Hey Gov. Jindal: Now Would Be A Good Time To Ask Forgiveness

Remember those sand berms our "experts" like Sarah Palin said just had to be built to protect the Louisiana coastline from the BP oil disaster, while the real experts said they'd cause more harm than good? Remember Jindal leading the Conservative Chorus in portraying the president as a dithering wonk who did nothing to protect Louisiana’s coastline because some fancy-pants geeks with a bunch of alphabet soup behind their names said sand berms would be a waste of money?

Remember this:

Gov.Jindal:to avoid ravished coast, build the berms.Ask forgiveness later;Feds are slow to act,local leadership&action can do more for coast

Good times! Well, turns out the real experts were right, and Jindal wasted over $200 million:

Louisiana Rethinks Its Sand Berms

In a story in late October, I reported on the continuing effort by Louisiana to build sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico to block and capture oil from the BP spill. Back in June, BP ponied up $360 million for the berms, of which roughly $140 million was left.

Federal officials and scientists I interviewed called the construction of additional berms pointless because little surface oil remained in the gulf and urged that the remaining money be spent on coastal restoration, a move that BP said it would support.

At the time, however, Louisiana officials insisted they were committed to spending the remaining money on more oil-blocking berms.

Several weeks later, Louisiana has changed its tune considerably. On Monday, Bobby Jindal, the state’s governor, announced that $100 million of the remaining berm money would be redirected toward coastal restoration, a move endorsed by BP.

This is what happens when the mainstream media presents the politically-motivated opinions of partisans as "the other viewpoint" in a scientific, fact-based debate. This is what happens when the Conservative Chorus outshouts the reasonable people with alphabet soup behind their names. Thanks, guys.

So, once again the reasonable people were proved right and the people who have been wrong about everything since forever are still wrong. I know, y'all are shocked. After wasting a few months (and $200 million) doing shit that didn’t work but made for some good headlines, we learn this:

Like other scientists, though, he considers the berms a failure in their original role as oil-blocking structures and a colossal waste of money. According to state estimates, the berms have captured just 1,000 barrels of oil so far, at a cost of $220 million. By way of comparison, Mr. Bahr pointed out, the recently opened Hoover Dam Bypass, a four-lane highway bridge that soars 840 feet above the Colorado River, cost $240 million.

“That’s an awesome structure that’s going to be around beyond the end of petroleum, and here we’ve spent $220 million and got virtually nothing to show for it,” he said. “It just seems appalling to me.”

Yup, it’s appalling alright.

Drill it, spill it - we don't care.

The subject of off shore oil and gas drilling has been a frequent discussion topic since I've lived in Florida. My particular part of the state has a large proportion of people who have environmental concerns, at least as far as clean water and the health of fish stocks are concerned. Most oppose rapid growth, virtually all of my local friends are extremely concerned about the ongoing discharge of polluted fresh water from Lake Okeechobee into our estuary and are likely to show anger at the sugar industry and even the cattle industry that are sources of much of it and who benefit greatly from the government guaranteed status quo. But when it comes to oil, it's been Drill Baby Drill even despite former Republican Governor Jeb Bush's opposition to it.

Before the BP disaster, one couldn't bring up the subject without becoming an audience for vituperation against "the Enviros" who were the root of the problem: the problem of course being high oil prices. The Environmental bogey men, they insist, are the reason we don't have more and cheaper nuclear power and why our bottomless oil reserves aren't being tapped as cleanly and risk free as turning on the bathroom faucet. It's the Liberals -- it's always the Liberals. They're all Republicans and conservationists without being in favor of conservation and environmentally concerned without being environmentalists. It's doublethink at it's finest.

One would expect that to have changed, and indeed it is changing, but not by as much as you might think. The illusion persists that there are huge amounts of oil off our coasts than can be easily accessed by sticking a straw into the mud and that the sooner we give the right to do that to foreign oil companies who sell into a competitive worldwide market, the sooner we'll be back to 26 cents per gallon. Efforts -- my efforts at least -- to dispel the mythology haven't been worthwhile. There's always some secret reserve or hidden oil field kept under wraps by a malicious government and their familiars: the Enviros.

