Time for Thorns

Here’s the link to the BP report on the Deepwater Horizon disaster,  if you feel like wading through its nearly 200 pages.    I don’t,  at the moment.

h/t Daniel Foster at The Corner

What interests me in  this report was that Thad Allen is sending letters to BP.    Why the hell is the National Incident Commander using snail mail?   To create a paper trail for the lawsuits?

h/t Daniel Foster at The Corner.

The current  test results on the new cap are  less than optimal.  Still, the news is better than it was in that the cap is thus  far holding.,  which is great,  but leaves  other problems unsolved.

An LSU professor has designed an elegantly  simple skimmer,  and tested it on a small scale.    Rest assured we won’t see it in action any time soon due to the glacial pace of the government.   In fact, by the time it gets a look,  the spilled oil will have emulsified,  making the oil much harder tor remove from the water.

This video  lays out the time-line of the bungling by His Oneness.

But this video is even  more important,  with ordinary people telling how locals are being destroyed by work rules and retaliated against.

The  new cap is in place  — check  this interview for real-time information on the Gulf spill from Rory Cooper,  director of strategic communications at the Heritage Foundation,  who just spent a week there.  Of course,  His Oneness has found an excuse to delay testing of the cap.

Meanwhile,  the Obama Administration has issued a second drilling moratorium,  which along with the de facto moratorium on shallow-water drilling,  is killing the Gulf Coast  economy.    Not that His Oneness gives a damn,  since only Florida voted for him.  I suspect Democrats will lose a lot of ground  in Louisiana over this.

Sky News has brought up an  interesting point on losing tax revenues which I hadn’t considered.

David Freddoso gives  a heads up on the forthcoming report on the government’s response to the oil spill.

UPDATE:   The  report is out,   and Freddoso  informs us that the White  House,  BP,  and the Coast Guard have lied about the assets actually deployed.   Gee,   I’m stunned!   Aren’t you?

I’ve just begun to read the PDF file,   but I hope to find some backup for the claims Dick Morris sets  forth here,   beyond what my Alabama friends have confirmed.

FURTHER UPDATE:  A bipartisan Senate committee voted to establish an oil spill  commission separate from that of His Oneness even before the report came out.

By the way,  there were no  “burrowed in”  Bush appointees overseeing Deepwater Horizon as Nancy Pelosi claimed.

Newsbusters does its  usual fine job of pointing out the hysteria in the media over BP chief Tony Hayward yachting,  which ignored His Oneness playing yet  another round of golf.

Of course,  Hayward had just been demoted,  while Obama still holds his office,   though more and more people are beginning to see past the rhetoric to the largely empty reality.

I watched the speech.   I thought it was awful.  Quinn Hilyer did a live blog  here,   and  here.   Nobody at The Corner was impressed, beginning with  K-Lo on Twitter,  and  Daniel Foster,  but Iain Murray  summed it up best.

MSNBC had  a trio of unhappy campers:   Chris Matthews,  Keith Olbermann and Howard Fineman.  Who’d a thunk it?

And Greg Pollowitz at Planet Gore reports  that AP fact-checked His Oneness!   Gee,  they’re only two years late…

Russ Ferguson is  tired of talk,  while Peter Ferrara calls His Oneness a  green pied piper.    Erik Erickson was  overdone in cliches for me, but correctly mentioned Jimmy Carter,  while Jonah Goldberg saw it all as  presidential goo.   Do read Jonah’s post on what he left out of that New York Post piece,   here.

Jen Rubin  was bored with the performance,  which Victor Davis Hanson found  vague dreaming.    Stephen Green  “drunkblogged” the speech,  which means that if he really was imbibing,  he enjoyed it a lot more than I did.  The Cato Institute’s Patrick Michaels  points out the staggering stupidity of His Oneness comparing this to the moon shot,  which we knew how to do,  and claiming we’re going to reduce the per capita carbon consumption of 400 million Americans to what it was immediately after the  War Between the States without a clue.

Watch Charles Krauthammer deliver his view,  here.

After getting the saw blade stuck,  BP has  managed to shear off the riser,  and can attempt to set a cap on the well.

The cap is now in place,  and oil is beginning to run up the pipe,  but the operation not yet completed,  and there is still a leak.

Gov. Jindal and Sen. Vitter are telling His Oneness not to do further economic damage to their state.   Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wants Obama to  take over BP,  while Bill Weckesser wonders if there’s a  political reason behind the administration’s foot-dragging response.   Of course,  there is a  ready-made fall guy available to His Oneness.

Well,  BP has announced that  the top kill didn’t succeed,  nor did the  3 junk shots.   There is just too much pressure to overcome at that depth.  Oil is  nearing the Florida panhandle and has hit Dauphin Island off the Alabama coast near Mobile.

Of course, if the greenies and thee co-Nazis at EPA had allowed land and shallow water exploration and drilling  to continue,  there wouldn’t be any deep water drilling.    The land of unintended consequences surrounds them,  yet they remain oblivious.

There isn’t much good news to be had,  except that the relief well is not only under way,  but ahead of schedule.   As expected,  3 weeks of Congressional  hearings hasn’t produced much understanding,  just a lot of finger-pointing and blame shifting  –  lots of heat,  some tears and turmoil,  and little light.   That’s about par for such showcases of Congressional ignorance and stupidity.

Next up is  cutting the riser,  which I see has just been completed in preparation for attempting to place a cap on the well.   Obama’s administration responds by  beginning a criminal probe into the oil spill,  no doubt keeping an eye on this  interactive map of the spill  — what else is the eye in the sky watching?   And  EPA officials met  with film director James Cameron in a group of scientists and other experts for a brainstorming session on stopping the massive oil leak.   I suppose that’s one way to  distance yourself from BP on the response.

I’m just waiting for His Oneness to find a way to blame Bush for the problems arising from BP’s  request for tax records from people seeking compensation.   Victor Davis Hanson has the most pithy explanation of the deer-in-the-headlights look of His Oneness lately.  David Brooks has a  similar take.

A tiny ray of light is that biologists don’t think the spill will kill off the shrimp population.

BP isn’t declaring victory,  but it’s looking  quite good.    The dilemma for His Oneness will be whether to take credit for the great success,  or warn that the problem isn’t solved.   Depending on the questions he gets at the presser,  he may attempt both,  since he has already been doing that to some extent.