Navy Flight Team Brings Hope To Oil-fouled Beach

WKRG.com, 7/8/2010 - Pensacola Beach, Florida (AP): Six U.S. Navy Blue Angels aviators hope to cheer up Panhandle residents dealing with the massive BP oil spill. ∴ The Blue Angels annual Pensacola Beach Air Show starts Friday with formal practice. The main event is Saturday. The team held an informal practice Thursday. ∴ The men who fly he six F/A-18 Super Hornets said they understand how concerned area residents area about the oil and tar that has reached the area's once pristine white beaches because they also live in the community. ∴ The pilots said they hope he show will raise spirits and provide a much-needed boost to beach businesses.

Gotta love those Naval aviators! :-) --bc Read More......

WSJ: The 'Paralyzing' Principle

WALL STREET JOURNAL/Review & Outlook, 6/21/2010 - The Gulf disaster rehabilitates a discredited idea. The Gulf oil spill is having all sorts of nasty consequences well beyond damage to the regional environment and economy. Not least, the resulting political panic seems to be rehabilitating the thoroughly discredited theory of regulation known as the precautionary principle. ∴ This principle holds that government should attempt to prevent any risk—regardless of the costs involved, however minor the benefits and even without understanding what those risks really are. Developed in the late 1960s, this theory served as the intellectual architecture for the Environmental Protection Agency, which is still required to eliminate certain environmental risks no matter how expensive or pointless the effort is. ∴ This same mentality is now prompting not merely tighter safety standards, but President Obama's moratorium on all new deep water drilling, shutting down dozens of Gulf and Alaskan projects, maybe permanently. Last month, 26 Democrats demanded that the government fold up BP's other major Gulf operation, Atlantis, "to ensure that the explosion and mishap of the Horizon platform are not replicated." Read more at WSJ...

Jim Huffman (R), candidate for U.S. Senate, commented on this article: We need policies that weigh and balance risks... Read More......

Obama’s ‘battle plan’

NEWS FROM THE HILL, 6/15/2010 by Ben Geman and Sam Youngman - President Barack Obama sought to seize political control of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill Tuesday by laying out plans to ensure BP makes coastal residents whole while offering a broader pledge to rebuild the region and curb U.S. oil reliance. Read more at The Hill... Read More......