Obama’s Katrina

Ah that old saying – “It’s lonely at the top”. Will the gulf oil spill turn the media against Mr. President? They were sure quick to jump on W. To be clear, I do not believe Obama should have to take the brunt of this but I also know that Bush should not have had to take it for Katrina.

It’s the shear size, bureaucracy, and ineptness of our federal government to respond to anything. (Maybe another reason they shouldn’t touch healthcare – but I digress). It also appears that once again the state of Louisiana was ill-equipped or ill-informed to take action. This is strike 2. If you build your city below sea level you might want to have a plan in place in case a big hurricane hits. When you have oil drilling off your shores you might want to have a plan in place to contain a spill.

But now there’s chirping on the left that Obama is out of touch with the situation. When James Carville doesn’t have your back sir you may have a problem. Can the media be far behind? They are biting their tongues for now but if Top Kill doesn’t work you better grease up that silver tongue of yours ‘cause you’ll need to deliver another magical (yet empty) speech to save yourself.

Pretty soon we’ll be hearing the sports reporters on ESPN bash Obama like they did Bush. There’ll be the poignant picture of you gazing at the sludge covered birds and gooey marshlands with a caption of “why did I wait so long to react?” Eight years from now they’ll still be talking about how disconnected you were.

Again, there was not much you could have done Mr. President. You can blame BP but we all know you are indebted to them just as much as all of our politicians are.  You can rail against the evils of offshore drilling even though we all know we need to do it (and its track record was pretty darned good until now). Of course you can look for someone or something else to blame but remember –

It’s lonely at the top!

So only the federal government can profile?

All of the talk about illegal immigration reform centers on cracking down on employers who hire illegals. The theory I guess is that if there are no jobs then they’ll go home. I doubt that’ll work because we’ll just put them on welfare – but that’s not the point of this rant. How is an employer supposed to be sure the workers are legal citizens? Sure they check the box that says “Yes I am” but that’s not proof. They will have to ask for proof. The dreaded “Where are you papers?” question.

So people who are peacefully looking for work will be subject to proving their citizenship to people not trained or qualified to ask for such proof. Meanwhile Arizona is not allowed to ask people who have broken the law or are acting suspiciously to prove their citizenship to trained law enforcement officers? Ah government run amok again!

Here’s a historical (or hysterical) perspective. As an assignment for an English class some 30 years ago when I was a junior in high school, I wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper stating my position that the US should not take in the Cuban refugees. It was actually sent in and published by the paper. 30 years later we are still talking, and only talking, about illegal immigration.

Freedom is not free. Yes the US has vast resources but they are limited. 700,000 people immigrated to the US legally last year. Who knows how many came in illegally? We must get control of this problem – and it is a problem.

Maybe we should just adopt Mexico’s laws on this issue. There you go to jail period. How does that sound Presidente Calderon?