Democracy- is it still alive? I know it has been repressed. Congressmen do nothing for people these days- just corporations. To get our system working again, what should we do? Ethics are gone. Lobbyists for special corporate interests and big money have bought  congress. Congress is no longer ours. Financial, big oil, insurance, and medical interests rule this country at thier whim. I believe this is common knowledge. What are we willing to do about it? If I were a student in Sparkman today, I would vote to change the mascot.

Bob,

I know how much you love the coastline around the Gulf.  I would like your personal observation as to the damage (oil contamination) you have seen in that area.

Cecelia

I have not been to Pensacola Beach to inspect it yet- (too busy with home improvements). Extensive news media coverage shows lots of tarballs in the sugar white sands of our Gulf -side beaches. Nothing is wrong with our inland waterways...yet. There's still lots of fun to be had but a lot to be said about the bigger mess yet to come.

What's the beach like right now? 27 years ago I had been on a beach catamaran sail out of Texas City (around Galveston) and discovered tar balls from oil all over that beach- which was one of the most ideal spots for beach cats I had ever seen- yet polluted with Texas Black Gold. That beach did not have white sands like Pensacola Beach. Their sand was a digngy brownish tea color. I had moved to Pensacola because of the ideal nice white beach with easy access for cat sailing (the bureaucrats have since put up fences and restricted public boat access). Galveston beaches have had tar balls in their sands for many years and right now that's close enough to what Pensacola Beach has in it's white sand. It's like this: I had ruined my two Jimmy Buffet beach towels, a T-shirt and a swimsuit from tar ball stains, while I had visited that Texas beach.  I still had a great time sailing, boiled crabs on the beach, hot dogs and a sun tan. I looked like a refugee in my tar ball-stained gear. Nothing got on the sails but the bottoms of my feet were black.

So that is what our beach is like right now- Galveston. The oil spill is massive- still gushing unstopped, after a month and a half. The worst is yet to come. Tar balls are the tip of the iceberg... I expect sludge is next. After that what? More dead wildlife, fisherman and charter boats out of work. Marinas are closing down. Blockades are being deployed in even small coves. An already bad economy here is to be devastated.

I want a hydrogen or electric powered car in my life time. This kind of mess is ridiculous.

I've worked in the oil field services marine industry and I have seen how the oil companies operate and it is not pretty. Shortages? There is no shortage of petroleum- especially in the Gulf. You can see now: Engineers on an offshore drilling site in 1999 had told me that we have more oil in the Gulf than the entire Saudi desert or likely anywhere else on the planet. We have enough oil to last us forever- now- right in our own backyard. Oil production (for gasoline) is contolled. Higher prices mean higher profits for big oil. Exploration drilling puts tax money back into the oil companies ahd generates more profits. There's enough oil already. Drilling could stop forever right now and there would be plenty of oil from existing holes below the sea! There was no need for the exploration hole that is gushing into our Gulf. It's a symbol of greed. There is an underwater ocean of oil. Hundreds of capped unused oil wells lie beneath the sea in a city of offshore oil platforms in our Gulf. Yet we import oil to support another part of the globe, all for the sake of money and control.