Quote of the Day

“This is the first time anything vaguely like this has ever happened.” — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, pooh-pooh-ing Deepwater Horizon in the June 19 New York Times and displaying the benefits of a short-term memory. Barbour, who’s normally a sharp customer, has clearly forgotten the catastrophic Santa Barbara Channel oil spill of 1969. Compared to Deepwater Horizon, the Santa Barbara blowout ‘merely’ lasted 10 days and spilt 80,000 barrels worth of crude or so. However, it left such a stain on the national psyche that it kiboshed offshore oil drilling for more than two decades.