by Randy Rieland
Photo: The White House
Top Hat, Top Kill, Junk Shot, Enough Already. I don’t know
about you but it sure feels like nobody’s going to stop this leak. Even BP CEO
and chief spinmeister Tony Hayward is lowering expectations. This mess is officially
out of control.
“Plug
the damn hole”
Presidents don’t do impotence—usually. But while
BP pipes spew non-stop on webcams, President Obama reduced to sending Cabinet
members to the scene where they hold daily press briefings to explain what BP
is (or is not) doing. Should we be surprised then at Obama’s “Plug the damn
hole” outburst at a recent White House meeting?
In his Washington
Post blog Joel Achenbach calls BP the ballerina and the federal government the Stage
Mom. But here’s an alt analogy: BP is the teen learning to drive and the
government is the parent in the front seat. Only he doesn’t know how to drive
either.
They got nothin’
The speculation in Washington is that if BP can’t
pull off its “top kill” gambit tomorrow, the White House will need to do something dramatic, like take over.
The feds do have the authority. But what would they do if they took charge of
the unstoppable spill? The government’s
top man in the field, Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen, flat out concedes that
the feds are out of their league-technically-when it comes to plugging the
damn hole.
Got
any ideas?
Andrew Revkin, in his Dot Earth blog in the New York Times, wants a swat team, of
gung-ho geologists and engineers. David Gergen, writing for CNN, wants to rally
the country’s best and brightest to brainstorm a solution.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) wants to send in the troops.
Let the U.S. military take over the cleanup operation.
Screw
the army, we want Bruce Willis!
There is one other option out there, a dark option that
BP wants nothing to do with. Nuclear weapons. Hey, we’re serious here,
people! The Soviet Union has used nukes four times in the past to cap leaking
oil and gas wells. Sure it sounds crazy, but according to Russian writer
Vladimir Lagovsky, the explosion “compresses the
rock and squeezes the channel shut.”
Of course, resorting to nukes could be a tough call
for a Nobel Peace Prize winner, notes Christopher Brownfield, writing in The Daily Beast.
… using nuclear weapons, even for peaceful purposes, would be
problematic for a president who stood in Prague and declared that the world
should rid itself of such devices. If President Obama were to use a nuke to
close this well, he would give other states an excuse to seek nuclear weapons
of their own.
Oh, and by the way your poll numbers suck
Surprise, surprise. More than half the
people surveyed in the latest CNN poll are unhappy with the way Obama is handling the Gulf disaster.
Mr. President, plug that damn hole.
Related Links:
The 7 dumbest things in BP’s spill response plan
BP gears up for ‘top kill’ to plug oil leak, despite doubts
