Look, after a few weeks of media scrutiny, national hatred and verbal gaffes, followed up with an all-day stoning (and some apologies) at a congressional hearing, you finally got your life back. So long and thanks for all the oil.
Meet the new guy: BP Managing Director Bob Dudley. The face of BP PR will be this guy.
"The president talked to the governor about this, and they both agreed that he had the ability to do both," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday after Mabus met with Obama at the White House.
That prompted quick criticism from the Defenders of Wildlife, which is working to save animals from the oil that has gushed from an offshore BP oil well for nearly two months.
"The idea that he is only going to work on this part-time is disturbing," said Robert Irvin, the group's vice president for conservation programs. "If this is the equivalent of war, as the president has been saying, it needs a full-time general."
Catholic Charities reported this week that of the 9800 people the counsellors had approached since May 1 in Orleans, St Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, 1593 were referred for counselling with signs of depression.
''It's the fear of losing everything,'' said Anh Cao, a Republican congressman from New Orleans who, with a response team, is travelling along the Gulf Coast to assess needs.
Mr Cao said he met two fishermen in Plaquemines Parish who told him they were contemplating suicide. While such cases were extreme, he said they reflected how some people were ''approaching a point of despair''.
Louisiana's jobless rate rose last month — whether it's the oil's fault is still being evaluated.
... when you are so scared of the future of the Louisiana coast that you see a depopulated, barren, stained coastal culture for a decade to come; when you feel the sea breeze tendrils of life that have always nourished your beach bum soul inexplicably loosen and shatter in an oil-soaked future wholly beyond your imagination, and you wake up with the cold sweats of despair and disappearing dreams with every front page of The Times-Picayune delivered to your door; when all you have is a tiny drop in the bucket of hope that we can bind our fierce determination together, dollar by dollar, to fight for our lives..."
This game is for two players. Each player takes a role — either 'BP' or 'The Public' — and each player has two cards that represent two possible strategies. BP is trying to shore up its dwindling share price, while the public just want the leak plugged. Both players pick a strategy and play it face down, simultaneously. These are then revealed and the effects on the share price and the leak are worked out. This action is then repeated until the game ends. It's very simple, takes just a few minutes to play, but is also quite devilish and deceiving.
Louisiana author James Lee Burketells Bloomberg the disaster “is going to remain not just the worst industrial calamity in this country’s history, but maybe in the world’s history, outside of acts of war. The magnitude of this is just immeasurable.”
Rep. Charlie Melancon on CNN's The Situation Room:
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