Sorry for the three month dead zone. I'm writing about the dead zone forming in the Gulf of Mexico right now. Lots of rumors going around. On Richard Hoagland's facebook page, there is talk of the fragile capstone above the oil reservoir collapsing suddenly, causing a massive tsunami that would wipe out hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents. Not to mention it would lay bare the estimated 15 billion gallons(or is it barrels?) of oil, that would gush out in an apocalyptic black flood that would spell the doom for the Gulf, Caribbean, and Atlantic ocean. This is John on the isle of Patmos Revelations apocalypse we're talking about here.
There is evidence that the casing below the sea floor has cracked, and oil is leaking from those fissures. The casing goes, and all attmpts to salvage oil will be gone. Hoagland says there is a large bubble of methane immediately below the sea floor. The icing on the cake would be to have this extremely powerful greenhouse gas come spewing into our atmosphere all at once, perhaps tipping us past the edge of the climate change point of no return. I don't think any demented horror or science fiction writer could have ever come up with a more frightening scenario than what we are expereincing already.
Concentrations of methane, benzene, sulfulr dioxide, etc. are WAY over the legal limits, getting ready to cause more suffereing in the future from cancers, damaged fetuses, cataracts, and who knows what else. More rumors - troops are amassing near Jacksonville, FL for a possible massive forced evacuation of everyone around the southern coasts to at least 200 miles inland.
And where are our leaders during this? Obama tells us all will be well, things will be even better than it was before this "accident". What has taken him so long to respond forcefully to this? Why does Kevin Costner have to be the one that offers practical solutions, not the government or BP? There are a lot of ingenious solutions to the wellhead problem from people all over the world showing up on the Internet. How come BP can't come up with any solutions one third as brilliant as some of these? Could it be there's an agenda - a collusion between the government and petroleum industry to prolong, even intensify this disaster? I'm not one for conspiracy theories, for the most part, but things are sure starting to stink of conspiracy lately.
And Obama - I voted for him, I believed in him and trusted there would be real change. Hmmm - let's see - he changed 700 billion dollars into Wall Street bonuses. He gave us a weak, pathetic health care package that was almost identical to what Republicans had proposed a few years earlier. As far as financial reform goes, it looks like the banks got everything they wanted. At least all of us on Main Street now know which street really matters - Wall street. His response to the BP disaster has been - well, I'll quote a former Obama cheerleader, James Carville on that - Obama's response has been "lackadaisical... and naive." Hell, the way I feel about it now, that almost sounds like a ringing endorsemnet of Barry.
I guess the real lesson in all of this is that there is no politician in existance who would ever live up to the hype they've made about them selves, none who would ever keep their promises, for the betterment of the nation, and of the world. Because politics is not about altruism - it's about grabbing what you can, and running down the street with your booty before the maddened mobs catch up to you and tear you asunder limb from limb.