Muscatine

News headline for today:

"Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calls Gulf oil spill 'of national significance'; President Obama sending officials to the site."

So the oil rigs burns and explodes on the 20th, sinks and begins leaking the next day and has been threatening our southern coastline...and these two morons wait until the 29th to call it "of national significance" and to send help.

BB,

Lighten up will ya, Obama was too busy looking for his birth certificate.

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Following up today with new revelation:

As the oil gusher spirals out of control, Team Obama officials admit they didn’t even know that the Defense Department had equipment that could help contain the oil slick.
The New York Times reported:

As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast and fears continued to grow that the leak from a seabed oil well could spiral out of control, officials in the Obama administration publicly chastised BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, where Obama is expected to travel this weekend.

Yet a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP.

The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.

The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful.

By Friday afternoon, she said, the Defense Department had agreed to send two large military transport planes to spray chemicals that can disperse the oil while it is still in the Gulf.

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Why did nobama wait? Why did they not know what resources they had?  Where is FEMA in all this? Where is the outrage from liberals?

Even more:

Overview

The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) was signed into law in August 1990, largely in response to rising public concern following the Exxon Valdez incident. The OPA improved the nation's ability to prevent and respond to oil spills by establishing provisions that ***expand the federal government's ability, and provide the money and resources necessary, to respond to oil spills***. The OPA also created the national Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is available to provide up to one billion dollars per spill incident.

In addition, the OPA provided new requirements for contingency planning both by government and industry. The National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP) has been expanded in a three-tiered approach: the Federal government is required to direct all public and private response efforts for certain types of spill events; Area Committees -- composed of federal, state, and local government officials -- must develop detailed, location-specific Area Contingency Plans; and owners or operators of vessels and certain facilities that pose a serious threat to the environment must prepare their own Facility Response Plans.

Finally, the OPA increased penalties for regulatory noncompliance, broadened the response and enforcement authorities of the Federal government, and preserved State authority to establish law governing oil spill prevention and response.

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I don't think we need any more excuses from the nobama admin! Go ahead barry...just keep worrying about those vicious little old lady teapartiers, those heavily racist cops in Arizona picking on illegals, and those people in Iowa you visted instead of our southern coastline. Everything was put in place for you to handle this spill, barry....and you waited.