"It was twenty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play" ...It was also about twenty years ago that the Exxon Valdez spilled oil which covered a large area of Alaska.
The oil, in substantial portion, is still there polluting the environment.
The justices on the U.S. Supreme Court let ExxonMobil off the hook by substantially lowering the damages that had been awarded by an Alaska court.
Now we have another major disaster off the coast near New Orleans (where about 90% of the close-to-shore rigs were wiped out or shut down by hurricane Katrina and Rita, and many other rigs not close to shore were disrupted or destroyed by Katrina and Rita).
In the disaster this week, one of the Cadillacs of oil drilling rigs built in 2001, the Deepwater Horizon, exploded and sank (after about 20 years of what Obama called significant technological improvements to drilling rigs).
Those who are ignorant of the dangers facing humanity like to say drill baby drill, but the real story is Spill Baby Spill.
The search for missing crewmen and the containment of a major oil spill are still under way.
UPDATE: The U.S. Coast Guard has now verified that this is a major spill:
For days, the Coast Guard has said no oil appeared to be escaping from the well head on the ocean floor. Rear Adm. Mary Landry said the leak was a new discovery but could have begun when the rig sank on Thursday, two days after the initial explosion.(Huffington Post). Oilah Akbar! Oilah Akbar! is the religion of the oil barons who preach one thing but deliver the death of civilization.
"We thought what we were dealing with as of yesterday was a surface residual (oil) from the mobile offshore drilling unit," Landry said. "In addition to that is oil emanating from the well. It is a big change from yesterday ... This is a very serious spill, absolutely."
Before this spill we talked about the inane decision to allow drilling offshore, which President Obama alluded to as "tired arguments of long ago".
Start up the word grinders Press Secretary Fibbs (successor to Snotty and Snow Job) and see if you can out do the neoCons with propaganda.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
