Well,

The honeymoon is over. The Obama administration has had a "deer in the headlights" reaction to the B.P. oil spill for too long to be ignored. I've been quick to pounce on G.W. Bush for his talent for the absurdly extravagent demonstration of foot-in-mouth, but, Obama's crew is getting their own legacy of such now. Granted, Obama didn't shoot himself in the foot by creating crises out of thin air like the previous bunch did by inciting chaos in Iraq, and ignoring Afghanistan....still:

1. Six excrutiating weeks have passed, and the Federal Gov't hasn't marshalled all available resources in this struggle. I recall the effort after the Haiti earthquake: do our own citizens deserve less?

2. Nations around the world have offered help, and there's been no reply, no coordination, no master-plan from our government. I think I could have done better with a napkin and a pen on my knee while flying down there in two hours! WTF??

Why is this acceptable to us?

It used to be that the U.S. was the nation that led. We were the "can do" people.

Now,

1970s: J. Carter predicted middle eastern wars and turmoil. He wanted us to get off our addiction to oil. what have we done in the last 35 years? We built SUVs. Outstanding.

1980s: insufficient regulation of banking led to the S&L crisis. Took a decad to liquidate that gaffe.

1990s: The Tech bubble. The business cycle is banished. How'd that work out?

The "ots": housing and Wall street debacle. No regulation, no one minding the store, leave the crooks in charge. When they f**k up, reward them with a bailout.

Now: sitting helplessly by as the entire Gulf of Mexico is fouled.

Now: no space program. Not even the low-earth-orbit fedex known as the space shuttle. We have to borrow rockets from Russia.

Now: two generations of politicans, avid for re-election, have lied about the "true cost" of infrastruture. They wanted to be able to say they held the line on taxes. So, bridges, sewers, the electrical grid, roads, rail service, you name it, are rusting and falling apart. We get the gov't we want, and we wanted to believe the lies.

Now: no energy policy? The right wants us to drill more and faster? Seriously? How about an electric car? The ability is there, fix the grid, harness wind, waves, water. make the frigging car.

When I was a kid, I believed we could do anything? What happened?

What in the name of God happened to the land I was proud of?

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

What I could do with a napkin:

Name someone with military background. Someone with experience and grace under pressure to synchronize and coordinate the effort. A Colin Powell for example.

It is clear beyond all endurance that no matter how big B.P. is as a multi-national corp, they are in over their heads here. We might well send them the bill after the fact, but, there are resources sitting idle in the nations I've mentioned that aren't being called upon. Booms have been offerd from Japan and Norway. Why not platoon the other oil companies into the effort. There is capacity to respond that simply isn't being tapped.

I drive a Hyndai Accent, it gets 37 mpg. I had hoped that maybe this time around I'd drive something more efficient. There were cars doing this well 30 years ago. Our efforts to improve our efficiency have been an on-going and bad joke.

I've grown hoarse with effort: writing to congresspeople, writing editorials to the local newspaper. The inertia has been suffocating for 30 years.

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

Industrial accidents and medical malpractices are always caused by the so-called experts (competent people)unavoidably; because they are also error-prone humans. There is no error-proof solutions for mistakes and accidents committed by humans.

The only tangible recourse available for victims in these cases is financial compensation and that can only be guaranteed by mandating insurance requirements to the Entrepreneurs and by regulating the Insurers, when setting limits on policies and claims.

Good governance demand that the Entrepreneurs and the Victims are treated equitably.What Obama has done now is give an open check to the victims with no regard for BP,calling them the villain.
This attitude tips the scale favoring only the victims, which might well be the right thing to do in this particular instance(due to inadequate insurance) but is very counter productive in the long run.

If this trend continues,we might as well sing Requiem to freemarket Entrepreneurs and look up for guidance from other form of governance,if one is available to fit our bill.

I'm going to make a couple predictions here that might be pretty far-fetched, and I'm going to combine them with a reading of the political situation that a lot of folks might disagree with. I could be completely off on both of them, but I don't think so. When it comes to the predictions, only time will tell. When it comes to my reading of the political situation--well... some folks might view these comments as me being an apologist for Obama. I won't really argue against that impression, because I am in a way rationalizing his political choices. I really think that's because my reading of the situation actually is that he's playing this as smart as he can. If that reads as me being on his side then so be it.

Obama is in a real bind on this one, and the problem is such that it doesn't really compare to Katrina or several of the other disasters which Bush gets blamed for. There's a very good reason for that, though, that will become obvious in just a second....

