Reply #140: By that metaphor, they're STILL going off, and the method of stopping this is the question

[PurityOfEssence]

The clean-up and dispersant issue is also a bit different: how clean is clean?

Has BP done everything it possibly could have done, regardless of expense, with all the tools of all the companies that could help? Is it a good thing to reinforce the primacy of corporations by standing on the sidelines wringing one's hands and making flaccid demands that sometimes get flatly ignored?

Sparring with assumptions is much of what politics is all about. We really can't "punish" them by taking them off this; it would be attacked as nationalizing and socialism and all that, but we CAN stand over their shoulder, bring in other companies' people and equipment to help, not just let them use dispersants we don't like, and keep the heat on them. To a certain degree, we're doing most of this, but there could be more, and cringing in the face of a corporation is also NOT a good idea.

This is not a simple situation with simple situations, and some of the heat Obama's taken for being submissive is not justified; that's life, though: he's reaping the harvest of his corporatism, and that's just too bad.

This is not a "thing that's happened", it's a thing that's very much still going on, and we SHOULD climb onto the bridge and grab some binoculars.