A Hot Mess

That would be BP. Who would believe that they would still be throwing Hail Mary passes three weeks in?

Who can believe that they built this 100 ton or however many ton well cap, float it out to the site of their man-made catastrophe only to find that when they hoist and lower the doggone thing, crystals form inside it (in 5000 ft of water apparently these things happen, which you would think they would know), rendering it useless. And what, children, is the Plan B? They don't have one. Once again, they have no fall back position. Is this a comedy of errors or a tragicomedy? Frankly, I'm not laughing nor I imagine, are the people of the Gulf Coast.

I just want to say that if I were working there and I'd had my work fail so catastrophically, I'm thinking I would have been fired. Someone here is a complete misfit for their position (think Peter Principle) and yet, I suspect they remain employed. I just want to know: when is someone's head gonna roll, because this is past ridiculous? I'm telling you, this is criminal stupidity.

I don't begin to pretend that any of the solutions here are easy or obvious, but what is obvious is that not nearly enough questionining is occuring at BP. Clearly, there's no one asking the tough questions that need to be asked like: if this doesn't work, what's our backup plan? What about sea conditions? What do we do if the conditions at sea are inhospitable? What is the low tech solution to this problem? I mean, is there no one in this company with the cojones to challenge leadership's obviously flawed premises relating both to risk and to the prospects of any intervention actually succeeding? Isn't that what these folks get paid the big bucks for? Or do they just get paid to show up when stuff is working? If that's the case they should all just go home (cuz stuff ain't working) and let strangers off the street finish this up.