Reports indicated today that BP’s latest “Top Kill” effort to plug up the gushing oil tanker, which has to date, released an estimated 18 million to 40 million gallons of crude in the ocean, to the detriment of sea animals, marine life, and to the financial chagrin of piscators in the gulf, has itself, been killed.

Not surprising, detractors continued this week to claim the oil spill was — Ready yourself for this fast-growing cliché — Obama’s Katrina.

One of the most prominent to claim this, although not the first, is former crony, or officially, former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, Karl Rove, who on Thursday had this to say about the current administration’s response:

Obama officials have it backwards: They talk tough about BP’s responsibilities but do not meet their own responsibilities under federal law. They should not have let more than a month go by without telling BP what to do.

And he goes on to say:

Initially, Team Obama [as if disaster relief work is an Olympic sport] wanted to keep this problem away from the president (a natural instinct for any White House). It took Mr. Obama 12 days to show up in the region. Democrats criticized President George W. Bush for waiting four days after Katrina to go to New Orleans.

First, the oil spill is not a catastrophe on the level of Katrina … yet. Not even close. A major U.S. city has not been buried under a wall of water. Some 1,800 people have no lost their lives in the worst hurricane since 1928′s Okeechobee hurricane. Some $80 billion in property damage has not occurred. So, for Rove to equate the two is, at best, misrepresenting things, and at worst, soulless to the core, which we must admit, is right in line and consistent with the general philosophy of his party.

Second, I find it awfully convenient that when problems such as the oil spill arise, the right suddenly crane their collective necks toward Obama for answers and solutions, while in other breaths and on other topics, the administration is inept and bent on self-destructing the country. Rush Limbaugh is one bloviating hypocrite I would place in this category. His statements are reported here. Mark Levin on his radio show took the zaniness a step further, when he stated, ridiculously and blasting just for blasting’s sake, as reported in the same article:

This is the first real challenge that President Obama has dealt with and he hasn’t been able to handle it.

The first real challenge, you say? The worst recession since the Great one in the 1930s wasn’t a challenge? I suppose neither were two wars, all three of which were the ruins from another administration. So, if I can attempt to put this into perspective: Obama is expected, in some instances, to hold the planets in alignment, and in other instances, stay the hell out of our lives, the poor, the sick, the downtrodden be damned? Does that sum it up?

Here’s a bit of nostalgia, if we want to summon Bush to talk about Obama, here’s a recent snippet from Frank Rich on the topic, and a Time article from 2005, with the button precisely placed on Bush’s meagerness as a leader.

From Rich:

FOR Barack Obama’s knee-jerk foes, of course it was his Katrina. But for the rest of us, there’s the nagging fear that the largest oil spill in our history could yet prove worse if it drags on much longer. It might not only wreck the ecology of a region but capsize the principal mission of the Obama presidency.

Before we look at why, it would be helpful to briefly revisit that increasingly airbrushed late summer of 2005. Whatever Obama’s failings, he is infinitely more competent at coping with catastrophe than his predecessor. President Bush’s top disaster managers — the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, as well as the notorious “Brownie” — professed ignorance of New Orleans’s humanitarian crisis a full day after the nation had started watching it live in real time on television. When Bush finally appeared, he shunned the city entirely and instead made a jocular show of vowing to rebuild the coastal home of his party’s former Senate leader, Trent Lott. He never did take charge.

From Time in 2005:

It isn’t easy picking George Bush’s worst moment last week. Was it his first go at addressing the crisis Wednesday, when he came across as cool to the point of uncaring? Was it when he said that he didn’t “think anybody expected” the New Orleans levees to give way, though that very possibility had been forecast for years? Was it when he arrived in Mobile, Ala., a full four days after the storm made landfall, and praised his hapless Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director, Michael D. Brown, whose disaster credentials seemed to consist of once being the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association? “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” said the President. Or was it that odd moment when he promised to rebuild Mississippi Senator Trent Lott’s house–a gesture that must have sounded astonishingly tone-deaf to the homeless black citizens still trapped in the postapocalyptic water world of New Orleans. “Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house–he’s lost his entire house,” cracked Bush, “there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.”

