Leaders of What?

I realize it is almost always a fool’s errand to look for conspiracy theories, but there has been no significant oil leave in the Gulf since 1976, before I even graduated high school. Now, two weeks after Obama is finally forced, kicking and screaming, to okay at least the concept of the vague idea of offshore drilling in the Gulf…this happens?
Now, of course I don’t believe some sort of secret Obama SEAL team took out the rig, but it really is the most appalling timing. Not to mention there are only a handful of rigs in the Gulf without blowout valves. Which, it may be noted, are inexplicably not required by US law–but most companies install them by choice. A wise choice, as BP will learn when they get the cleanup bill, which could have bought hundreds of thousands of such valves.

“oil leak”, I meant.

This reminds me of the horrible timing of Chernobyl. America was finally coming back around to the idea of building more nucs, after being flim-flammed by the ridiculous “China Syndrome” movie that JUST HAPPENED to be released on almost the same day as the Three Mile Island accident. TMI was an accident where the safety mechanisms worked, no one was killed or exposed to more than an insignificantly small dose of radiation, and from which there were never any provable environmental or human consequences–with the exception of increased stress in the local residents, leading to a slightly higher heart attack rate. (One suspects being told repeatedly by the MSM that they were going to grow an extra head might be responsible for this, more than the accident itself.)
Regardless, due to the movie and the media hysteria, it provided the push needed to get new nuclear power essentially banned in America (thanks, Jimmeh). Then finally, after 20 years, the idea was being floated again, and…Chernobyl. The (effectively) deliberately caused meltdown of Chernobyl has been describe by nuc engineers as “probably the worst imaginable nuclear power plant disaster short of a direct meteor strike.” Chernobyl had primitive safety mechanisms (which has been deliberately turned off), had no containment building (!!), and was a graphite-pile reactor. Graphite pile reactors are only used in the US for production of certain radioactive materials, and the only one remaining is a small research reactor. The problem with them is while they are easy to build (the first pile, built by Enrico Fermi, was graphite), their default state is hyper-critical. Losing the neutron modulator causes the core to go hypercritical. In a normal pressurized water reactor, loss of coolant causes the reaction to cease.
So an accident in the notoriously inept Soviet Union, caused by deliberately shutting down the safety systems on the most dangerous kind of reactor, lacking a containment structure…was given as the reason we shouldn’t build the sort of reactors that had (and have) been running with a 100% safety record in countries all over the world, including India, for 40+ years.
What I’d like to see is the breaks going OUR way, for once. Like finding out solar panels cause brain cancer, or wind power creates tornadoes, or something.
I’d like to add that even though it is to the Ukraine’s benefit to claim so, the enviro-nut projected (and endlessly MSM-repeated) “hundreds of thousands of deaths” have yet to occur. Studies so far show no excess cancers within statistical uncertainty (even the notoriously hysterical WHO expects no more than 4,000). The confirmable death toll remains at less than 50, mostly among those who fought the fire. And the other three reactors there are still in operation. (And if you read the Wikipedia article, which sounds very impressive, note that it oddly makes no mention of the fact the reactor was graphite pile and what this meant. Gee, wonder why? Greenpeace at work?)

Completely Off-topic, but would you have any commentry on the UK Elections? I think you mentioned that you lived there for a while.