Big Oil, Deep Bore Tunnel, Little Elegant Monorail

Seattle is getting ready to dig a really big hole in the ground, provoking a scathing, insightful article in The Stranger – the city’s most passionate monorail-supporting newspaper back in the Grant Cogswell campaign days.

The Dominic Holden piece gives a detailed answer to the ominous question: what could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, down in the Gulf, BP announced today that things are going “extremely well” with its new cap, which will undergo a pressure test over the next few hours. That announcement came despite the distinct possibility that if the well itself is damaged the cap could cause an even more disastrous rupture by pushing oil out through the sea bottom.

Things weren’t quite so rosy at The Nation, which reported that a despondent fisherman in BP’s unfortunately titled “Vessels of Opportunity” program committed suicide after falling into a despondent state over the oil spill.

No mention of that incident on BP’s ghoulishly upbeat Facebook Page, which posted this note from Monday’s cleanup efforts:

“The morning armada of oil-fighting vessels ranging from flat-bottomed jon boats to 60-foot shrimpers streamed south on the Pascagoula River beginning at 6 a.m. Monday. Their quarry — the oil slick from the gushing Deepwater Horizon well — mostly failed to show up.”

And the BP Gulf Response web site remained filled with pictures of spotless pelicans, sandy white beaches, and wholesome folksy-looking people in hardhats earnestly explaining BP technology.

Kevin Costner even appears in the clip, an odd juxtaposition until you read up on his post-Waterworld interests.

Really. What could possibly go wrong?