Is the administration determined to make the Gulf oil-rig disaster "Obama's Katrina"?

Do they think we'll never find out? This May 11 satellite photo showing oil dispersing in the Gulf was finally released -- on the 17th.

by Ken

This Agonist post of Sean Paul Kelley's yesterday was titled, appropriately enough, "I Told You So!":

I told you so, I told you so, I told you so a thousand times:

BP director on MSNBC just now says what's really threatening Gulf states is not the oil leak but "alarmist" claims by scientists

Expect more of this. Expect the Feds and BP to do as much as they can to prevent real science from being performed on the underwater plumes and then flacks to pollute their airwaves denying that the massive dying off of fish stocks, crabs, oysters, porpoises and so much more are natural and had NOTHING, absolutely nothing to do with the Gulf Gusher.

Sean Paul has been all over the oil-gusher disaster, and the insufficiency of the response. The post to which this one immediately refers began by quoting this gem from Digby:

I keep seeing scientists on TV with that "hair on fire" look about them, nearly frantic, trying to get people to understand how serious the spill is. They are followed by oil company flacks saying it's no big deal and politicians turning it into he-said/she-said. It's the strangest disaster coverage I've ever witnessed.

Sean Paul points out, though, that "Much of the oil may never 'wash' ashore," thanks to all those chemical dispersants being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. (And that's not going to cause any problems, nosiree!)

I think the oil companies had a pretty good idea of what would happen by using them, in essence that they would prevent or substantially delay millions of gallons of oil washing up on shore. And with that being the case the damage would be below the sea, in which they could then hire faux-scientists to spew arguments in the media about how fish stocks and oyster stocks (among others) were in terminal decline before the oil spill and their disappearance has nothing to do with the oil spill.

We're only seeing this just begin. But if less oil than any one expects washes ashore and "only" kills coral and wildlife under the sea in the Keys and other places, I guarantee you these arguments will be made and believed. After all, you going to believe your eyes or what the pointy headed libruls tell you?

What's really shocking Sean Paul, and not just him, is that the administration has managed -- surprise! -- to locate itself, not just on the side of the oil companies, but in apparent cahoots with them on what has clearly become a massive effort at cover-up. WTF?

Think back to the immediate aftermath of the rig blow-up, when Lyin' Rush led the Right-Wing Scumbag Chorale suggesting that it was all a liberal plot, and then that it was -- what else? -- all Obama's fault. It was grotesque. Yet another demonstration of the far right's total divorce from any semblance of reality, not to mention honesty or decency. "Obama's Katrina," they were calling it.

And at the time it did seem grotesque, beginning with the still-astonishing right-wing whitewash of the Bush regime, which began by playing with their tiny penises while the hurricane took dead aim at the undefended city of New Orleans, its inherent indefensibility having been greatly augmented by the thieving incompetence and ideological putridity of the regime, and then even after the catastrophe befell, those vile effing doodybrains just kept right on playing with their puds.

And the Bush pukepile's own incompetence and malicious indifference to and traitorous disregard for anyone who isn't part of the predatory corporate-criminal subculture of society that invented that swinish nonentity as a national figure had been so thoroughly imprinted on the federal government, which they were so determined to prove can't do nuttin' for nobody (except of course enable their slash-and-burn crusade of predatory thieving), that the entire government sat on its collective fat, lazy, stupid ass and burped and farted the days away as the city and far too many of its inhabitants died.

No, the hurricane itself wasn't the fault of those miserable sons of bitches. Everything else was, though.

Of course that Obama administration hasn't been that inept and disengaged in responding to the Gulf disaster. The mere fact that it has responded puts it in an entire other category. And yet, and yet. As in so many areas, the agenda of the Obama administration is far harder than one would wish to distinguish from that of the Bush regime.

Can anyone explain how it serves the interests of anyone except the people who allowed this to happen to make the first consideration a PR blitz in which the only concern is making believe that it's not such a big deal, everything's under control, when every shred of evidence indicates that, literally, nothing could be further from the truth? Why is it considered even permissible, let alone desirable, for the government to lie to the American people?

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something here.

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