Following earlier confident statements about “no fracking arrangements having been affected by the floods in Colorado”, the shot below was taken by a Denver Telegraph snapper on Thursday:

The grey-brown slurry cascading down the hill of this picture is fracked oil.

“Yes we can” promised Presidential hopeful Barack Obama throughout much of 2008. It was without doubt the most empty, shallow and banal slogan in political history – and that’s really saying something. But as all those who foolishly placed their trust in this void of a man found out, no they wouldn’t….and neither would he.

Ironically, the slogan became an unspoken way of life for the very villains Obama obliquely promised to rein in: the media barons, the investment bankers, and the Treasury officers, politicians and central bankers…..all of whom were corrupt, denialist and pushing agendas they knew would enrich them – while pauperising the rest of us. “Yes we can,” they said, “because we’ve paid the cops and the pols to look the other way”. “Yes we can,” they said, “because the voters are asleep”. “Yes we can,” they said, “because there is no equality before the law any more, only privileged protection for us”.

The assertion that “we can” – in the sense that it’ll work in the end – has been expanded to included the ClubMed area of the EU suffering undeserved and idiotic austerity that was always bound to be an economic Angel of Death, QE in both the US and the UK, and stealing from bank depositors by belatedly declaring them to be investors rather than customers. In fact, some words and punctuation have been quietly added over time, such that the promise – no longer a slogan, but a cast-iron promise – has become “Yes, we can do anything we f**king well want”.

The bollocks about fracking has been pushed and propagated by the oil business and their useful idiots for some time now. The headless chickens looked like they were home and dry…..but when the weather turned wet in Colorado, the chickens came home to roost. Imagine a hyper-fracked Britain ten years ago and how it might deal with the sort of torrential rain we’ve had during the last four winters out of five.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the frackophiles handle this one. It may well turn out to be bullsh*t on a scale to make Fukushima look like the unvarnished truth.

Yes we can…but should we in the first place?