A Blast From the Past

Those of us who'd been following the Family Circus, DT steps of the shaved chimp known as George W. Bush knew that his administration had waged an all-out war on science that stretched from NASA to the Surgeon General's Office to the EPA to the FDA to the Dept. of the Interior and beyond.

So it kind of feels like a blast from the past, if recent events in the Gulf of Mexico permit me the unintentional pun, when I read stories like this from the New York Times, especially when they're front and center, above the fold:

WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is partly responsible for protecting endangered species and marine mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January 2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans. Agency records also show that permission for those projects and plans was granted without getting the permits required under federal law.

Now, the president obviously doesn't make every single decision in the government but in a tribal sense he does. Any bureaucrat, from the Vice President on down to the meanest file clerk, is either in line with the President's agenda or gets out. While it would be fallacious to lay this squarely at the doorstep of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., nonetheless it's just as fallacious to consider this laissez faire trend starting on January 2009, the month Obama took over, as a mere coincidence.

Apparently, this radical liberal, Socialist, pinko President has been "Drill, Baby, Drill" all along and is suppressing science at a rate that eclipses even the neocon Dark Ages of the Bush administration.

Miss him, yet? Hardly. It's as if Bushie never left us.