With all the talk about Freedom Flotilla, the news has had something else to focus on besides the horrific disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But unfortunately, the oil is still there, still gushing with no end in sight.

On the political front, Republicans have reached an all time low with this Alaskan Governor’s latest comments about the spill.

Don’t worry about the oil spilling into the Gulf, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) says, because the worst spill in U.S. history is “not an environmental disaster,” just nature taking its course.

“This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a natural phenomenon,” Young said after Congressional hearings last week. “Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. … We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover.”

If my mind wasn’t already completely boggled by the things some Americans come up with, it would surely be now.  Beyond boggled.  What’s worse than boggled?? Flabbergasted perhaps? That’s where I am.

Some of the comments on this article are fantastic. Gives me a bit of hope.

Sam Knause says:

When did becoming completely devoid of common sense, or the avoidence of facts, become a prerequisite for the majority of politicians and people in prominent positions, in the U.S.?

Are these people being drugged on a massive scale?
Do they all share a brain tumor affliction?
Are they aliens pretending to be humans?
Do they think one thing, but the words come out the complete opposite?
Do they long to be stand up comedians?
Has pollution, poisons, and pesticides reconfigured their brain matter?
Do they all live at high altitudes and suffer from oxygen deprivation?
Do they all have some kind of congenital disease being passed from generation to generation?
Are they all deaf, and can not hear what nonsense spews from their mouths?

I am trying to find a reason, or make a reasonable argument for the outrages beliefs of these people. I just find it almost impossible, that this many people in this country could be so misinformed and totally devoid of facts. They must all suffer from a severe case of learning disablities that only effects republicans, blue dogs, and the Tea Party people.

This country can not improve or more forward with these people dragging us backwards.

Iskow reminds us of some other priceless quotes:

“The oil spill is as natural as water”
Rush Limbaugh May 4, 2010

“So, where’s the oil?”
FOX’s Britt Hume May 14, 2010

“Holding BP responsible is un-American”
Rand Paul May 20, 2010

“Drill, baby Drill”
Republican chant lead by John McCain, Sarah Palin, Michael Steele and hordes of people with teabags stapled to their hats..

rodsbadhairday says:

What is with politicians from Alaska?
It’s like they have twizzlers for brains.

Hey Russia — want it back?

and just one more… Dave Bee says:

Yeah because those giant machines used to help cause the disaster were all natural too. If it werent for them, the oil would still be under ground, maybe seeping, but not gushing out gallons a minute. God what a simplistic, stupid bit of reasoning. I cant believe it. Its sad to see human people with brains say such stupid things out loud. He must be paid off in huge numbers to be willing to look so incredibly moronic to the whole world like that.

For a while now I’ve been on Counter Current’s mailing list.   Counter Currents is an independent alternative News Site.  I like them because they care about things that really matter to the people of this earth.  The articles are wonderfully written and come from a variety of sources.  The stand for Peace and Justice!  

I just love them to bits. If you want to subscribe, you can do so here.

Well, in todays email, the top three stories are all about BP and the oil spill.

What If The Oil Spill Just Can’t Be Fixed?
By David Roberts

It’s entirely possible, even likely, that we’re going to be stuck helplessly watching as this well spews oil into the Gulf for years. Even if the flow were stopped tomorrow, the damage to marshes, coral, and marine life is done. The Gulf of Mexico will become an ecological and economic dead zone. There’s no real way to undo it, no matter who’s in charge

This is something I’ve been thinking about for sure. I spent five minutes on my lunch break today just watching the live feed. Hundreds of thousands of liters of oil just spewing forth into the cool blue ocean. Five minutes was horrific. And this has been going on for over a month now.

David makes another fantastic point that I’ve been ranting about for a while now…

The thing is, we’re already operating in those circumstances in a thousand different ways — it’s just that the risks and the damages tend to be distributed and obscured from view. They’re not thrust in our face like they are in the Gulf. We don’t get back the land we destroy by mining. We don’t get back the species lost from deforestation and development. We don’t get back islands lost to rising seas. We don’t get back the coral lost to bleaching or the marine food chains lost to nitrogen runoff. Once we lose the climatic conditions in which our species evolved, we won’t get them back either.

We’re doing damage as big as the Gulf oil spill every day, and there’s no fixing it.

How do we convince the rulers of the world to change?

Deepwater Horizon: This Is What The End Of
The Oil Age Looks Like
By Richard Heinberg

This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet.

Richard cuts straight to the heart of the matter…

The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner, what we will end up doing anyway as a result of resource depletion and economic, environmental, and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff. Everybody knows we must do this.

The only solution. The ONLY solution. We have to give up oil and turn to wind/solar/tidal/geothermal. And we have to do it now.

BPing The Arctic?
By Subhankar Banerjee

There is, I’m beginning to realize, another crisis we have to face in the Gulf, the Arctic, and elsewhere: How do we talk about — and show — what we can’t see? Yes, via video, we can see the gushing oil at the source of BP’s well a mile below the surface of the water, and thanks to TV and newspapers we can sometimes see (or read about) oil-slicked dead birds, dead sea turtles, and dead dolphins washing up on coastlines.

But what about all the other aspects of life under water that we can’t see, that won’t simply wash up on some beach, that in terms of our daily lives might as well be on Mars? What’s happening to the incredible diversity of marine life inhabiting that mile-deep water, and what cumulative impact will all that still-spilling oil have on it, on the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico, and possibly — in ways we may not yet be able to imagine — on our lives?

I wish that certain people, in positions of power, would stop looking at the earth in terms of profitability and resources to exploit. Until we collectively come to an understanding that the earth is as complex an organism as the creatures, including humans, that inhabit it, we will forever be warring over it.

Five weeks now since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon Rig and no progress has been made.  Every attempt taken by BP to stop the catastrophic flow of oil into the gulf of Mexico has failed.

Today, they will attempt to block the well, with a new measure that has never been attempted before at such depths.  In its attempt to plug the leak, BP plans to use undersea robots to inject heavy fluids into the mile- deep well and then cement into the seabed well to block oil flow in the “top kill” operation.  The chance of success is projected to be between 60 and 70 %.  The chance of failure could result in an even larger leak.

A memo, released by Representatives Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak, stated problems were found in equipment meant to provide fail-safe protection against a blow out mere hours before the explosion.  According to lawmakers briefed by BP executives, an internal company investigation points to a series of equipment failures, mistakes and missed warning signs that led to the blowout.

BP, not surprisingly,  declined to comment on the memo.

Also interesting news, turns out BP was a major player in the 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster.   BP owned a controlling interest in the Alaska oil industry consortium, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co, that was required to write a cleanup plan and respond to the spill two decades ago.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how many oil spills happen that we don’t hear about.  It’s quite a long list. Canada is one the list once, while the US is on the list 24 times.

Can we just move away from oil now?

Other Sources:

Democracynow!: Ahead of Pivotal Attempt to Plug Leak, BP Acknowledges “Fundamental Mistake” in Hours Before Rig Explosion

Rueters: BP had warning signs before Gulf blast: panel

CNews: BP had key role in Exxon Valdez disaster

EDIT: Just read an article on ProPublica talking about the effects of both the oil and the chemical dispersant’s on human health.

Fishermen hired by BP to help with the oil spill cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico are coming down sick with “severe headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty breathing” after working long hours in oil- and dispersant-contaminated waters. (source)