Gulf Coast Oil Spill Tragedy And Politics As Usual

by: bruce nix | published: 05 06, 2010

Being a native of South Florida and having been a beach-bum for most of my entire life, it is difficult to look at the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and not feel a bit of sadness. I have always been an environmentalist of sorts at heart and it is terrible to see what an ecological nightmare this spill has the potential to become. At last report, close to 200,000 gallons of oil a day are coming to the surface from the now totally destroyed well. With no guarantee of stopping it in sight or at least slowing it down.

I love the ocean and one of my favorite places to vacation is on the snow-white sands of Panama City Beach. We go there every year and stay as long as we can. There is an abundance of wildlife that makes their home on the shores of the Gulf. There are the oyster beds of Apalachicola Bay that are famous for some of the best tasting oysters in the world. The shrimping fleets of Louisiana are harbored near Venice and the yellow fin tuna are very abundant there. Bay waters run into the bayous that are home to some of the most beautiful species of aquatic life in the United States. There are countless bird and fish estuaries all along the coastlines of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. You can not have a soul and not feel a passion for this place of wonder and beauty, if you have ever experienced it for yourself.

British Petroleum is working fast and furious on a way to stop the oil flow but is hampered by the fact that the well head is nearly a mile at the bottom of the Gulf. The plan is to drop a large containment dome over the well and pipe the oil to a waiting tanker as it comes up. This would slow down the spread of the slick so that cleanup could commence. A parallel well would then be drilled beside the leaking well, by another rig and a new “blow out prevent-er” installed. They have the ability to aim for the old well and once in it, a heavy fluid would be pumped in, thus sealing the well. All of this is an amazing feat of technology and hopefully it will work. Oil, being a necessary evil, is what drives the engines of this great country and until a substitute is found, it will be needed for sometime to come. It is what has made us a world power.

What saddens me most about this terrible tragedy, besides the loss of life (eleven souls perished) is the fact that our government stood by for almost twelve days and did absolutely nothing. PBO finally boarded a plane and flew down there to assess the situation. Too little too late. The military should have been brought in immediately to aid in the struggle. The US Navy has almost everything needed at their disposal to aid in combating this thing. They have deep submergence vehicles that can dive to that depth and may have been able to slow down the leak. They have the manpower and the technology, not to mention the surface ships needed. They have one of the finest deep-sea salvage & rescue corps in the world and are fully capable of helping to resolve this spill.

This spill will ultimately affect countless thousands of lives in the fishing industry, it will affect several of our states economies and will cost thousands of jobs in the oil industry and possibly the future of oil exploration in our country. Not to mention the impact that it will have on wildlife and the environment.

The same mainstream news media that hammered the Bush administration for its apparent slow response to New Orleans after Katrina has been astonishingly quiet about PBO's lack of action on this tragedy. Why? George Bush was ostracized and raked over the coals endlessly for everything that happened as a result of Katrina and at times the media still points a finger his way.

The current administration and it's policies, seem to be immune from the mainstream medias blatant persecution of anything that does not fit their standard of liberalism. It is sickening.

The Obama administration seems to be charmed. They can do no wrong. They have turned this country on its head with their flawed policies, busted the bank with entitlements that can not be maintained by the taxpayers, passed stimulus and health care bills that the public did not want, embarrassed us in front of the world, jeopardized our national security, ridiculed our trusted allies, tried to be-friend tyrants that despise our country and are trying to kill our citizens and now in a time of need, they have ignored a national tragedy in the making. Brilliant!

This administration is the most corrupt, counter productive administration in the history of the Presidency. We are stymied and left at a loss of doing anything about it. Fortunately the mid-term elections are nearing and it should be the Patriotic duty of all of those eligible voters to stand up and show those tyrants in Washington the door. In November remind them who is in charge of this country and whose house it is that they occupy!

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