pipe on the seabed.

It is gathering up an estimated one fifth of the oil pumping out of the fractured well.

“Over the last 36 hours we have made a lot of progress on containment on the seabed,” Hayward said. “We have a piece of technology engineering which we have developed and which is now allowing us to produce oil from the leak to the surface.”

The BP chief spoke to Sky News after completing a visit to Florida where he handed over $25 million to pay for an advertising campaign for the state’s tourism industry.

He appeared upbeat as he met teams at BP’s vast crisis control center in Houston.

The center has been working around the clock for more than three weeks trying to identify solutions to the crisis.

The company believes the next stage of its response effort could see the leak sealed completely within seven to 10 days if all goes to plan.

99 posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2010 1:02:45 PM by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2515929/posts?page=99#99

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OBAMA ADMIN GAVE RIG 'SAFETY AWARD' LAST YEAR