As the oil spill disaster in the Gulf goes on causing both an environmental and economic crisis, President Obama is sticking with his tried and true play-the-victim-then-blame-others approach. In an interview on Friday, he claimed that criticism of his handling of the situation is unfair because if he had tried to prevent the spill from happening, his political opponents would not have let him. Of course the criticism he's getting is not about preventing the spill, it's about how he's dealing with it now (a majority of Americans believe he is doing a poor or very poor job handling the crisis). But when did reality ever get in the way of a baseless Obama diversionary tactic?

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In the interview the president said: "If six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending." He went on to imply that that anti-big government types such as Tea Party activists were being hypocritical on the issue saying, "Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying 'do something' are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much." (source)

Contrary to his latest whine, both Mr. Obama's political opposition and the American people have not started asking for a bigger government to do more than it is already empowered to do. In fact, they are demanding the same thing they always have, that the government do what they are sworn to do and not waste time, energy, resources and money on more federal government power grabs.

If President Obama was not spending so much of his time pushing unpopular socialist legislation, taking over private industry and running up the deficit with obscene levels of government spending; there just might be enough time in his day to:

• Weed out government officials and agencies who are part of the problem not the solution in the Gulf.
  
  
• Streamline the processes by which those directly affected by the spill can get help.
  
  
• Meet with industry officials and those of the company responsible for the spill before almost two months have passed.
  
  
• Come up with a better policy than his job-killing six month moratorium on all off shore drilling.
  
  

And take many other actions within his authority to do some good instead of playing politics.

Speaking of that authority, Mr. Obama once again employed a strawman fallacy in an attempt to minimize his responsibility and his failures. In the latest episode of the White House's online show West Wing Week he said, “Even though I'm president of the United States, my power is not limitless. So I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw. All I can do is make sure that I put honest, hard-working smart people in place...to implement this thing." (source) Of course no one is making such ridiculous suggestions but ridiculing those who dare to criticize him is the Obama way.

Instead of acknowledging that his big government, high spending far-left agenda is still distracting him from his duties in the Gulf, President Obama is trying to convince the American people the problem is that he wasn't allowed to make government even bigger, spend even more and move the country even further left.