Pondering the BP Oil Disaster

We're creeping up on two months now since the Deep Water Horizon blew up, and oil and gas are still gushing ever faster into the Gulf of Mexico.  After all this time, it is baffling and infuriating that something can't be done.  People are angry. . .I'm angry. But who should we be angry at?

Watch live streaming video from wkrg_oil_spill at livestream.com

When I started this blog, it was out of frustration with the George W. Bush administration, and the never-ending crapitude of our politics at the time.  If this disaster had taken place in 2007, would I have been hammering Bush for it?  Maybe. Probably.  But then, he had quite the undistinguished track record.  So why now am I not blasting President Obama?  I don't know. But I've been thinking about it.

If this had happened during the Bush Era, there would be an unbroken line between the administration of Big Oil and the disaster. A clearer path to blame would have been easier to see.  With Obama in charge, we have to wonder, could he have known that the regulatory agency was ineffective and corrupt? Maybe, but weren't all segments of the government decimated by Bush/Cheney?  So yeah, Obama should have assumed that each and every department of each and every agency needed a thorough overhaul. In this regard, I'm not angry, because how much can be "fixed" in a year and a half?

It is clear that the oil companies used their massive profits to get rich, and to develop technology to extract oil from ever deeper waters.  It is equally clear that they gave no serious thought to beefing up technology for cleaning up oil spills, or fixing damaged wells a mile under water.  This is kind of stunning to me.  I used to work in the amusement industry, specifically in safety.  If you build the world's tallest roller coaster, it is a given that you have a way to rescue passengers--and keep them safe--if something goes wrong.  How did BP get away with creating super-deep wells, but no way to fix them?

So, I'm vaguely mad at the government in general, and the President in particular. I'm very angry at BP, and the corporate culture in this country. I cannot give Bush/Cheney a pass, without whose policies this accident may not have happened. But I'm actually just angry period.  How can it be--cliche as it may be--that we could put a man on the moon in 1969, and we can't plug up a damned hole?  How could it be that we've had oil spills for decades, but no effective way of cleaning them up?  If you've got a company that has made countless billions in profits off of oil, why haven't those billions built a friggin' monster ShopVac or something to start sucking the oil out of the water?

On top of this, you have politicians trying to make hay off of all of this. Gov. Haley Barbour acting like the Mayor from Jaws, others insisting that heck this is not a big deal. Still others calling this a "natural disaster" and claiming that this much oil leaks naturally all the time.  I want the politicians in this country to stop trying to either staunch a political problem, or trying to pump up their political fortunes off of this tragedy. I want them to figure out what to freaking do to fix it.  Yes, it's a mile down, and it's a tough problem. But it's a hole in the ground.  FIX IT!