SEND IN THE NAVY!

 

A dead Gulf menhaden floats in oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak in Bay Jimmy on Sunday. Matthew Hinton - Times Picayune.

From NOLA:

Two senators wrote a letter to President Barack Obama on Sunday arguing it's time to bring in the Navy to attack the 2-month-old scourge of oil menacing the Gulf of Mexico.

Coming from Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the letter argues the Navy could focus and speed up the crisis response, which is currently managed by a unified command that includes several agencies and companies.

"For the long term," wrote Nelson, "you really need a military command-and-control structure where orders are given and things get immediately implemented."

And I say, "Send them in!" I've mentioned to Grandpère that we need the Navy down here to take charge. The senators surely channeled my thoughts. I'm quite grateful for the efforts of folks from all over the world to mitigate the damage from BP's oil gusher and clean-up the Gulf Coast and the Gulf waters. They work hard under difficult conditions, and they, and all of us, deserve better than the mess of disorganization under which the workers function. When "a unified command that includes several agencies and companies" is in charge, there will be questions about which agency or company is in charge of particular tasks and, when something goes wrong, which group has the authority to try to fix the situation. And let's not forget the opportunity to pass the buck.

I've seen comments around and about that those of us on or near the Gulf are strident, that we whine and complain. The oil gusher story goes on far too long, and people lose interest. What about Haiti? I don't read much about Haiti any more, and many there still live in desperate conditions. And the US Gulf Coast and Haiti face the hurricane season.

From Frank Rich in the New York Times:

PRESIDENT Obama is not known for wild pronouncements, so it was startling to hear him liken the gulf oil spill to 9/11. Alas, this bold analogy, made in an interview with Roger Simon of Politico, proved a misleading trailer for the main event. In the president’s prime-time address a few days later, there was still talk of war, but the ammunition was sanded down to bullet points: “a clean energy future,” “a long-term gulf coast restoration plan” and, that most dreaded of perennials, “a national commission.” Such generic placeholders, unanimated by details or deadlines, are Washingtonese for “The buck stops elsewhere.”
....

The president had it right the first time — this is a 9/11 crisis — and only action will do. The sole sentence that really counted on Tuesday night was his prediction that “in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well.” He will be judged on whether that’s true. The sole event that mattered last week was his jawboning of BP for a $20 billion down payment of blood money — to be overseen, appropriately enough, by Kenneth Feinberg of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Rich's entire column is worth a read, as he goes on to assess the Obama presidency, not just to do with the oil gusher, but what else needs to happen on the presidential front.

Just so you'll know, this whining, complaining, ungrateful inhabitant of the Gulf Coast region has no plans to shut up.