They're not chanting Drill Baby Drill any more; not out loud at any rate, but Floridians aren't yet solidly behind a Constitutional amendment preventing these operations in Florida waters. The Republican-led Legislature seems firmly against it and abruptly adjourned a special legislative session after 49 minutes Tuesday, squelching Governor Charlie Crist's proposal to put the amendment on the ballot. Florida legislators, of course, get a lot of money from the oil and gas industry and before the false equivalence parade float is pulled out of the shed, the lion's share goes to Republicans.

The House Republican leader, Adam Hasner claims that Crist is making it "all about politics" but of course opposition to environmental responsibility has little else but politics to offer as a basis.
It's all about continued profits for the oil industry, continued support for their party (which Crist has recently left) and continued disregard for public safety, health and the common resources of our country.

I don't expect my local friends to put it all together and realize that we' can't preserve our local environment while letting the unholy alliance between oil and government rape the land and water and food sources, but according to the Miami Herald today, support is indeed growing for a permanent ban on at least near-shore drilling. That means at least a few more people are willing to see the picture beyond what is framed by their job, their backyard and their circle of idiocy. It's far too soon -- enormously far too soon to sound like an optimist and in fact I'm convinced that slogans and dogmas, slanders and stupidity will remain the song of the South until the Gulf looks like the LaBrea tar pits and we have to resort to eating termites and grasshoppers while the crops die -- and even then, I'm not sure many minds will be changed in the direction of responsible oversight and regulation by a government agency.

What the hell, might as well just drill!

Ron Paul and my rights

Non pudet, quia pudendum est;
prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est;
certum est, quia impossibile.*

I really want to like Ron Paul. There have been times when I felt we needed Ron Paul, even if only to keep the others honest. I concur wholeheartedly with many of his ideas about leaving people alone in their homes and private lives; about transparency in financial matters. I share the loathing of surveillance, of being forced to carry papers. I agree about the wars that are useful only to increase government power over domestic affairs. I agree about the importance of the Bill of Rights that neither Party seems to care much about -- and so on, but I am constantly reminded that I really don't know how he can say what he says, nor can I understand his motivations without postulating entities sufficient to send Occam running down the street screaming.

Two years ago he told us that

"Congress refuses to allow reasonable, environmentally sensitive, offshore drilling."

They did, of course allow drilling, but they allowed unreasonable, unsafe and reckless drilling, free of unbiased oversight, which according to Libertarian doctrine should have magically resulted in safe and reasonable results: they allowed the drillers to tell us what was safe enough and what was too expensive to do. They allowed the rig operators to determine what the lives of the workers were worth relative to profits and they allowed them not to give a damn that my grandchildren may never see a clean beach in Florida or eat Gulf shrimp.

It wasn't reasonable, environmentally sensitive drilling that got us into the current mess, now was it? It could have been all that if the laws had been enforced. The blowout might have been prevented if the people in charge of oversight hadn't been on the oil train and had done their jobs; if the regulations themselves hadn't been written by oil men and largely in secret -- if government hadn't been made to look the other way because of a philosophy teaching that government should look the other way. Eleven good men, many of whom saw this coming, would still be alive had we had some very basic oversight -- if we didn't have people insisting that the people who profit write the rules and the people with everything to lose keep silent or be called Communists.

Yet Dr. Paul says it was because of too much government that BP cheated and lied and people died -- that vast tracts of land and sea were destroyed, important industries were ruined, property made worthless -- and old fashioned as it may sound, I think contradictions in logic and fact weaken an argument. Is it a contradiction that oversight in an industry that has the capability of doing unprecedented damage is "too much government" while giving tax breaks and incentives to companies making tens of billions in profits is not?

Yes, it is a contradiction! Are we really so afraid of Communism that we're willing to accept what is by definition, giving state supported irresponsibility to state supported industries while calling it "limited government?" Or is it that the rather insignificant benefit of allowing a foreign corporation to pump American oil and sell it abroad in amounts that really don't matter either in terms of conservation or the price of crude, is a consummation so devoutly to be demanded that risking the end of the world is not worth talking about?

"We still need oil, and a lot of good jobs depend on oil production,"

he advises us. But do we need that oil, from there and do we need it so much we'll gamble our country's future on it, people's lives and livelihoods on grabbing a tiny bit more of it. We should be held hostage so that foreign corporations who pay hardly any taxes yet have a bigger vote than you do can add to their already obscene profits: so that they can play while we pay -- and pay forever.

