Spill Baby Spill - Who should really pay for this Disaster???

[Blackflag]

And there were SOLAR PANELS on the White House roof.....

WOW COOL! Why did the BCE have to get rid of solar panels???

[chefcraig]

And there were SOLAR PANELS on the White House roof.....

Yep. And women did not wear brassieres underneath halter/tank tops. When did that fucking evil begin?

[LoungeMachine]

In year 2000 dollars. We're not using those in 2010.

See where it says "not adjusted for inflation?"

And my point that it DOUBLED under the "energy pResident" is still correct, even factoring in inflation.

This country and congress is RUN by Big Oil, and so much of our defense, economy, and society is at their beck and call.



Just another pathetc example of how FUCKED we are without serious CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

[Lqskdiver]

Geezuz, Luisiana is one fucked state. First Katrina, now this. Just wait, it's going to get worse and there will be all sorts of finger pointing. Shit, it's already starting.

[LoungeMachine]

Geezuz, Luisiana is one fucked state. First Katrina, now this. Just wait, it's going to get worse and there will be all sorts of finger pointing. Shit, it's already starting.

Well, plus ELVIS lives there........

[FORD]

Accidental Tourist
May 3rd, 2010

I’ll never forget my first glimpse of the Perfect Beach.

It was 1996, right after Christmas, when I was first introduced to the most beautiful beaches I had ever seen. Mike and I had been dating for a few months and pooled our meager finances (he was between radio jobs, as usual, and I was a poor student), drove about 6 hours south from Atlanta toward the Gulf of Mexico through Tallahassee, Florida, and then the quiet fishing villages of Apalachicola, East Point and Carrabelle, over a long causeway spanning Apalachicola Bay to St. George Island where we had rented a little beachfront cottage for a three day weekend.

Mike had been visiting the island for 15 years, but I had never seen that part of Florida. All I knew of Florida beaches were the rowdy drive-in tourist places like Daytona, or the crowded real estate of Panama City with its towering hotels and noisy restaurants. This was different. They don’t call it “The Forgotten Coast” for nothing; it was something out of another time. On St. George Island you could walk for a mile and not see another human being. There were no high-rises, no fast food restaurants, no surf shops. Just pristine beaches as far as you could see, small mom and pop establishments, two gas stations and colorful, modestly-sized individual houses dotting the seashore.

This was unlike any beach I had ever visited. The sand was golden/pink powder, with gentle dunes covered in waving sea oats. The air was so clean, so sweet-smelling, it had a weight and substance that reminded me of what it must have been like in a more primitive time, before commercialism utterly destroyed those beaches with which I was familiar. Here, the sea shells were scattered everywhere, carelessly, undisturbed. Sea birds circled overhead in great flocks, dolphins swam so close to shore you could almost look them in the eye. The waves were surprisingly gentle. Body surfing was a powerful thrill, especially if a storm came up. Locals fished right on the beach, waving to us as we strolled along the shore looking for seashells, which we collected by the bucketful. There were notes in our cottage that reminded us to turn off our porch lights at night so as not to confuse the pregnant sea turtles that nested on the beach, waiting to drop their eggs into the scooped-out sand At night we watched the tiny lights of the shrimp boats on the horizon under a blanket of stars so thick, and moonlight so bright, you could walk on the beach at midnight and actually cast a shadow.


Mike said that on previous trips he had taken his kids to the inland side of the island, which borders Apalachicola Bay, where they had rented a boat and scooped up oysters out of the water, cracking them open and sliding their salty goodness into their bellies by the score. He described terrible storms with explosive lightening way out in the ocean as he watched safely from the beach; millions of tiny red crabs so thick they moved like one giant organism along the bay shore. Large blue crabs were so abundant you could catch them with a net if you waded off shore about 30 feet to a sandbar, where you could also scoop up dozens of perfect, intact sand dollars. (Mike had jars of shells and sand dollars at home; he was hooked on collecting them.)

On this my first visit we drove about 45 minutes west from Apalachicola toward Port. St. Joe on highway C-30 along the gulf, and made a sharp left turn onto Cape San Blas, a spit of land that juts into the ocean and faces directly west. Here was yet another stretch of endless, vacant beach, even more deserted than St. George Island. And unlike the island’s fine, pink sand, here it was snow white and impossibly finer. Like powdered sugar, blindingly white in the bright sun. And the dunes were like rolling hills; some of them near the State Park on the northern tip of the island towered over the random two-story beachfront houses. We spent the day there walking the beach. We might have seen four other people. We stayed for the big show – sunset. The cape faces directly west and you can watch the sun sink into the ocean and be astonished as the sky turns from yellow to orange to hot pink to magenta, then purple and indigo in the space of an hour. I used up two rolls of film (no digital camera then) trying to capture the magic of the changing sky.

There is no way to visit that area and remain unchanged. The peace and calm and beauty of the place stays with you forever, reminding you that despite all the other things going on in the world, there is a place oblivious to the day-to-day melodrama and chaos. A quiet, natural place where you can escape every once in awhile to discharge all that clotted frustration and regain, or establish for the first time, your balance and serenity.

