Why not

So, I posted on Facebook my desire to use the word "skullduggery" (or, more correctly, I suppose, "skulduggery") in my everyday life. Based on the suggestions there, I have decided to take another stab at this whole blogging idea, and offer some commentary on misdeeds and the like in the news.

Currently, few misdeeds and wrong-actions are more visibly demanding of attention than the debacle in the Gulf of Mexico:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/us/09spill.html - this NY Times article offers an updated assessment of how the oil plume is proliferating.

I hear comparisons between the Obama administration handling of this current mess with Bush's handling of Katrina, and while I may not think that the Obama crowd has done nearly enough, let's be fair. Katrina was a natural disaster, not man-made. Predictions for the devastation were early enough and accurate enough for resources to be allocated to handling the situation proactively. What happened with the BP oil well, if early indicators are correct, was avoidable, and it was greed and hubris that got us here. There was no early warning, just a failure of conscience on the part of an oil company representative. And the complexity of cleaning up from an oil spill simply cannot be compared to cleaning up after a hurricane. They are two entirely different situations.

Yes, I urge the Obama administration to take fuller control and further steps to better address this terrible environmental disaster. But I also urge those who would have us turn this spill into a political opportunity to think twice. There are few points to be gained on the backs of the same folks who are already suffering in a region still not fully recovered from the last blow dealt to them. Have compassion, offer solutions, and save the blame and finger-pointing for later, if you will.