The White House is under attack on its plan to open up areas for drilling off the East Coast — a plan long opposed by environmentalists and now attracting renewed criticism with the growing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
The spill is now believed to exceed the Exxon Valdez but some experts — gushing 200,000 gallons a day, here.
The first lawsuits by fishermen have been filed over the devastation to the Gulf. The White House is reportedly reconsidering its plan to open up sensitive areas off the East Coast to drilling. It appears that it only takes a massive environmental disaster to get the Obama Administration to reconsider such plans. Hypothetical examples of a massive oil spill from an oil rig a few weeks ago were viewed as simply too speculative by the Administration.
UPDATE: After first defending the policy, the White House is now saying that the disaster was sufficient to get it to take the new drilling off the table — at least for the moment, here.
Bdaman, I am on the east coast of Fl and have been incredibly challenged in my thinking that no, G*ds not really angry at us…this place is already looking like a 3rd world banana republic…I can’t even imagine what would evolve here if the tourism industry gets impacted by this…
Yesterday this MODIS image on the Terra satellite captured a wide-view natural-color image of the oil slick (outlined in white) just off the Louisiana coast. The oil slick appears as dull gray interlocking comma shapes, one opaque and the other nearly transparent. Sunglint — the mirror-like reflection of the sun off the water — enhances the oil slick’s visibility. The northwestern tip of the oil slick almost touches the Mississippi Delta. Here’s a larger image that you can click to zoom.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/449676main_gulf-spill-full.jpg
Also yesterday, A University of Florida professor and oceanographic expert says he believes the east coast of Florida might see the worst of the impact of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100430/ARTICLES/100439956?Title=Expert-Florida-East-Coast-could-get-the-brunt
I say lets just give up every single industrial activity so that earth can remain pristine and untouched. We should all receive a small energy efficient cottage from the federal government and be given a diet of soy beans and rice (preferably brown), wear white tunics (the dyes are bad for the environment) and call each other brother.
Lets get the transition over quickly so we need to eradicate all of the greedy capitalists and their bourgeois defenders. Then we can all live in harmony with each other and the earth. That is the true path to human success and harmony. Clean, water, clean air and universal brotherhood.
The only thing that stands in our way is greedy industrialists and their minions.
Buddha,
You’re right, I don’t even have a latin motto… 🙁
Look at the fancy lineage on Slarti! 😉
But Bohr still has the best coat of arms.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-xyKcpbV58A/SZvSuSfVBGI/AAAAAAAAAaE/kE5Z6_Q2Qtg/S220/bohr_crest.png
CONTRARI SUNT COMPLEMENTA
The person declaring in their pseudonym that Woosty remains in the family ‘Felidae’ (most likely as a member of the species felis catus) said:
FFLEO said,
“(I barely grasped the differential and retreated at the integral, although the name Leibniz kinda rings a Bell Curve or a Series of something-or-the-other)”
It takes all kinds. I can’t do the folksy accent – so you’ve got that going for you… 😉
By the way, academically speaking Leibniz is my great^12 grandfather…
Leibniz advised Malebranche who advised Bernoulli who advised Bernoulli who advised Euler who advised Lagrange who advised Poisson who advised Chasles who advised Newton who advised Moore who advised Hildebrandt who advised Phillips who advised Reed who advised Layton who advised me.
http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=81042
“coupled time-delayed hyperbolic PDEs”
huh?
and what about this part of my statement…’And what would you expect his decisions to look like after 8 years of declining ethics and ever increasing partisan politics? (no, I don’t agree with everything he has done by a long-shot…just asking)’
I’m just guessing here, but I think he sees the value in bringing the country back into a state that is not divided against itself…
that spill just may make off-shore drilling a future non-issue, as usual, way too late…
nuthin’ unAmerican about Woosty
“…things like the G2 checkpoint or characteristic equations of coupled time-delayed hyperbolic PDEs”
_______________
Yeah, me too…
(I barely grasped the differential and retreated at the integral, although the name Leibniz kinda rings a Bell Curve or a Series of something-or-the-other)
FFLEO wrote, “Woosty wrote,” and then “Wootsy” (called a transposition of 2 letters on a cotton-pickin’ online blawg).
