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Obama's Albatross and the Pelicans of Louisiana
It is now the biggest oil disaster in US history, a shape-shifting monster slicking up seabirds – including Louisiana's state bird, the Brown Pelican – and threatening not just a visible gumming up of tourist beaches, and the wholesale destruction of fragile Gulf Coast marshlands, but an invisible, decades-long, undersea strangling of a giant food chain linking plankton to small fish to big fish to the American dinner table.
Death of wildlife will not undo a presidency. But front-page pictures of oily seabirds can move public opinion. And, as the American media moves into the long slow "silly season" of summer, these helpless flailing creatures – the Laughing Gulls, the Bridled Terns, the Magnificent Frigatebirds - are poised to become the poignant symbols of a presidency mired in disaster, not directly of its own making, but a disaster nonetheless.
President Barack Obama knows he's in trouble.
He's cancelled trips to Australia and Indonesia because of the spill, showing he is no longer going to try to keep his distance from the mess, simply because the federal government, as one of his officials said at the beginning of the crisis, has none of BP's "expertise" in deep offshore drilling.
This week, he visited Louisiana for the third time, attempting to direct a growing storm surge of public anger and despair away from the White House and towards BP, the company behind the catastrophe.
After meeting with a local oyster fisherman and a marina owner on Grand Isle, a barrier island befouled by the oil, he let reporters know he was "furious" about the situation. He warned the oil company not to "nickel and dime" the men and women whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the spill, and summoned the firm to pay them compensation quickly:
"I want BP to be very clear, they've got moral and legal obligations here in the Gulf, toward the damage that has been done."
But the risk is Obama will have as much success in channelling anger as BP has had in channelling the oil, still gushing into the sea, some six weeks after the explosion which sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
His administration's promises to open criminal and civil investigations into the explosion that killed 11 oil workers, and the ensuing environmental disaster, could, for example, turn against it.
It is hard to imagine the lawyers for the five oil and oil-services companies likely to be targeted not pointing out in court that their firms may, possibly, have taken liberties - but above all they took advantage of an entirely permissive regulatory atmosphere created by government overseers who readily accepted gifts, and who generally approved whatever drilling proposal was sent to them.
Another danger for Obama: the oil industry in Louisiana will take a hit. If tourism and fishing are ruined, that leaves the other big employer: oil and gas.
There are thousands of wells operating off the state's coast, but the new work is in deep offshore drilling.
As this reporter drove around the bayou looking for stories recently, much of the talk on the local radio was what would happen if the giant navigable offshore rigs doing that drilling simply moved away to drill in Brazil, or off of Africa.
Currently they face a six-month ban on any kind of work, courtesy of the White House. Costing about half a million dollars a day to rent, once they leave, they'll likely stay for a few years in friendlier, less regulated waters.
What new jobs for Louisiana then?
The birds dying on the shores of Louisiana are perhaps, then, more than symbols of our energy-mad society here in the US. And perhaps more than signs of the "business is always right" disease that bedevils American governance. With their painful floundering to get out of an inextricable situation, they are omens, possibly, of the near-term future of the Obama presidency.
And no volunteer's gentle soap bath, or tube-fed fish puree, will help the president escape his fate.
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15 Comments so far
Show All"What new jobs for Louisiana then?"
Well, gee Nick...how about a state-funded initiative manufacturing solar panels? Or setting up wind farms in the much-abused Gulf?
How about using the intellectual and financial resources of Louisiana to come up with an economic model that doesn't rely on extracting and burning more fossil fuels?
How about seeing this problem as one soluble by the citizens and leaders of Louisiana and not some political hireling like Obama who is completely in the pocket of the corporations?
You can't get the toothpaste back in this particular tube but you can stop the globalists from putting another one in your waters.
People have no respect for animals in this state. They don't even respect their own brothers and sisters. Bush and Reagan didn't lose elections despite the environment. Obama is aiming on doing the same.
Time for eveyone to rent 'The Pelican Brief' from Netflix again.
As the oceans turn black, so will the fate of the feckless Obama.
I loath stories like this, that attempt to equate the destruction of the Gulfs environment, including its peoples, to the fate of Obama's presidency. Seriously WTF? One mans ability to be the puppet of the powers that be for another 4 years some how has some importance compared to the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf?
Personally I wouldn't trade one pelican for 4 more years of Obama. He just does the bidding of the rich and powerful like all recent presidents have. If he doesn't get re-elected, he'll just be replaced by another that will preside over the raping of the American middle class, by the rich ruling class in this country, like he's been doing over the last few years.
Obama likes only certain birds: hawks and geese that lay golden eggs.
Joe
"Currently they face a six-month ban on any kind of work, courtesy of the White House. Costing about half a million dollars a day to rent, once they leave, they'll likely stay for a few years in friendlier, less regulated waters."
If decent regulations were put in place and/or enforced in the fist place, we wouldn't even be here. Unfortunately, that's why a ban is necessary, so that drilling safety can be reevaluated. Tough s++t if it means a temporary loss of jobs. It is the deregulation madness that brought us here, brought us to the precipice. When you play with fire without regard for anyone or anything except quick profits, you're gonna get burned.
