In between arranging stuff for our upcoming vacay, work (I was there from 7am-6pm yesterday), and other obligations, I’ve barely had the energy to keep up with the world. But I scan the headlines, I read, I sigh . . . and I think, I need to blog on that. And yet, I keep coming back to one thing…
The horror that is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Gulf Coast Oil Kill.
That’s what Wonk the Vote calls it in this extraordinary post titled, “The Audacity of Ordinary People.” A must read that discusses the disdain with which our leaders, left and right, hold us.
Though Obama tries to sanitize his worldview for public consumption with very pretty words, he seems to fear the same thing that the wingnuts on the Texas State Board of Education fear:
The audacity of ordinary people.
In fact, just a couple weeks ago, Obama warned us that the cacophony of voices out there are a threat to our democracy and Donna B echoed that sentiment. I guess the “loud, raucous, moving, exquisite collection of noises” that make up America is not music to their ears.
It is the very voices that we need to hear from most that they fear, . . .
In the meantime, USA Today seems to think that we little people are the solution to the gusher in the gulf.
Can anyone stop the oil? This is the question on the lips of many Americans, as thousands of barrels of oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well. Now with oil beginning to arrive on the fragile Gulf Coast shores, endangering species in the area, a hero can’t come soon enough. From Kevin Costner to non-profits to concerned citizens across the country, many are coming forward with potential solutions.
New Orleans resident, Dakinikat, has been doing the heavy lifting over at The Confluence about the disaster. She writes:
I’ve seriously meant to write about other things–including Financial Regulation–but it’s very hard for me at the moment. I walk the dog and I smell the stuff. I see helicopters over head all the time again; much like during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. You can’t watch TV down here at all without seeing ad after ad of trial lawyers looking for clients and then there’s the relentless news and weather updates. We’re in a state of emergency. I don’t feel like any one at the White House really gets this.
I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get a serious plan and response to this crisis. We’ve seen no major news anchors down here. Not even the Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel has shown up so I feel like so many folks don’t know what kind of a situation is developing here in Southern Louisiana.
She encourages us to call our Representatives. And Twitter bomb the MSM. Hey, it worked for Iran, didn’t it?
Teaspoons against the tidal wave. And the tidal wave is winning. In an article linked in Wonk’s post, Linda Monk writes in The Coming Black Death: BP Destroys Both Nature and the Human Spirit:
People in South Louisiana have “an almost superhuman resilience and a hopeful outlook in the face of almost every kind of imaginable hardship — hurricanes, yellow fever, backbreaking poverty, exploitation. Even the national disgrace of watching our families being separated in the aftermath of Katrina.”
But even Martinez notices a new attitude among his neighbors and friends. “It’s like their fight is gone,” he says, “and I can honestly say I have never seen this before, not even after Katrina.”
“I don’t know if it’s that we haven’t had a chance to properly recover from Katrina, or if there is a shared perception of this oil spill being sort of like finding out you have terminal cancer. There is just a kind of hopelessness everywhere.”
It seems to me it’s not just BP that has stuck the knife in them, it’s all of it. The “passing of the buck,” the years and years and years of allowing the foxes to guard the chicken coops, the years and years and years of believing that private business could “police” itself
Honestly? I think BP knew exactly how bad this all was going to turn out from Day 1. I am now beginning to think that the reason they didn’t have a plan, aside from pure greed, was that they knew it wasn’t possible to contain something like this at that depth. They knew, and they drilled anyway. They played craps with our coastline, and now they’re just going to walk away from the table. Only in this case, The House didn’t win.
Bottom line for me is that BP won’t do anything to lose the well, no matter what. The “top kill” then, is most likely to fail, although it will be useful as a public relations exercise. From BO’s perspective, the relief wells coming through a couple of months from now are the solution, and so what about the Gulf?
Oh, but BP has a plan! Another one!
Oil major BP is exploring a new way to siphon off oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico should current plans to plug the leak this week fail.
The London-based company said on Tuesday it had plans to remove a damaged part from the ruptured well and put in place a tube which would capture most of the oil and gas flowing into the sea, calling it the LMRP cap containment option.
Um. Why didn’t they do that in the first place? Anyone think this is just more smoke and mirrors? Yeah, me too.
Someone else somewhere noted that if the Gulf is killed, all bets are off for unregulated drilling in the Gulf. If it’s already ruined, they said, any other efforts to regulate drilling is a waste of time. At this point, I wouldn’t put this thought past the PTB.
Gotta go…getting my pacemaker tweaked today, then off to work.