Therefore, I got your name correct 50% of the time. I actually started out as W’ssaC but I thought that abbreviation might aggravate you–ha!
What the heck kinda’ un-American name is Woosty anyhow?!
FFLEO,
I respect your views, too (I didn’t expect to change your mind – I just wanted to present a different opinion). Given that the interest in politics that I developed in the last several months of the 2008 campaign hasn’t really diminished I doubt that I will ever refrain from voting (or vote for a non-viable third party candidate). I’m fond of the Robert Heinlein saying that the choice between bad and worse is far more important than the choice between good and better and while I had hoped that the choice we got was between bad (with a disastrous running mate) and better, I still think that President Obama is good (and that we’d be in a world of trouble if Mr. ‘I never thought of myself as a maverick even though it was in the subtitle of my autobiography’ was president). As far as Woosty’s comment about special knowledge goes, the way I see it is that I hired him to make decisions for 4 years and he’d better find out more about the issues he’s making decisions about than I know or he’s not doing his job right – I don’t believe that he has access to information that I don’t have access to (except regarding national security), but he certainly has more access to experts than I do and quite frankly I hired him for the job so I could concentrate on more interesting things like the G2 checkpoint or characteristic equations of coupled time-delayed hyperbolic PDEs.
The following Obama offshore drilling speech occurred on March 31, 2010. Just 20 days later, the Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig under lease by BP caught fire and exploded 50 miles off the shores of Louisiana.
Mr. Obama’s offshore drilling talk (via Teleprompter, of course), starts at video frame time 05:15. At the end of the rah/rah speech he states that we will,
Quote:
“…protect our planet and help us become more energy independent. That’s what we can do, that is what we must do, and I am confident that is what we will do.”
End Quote
Woo-S-ty Woo-S-ty Woo-S-ty Woo-S-ty Woo-S-ty…
cause I know it’s a difficult name…
So you don’t think the President of the USA, Commander and Chief of the Armed forces, has a tad more info than someone as ‘parochial’ as myself?
And what would you expect his decisions to look like after 8 years of declining ethics and ever increasing partisan politics? (no, I don’t agree with everything he has done by a long-shot…just asking)
FFLEO,
Seconded.
And here I though I was the only one who felt that way about that “special knowledge” nonsense.
Woosty wrote,
“I remind myself often as he makes these decisions that I don’t agree with, that I haven’t a clue what he knows…that I don’t.”
_________________________________
I have heard that parochial ‘nonsense’ my entire life regarding presidents and congresspersons’ vast, special knowledge unknowable to mere citizens. The statement was even applied to the infamous G. W. Bush by his voters/supporters who tried to cover for his habitual idiocy.
“Oh, any president is privy to so much special knowledge and intelligence through his advisors that we non-presidential people surely cannot understand what he knows.” To wit; weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds, yeller cakes of uranium, et cetera, ad nauseum.
Wootsy, this is not an attack at you but against that statement I hear so often.
Dredd,
Every once in awhile I guess correctly!
I agree with you Slartibartfast, Obama has been engaged and not unsuccessful considering the current anti-co-operative environment he is operating in. I am not unashamed of the manner in which things are accomplished in Washington right now. I don’t believe he is as naive as he looks next to the incredibly sold out populace he is moving amongst.
I remind myself often as he makes these decisions that I don’t agree with, that I haven’t a clue what he knows…that I don’t.
Slartibartfast,
While I respect your views, we will remain at diametrically opposed positions on our opinions surrounding the ‘sphere’ that is Mr. Obama.
You are aware that I crossed the line to vote for him; however, I would not—under any circumstances whatsoever—vote for him again. I will most likely not vote in 2012 if he receives the Democratic nomination because to date, I have not observed a Republican for whom I could vote and I cannot envision a viable one within my Party—founded primarily on my revulsion of the abject religiosity proudly displayed by virtually all of them.