RUSH: David Axelrod was on Good Morning America today. George Stephanopoulos: ‘Will this be Obama’s Katrina? Should the federal and state governments have done more and earlier?’
AXELROD: This is always the case in Washington that whenever something like this happens, the political speculation sets in. Now, I’m not concerned about that. What I’m concerned about is that we do every single thing we can to remediate this problem, to stop the flow, and that’s what’s going on.
RUSH: Isn’t it comforting to know that this guy, Axelrod, is the leading expert here on oil wells and rigs. So he’s not afraid this will be Obama’s Katrina, and the reason is because Axelrod controls the media. Remember, the media was out there saying, ‘Bush hates black people.’ You had all kinds of elected Democrats during Katrina, ‘Bush hates black people, Bush wants black people to die, Bush wants New Orleans to be half empty, blacks moving out of the city and out of the state, Bush wants this.’ And Axelrod said that’s what always happens. It doesn’t always happen, Mr. Axelrod. Your guys always get a pass.
Now, there are some State-Controlled Media today that are trying to do stories on this, there are a couple of them, one is ABC’s The Note: ‘Slick Waters: Heckuva Dilemma, As Sludge Sticks to Politics and Policy — While our eyes gazed downward at Florida, what if the biggest political story of the week was creeping up toward the Gulf Coast? Like the scale of the environmental impact, the political impact has the potential to get worse with the sticky, deadly mess that’s already lapping onto shore. The Obama administration, like the rest of the country, was a beat behind. It took eight days before we began to see the full efforts of the federal government brought to bear.’ Can you believe ABC is reporting that? Eight days. I mean Bush flew over Katrina on day two. FEMA was on their way down there.
Calvin Woodward in the Associated Press here, eight people to write this one: ‘A Containable Accident, Then Suddenly A Crisis — Suddenly, everything changed. For days, as an oil spill spread in the Gulf of Mexico, BP assured the government the plume was manageable, not catastrophic.’ Oh! This is new. We’re going to blame Big Oil not telling Obama the truth. They hid it from him. We were all watching the slick on TV but Obama never saw it because BP was not telling him the truth. Yeah, right. By the way, whatever happened to putting all this stuff on fire? Two days ago all I saw all day was, ‘Coast Guard getting ready for controlled burns of oil on surface of sea.’ They waited too long, it got too windy. I’m just an average, ordinary run-of-the-mill layman on stuff like this, but it seems to me if you start this fire, these controlled burns of oil while they’re moving ashore, if they don’t fully burn out before they get to store you’ve got a double problem.
You’ve got more than oil-coated birds. You got oil-coated birds on fire. Yeah. Prince William Sound times ten, Exxon Valdez. And Obama didn’t know. I shoulda known. British Petroleum lied to Obama. ‘Government scientists realized the leak was five times larger than they had been led to believe…’ Of course BP lied again. Ahem. ‘… and days of lulling statistics and reassuring words gave way Thursday to an all-hands-on-deck emergency response. … On Thursday, President Barack Obama set in motion a larger federal mobilization, pledging to deploy ‘every single available resource’…’ And, of course, we see it, do we not? ‘…to the area and ordering his disaster and environmental leaders to get down there in person. Only a few days after the Coast Guard assured the country there was ‘ample time’ to protect the coast if oil came ashore, warnings from the government were newly alarming.’
So here’s two reports. You got ABC, which is pretty head on, pretty straight. Here’s six people at the AP, a containable accident and suddenly a crisis — hint, hint — it’s all because British Petroleum didn’t tell Obama. Obama is the only one who did not know the severity of this. Here’s more Axelrod. Stephanopoulos said, ‘How about the broader policy implications? Several of the president’s allies, Senator Nelson of Florida, have said that right now the president’s call to expand oil drilling should be suspended until the investigation’s complete. Do you agree with that?’
AXELROD: Let’s understand what the president has said. All he has said is he’s not going to continue the moratorium on drilling. But he hasn’t — no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here. No domestic drilling in new areas is gonna go forward until there is a adequate review of what’s happened here.
RUSH: Meanwhile, the Chinese are drilling in the Gulf, the Russians are drilling in the Gulf in association with the Cubans. The Vietnamese are drilling in the Gulf. The Angolans are drilling for oil in the Gulf, and they’re not shutting down.
