BP and the administration need to have a meeting about how to whipsaw the expectations from the gusher. Carol Browner is the latest version of someone in authority who receives only the spin brief; whereas the BP executive, with his smooth Texican accent and cowboy casual look -- too hot already to wear a string tie, is it? -- gives out the usual palaver about BP to the rescue. We are down to option 5. The odds do not increase that this lot will get their stories straight before August. Nor will the odds improve on the stemming of the gusher.  That's why they call it option 5. What is worse is the gusher or the torture of language by BP executives who haven't the foggiest how to do TV. This isn't a seminar. You are not the boss. This isn't about the confidence of investors. This is politics. Check the BS at the door. POTUS Obama is hoisted by his own petard by claiming responsibility for this amateurism and evasion. There will be BP blood.

The Joe Sestak campaign may profit from the revelations of the famous scalawag Bill Clinton's offering a job to a man who already has a job in order to encourage Mr. Sestak to drop out of the Pennsylvania Senate race. The questions will continue.  All the answers are inadequate.  None fatal.  The Pat Toomey campaign may be off-balance for a time, because of the peculiar narrative of the White House interfering in Keystone affairs. What is fixed is that the White House political apparatus failed again in a Senate race. The Martha Coakley loss in Massachusetts was a fiasco. The Evan Bayh retirement in Indiana was bad luck, same as Byron Dorgan retiring from North Dakota. The White House commitment to Arlen Specter was lame, inert, wasted breath. Sestak is a bright light whom the White House ops have now stained. The record points to continued willfulness and deafness. Five months to go till the election. Sestak may benefit from the headline demonstration that he is chatty with Bill Clinton. Strange, unforced, farcical twists. A Sestak victory is logical after all this operatic noise. Toomey will counter. The race is about jobs in Pennsylvania, and the Democrats have used up their theater piece with cynical maneuvers in order to sustain an 80-year-old empty vessel.  Note that Salena Zito, PTR, remarks that Sestak appeared off his game as he faced the gaggle (above) on the Capitol steps.  Perhaps waiting for the spin to move on from his false note.  BP may have failed everyone and yet rescued Sestak from the White House.

The news does not indicate that the "top kill" is on schedule, nor that the "junk shot" has proved useful in stemming the push of the oil and gas from the gusher. There was the risk that the "junk shot" could damage the pipe or the BOP.  There is another story that follows this catastrophe.  Who is in charge?  What is BP?  A stateless, lawless, ravenous, non-transparent enterprise for profit?  Who watches BP?   Spoke Michael Vlahos, author "Fighting Identity," re the dystopian plot of "Blade Runner" in comparison to the Deepwater Horizon episode.  You will recall that, in the surprisingly imminent 2019, the Tyrell Corporation manufactures replicants that have proved so superior to human beings that they are banned to the outer colonies -- after a civil war frightens Earthside into regulation and control of its own creations.  The Blade Runner protagonist (Harrison Ford's most successful role) is tasked to track down replicants when they escape their bounds. The episode does not end well for the replicants nor the hero, as he falls in love with a superior creation who lacks a soul.  Shrug.  The question now is who are the replicants? who is the Blade Runner? what of the sad-sack and soaked residents of the US who are burdened anew by the civil war between the Tyrell Corporation and its creatures in the outer colonies -- the deepwater and ultra-deepwater wells?  What use is the state?  POTUS stood frail and frustrated before the camera on Thursday 27, repeating aimless intentions to make BP pay the bill, to reorganize regulators, to delay and disguise the plans for the Arctic and the Coasts re drilling.  Tyrell pays, and so Tyrell rules?  Order and progress are just a price to BP.  The BP replicants are much more than one man-one vote.  The cure?   Deglobalize?  Unacceptable?  Then accept that the outer colonies and their natural resources are for plundering, not  consoling and managing.  Fall in love with replicants or not -- Tyrell rules.  Is it Gazprom or the Kremlin?  Is it the mandarins or CNOOC?  All is Tyrell, and we may not turn away from the superior replicants, our children -- or, at the least, a few of our children.

