And The Walkback Begins

Let it be recorded that the Village walk-back of the Deepwater Horizon disaster being anything but a disaster, just a mild inconvenience, after the capping of the well earlier this month began with Time's Michael Grunwald (complete with Rush was right nonsense).

President Obama has called the BP oil spill "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," and so has just about everyone else. Green groups are sounding alarms about the "Catastrophe Along the Gulf Coast," while CBS, Fox and MSNBC slap "Disaster in the Gulf" chryons on all their spill-related news. Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted the spill was an "environmental catastrophe." The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill — he calls it "the leak" — is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.

Well, Rush has a point. The Deepwater explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it's no leak; it's the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It's also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it's important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. "The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared," says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana. 

We don't know the extent of the long-term damage...so there's no long term-damage.   Same sentence, even.  Also Rush has a point!

And so it begins, folks.  The new avenue for attacking Barack Obama just mere weeks after yelling "OBAMA'S KATRINA FAILURE" and "INCOMPETENT DO-NOTHING FEDS" will now "Obama overdid it!  Environmental fearmongering!  Drill more now!"

That's right:  Expect Obama to now be attacked all over again for doing too much to save the Gulf.

In a way, I expect this story to follow the general arc of Obama's presidency:  we have a massive problem on our hands, Obama coordinates a response and shows leadership, he gets attacked early for not doing enough anyway, the problem is dismissed and then he gets pilloried in the press for spending too much to fix the problem when doing nothing of course would have led to disaster.

I got a ten spot today on Rush saying we shouldn't have lifted a finger or a single taxpayer dollar to do anything in the Gulf, and that nature anf BP would have solved the problem anyway.  I'm sure Eric Boehlert's crew will have that story up when it happens.

But mark the occasion:  the Village pushback on those Dirty F'ckin' Hippies for "overplaying the fear card" on the Deepwater Horizon disaster begins now.

[UPDATE]  As Bob Cesca reminds us, the millions of gallons of oil is still there.