Telling the American people in his recent address to the nation, that the gulf oil disaster is the worst environmental problem, ever to befall America is a bit of an understatement. The entire gulf coast of the Untied States of America is under attack according to the President, as if we only understand situations if they are put in the context of war! If that is so, it appears this attack like the other wars we have been in as of late, is not particularly going our way! Our ability to protect and preserve this part of the countries way of life and livelihood have been anything but self-assuring to the people who live there. Strange the people of Iraq and Afghanistan feel the same way.
Face it; President Obama has had his share of disasters. The paint wasn’t dry on the White House walls before the economy tanked and financial disaster number one pretty much took out all the credit worthiness of Joe-middle class. Other problems like the mortgage crisis and the war in Afghanistan cried out to be addressed, like babies ready for their three a.m. feeding. And for sure the jobless rate being what is was and is still today is a crisis of major proportion. But this oil leak apparently was preventable had there been some sort of government oversight. Oh, yeah I forgot; there was! Or wasn’t, according to who you ask!
As Joe in the street apparently sees it BP is in charge, not the President. The fact that they propose to put twenty billion into a fund to settle claims, and that they are sorry and really are going to look into any shortcuts they might have taken that could have caused this problem somehow isn’t enough. Whereas the amount of money should at least make us feel a bit better, in this day and age, a billion dollars won’t even build bridge anymore, so what have we really gotten?
Republican bubbleheads are having a field day with the President’s speech. Saying it was more on rhetoric and philosophical, “we got to do’s” than it was on a plan to address the crisis. The President should have said we have to stop the leak and if BP can’t do it, he will. In so many words, what he said is we need a commission to look into this. No we don’t. We need to stop the leak!
One remembers the Jimmy Carter presidency, where he was forced into action to rescue the hostages from Iran, He sent in the troops under cover of night and the dam helicopters couldn’t get there in one piece; mission failed. President Obama isn’t about to send in the troops, but it certainly would have helped his part in the argument if he had said he had others besides BP exploring how to stop the leak. No one appears to trust anything the BP officials are saying, and at this point who can blame them?
In all crises, there are just some things that are out of your hands. The fact that this one is ongoing and that millions of barrels of oil continue to flow into the gulf daily doesn’t make it any easier to address. The fact that corporations rule the high seas of off shore drilling isn’t going to help either. Kind of like making a deal with some bad guys to do a job for you and then when it gets real messy complaining. Sorry America; you want the oil. This is how we get it.
In the most recent Time Magazine there is a chart of all the oil wells, deep-sea kind, operating in the Gulf. You might be surprised to find that there are hundreds of them run by every oil company there is. All governed by the same governmental regulations that were part and parcel in allowing what happened at BP’s well to occur. Our biggest surprise right now should be that this didn’t happen sooner. And our biggest worry, like that of another hurricane hitting New Orleans that another blowout won’t happen!
The Time Pieces 