Smudging iPads is among the pleasant moments of my day, since the problem has a solution that is satisfying. I clean the screen with my half-dozen or more Apple-approved cloths. I have spray, but that is unneeded. The smudging is the work. The positives for the iPad are many; the negative is the lack of Adobe Flash, which makes many of the graphics at the WSJ unavailable. I use it mostly for checking the news on Bloomberg, WSJ, NYT and FT; also for email. The apps are useful for Pandora and Weather.com, and it has swift access to WABC and so forth on apps.   The books are simple; so are the audiobooks.   It revives the illustrated novels sometimes known as graphic novels or comics.  The smudging is for free.

Spoke Hugo Restall, WSJ, and Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, re the 11 suicides and many other cases of self-abuse at the vast Foxconn electronic facility on Mainland China across from Hong Kong. The factory builds much of the best electronics consumed in the US from Apple, Dell, HP and so forth. The working conditions for young people in the plant are cramped and unhappy, and the work schedule calls for 12-hour days, six days a week, for meager wages since the young workers are classified as migrant workers.  Foxconn is one of the best plants in China, owned by a Taiwanese-controlled syndicate headed by the third-richest man in Taiwan.  Nonetheless, these conditions describe European and US factories and industries around a century or more back, before the muckraker worlds of Upton Sinclair awakened TR and others to to the abuse of the owners. See Sinclair's stunning "The Jungle." Such works of literature are likely in train from China.  Meantime Jeff Bliss, of the BlissIndex, tells me that Silicon Valley is freshly sensitive and alert to the problem.  In Africa, the diamonds form the abusive fields are known as "blood diamonds" or "conflict diamonds" and are treated as taboo in Europe.  Will our mobiles be known as a Conflict iPhones?

No one happy about the market recovery at the close, since the problem is not the earnings story or joblessness or housing overhang in the US but rather the pending downgrades for banks in Europe and around the world. Later in the evening, news arrives that bond holders are spontaneously and collectively downgrading big banks -- ranging from BNP Paribas to Goldman Sachs --  because of a perceived capital deficit of $1.5 trillion. Significant that the bond vigilantes are not waiting for ratings agencies or government confabs or collective bail-out packages promised for tomorrow; the vigilantes are acting today. The LIBOR rate is not astronomical, but the trend is higher. The threat is risk that you cannot see. Right now, the worry is fixed on Europe. 

You will struggle to laugh this video off. What makes a PM? Imitating a PM? Cameron is a surprising lightweight. Can he gain weight in office? John Burns, NYT, writes that Nick Clegg lets David Cameron get to the left of his party in order to make the Tories more electable. Is everyone headed to Blairville? Note that electability is the talent to appear anything you want to the greatest number of married woman and women who aim to be married someday (see video). No one wins without the commonsensical and intuitive female vote - not in the UK, not in the US, not in any known sizable state.  Blair works for the female vote. So Cameron and Clegg imitate him. Obama works, so the GOP will imitate him. How? Gingrich? Palin? Mitt? Unknown. Who is most like Tony Blair/Barack Obama in the GOP ranks? Unknown.  

Spoke to Laurence Norman, WSJ, re the first presentation of deficit reduction by the new Chancellor of Exchequer, the posh and youthful George Osbourne, and learn that Osbourne first tastes the low-hanging fruit.  Job cuts for up to 700,000 public employees are in the wind.  All necessary, and we shall see how long Cameron, Clegg and Osbourne can explain the necessity of slashing to the mums who must be slashed.  California and New Jersey watching how it goes in London.

If I were constructing a dystopian romance about an alien and vastly superior tech army invasion and subjugation of Planet Earth that focused on the resistance after two hundred years of slavery and famine, it would resemble the Taliban's video of the mujahideen rising against ISAF in Afghanistan.  If I were creating watercolors of the faces of intransigent resistance to brutality and deprivation, it would resemble the faces of the jihadists marching through wet forests in Pashtunistan.  The ISAF policy of counterinsurgency cannot succeed, because the Pashtuns regard the Americans as the same as the British Raj, the Soviet Bear -- as invaders and crusaders, to be refused at all instances.  No surrender.  As their great-great-grandfathers, so their grandfathers and fathers, resisted.  Does POTUS Obama know that his policy is wasted cunning?  Does NATO know that it is trapped in an anachronism?  This video is a Taliban Hollywood epic of war and brotherhood and patriotism.  Add a love story, a family struggle with loss, a heroic brother, an American turncoat, a Chechen marksman, and it's off to the box office.  Why exactly did we get on the wrong side of a Lawrence of Arabia plot?  Now you can see more clearly why the White House fears a Petraeus boom for the GOP: "I will go to Afghanistan" speech will work.  Only a victorious, Wellingtonian American general can make peace with the resistance.  What sort of PM was Wellington (Wellesley)?  The Iron Duke (below, 1844), the man who resisted the Reform Bill of 1832 with Iion shutters in London to keep out the Reform mob?  A mediocre PM, last of the Irish Ascendancy.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

This is stunning video of the "Deepwater Horizon" gusher that is an environmental disaster at 5,000 feet beneath the Gulf. The Obama administration is out of options. It has committed to BP and has not developed a Plan B. There is information that the Coast Guard, NOAA, Department of Interior's Mineral Management Service and other associated government regulators are at each other's throats. Note that POTUS court media are starting to weave and wince at the scale of the confusion. The contest in Washington is not between the Republicans and Democrats but rather between the Gulf State senators and the administration, and between the abolitionists on the West and East Coasts and the energy state senators. A tangle of persuasions. POTUS continues to avoid the national crisis speech. BP keeps making the Error of the Third Kind, which is answering the wrong question precisely.  Most recently, BP is trying to blame Transocean, the rig operator.  Next up, BP will blame Neptune.

DNI Dennis Blair was fired by the order of POTUS on a Thursday, not the correct news-dump day of Friday. Disorder, nerves, finger-pointing, and a collective sense of denial in the White House. Why did Blair go? Am told that Blair is not one of POTUS's agreeable political actors. Blair is military, a retired admiral. The White House fears the military -- like green kryptonite. Jim Jones at NSC is isolated and bypassed. But Blair was openly disdainful of the sycophants such as John Brennan and Leon Panetta. Am told that Panetta could take DNI, and Brennan could take DCI. POTUS does not want military near at hand. Why?Because the political apparatus in the White House fears a military challenger in 2012. A draft for a military leader. A new Ike.  Who?

The revelation by South Korea that it was a North Korean torpedo that sank the Cheonan on March 26 in the Yellow Sea has the usual suspects flapping their arms and puzzling how to punish the nasty, awful, horrible bad boy Kim. Burlesque diplomacy. Kim is China's No. 1 puppet. Kim's mischief keep the neighbors thrilled with worry -- and especially keeps the reluctant Americans distracted from all the genuine mischief practiced by Beijing in Asia and Africa. POTUS dispatched StateSec HRC to Seoul to calm down the natives and pass out promises. POTUS demands that South Korea mind its manners. POTUS hands off Kim to Hu; and Hu waves ponderously, sighs and shrugs, tells Kim, "Well done!" and writes another check. The Great Game, North Asia style. Does POTUS know?

NOAA is the center of the "Deepwater Horizon" debate, because NOAA warned BP that it was underestimating the risk of a big spill in the biosphere of the Gulf. NOAA has a rocky record in other predictions, such as its hurricane predictions over the last four years. Wrong three out of four years. The above illustration puts a chimpanzee predictor, Dr. James Hansimian, and a set of dice, up against NOAA for the 2010 season.  NOAA with its satellites or Dr. H. with a talent to roll dice?  What do we know about the climate in 2010?  Not enough to outsmart our cousin -- who is the author of "The Banana Curve: No Tricks."

Spoke Jon Nadler, Kitco Metals, at Montreal re the gold boom and the sudden decline in crude oil and copper; in fact, the decline in all the base metals. Nadler pointed to China and remarked that the Chinese intervention in the overheated asset hunt in China (real estate) can no longer be masked by whimsical inflation targets and false reports.  In sum, China is on a jaunt to a recession.  Is it coming our way?  Look to Europe for the slowdown soonest, as it will cut back imports from Asia.  The US cannot buffer itself from both China and Europe.  Those banks too big to fail continue to build up cash.  Gold is an asset, but it is also a refuge.  The euro is acting as if the EU aims to inflate away its debts.  Also spoke to Yalman Onaran, Bloomberg, re the ongoing Basel II and Basel III negotiations, and learned that there is no system that cannot be defeated by what the smart guys calll "risk arbitrage."  What have we learned since Lehman, AIG and TARP?  That we like to give the keys to the school bus to the guys who just crashed it into a runaway freight train.

Spoke Ian Urbina, NYT, to learn that the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior cannot and does not provide adequate inspection and risk-management for the already-approved deepwater drilling in the Gulf, and that disputes with NOAA in the near past are now at the center of the dispute on Deepwater Horizon and the US government. There is a lot of explaining to do. MMS is both a fee collector and a cop, and it does not do the cop part well enough for the observers. A NOAA letter of September 2009 warned MMS that there was risk to the biosphere from the Deepwater Horizon rig. Same warning over the present BP Atlantic rig. The BP failure now rearranges relations between the USG and all drillers. Offshore drilling just became much more expensive and adverse. The engineering miracle that is needed in the Gulf only multiples the scale of the future threat. Estimates of millions of gallons of oil creeping along the Gulf bottom in an oil plume creates a scenario that will challenge any political effort to continue drilling offshore, especially deepwater.

Late news that BP has some positive information re its latest fix to insert a straw in the gusher and attempt to redirect part of the flow pending the relief wells.  Spoke Larry Johnson, No Quarter, who remarks that a source tells him that BP is both arrogant and ignorant, and that BP is not looking at the possibility of conventional detonations sealing off the well -- as has worked elsewhere.

Fresh-faced and sincere Tim Burns wins the role of villain from the SEIU's POV in a wonderfully loony attack ad that is part of the major-league Democratic attack cash pouring into the special election in PA-12 on Tuesday 18.  Burns here achieves a level of malevolence for the fragile Dems usually attached only to arch-vipers such as Palin and McVeigh.  The beleaguered, mournful 12th is Jack Murtha's empty seat, and I have watched it closely thanks to Salena Zito, PTR, since back in January after the Brown win in the Bay State. Burns is a newbie to politics, born in Johnstown, founder of his own company in his basement. The SEIU regards Burns as unacceptable on the basis of his wicked, horrible, awful, non-human and creepy donors, who are all guilty of being Republican. The SEIU's Apollonian candidate is a Party op and Murtha staffer, Mark Critz, who waited in line in the Democratic Party food chain, but not very long; he was Murtha's District manager, dispensing baubles from the great earmark machine. No one in the 12th has voted for anyone but Murtha since Nixon, perhaps not since Henry Clay. The latest thrill is that Bill Clinton will be at a bowling alley with Mark Critz, bowling for Mrs. Pelosi's despair. Am told to watch out for that 7-10 split. There will be sweat in the Democratic majority on Tuesday eve. Polls? Dead heat.

Spoke Jessica Resnick-Ault, Bloomberg, re the Obama administration's increasing anxiety about the Deepwater Horizon global alarm and how POTUS is late to the alarm. Oddly. "Never waste a good crisis" (RE) remains the genius of the Obama team.  Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary, calls in several big brains to gather in Houston to think outside the BP box of 500 engineers and guys who know deepwater drills.  The BOP failed.  The containment vessel failed.  The siphon is not working as planned.  Golf balls are possible (see below).  I asked if a nuke was on the list, and was told that nukes are not mentioned.  Still, why not the "Andromeda Strain" moment for POTUS?  Knock on the door.  Code word, "Wildfire."  Executive action.  All solutions on the table.  Non-nuke bunker busters?  Instead, POTUS complains.  Finger-shaker-in-chief, when what is available is the big box office role of the trigger puller.

The end of a pol is always a teaching moment. Arlen Specter, the Fearless Fosdick of the Keystone State, a man who can take a punch (or bullet) and keep on campaigning, switched parties to the Democrats of Pennsylvania just a year ago (below) after half a century of taking Republican money and taking up Republican airtime for the last three decades as Mr. Independent GOP. Specter is a textbook example of a career party hack, and the lesson is that when you stay too long at the public trough, you are seeking disdain. Specter earned his miserable conclusion. Unloved, disrespected, snickered at, foolish, trite. No one will miss Specter, and his kind of self-infatuated blockheadedness may wipe out his entire record. What was he for? Not even for the money. A career of vanity and ridicule.

The star in the sky that we all depend upon to the limits of dependence, and the SDO robot, continue to amaze and worry me. That variable star is variable. Those flares and plums and jets are unexplained except that the star is variable. Sunspots are associated with a warmer planet, and sunspots are marked by activity that is consistent with the above excitement. It looks dangerous. And yet without it, we are not here -- and neither are the moons of Jupiter and Satrun we are now studying with Cassini -- and when the variable star does go, we are gone, as if we never were here. Waiting on Kepler to show the way to the escape route to New Edens. Speculated with Marcelo Gleiser, author, that perhaps we are in the stage where we spread ourselves into the near-at-hand galaxy. It required 13.7 billion years to produce the iPad, and now another few thousand until we get our DNA to near space. A colony plan. And the Obama administration's blockheaded approach of closing down manned space is a trifle. We are going when the Sun goes, so let's got out there first.

Gordon Brown outmaneuvers David Cameron and Nick Clegg with his offer to quit Labour leadership by September. At this point, it looks clear that Cameron cannot form a government without major and unattractive concessions to the Lib Dems. All witty. Am told to expect new elections pronto, by next year, 2011. That is just about the time I am told the Germans will be turning on Mrs. Merkel in more regional tantrums like Rhineland-Westphalia on May 9. For now, Britain lacks a coherent and mandated government -- with the weight of the budget deficit and the falling pound.  The LIBOR OIS is already pointing to the failure of the euro bailout.  The euro has started its decline again, after a relief bump.  Who believes the Europeans?  Not the Europeans.  Not the Asians.  Who?  Sad-sack bunch of spendthrift whiners and cheats.  Pox.  

In and out of rooms go the two pols with the most to lose by settling the decision quickly, Clegg and Cameron. Clegg will dally, and Cameron will dawdle, and neither has the weight to force his colleagues to agree that a nationalist streak (Tories) can cooperate with San Francisco Lite (Lib Dems). Labour aims to force Brown to resign so that Labour can go into opposition and prepare for a new election within the year. Cameron inherits a talky confusion, obliged to make promises to the flimsy Clegg demand for election reforms. Whenever I hear the word "reform," I know Parliament is at work somewhere looking for tax revenues. The mess in London is backstopped by the mess in Brussels, where there is a genuine sense of panic and gloom. The metric is that the ECB and the 27 countries of the EU (16 using the euro) must produce a €600bil pot by Monday in order to secure the banks. There may be a bank run starting in Asia on Sunday eve. Watching gold and the US dollar (sanctuary). Watching Cameron and Clegg aim to negotiate amid fears of fear.  Watch Merkel and Berlin. On the 65th anniversary of V-E Day and the victory over Germany, all eyes on Berlin.  Does Berlin lead, or does it buy the bottom?