Bush seemed so regularly out of it last week, it made you wonder if he was stuck in the same White House bubble of isolation that confined his dad. Too often, W. looked annoyed. Or he smiled when he should have been serious. Or he swaggered when simple action would have been the right move.

And he was so slow. Everyone knew on Sunday morning that Katrina was a killer. Yet when the levees broke after the storm, the White House slouched toward action. And this from a leader who made his bones with 9/11. In a crisis he can act paradoxically, appearing–almost simultaneously–strong and weak, decisive and vacillating, Churchill and Chamberlain. This week he was more Chamberlain.

Today, as BP engineers are apparently hoping for the best, but not expecting too much, in their numerous attempts to plug the massive oil leak that is daily imperiling our wildlife, salt water and god knows what else, some folks are blaming Obama for the seemingly languid response to the problem, even equating it with Bush’s woefully, and real, inept response to Katrina.

Credit: Getty Images

Peggy Noonan, in a recent Wall Street Journal column, has claimed that

I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill.

And she goes on to ask:

How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing? We’re plugging it now with tires, mud and golf balls?

Great questions. But it’s BP’s oil rig, not the government’s. If an Exxon station’s gas pump line, the one that goes to the car, bursts (I’ve been at a station where this has happened), the local Exxon station will come in and, I would hope, reimburse the customer for his troubles (gas-drenched clothes, the extra time and inconveniences, etc.). The local county government or the state will not helicopter in and handle a matter that is the responsibility of a private entity.

We have eight years proof that Bush, and probably Clinton before him, likely paid no attention whatsoever to regulations of oil rigs on the seas, and the current rig in question has been in operation at least since 2002.

Conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan, with The Atlantic, recently opined on this topic. First quoting Noonan with:

The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration

And then the clear-eyed Sullivan’s reply:

Seriously? Her evidence for this? She claims the Democrats don’t love him. The latest poll of polls shows over 80 percent support. She claims that he is “weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support.” Really? With unemployment at near record highs after a deep recession, Obama’s approval ratings are stuck just below 50 percent – and have been remarkably stable for months. At this point in his presidency, Obama is about five points more popular than Reagan, who was poised to drop to 37 percent approval by January of 1983. Clinton was lower than Obama in June 1994. In today’s polarized climate and awful economy, Obama is remarkably resilient. He has a favorable rating over 52 percent, and his unfavorable rating is at a six month low of 39 percent. This is Obama’s political end?

The premise of Noonan’s moronic column is that the federal government, especially the president, should be capable of ending an oil-pipe rupture owned and operated by private companies, using technology that only deep-sea oil companies deploy or understand. And if such a technical issue is not resolved by government immediately, it reveals paralyzing presidential weakness and the failure of an entire branch of political philosophy. Again: seriously? It’s Obama‘s fault that under Bush and Cheney, government regulation of oil exploration was so poor and corrupt, corner cutting appears to have been routine? And this, Peggy, is what governments do, even when run by crazy-ass liberals. Governments do not dig for oil; they merely regulate those who dig for oil. That the government failed to do so under the previous administration does not seem to me to be proof that this administration has failed.

Credit: Public Policy Polling

This just in: A majority of Democrats and Independents are rooting for the New Orleans Saints to win the Super Bowl, while a small majority of Republicans will be pulling for the Indianapolis Colts, according to this study.

Overall 32% of voters we polled on our last national survey said they’d be rooting for the New Orleans Saints this Sunday, with 22% going for the Indianapolis Colts and 46% expressing no preference.

There’s a significant partisan divide within those numbers, as Democrats prefer the Saints by a 36-21 margin while Republicans say they want the Colts to be victorious by a closer 26-25 spread. Independents lean toward the Saints as well, 33-20.

Here is the press release from Public Policy Polling.

