President Obama is scheduled to make a visit to the Gulf on Friday.  First things first though:

Scoop du jour: Forget politics. What inquiring, food-centric minds really want to know is, exactly what did President Barack Obama dine upon Tuesday night at the home of philanthropists Ann and Gordon Getty, where Sen. Barbara Boxer held a $17,600-a-plate dinner in support of her re-election campaign?

Who is Gordon Getty? Oh, nobody in particular:

[T]he fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty…. When his father died in 1976, Gordon assumed control of Getty’s US$2 billion trust. According to the Forbes 400, as of September 2008 his net worth is $2.5 billion, making him number 163 on the list of the richest Americans.

Of course, I’m sure there’s absolutely no connection whatsoever with the crisis in the Gulf and the timing of Obama’s fundraising dinner with a rich oil magnate.

Besides, the meal sounds positively scrumptious!

With gourmet Getty chef Jennifer Johnson at the stoves, you can be sure the 100 or so supporters who were expected got their money’s worth.

So Tuesday night, the plan was passed hors d’oeuvres, including quail egg with caviar and salmon ceviche with jicama and avocado on a tortilla chip.

Johnson’s first course featured a spring onion-asparagus tartlet with Meyer lemon vinaigrette-dressed frisee salad.

A main course of braised Kobe beef short ribs with potato puree and a salsa verde-topped spring vegetable ragout was followed by buckwheat crepes with roasted cherries and almond ice cream.

Rumor has it the quail eggs appetizer was a last minute substitute, because good Gulf shrimp is just too hard to find nowadays.  

On July 27, 2003, the oil tanker Tasman Spirit ran aground at the entrance to the port city of Karachi.  Laden with sweet crude, the vessel lay beached for two weeks before eventually breaking up and spilling 35,000 tons (10,780,000 gallons) of her cargo into the bay, from which an estimated 11,000 metric tons of toxic gasses known as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) evaporated into the air.

Fumes from the volatile organic compounds and mist containing hydrocarbons, accompanied by a strong smell, dispersed into the residential area, the researchers and others said. Local hospitals reported many cases of headaches, nausea and dizziness and seventeen schools in the vicinity were closed for about a week. Local media showed pictures of piles of dead fish and turtles on the oiled beach.

The tragic incident so close to a large city provided a chance to test the effects of oil spill VOCs on densely populated areas. Immediately following the spill, researchers began to study the health impact of the noxious fumes on the city’s approximately 700,000 affected residents.  

New Orleans residents are understandably annoyed over their city being enveloped by the smell of fuel. Mandie Landry, an attorney who works in the city’s Central Business District, told Yahoo! News that “it smells like it’d smell if a bus was in front of you blowing out exhaust fumes right in your face.”

Another local resident, Tulane University employee Laura Mogg, told us that she caught wind of the “terrible” and “gag-inducing” smell from her office building on the school’s sprawling uptown campus. “I smelled it the second I opened the door,” she said. “Really, it’s that strong.”

How many weeks/months will people in Louisiana and other states be forced to breathe these poisonous fumes as wave upon wave of toxic sludge hits their shores?  

What kinds short and long term health problems can these millions of people expect as a result?

We have yet to even remotely grasp the ecological, human and economic damage this disaster will cause.  Indeed, the more I read the more I fear that when the final butcher’s bill is taken, Deepwater Horizon could very well rival Chernobyl on the all time list of man-made disasters.  

And the most horrible part of all?  Nobody can do a damn thing to stop it.  

Ezra Klein, BiT (Broderite-in-Training) does his best to comfort a single mother about her Health Care prospects.

A reader writes in:

   

I do not understand how this bill will affect my family and me. I am a self-employed single mother. I cannot afford health care for myself and my children. I made $38,000 last year and I expect to make less than $35,000 this year. What does this health care reform mean for me? Will I be able to get coverage for my children and myself in this first year?

Not in the first year, necessarily. But when the bill goes into effect in 2014, your situation will change dramatically. Using the Kaiser Family Foundation’s premium calculator and a slightly stylized version of your situation (the calculator is not terribly flexible), here’s what I can say:

First, you’ll be buying insurance on the exchanges. That means no discrimination based on preexisting conditions, insurers who are being watched and regulated, lots of choices, and the buying power that comes from being part of a large risk pool rather than being on your own.

More specifically, your income would make you eligible for substantial subsidies. About $11,571 worth, to be precise (this is keyed to a family of four, I should say). The cap on your premium payments as a percentage of your income would be 4.4 percent. You’d be paying about $1,540 a year.

So for the next four years, this single working mother of at least two will be stuck waiting for the privilege to pay an extra $1500 she doesn’t have (not including copays and deductibles) for a bare bones health insurance policy that won’t even cover her if she becomes pregnant again accidentally.  And the best part?  If she doesn’t pay her mandated tithe to a for-profit insurer, the IRS will fine her even more money she doesn’t have.

Quite a sell job Obama & Co. has created for itself, don’t you think?  

After all of the teabagging hoopla, the breathless media coverage, and the Presidential hopenotics that have intentionally raised outsized expectations about what Obamacare actually does, the Dems are now forced to defend this deeply flawed and regressive legislation for the next two election cycles before most of the alleged ‘benefits’ (such as they are) even begin to kick in.

So get used to four more years of pandering Ezra Klein posts chock full of platitudes about ‘choice’ and ‘buying power’ (neither of which actually exists under this legislation) and specious arguments that if we all just stay patient, keep Smoking the Hopium*, and vote for the Democrats, our Brave New Healthcare Order awaits.

That is, of course, assuming there are any Democrats left in four years.

*h/t TheMomCat