“Gulf oil” on The Daily Caller

The ocean floor is known to release numerous natural gases. The release of these gases is not normally caused by manmade disasters but by natural events. Because the ocean and the world’s land mass are plush with natural filters alleviating risk to human lives, we have not been truly affected until now. (more)

As of early this morning, the oil leak in the Gulf appears to have been plugged and the White House is hoping that the president’s political hemorrhaging has been simultaneously cauterized. (more)

BP PLC is in talks with U.S. independent oil and gas producer Apache Corp. on a deal worth as much as $10 billion that could include stakes in BP's vast Alaska operations, according to people familiar with the matter. (more)

Washington (CNN) — The man charged with independently administering the $20 billion fund set up to compensate for damage caused by the Gulf oil disaster said Sunday that he is prepared to provide up to six months in emergency compensation without the requirement of releasing BP from liability. (more)

Missed warning signs (more)

BP PLC is pushing to fix its runaway Gulf oil well by July 27, possibly weeks before the deadline the company is discussing publicly, in a bid to show investors it has capped its ballooning financial liabilities, according to company officials. (more)

Why I’m wasting my time on this astounds me, but I felt the need to expose the truth on a sad topic; moreover make it stop. How a group could preach their so-called “love of the earth” and turn around and use that same token to make money to evoke their cause is beyond me. (more)

I remember fondly trekking across downtown Des Moines, Iowa early in January of 2008 to catch Barack Obama’s acceptance speech upon winning the Iowa Caucuses.  I was one of the few who did so without the luxury of snow shoes. (more)

Last month, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour told Fox News that tar balls washing up on beaches are not cause for alarm. Anywhere from 250,000 to 750,000 barrels of oil seep through the ocean floor and into the Gulf of Mexico every year, Barbour said.  It’s natural to have a few tar balls. Mississippi is used to it. (more)

The list of crises facing the White House today is lengthy and weighty: the Gulf oil spill, high domestic unemployment combined with an unstable economic situation in Europe, a cultural divide on the issue of immigration, and continuing efforts to stabilize Iraq and win in Afghanistan, just to name a few. Today, we are likely to get a very poor jobs report after five consecutive months of job growth. Will the jobs report be seen as the beginning of a double dip recession? (more)

The United States has serious problems at home and around the world. The problems and predicaments we face as a nation—and as citizens—grow in number and severity. (more)

Tucker Carlson, TheDC’s editor-in-chief, discussed the Obama administration’s response to the Gulf oil spill, specifically the fact that the world’s largest skimming vessel is waiting for clearance from federal officials to begin work in the Gulf of Mexico. (more)

After our government claimed that we did not need or could not obtain larger ships to skim the Gulf oil spill, a giant-capacity skimming ship has arrived in U.S. waters.  Yet our government has left us wondering whether it will permit the ship to join the cleanup effort. (more)

President Obama exerted a welcome amount of executive leadership this past week as he dismissed Gen. Stanley McChrystal following the revelation of inappropriate comments offered by McChrystal and his staff in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. Excerpts from the Rolling Stone article demonstrate an impermissible lack of judgment on the part of McChrystal and his staff and the subsequent actions taken by the president were both appropriate and justified. Unfortunately, this recent example of executive leadership belies the uncertainty with which the American public has come to view Obama’s credibility as both leader of the free world and overseer of a nation struggling through myriad domestic crises. (more)

So should he stay or go, be fired or forced to resign? Because all commissioned officers serve at the pleasure of the president, Obama has every right to fire General Stanley McChrystal, either for apparent insubordination or over the bad judgment for which the general has already apologized. Little question there: No wartime commander in his right mind should have granted any reporter a solid month of apparently unlimited access to him and (even worse) to his personal staff. If he’s feeling charitable, Obama could just bust McChrystal back to three stars – maybe throwing in the additional duty of performing KP on the weekends for the next 90 days. (more)

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Here are some thoughts on a few recent and important money-politics headlines: (more)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill. (more)

The oil that’s flooded into the Gulf of Mexico has created big concerns about the environmental and economic damage. Another serious outcome has gotten far less attention: peak oil. (more)

Since President Barack Obama took office, the U.S.-U.K. “special relationship” has been in free fall. The first manifestation of this decline, shortly after the President’s inauguration, was Obama’s sudden return of the Winston Churchill bust from the Oval Office, loaned to the U.S. by the British people as a gesture of solidarity after 9/11. A series of incidents followed. Now, the British even see the Obama administration’s treatment of BP in the wake of the Gulf oil spill in this light. Rough periods in the relationship are nothing new, but this one is different and likely will prove very difficult to undo, if it isn’t already too late. (more)