Obama's Katrina

Sometimes I really wish the confounded media could find two original ideas to rub up against each other. Obama's Katrina - except, of course, that Katrina or its like has nothing whatever to do with the Gulf BP disaster. It is sort of like the "-gate" every scandal except that they naturally have nothing whatever to do with something like a politically inspired burglary and political cover-up of that criminal act.

A manmade corporate financed disaster is in what way similar to a hurricane? State and federal governments are responsible for flood relief, oil companies are supposed to be responsible for the oil they drill for. It is certainly true that a very large number of Gulf people are going to be harmed by the ecological smash up of oil all over the place and the Fed is responsible for trying contain a spill once it gets beyond the capabilities of ... well BP or whoever the oil bunch is pointing fingers at now. Once a hurricane forms it is one and its track is predictable and there is usually a period of some days to get squared around unlike something like an exploding oil rig.

However good or bad the Federal response, this would be something like Obama's Oil Spill problem, not Katrina or Gulf-gate or ... whatever overused media short cut for thinking they use. I'm pretty unsure exactly what it is that the media people are parroting that anyone with a brain thinks the Fed could do beyond what it is doing and has been doing. The Federal Government is scarcely full of oil drilling experts or spill mitigation experts - that being the province of oil companies. I do believe that a regulatory body sure ought to have people who know enough to ask exactly what a company proposes to do about a problem 5K feet under the water and base decisions on realities rather than corporate wishes. Sadly, getting this mess under control shows no sign of happening soon.