It's a bad argument, a very, very bad argument, even coming from someone not smart enough to see that -- and Paul certainly is smart enough, so why is adding an insignificant amount to the current supply of oil so desperately important? Why are oil jobs more important than the countless other jobs destroyed by oil spills? Are today's fishing jobs, logging jobs, more important than making sure that there are fish and trees next week? Libertarianism would seem to say so. Libertarianism would seem to promise that passenger pigeons will return now that they were hunted to extinction, that we'd still have the American Bison and the Bald Eagle if we'd been allowed to shoot as many as we liked, but you know -- it's not true.

Look, I don't think I'm channeling Marx when I say that we don't have crime simply because we have too many police, that Enron destroyed lives and fortunes because the Government looked at their books; that people wouldn't rob banks if banks had no guards and robbery weren't illegal. I don't think it's communism to have a government say: no dammit, you can't build a fireworks factory next to that school and if you build it anywhere, you'll install sprinklers and put up no smoking signs, but that's just what people calling themselves libertarians are saying.

I don't understand and I'm quite sure I don't understand because it's not to be understood, it's to be believed. The pieces of the puzzle don't need to fit, the ideas don't need to work. In fact they have a history which proves it so. It's the logic of emotion; the argument from anger and the special pleadings of selfish solipsism: I don't care what happens to my country if oil is a penny a barrel cheaper for two weeks. I don't care if it's a Ponzi scheme because I'm making money. I don't care if I poison the river, my property rights are my property rights. I don't care if your grandmother can't ride my bus -- it's my bus and my right. I don't know if I'm more disturbed by the fact that I don't understand or by the fear that I do understand.

*There is no shame because it is shameful;
it is wholly credible, because it is unsound;
it is certain, because impossible.

(with apologies to Turtullian)

The Devil and the Oil Spill

Fox and Palin.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?

Yes, we have people out in the street screaming about tax increases that never were and while Federal income taxes are lower than they've been in 50 years. We have Fox giving air time to the airhead who has taken time out from chanting "drill baby drill" like an over-aged cheerleader for the oil cartel to chastise President Obama for not doing what he in fact is doing and for not knowing how to do what it was BP's responsibility to know how to do and to be able to do. I wonder if she took time to take a shower and change clothes before switching from 'hands off the oil industry' to 'we need government intervention and oversight.'

"Well then what the federal government should have done was accept the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans that have had the solutions that they wanted presented."

Well, of course that's what the administration is doing. Looking for assistance from countries where drilling is subject to much more oversight and where Fox ranteth not. Perhaps it's time to ask that "gotcha" question once again. So what newspapers and magazines do you read Mrs. Palin? Oh, I see -- you watch Fox.

Of course there was a 4 week delay in waiving the federal Merchant Marine Act of 1920, which mandates that all goods shipped between U.S. ports be transported in U.S.-built, U.S. owned and U.S. manned ships.Of course there was a long delay during which BP didn't tell us how bad it was and that they couldn't have it stopped in short order, but face it, the Grand Old Bastards have so much fun and profit with their daily game of pin the tail on the President, they're even criticizing the pants he wears when talking about the oil spill, unlike the Commander guy with his costumes.

Does it really matter whether the president has apparently made sure that we won't have to pay for this disaster by having BP set aside 20 billion in escrow? No, even that is proof of perfidy, since it will somehow hurt the Louisiana economy and it basically is a socialist plan to redistribute wealth says the irrepressible Bachmann. Win or lose, we lose, if you ask the New Right.

But it appears that God wants no part of this sound and fury and we're going to have to fix it ourselves. If only we only had to battle the Devil and the oil spill here and not the legions of lying idiots.

Top Kill, Bottom Kill

As Jeff Foxworthy might say, "you might be a liberal if you've ever taken extra trash bags on a two-day canoe trip just so you could pack out other people's trash." I have just arrived home sun-burnt, exhausted, and mentally recharged from a nice float down the Buffalo River. I needed it after completing this video of a bipartisan discussion on the BP oil spill. Enjoy!

