Following OPM

The New York Times confirms the good news that others have been saying for weeks:

The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.

And there won't be future oil to worry about because the static kill procedure used to seal the hole seems to be working.

As is often the case, the people who put real money on the line anticipated these developments a month ago. That's when the stock prices of the three companies that stood to lose the most--BP, Anadarko, and Transocean--stopped their decline.

Unlike the oil-spill stocks, the S&P 500 has traded in a narrow range this year.

Using other people's money is one way to get rich. Following OPM is another.

In Over His Head

We are close to a tipping point. Contrasting memes about the President are jockeying for the lead—the cool customer, the elitist professor, the young internationalist, the talkative lawyer, the too-nice guy, the “Chicago way” bully. The oil leak in the Gulf threatens to swing all the needles to negative and freeze them there.

To be sure, there are lots of negatives already: persistently high unemployment, Afghanistan, Iran, debt-and-deficit worries, a looming hot war in Korea, worsening illegal immigration, and a dozen other problems that scream for attention.

The main problem and my biggest fear about this President is that he is incompetent. Many may disagree with his policies, but nearly everyone wants to see the government running smoothly. Existing laws should be enforced effectively and efficiently, whether the subject is immigration, environmental protection, homeland security, or tax collection. President Obama may not know how to plug the leak, but the Chief Executive should have done what it was in his power to do, namely, to protect the coast line and have the Coast Guard and Navy help break up the slick.

(Like any neophyte manager who's taken aback by bureaucracy, the President in his early months tried to cut through red tape by appointing dozens of "czars." At least he's abandoned that approach with the Gulf.)

The rumblings are not yet a roar. Diehard progressives still blame the previous Administration, but it’s been 17 months and to a majority of the country things seem to be getting worse. As I wrote well before Mr. Obama was nominated,

The four L's on how to get to the top of the heap in the Democratic party: liberal, loquacity, looks, lawyer. No experience necessary.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

By Ramirez from Investor's Business Daily.

The Nuclear Option

The uncontrolled gusher from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig has prompted one editorialist to call for the nuclear option, literally:

Obama should be discussing the possibility of using an atomic weapon to seal the leak [bold added]. Before the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the United States successfully detonated nuclear devices both on land and under water, and two potential delivery paths for a nuke are already in place in the form of the partially completed relief wells. Assuming the bomb could be delivered close enough to the drill channel, the yield required would be relatively small. Moreover, well-established formulae establish the burial-depth-to-yield ratios that make it possible to trap virtually all of the radioactive fallout within the sub-oceanic bedrock. [snip]

It seems a reasonable conjecture that the dissipation of a limited amount of radioactive material across the vast Gulf is preferable to the blanketing of thousands of miles of American coastline in ribbons of tar.

It sounds so crazy that it just might work.

But be very careful. As this experience has taught us, the ocean deep unleashes forces that man cannot control.