The Observation Deck

Bryan Schwegler wrote:I'm with Dick Cheney...let's nuke the well. I mean everything else has gone so well so far, what could go wrong?

Jim DeVito wrote:I guess I was asking what would have been done differently to fix this mess quicker if the election had gone the other way. Stephen seemed to imply that there would have been a different response perhaps a better one.

Charlie Page wrote:McCain would have waived the Jones Act so foreign help could be accepted sooner.

I'd like to think someone else would have concentrated their efforts to first cap the well and clean up rather than looking for an arse to kick and figuring out who's criminally liable.

Bryan Schwegler wrote:

Charlie Page wrote:McCain would have waived the Jones Act so foreign help could be accepted sooner.

Not so sure how big of a difference in the end that would have made? Does a foreign government somewhere have magic wand to make the oil disappear that we don't?

Wall Street Journal wrote:President Obama has repeatedly said his Administration is doing everything in its power to expedite the oil clean-up and mitigate the damage. But in the two weeks immediately after the spill, 13 foreign governments reached out and offered their assistance. The U.S. response? Thanks, but no thanks.

Or at least that's how Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston, described the U.S. answer. The State Department phrased it slightly differently: "While there is no need right now that the U.S. cannot meet, the U.S. Coast Guard is assessing these offers of assistance to see if there will be something which we will need in the near future." One month later, many of these offers are still outstanding.

The Belgian dredging group DEME says it has offered the U.S. specialized vessels and technology that can help clean up the spill in three to four months compared to the estimated nine months that the U.S. will need. There are only a handful of these vessels in the world, and most of them belong to Dutch and Belgian companies. So why aren't we calling on them?

Blame it on the protectionist Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also called the Jones Act, that requires ships working in U.S. waters to be built, operated and owned by Americans. Building specialized clean-up vessels in the U.S. is too expensive because of high union labor costs, and unions don't want ships built with foreign labor to be used in U.S. waters. To circumvent the Jones Act, clean-up crews have had to outfit American ships with skimming technology airlifted from the Netherlands. This has resulted in serious delays and greater harm to the Gulf.

Presidents can suspend the Jones Act in emergencies, as George W. Bush did after Hurricane Katrina. But the Obama Administration continues to maintain that this isn't necessary and that there are "no pending requests" for waivers. But Florida Republican Senator George LeMieux disagrees and says his constituents want all the foreign help possible.

We sympathize with the President's lament on Monday that "I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw." But there's no excuse for turning away ships that can clean up the oil merely because that might offend Mr. Obama's union friends.

Bryan Schwegler wrote:Ah how fickle the American public is. I believe for the first few weeks, that's exactly what Obama was doing. But "the people" weren't happy because he wasn't being out enough and mean enough. So he switched tacts to the rear-kicking kind because "the people" were becoming restless; someone wasn't being held accountable.

Bryan Schwegler wrote:The same situation would have happened to McCain and given Palin's past history of fine oratory, I could only imagine what words of outstanding wisdom would have flown from her lips...maybe she would have compared the oil well to a pitbu...er...something?

Charlie Page wrote:McCain would have waived the Jones Act so foreign help could be accepted sooner. That I'm sure about. We can only speculate what else he would have done to make more of an impact.

Jim O'Bryan wrote:But you are right I can see John McCain demanding to cancel the Jones Act.

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Bill Call wrote:You should all be more concerned about BP's efforts to secure the release of the Lockerbie bomber:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38256677/