NASA satellite imagery confirms the slick reached the edge of the Loop Current of the Gulf Stream a week ago, May 18; this is the latest satellite view I've been able to find today.
Oil-coated egret on Grand Isle, Louisiana, May 20.
Photo by U.S. Coast Guard.
Sullivan:I have to say I have struggled with how to blog about this. In many ways, it seems to me to be the biggest story of the year, a gaping, unstanched wound in the planet, emitting death. And yet the prospect of going without drilling seems remote, the possibility of any political will to jump-start alternatives with the impact we need seems just as elusive, and the helplessness of government and industry to stop this nightmare is the most obvious fact (I just assume that BP is doing all it can as of now): all of it makes this story as huge as it is simply despair-inducing.Your Head Trucker does not believe the government needs to own and run everything; and certainly no one planned for this disaster to happen. The free-market capitalists at BP are working day and night to stop the spill, to be sure - but to protect the environment, or to save their own butts? Oh and no volunteers, please: we will handle everything with our own contractors, so get the fuck away from the coast!
If we cannot stop this, what else can we not stop?
But wait! It's un-American to criticize BP! So says dipshit libertarian teabagger Rand Paul:
The President takes note of the long-standing "cozy relationship" between the oil industry and the government in his weekly video address:
Transcript and info on the new commission here. The White House overview of the federal response is here.
What I Say: I don't believe any of these commentators have yet foreseen the full, longterm ramifications of the oil spill on the environment or on the economy of this nation and all the others that surround the Gulf, and beyond. Having lived on the Gulf Coast, my intuition tells me that much worse is to come, which will make the Exxon Valdez spill look like a dropped teacup. This is not Obama's Katrina; it's Katrina and 9/11 and Pearl Harbor all rolled into one and multiplied times ten. It's the Hiroshima of the Gulf of Mexico, boys.
Your Head Trucker predicts that Obama's response to this single event will be the make-or-break issue of his Presidency, all else aside. I don't know how he can or should meet all the challenges involved in this horror, but I feel certain that if he does not meet them all effectively - and is not seen to meet them effectively by the public - well fellas, just call him one-term-Jimmy and prepare yourselves for another twenty years of god-fearing, business-loving, flag-waving Republican rule, count on it.
In fact, I wouldn't doubt that before year's end, the head-up-their-ass Republicans will be claiming that Obama engineered the oil spill as an excuse to take over the oil industry and extend his Communist domination of the government. Which of course is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Remember, you heard it here first.
God help us all.
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5 comments:
This event is of epic proportions to be sure. The fact that NO ONE, not BP, not the Engineers, not the Government, not all the Kings Horses nor all the Kings Men can put his catastrophe right is what is so frightening. I can't see how (logically) the right wing conservatives can blame Obama for not fixing it. Of course, logic generally escapes these wingnuts.
As horrific as this oil spill is, it will, sadly, be considered "collateral damage" - an unfortunate occurrence and part of the cost of our "lifestyle". Truly we are all responsible for this destruction of our greatest natural resource which comes with our greed for oil, convenient transportation and profit-sharing.
And as we often comment on religion, I must say that if the world's religions spent less time obsessing about how humans use their genitalia and more time stressing our moral responsibility for stewarding our god-given gift of creation, we would be a lot better off.
God help us all.
Amen to that last part Frank - but it's always sex with the Christianists, never stewardship, isn't it? What a very strange sense of values . . . .
Don't get me started on this mess. My heart breaks every time I see an oil soaked creature. Not to mention the 11 souls who were incinerated out on that rig.
God damn BP and all the other oil companies straight to hell!
It's our love affair with fossil fuels that will kill us all if we don't wake up fast.
Stan - I hear ya buddy.
Dave - Yup, but we can't turn off all the lights and go back to horses and buggies. What I don't understand is why after 40 years of one energy crisis and oil spill after another has no one come up with a practical alternative?
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