Stories I am tired of

The good news, no guns. The bad news, in this post, racist teabagging and the gulf.
Well... I guess Bill Maher is a teabagger. He will be thrilled to hear this. I mean, teabaggers are racist and this has got to be the single most racist thing that I have heard said about Obama in either public or private conversations. Check it out here and tell me what you think. There is, of course, the obvious exception of black comedians who, by definition, cannot say anything racist about black people and since they are black, cannot possibly be a member of a racist organization.

The thing is that I am getting a bit tired of this story. Outside of the one incident with the black representatives heading in to the health care vote, I don't know of a single instance of any kind of racist sentiment being uttered by a teabagger. Whenever the teabaggers are called racist, that is the only example I ever here. I guess that it could be a function of the media that I am exposed to. The only media that I read really are articles posted by people I follow on Twitter (mostly conservative with a dash liberal thrown in), some Daily Show, some Colbert Report, and every once in a while, Rachel Maddow. I know. Rachel Maddow is a bit of a guilty pleasure. It's like watching a mirror-universe version or Bill O'Reilly, but with boobs. Boobs are good. If you're wondering, the mirror version of Glenn Beck would be Keith Olberman, who has no boobs. In Glenn Beck's case, boobs are not good.

You know the other story I'm getting tired of? The "BP is evil" story. Look, I am not by any stretch an environmentalist. If you want to hug trees, go check out my friend's blog "Musings of a (Fairly) Young Contrarian". It's a good read. He blogs about the environment, human rights, social issues and unfortunately, soccer. It is not for the faint of heart. I mean how much soccer can one person read about? Anyway, back to my thoughts. I don't mean that I am tired of the oil spill in the gulf story. Far from it. I am as interested as anyone else. It's an important story and I believe that a lot can be learned from what happened and changes can be made to make sure that it either doesn't happen again or, at the very least, that the impact is nowhere near this degree of severity.

Understand this. I am not happy about the situation in the Gulf. I am angry that it happened. I am angry that there are people out of work. I am angry that people lost their lives. I am angry that there is an ecosystem that is all but destroyed. I am angry that there are ways of life that are likely to come to and end for families that have been working for generations. I am angry that it has taken so long for any kind of functioning solution to show up. I am angry that the US government has taken precisely ZERO actions to assess or direct the response. I am not happy that they were impotent to stop BP from spraying the most toxic versions of the chemical dispersants into the ocean further damaging the ecosystem. But I am probably the MOST angry that the best response to this disaster that I have seen has come from KEVIN FREAKING COSTNER! Given all of this, I don't think BP is evil. Negligent? Yes. Incompetent? Certainly. But "evil?" It's a bit of a stretch. In my mind evil implies an intention to cause harm. That is the single over-arching goal. Death, destruction, mayhem.

Of the how many oil rigs in the gulf, what is it 3,500? This is the first one I have heard of with a significant oil spill. Did their safety measures fail? Yes. Did they have multiple layers of fail-safe systems fail? Yes. Was it their rig? Yes. Did they fail to keep these systems functional? Yes. Was it their fault? Yes. But was it their intent? Only if they are the real life incarnations of Bond villains. I mean come on. Seriously. You think that they were bored and said, "Let's dump a shitload of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and wreak havoc on the environment, sabotage our political win for new offshore drilling, cost ourselves billions of dollars and do irrevocable damage to our reputation. It will be... wait for it... LEGENDARY!" Do I fault them? Absolutely. It was the grossest form of negligence possible in an oil organization. I also fault the government that was supposed to regulate them. Why the hell are they taking my money to pay inspectors and fly them around the gulf and, you know, inspect stuff, if they are not finding things EXACTLY LIKE THIS? Isn't it their job to find this stuff and stop it before the worst case scenario happens? But on the flip side, as much as I fault BP, they are probably one of the few organizations that can mobilize and fund the efforts necessary to clean up the mess. And they are incentivized to find a solution and find it quickly. They do not have a bureaucracy (why the hell does that word have so many consonants? Even its spelling is wasteful.) to deal with. They don't have to have committee meetings in front of television cameras and posture for reelection. They are far more nimble than the US government.

The best part is that when all is said and done, nothing will change. BP will get a slap on the wrist. Their profits last year were a little over $16 Billion dollars. See page 3 of this report from BP's site. The government will institute some meaningless and toothless regulations that looks like they've put BP in their place, but will result in no change in the safety of the environment, and no change in BPs practices. It will however make it look like they were tough on "Big Oil" and those "evil" profit making companies. Because everyone knows that making profit is evil. I've said my piece. Feel free to comment below.