Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Bradford Braley, who apparently got the privilege of conducting an officially-sanctioned big government worship service in front of the House of Representatives last week just because he’s the brother of Congressman Bruce Braley, dropped the ball.

Braley had the chance to pray for an end to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but what did he do? He prayed for a little emotional manipulation instead.

He prayed, “Inspire a sense of awe and wonder at the bountiful resources of this land, and in light of the environmental tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, may we humbly dedicate ourselves to preserving and protecting those resources.”

Braley had the chance to stand before the most powerful legislature on Earth, and to pray to his supernatural, all powerful deity, but all he asked for was for his deity to inspire a sense of awe, and to encourage people humbly dedicate themselves? If his God is truly as all-powerful, why didn’t Bradford Braley just ask his God to make the oil spill go away?

Does Braley not really believe in the power of prayer, or was he just being stingy?

Yesterday, on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Ted Poe said, “The Federal Government needs to get out of the way and let us continue safely to drill offshore and provide the energy needs of this country.”

Continue to drill offshore safely? How can something be continued if it hasn’t started yet?

Doesn’t Ted Poe get it? Offshore drilling has been proven to be deadly dangerous. It’s killed people. It’s killed one of America’s natural treasures. It’s killing the American economy.

Sorry, Representative Poe, but no, the government does not need to get out of the way of offshore drilling. The government needs to end offshore drilling.

They say the eyes don’t lie. Look at the live feed of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and it sure looks like there’s just as much oil gushing out of the busted offshore drilling site as there was before BP installed its “top hat”.

New York Times reports, “At least one expert, Ira Leifer, who is part of a government team charged with estimating the flow rate, is convinced that the operation has made the leak worse, perhaps far worse than the 20 percent increase that government officials warned might occur when the riser was cut.”

Read the rest of this important article.

They call it progress. BP is capturing four times the amount of oil that it had claimed was actually leaking from the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling site, and still, huge amounts of oil are gushing out of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, evading the best technological solution it has, a solution that took a month and a half to put into place.

Look at this, here, a photograph of the water next to the site where BP’s cap is in place. That’s from just a minute or two ago, and as you can see, the water is still a disgusting brown, filled with massive amounts of petroleum escaping into Gulf waters.

They’re saying we should feel good about this, but the way I see it, it’s same kind of progress as a skydiver with a malfunctioning parachute finding that he can reduce the speed of his fall a little bit by sticking out his arms.

No, BP, it’s not good enough.

It’s an amazing sight this morning from the Deepwater Horizon drill site: A robotic submersible has a circular saw attached, and a mile down under the surface, is cutting into the pipe from which a massive amount of crude oil has been gushing since the oil rig exploded and sank a month and a half ago.

BP has been repeatedly impotent in its efforts to contain the oil spill. The current effort, to cap the main spill site, isn’t even aiming to completely stop the spill. Oh, how the standards of offshore drilling have fallen. They once told us that they were technological geniuses. Now, they’re big energy goofballs.

Why, with this repeated incompetence, should we continue to allow offshore drilling?

There’s a powerful bill in the U.S. House of Representatives right now that deals with the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling crisis in a clear, direct way. H.R. 5248, the No New Drilling Act, looks at the damage caused by the gigantic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and proposes a restoration of the moratorium on the expansion of offshore drilling.

U.S. Representative Danny Davis has not signed on as as a cosponsor to the No New Drilling Act. Why? He’s been busy.

Busy doing what? Busy supporting another piece of legislation: H. Res. 1297.

What would H. Res. 1297 do? It would recognize the importance of American Craft Beer Week.

The resolution, supported by Congressman Davis, notes the serious contributions of American craft beers, observing that, “American craft brewers increase awareness of the differences in the flavor, aroma, color, alcohol content, body, and other complex variables of beer.”

Come on, Representative Davis. If you have time to sit in your office, noting the differences in the complex variables of beer, you have time to sign your name to H.R. 5248, and take on the serious offshore drilling crisis. Please – cosponsor the No New Drilling Act.

