Bury It On The Weekend?

Since I read the report from the Wall Street Journal that some estimates had one million gallons a day of oil streaming into the Gulf, or 25,000 barrels, I've been hard pressed to find that number anywhere else in the MSM. The number I keep seeing repeated is 210,000 gallons per day, or 5,000 barrels, and it's hard not to believe that it's the work of corporate shills. This, by the way, is in the wake of BP admitting on Wednesday that spill amounts could even be as much as 60,000 barrels per day.

So today I jump on board to ride the intertubes and there's stories aplenty that point to bigger and badder goings on in the Gulf. Now yesterday my local fishwrap only had one story about the continual spewing of oil into the Gulf and it was on page A-15. Hard for me to fathom because IMHO something that's going to affect food prices for possibly the next year and perhaps longer, as well as fuel prices, is absolutely the definition of what news is.

Now the alarming reports making their way onto the net at this time, as opposed to earlier in the week, strikes me as suspicious. Weekends for most of us are both a time to recharge and yet busy with familial responsibilities, especially on Mother's Day weekend. Not really a time to be paying close attention to the steady stream of bad news.

The news is frightening: from an NOAA report dated April 28, it makes clear that the Coast Guard fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

Read the entire thing and prepare to be alarmed. 

In the meantime, more coastal areas have been made off limits to the public and the dome they wanted to place over the geyser has failed for the moment. And as the media urges you withhold judgement as to who's at fault in this disaster remember that a piece of machinery costing .004 percent of BP's 2009 profits might have prevented the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that is currently threatening the U.S. gulf coast.

Also remember that Dick Cheney's cronies have their fingerprints all over this abominable mess.