• I wouldn’t think twice about eating a fish, crab, oyster or shrimp harvested from anywhere along Louisiana’s coast right now. The harmful elements of crude oil evaporate quickly. The substance that remains will kill vegetation and it can certainly make seafood taste bad, but you’d be disgusted by the flavor long before you got sick. Just to prove it to you, I’d be happy to eat all the fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters you care to drop off at the Sportsman office.
• Bill Clinton could turn on tears of sympathy like he had a sprinkler system installed in his eyes, and no one will ever forget George W. Bush rallying rescue and recovery teams at Ground Zero just days after 9/11, but so far, with this national tragedy, Barack Obama has seemed about as warm and sensitive as a granite countertop.
• BP CEO Tony Hayward must have more feet than a centipede, because right now, he’s got at least that many in his mouth.
• Those absurd, ridiculous people calling for an end to all oil drilling need to live what they profess. Please stop driving to your protests, and, oh yeah, don’t ride your bikes there either. Those tires on your bicycle are made from petroleum.
• Gov. Bobby Jindal is a small-government guy, and some political pundits have questioned his sincerity in light of his calls for the federal government to do more to protect the Louisiana coast. But I don’t see the conflict. Government exists, at a minimum, to build roads and provide for the common defense — even if that defense is against an oil-based catastrophe. Limited-government advocates are opposed to robbing money from hard-working citizens and using those dollars to study the effects of cow flatulence or to award free healthcare to those who haven’t worked to earn it.
• Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were separated at birth.
• Presidential Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar have said that BP will be responsible for paying all of the workers impacted by Obama’s six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling. If you believe that, raise your hand. The men with the padded truck will be along soon to take you away.
• Hearings may ultimately show BP was guilty of negligence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Either way, its shareholders and employees will have a tremendous debt to pay. But those out there who are calling for boycotts and hoping to crush BP should think for a moment: If BP goes bankrupt, who’s going to pay to clean up this mess?