How To Kick The Oil Habit

The conventional wisdom that we must depend on fossil fuels until we “transition to a new energy future” is a favorite of our political and media betters; problem is, they’ve been saying it for the past 30 years while doing absolutely nothing to further said “transition.” Now we face one crisis after another, after another.


Thanks a lot, assholes.

Never mind. I’ve said all along that this piece of conventional wisdom is false, a lie we’ve been told to make us feel better about our lack of action. Don’t worry, be happy. But sorry, peeps. Time to grow up. Time to call bullshit where we see it and demand some action, some leadership and some honesty.

Here’s a great place to start:

The last time lawmakers truly freaked out about the problem of our oil dependence--when gas prices topped $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008--the Senate Energy Committee called in Skip Laitner, director of economic analysis at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The committee asked Laitner what efficiency--the famously unglamorous energy strategy--could do to relieve gas prices. He gave them an astonishing figure: It could save 46 billion barrels of oil. If the U.S. made an all-out investment in energy efficiency-cutting energy waste out of vehicles, buildings, the electrical grid, and elsewhere in the economy--Laitner believes it could save the energy equivalent of 46 billion barrels by 2030.

Domestic offshore drilling produced 537 million barrels a year over the last nine years, according to the Minerals Management Service. A full-bore efficiency plan would save the equivalent of 85 years of offshore drilling.

Let me repeat what I’ve said before: the oil companies are cutting back on refinery production, even shutting some refineries down permanently, in an effort to keep gas prices high. So I don’t believe conservation will lower gas prices significantly. But that’s not my concern. My concern is ecology, safety, and other areas of the economy that depend on our coastal areas. And it looks like conservation will give us that so-called “breathing room” we’ve been told we need offshore drilling to provide to fuel our transition to renewables.

Most of Laitner's “10 solutions” look fairly painless and easy to implement, but they require will, leadership, and commitment. We need to decide that we really do want to transition to renewables, not just use the words to justify our wasteful ways while we steep ourselves in denial.

There are tons more ideas from folks like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, whose commentary Freeing America From Its Addiction To oil provides tons more pro-business, capitalistic solutions. But, as he notes, we need “real carrots, not just sticks painted orange.”

We can do this. It’s not hard. We have the motivation. We have the tecnology. We simply need to demand it of our leadership.

Drill until we drop

Perhaps a society such as ours has as finite a lifespan as the individuals it's composed of and I think I'm seeing the kind of memory loss and dementia in the American public that we associate with extreme old age. The aged body sometimes can't absorb sustenance very well and neither can the American public assimilate the things that make a capable and dynamic Democracy possible. a large part of our population, for instance, seems to think that the huge environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico means that we need to do more of what made it happen and in the same careless, unregulated way. Presumably a number of those live far inland and don't like seafood or care that the Earth is becoming less livable because these are still the "end times," but not all of them. Some just think that as long as their immediate, short term needs are met, the rest of the world can go to hell, and so it goes.

A recent poll shows that despite the total lack of evidence and the extreme unlikeliness of the scenario, nine or ten percent of Americans do believe Limbaugh's idiotic proposition that it was the "enviros" behind the drilling platform explosion, but the scary part is that 22% are "unsure." Amongst self-identified Conservatives, the number jumps to 44% who believe it was sabotage by liberals. The evidence to the contrary is out there, the evidence for it isn't out there, so either 31% are unable to assimilate it by reason of dementia or have no interest in the survival of the USA as we think we know it -- or Like many aged people, they've given up and are simply wandering in a senile, paranoid daze of denialism looking for their lost youth and vigor.

"Perhaps most surprisingly 21% of voters said the spill made them more likely to support offshore drilling,"

said Public Policy Polling director Tom Jensen. 55% of Americans polled after the disaster began, still supported offshore drilling, according to the same poll.

Am I pushing this too far? Is this really only more of what America has been doing since its beginning? We are, after all a nation that is happy to continue its war on drugs and embargoes on foreign countries that cause more harm than good; a nation that has had to struggle tooth and nail to overcome our vicious habits. Most of all we're a nation that always waits for a calamity before doing anything. What I'm afraid of is that this time the calamity we're waiting for won't come until we're a nation incapable of taking care of ourselves but a nation with a huge Army.

