Chris Rose in the Gambit Weekly

Revenge of the Dinosaurs: This is one of the best critiques of the whole situation I have read yet. Chris Rose is an editorializer who wrote weekly columns for the Times Picayune in the years surrounding Katrina. For reasons unknown to me, he recently switched to the local weekly alternative magazine, The Gambit (which is to NO what The Scene is to Nashville).

The frustration and infuriation here is palpable as I'm lead to believe it is all over the rest of the country. Tuesdays headline of the Times Pic read : WITH OIL WELL STILL GUSHING, OBAMA NOW TARGET OF ANGER. That surprised me and I said as much to a friend who told me he agreed, that he was angry with the president and felt like he wasn't present enough in the region. Hmm...

Maybe its because of naive bias and the way I still unabashedly heart Barry-O, but I don't blame him for the handling of this catastrophe. There is a hole a mile beneath the sea spewing fossil fuels (that are themselves 3.5 more miles beneath the crust of the earth). Those are the hard facts. Barack was not hired for his engineering skills so back off on that. As Mr. Rose points out, if you dig up the dead and reanimate some monstrously powerful forces for the sake of seeking a profit, then you had better have a contingency plan for shit hitting fans. Spare BO the blame and save the drama for BP.

(Disclosure: that frontpage is also where the pic of the oil-slicked pelican came from)