Thursday, May 20, 2010

Barack Obama's Oil-Spill Photo Op: Epic Fail

We wrote here last week about Obama's pathetic trip to the Louisiana coastline - all part of his role in the great Gulf Oil Spill Conspiracy:

The president was also seen taking off for a disaster scene tour in a chopper. But winds were such and the threat of fog possible that the president only saw the ordinary Louisiana coast.
After all that travel, logistics and talk, he never spotted one drop of oil.


Aides were quick to describe how useful the tour was for Obama to see something for himself...Local officials were quoted as appreciative of his presence which, truth be told, did absolutely nothing to stop the oil, advance the recovery or mitigate any damage beyond that potentially to the president's image if he hadn't gone.

Tim Blair has some more info on the president's ill-fated attempt for the ultimate environmental photo-op:

Barack Obama's media advisers were quite distressed when the President travelled down to the Louisiana coastline last week to make his first on-the-spot statement about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Their distress was caused by what they didn't discover, rather than what they did. Despite their frantic requests, no photogenic dying oil-covered birds could be found to form a backdrop for the Presidential tirade as he weighed into BP.

Maybe it's because...this is not quite the environmental disaster that Obama desperately wants it to be?

Yes, there will be ecological damage caused by the 5,000 barrels of oil a day which has been spewing from the stricken rig. Yet this is not much more than the natural oil seepage which occurs spontaneously in the petroliferous Gulf of Mexico, and has done for millennia.

Obviously, that is much more widely dispersed and is absorbed naturally by microbes which have evolved precisely to perform that function; but that will continue to happen for yet more millennia – by contrast, the leak from Deepwater Horizon will very soon be capped.

But those dirty birds do exist, BTW - via the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries:

To date, 21 birds have been processed through Fort Jackson, including an oiled brown pelican discovered by LDWF biologists yesterday. Two birds are currently alive and being treated, and 15 birds died after admittance, were dead on arrival or had to be euthanized.”

Even the mainstream media is beginning to get wise here:

As for that huge lump of land between New Orleans and the Gulf where most of the oil is hitting, it’s pretty much devoid of population. I flew over it once on the way back from El Salvador. It’s just a giant mud flat. So if the oil lands there, here’s what you’ll get: oily mud. That’s only slightly worse than muddy mud.

Sorry, Barack, you tried - but I don't think a dozen +3 dead birds is going to be quite enough to convince America that we must abandoned offshore oil drilling in favor of windmills, solar panels, winged horses, and magic carpets.

Next time, Baracky, before you blow up an oil rig in order to advance your bizarre policies, make sure you transport a planeload of goo to the nearest beach. To paraphrase the Zen masters - if a manufactured crisis cannot be coupled with a manufactured photo op, does it make a sound?

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