Not really. No, he spent most of his time just carrying on in the same old tiresome way, more about making people pay and declaring someone other than himself to be irresponsible and reckless with the nation's future.
Meanwhile, the cheerleaders over at MSNBC were all in a tizzy. Keith Olbermann whined that nothing specific was said, while Howard Fineman felt the president did not seem like a commander-in-cheif. Chris Matthews compared the president to Jimmy Carter, and declared "I don't sense executive command." Funny, I had that same sense back when Chris was getting tingling sensations running up his leg. Dr. Krauthammer opined that Mr. Obama gave it a shot, but the story will not be his speech. And thank God that's true.
Oh, and Brazil defeated North Korea in World Cup play, 2-1.
Media Matters is now saying they have the "timeline" of all this as contrasted with Katrina, and that Obama was actually "johnny-on-the-spot in all this.
ReplyDeleteWhat they focus on as already acknowledged by others, including former FEMA chief Brown, are the actions of the Coast Guard, who WERE there quickly. As they should've been.
But when it comes to the overall response, and the turning away of some foreign cleanup vessels due to EPA regulations, etc., it looks pretty damning. The only note that MM and FactCheck.org can really crow about is the hoopla over the Jones Act being responsible for the delay. Unfortunately even the Heritage Foundation's Foundry Morning Bell got into all this, but it turns out that the Jones Act has nothing to do with cleanup and is an old law relating to commercial trade, and that the only way it might come into play is the actualy shipment of supplies to US ports or to other ships perhaps. At most.
Still, it seems EPA rules had something to do with all this delaying, along with politics perhaps.