Gibbsie, you’re doing a heck of a job.

"There’s nothing that we think can and should be done that isn’t being done. Nothing," Gibbs said Friday during a lengthy, often testy exchange with reporters about the response to the oil disaster.

There are no powers of intervention that the federal government has available but has opted not to use, Gibbs said.

I actually believe him. I believe that the combined resources of BP and the United States Government are being wielded in every possible way to stop the spill.

I also believe that we’re completely fucked.

Ugh

Three scenarios lie ahead.  They rank as bad, worse, and ugliest (the latter being catastrophic and unprecedented).  There is no “good” here.

The Bad.

Containment chambers are put in place and they catch the outflow from the three ruptures that are currently pouring 200,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf every day.  If this works, it will take until June to complete.  The chambers are 30-foot-high steel configurations that must be placed on the ocean floor at a depth of one mile.  This has never been done before.  If early containment is successful, the damages from this accident will be in the tens of billions.  The cleanup will take years.  The economic impact will be in the five states that have frontal coastline on the Gulf of Mexico: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

The Worse.

The containment attempts fail and oil spews for months, until a new well can successfully be drilled to a depth of 13000 feet below the 5000-foot-deep ocean floor, and then concrete and mud are injected into the existing ruptured well until it is successfully closed and sealed.  Work on this approach is already commencing.  Timeframe for success is at least three months.  Note the new well will have to come within about 20 feet of the existing point where the original well enters the reservoir at a distance of 3.5 miles from the surface drilling rig.  Damages by this time may be measured in the hundreds of billions.  Cleanup will take many, many years.  Tourism, fishing, all related industries may be fundamentally changed for as much as a generation.  Spread to Mexico and other Gulf geography is possible.

The Ugliest.

This spew stoppage takes longer to reach a full closure; the subsequent cleanup may take a decade.  The Gulf becomes a damaged sea for a generation.  The oil slick leaks beyond the western Florida coast, enters the Gulfstream and reaches the eastern coast of the United States and beyond.  Use your imagination for the rest of the damage.  Monetary cost is now measured in the many hundreds of billions of dollars.

Too bad for everybody who had a mortgage or rental property on the gulf coast.

Too bad for everybody who borrowed money to operate a fishing or shrimp or tourist boat.

Too bad for the insurance industry. They’re going to need a federal bailout.

Too bad for the American taxpayers. We’re going to be on the hook for this one way or another.

And what happens if there’s a hurricane in the gulf this year?

I overestimated Haiti. I was thinking this morning that we’d start hearing about criminal machete gangs tomorrow sometime. I was off by a day.

There’s no government. The presidential palace was destroyed, the UN headquarters was destroyed, and most of the good guys are digging their families out of the rubble. That means it’s open-season for the looters, rapists and mutant zombie bikers.

Presumably, Pat Robertson and I share a common belief system. I’m just not sure that a biblical world-view accounts for an entire country being able to enter into a bargain with the devil on behalf of every citizen, born and unborn. However, if you’re open to such ideas, it does seem like a new Gate of Hell has opened in Port-au-Prince. I’m not sure the demographics would be much affected by Rapture, either, so there’s strike two.

The responsibility for preventing the destruction of an entire ethnic group once again rests with the United States of America. There’s no other government or civilization on Earth that can effectively respond to such a thing, and therefore I presume that Barack Hussein Obama is already preparing his apologetic remarks for the previous administration’s failures re: the Republic of Haiti, to be presented at an opportune moment. It’s his nature.

My selfish thoughts are typically of the “I’m glad it’s not me” variety. Doubly so, because I know there aren’t 300 million well-meaning foreigners a couple hundred miles away who will be airdropping saltines on my sorry ass were this shit to happen here. At a point like that, “God, Guts & Guns” would no longer seem like such a quaint slogan reserved for the rosy-naped.

Anyway: Let’s Roll