If I Had a Rocket Launcher

One advantage of middle-age is the acquired ability to compartmentalize.  As life piles up sorrows and disappointments, the capacity to say "I'm not going to think about that" becomes an essential life skill.  In recent months, my method of preserving some level of equanimity in the face of brainless political grandstanders, power-hungry media hacks, avaricious financiers, and other loathsome bit players on the American stage has been to simply ignore them.

But the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has overthrown my ability to look away.  Every headline is an ax in my chest. I'm breathless with grief and fury.  Up to 798,000 gallons of oil are gushing into the Gulf every day.  The top kill fix has failed and BP's next "plan" (or should I say "irresponsible wild ass guess") is a modified version of attempts that have already failed twice.  According to a story in yesterday's New York Times, BP knew there were problems with the well casing and blowout preventer almost a year ago but nonetheless approved construction in violation of the company's own safety policies and design standards.  Yesterday morning a BP executive said that the real "end point" is a relief well which won't be in place until August.  Yes, you saw right -- August.

This calamity is only the latest piece of evidence that corporations like BP should not unthinkingly be given the same legal rights that you and I have.  The Supreme Court was dead wrong in January when it said that restrictions on corporate spending on elections are impermissible. Unlike human beings, corporations pair unlimited life spans and resources with a single goal: to make as much money as possible for their shareholders.  They are created as amoral entities with no obligation whatsoever to be caring neighbors, respectful employers, or protective stewards of our shared planet.  To the contrary, when their obligation to their shareholders requires it, corporations must be intentionally heartless, harmful, and destructive.  Pro-business interests constantly agitate for the elimination of government regulations, arguing that corporations are fully capable of self-regulation.

To which I reply,"No.  They're not."  And, as our friends on the Gulf Coast are learning to their sorrow, treating multi-national corporations as anything other than potentially lethal creatures is suicide.

I look at the ruin in the Gulf and say to myself "face this."  And "remember."  Remember and vote for leaders who won't be bought by the oil companies.  Remember and hold government accountable for real corporate regulation.  Remember and when told by oil company shills and their media lackeys that less corporate regulation is good for me, reply that I've seen the fruits of their labors in a desecrated Gulf.  They're criminals and as my hero Bruce Cockburn said, "If I had a rocket launcher, I'd make somebody pay."

On a lighter note, the picture above is a beaver lodge in an alder woods near Mt. St. Helens on a spooky beautiful overcast day. We didn't see any beavers although we did see some sort of unidentified small mammal swimming toward the lodge and clambering up onto the roof.

Today's front yard critter count:
Raccoon:  1 (Old Tailless Guy)
Deer: 0
Neighbor cat: 1