After Mike and I were married and moved to Chicago, we would drive 15 hours to get there. It took two days but we didn’t care. Sure, there were closer vacation spots, but nothing that compared to the Forgotten Coast. We would arrange these trips six months in advance, sometimes lucky enough to coordinate with Mike’s grown children who loved the place as much as we did, and at least twice we enjoyed a week-long family reunion in a rambling beachfront house, enjoying cookouts on the beach, constellation-counting competitions, endless games of Frisbee, massive sand castles, ghost stories in front of the fire pit we all dug earlier once the sun went down and the air cooled. We reconnected as a family the way you can when there are no distractions, no TV shows or newspapers or laptops. We laughed and played like carefree children.

We left Chicago and moved back to Atlanta in the summer of 2000 – too late and too broke for a trip to our perfect beach that year. But Mike and I visited The Forgotten Coast at least twice a year without fail after that. When Molly was born in July of 2004, one of the first things we did was reserve a beachfront house on Cape San Blas for Thanksgiving, where Mike’s grown children (and grandchildren !) met their little four-month-old sister (and aunt!) for the first time. On that trip we were delighted to hear Molly laugh out loud for the first time ever, watching her three year old niece Lauren and five year old nephew Jake chase each other on the screened porch in the twilight. Since then she’s spent many weeks in her almost six years on those beaches, learning to body surf; building sprawling sand castles and mermaid palaces; marveling wide-eyed at the sheer number of stars and squealing in delight when spotting a meteorite streaking across the night sky; napping under a beach umbrella as the round of the waves lulled her to sleep; digging for tiny cochinas as the waves lap over the shore, grabbing mounds of wet sand and watching in amazement as the rainbow-colored shellfish burrow down into her cupped hands. Our last trip to this magical place was right after Christmas, and once again we were fortunate enough to have Mike’s grown children and elementary-aged grandchildren join us for a few days. We were looking forward to a summer visit later this year.

But now there is an unstoppable volcano of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to kill everything in its path and destroy the beaches we love so much.

Scientists say the Gulf Stream current may pull the massive and growing black pool of poison around the Florida keys and up into the Atlantic. Efforts to stem the flow from the sea floor and remove oil from the surface by skimming it, burning it or by dispersing it with chemicals continue with little or no success.

According to Dr. Ralph Portier of Louisiana State University, “Coastlines from the panhandle, through the Tampa Bay area and the Florida Keys may be overrun by a toxic tide that will poison wildlife, foul the air, and further punish an already crushed local economy. The Gulf spill is at the top of ‘the Loop Current,’ a part of the Gulf Stream that sends water around Florida and as far north as Cape Hatteras, NC . . . ’The trouble with our marshes is they’re already stressed, they’re already hanging by a fingernail,’ added Dr. Denise Reed of the University of New Orleans. ‘And yet it now seems possible that the influx of oil from the still-gushing well in the Gulf could deliver the killing blow to the whole coastal ecosystem. The volume of oil that now seems likely to wash up on the Louisiana coast could overwhelm the coastal grasses’ ability to recover. If the roots die, the plants die and the ground underneath turns to mud and disappears into the sea within a year.” And, with hurricane season approaching, powerful storms could blow the oil into the marshes and wetlands with violent force, or drive it further up the eastern seaboard to the beaches, fishing areas, national wildlife refuges and estuarys there.

Accidents happen. That seems to be the attitude of both Washington politicians and the Corporate Media. But the Deepwater Horizon disaster is as much an accident as the drunk driver who plows into a school bus and kills all the children on board. Sure, it wasn’t done deliberately, but it was 100% preventable nonetheless. A simple shut off valve on the main pipe would’ve prevented this deadly nightmare. But it cost $500,000 and why should BP pay that? With a complete disdain for the risks and the government regulations needed to minimize those risks, one can assume Dick Cheney – in his secret energy meetings – had assured BP (and how many other oil companies?) they could do whatever they wanted in the Gulf. Who cared? Fishermen? shrimpers? vacationers? . . . they don’t count. Any more than coal miners do, or those poor folks who live in the desert near nuclear waste facilities.

Dead oil rig workers? Dead fish? Dead sea turtles and sea birds? Dead whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals? Dead migratory sea birds? Dead fishing industry? Dead tourism? Far-reaching economic devastation? More unemployment? Biggest environmental disaster in history? So what! That’s half a million bucks! . . . That’ll almost pay for my new G5. Greedy bastards.

Obama visited Louisiana on Sunday to survey the spreading oil slick from a helicopter in a move weirdly reminiscent of Dubya’s flyover of the nearby real estate to peek at the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Obama’s visit had great optics, as the PR people would say, but zero affect on the problem at hand and was ultimately pointless from anything other than a photo-op standpoint. “Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak,” Obama said to the cameras Sunday ”BP will be paying the bill.”

This could have been a defining moment in the Obama presidency, an opportunity to confront the rabid “drill baby, drill” Republicans - whose policies were instrumental in causing this disaster – with full force. Instead he scolded BP like a forgetful child who had accidentally forgotten to take off his shoes and tracked mud into the house. “Look at the mess you made, Billy! You’re going to use your allowance to pay to clean the rug!” Worse, he did not reverse his position on offshore drilling. As a sop to consumer food safety he did ban commercial fishing in the area for 10 days. From the predictions of the expected environmental damage, that time frame might stretch to 10 years. “Your government will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to stop this crisis,” he said.

