Spill Baby, Spill

Two weeks ago, the big oil companies must have thought they'd hit the lottery. They had a popular Democratic President willing to do betray his own supporters/promises/logic on an expansion of offshore drilling more radical than anything proposed under George W. Bush.

And then this happened:

NEW ORLEANS — A deepwater oil platform that burned for more than a day after a massive explosion sank into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, creating the potential for a major spill as it underscored the slim chances that the 11 workers still missing survived.

The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, which burned violently until the gulf itself extinguished the fire, could unleash more than 300,000 of gallons of crude a day into the water. The environmental hazards would be greatest if the spill were to reach the Louisiana coast, some 50 miles away.

And this:

As efforts failed Tuesday to contain the flow of tens of thousands of gallons of oil leaking from an exploded well deep in the Gulf of Mexico, emergency response teams are considering a controlled burn-off of the oil on the water's surface as early as today.

Tuesday night, the expanding oil slick was about 20 miles off the coast of Louisiana and stretched 100 miles wide by 45 miles long at its greatest expanse.Workers were girding to protect environmentally sensitive areas nearby in the Mississippi River delta that are home to migratory birds and a nursery for nearly a quarter of the seafood production in the continental United States.

"It is the closest it's been to shore throughout this response, and we're paying attention to that, very careful attention to that," said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry. She added that if the spill isn't contained, it has the potential to become "one of the most significant oil spills in U.S. history."

I'm so glad we've moved past the age old debates between businesses leaders and environmentalists enough to realize that more offshore drilling is awesome and should be embraced by everyone.

This is horrific, and we can only hope that this disaster can make the Administration rethink it's idiotic reversal. Once again, we need to bring up the fact that this concession was not made with anything meaningful in return, but it was done solely to show Republicans that the Administration was willing to compromise.

As DCJonesy and I were discussing last night, there is not a single example of this type of preemptive concession leading to progress on anything that the Democrats are trying to push. They don't meet you half way, they don't vote yes. They take your concession, continue to lie about the bill and attempt to block it's passage.

Every day that this story remains in the news (and it's gonna be a while), it will be a huge black eye for the administration. And the beating that they (hopefully) take on this will be well deserved.

Attempting to enact idiotic policies rarely results in instant negative consequences for those that proposed them, but that might be the only positive to take from this environmental catastrophe.