Liquid Nitrogen will do the trick. A good friend living in Australia, that's an expert on these Oils Well, tells me that he sent a recommendation almost 3 weeks ago to BP, suggesting that they use Liquid Nitrogen. The reason is that Crude Oil has a lot of coagulants and other particles that freeze on contact with Liquid Nitrogen. Once the freezing slows and then stops the flow, a more permanent solution can be affixed.

If Bush were still in office you can bet your sweet ass that every lefty on this site would be screaming bloody murder at the administration's procrastination and calling for every cabinet member to be executed.
Not saying that the Obama admin has an answer or that they even should, just the fact that if the tables were turned....

Bingo........

Keith

Apples and oranges. Man-made disaster vs. nature caused. It's BP's rig, it's their responsiblity. BP should have been prepared for something like this. It was inevitable.

You're probably right though that most liberals would have wanted W's head if the tables were turned.

I think W's background as an oil-man would likely have done that, you guys are 100% right. It doesn't make it correct, but I bet it would've happened.

The sand barriers thing -- I heard the presser yesterday and the on-site commander (name escapes me) had a pretty reasonable answer, including:

a) this is a non-trivial request -- probably 3+ months to build
b) the sand barriers present immense logicstical problems (e.g. where to get the sand from)
c) the impact of making them is in and of itself an ecological impact, not to be taken lightly

It's easy to point the "inaction on our request" finger, but the "do no harm" Hippocratic oath might lead us to be a bit thoughtful before going here. I'm as frustrated as anyone that this all is going on, but let's not make it worse by guessin and taking wild shots.

Bobby "We don't want the federal government intervening in matters of the state of Louisiana" Jindahl?

The BS is him crying for federal assistance now. What happened to "state sovereignty?"

Typical right-wing hypocrisy: We don't need no federal government... until we need the federal government.

Olbermann said that too?

Ya know... brilliant minds think alike they say.

I haven't seen an episode of "Countdown" in a long time sorry to say Hank. When I do watch TV at 10 pm... it's usually History Channel or Nat Geo.

I gotta admit though... you ARE the definitive expert on ignorance!

Yep.

I never bought into the "hopey, changey" stuff in the first place.

Obama is still better than Bush was or McCain would have been.

Hey, if like you say, things are still pretty much the same... what exactly is it about Obama that drives you wingnuts so crazy?

A whole lot better than that doomy-gloomy-I-hope-America-fails thingy the cons embrace.

Seems to me the banksters did a pretty good job of breaking this country without all those social programs.

A lot of the European Union countries too. What with Goldman Sachs sellin' 'em billions of dollars worth of allegedly AAA rated securities that they KNEW weren't worth the paper that they were written on. The financial derivative house of cards is what's got the world in recession right now.

Social programs aren't killing the Social-Democracies of Europe Hank... the "Global Economy" is.

Do you know WHY Reagan began the whole deficit spending policy?

Because the corporate cabal that pulled his Alzheimer's-addled strings knew that they couldn't do away with Social Security, Medicare and Welfare directly. The People would never stand for it. But they also knew that if they could run the deficits high enough... those programs would eventually have to be dealt with. Couple that with the Baby Boomer generation now reaching retirement age en masse... along with a bunch of financial fear-mongerin' and you now have the situation we are faced with today.

Lemme ask ya Hank... who REALLY benefits from "fiscal responsibility"?

I'll give you a hint... it ain't you or I or the vast majority of American citizens.

Yet you continue to scrub the scrotums of those who would just as soon see you livin' under a bridge somewhere once you reach your golden years.

So I gotta ask you Hank... WHY?

What's in it for you?

If that's genuinely a concern for you, why aren't you more motivated to pay a larger portion of your debt now (increase taxes) to reduce the burden of your kids and grandkids?

I guess, then, protecting your offspring from paying your debts isn't really all that important to you.

"Increasing taxes during a recession is quite possibly THE most insane thing that should be considered."

Decreasing them during war time WAS the most insane.

RR began the era of borrowing from SS.

+100

I suppose that depends on how genuinely concerned you are with your offsprings future debt responsibilities.

Do either increased taxing or decreased spending really net us any long term benefits? My guess is no, seeing as both indirectly lead to increased unemployment, and subsequently lower consumer spending. If you increase taxes, people buy less stuff, and small businesses suffer. When they fail, people lose jobs and can no longer contribute to the economy. Reducing spending, while it prevents the need to raise taxes, ultimately means laying people off, which leads to the same problem of more people who cannot spend.

Back to the original topic for just a moment... I know it's been said a hundred different ways in this thread, but this thing is going to screw us pretty hard. I know, I know, they just lowered gas prices a bit, but I'm pretty sure we're about to see some pretty steep increases over the summer. BP may end up shouldering the bill initially, but you can bet we'll be the ones who pay it in the end (if it ever gets truly paid).

Keep those gardens healthy and the chickens laying, folks....

Okay, I admit I didn't read all this and did not visit the site Ryley makes refrence to, but I sure as hell don't see any info blackout. The tube is saturated with photos of oil on the beaches and marshes, fishermen looking sadly at oily oysters, diagrams of how far it might spread, oil soaked birds, clams, etc, and constant photos of the spewing oil. Not much of a blackout IMHO.

The "top kill" procedure is going on now. You can watch a live feed here:

Oil Spill

I don't see Obama's administration as having any culpability in the BP disaster. Too new and likely only recently learned that MMS has been in bed with the industry since day one. That's makes Congress (as an institution) and numerous prior administrations culpable for not requiring better regulatory oversight. That doesn't mean that better oversight would prevent oil well explosions; it only means that better oversight would reduce the frequency of such events. Total prevention probably requires zero offshore drilling, which is a different subject.

I'm puzzled by all the gov't. activity over the oil leak. The administration needs to send the memo that neither the government nor anyone else, including BP, knows what to do or how to stop the leak. Instead, in order to appear presidential and doing something, numerous federal agencies have diverted tons of staff to LA in regards to the spill. Except for a few that can actually contribute something useful, what I'm hearing is that hundreds, maybe thousands, of federal employees who have been sent to the Gulf attend daily briefings. That's it. They attend meetings and are briefed about the latest goings-on. But they aren't actually doing anything to solve the problem. Not that they wouldn't. But because they can't. Not to worry however; at least every week each Cabinet Secretary can report that he or she has sent XX federal staff to the Gulf to deal with the oil spill catastrophe, which is mostly true, except that next to no one is actually dealing with it because for the most part there is next to nothing that people can actually do that is worth doing in the long run. So scads of staff are hurrying up to look busy so that the gov't can report that it is doing everything possible to deal with the oil spill, which is also mostly true, even though those scads of people are just attending briefing meetings day in and day out.

That is my problem with gov't. The lack of intellectual honesty. I'd rather they just send those who can actually contribute to problem solving, even if it appears that it is too few, instead of sending many for appearances sake. That's my fairly non-partisan appraisal.

Sg