Barack Obama's credibility hits rock bottom after oil spill and Sestak scandal

[Subdivisions]

Check out this scathing hit on Pres. Obama from a British news source (remember that BP is a British company):

The first thing Barack Obama probably should have done was to order the livestreaming Oil Spill Cam to be turned off. As the President insisted to Americans that he was "singularly focused" on staunching the flow, there was that mesmerising image on their television screens of plumes of hydrocarbons gushing relentlessly into the Gulf of Mexico.

When any political leader feels they have to declare that they are "fully engaged" in an issue, it is clear that they are in trouble. Talking about it undermines the very point you are trying to make - not to mention that pesky Oil Spill Cam showing that, 38 days into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, not a whole lot had been achieved.

Even judging Obama by his words, he has fallen woefully short over what has now eclipsed the 1989 Exxon Valdez wreck as biggest oil spill catastrophe in American history. He may have described it as an "unprecedented disaster" in last Thursday's press conference but a week into the crisis he was blithely stating that "this incident is of national significance" and rest assured he was receiving "frequent briefings" about it.

George W Bush's unpopularity and perceived incompetence was encapsulated by the way he dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Candidate Obama branded it "unconscionable incompetence".

Central to Obama's appeal was his promise to be truly different. His failure to achieve that is now at the core of the deep disappointment Americans feel about him. At the press conference - the first full-scale affair he had deigned to give for 309 days - he appeared uncomfortable and petulant.

...snip...

Obama engaged in the obligatory populist bashing of Big Oil and, of course, demonstrated the Obama administration's version of Tourette's Syndrome, blaming the previous administration for the situation when, by my reckoning, it's a full 16 months since Bush left office.

...snip...

By Friday, he was sticking his finger in the sand at Grand Isle, Louisiana as part of a photo op self-consciously designed to contrast with Bush's famous looking down on the Katrina devastation from Air Force One. It was Obama's second visit to Louisiana in the 39 days since disaster struck. According to C'BS's Mark Knoller, in the same period Bush visited the post-Katrina region seven times.

...snip...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7783408/Barack-Obamas-credibility-hits-rock-bottom-after-oil-spill-and-Sestak-scandal.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. It'a a hit piece all right. A Real Turd.

I wonder what common interests there are between the author and publisher and BP.

"The first thing Barack Obama probably should have done was to order the livestreaming Oil Spill Cam to be turned off..."

Yeah.

Right.

:eyes:

[BeFree]

4. It's a bloody good point

The cam airing and showing nothing being done points out the contradiction between words and reality.

[NYC_SKP]

6. Disagree.

Regardless of any contradiction theorized about this mess, any attempt to block coverage would have been ROUNDLY criticized.

The president, in this sense, is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

As usual, he did the right thing.

:patriot:

[BeFree]

8. True

The cam being taken down would be a bloody error.

But the lack of action weighed against the sternly worded words leaves an awful lot to be desired.

It's a good thing they didn't point out the close connection between Chu and BP scientists. Or did they? If not they'll get around to it.

[JVS]

2. Let me grab a coke.

:popcorn:

[Codeine]

3. The Torygraph.

Not worth the ink used to print it.

[HipChick]

9. the only use I had for it was the cat's litter box

[IDemo]

5. "it's a full 16 months since Bush left office."...

Funny, Clinton continued taking the hit for everything that went wrong for years after Chimpya took over.

[QC]

7. That's a forthrightly, openly, extravagantly conservative newspaper. n/t

[volvoblue]

10. It's a conservative rag -

it's very conservative. dont' know if it is one of Murdoch's or not.

[provis99]

11. big deal. It's the Telegraph, a Rupert Murdoch production.

[kestrel91316]

12. Yes, we've already noticed you don't much like Obama.

[scheming daemons]

13. Yes, subdivisions, we know that conservative British papers don't like Obama

The question is... what is YOUR problem?

[nemo137]

14. I don't think it's so much BP being British

as it is the Telegraph being rampagingly conservative.