First off, I agree with those who are suggesting that this thing is going to require more than BP's pathetic efforts to fix. It looks to me like we're going to have to engage in a very large project that may take a year or more to complete. It's like D-Day or the Hoover Dam. BP is out of their depth (pun noted) and even if they had the capacity to deal with the situation properly, it's unlikely that they would do so because it's simply not in their financial interest.

Corporations (not just BP--but nearly all corporations) have so embraced the short-term bottom line in the past 30 years that they simply will not make a long-term decision that cuts into those short-term profits, even when those decisions are in their long-term interest. Corporations only rarely see past the end of the next quarter, let alone the next year.

Because the oil spill was created by a multi-national corporate entity, Obama can't simply step in and take over. Should he do so, the various world corporations would claim that he's engaging in a kind of anti-corporate socialist takeover again. That is, after all, what they claimed when he bailed out the banking system. It turns out it wasn't any more true then than it would be now, but the difference is that with the banking system we really were on the edge of a depression, so he had to spend a certain amount of political capital in order to keep us capitalist....

Unlike Hurricane Katrina, the 9/11 attacks, or any number of other situations that occurred under Bush, for which we actually do expect a direct government response, we expect a corporation to clean up after itself. Of course, corporations--particular oil companies--don't usually do that, but they do use that assumption in their PR campaigns and political wrangling. Had Obama stepped in from Day 1 of the crisis, the immediate hue and cry from the corporate world would be that this was yet another example of goverment interference in the free market.

The problem, of course, is that for those of us watching events, it looks like Obama is choosing to do nothing. He can't even begin a process of capping this oil spill because it looks like it's going to take a massive effort. Once one begins to marshal such an effort the corporation responsible will not only stop their own effort, but begin the process of claiming they are the victims of government high-handedness. That effort will undermine the relief project itself, split the already divided government straight down party lines, and could very likely delay the project for several years or even longer.

Before Obama steps in, BP has to demonstrably and inarguably fail. At that point, he can start the process of capping the spill without those who automatically line up against him claiming he should give the corporation responsible "a chance" to do what most of us realize they are both incapable of accomplishing and disinclined to do at all.

I'd guesstimate that it's going to take about a year (6-12 from now) before the public reaches the conclusion that BP isn't going to be able to do this thing on their own. If Obama had stepped in from Day 1 to deal with the situation he'd be confronted with the obstructionist politics of the corporate lackeys in our government (mostly Republicans--but an awful lot of Democrats too) who would delay the project. Their delays would actually add more time to the project than it would to let BP fail first.

So, in conclusion, it's better for Obama to hang back and get a gameplan for the effort together in the meantime. But he can't actually DO anything yet. Any action would be seen as undermining the "responsible" efforts of our morally upstanding corporate world, who view themselves and the market itself as an inherently moral enterprise. (Or that's at least how they present themselves.) Otherwise, the inevitable obstructionism of the politics will wind up costing more time, money and effort than any immediate action on his part would take up.

I'm not sure if it was U.S. Government or BP who asked for spare equipment but City of Oulu, Finland, sent 800 metres of oil boom. I hope it is enough.

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Geeman has thought this thing through from Obama's persective very well and thoroughly. My hope is that BP can indeed build the relief well by August.

The Administration already has insisted that BP start drilling a second relief well in case something goes wrong with the first try.

The problem lies with the oil already in the water, and that which will flow in the next 6-8 weeks. Point well taken Geeman about Obama needing to let this play out until it is obvious that BP can't handle it. Two points:

1. We'd better pray that they can handle the relief well part, and get better at the capping and collection part. Our government lacks the technology and the know how to do this if they fail. We'd have to call in the other oil companies to try.

2. I think most people realize that cleaning up hundreds of miles of shoreline is beyond the capacity of any one corporation to complete. BP is on the hook for 20 billion, so they will pay over time. But, while they may foot the bill, and the groundwork is in place, this operation needs to have the urgency and coordination of a named military operation such as Deseert Storm Noble Eagle, Iraqi Freedom...etc.

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"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong". (Knight's Oath, Kingdom of Heaven)

Thanks for the above thoughful comments. I would like to see a world map that shows how much off shore drilling there is.
By which companies and countries showing quanity and pressure of oil.

Obama is a sweet talker.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-16-2010/day-58---the-strife-aquatic

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Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. - Plato

Ok i did not know about the MMS.
Then what exactly is the job of MMS.

Whats happened to this area? or is it another Exxon-Valdez.

Is there any chance of getting back the fishing industry?

Reliability is a must -but the minor details of the story are skipped altogether.