Jimmy, say it ain’t so

I’ve been a Jimmy Buffett fan for the vast majority of my life. Bought the records, went to concerts, bought CDs and then the books. I know Jimmy is politically liberal, but I honestly didn’t think he was a stupid political liberal. At least until he opened his mouth about the Gulf oil spill:

“To me it was more about eight years of bad policy before (Obama) got there that let this happen. It was Dracula running the blood bank in terms of oil and leases,” he said. “I think that has more to do with it than how the president reacted to it.”

Old buddy, maybe that’s how it is to you, but you need to open your freaking mind along with your eyes and put a little thought into this. Are some of those “life experiences” from back when we were all younger flashing back on you or what?

First, I have no doubt that the oil companies were pretty cozy with the people who were supposed to regulate them. No matter who sits in the White House or what party they’re from, that’s always the way of it. It was true during Bush’s administration, Clinton’s administration, Reagan’s and so on back to Washington, most likely. Big companies and big industries always cozy up to the government. They want a sweetheart deal on taxes, a law that makes it difficult for competitors to enter the business, to bend laws or regulations to suit themselves, something. This is one of the many reasons I oppose any government regulation. It will inevitably lead to corruption.

Second, Obama has 18 months in which he could have at least tried to put an end to this if he had chosen to push away the hamburger plate and get on with it. He knew about it–he had the reports. Instead, he did nothing.

Third, after the event had happened, and offers of help were coming in, he still did nothing. We couldn’t use the existing skimmer ships we were offered because the didn’t get 100% of the oil out of the water. It wasn’t good enough that they got 99% or 98% or even 50% of the oil, we must have perfection or we won’t use them. It isn’t good enough to keep half the oil off the beaches. Good grief, common sense (yeah, I know) would tell you that getting any of the oil out of the water before it hits land or is ingested by sea critters is a Good Thing.

We couldn’t build berms to intercept the oil because there were no environmental impact statements, dredging permits and all of the other paperwork so beloved by the bureaucratic mind. The hell with the estuaries, you didn’t fill out form Z123stroke15 in triplicate!

Fourth, assign a realistic level of blame (rather than blaming them for everything since Eve bit into an apple) for what the various companies involved had to do with this. Don’t tell me that they don’t have risk mitigation programs and emergency response teams, because I’m not going to believe it. I will believe that what they had was drastically inadequate to the task. Poor-to-no planning in case of a big malfunction is pretty much always going to lead to a disaster, especially 5000 feet under the surface of the ocean. However, I’m not going to pillory every oil company in the world because of BP, Halliburton and Transocean.

Fifth, let’s not destroy another sector of the economy because of this event. Things are bad enough already, thanks. (And by the way, where does the Big O think that the fuel to fly his sorry ass around the world attacking the country comes from? Wind mills?)

Nah, Jimmy, you really blew it on this one. Good luck with the concert, but if I were you, I’d stick to music.