Burn baby Burn.

Napalm it.

On the sea and if needed in the marshes too. Wild fire is natural and the environment recovers.

There's a huge outcry whenever blame for this is put on President Bush - specifically Dick Cheney's energy commission that rolled back or rejected the safeguards that could have prevented this.
This is part one. Part two is the GOP brain trust members like Sarah Palin blaming the spill on environmentalists with just enough tortured logic so that the base will say, "My God, she's right again!"

Next up: Blaming the Iraq War on peace activists.

"Ain't never gonna' happen" means six weeks from now when all else fails.

Those wetlands and waterfowl are ruining the oil!

I just hope everyone looking at this feels sick every time they see the car needs gas.

Every day this fantasy meanders into focus several times, and is always hovering in the blurry background...

I am living in the shade of a huge solar panel. Someplace really hot, like Death Valley. There is a good well and decent water table. Underground is a nice cool inbuilt cavern with all mod cons. I go out on the deck, and there is a city of thousands of people who have turned their backs on the gas stations, irrevocably.
There are pool halls, pools, poker dens, dance venues, libraries and fabulous theaters.

And there are cars. Cool, fast cars. Comfortable cars that go vroom on freeways, all electric. And there are high-speed trains, lots of them, snaking all over the countryside.

Bill -

George Bush did not tell Transocean to drill faster than they were comfortable with. BP did. It resulted in fracturing the rock formation and having to start over.

George Bush did not tell Transocean to continue drilling after big rubber chunks of the annular came up the drill pipe. BP did.

George Bush did not tell Transocean to continue drilling with a blowout preventer that had one malfunctioning control module, and leaking hydraulic pressure. BP did.

George Bush did not tell Halliburton to cap the well without heavy drilling mud inside of it, per standard procedure. BP did, on the morning of the explosion.

This disaster is squarely on BP. Not Bush, Not Cheney, Not Obama, Not Palin. BP. Don't believe me? Watch this episode of 60 minutes where they interview a survivor of the rig explosion.

I'm pretty sure he, and the Berkeley professor of engineering also interviewed, know more about what caused this than everyone that reads this blog combined.

Back on topic - using a nuclear explosive to solve this wouldn't have ever been on the table specifically because of the geology in the Gulf. It's not a giant slab of granite - there's about 3000 feet of muck laying on top of the granite. In order to 'safely' use a nuclear explosive to do this job, you'd have to drill down just about as far as you'd have to drill to make a relief well, so there's no reason to.

MachineShed Fred,
Either you are reciting what the media reported, or you have some independent knowledge of the oil business.
My opinion is based on my own hunches but if it matters, I did grow up in the oil business in Arabia.

I don't think a contractor on a job can just say, "But the client told me to." People were killed here. If an electrician went to a home and installed some faulty wiring because the homeowner was in a hurry, your excuse wouldn't last 2 seconds. Halliburton shares in the responsibility here, and I believe they are being protected. I don't think your litany of excuses would hold up in court.

Cheney went to great lengths to hide the secret energy talks. He went all the way to the Supreme Court. One of the things I'd like to see when BP goes to court, is what was in there because the leaks - political that is - indicate the reason Cheney resisted so much is that he was acting as an agent for the oil companies.
He spent 8 years destroying the regulation of business so why are you so sure he didn't hurt things here too?

"so why are you so sure he didn't hurt things here too?"

Why? Occam's Razor.

This sticks to high heaven of some middle-management moron trying to increase his bonus by pushing people to get stuff done faster. They wouldn't accept any delay in getting this well online. They cut so many corners in this operation in order to save money, that it's going to cost them billions.

As far as the contractor goes, you're right. They should have done it right regardless of what the BP company man says. However, since we already see that BP doesn't give half a damn about doing things right, who's to say that BP doesn't go with a different contractor next time who will do what they say? He's put in the position of cutting a corner and maybe having something go wrong, or telling this guy to stuff it and losing millions of dollars of business for his company.

We know what would have been right today, but that Transocean man, with his experience, probably didn't see much harm in doing it BP's way at the time. This crew had gone 7 years without a serious injury in one of the most dangerous jobs there is. This crew just set a world record for the deepest successful drill.

None of that excuses liability for this stupendous mess, but don't forget that even today BP's CEO is still looking right into the camera and lying about how bad this is. He's still making excuses and trying to shift blame. He looks like the Iraqi Minister of Information up there - a huge joke.

Except, no one is laughing.

Here's something from the Washington Post:

“MMS [Minerals Management Service] actions are shaped in part by the 2005 regulation it adopted that assumes oil and gas companies can best evaluate the environmental impact of their operations. The rule governing what information MMS should receive and review before signing off on drilling plans states: ‘The lessee or operator is in the best position to determine the environmental effects of its proposed activity based on whether the operation is routine or non-routine.’”

It's easy to follow regulations when you're the Decider - so to speak. It's much the same way as Wall Street was virtually allowed to regulate itself and pay the companies that assessed the triple-A ratings for junk.

There will be a huge effort to protect Dick Cheney and Halliburton from any blame here, but I've seen this man's work and in addition to the outward stuff he packed all these agencies with his allies - which is to say the oil industry's allies. Cheney lived to twist and turn a million little knobs of government. It wasn't all the obvious no-bid contracts Halliburton was handed - a lot of it was a million little power plays.

In fact, the real question is if Cheney didn't greatly impact the oil industry, what was he doing?
The oil companies could demand their money back for dereliction of duty.