BP's Top Kill procedure is stopping the flow of oil - Thad Allen

Brown pelicans sit behind an oil boom surrounding their island earlier this week in Barataria Bay, La. The island is home to brown pelicans, egrets and roseate spoonbills, some now stained by oil from the BP oil spill. Officials now say it may be impossible to clean the hundreds of miles of coastal wetlands and islands affected by the massive spill which continues gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Image Credit: John Moore

BP's Top Kill procedure is stopping the flow of oil - Thad Allen

U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the main person on the scene of the oil well rupture from the US Government, in an interview with Dave Cohen of New Orleans' WWL radio said that engineers have "stopped the hydrocarbons from coming up" and have been able "to stabilize the wellhead and are pumping mud into it."

This interview took place at 9:22 a.m. ET and represents the first good news about the incident that claimed 11 lives and has shown how productive and effective a US Government disaster response under the Obama Administration can be.

One Congressman's view of the response of the Obama Administration goes like this:

... And this expression of gratefulness to the Obama Administration from Democratic strategist and New Orleans resident James Carville.

"The President of the United States could've come down here, he could've been involved with the families of these 11 people" who died on the rig after an explosion, Carville said on ABC's Good Morning America. "He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now. He could be with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard...doing something about these regulations. These people are crying, they're begging for something down here, and it just looks like he's not involved in this."

His voice rising, Carville cried out, "Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving! We're about to die down here!"

Later, Carville said the administration needs "to launch a criminal investigation -- the Attorney General needs to investigate criminal negligence on the part of BP and what went on at MMS (the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling). There's a thousand things that he could do. He just needs to get down here and start doing something, people are dying."

Welcome to the sinking feeling that we are experiencing living in Carter's Second Term ... on steroids!