The finger-pointing has only scratched the surface. Blame for this environmental catastrophe will be thrown around for next generation or so.

At the risk of getting kicked off this blog, for the 5th or 6th time, and knowing the left slant of it and the majority of the posters...Dick Cheney's old company doesn't drill a drop of oil, they are a oil production maintainence support company.

As the articule stated, they were prepping the well to cap it for future use, and they have capped thousands of wells with no blow outs.

Yes....this is a mess, and yes, Alaska was a mess ,but that was cleaned up as well.

All parties have said they accept responsibility.

So when the "greenies" among you start with the Dick this and Dick that......it's folks like those that will post against this incident, will not give up anything they use that oil is a base factor in making that product.

And what you don't want to think about is how fast this country stops, if the flow of oil from those that have it, to those that don't, can happen in 48-72 hours.

Until pure synthenic oil is made, or any use for oil to build anything is devised, we better clean this mess up as fast as we can.....and drill here, to get rid of oil dependency as fast as we can.

You may now tell me how we must protect our birds and fish...but when your done, those smiling ARAB,and Hugo Chavez faces will still be there...screwing us.

My day will be made, when we smile back at them...with a single finger salute.

An underwater oil volcano gushing 6 million gallons per day and nobody knows how to shut the damn thing off. I have a real bad feeling about this one becoming a mega-epic-disaster.

And this just chaps my ass royally:

'The Wall Street Journal reports that the well lacked a remote-control shut-off switch that is required by Brazil and Norway, two other major oil-producing nations. The switch, a back-up measure to shut off oil flow, would allow a crew to remotely shut off the well even if a rig was damaged or sunken. BP said it couldn't explain why its primary shut-off measures did not work. U.S. regulators considered requiring the mechanism several years ago. They decided against the measure when drilling companies protested, saying the cost was too high, the device was only questionably effective, and that primary shut-off measures were enough to control an oil spill.'

Cementing a deep-water drilling operation is a process fraught with danger. A 2007 study by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that cementing was the single most important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period -- more than equipment malfunction. Halliburton has been accused of a poor cement job in the case of a major blowout in the Timor Sea off Australia last August. An investigation is underway.

I am not a "greenie," but am upset and offended by the devastation this type of disaster causes the environment. And, geez, in light of Haliburton's history of slip shod - neigh, downright lethally bad construction standards in Iraq, I think it's fair to question their role in this.

Just like Bush was asleep at the wheel with Katrina, Obama was late to this party.

Once the investigation is even part way over FEMA boss W. Craig Fugate will be under the Obama bus in no time.

But it'll be interesting to see who the rubes will blame this on. LOL And 'they' claimed Reagan was the ultimate Teflon President.

Jack Peek,
You write, "Yes....this is a mess, and yes, Alaska was a mess, but that was cleaned up as well."
Sounds good but it's not true. Some of the Valdez tanker oil was cleaned up but a lot of it is still there.
I grew up in an oil town in Arabia and I watched the men gather to work out one problem or another. I was always impressed by their ingenuity and the pride they took in crafting a solution to a bad problem.
When BP basically said, "We'd take help from anybody right now" it scared the hell out of me. It basically means those oil men have gathered and they don't know what to do to shut this down anytime soon.
I still hope there's a roughneck out there somewhere who comes up with an idea, and fast. Getting some of the oil back out of the water is a huge priority but we've got to cap this bastard as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, the pro-business "Drill, Baby, Drill" set should spare us the lectures. Especially while making simplistic statements like yours that aren't true.

I'm no 'Greenie,' but it should be noted that BP especially has a bad record of pennypinching and shoddy maintenance in the gathering lines at Prudhoe Bay and their Texas refinery, which exploded, killing several employees. Time will tell whether this episode is related to the earlier failures.

Again when there is no regulation, the bought off repugs with overloaded pockets of cash will never pay for the accepted methods of safety equipment. http://tpzoo.wordpress.com/ will show the Norwegian valve system that has no record of failure, like the kind they use in the North Seas. We are just so corrupt, we should still use the firing squads.

John, you should do a search on who donates to the Dems. You'll find they are every bit in the pockets of big business as the Repubs. Dems just do a better job of hiding it from the public. Just an FYI, business pay tribute to both parties to hedge their bets.

I've had a number of discussions about this with friends this past week. And it all reminded of me of something my contracts professor used to harp on back in the day (mid 70s).... we allow corporations to externalize their costs onto others (future generations and taxpayers who have to clean the messes and onto the environment) with absolutely no consequences. It's probably time that stopped; though,given how the corporate interests now own government, I am not holding my breath.

Environmentalists are more to blame for this than anybody else. They're wrong about a lot of things and this proves it.

Most recent rumors are that it was caused by a North Korean SSC Sang-o Class Mini Submarine self-destructing.

This article brings the crazy pretty hard: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1367.htm

Amazing a long post by Jack Peek and not one all caps word.

And typical of the right all about increasing supplies & nothing about reducing use.