It's about enough to make a happy person get depressed. Hundreds of thousands of gallons, if not more, of crude oil, are being thrust right into the waters of our precious Gulf of Mexico by the blowout of an industrial deep water oil drilling platform that happened on earth day , of all days.

I think Obama is way underperforming on this - especially for a guy who ran on being an environmentalist, and one who would take on industry. This has just been one been embarassment and headache for Obama. He had just said that expanding off shore drilling was good. Ouch - I bet he regrets that.

But this is going to be one of the most devastating events in the history of our nation I think. Obama will be tagged with it. And while I have sympathy for his feeling a little hamstrung in the context of legislation and a certain very aggressive segment of public advocacy that don't want the executive branch interfering with private business. But in situations like this, which are beyond extreme and way into the "something has to be done and done right now" category, the failure to act more decisively is apparent, and is going to hurt Obama. And not that the Republicans are going to be able to exploit Obama on environmental failures - everyone knows things would be worse if we still had republicans in charge - but it will help the Greens I think in the long run.

The said thing is to see these governmental officials come on the air and say that they have to work with BP because the industry controls all the people who might have an inkling of what to do. Well, if that is the case, then why did the government permit these facilities when obviously their "fail-safes" were anything but?