But . . . what about the government policies that made it possible for this deadly disaster to happen in the first place? What about the eleven oil workers who are dead because of Halliburton/Cheney’s super-secret energy meetings in which oil industry lobbyists successfully eliminated from government policy any effective regulation or safety measures that would’ve prevented this kind of disaster? Did I miss that part of the speech as Obama metaphorically wagged his finger at BP?

And, of course, there’s been not a peep from Corporate Media about the cause of this disaster. They cover the sensational aspects of the story – the first bird treated for oil poisoning, the local fisherman who worries his family will now lose everything, the lady who runs the oceanfront B&B who cries because people are canceling their reservations – but they ignore the deeper story: that this disaster was predicted and preventable.

As reported by Seymour Friendly, “Article after article after article after article has highlighted and exposed just how ill-prepared both industry and government were for a predictable disaster in an offshore drilling operation that both industry and government together allowed to proceed. . . The deeper story in this wreck that is being missed is the story of an industrial energy production system – offshore oil drilling – that is in general emphasized by a big industry and normally co-opted or coerced government officials and agencies – and that continues to produce major disasters despite decades of technological focus and advance.”

Largely because of the lack of pointed media coverage, those folks most likely to be affected by this disaster – the fishermen, oystermen, boat rental operators and coastal business owners dependent on tourism – will likely continue to vote for the very Republicans in government whose anti-regulatory attitudes allowed this disaster to occur. Just as they will likely believe Rush “Deaf by Temptation” Limbaugh as he outrageously accuses liberals and “Eco-Nazis” for this disaster, suggesting they blew up the rig and murdered those on board to discourage further drilling. Or, they will nod in lemming-like unison as Glenn Beck calls the spill “Obama’s Katrina” . . . while the wildlife around them withers and dies.

Yesterday I thumbed through my photo albums and savored the memories of our time on the Forgotten Coast. Periodically I glanced at TV, watching the advancing pool of toxic goo spread like a cancer across the Gulf. I kept thinking of the last lines of the poem that ends “. . . for want of a nail, the war was lost . . . ”

For want of a shut-off valve, the coast was lost.

- Kathy Bay Malloy

http://www.mikemalloy.com/2010/05/03/accidental-tourist/

[Blackflag]

And my point that it DOUBLED under the "energy pResident" is still correct, even factoring in inflation.

Look at how much it increased since Obama took office. He's clearly BCE.

[chefcraig]

And my point that it DOUBLED under the "energy pResident" is still correct, even factoring in inflation.

This country and congress is RUN by Big Oil, and so much of our defense, economy, and society is at their beck and call.



Just another pathetc example of how FUCKED we are without serious CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

No, I don't believe that completely covers things. Economic blight, be it postulated via campaign reform, local politicians being in bed with developers or outright ignorance does not change the fact that people, left to themselves to survive, are fucking animals. Realistically, I should have sold this house about 7 or 8 years ago. Instead, I held out for a better price, then had a couple of hurricanes come along and wreck things. This was compounded by a new "element" moving into the neighborhood, as property values dropped.

The result of my holding out to regain my investment? Dogs now bark 24 hours a day, sirens go off unexpectedly from emergency vehicles, loud music blasts from every car going by and I find that my once wonderful neighborhood has turned into the hood. Now, is it my fault as a citizen for not moving away from these "people" promptly enough? Furthermore, exactly how far west am I supposed to move (before finding the Everglades or hopelessly unaffordable housing) to get away from their kind? Is there a land to get away from shitbags once and for all? Exactly how far does one need to go and how much does it cost to do so? And finally, while attempting to do this, is one labeled a racist for doing so?

[LoungeMachine]

Move west, young Chef.




And then head north......

[ELVIS]

First of all, BP's liability is limited to 75M under a 1990 law...

Secondly, Obama claimed a "all hands on deck approach since day one." Where are they ??

Thirdly, BP seems to have a plan and they are implementing it. I hope they succeed alone, without federal government intervention...

And finally, the "disaster" that you hear on the talking head shows seems to be quite exaggerated based on my local standpoint...

[Nickdfresh]

You queers should be riding bicycles for your transportation needs...

You just want to see men in their tight shorts...

[jhale667]

And finally, the "disaster" that you hear on the talking head shows seems to be quite exaggerated based on my local standpoint...

5,000 barrels of oil leaking into the gulf every day...yeah, that's peanuts.

[ELVIS]

Well, so far it isn't the disaster the oil haters are hoping for...

[jhale667]

Well, so far it isn't the disaster the oil haters are hoping for...

Holy Fuck - did you take EXTRA Stupid-pills this morning??? WHO THE FUCK HOPES FOR A DISASTER, YOU IDIOT???

Seriously, did you even think before you posted that nonsense?

[ELVIS]

Sure I did...

There are people out there who would like nothing more than a good reason to shut down off shore drilling...