Poor BP.

They promised the country they won't stop until every last bit of their oil spill is cleaned up. And now, with the use of dispersants and other untested techniques in waters so deep, it looks like their job of cleaning up the scattered and sunk mess is going to be even harder than had the oil been contained and floating nearer the surface.

It's like you have a pile of leaves all raked up ... and the wind comes and scatters them and you have to start over. Or, you've got the miniscule debris all swept off the bathroom, hallway and kitchen floors, and then someone unknowingly walks through the dust pile redistributing it, before you have a chance to come back with the dustpan to pick it up.

Dontcha hate it when that happens?

So poor BP. Just a few months ago, they though the job was almost over. Turns out the real work is just beginning... Promises made, promises kept, eh?

And I've no doubt our competent media, old and new, will continue tracking this cleanup and scientifically investigating the reported facts. Nobody really believed that you could one day just proclaim the spill ... "done", with all the spilled particles just magically disappeared. Or eaten up by the crude-consuming bacteria -- hungry little buggers!

Interesting the corporate ethics that will come into play here, as the company charged with taking the lead in cleaning up their messes attempts to limit liability. Should set a good 21st Century precedent for how accepting the public, and their watchdog media, will be for corporate error and easy payouts to help the public swallow their losses.

Will we take the money and look away? Fix a price and absolve their guilt? With federal funds perhaps, to help bail out the region?

Or do we take a more tough-love parental approach: make sure the corporate power gets that mess cleaned up properly* -- before it's back to business as usual, and before the ideas of fairplay, responsibility and paying for your own actions out of your own profits for your own actions are scattered to the winds.

God help us all if the message BP takes away from this deadly disaster is that their cost-cutting efforts and corner-cutting pays off in the end.


*even if it bankrupts them; nobody's too big to fail who's big enough to take those kind of heedless risks, especially with other people's lives and in shared ocean waters.