Beyond Unacceptable
As you know, I generally like to keep things happy and light-hearted on this happening little bloggy I create for your reading pleasure. Cigars are what we all have in common, and sometimes I yak about my favorite stogies and sometimes it’s about the trials and tribulations we all go through in life. But today, I’m particularly dismayed at what’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico as an ecological disaster of catastrophic proportions looms in the Cajun seas.
Unless you just crawled out from under a rock the size of Rosie O’donnell’s lunch box, British Petroleum has an oil-rig in the waters south of the Louisiana coastline and it won’t stop spewing thick, black toxic crude oil into the water … for 35 days. That’s right, thirty-five 
days have gone by since the disaster began and BP has done jack-shit to stop it. Oh, yeah they’ve tried, blah, blah, blah, meanwhile the slick is growing by the mile and finally the coastline is in massive danger – and after that, the Florida and Texas coastlines and all sea life and water fowl in general.
How the living hell does something like this actually happen. And maybe a better question is: Why can’t they stop it?
Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal is in Defcon 5 freak mode, and who can blame the guy. He’s ordering sandbag walls to be built along the entire coast of his state and I think if he meets up with any BP executives, there’s gonna be a good old Cajun ass-kickin’ the likes of the world has never seen.
I listened to an exec from BP on several morning shows today and when asked what his confidence is that they will have this under control, on a one thru ten scale, his answer was a six or a seven. Holy oil covered pelicans – that is NOT the answer the world wanted/needed to hear. If this slick spreads as predicted, a great number of industries 
will be decimated to the tune of billions of dollars. Fishing, shrimping, vacation and tourism will be the harrowing victims of this gaping sludge monster. And who knows how long the poisons effects will wreak havoc on an ecosystem spanning a possible thousands of miles wide.
Another thing Governor Jindal is pissed at is: Where the hell is help from President Obama? We’re talking 35 days man. What the hell is talking so damned long to act? Our government needs to be way up British Petroleum’s bum and taking heads along the way. How could more than a month go by without any type of reasonable solution?
Now people are asking why there wasn’t some sort of emergency disaster plan put in place in case a meltdown like this were to ever occur? BP isn’t giving any answers and the worst-case scenario is that they don’t have any to give.
Like I said, this isn’t my usual type of piece here on the blog, but the trickle down effect of this event will effect all of us greatly and sometimes you just have to shake your noggin in massive disbelief at the grotesque and careless stupidity that resides in this world we cohabitate in.
Okay we’re all terribly pissed off and the ramifications are staggering. If there isn’t anything you can directly do to help, I say light up your favorite cigar, try to relax and thank your maker for everything you have. I still say that it’s a damned good world we live in – when others don’t f@#k it up for us.
Peace, out.
Tommy Z.
JR CIGARS BLOG with the Zman
May 24th, 2010 at 3:31 am
Yeah it sucks. But whatcha gonna do? You and I scream like a stuck pig when gas is $5 a gallon and about how A-hab the A-rab has us by the shorthairs. So they drill offshore, something goes wrong and then we scream about that.
The environmental impact is devastating to be sure. I’m not sure that Prince William Sound has ever recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.
May 24th, 2010 at 4:57 am
How in the hell did BP not have a plan for this type of problem? The fuggin’ well is uncapped, spewing oil like bullshit from a politician’s mouth and they have no, real idea as to how to stop it? I’d call them idiots, but that would be too good for them. As for politicians, I’ll give Jindal credit. He’s called out BP and pleaded with the federal government to do something. The problem? BP doesn’t know what to do and the politicians don’t want to offend BP. I wonder how many of these politicians, right up to the oval office, have taken money from BP into their political coffers?
May 24th, 2010 at 4:58 am
BP IS FINISHED!
Hey check out this video. Redneck dudes have proposed a way to clean up the oil. http://www.wimp.com/solutionoil Pretty impressive.
Time for a cigar now. And to say some good words that this mess gets cleaned up with as little environmental impact as possible.
