More Delay in Oil Cleanup as Coast Guard will Build Skimmers Rather than Use Foreign Help!

Day 60!

And Obama's Gulf Recovery Czar will only be working part time!

A brown pelican coated in heavy oil wallows in the surf on East Grand Terre Island, Louisiana.

Well here we are at Day 60 of the worst environmental disaster in our nation's history and the oil continues to gush from the broken Deep Horizon well at rates much higher than previously estimated.

What's our "Dear Leader" Obama doing about it? Not much. He hopped on Air Force One today and flew to Columbus, Ohio to give a 12 minute speech touting his claim of the success of the stimulus bill. With unemployment in Ohio remaining over 10% that seems an odd claim to make. Besides, security for his visit forced businesses to close and workers to lose a day's pay.

Meanwhile, we learn that Obama has asked Navy Secretary Ray Mabus (remember this was the job that Joe Sestak supposedly wanted to drop out of the race with Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania) to oversee recovery efforts in the Gulf. But Mabus won't be resigning from his Navy post (itself more than a full time job) he'll just be working part time on Gulf recovery. Just like the rest of Obama's efforts to stop and contain the spill.

One good bit of news is that 32 of the oil separators touted by actor Kevin Costner have arrived in the Gulf and will soon be deployed.

Otherwise, it's business as usual. The briefing Friday by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen gave us this nugget:

ADMIRAL ALLEN: Sure. We're coordinated with DOD right now to take a look at the availability of skimmers within the Navy inventory. That is (inaudible) right now between us and the Department of Defense and that will be worked out today.

We're also looking at the entire availability around the country. We're actually starting to manufacture skimmers in places like Port Fourchon and other places. What I told the folks is don't anticipate demand can ever be met on skimmers. Getting as many as we can make and as fast as we can get them here is what we need to do.

We're hoping to have a larger strategic assessment of the exact—actual gap that we've got and how many we will need ultimately. Part of the problem is we never had to deal with oil dispersed across this wide an area, but we have the availability of the 2,000 vessels of opportunity.
...
Well, we're pulling everything we can as we—and we're actually—it's ordering. It takes six to eight weeks to actually build a skimmer. We got the production orders in. We're just—it's kind of like the (inaudible) situation. What we're doing is we're taking all of it as quickly as we can get it and we'll have some more (inaudible) later on today or Monday on that. Yes.

So, let's see if I got this right. Only now, after SIXTY DAYS is the Coast Guard checking to see if the Navy has some extra skimmers that can be used? And they are only now ordering new skimmers will will take an additional six to eight weeks to build? No doubt shipbuilding unions will be pleased!

And we STILL haven't accepted the help of other countries who offered us advanced skimming boats at the very beginning of the spill?

No one excuses BP's role in this disaster, But, with Obama and Democrats in Congress spending so much time trying to blame everything on BP, when are they going to be held accountable for their own total lack of leadership, management and just plain old common sense?