Banks Don't Rescue People, Governments Do

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And in all the footage of people being saved [in Japan], I haven't seen one mega-bank rescue anyone. I saw help from a lot of volunteers, firemen, rescue workers, doctors, nurses, etc. But not one bank. And that was true during snowstorms in North Dakota, the floods in New Orleans, and the earthquake in Haiti. Oddly, though the banks are sucking up enormous amounts of our budgetary resources, they don't own rescue helicopters, they don't track earthquakes, they don't study tsunamis, and they don't deal with radiation poisoning.

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Dylan Ratigan

The Oil Gusher Is Capped And Undergoing Testing

Apparently the cap is in place and BP is testing to make sure the pressure won't blow up the floor of the sea.  My BP feeds here, BP's actual feeds page (now updated with all feeds on one page) is here.

Visit My BP Live Feeds Page

Up there, under the title of this blog where you can select pages, or here. (From BP's live feeds page, but all in one place.)

BP Might Need To Step Aside. Really?

BBC News reports that BP is not doing enough to stop its leak that will ruin America for years to come. Ken Salazar is even considering taking over from BP! Seriously? But BP was doing so well.....

A top US official has warned BP may be "pushed out of the way" if it fails to perform in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster clean-up.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the British oil giant had missed "deadline after deadline" in its efforts to seal its blown-out oil well.

But he said BP had agreed to pay clean-up costs beyond the current US $75m (£52m) liability limit.

Mr Salazar is due to visit the disaster site on Monday with other officials.

Limited options

The oil leak began more than a month ago, when a drilling rig working for BP exploded, killing 11 people.

Millions of gallons of oil have spewed into the ocean since then from the well's ruptured riser pipe, 1,524m (5,000ft) beneath the surface

The spill has reached Louisiana and is threatening Florida and Cuba.

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Mr Salazar told reporters after visiting BP's US headquarters in the Texan city.

The BBC's Madeleine Morris reports from Washington that Mr Salazar presumably means the US could take over the entire operation.

The US government has been at pains up until now to stress that BP is not only legally responsible for cleaning up the spill but paying for all clean-up and restoration, our correspondent says.

It is within the US government's power to push BP aside but the question is what would that achieve when BP is the only organisation with the knowledge to deal with a situation like this at such a depth, she adds.

This is not a joke. Salazar is just now realizing this. Obama's Katrina? 'Fraid so.

I Think I Am Going To Be Slick

NASA's Aqua Satellite Sees Sunglint on Gulf Oil Slick

At 3 p.m. EDT on May 18, NASA's Aqua satellite swept over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill from its vantage point in space and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument captured sunglints in a visible image of the spill.

The visible image showed three bright areas of sunglint within the area of the gray-beige colored spill. Sunglint is a mirror-like reflection of the sun off the water's surface. In calm waters, the rounded image of the sun would be seen in a satellite image. However, the waves in the Gulf blurred the reflection and created an appearance of three bright areas in a line on the ocean's surface.

According to the May 18 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) web update of the Deepwater Horizon incident, "satellite imagery on May 17 indicated that the main bulk of the oil is dozens of miles away from the Loop Current, but that a tendril of light oil has been transported down close to the Loop Current."

The May 18 NOAA update also noted that "NOAA extended the boundaries of the closed fishing area in the Gulf into the northern portion of the loop current as a precautionary measure to ensure seafood from the Gulf will remain safe for consumers. The closed area is now slightly less than 19 percent of the Gulf of Mexico federal waters."

Image credit: NASA/Goddard/MODIS Rapid Response Team
Text credit: Rob Gutro, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

"Let's Explode This, Collapse The Well..."

From C&L:

...[Shepard] Smith originally brought on Christopher Brownfield to discuss the potential for using a nuclear bomb to stop the leak

Brownfield: If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone. They lose hundreds of millions of dollars, from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well.

Brownfield: Yes, I think -- stopping the spill immediately. And the reason why we haven't seen that option is because, frankly, BP is still at the helm. I think President Obama needs to take charge of this, bring all the assets of our military to bear, bring the U.S. Army Corps of engineers, bring the U.S. Navy, and bring in all the private-sector organizations that have the equipment for deep-sea operations to make this happen. Let's explode this, collapse the well, and put an end to it...