"A Gaping, Unstanched Wound in the Planet"

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.

If we cannot stop this, what else can we not stop?

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!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 
But wait!  It's un-American to criticize BP!  So says dipshit libertarian teabagger Rand Paul:
 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 
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.

Republican Betrayal

The news that the House of Representatives failed to pass the so-called bailout bill today came as a real shock to me and, I don't doubt, to many other Americans. It just took my breath away.

It was sunk by those Republicans to whom "the free market" is for all practical purposes synonomous with "the will of God." No socialism in America, oh no! We'll watch the whole country crash and burn first, before we betray our oh-so-sacred principles!

In fact, they have betrayed the country, exactly as their Republican grandfathers did in 1929 and the years following: standing firm on their free-market faith while all around them the country sank deeper and deeper into economic misery. And when Roosevelt finally got into office in 1933, they fought his every move tooth and nail, crying socialism all the way.

But as my little grandmother used to say, a sweet, humble soul to whom economics would have been as mysterious as astrophysics, "If it hadn't been for Roosevelt, we'd have all perished to death."

Which gets right to the heart of the matter: pure, unrestrained greed is lethal to the economy and the nation; Roosevelt saved the people from the excesses of the free market, and for that he was beloved by many millions who suffered economic cruelty at the hands of the self-righteous, and highly self-interested, Republican capitalists.

I'm no economist, but I know enough to say that you can't have a completely free or a completely regulated market; a happy medium must be found for the greatest good of the greatest number. The New Deal, it seems to me, was by and large that happy medium until the jackbooted Republicans of the Reagan-Bush-Bush era trampled it underfoot and made the world safe for avarice.

It was chilling to watch the televised press conferences today in the aftermath of the House debacle, with an inset displaying the Dow sinking lower and lower by the minute: down 777 points by close of business. I watched it sink a hundred points with my own eyes, in only 15 minutes of viewing.

Of course, the renegade Republicans who 86'd today's bill are the same who have gone along so blithely with Bush's imperial decrees and power grabs in the past; today they suddenly found the testicular fortitude to defy the President, not to mention the leaders of their own party. But stupidly, they have taken the wrong stand at the wrong time.

Of course, they tried to blame it on the Democrats, and Nancy Pelosi's "partisan" speech before the vote; but good ol' Barney Frank had a brilliant riposte to that.

McCain is also claiming that he charged up to Washington last week and rewrote the first version of the bill and protected the taxpayers, yada yada yada; or at least that's the slick impression his statements and those of his supporters make: rewriting history so soon. The fact is, House Dems and Repubs had a compromise bill already agreed on, and the votes lined up, before he got to Washington; his presence at the White House conference last Thursday emboldened the renegades to drop a bomb on the compromise.

So here we are. I realize that all may yet be well, though with the Jewish holidays, no bill will be passed before next weekend in the best case. But if this country really has slipped off a precipice today, I do hope history records that McCain and the pure-T-free-market Republicans are the ones who gave it the last shove into the darkness.

Bush is the new Hoover. The New York Times editorializes on today's events:

After nearly eight years of voting in virtual lock step with President Bush on everything from tax cuts to torture, House Republicans decided on Monday to break ranks on the survival of the nation’s financial system.

The rejected bailout bill that was on the floor after a weekend of hard negotiating was objectionable in many ways, but it was a Republican-generated bill and was improved from the administration’s original version. Sixty percent of House Democrats voted for the bill, enough to easily pass the measure if the Republicans had not decided to put on their display of pique and disarray.

The question now is whether the stock-market plunge that followed the House’s failure to lead — and a renewed credit freeze — will be enough to get the 133 Republicans who voted against the measure to change their minds. And, more important, whether the damage that the no vote has inflicted is readily reversible.

Republican no votes were rooted less in analysis or principle than in political posturing and ideological rigidity. The House minority leader, John Boehner, conceded as much: “While we were able to move the bill drastically to the right, it wasn’t good enough for our members.”

It’s not clear what would be good enough for the Republicans since there was very little talk of substance on Monday after the bill died on the floor of the House. Instead, the Republicans tried to blame a speech before the vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who connected the current crisis to the fiscal and economic mismanagement of the Bush years. It may not have been the perfect moment to say that, but it was true.

Republicans were also upset that serial bailouts represent a rejection of free-market principles. They do. That’s because the free market in finance, unregulated and unsupervised, has failed. And, in its failure, it is inflicting greater damage on an already weak economy.

No amount of amendments to the bailout package will change the administration’s disastrous economic record or erase the manifest failure of the Republicans’ free-markets-above-all ideology.

Fasten your seat belt. I've a feeling it's going to be a bumpy ride.