Suspend the Jones Act

All things being equal, it appears the Gulf oil spill actually IS Obama's Katrina, only worse.  Without a discernible smidgeon of ability to actual lead or govern, the Obama Administration has made misstep after misstep in handling BP, stopping the flow of oil (although I'm not ready to throw them under the bus on this one just yet) and clean up.

Its the clean up that concerns us now.  Solutions have been popping up on the news, YouTube, blogs, etc for quite some time now. Booms, hay, hair, sand, Kevin Cosner's thingamajig, oil sucking barges.  Yet somehow none of these things are being done.  Somehow its Dawn dish washing liquid to the rescue of the animals after they are soaked in oil, but take it out of the Gulf before it reaches our shores? Wait! Stop! Do you have flashlights and flotation devices on these boats?  The rank incompetence is stunning, and frankly embarrassing, and sadly dangerous.

Now to the Jones Act, which requires vessels going from one US port to another to be American flagged and have an American crew (with American wages propping up American unions, by the way).  So when 13 or so countries offered to help clean up the oil spill, our stupidity got in the way.  Some of those ships have even done this before with other oil spills!  But no, we can't have the style of the precious unions, who delivered the 2008 election to Obama be cramped in any way, even if it is to save the Gulf.  And lets be honest, if Obama was any kind of national leader, instead of just a hack for the unions, this would have been done in April.  If Obama really gave a damn about this country, its people, its land, its economy, he would be helping Jindal, not golfing.

There are several wonderful conservatives running for office in Connecticut, for both state and federal positions.  Among those is Jerry Labriola, running for Congress against Rosa DeLauro, who yesterday called on President Obama to suspend the Jones Act.  Read his blog post here.