Senator suggests using beer ingredients to clean up spill

Iowa's senior senator has a suggestion for President Barack Obama: Time for a beer summit.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told a conference call of Iowa reporters Wednesday that he thought the government should try using an alternative method to clean up oil that's been polluting the gulf since a rig exploded and sank Apr. 20.

The method? Use ingredients utilized in fermenting beer to absorb stray oil.

"I think that there's alternatives to soaking up oil that have not been used yet," Grassley told reporters. "There's a process for making beer — I don't know if it's the yeast or what it is in making beer. You can put those microscopic things on oil and they die, and all you've got is some methane gas left."

"The spill itself, I think the administration is doing all they can do because it doesn't have the capability of doing more to stop the flow of oil," he added. "They're going to have to rely on oil companies to do that; that's where the expertise is."

"In every other respect, I don't think that the administration's doing enough," Grassley added. "They waited a whole month to respond to the berms being built at the request of Gov. [Bobby] Jindal."

Grassley's beer comments aren't his first foray into the spotlight for his curious remarks.

In April of last year, he said that executives from AIG should either resign or commit ritual Japanese suicide.

"The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide," the senator said. "And in the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology."

A blogger replied, "There's a major distinction that Grassley should be aware of here -- Japanese execs who fuck up kill themselves when they feel that their shame is too heavy for them to carry on living; in the AIG case, clearly the execs are acting completely shameless even after all the screwing up they did.