Mission Impossible: Obama Taps Crack Team Of Scientists To Do The Job BP Can't

[NJmaverick]

President Obama's new plan to fix the Gulf oil spill is so crazy it just might work...

As BP's high-priced industry experts flail, the president last week turned to a rag-tag band of big-think scientific renegades, and sent them on a mission to somehow MacGyver a way to stop up the leak -- before it's too late.

OK, maybe that's going a bit far. In fact, the news that Obama and his energy secretary, Steven Chu, sent a team of leading physicists and engineers to the Gulf to work with BP offers further evidence of the administration's essentially technocratic approach to governance, and its faith in knowledge-based expertise. That might seem like common sense, but it represents a shift from the Bushies' belief in the problem-solving power of industry, and its willingness to let science take a backseat to the concerns of its religious base.

Still, asking one of the key inventors of the hydrogen bomb, along with an engineer who helped develop techniques for mining on Mars, counts as out-of-the-box thinking. Here's a quick rundown on the president's unlikely team:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/mission_impossible_obama_taps_crack_team_of_scient.php?ref=fpa

[jaxx]

1. Good luck!

The thing has got to be stopped, conventional methods aren't working so this looks like a good mix of minds to come up with something.

[ensho]

2. wishing them success

I think the Obama team was being smart to do this

[Tarheel_Dem]

3. Whatever it takes. (nt)

[paparush]

4. Then get BP out of the farking way and lets get to work!

Quit spouting the BP lies and let some independent (ie- not driven by profit) people get hands on this mess.