PIGS “R” US

By Octopus

Early this morning, I walked my fabled beach to partake of what little time may be left before the sludge arrives. My beach is one of the most beautiful on the Atlantic coast ... a wide expanse of fine white sand that crunches beneath your feet, and an infinite emerald green vista beyond the breakers. Here, you can walk for miles before encountering another person.

On any given day, beachcombers will see herons, egrets, sandpipers, and plovers teasing the surf, or black skimmers and pelicans strafing the waves.

The Gulf oil leak disaster comes on the heals of an unseasonably cold winter that left hundreds of manatees and endangered marine turtles cold stunned, dead, or dying. For decades, marine biologists have warned: Our coral reefs are vanishing; our fish stocks are depleted; storm runoff is destroying our wetlands; and floating garbage will bring our ocean ecosystem to the verge of collapse.

Public opinion is a pendulum that swings between fads and confabulations, a rhythm and discord orchestrated by sociopaths. When gas hit $4 at the pump, everyone chanted: Drill, baby, drill. When corporations threatened to close factories and move operations overseas unless the government eased environmental regulations, everyone chanted: Down with tree huggers - they kill jobs.

Nobody listened. How soon we forget past transgressions. How soon we forgot about the tragedy of Love Canal where a housing community was built upon a waste dump containing 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals. In short order, residents reported acrid liquids leaching into their basements, and higher than normal prevalence rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer. Children who played outdoors came home with burns on their skin. Eventually, the government evacuated 800 families and reimbursed them for their homes; however it took another 18 years before the successor corporation agreed to pay restitution.

How soon we forgot about the succession of fires along the Cuyahoga River: The first in 1912 that killed five, a fire in 1936 that burned five days, another in 1952 that burned three days and caused millions of dollars in damage, and the last in 1969 when accumulated trash and debris trapped in heavy black ooze was ignited by a sparks from a passing train.

How soon we forget the epidemic known as Minamata Disease, a severe neurological disorder resembling cerebral palsy caused by the release of methyl mercury in industrial wastewater. This highly toxic chemical accumulated in the seafood harvested from Minamata Bay, which when eaten by the populace resulted in mercury poisoning. By 2001, over 2,265 victims had been officially recognized, of whom 1,784 had died. At least 10,000 others still await compensation.

Major Industrial Polluters

(Click on image to enlarge)

Each year, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) publishes information and analyses on major polluters in America. This study relies on EPA Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI), which assesses the toxicity of chemicals released, impacts on human health, the risk to exposed populations, and the burden borne by local municipalities. How toxic is toxic?

The EPA tracks 600 toxic chemicals released into the environment as measured in millions of pounds per year. It should be noted that toxicity is not merely a measure of the quantity of pollutants released each year but the toxicity of each compound in relative terms. Toxicity varies by seven orders of magnitude meaning, pound-for-pound, some chemicals are ten million times more toxic than others. The EPA database includes known carcinogens such as asbestos (toxicity index = 1 million), benzidine (TI= 480,000), and bis chloromethyl ether (TI= 440,000), highly toxic industrial solvents, and millions of pounds of heavy metals such as cadmium (TI = 90,000), chromium (TI = 86,000), arsenic (TI = 60,000), lead (TI = 8,000), and mercury (TI = 6,000).

One would think the term Environmental Justice would place Mother Nature and the right of all citizens to clean air and water on an equal footing along with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In fact, Environmental Justice is a ploy used by polluters to spread the impact of pollution without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, or station in life.

Pollution is good for business. It saves owners and shareholders the cost and inconvenience of cleanup and puts more money in their pockets. “Lets allow more arsenic in public drinking water,” says the coal lobby, “and who gives a damn if your worthless kid gets leukemia.” The perks and privileges of the few outweigh the health concerns of the many because public welfare, as Glenn Beck has told you, is tantamount to socialism.

“Have another Double Whopper with bacon and cheese,” says McDonalds, “Who who gives a damn if you die of diabetes. Shareholder value, baby!, that’s what’s its all about.”

“Go ahead. Beat your children and traumatize the crap out of them,” spouts Herr Doctor Freud, “Es ist goot fur beezniss.”

Corporate responsibility is an oxymoron. The titans of industry don’t want environmental regulations, banking reform, consumer product monitoring, food inspections, or workplace safety standards, because regulations are bad, big government is bad, and what’s good for business is good for America!  The 19th Century mindset of social Darwinists, libertarians, and the discontents of civilization are anachronisms living in the post-modern world.  And who the hell needs healthcare when you have no heart and no brain, and your head and your ass are interchangeable.