By the way, speaking of Vietnam. Folks, I don’t know if you know this but ‘Vietnam marked the 35th anniversary of the Communist victory in the Vietnam War with a grand military parade today through the former Saigon, with the government basking more in its economic achievements than its historic military defeat of the United States. Some 50,000 invitees, many waving red and gold ruling party flags, crowded the parade route. They marked the day that North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the gates of the former Presidential Palace in Saigon and ousted the US-backed South Vietnam government — the culmination of one of the most seismic military achievements since World War II.’ This is the AP praising the military acumen of the North Vietnamese. Now, there’s no evidence that John Kerry was there, and I wonder why. You know, he served in Vietnam. And where was Bill Clinton? Where was Obama? I mean this is made to order. This is the kind of ceremony they have to have the current crop of Democrats present ’cause it makes the US look horrible, which is what they’re after, what they’re about. I got a new name for the Democrat Party, by the way. I’ll share it with you later.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Louisiana National Guard was mobilized to fight the oil spill threatening the fragile coastal ecosystem. Folks, we were joking about this and treating it a little lightheartedly, but eight days went by and Obama didn’t do anything. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we’ve got the Haiti situation, all we’re told that, ‘Yeah, this is a different administration, we’re going to go in there, we’re going to fix that problem, we’re going to fix it up, everybody is gonna get relief.’ Nothing’s happening in Haiti.
Eight days. Nothing was done to stop this oil slick or to prepare the people can you blame the people of Louisiana? Now it’s headed for Florida and people there are a little panicked in its path. I’ve mentioned this earlier on in the program, but seriously, here we have a president who obviously does not like the job. He doesn’t like running the bureaucracy, managing it, being the chief executive to see that these things that the government is literally there to do get done. Instead he’s totally focused on advancing his agenda, transforming our culture and our society, raising taxes, redistributing wealth, all of these other things, and nobody is at all upset about it. I mean, Bush had flown over Katrina days before Obama did anything about this. FEMA was down there as soon as they could get in, and still Bush was beat up, ‘Bush hates black people.’ Look, there’s still black people down there, can we say that Obama doesn’t like ’em?
Paul Krugman in the New York Times on his blog today tried to make a satirical statement, ‘Just wait, just wait ’til the Republicans start blaming the oil slick on Obama.’ Uh, Paul, we haven’t blamed the oil slick on Obama, but you did blame the hurricane on Bush. You blamed the hurricane on Bush, and you blamed global warming for the hurricane and you blamed Bush for not caring. You people on the left obviously do not hear yourselves. Here is last night The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, but Jim Lehrer wasn’t there. The fill-in anchor was Jeffrey Brown. He spoke with correspondent Tom Bearden about the oil spill in the Gulf. The question, ‘You’re hearing some anger from people about the level of speed of response?’
BEARDEN: There’s great concern among some people that this is, at least in the early stages, a repeat of the lack of response that occurred in Hurricane Katrina. The president of Plaquemines Parish says he’s very afraid that there’s a lack of coordination and leadership being exhibited here, much the same way he saw occurred in Hurricane Katrina, and things are just not happening fast enough.
RUSH: Oh, not happening fast enough. Obama’s not doing anything, we went through the timeline, he’s not doing anything. He addressed it today for 30 seconds and then spent the next three minutes touting this so-called great report on economic growth the past quarter. On MessNBC today Bill Nelson, Democrat, Florida, was asked, ‘We got news the White House is saying no oil drilling in new areas will go forward until a review of this spill is finished. Are you satisfied with that?’
NELSON: No, and they’ve gotta go further. They’ve gotta suspend their five-year plan for exploration and seismic testing until we get to the bottom of this and find out what happened. Now, as the White House looks down the line, it wants a climate change bill later on this year, Lindsey Graham was insisting that there’s going to be offshore drilling. I think that’s dead on arrival.
RUSH: And just as our first caller of the day from Houston said, ‘Yeah, and they’re just happy as they can be in the White House about this,’ just rubbing their hands together in glee. As we head into the summer driving season, is it reasonable to expect, ladies and gentlemen, that we might get close to four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline? They start talking about the size of this spill equaling that of the Exxon Valdez if they’re unable to stem the tide of this leak for the next ten days or so. And here’s a Democrat, Senator from Florida who wants no progress whatsoever on energy. So the next question, ‘Mary Landrieu points out these spills are very rare, a spill rate of .001%, most of the time oil is produced and transported safely. What do you say to that?’
NELSON: Well, look at the potential magnitude and why did not the backed-up safety mechanisms work? This thing is moving east now toward Florida. I can tell you, people down here are panicked. Our tourism, our pristine beaches, our bays and estuaries where so much of marine life is spawned, our military testing and training area, the largest for the military in the world, all of these things are threatened.
RUSH: Well, okay, what are we going to do about it, Senator Nelson? I mean the leader of the regime is out there touting his great economy, and he’s sending Janet Napolitano — he-he-he-he — to do what? He’s sending SWAT teams down there, the Justice Department sending lawyers down there. Louisiana is dispatching the National Guard. What’s being done about it? Doesn’t seem very much.