Ecological catastro - oh, never mind!

When I look at the New York Times online this morning, I see the pretty photo above (taken yesterday off the Louisiana coast) side by side with an alarmist ad: an oiled bird with the headline Offshore drilling is dirty and dangerous. So which is it? More the former than the latter, evidently. The NYT story begins: 'The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.'

The story gets less cheery as you read on, but still, it's obvious that it was mostly hype and manufactured horror that we've been engorging on Good Morning America for the past three months. All that remains now is to finish plugging that hole, clean up the beaches--and send the bill to BP! Poor BP. Poor Tony Hayward. Do you think that in Russia they'll allow him to have his life back? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford