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I'm posting this in chat as I don't consider it news and, frankly, though it didn't come up in a search, I'm not completely sure it's not posted prior with a different headline and I didn't see it. I think it's appropriate to prompt specific discussion about the meaning of this statement the Puppet made, "Nothing that is taking place down there that I am not intimately aware of or briefed on." President Barack Obama

Aerial photos of the flood damage caused by heavy rains along Colorado’s Front Range. A 60-year-old Cedar Cove woman was believed to be the fifth person killed in this week’s historic flooding as authorities scrambled Saturday to reach the 230 people listed as unaccounted for in northern Colorado. Meanwhile, evacuation orders spread throughout the day to communities downstream as rivers continued to flow above flood stage.

An inquiry was completed in August 2010, but the report has only now been released along with the Government's response. This post provides a summary of the incident and findings, primarily based on the Inquiry's Report. Despite the fact that the Halliburton cementing report clearly showed that the casing shoe could not be regarded as having barrier integrity, the report was ‘signed off’ by Mr Treasure (PTTEPAA’s senior on‐rig representative) later in the evening on 7 March 2009, with a handwritten annotation ‘good job well done’. The extraordinariness of this state of affairs need not be laboured. It suffices to...

The oil spill in the Gulf may be mostly out of the headlines now but Louisiana voters aren't getting any less mad at Barack Obama about his handling of it. Only 32% give Obama good marks for his actions in the aftermath of the spill, while 61% disapprove. Louisianans are feeling more and more that George W. Bush's leadership on Katrina was better than Obama's on the spill. 54% think Bush did the superior job of helping the state through a crisis to 33% who pick Obama. That 21 point margin represents a widening since PPP asked the same question...

A new study confirming the existence of a massive plume of oil trapped deep underwater in the Gulf of Mexico defies notions that bacteria, while they are degrading the oil, will make as quick work of petroleum lingering in the water's cold depths as they have on the surface. In a widely hailed study published today in the journal Science, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found there was no "appreciable" surge in bacteria growth and oil consumption around a plume they traced near the well that exploded earlier this summer. The first published peer-reviewed study of the subsurface...

The $20 billion victims' compensation fund established for the Gulf oil spill may use revenue from BP's oil and gas drilling as collateral, according to details released Wednesday by the White House.

If you only listened to President Obama, you wouldn’t even know an oil spill is occurring in the Gulf. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the oil spill since June 22 when he announced it was on a laundry list of items discussed at a cabinet meeting. Before that, on June 16, he spoke briefly after negotiating his secret liability deal with BP. Other than those two instances, the president hasn’t spent another public moment focusing on the spill since he began fighting the “battle” against “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced” from the Oval Office four weeks ago....

NEW ORLEANS -- Where would Jesus drill? Religious leaders who consider environmental protection a godly mission are making the Gulf of Mexico oil spill a rallying cry, hoping it inspires people of faith to support cleaner energy while changing their personal lives to consume less and contemplate more. "This is one of those rare moments when you can really focus people's attention on what's happening to God's creation," said Walt Grazer, head of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.(continued)

Day 74 I also want to stress that we are working closely with the Gulf states and local communities to help every American affected by this crisis. Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill. But as President of the United States, I'm going to spare no effort to respond to this crisis for as long as it continues. And we will spare no resource to clean up whatever damage is caused. And while there will be time to fully investigate what happened on that rig and hold responsible parties accountable, our...

The A-Whale bills itself as the largest open-water oil skimmer in the world, and it’s at least very impressive. Originally an oil and ore tanker, the ship’s owners recently refitted the ship to do exactly the kind of work that the US so desperately needs in the Gulf of Mexico, and to do it on a vastly larger scale than current operations can handle. According to the ship’s project manager, the entire American effort in 66 days has skimmed off 600,000 barrels of oil. The ship’s owners claim that A-Whale can skim 500,000 barrels a day. So where is the...

Energy Policy: Our interior secretary plans to reinstate the offshore drilling moratorium struck down by a federal judge. But if deep-water drilling is so unsafe, why are we helping Brazil drill nearly three times as deep? Maybe Secretary Ken Salazar can explain why Britain and others can safely drill in the North Sea and no other nation has suspended its offshore drilling. Yet there he was Tuesday saying he'll reissue a reworded moratorium that will make it clear to dunces like U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman why offshore drilling is unsafe. As with health care reform and other issues, the...

Until this week, the general impression of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf has been that the explosion took everyone by surprise, and that neither BP nor a dysfunctional MMS had any idea that the well had reached a critical stage. Two days ago, however, Bloomberg reported that both BP and MMS were well aware of the high risk of a blowout at that particular well. BP and its subcontractor Transocean had in fact been fighting against a blowout for over two months, and MMS was well aware of the situation:

The other day President Obama gave BP an ultimatum, he met with BP executives for the first time, and squeezed $20 billion from the company. He also made a prime-time bomb of a speech. Moreover, in that short period, Tony Hayward has been demoted, a part-time czar has been appointed, and it is now reported that claimants are being turned away. The success the Obama administration had in getting the oil spill live feeds off the front pages of websites and cable news stations and cause the change in the narrative from millions of gallons of oil gushing to a...

WASHINGTON -- Some 28 foreign countries and international organizations have offered help in responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but the bulk of those overtures remain "under consideration," according to a tally posted on the U.S. State Department's website. On May 10, for example, the United Arab Emirates offered to send oil skimmers, dispersant and containment boom, along with human and technical support, the website says. As of Friday, no decision had been made on any of those propositions, the site indicates. Also pending for more than a month are offers of containment boom and skimmers from the...

Eight days ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters. Today, against the governor's wishes, those barges sat idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore. "It's the most frustrating thing," the Republican governor said today in Buras, La. "Literally, yesterday morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges."Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP's oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and...

EXCERPT "I think the president is doing the best anybody can," said Winfrey, who campaigned for Obama when he ran for president. "I really don't understand what people want him to do? I think he's the president of the United States. "You're not supposed to be emotional, you're supposed to take action and get things done and make sure those things happen so I'm not sure what people want him to do," she said.

In which Obama golfs, dates and parties. "Being President is hard." [Video at link]

Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool By: Timothy P. Carney Examiner Columnist June 9, 2010 In this May 30, 2010 file photo, BP PLC CEO Tony Hayward talks to reporters as he visits a Coast Guard command center in Venice, La. BP's inability to contain the worst oil spill in U.S. history has focused attention on CEO Tony Hayward's words and deeds over the past six weeks - and the scrutiny has not yielded a flattering image. (AP file photo) As BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was on...

Energy Policy: President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. But before we save the planet, let's save the Gulf and stop exploiting crises to deny America the energy it needs. Saving the planet is nice, but just how do we plug the hole again? With an abundance of hand gestures, the president didn't really say in his speech Tuesday night. He did say fossil fuels were bad and green energy is good, but the people of the Gulf states don't need wind turbines right now. Contrary to Obama's assertions, our "addiction" to foreign...

The Politico‘s Mike Allen puts this in his morning newsletter: EXCLUSIVE: Phil Schiliro, the White House congressional liaison, has told the Senate to aim to take up an energy bill the week of July 12, after the July 4 break (and after the scheduled final passage of Wall Street reform). Kagan confirmation will follow, ahead of the summer break, scheduled to begin Aug. 9. The plan is to conference the new Senate bill with the already-passed House bill IN A LAME-DUCK SESSION AFTER THE ELECTION, so House members don’t have to take another tough vote ahead of midterms.Every Republican challenger...