BP

BP should be lucky if the mocking cake is the only thing that hurts them.

Of course if this were a just world, BP would have tested everything and none of this shit would have happened. If this world were fair, the entire execubot board, board of directors, lobbyists, some of their finance and engineering depts would be there cleaning up this shit with sporks and wet wipes from the local Popeye’s.

@ManchuCandidate: In a just world, there would be a law where, if shown to have done a certain amount of damage, BP could be broken up and sold to pay for that damage. I want them destroyed … I want them broken and jailed. This will be a lot bigger than predicted. Mark me ….

@blogenfreude:
I agree. When the scope of this mess becomes clear, the CEO of BP might want to avoid any trips to the Gulf Coast forever.

@ManchuCandidate: As Bush and Cheney should avoid travelling to the Netherlands or Denmark. We can only hope that those countries would obey that law and arrest the miscreants. As if ….

@ManchuCandidate: Gulf Coast? Wait until this shit gets caught up in the Gulf Stream and destroys the coast and economies of Florida, the Caribbean (sorry baked!), and all those other East Coast beach areas. Oh, and those fisheries and fish farms. Those of us in Kaleefornya have been dealing with a collapse of the fisheries for the past ten years due to drought, when it finally hits the East Coast, I hope folks realize it wasn’t just a bunch of arugula-eating hippies raising the alarm out here.

@SanFranLefty: You know, SFL, the sad thing is, 99% of the people even in the northeast will not notice, when the tarballs start washing up.

I am one of the rare ones, I live on, for, in, the water, along my coast. I fish, I clam, in the bay here, I fish on the beach. But even more than that, more than the most committed fisherman and baymen around here, I snorkel and scuba in my bay, no scuba divers do this, the vis is for shit, all I am doing is clamming and catching crabs, except doing it underwater, with the scuba.

I have lived in this coast for 48 years, when I was a kid, you swam in the ocean, the water was brown soup. You could not see a foot in it, if you wore a mask and tried.

Now, after the clean water act and the enviro regulations, its like what we used to think only the caribean is supposed to be, you can wade out to your waist, and look down, and see your toes in the sand. I never saw my feet, when I was a kid, the water was soup. Now, its green and blue, like the caribean, I have to tell you, in the 60s and 70s, blue, green, seawater, that was something only seen in travel advertisements, to me, the ocean was gray, brown, muddled, always.

I see it, in my life, I see the effect of the enviro laws enacted since I was a kid, its huge, real, and huge,

BUT ONLY IF YOU LIVE IT. Its huge to me, because I love and live, the water, its my passion. Most people, they visit for a week, once a year, its not real to them.

I have caught wild bay scallops in my hands, scuba diving in clear water in an estuary that for a short time each spring, is almost in its natural, normal, state. And I see with my eyes, and I feel deeply, the thing that happens later in spring, when the fertilizer runoff from all the suburban lawns bordering on the bay creates an algea bloom that suddenly completely blots out all life in the bay, the clear water turns brown and murky, the beds of seagrass where I find scallops, clams, and crabs, all get coated in a slime that kills the seagrass, the water turns murky, and places where I had seen the most beautiful things, terrapins, loons, softshell crabs, starfish, seahorses, places where I had sorkled along, towing my son behind on the dinghy, and bringing up for him to see all these creatures I have found, starfish,

Well, suddenly, after the first real rain of spring and the runnoff hits the bay, this all disappears, and it turns into a murky, algea and jellyfish filled soup.

I see it with my eyes, every spring. Meanwhile the state and the enviro groups create task forces to consider the effect of fertilizers and eutriphication on the bay’s ecosystem, and the studies drag on, I see the death, and the complete transformation of the bay, from clear, bright, and teeming with life, to dull, murky, and dead. because I do live for it, I live for those days and nights, in the water, in the water, a part of this system I see and feel being destroyed.

I see it, but, really, I am rare. 99% of the public will never know and see it as I do, never, never.

@prommie: we need to have you do some PSAs for the Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club. Seriously, I’m not snarking. Maybe some of the 99% could relate to your story…

@Promnight: The same thing happened with the air in cities after the introduction of regulations related to emissions and leaded gas. You could see across town again on a clear day. It took like a few years to see the change.

@Promnight: As to the clean-ups… GE, which polluted the Hudson for years with PCBs, when confronted with liability to clean it up launched a huge advertising blitz here in the valley which persuaded many locals that dredging the river to clean it up was a bad thing. God knows it’s long past time for those petro-chemical fertilizers to be banned. Apart from their toxic effect in the waters they don’t really work. Good piece. Interesting and touching to read.

@SanFranLefty: If the oil does really hit the gulf stream it will end up in Cornwall.

@ManchuCandidate:
tested everything? bwahahaha…that would have cost BP a hundred and fifty million dollars! are you mad, MC? that’s a quarter of some BP assface’s golden parachute! fucking idiots.

@Promnight:
that touched me prommie…i went out on the dock and a single tear rolled down my face…(sorry RML)
you know i grew up summering (hehe) at ventnor, new jersey, and from the first time i saw the ocean, it drew me, it’s mysteries, it’s vastness.
i was about 5 the first time i saw miami beach…whoa. i was terminally hooked. then i saw the caribean sea…WHOAAAA. and made it my true purpose in life to live there. it’s the only thing i accomplished and haven’t fucked up. i’m certain bakette will have fun stories for her shrink. so i hear you pal, i hear you.

@SanFranLefty:
the states and likely the upper caribbean chains, like the bahamas, are Fuqued. i’m reading maps of the gulf stream. people wonder why i don’t sleep. it looks to me, the newest expert, like it might hit as far as cuba, but the gulf stream will carry it north, sparing my perfect paradise…for a little while. we live in a biosphere people! ultimately, humans on this planet are fucked. and i’m missing what george carlin would say about this. let’s all just get naked and do lines off a hookers ass, like they do in deecee, WTF? and have lots and lots of pets.

@blogenfreude:
they’ve really gone and done it this this time ollie.

@SanFranLefty:
True dat.

Of course, Rush stated that it’s no big deal. BTW, you know where the gulf stream turns into the Atlantic? Palm Springs. Who has a oxycontin filled home in said Palm Springs? Rush.

@ManchuCandidate:
rush said no big deal? i’m off to get a hooker and some blow.

@baked: Oh, yeah, Rush said, “hey, we got seven seas, people, this isn’t even a sea, its just a gulf, who needs it.” Seriously, thats what he said.

@baked: Oh, and if you’re off to get a hooker and some blow (are you channeling Pat Obrien?), can I come?

@ManchuCandidate: I think you mean Palm Beach. Palm Springs is in the California desert and is, coincidentally, the home of the Betty Ford Center, where Rush probably has a suite on permanent reserve.