Joe Sestak, running independently in Pennsylvania against the aged and pointless Arlen Specter, closed the gap to nil by running a blunt attack ad that links Specter to the Republican if yesteryear, not only to George W. Bush but also to Sarah Palin. POTUS and the Axelrod ops missed entirely the theme in this cycle, which is throw the bums out and try new, younger, not-yet-smart-enough-to-steal big bums junior. The Brits have a "hung Parliament," and hanging our Congress requires a kind of Continental contrariness by the electorate. This is no longer about order. Punks and iconoclasts will have their day. Specter is creatively absurd. Sestak, a three-star admiral, a counterpuncher after 31 years' serving the fleet, will storm into the midterm, and Pat Toomey has a match on his hands. What if the only way the Democrats can hold the Senate at 50 seats (with Biden that is a majority) is to win in the Keystone? Sestak joins the Lieberman caucus. Political irony is better than chocolate.

Another evacuation, another false alarm (stand-down after 2:15 PM Eastern time), another demonstration that the NYPD and the public have moved to Defcon 3 ("See something, screech, 'Murder!' ") re the war on terror that is now somewhat ambiguously prosecuted as a criminal investigation. The recents arrests of genius jihadist wannabeez, the Zazi group and now the Shahzad lone wolf, underline the fact that the jihad has dreams of the Big Town. Lights on Broadway is the dream of the boy with his guitar. The jihadists have body parts on Broadway as their fantasy. Zazi wanted his head displayed. While Shahzad wanted someone else's head to display. Both characters are remarkable in that they are not remarkable.  Speaking Seb Gorka, FDD, on Friday 7, and Gorka asserts that this is a global insurgency with volunteers like Yankee fans, all self-trained and dreaming of the big time.  The way ahead is not to play whack-a-mole on Broadway.  Suggest target is the wack-jobs in Riyadh who feed and fund the dutiful, diligent Pakistanis who tolerate this fantasy life as piety.  Follow the money.

Spoke Steve Dennis, Roll Call, and Selina Zito, PTR, re the sudden retirement announcement of the Liberal Lion of WI-7, David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee and therefore the Cardinal of Cardinals. Obey overstayed his welcome a decade ago, and his last hurrah was the stimulus package of 2009. Obey is Mr. Stimulus and is responsible for that $1trillion exercise of Federal creativity. Add his job to the not-saved and not-created pile. Sean Duffy, the startlingly vigorous (below) young Republican DA from Ashland County, WI, will not zoom to the top of the Leans Republican districts. Salena Zito says the 40 to 50 pick-ups just moved toward the number 80. Mention that Healthcare yes-vote Democrat John Boccieri, OH-16, is now in freefall against the sturdy Republican challenger Renacci. Obey didn't quit because he was "bone tired" and humbly accomplished. He quit because he was 20 points down to Duffy in his own internal polls. The Liberal Lion goes out a scaredy kitten. There will be more kitten blood.

Spoke Jeff Ball, WSJ, re the oil slick as it oozes and rocks toward the barrier islands and learn that the dispersants that are being dropped on the oil in massive, truly unprecedented quantity from aircraft are having a noticeable effect of controlling the spread of the slick. The downside is that the dispersants themselves are toxic and may damage the ecosystem. BP says that it is days from deploying two gigantic steel funnels over two of the the three gushers. This will permit draining the oil into ships while BP continues drilling the two relief wells, which may take two to three months. The fishing is badly damaged. The scale of the clean-up is massive and relentless. Estimates of the daily flow are from 1-5 thousand barrels,  up to 30 thousand barrels per day or higher. Massive. Valdez was 280 thousand total. The catastrophe continues. Am told that the rig emergency system, the blow-out protector, failed because regulators do not require a remote BOP in American waters.  Ooops.