May 24th, 2010 at 5:14 am
Having recently spent time in Key West I can say this was the main topic of discussion. The fear of this oil spreading to the keys is running rampant. Alot of people earn their living from the sea in this area and they’re shiting their pants. I can see BP pulling some legal bullshit to avoid cleaning up the mess. It would be a shame if the only living coral reef in the continental USA would be damaged.
May 24th, 2010 at 5:51 am
Damn D in D, those are some red neck geniuses.
May 25th, 2010 at 4:13 am
ifn the bp executves are smart they’ll keep their asses outa la. them boys ‘ll kill em.
no oil company that does bidness on us soil has been fined more than bp or been responsible for more disasters and deaths.
btw, this was heaven sent for ya all’s prez. now he can back down on his offshore drilling position as it being unsafe.
May 25th, 2010 at 4:42 am
Kevin Costner to the rescue!
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/21/nation/la-na-oil-spill-hollywood-20100521
May 26th, 2010 at 1:12 am
Sure as hell thought I’d see more comment than this.
Isn’t anybody else like…really pissed?
May 26th, 2010 at 4:00 am
damn right i’m pissed but your prez hates white people so what can we do? you know, just like dubya hated black people…
May 26th, 2010 at 4:39 am
Don’t get me wrong, but there are 2 things I want to say about this oil spill.
Yes it’s bad, but it was Transocean’s rig, not BP’s, and perhaps their design was flawed, and BP had no way of knowing that the rig they were leasing could have a serious design flaw.
Also, we have had tens of thousands of wells drilled along the gulf coast at least 75 years, and this is the first time in that anything of this magnitude has happened.
And it’s nothing compared to the spill of red ink coming out of Washington!
May 26th, 2010 at 4:57 am
Just seems unbelievable that there really was conceived backup plan incase some of this nature happened.
May 26th, 2010 at 5:01 am
rl7, I just read that the accident may have been caused by BP’s use of saltwater instead of heavy drilling fluid as a shortcut. Otherwise, I would have agreed with you on the point about Transocean.
madman, we should start calling you 50-Cent. Okay, you’re better than that, how about A Dollar and a Half?
May 26th, 2010 at 7:29 am
HB, I read that the first indication that there was trouble was that the pumps started spewing mud all over the place. It may be a while before we know exactly what happened, and why. And since my dad used to work for a drilling mud company, I believe most mud is about 40 times heavier than seawater. So I can’t see using seawater at the depths they were operating. And it may have been Halliburton’s, or Schlumberger’s, or someone else’s blowout preventer that failed.
I just don’t want to automatically blame BP, when the fault could lie somewhere else completely.
BTW, Z, the backup plan that has been used and developed for years is the blowout preventer.
May 26th, 2010 at 7:56 am
Good info. Thanks, rl7.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:28 am
Hooboy, I had dinner last night with one of my former bosses. Okay, a little background. After leaving active duty I worked as an analytical chemist for 15 years for a company that makes hydraulic fluids, cutting fluids, basically anything used in industry for manufacturing. I loved being an analytical chemist because I got to play with all sorts of cool toys. Well, after being in the job for 13 years the company thought I needed a change. They had just purchased a company that made fluids for the off shore drilling industry. Yes, one of the fluids was a blowout preventer fluid. Within 2 years they moved all of the off shore department to England and I was laid off. Now, guess whose fluid was used in the blow out preventer on the Gulf rig? Yep, the company I used to work for. From what my friend said, they are jumping through their ass analyzing the batches that were sent to that rig to determine if there was any possibility that it could have failed.
May 27th, 2010 at 3:29 am
any one else the least bit sus-piss-shus that the well was “capped” on live tv hours before ya all’s prez had his 1st press confrence in a year?
May 27th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Found the following 05/26/10 article by Slate magazine writer Christopher Beam concerning John Kerry’s comments on the “Oil Spill,” to be, a form of “Cognative Dissonance” taken to the extreme, i.e., Don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind is already made up! (Oil spill bad -
continued off-shore drilling good.)
