Napolitano to the rescue…

Good evening, Netizens…

US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano answers a question during a press conference on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 29. President Barack Obama has ordered several senior cabinet members to Louisiana, where on Friday Napolitano and others were to conduct an aerial inspection of the affected areas.

The scope of the disaster still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana Coastline is hard to imagine. In this picture US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano answers a question during a press conference on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 29. President Barack Obama has ordered several senior cabinet members to Louisiana, where on Friday Napolitano and others were to conduct an aerial inspection of the affected areas. Isn’t that a bit too little, too late?

When members of the Coast Guard, British Petroleum and various other downhole companies striving to stem the leakage from where the ocean-going deepwater drilling rig Deepwater Horizon suffered a blowout, burned and sank 50 miles out from the coast. No one, to date, has been able to absolutely define how many gallons of light crude oil have already leaked into the ocean, nor how soon the leakage can be stopped.

The only certainty, it seems, is that the light crude has already begun arriving in the fragile ecosystems along the Louisiana coast and preliminary cost estimates to undo the ecological disaster could easily exceed that of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

The unanswered questions are (1) how did the blowout occur, (2) how can the estimated 5000 gallons per day of light crude be stopped from flowing and (3) how can similar disasters of this type be prevented in offshore drilling? The unasked question, of course, is could this have been sabotage?

Until such time as these questions can be answered, President Obama has ordered all offshore drilling operations stopped and rightly so.

Thus far Sarah Palin, who is quoted as uttering “Drill, baby, drill” in favor of offshore drilling, has yet to make any public statement how she views this unspeakable disaster.

Dave