NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Engineers Saturday readied a plan to permanently seal a damaged Gulf of Mexico well, despite delays to the process caused by debris left behind by a recent tropical storm.
As the work continued, incoming BP boss Bob Dudley vowed that the oil giant would not abandon residents affected by the spill after the well is finally sealed.
BP hopes to drown the well in an operation dubbed a “static kill,” in which mud and cement will be injected down into the ruptured wellhead via a cap installed on July 15.
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
The Sunday Talking Heads:
This is Ms. Amanpour’s debut as the anchor person for a Sunday talk show.
This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Coming Up Exclusive interviews House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Round table with George Will, Donna Brazile, Paul Krugman and Ahmed Rashid.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff; Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.; Richard Haass, President, Council On Foreign Relations; Thomas Saenz, President, Mexican American Legal Defense And Education Fund.
Chris Matthews: Kimberly Dozier, Associated Press; Dan Rather, HDNet, Global Correspondent; Rick Stengel, TIME’ Managing Editor; Helene Cooper, The New York Times, White House Correspondent.
CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They’ll discuss the war in Afghanistan as the U.S. experiences its deadliest month in the country. Topics will also include the wiki leaks incident, immigration and the economy.
Later, discussion about the passing week’s main political issues with New York Times correspondent, Peter Baker, and Washington Post editor Dan Balz.
Fareed Zakaria – GPS: Senator John Kerry — the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to talk about the Wikileaks and, more broadly, the war in Afghanistan; about Iran and whether we should be engaging that nation; and about U.S. politics.
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S. responds directly to the accusations in the war logs that his intelligence service has been colluding with the Taliban.
Finally a panel of experts featuring Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker, Reuters’ global editor-at-large Chrystia Freeland, and Ross Douthat of the N.Y. Times on the Obama’s administration is handling the crises that seem to keep coming at them.
The disclosure of tens of thousands of classified reports on the Afghan war last week by WikiLeaks has been compared, rightly or wrongly, to the release in 1971 of the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. “The parallels are very strong,” Pentagon Papers contributor and leaker Daniel Ellsberg told The Washington Post on Monday. “This is the largest unauthorized disclosure since the Pentagon Papers.”
But perhaps not large enough? Outlook asked Ellsberg for his wish list of documents to be leaked, declassified or otherwise made public, documents that could fundamentally alter public understanding of key national security issues and foreign policy debates. Below, he outlines his selections and calls for congressional investigations
This is actually the hardest diary to execute, and yet perhaps the most valuable because it lets you track story trends over time. It should be a Sunday morning feature.
Hmm… Maybe this isn’t as suitable for blogging as I hoped.
I really don’t have much to add to yesterday’s set up except that the flex wing may be more significant than I thought. The Red Bulls and Ferraris that are using it are 1.2 seconds a lap faster than everything else on the track.
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
On this day in 1981, MTV, Music Television, goes on the air for the first time ever, with the words (spoken by one of MTV’s creators, John Lack): “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first music video to air on the new cable television channel, which initially was available only to households in parts of New Jersey. MTV went on to revolutionize the music industry and become an influential source of pop culture and entertainment in the United States and other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia and Latin America, which all have MTV-branded channels.
In MTV’s early days, its programming consisted of basic music videos that were introduced by VJs (video jockeys) and provided for free by record companies. As the record industry recognized MTV’s value as a promotional vehicle, money was invested in making creative, cutting-edge videos. Some directors, including Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Three Kings) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), worked on music videos before segueing into feature films. In the 1980s, MTV was instrumental in promoting the careers of performers such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince and Duran Duran, whose videos played in heavy rotation.
WASHINGTON – They’re a minority, but a vocal one, and they’re hovering like storm clouds over a brittle recovery.
…
Are double dippers becoming recovery party poopers?
“If consumers are hearing a lot of bad economic news and they’re already scared, they might pull back some more,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for IHS Global Insight.
There are 15 million people unemployed. “Employers might be willing to hire more if consumer spending was doing better,” Gault said. “But then maybe consumer spending won’t start doing better until employers start to hire.”
…
With such a mindset, warnings of an impending double dip-recession can hit home because “consumer behavior is driven by outlook, not only people’s present situation but their future concerns,” said Pew associate director Michael Dimock.
In order to affect a timely halt to deterioriating conditions, and to ensure the common good, a state of emergency is declared for these territories by decree of Lord Cutler Beckett, duly appointed representative of His Majesty, the King. By decree, according to martial law, the following statutes are temporarily amended: Right to assembly, suspended. Right to habeas corpus, suspended. Right to legal counsel, suspended. Right to verdict by a jury of peers, suspended. By decree, all persons found guilty of piracy, or aiding a person convicted of piracy, or associating with a person convicted of piracy, shall be sentenced to hang by the neck until dead.
If you can stay up for it, tonight is a pivotal episode of Ghost in the Shell. TV Listings calls it ‘Endless Gig’, Wikipedia ‘Return to Patriotism’. I call it ‘Sacrifice of the Tachikomas’.
Recent Comments