I watched this, Rachel laid it out nothing is being done.

I was thinking supertanker pumping water through a separator. Then I thought what a supertanker looks like over a 22 mile patch.

Not a thing anybody can do now.

NMBill,

Well, you're right in the sense that this oil cannot be cleaned up before it creates great harm. The beaches are one small part of the problem, as this piece shows.

It has become evident to me that we can't do much. Eventually, the oil will be stopped from flowing. It's anyone's guess whether that will be in August, or even this year.

I'm fighting my first response, which is to look for scapegoats. That will do nothing to fix this particular problem. Yet, someone must be held responsible. And, the buck should stop at the top - meaning, at Tony Hayward's desk and at Barack Obama's desk. While they both may have stepped into a disaster that began before they appeared on the scene, they are at the top and that's where the axe should fall. After the oil is stopped from flowing, they need to both resign. I'm not holding my breath - ours is not a culture of responsibility - yet, that's what should happen.

On the personal front: I'm at the point of realizing that I don't have a clue as to what to do. And, I'm glad I can say that. Thing is, no one really has a clue. We're lost. The old maps won't serve us anymore because we're in uncharted territory. We need a new map and only we, together, can draw it. We are lost.

Temporarily cancel all domestic oilfield leases.
Let industry find a way to siphon these plume fields and surface oil instead, first.
Watch how fast they work.

Cmon people. It should be a no brainer that oil drilling should stop immediately all around the globe or else we risk causing even more ecological imbalance and devastation, and environmental degredation for our remaining time on this planet. Not temporary - PERMANENT!

Exxon and Alyeska Pipeline had no capability to skim/suck up the oil and keep it off the shoreline in Alaska in 1989—though they claimed they did, before the spill.

Nothing has changed in 21 years. The oil companies still have no capability. Not because the technology doesn't exist, but because buying politicians and judges is cheaper than investing in the equipment and training.

Don't forget that a so-called Democrat, Obama, expanded off-shore drilling to include Florida, the Carolinas and Alaska—and said off-shore drilling is safe—just weeks before the Gulf blow-out.

Now the spin machine is saying it's not Obama's fault. The Interior Dept. employees who were regulating off-shore drilling were "hold-overs" from the Bush administration. (Who's fault is that?) Even Howard Dean—who once claimed to represent the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party"—was on MSNBC today, defending Obama and saying it's only "bad luck," and has nothing to do with Obama's policies.

Bullshit!!!

Screw Obama and his corporatist allies! Screw his apologists too. Obama has always been for corporate profits at the expense of public interest, going back to his days as U.S. Senator, and even as an Illinois Senator. Now, we reap what he has sewed.

And, if you think the Gulf oil blow-out is bad... Obama is also pushing through another Republican policy: public financing and insuring of new, private, for-profit nuclear power plants—which he also assures us are "safe." Wait till there's a "no way anyone could have predicted it" nuclear disaster, and we learn there is no capability of containing it—not for decades (like an oil spill), but for thousands of years.

Then, he nominates Elena Kagan, crusader for Monsanto's genetically modified organism (GMO) crops—an even bigger disaster than either oil blow-outs or nuclear melt-downs—to the U.S. Supreme Court??!!

When will Leftists take off the kid gloves with this poser?

Expanded off-shore drilling, new nuclear power plants, mandatory purchases of health insurance from private industry, escalation of the war in Afghanistan, torture, drone attacks, secret "special forces" wars, and assaults on Constitutional rights, and expansion of Bush's Unitary Executive: just few of Obama's Republican policies that would not have been possible under a Republican president, because Congressional Democrats would have opposed them.

Sickening!

Drillng and extraction below 150 ft should be stopped by the Federal Government until technology to handle deep sea leaks are developed and in place. That is the simple solution to this problem.

But what is the solution to the President Obushma problem?

He has clearly and very publicly shown that he handles pressure badly. There are those who have watched his prevarication, frustration and impotence who will seek to exploit his weaknesses.

God help America.