Inevitably, the cost of cleanup and compensation will be borne by the consumer as energy costs rise. Eventually taxpayers will get stuck with the bills when push comes to pay, because BP’s lawyers will delay and delay. When gas hits $4 at the pump, the pendulum will swing once again with chants of “drill, baby, drill,” because nothing in the human Universe ever changes, while Mother Nature suffers one more incremental death blow.

The longer the Louisiana oil leak persists, the more inevitable this becomes:  Oil will enter the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current that will transport it to the east coast of Florida … thus impacting our beaches and coastal ecosystems. The oil slick arribada may be weeks or months away. Heartbroken, livid, outraged, there are no words to describe what I feel.

Heckuva Twist, Brownie

By Captain Fogg

When you want to get the best advice on how to treat a disaster, who're you gonna call? Well certainly not the "enviros" who might know something about nature and how it works. Certainly you don't ask advice from people who have been telling you it was going to happen any day now after the day actually arrived. That would be to close to admitting you were wrong. No, you want to hear from someone whose personal record of handling catastrophic situations has become a metaphor for bungling and incompetence: you ask Brownie.

Of course the hottest new dance, the Tea Party Twist, has the baggers in knots trying to blame Obama for the latest Gulf oil disaster, the kind of disaster we've all been warned about and have been laughed at for worrying about. We dare not mention George and Dick who actually were partying it up while New Orleans drowned and doing Lord knows what for days afterward since it might diminish the outrageous new claim that Obama stalled doing anything about this oil spill so as to maximize the tragedy and give him an excuse to "pander to the environmentalists." You remember them, they're the guys who were to blame for the high prices that made the oil industry so happy?

Come on baby, let's do the twist:

"This is exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'I'm gonna shut it down because it's too dangerous,' " No, this would never have happened but for President Hussein.

"This president has never supported Big Oil, he's never supported offshore drilling, and now he has an excuse to shut it back down."

whined Brownie through the microphones at Fox without regard to the fact that "back down" would indicate that it had ever been shut down and that Obama hadn't been saying all along that he was in favor of drilling when needed if it could be done safely. No he hasn't yet joined Rush in claiming that environmentalist hippies in diving gear sunk the platform and he hasn't mentioned the failure of the safety equipment from Halliburton -- who would dare? Why mention that the free market is supposed to take care of this, not that durned Gummint. Who would be so unpatriotic and nonpartisan as to mention the truth? Lady Sarah after all says we need people to trust the oil industry. That means we need people to distrust the (Democratic) government if not Democracy itself.

So let's go, the band is playing and it's the Blame it on Obama Cha-Cha. Who can resist? Play it loud and you won't hear me blaming this on official drill baby drill Republican policy.

Blame it on ObamUH
Blame it on ObamUH!

Come on everybody!

Who cares?

By Captain Fogg

Can we call public reaction to the Gulf oil spill predictable? I'm not surprised that a CNN poll yesterday shows 47% don't approve of the way the President has handled it, but I would be surprised if many of that group really have no idea of what Obama has or hasn't done -- perhaps the majority of them, perhaps more. Of course the poll isn't scientific and it didn't ask how many people approve of BP's safety record or of the Halliburton safety equipment that failed. It's just another chance for people to show that they really disapprove of the man being in office. Another CNN poll today shows that 61% favor the continuation of drilling. I wonder how many of them live far inland.

Has anyone else noticed the lack of notice that 11 people are missing and presumed dead; either burned alive or drowned in the oil rig explosion and sinking? Shouldn't we be lionizing them for having died for cheaper oil which after all is the only thing that keeps us free and in God's good graces? No, that's predictable too. No talk of sacrifice when it comes to oil please, since it may lead some to consider what sacrifices are worth it and who should be making them. It may prompt people to ask whether the loss of jobs and industries makes the penny or two's difference in the cost of crude worth more and more destruction of the oceans we depend on for food and oxygen.

It's all too easy for us to keep the blinders on. We're too occupied with this week's groceries and next week's mortgage payment and American Idol and Obama bashing and besides we're so damned ignorant of how nature works we can't make the connection between the fish sticks and the fish they come from - if there is any.

