British Petroleum Should Close and MMS Heads Should Roll

If a nation or group of terrorists had perpetrated a similar crime, the full weight of the US government would justifiably be focused on revenge.

The spill in the Gulf may be the worst of all time before it's over. The public relations spin machines are in over-drive. BP Chairman Tony Hayward has lurched from minimizing the spill, to making it all about him ('I want my life back') to coming up with cute headlines to describe BPs succession of failed attempts to cap the gaping hole gushing oil.

Now there are ads in which Hayward looks soulfully into a camera to express his sorrow about the spill. All that's missing is a voiceover with Tiger Woods' father. It would all be semi-comical except it's not. It's absolutely real, with real consequences.

Eleven people are already dead. Tens of thousands will have their lives altered permanently.  Untold numbers of people will get sick. An ecological dead zone expanding in the Gulf. And no real end is in sight. 

This should be the end for British Petroleum and for the bureacrats who were supposed to oversee them. The measured response of President Obama is in stark contrast to the consequences that millions of innocent Americans are feeling. It's way too nuanced and rational.  It's time to tell BP to close up shop in the US, never to return.  It's time to clean house at MMS. Tony Hayward and his senior team should be facing criminal charges for their depraved indifference to safety.

If this doesn't reinforce the idea that government oversight has to be at arm's length from the industry it's supposed to be monitoring, nothing will.

Peggy Noonan: Government ... will handle nothing well.

Peggy Noonan slams President Obama's handling of the Gulf (of Mexico) crisis in today's Wall Street Journal. She describes him as aloof and out of touch, which is not the first time he has been labeled as such.

Noonan says that there have been three major catastrophes in Obama's first 18 months in office: the process of passing health care reform; the indifference to the massive problem of illegal immigration and unsecured borders (see the video linked on this site), and; the Gulf spill. He has, she says, fumbled all three crises.

In the end, without making a direct link, she points out what the Tea Party has been saying all along:

But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.

Read Noonan's entire article.