Burn On, Big Gulf, Burn On

If the mere threat of an oil rig accident in the Atlantic Ocean from offshore drilling wasn't enough to convince supporters of noted book-banning wolf killer Sarah Palin's energy policy - which was co-opted by President Obama earlier this month - to change their minds, then the real accident in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast should.

A BP oil derrick recently exploded, killing eighteen people and causing an underwater pipe to emit oil - now up to 42,000 gallons a day - into the the Gulf of Mexico. The oil slick is slowly making its way toward the shore, threatening several marshes and estuaries in Louisiana and possibly Mississippi. For a region still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, this man-made disaster maybe too much. Commercial fishing interests and environmentally sensitive areas alike are threatened, and no one knows what's going to happen. It could affect areas like Chandeleur Sound, just south of Gulfport, Mississippi, and western Mississippi Sound. Barrier islands that shield those waters, CNN reports, were devastated by Katrina in 2005 and haven't fully recovered.

Ironically, this is all happening as the Interior Department took a step in the right direction in energy policy - approving a wind turbine farm five miles off the coast of Nantucket.

The government plans to set fire to as much of the slick as possible to burn it out and prevent much of it from reaching the shore. So, "drill, baby, drill" has become, "burn, baby, burn."

That's why there's still no offshore drilling off the California coast. No one wants a "Frisco inferno."