Comparing BP disaster to 9/11 is sacrilegious

More than two months since the BP disaster, a number of polls indicate that a majority of Americans still disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the spill.
Instead of showing true leadership, Obama has become desperate and publicly stated that Americans should liken the BP spill to the Sept. 11 attacks.

He said, “In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.”

This statement demonstrates the lengths to which the president will go to protect himself politically, and is nothing more than a crude attempt to force through his prized cap-and-trade legislation — a bill that could potentially cost American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually.

After watching the president use his first Oval Office address as a public-relations attack on BP, it was obvious to me that he would prefer that the American people view BP as an enemy comparable to Al Qaeda. However, this kind of attitude won’t salvage the president’s approval ratings. In fact, I think voters will see it for what it really is: the politicization of a national crisis to push Obama’s very “green” and very costly environmental agenda.

Last week, the energy bill that was floating around Congress, supported by the president, failed to move out of caucus in the Senate. The proposed legislation included an energy tax that would raise the cost of gasoline and electricity so high that we’d be forced to use less energy. We should all be grateful that this highly politicized bill, really just a tool for the president to force through cap-and-trade, didn’t become law.