A story connected to the Transocean – BP offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that bears paying attention to in the weeks to come: Corruption that has enabled lax regulation and slow response to the oil spill.

Consider the telling statement overheard by a grassroots reporter in Florida, before he was kicked out of the room. Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Sole to an executive from BP: “I’m going to take care of you.”

Just how does Secretary Sole intend to take care of BP? With extra rounds of hot chocolate at oil spill emergency response meetings?

The National Weather Service has issued the following advisory for the site of the Deepwater Horizon, the offshore oil drilling rig that exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico one week ago this evening:

SURFACE HIGH PRESSURE WILL QUICKLY TRACK ACROSS THE AREA WEDNESDAY
WHICH WILL SUPPRESS WINDS AND FLATTEN SEAS. AS THIS RIDGE
CONTINUES EASTWARD WEDNESDAY NIGHT, WINDS WILL THEN SHIFT BACK TO
THE SOUTHEAST. THIS HIGH WILL SETTLE IN THE WESTERN ATLANTIC
THROUGH THE WEEKEND. MEANWHILE, A SERIES OF SURFACE LOWS WILL
DEVELOP AND MOVE THROUGH THE SOUTHERN PLAINS. THE RESULTING WINDS
BETWEEN THESE 2 FEATURES, SPOT AREA, WILL BE STRONG PERSISTENT
SOUTHEAST WINDS OF AT LEAST 20KTS FROM THURSDAY NIGHT THROUGH
SATURDAY NIGHT. IN ADDITION, EXPECT SEAS TO BUILD TO A PEAK OF
8-11 FEET DURING THIS PERIOD. ALTHOUGH A FRONT IS EXPECTED TO
APPROACH THE COASTAL WATERS LATE THIS WEEKEND, AT THIS TIME IT
DOES NOT APPEAR THAT IT WILL PUSH THROUGH UNTIL POSSIBLY EARLY
TO MIDDLE OF NEXT WEEK. THUS, SOUTH WINDS WILL CONTINUE INTO
EARLY NEXT WEEK.

The practical upshot: Winds will be coming from the south starting tomorrow all the way through into next week, pushing the growing crude oil slick into Louisiana’s coastline. Two national wildlife refuges are directly in the path of the oil. Starting on Thursday, the seas will be too rough for an effective effort to contain the oil spill.

The effort to prevent landfall of this oil spill has failed.

What’s at stake:

As of 1:30 PM this afternoon, the oil spill was 21 miles from the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, 69 miles from the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, and 69 Miles from the Bon Secours National Wildlife Refuge. Also in the path of the growing oil spill are the Gulf Islands National Sea Shore, and the Fort Pickens State Park Aquatic Preserve.

NASA released this satellite photograph of the rapidly expanding oil slick coming from the site of the wrecked Deepwater Horizon. As you can see, when this photograph was taken, the oil slick was clearly larger than the city of New Orleans. I was astonished by that. Now, that’s small potatoes. The oil slick is at 28,600 square miles, larger than the state of West Virgina.

So far, all efforts by BP to stop oil from surging up from the wellhead and riser on the sea floor have failed, and the slick is getting closer to shore day by day, threatening fisheries, shrimping grounds, oyster beds, tourist beaches, and the mangroves that protect the delta from being washed away by hurricanes. The slick is now just 30 miles from shore and should hit the Breton National Wildlife Refuge and the Delta National Wildlife Refuge first.

The Obama Administration says that it will continue pushing ahead with its policy to expand offshore oil drilling, unchanged, despite this offshore drilling disaster. How is that different from the approach the Bush Administration took? Is that what we voted for in 2008?

Big oil companies, and their political lackeys in Congress, are always going on about how oil spills aren’t very common. But then, oops, reality comes along, as it did yesterday for the Contango Oil company, which had to shut down 6 oil wells when one of its pipelines started leaking petroleum into the Atchafalaya River down in Texas.

Never worry. It’s a rare thing. Really.