Yes, the free market will take of everything and a bull will eventually find his way out of a china shop and besides I don't have time to care about it. I've got to pick up the kids from school and take them to soccer practice and yoga and put gas in the SUV . . . .

Paint it black.

By Captain Fogg

It amazes me how my fellow Floridians, so many of whose lives revolve around the rivers. lakes and coastline of the Sunshine State, so many of whom are actively concerned with keeping the natural environment natural, can still side with the polluters and despoilers when it comes to voting for Republicans who work for and ofter are developers, sugar producers and cattlemen with no vision that goes beyond this month's P&L. Will that change when the Gulf becomes a smelly dead sea, when the white sand turns to black and the drinking water runs out or will Florublicans continue the self-destructive doublethink?

It may be a week or more before the gushing well head in the Gulf is capped. The optimists say it may be months before the Gulf recovers, others say any return to life may take far longer since the oil cloud runs very deep and the dispersants used to break up the oil are toxic to the entire food chain and what settles to the bottom may leave it as hostile to life as a newly tarred section of the Interstate. Certainly the business food chains that begin with fishing and tourism will be devastated, but if you expect the Party of Business and Free Enterprise to give an oily damn, think again.

Palin and Kristol are flapping their jaws like sock puppets covering the hands of Exxon and BP trying to keep up the enthusiasm for more drilling and closer to the shore. It's about "energy security" says the big hair Runaway Governor without addressing the cost of this cleanup and the cost to all those who buy food that may now have to come from Asia and the Southern hemisphere and the cost to those who depend on non-toxic oceans.

“We believe that God shed his grace on thee. We still believe that America is exceptional.” she said while non sequitur alarms were set off around the world.

Indeed it is: exceptional in it's ability to justify being raped, cheated, pillaged and looted by the people for whom she speaks. Our security and the price of oil have little to do with the matter, it's about increased profits for companies whose profits have more than doubled in the last year, who get tax subsidies despite paying little or no US taxes. By the grace of God and Palin they'll do even better next year and it's not because the price of oil will go down or that there's enough offshore oil to make a difference or that the oil that's brought up will not be sold abroad. Far from making us more independent, it will makes us more dependent on multinational corporations with no motivation not to sell to the highest bidder; with no motivation but their own welfare.

The accident was the result of too much regulation said the more erudite but less credible Bill Kristol and we ought to do more of it and much closer to shore.

"Look, it was a bad accident but the fact is I think we get one-third of our domestic oil from the Gulf, from offshore drilling in the Gulf. We need it. We can't cut back on it,"

said Kristol as though the solution to a bad habit was increased indulgence, as though the best way to treat a dwindling resource was to use it faster. In fact saving it until later when the demand is higher may be the policy behind the fact that there is as little drilling going on as there is on leases they already have. No, we need ever riskier drilling in ever more sensitive areas because nothing is as important as using oil faster and faster. Not even honesty. Not even conservative handling of a precious asset. Just suck up more, suck it up faster and get it out there where we can burn it ever more extravagantly before the market forces of supply and demand can make us come to our senses and sell the Hummer.

Yes we can cut back on it and it has little to do with how wonderful we are or how much God loves us and Sarah Palin waves the flag, but no, it's the environmentalists who made us drill so far away from shore where it's harder to fix the blowout, says Bill. But don't look for logic in the words of either or from even oilier Rush who thinks environmentalist hippies poisoned the Gulf. Look for buck passing, shape shifting, gratuitous Obama bashing and justification for ever bigger control over our lives by the global oil cartel and the politicians and governments who work for them.

If We Could Talk to the Animals – They Would Tell Us We’re Idiots

By Bloggingdino

Woke up this morning to headlines such as “Oil Could Gush for Months.” Now, I may be simple, but even I knew that when oil company executives and politicians were telling people that today’s oil-drilling technology is so sophisticated, we’ll never have to worry about major spills like the ones we had years ago, their words carried about as much weight as a used car salesman’s assurance about some clunker, “this baby’s sound under the hood and will get ya 25 miles to the gallon even in the city.” Do they make “Sounds Like BS to Me” hats big enough to fit a large dinosaur?  ....