Spoke Bill Roggio, Arif Rafiq, Pete King and Thaddeus McCotter re the Times Square bomber, and late reported the detention at JFK of a 30-year-old American citizen from Connecticut, Faisal Shahzad.   Shahzad was outbound for Dubai, likely to transfer to fly on to Karachi and escape into Pakistan.  ICE nabbed him; awaiting details of how.  Critical evidentiary details point to the Mehsud network of the Pakistani Taliban as the recruiters, trainers, planners, likely fund-providers of the operation.  Bill Roggio explains that over the last days he was alerted twice by Taliban speakers in Pakistan, who follow LongWarJournal.com; that there was new video on YouTube of the Mehsud clan martyr trainer Qari Hussain Mehsud.   Roggio checked it to discover that the video made claim to the Times Square attack.  The next day, there was another communication from Pakistan, pointing to Haikeemullah Mehsud's come to life one more time, after the repeated KIA reports over the last months.   Connect all these dots, you have the Times Square attack launched by the Mehsud clan, which is closely linked to AlQ in Pakistan.  Using American citizens.  A success to deliver the bomb to the target and ignite it.  Now we will walk Shahzad backwards the last months, and then we will try to penetrate Pakistan.  A story twice told.  Eager to learn of how Qari Hussain Mehsud recruited, trained and launched Shahzad.  

POTUS in the Gulf. The narrative for POTUS did not improve as he was jetting to the Gulf to emphasize his "hands-on" approach. The Obama team has never acted more defensive. The BP spill is gigantic and the scenario is a nightmare. The fishing business is flattened. Jobless numbers will skyrocket through the next 90 days. The temp hires by BP and the Feds will draw thousands of outsiders to the region and provide some offset. The Obama team shows signs of weariness with the scale of the Gulf. POTUS emphasized that BP is paying. The check is later. Right now, the threat is that the disaster generates overwhelming and fascinating graphics and video.  Spoke Jeff Ball, WSJ, to learn that there is a fresh radical idea to open the dams up stream to flush out Mobile Bay.  All attending service industries are also shrinking because of the damage to fishing.  Massive dislocation is possible.  Perhaps they can plug the hole.  Routinely now, the comparison is to Valdez.  A similar blowout off Mexico in 1979 at Ixtoc bled oil for three months.  The Mexicans refused to pay for the clean-up in Texas.

The WHCD fell off the stage to the breaking news from 45th and Seventh of the discovery of a Nissan SUV that was smoking with what appears to be a crude car bomb. The VBIED was first discovered at what is reported around 6:30 PM Eastern. The first three reports are usually wrong. Was POTUS told? Of course, as the Bloomberg editor-in-chief was on the dais. This will require more spinning by John Brennan, who is likely on his way to NYC. The search for the bomb builder will dominate the next hours. Two gigantic narratives now, neither suiting the POTUS script for the midterms: Deepwater Horizon and the Nissan VBIED. POTUS en route to New Orleans to play catch-up on the spill, while NYC goes under armed guard until the builders are nabbed.  We need a timeline for the bomb.  Also, we need to know what POTUS was told and when he was told it.  Same for the reporters in the room, who were watching POTUS while there was a bomb in Times Square.   Events are in the saddle.

 

The stand-up Bill Maher is a well-known celebrity who broadcasts talk radio points on national cable now and again with a careful, labored wit; and he receives attention and credibility because the PR machine he works with sends him out to chat with the oldest possible TV hosts. This adds up to okay but unhelpful politics, because Maher is on the script. What is notable here is that Maher wanders from the script -- or appears to be scriptless, though all is arch rehearsal with a veteran hambone like Maher -- when he mentions that POTUS is not exempt from blame for the Gulf spill. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is the presenting issue. It is likely that this Maher slap is more general. POTUS is slipping in his ability to connect to his voters. The polls show devotion to the Democratic Party, not to POTUS. Deepwater Horizon does play as Three Mile Island if and when the Democratic Party needs to shove POTUS out the door in order to protect the left-center base. POTUS leads a party that is anti-Big Oil and anti-Big Coal and anti-Globalization. The White House decision in early April to open up offshore fields now confuses the narrative. Oil bad. GOP bad. But POTUS bad??  Here is more confusion for the Rust Belt Democrats.  Mention that POTUS has reversed himself and now plans to travel to the Gulf on Sunday 2, instead of taking the day off for his usual golf.