I think these numbers can be attributed to a few factors. First, the majority of Americans are pulling for the Saints because it’s the team’s first trip to the Big Dance. Everyone likes rooting for the underdog or whichever Cinderella team is wowing fans. The second reason has to do with New Orleans itself. Obviously, America in general wants to see the team win because it would be good for the people of New Orleans. Not that well-wishes and winning a sports title is going to make up for the thousands lost in Katrina, but at least it’s something. Finally, Democrats and Independents are probably pulling for the Saints for the latter reason, given Commander Genius and FEMA’s ineptness in helping a city consisting of 67 percent black folk.

***

Interesting. Rarely do I check the “Politics” and “Sports” categories when finishing these posts. I’ll have to look for more opportunities to do so.

I’m sure he’s not the only one to have done so, but New Yorker staff writer James Wood has composed a piece about the classic piece of theodicy that was Pat Robertson’s stupifying condemnation of Haitians. As Wood notes, theodicy is the acknowledgment of God’s kingship in the world in the wake of suffering or pain, and it turns up about this time after most major catastrophes. The most recent of such occurrence was probably Hurricane Katrina in 2005, although it’s not inconceivable that similar thoughts weren’t uttered, at least privately, in the aftermath of the 2008 cyclone in Myanmar or the 1990s quake in godless San Francisco.

As Wood writes:

This repellent cruelty manages the extraordinary trick of combining hellfire evangelism with neo-colonialist complacency, in which the Haitians are blamed not only for their sinfulness but also for the hubris of their political rebellion. Eighteenth-century preachers at least tended to include themselves in the charge of general sinfulness and God’s inevitable reckoning; Mr. Robertson sounds rather pleased with his own outwitting of such reckoning, as if the convenient blessing of being a God-fearing American has saved him from such pestilence. He is presumably on the other side of the sin-line, safe in some Dominican resort.

As I was intrigued (perplexed?) by messages I saw in passing on Facebook and in news stories calling for folks to pray for the folks in Haiti, this topic brings some, OK many, questions to mind:

Where were the prayers prior to the quake? Haiti isn’t exactly a thriving nation. The people of that country could have used some spiritual cheerleading way, way before the catastrophe in Port-au-Prince centuries before now. I’m more impressed with people who have actually sent food, resources or who have personally traveled to the country. Why should we wait for something terrible to happen, and then, and only then, pray for the affected people? Do the prayers do any good? We have no way of knowing, but why not ask God to prevent any and all natural disasters, mass murders, acts of terror, rapes and murders?

Why do folks pray about natural disaster victims to a God who, in his omnipotence, and there is no getting around this, either allowed the disaster to happen or simply did not prevent it. To what extent does it matter that we are supposedly “fallen?” Does the fact that we are “fallen” make it OK for an all-powerful god to allow the wide scale death of his creation?

Of course, we must concede that we have no way of knowing which disasters or deaths he might be preventing because obviously they never happened if he prevented them. For all we know, he could be preventing 1,000 huge disasters per year, and only one or two slip through. But if that’s the case, those one or two become interesting occurrences indeed. How do one or two slip the past omniscient eye of God out of 1,000s? Again, if he allows one or two to slip through, what does that say about God?

Would he seriously consider any such requests or questions to slow down or stop the natural disasters and personal tragedies that wreck humankind? If not, why not? Does it all boil down to his divine governance, thus reverting us back to theodicy?

Again, Wood:

The only people who would seem to have the right to invoke God at the moment are the Haitians themselves, who beseech his help amidst dreadful pain. They, too, alas, appear to wander the wasteland of theodicy. News reports have described some Haitians giving voice to a worldview uncomfortably close to Pat Robertson’s, in which a vengeful God has been meting out justified retribution: “I blame man. God gave us nature, and we Haitians, and our governments, abused the land. You cannot get away without consequences,” one man told The Times last week.

Others sound like a more frankly theological President Obama: a 27-year-old survivor, Mondésir Raymone, was quoted thus: “We have survived by the grace of God.”

Too bad that same grace didn’t extend to and smile on some 150,000 other Haitians, a grace that seems selective, to say the least.