Vultures

The monstrosity of the U.S. President's ego can be gauged by the fact that he used an Oval Office Address - the first in his presidency - to talk about our addiction to fossil fuels and about a transition to clean energy as though he were speaking from some distant future plane, away from a dire, unresolved present where an underwater geyser is spewing a now estimated 40 to 70, 000 gallons of toxic crude a day (the estimates have done nothing but gone up and up), and which has been spewing that amount or upwards of that amount since day one of the blow-out, into the Gulf of Mexico. And that's just the estimation from the well-head - which, if I understand right, is just a minor distraction from the real oil flow.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought these kinds of addresses to the nation were about getting down to the nitty-gritty business of levelling with the people, about telling them what is really happening - like the oil coming not only through the well-head but through the sea floor (thus making the given estimates way lower than what they really are) - and the precise, bare essential measures that are being taken, and the worst case scenario (though it already is a worst case scenario) measure that would need to be taken, like nuking the sea floor with a small nuclear device. (By the by, I hope that they nuke it sooner than later.)

Obama addressed the "wrenching anxiety" of those whose livelihoods depend on the sea, who are anxious "that their way of life may be lost."

May be lost? This is assured: if they were to stop the oil, and I mean stop every drop this very second, the livelihood of those people in the south is still utterly vanquished, for at least a good few years. They have not been temporarily haulted; it is not something that can be given back in the way of monetary compensation. As of now, short of a miracle and an equally miraculous, speedy clean-up, their way of life is gone.

Yet here this visionary President says, "I refuse to let this happen". Oh, how exactly? It has happened. Are you going to order the hurricanes to not bring the oil to land? What the hell is going after BP going to do? What the hell is blabbering about addiction to "fossil fuels" (we still really don't know the origin of oil) going to do? Why are the workers who are cleaning up the oil being ordered not to wear respirators?