Icewind's Ramblings

Remember back before the election during all of the campaigning and coverage of the presidential primaries how MSNBC was gushing all over Barack Obama? Well it is interesting now a year later to see how things have changed.  Its not the same now as reality sinks in.  Did you watch Obama's TelePrompTer reading last night?  What a mess we are in and a joke of a speech.  I couldn’t watch all of it because my bullshit meter kept going off and pegging the “get out your chest waders” because we are in deep shit.  He didn't read anything that was unexpected. Holding BP accountable.                        Yep we’ve heard that for 58 days now. We've been on the job from day 1.      Yep typical ‘no urgency’ gov’nment job. Clean up the Gulf Coast .                ...

Alaska has been sensitive to Oil spills especially after the Exxon Valdez incident over twenty years ago.  I think things have moved past the anger and aggravation dealing with the Exxon now that they finally settled the law suit brought against them . . . it only took twenty years and many people have grown old or have died before Exxon paid a dime.  Lawyers . . . kept playing ping pong within the court system even after being fined postponing having to cough up the money. For many years there were many protests about the environment and how things were going, especially here in Alaska with all of the “tree huggers” and environmental groups going on and on about one cause or another.  Things have calmed down somewhat now and seem to be a little easier to deal with when things go wrong. There recently was a small oil spill in Alaskan waters and you could see in the response that those earlier feelings had mellowed a bit.  People were now saying that a little...

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was one of the largest oil spills in history. It took place in Alaska in March 1989, when the oil tanker ran aground, causing 10.8 million gallons of crude oil to spill into the pristine waters of Prince William Sound . While this was indeed a huge spill, it was actually only a small fraction of what the United States uses in oil in any one day. The United States uses about 700 million gallons of oil every day. That is a lot of oil. When an oil spill occurs, everyone works to help clean it up. Have you ever noticed a rainbow puddle on the street or parking lot after a rain? That rainbow sheen that you see on top of the water is actually oil from cars that has leaked onto the ground. For Steve Smith, the 20-year anniversary of the nation's worst oil spill is like a reminder that he lost a loved one. "It's like a death in the family," the 70-year-old fisherman said of the Exxon Valdez disaster. "With time...