Is America Ready for "Angry Black" Obama?

So everyone's talking about this as "Obama's Katrina," even Frank Rich:

For all the second-guessing, it’s still not clear what else the president might have done to make a definitive, as opposed to cosmetic, difference in plugging the hole: yell louder at BP, send in troops and tankers, or, as James Carville would have it, assume the role of Big Daddy? The spill is not a Tennessee Williams play, its setting notwithstanding, and it’s hard to see what more drama would add, particularly since No Drama Obama’s considerable talents do not include credible play-acting.

But life isn’t fair, and this president is in a far tougher spot in 2010 than his predecessor was in 2005.

Sure, the US Navy has submersibles; how many Navy submersible crews have experience with underwater oil-drilling? Answer: none. The US Coast Guard doesn't have enough boom to protect the shores for which they're responsible.

What ought Obama to have done? He should've just dropped an atomic bomb on it. Or designed top kill himself on a napkin. He should've farted on the head of BP's CEO. Lots of good ideas -- but what they really come down to is the lack of an angry black man:

Much more after the jump...

Stop The BP Bailout!

British Petroleum failed to take safety seriously, used the wrong diagram to fight the disaster, lied about the scope of their fiasco, keeps minimizing the disaster, and can't say where all the oil has gone. Large balls of tar are washing up on shore as the uncontrolled vent puts 70,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day -- the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez every four days.

All that was bad enough. Then last night, Sen. Lisa ("Lease-A") Murkowski (R-BP) blocked an effort to raise the liability cap on oil companies from $75 million to $10 billion. BP has already spent $350 million; costs will probably reach the billions before the cleanup is done. There is nothing to stop BP from declaring its liabilities finished and walking away while oil still clogs the beaches of Mobile Bay.

Murkowski's motivations have everything to do with the prominence of BP in her state's oil and gas industry (.PDF). Her campaign coffer contains $426,000 of oil and gas industry cash. This action amounts to a billion-dollar taxpayer BAILOUT of a foreign corporation, and a very wealthy one at that, in exchange for a relative pittance.

But all is not lost. In fact, this is a crisis we cannot afford to waste. (More after the jump!)