Time Magazine of all places is saying today that the BP oil spill may not be as bad as advertised. Scientists are not seeing the damage to wild life or the environment they had expected. Time even credits Rush Limbaugh for predicting the spill was being hyped.

The article is pretty interesting and I encourage everyone to read it.

Some 200 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico over an 86 day period. With the gusher stopped clean-up crews have moved in to clean up the mess. The problem is — they’re having trouble finding any oil.

Two weeks ago skimmers picked up around 25,000 barrels a day and last Thursday only around 200 barrels were picked up.

Where did all the oil go?

BP CEO Tony Hayward was pilloried when he tried to downplay the spill saying something like “the ocean is a really big place.”

Well, Tony may have been at least partly right. 200 million barrels of oil is indeed a tremendous amount, but when you compare it the body of water it spilled into it’s really nothing. That combined with the heroic cleanup efforts of some 20,000+ people who worked on the spill from day one and it starts to make sense.

According to Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at LSU, this is mother nature doing her job.

The light crude began to deteriorate the moment it escaped at high pressure, and then it was zapped with dispersants to speed the process along. The oil that did make it to the ocean’s surface was broken up by 88-degree water, baked by 100-degree sun, eaten by microbes, and whipped apart by wind and waves.

Experts stress that even though there’s less and less oil as time goes on, there’s still plenty around the spill site. And in the long term, no one knows what the impact of those hundreds of millions of gallons will be, deep in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

So it seems like all of us are kind of flying blind here. It’s going to be interesting to see how all this shakes out over the long term. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the damage won’t be as severe as initially thought.

(hat tip Huffington Post)

“The Great One” Mark Levin rips Bill O’Reilly a new one over his defense of Obama’s bullying of BP. I completely agree with Mark on this one.

I can remember when the media wouldn’t let Bush so much as make eye contact with a golf course without a snotty remark or two. As far as the media was concerned there was always something better Bush could be doing than playing golf.

Obama’s presidency has of course been treated quite differently. Whether he’s escalating the war in Afghanistan, managing terror attacks on the homeland, attending Ted Kennedy’s funeral, tackling the economic crisis, or pretending to be in charge of the worst environmental disaster in history, Obama can always find time to hit the links.

Predictably, the media is just fine with that. Obama has played golf six times and attended two concerts since the oil began gushing. Had Bush done that during Katrina the media would have called for his resignation (which I think they did anyway).

In fact, Obama has now played more golf in his first 16 months than Bush did in 8 years. It’s not uncommon for him to spend 4 or 5 hours playing golf. For a president that’s an eternity. It’s amazing that he could even set aside that much time in a single day. Compare that with the 20 whole minutes he gave to the CEO of BP today. That’s the first conversation the president has had with the CEO of BP since this crisis began. Unbelievable.

(hat tip Instapundit)

The only takeaway from this speech is that he’s not going to let a good crisis go to waste, so he’s resurrecting “Cap & Trade” aka “Cap & Tax.”

It’s possible that I’m just having an acid flashback from college, but I think Keith Olbermann, Leg Tingles, and Howard Fineman trashed Obama’s address.

Assuming this is not in fact an acid flashback on my part, this marks the first time since the election that MSNBC has NOT run cover for this administration. Frankly, this is bigger news than the oil spill.

Did they get new management over there or something? What the hell is going on?

Click the link above and see for yourself.

While I was watching that clip something kept nagging at me that I really think should be discussed.

I know they say Obama’s speech sucked because it lacked specifics, but I get the feeling having a black man in The White House is what’s really bothering them. They seem unwilling to accept that America is a more diverse society now and people of color have every right to run this nation.

When Matthews said he heard “ a lot of meritocracy, a lot of blue ribbon talk” I think that was code for calling the president “uppity.”

How can MSNBC allow that kind of racism to stink up the airwaves? I for one am outraged.

I love how the media and politicians on both sides are screaming about Obama refusing to push BP aside and takeover the oil leak. The Obama administration isn’t known for being logical, but in this case they are.

The fact is if Obama took over the oil spill we would never get that well capped. BP has the most cutting edge equipment and the finest scientists and engineers on the face of the planet. When it comes to off-shore oil exploration and oil drilling BP is the authority.

It’s beyond idiotic to suggest that BP is somehow dragging its feet or not doing all it can to stop the leak. Nobody has a bigger interest in stopping that oil leak than BP. The oil industry itself is at stake. Short of the environment, no one has suffered more damage PR wise as a result of this than BP.

The Obama administration doesn’t have any of the equipment or the personnel to even do what BP has done up to this point. If BP can’t do it it’s because it can’t be done. When they come up with a way to cap the well they’ll cap it.

In the meantime Obama and his cronies should take their boot of BP’s neck and offer whatever assistance they can. There will be plenty of time for dog and pony show hearings and public floggings. Right now, all parties involved should be working together to find a solution to the problem and then get this thing cleaned up.

Rescuers on Monday recovered the bodies of three sailors after a Russian freighter sank near the Black Sea. The Nakhichevan was one of two freighters that broke up as 18-foot waves and high winds battered ships throughout the region. As many as 10 ships sank or ran aground in the northern Black Sea region during the fierce storm, including the Volganeft-139, an oil tanker loaded with nearly 1.3 million gallons of fuel oil.

Nearly half its cargo spilled into the strait and was washing up on nearby shorelines in what officials said it could be the worst environmental disaster in the region in years.

After rescuing the Russian tanker’s 13 crew members, workers began what could be a long-term effort to clean up the spill. They shoveled the tar-like, oil-laden sands and seaweed into piles on the shore as slick-covered waters lapped at their boots. Oil covered birds could be seen trying to swim flap their wings.