It’s on: US, UK and France launch missiles to enforce no-fly zone in Libya.

Not hawkish enough: Former UN ambassador Bolton criticizes Obama’s “pathetic” response to Libya.

The age old question: Where are the robots? Emergency crews are being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in attempts to contain Fukushima’s nuclear crisis. Robots could replace them.

Send them to Fukushima. Qwest Field hosts nation’s largest tournament of high school robotics.

Here they come. First wave of US personnel evacuees from Japan arrives at Sea-Tac. 6,700 expected.

Still not reassuring: New sensors and gates will close Viaduct one minute after detecting earthquake. You’re still taking your life in your own hands every time you drive through the thing.

How do you say “really embarrassing” in Spanish? US ambassador to Mexico resigns over WikiLeaks revelations.

Not again: There’s a new Gulf oil spill reported near the Deepwater drilling site.

In telecom news: FCC approves CenturyLink’s purchase of Qwest, thereby merging the nation’s third and fourth largest telecommunications companies.

Supermoon rises. Looks like the moon.

For your Sunday morning viewing pleasure: Helen Khan, actress in over 350 Bollywood titles, sings “Monica, Oh My Darling” from 1971.

33 replies on “Morning News”

  1. If Bolton is criticizing Obama, Obama must be doing the right thing. That guy is nuts. Plusl his moustache is ridiculous.

  2. “You’re still taking your life in your own hands every time you drive through the thing.”

    You’re taking your life in your own hands every time you get in car, or enter anyone of the various rickety old structures that house Seattle’s many venues and restaurants.

  3. I see that a 120-pound light fixture came crashing down at the Big Dig recently (Boston’s version of the tunnel). I don’t think anyone was injured, but just think – you have all sorts of fun things like this to look forward to. (Oh, and did I mention that the Big Dig ran ridiculously over-budget also?)

  4. 5280:

    The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S. Although the project was estimated in 1985 at $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006,over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars) had been spent in federal and state tax dollars as of 2006. A July 17, 2008 article in The Boston Globe stated, “In all, the project will cost an additional $7 billion in interest, bringing the total to a staggering $22 billion, according to a Globe review of hundreds of pages of state documents. It will not be paid off until 2038.”

    It was said the Callahan Tunnel was the only way to get to the airport from downtown, but I remember a cabbie taking me another way once when I was in high school, because the tunnel was so backed up. As we drove through what looked like a series of vacant lots, I was sure I was going to end up in a dumpster. Afterward, my mom was furious, not that I had “almost died,” but that I couldn’t remember the route.

  6. Why wouldn’t we just bomb Ghaddafi? Why is he off limits?
    I don’t believe the French or British have the gumption for a follow through and will abandon the whole thing and, naturally, leave us holding the bag.

  8. @6, don’t worry Vince; we’ll follow up with a ground invasion soon enough.

    If there’s one thing America is about it’s WAR!!!

  10. Your link makes it seem as if the ambassador were forced to resign for stating the completely obvious (Mexico is corrupt, crime is rampant, etc.) in a missive to which such assessments would be relevant. If that were the whole story, a forced resignation would set terrible precedent. But other sources imply a much more complicated set of circumstances: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20…

  11. I have been wondering “where are the robots” this whole time. In Japan, you wouldn’t even have to have a robot for each plant, you could just have a fleet that could be transported in the event of an emergency.

  12. Bolton was the ambassador to Canada for a while and every time he opened his stupid mouth I wanted to deck him. I couldn’t believe such a rude, arrogant jerk was actually a diplomat, not even to some backwater but with the biggest trading partner the Americans have. Feel free to strap him to one of the bombs you’re dropping on Libya.

  14. d.p @10 thanks for posting that link. The wikileaks cables cited in the first link are like you said completely obvious. Every Mexican lives their lives assuming those facts are true.

    And what’s the deal with American ambassadors going to Mexico to court the daughters of the elite? Bush’s ambassador married into the second wealthiest family(Modelo beer fortune).