Go after BP to pay the salaries of those put out of work, and quit crying about potentially environmentally destructive jobs. The price of unsafe drilling is clearly not worth the cost.
"...once they leave, they'll likely stay for a few years in friendlier, less regulated waters."
This environmental disaster may eventually become a WORLD event, so I wouldn't be surprised if stricter drilling regulations become universal. Alternately, other countries might take the 'not in my backyard' stance. Let the slime balls leave if they want.
Keep in mind Salazar wnet to DC Circuit Court in April 2009 to overturn the ban on drilling in Misssipppi Canyon Block 252, among others, allowing this very well to be Drilled.
This is Obomber's Gusher!
And keep in mind Obomber has refused to allow Bowen and Camili of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to do their routine work of measuring Obombers' Gusher's flow rate.
If the Greens cannot get some full sprectrum support from this debacle then they might as well disband.
"As this reporter drove around the bayou looking for stories recently, much of the talk on the local radio was what would happen if the giant navigable offshore rigs doing that drilling simply moved away to drill in Brazil, or off of Africa."
It is the same in West Virginia, there is considerable popular hostility toward anyone criticising Massey's safety record, or MTR mining. The 29 dead at UBB are heroes. Don't defile their name by asking questions about how the died. Kind-of
We seem to entered an era where the US populace is completely cowed into a serf-like obsequience toward the corporations.
Amazing and disgusting.
Yes, this is one of the more alarming and demoralizing things about all the chaos and stupidity going on these days--that so many Americans are ready to rush to the defense of these inept, incompetent, murderous, thieving, criminal corporations. When I encounter that, I feel I'm not even talking to a human being any more. They are so hypnotized by corporate lies and incessant chicanery, into thinking these entities actually are around to do us all a lot of good, that it's like talking to a literally programmed robot. I know it's always about keeping JOBS in the areas where disaster capitalism strikes a death blow to the environment, lots of random expendable people killed, whatever, but surely we can figure out better ways to create jobs than relying forever on mammoth corporations. If we can't, then "serf-like obsequiousness" is all we've got left.
Frank Rich hasn't totally given up on Obama, but this is one of his better columns IMO showing where he is trending in that direction. The comment section is even better. I particularly liked this one.
"Frank Rich is right in his observation that President Obama is too much “in thrall” to captains of industry and wizards of Wall Street. Perhaps, the problem is that we have over-estimated the intellect and analytical skills of this president. We may have been misled by using the predecessor, George W. Bush, and the competitor, John McCain, as measuring sticks. It may be that Mr. Obama is brilliant only in comparison to those two rather ridiculous political figures."
But all the blaming and finger-pointing at BP cannot hide the fact that Obama's response, a la Bush, lacked urgency. It still feels that way. One thing is for sure: Obama is clearly out of his depth.
Oh, here's the link to Rich's piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/opinion/06rich.html
"in thrall"
translation
Obama is BP's butt boy.
Politics, shmolitics. The Gulf of Mexico is dead, the United States is ruled by morally bankrupt corporations, and American democracy is a sick joke. And we're talking about "a political albatross" around Obama's neck? Shit is way deeper than that.
This problem has become the worlds. While it happened in US waters , The Birds, the Turtles, the Dolphins and Fish are not "American".
The Oil now spreads to the Gulf stream and will be carried into the Atlantic.
The USSR hads its Cernobyl which affected countries the World over. Coal mines and energy plants in China, affect the peoples health in North America and contribute to Global warming. The Athabasca Tar sands , the Oils polluting vast swathe of Nigeria are all WORLD problems affecting us all.
Now if one reads boards that speak to the Libertarian crowd, they will claim that this latests disaster is just another move towards the erosion of Liberties as it will be used as a Catylyst towards one World Government.
At the same time the Worlds Elites work towards "One World Government" as they participate in meetings of the Bilderberg group, or the Tri-lateral Commission. These people have long advocated such (with them at the controls of course) and have manufactured one economic crisis after another in order to move the world towards their goal.
We have progressives ( I count myself as one of them) whom advocate shrinking our footprints when it comes to the ecology and localizing economies as much as it is practical. This of course contradicts the "Gulf Oil Spill" being a world problem and the need for Worldwide mechanisms and laws to prevent one "local group" wreaking havoc on a local economy that then spills over the boundaries in which it happens to exist.
At the same time , across the seas in the Middle East we have seen worldwide anger stoked amonsgt the peoples of the World over the Israeli interception of a convoy bringing aid to the Palestinians. While this seemingly unrelated to oil spills in the Gulf it all interconnected when one explores what it is in the "Human Condition" that has brought us to this place.
When will that same Worldwide anger manifest itself over what happens to the Jungles of Nigeria , the Gulf and the Coastlines of the USA or the boreal forest of North Alberta?
Will we EVER reach that stage?
In my own opinion at the root of this all is greed and the desire for ever more wealth and with that the systems we have set up to reward the greediest amongst us. This reward system best suited to the system we call capitalism.
Capitalism and the "consumer economy" have to go. I can not see any reason why we should preserve them. They are prisons that prevent any meaningful progress.
'As this reporter drove around the bayou looking for stories recently...'
I always wanted to speak of myself in the third person.