How do you get someone’s mind off a headache? A strong punch to the stomach.
How do you take someone’s mind off the environmental disaster caused by the massive oil leak? Detonate a nuclear warhead.
Really? Detonate a nuclear bomb to melt the ocean floor onto itself to stop the leak? It is ok to try new things, like shooting debris in the hole to plug it, because what’s a little more pollution when millions of barrels of oil are gushing into the ocean each day. But a nuclear bomb? Yeah, let’s compound one threat to our future with an almost certain apocalyptic coda.
Someone said this nuclear fix is safe. Someone also said deep water drilling is safe. Someone said the Russians exploded nuclear bombs to stop pipeline leaks, but they never did it with oil, underwater and one mile down. Oh, yeah, just like top kill was never tried underwater and one mile down. Gee, I wish Anyone thought through how to fix something, let’s say an oil pipe, that far down below sea level before the accident. Boy, I never met this Someone or Anyone, but Someone sure is crazy and Anyone should be fired.
But, this is America, where Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels. So, if we look at everything ass backwards and upside down, it should work. From that perspective, the nuclear option looks like a plan. How about if all of the BP executives and the government officials who oversaw deep-water drilling put on some of Ginger’s old outfits and then tried to figure out what to do? No, it wouldn’t add any brain cells (so still a zero sum game) but it would sure provide needed comic relief in the aftermath of the biggest threat to the safety of all living beings since the Ice Age.
Of course, no disaster is complete without the accompanying political grandstanding and fiascoes. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wrote to the President enumerating the number of jobs that will be lost because of the moratorium on off-shore drilling, even as he decries the despoliation of his state’s shorelines and criticizes the administration’s slow response.
Maureen Dowd, who is becoming pathetic, says we got the President we voted for, as if that is a bad thing — a clear-headed leader who doesn’t lead by his gut. The President constantly overestimates our intelligence and ability to understand the important things. And President Obama has to stop what he is doing to go on Larry King so that we are reassured he can feel our pain. Because we need him to hug us and feel our pain while he is protecting us from our own stupidity.
We deserve to choke on the oil slick.