  15. You’re still taking your life in your own hands every time you drive through the thing.

    You take your life in your own hands every time you drive on any Seattle road with all the incompetent drivers here.

  17. Also, Canuck @4:

    You went east (away from the city), zig-zagged across Chelsea, and took the Tobin Bridge back. It’s only a good idea if you really know your way around. (You do not want to appear lost over there.)

    As for the Callahan being the “only way” back then, it’s never hurt to have had a subway under the harbor since 1904!

    That said, the endless attempts to draw analogies between the Deep Bore and the Big Dig always disintegrate under scrutiny (no matter which side is trying to squeeze its point out of them).

    For starters, the Central Artery portion that most people think comparable was a fraction of the total project. And it was a cut-and-cover operation, which had to be built without closing the existing artery (meaning hundreds of incremental rebuilds and relocations above, digging little bits at a time below).

    But the biggest blow to the comparisons — and yes, anti-tunnel advocates should make this point — is that I-93 is literally the only though-highway that Boston has! Our precious 99 has, of course, a parallel option, and it’s only six block away!

  18. Ah, d.p., that route through Chelsea sounds familiar, I never could’ve remembered it in a million years. Obviously, I know nothing about Seattle’s tunnel, save what I’ve read on slog, but I do suspect (along with a few other people) that smart cities will improve their public transit in these days of falling O&G reserves, and also that no matter what you are building, it will always cost at least twice as much as you think it will, which is okay if you’re rolling in cash, but not so much if your schools are having their funding slashed and you’re in debt to begin with.

  21. #6

    Actually Reagan did try just that right after Lockerbie.

    He sent in jets and they specifically targeted Kadaffi himself while he was in one of his tent caravans in the desert.

    However, he ended up living, and I believe one or two of his children were killed…

  22. And in late-breaking news, AT&T has bought T-Mobile for $39 billion. NYT has the article in their business section on the net. Sorry, guys.

  23. I was talking to a cabbie just last week in Boston about how Seattle was about to start its own sort of “Big Dig” and he got excited, hearing about it. The guy was a former construction worker but the construction biz has really slowed down out East, and he was talking wistfully about the Big Dig. I noticed that very few projects going on around Boston at the moment…

  24. There wasn’t much going on the last time I was there, that’s for sure. Still, it’s a very different city today than the one I grew up with.

  25. FYI, that is of course not Helen Khan *singing*; it’s Asha Bhosle. Bollywood actresses rarely sing their own songs. Asha and her sister, Lata Mangeshkar, sing probably most of them — or did from the 50s until the last decade or so.

  26. @24, the Park Street T station was being remodeled and my old art school on Huntington Ave is getting a new high rise dormitory building. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is getting remodeled, and something was being built on the side of Mass General Hospital and that was about all that I noticed going on construction-wise. That said, the Big Dig/bridge project is pretty impressive, now that it’s done, the expo center where they had PAX East is only about 7 years old and there’s a new skyscraper has joined the Pru and the Hancock Tower in the skyline since I used to live there in the late 1980s.

    The T system is even more extensive and useful, now, which is saying something. It’s shameful to compare the transit there to the pathetic system that Seattle (never mind the Eastside) has. I was able to get from across the street at the Museum of Fine Arts to Logan Airport on a $1.70 fare, and the Silver Line took me right to the front of the terminal I needed (it also stops at three other terminals). The cab ride I took about the same distance on arrival in the city cost around $30 with tip, I think.

  27. Not for nothing, but Reagan’s strike on Libya was in 1986, two years before the Pan Am bombing. The ’86 airstrike was ostensibly in response to the Libyan-backed bombing of a club in West Berlin. Ah, the Cold War … what fond memories.

  28. BOMB BABY BOMB!!!!

    how is your boy Barack any different from W?

    you Liberal Democraps told us the world would love us and we would all talk our problems away and wear flowers in our hair if bad bad W was gone….

  29. 12

    you are a backwater, dipshit.

    Canadians seeking quality healthcare in the USA distort trade figures…..

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