Quoted from article:
Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, the remaining sponsors of the energy bill, have been pushing hard to keep fellow senators onboard. At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast on Wednesday, Kerry implied that his fellow Democrats should get over their fears about drilling: “We are not going to stop drilling in the Gulf tomorrow, folks,” he said. “Let’s be realistic. There are 48,000 wells out there. One of them went sour. About 30 percent of our transportation fuel comes from the Gulf. You think Americans are going to suddenly stop driving to work tomorrow?”
(Recall what President Obama’s Chief of Staff holds as sacred.)
“Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” said Rahm Emanuel on Nov. 9, 2008. “They are opportunities to do big things.”
But in the wake of the Gulf oil spill, Democrats have failed to follow
Rule 2: Shameless emotional exploitation is your friend.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Did a little more reading on Mr. John Kerry and his concern over Washington having to play a big role in the Gulf oil cleanup and how he feels that the voter anger against Washington is what he labels “hypocritical.”
Columnist Mike Rivero, creator of the blog
WRH or What Really Happened (a favorite of mine), best sums up again what appears to be Kerry’s major affliction – Cognative Dissonance.
The article beautifully “lays Kerry out.”
John Kerry Says Voter Anger at Washington Is Hypocritical
“I think there’s a comprehension gap,” said Kerry. His point: While people may not be feeling the benefits of the bailouts and healthcare reform yet, Congress has been working with Obama to right the economic ship. Still, he sounded sympathetic to those kicked around by the economy. “There’s a sense of some things unraveling” to them, said Kerry.
But he said that the D.C.-directed attacks are hypocritical, since many of those attacking Washington spending presumably want to keep their Social Security and Medicare and want Washington to play a big role in the Gulf Oil cleanup. “There’s a huge contradiction on a daily basis,” he said.
_______________________________________________
Rivero’s missive to George Bush’s fellow
Tombsman at Yale:
Memo to Senator Kerry: I have rarely seen such a completely out-of-touch, mischaracterization of the current sentiment in this country.
Taxation without representation were the watchwords of the American Revolution.
But what we are seeing happen in Congress, in terms of most Congressional representatives having become “acquisitions” of the major corporations (particularly concerning the large defense companies), is just that circumstance happening again.
The only perspective of most Congressional members toward the citizens they allegedly represent appears to be as a (theoretically unending) supply of tax money, to be tapped cavalierly without ever having to balance the Federal government, or rein in government spending in any meaningful way.
Without these insane and immoral wars without end and their costs, which thinking US citizens do not support (plus the 3 billion the US government coughs up – illegally – for Israel every year), there would be money left for the social security and medicare for which American workers have theoretically paid their entire working lives, but will not be getting, because this government is broke.
Without these wars, there would be money to mend infrastructure, highways, bridges, schools, and hospitals
It is obvious that this is a man who has never in his life had to make payroll, keep employees employed during tough times, had his credit line pulled by a a bank through no fault of his own (just because the bank reserves were thin), or found his good-paying job outsourced, leaving him with no way to support a family or pay his mortgage.
Those issues, coupled with the fact that we are dealing with a Federal government which has spent itself nearly into bankruptcy, are the reasons why Americans are legitimately angry at this government. The anger here is not hypocritical; it is completely logical, and Senator Kerry understands, at some level, that these concerns are true.
_______________________________________________
(Orwell’s concept called “double-think,” where two contradictory truths are held to be, at the
same time valid, is perhaps what Kerry has
embraced as his guiding principle.)
May 27th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Seriously good stuff, KWV!
May 28th, 2010 at 3:44 am
Zman, newt weeks blog, lots of titties, OK?
May 28th, 2010 at 3:44 am
next weeks blog, too
May 28th, 2010 at 4:40 am
With our luck, we’ll get lots of kitties.
May 28th, 2010 at 4:41 am
Zman can’t get anything right.
May 28th, 2010 at 7:12 am
And, since Monday is a holiday, and Zman will want to eat, drink, and smoke himself silly, we probably won’t get the blog til Tuesday afternoon.
May 29th, 2010 at 12:24 am
I’m not gonna sit around waiting for that. I’ll go read some other stuff on the interweb.