The Left's weird relationship with risk and the misery that results...

While I was on vacation a couple stories broke that crystallize how the elite Left views risk of various types. The first of these was the Icelandic volcano eruption and resulting ash cloud that enveloped much of Europe. Much of the airspace over Europe was closed for up to six days stranding travelers and wreaking havoc on commerce and the European airline industry. (Fortunately my own European vacation was not affected as my wife and I arrived in Paris a few hours before the eruption and returned a few days after the bans were lifted.)

If such an event had happened in the US, the Federal Aviation Administration would have informed the airlines of where the ash cloud was and advised against flying into it. Individual airlines, and subsequently their passengers, would have been able to decide for themselves if the risk merited grounding their aircraft. Not so in Europe, where bureaucrats know best.....how to play the "c.y.a." game that is.

It took British Airways, KLM and Air France to send up test flights 3-4 days into the ban, showing no damage to the plane engines, before the regulators would relent. In the meantime, those airline and others have lost hundreds of millions. Stranded passengers have lost thousands as they've racked up credit card debt and dipped into savings to sustain themselves in airports all over the world.

Now to be fair, this event was unprecedented, however test flights should have began within a day or two. A day or two closure was probably prudent, but the individual airlines should have been permitted to assume the risk and consequently their passengers as well.

Meanwhile, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has sparked outrage from the Left with one democrat congressman proposing suspending all current offshore drilling. This is a wonderful idea if your idea of a good time is paying $5/gallon for gas. I suppose the next time there's a fatal traffic accident all automotive traffic should be suspended as well.

BP, and other energy companies, assume considerable risk when drilling. Obviously, considerable fines will be levied against BP (assuming they are at fault and this isn't a bizarre "ends justify the means" form of eco-terrorism) and steps must be taken to minimize the chances of an event like this happening in the future.

On a related matter, John Kerry and others continue to push their cap-and-trade scheme, ostensibly to save the world from Global Warming, a phenomenon that has been widely discredited since the Climategate emails story broke in November. On an unrelated matter, the Obama administration apparently thinks Iran will just hold a giant fireworks display (Location: east coast of the Mediterranean) when they master nuclear weapons. Oddly, they think nothing could possibly go wrong while taking over 1/6th of the economy with a massive health care bill that many of their Congressional supporters didn't even read.

So to sum things up, the Left believes any risk regarding the environment as too great, but hostile radical Islamic regimes having nukes is just something we need to learn to live with. Those Islamic terrorists that want to kill and subjugate everyone that doesn't worship Allah the way they do? Well, they're just misunderstood. At least European bureaucrats just want to cover their own asses.