Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

"We need to be realistic about operating in a mile of water"

Tony Hayward, the cherubic little weasel who serves as the front man for British Petroleum, BP, Beyond Pathetic or whatever they are calling their 'brand' this week, made the statement above, on camera to reporters while standing on an oil fouled Louisiana beach a couple of weeks ago.

Earlier that day I had a fairly heated argument with an elderly acquaintance who recently became enraptured by the 'Teabaggers.' This giddy political infatuation has had the gruesome effect of making him more of a pain in the ass than he was previously.  At one point in the 'discussion' he asked me why BP was drilling at 5000 feet below the surface and I told him that most of the 'easy oil' has been used up and drilling is increasingly taking place in ever riskier and more technologically challenging sites.

His angry retort was 'Bullshit, the tree huggers won't let them drill in shallow water.'

I tried to point out that there are nearly 4000 active oil platforms in the Gulf at depths ranging from a few feet to more than two miles but it was like talking to a wall... or a Teabagger; I gave up and drank my beer.

Sorry, this isn't a diary about Iraq, election year strategy, or how the Bush administration gets their ideas from examining the guts of this week's #2 Al Qaeda guy.  Nope.  In fact, there's only the barest smidgen of politics in this at all.

It's about.... fish.