The Rescue of the Chilean Miners

If all goes to plan (and hard to imagine it will), the first miners will be rescued around midnight.

Apparently many of the families want to be paid for interviews, given everything they've been through. Should go over well with American media, especially those who don't even speak spanish. Where is Rick Sanchez when you need him?

Lowlight of the coverage thus far, Larry King interviewing Jesse Ventura on the similarities between the plight of the miners and Ventura's Navy SEAL training.

But all that aside, hopefully the end of a nightmare for the 33 men and their families.

 

First rescuer is about to be lowered into the mine. It'll take about 30 minutes to get to the miners. They're now thinking the first one will be coming out in about 90 minutes.

 

Ventura did train with the SEALs, but he was not a Navy SEAL:

THE GOVERNOR'S NAVY PAST resurfaced in the last few days after an article in the San Diego "Reader" accused Ventura of "pretending" to be a SEAL, the legendary elite Navy frogmen whose name stands for "Sea Air Land" teams. The article cites evidence that Ventura was in the Underwater Demolition Teams, the UDTs, a separate group that saw less combat, and took fewer casualties.

Ventura's spokesman, John Wodele, confirms Ventura was in the UDT's, and he says the Governor has never tried to convince people otherwise.

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/199912/14_kastem_seals/

Sorry for taking this sideways. Many people seem to believe he was a SEAL. Did Ventura mention he was not a SEAL, but did some training with them?

 

Anyone else significantly worried that this operation will fall apart halfway through?

ps, msnbc's Kerry Sanders speaks spanish, thank God.

 

I don't remember. He said he was in a box. And waterboarded. So i can see why CNN immediately thought to interview him on the topic of Chilean miners who spent 68 days underground.

 

This is pretty fascinating. Trying to watch this & baseball.

Will be interesting to see how cable news follows the story. It's going to take over 24 hours. Will they go live all night?

What about tomorrow? Do they blow everything else off to stay with this? They almost have to, right?

 

I'm afraid to watch for just that reason.

 

FOX & MSNBC seemed to have their regularly scheduled hosts handle the coverage.

CNN tapes Parker Spitzer earlier, (& I think O'Reilly & Hannity often go live-to-tape earlier in the day) and had Anderson Cooper hosting live coverage when I flipped over. Did they bother taping today?

Is it a weakness that they weren't able to cover it, or would CNN viewers rather watch Cooper anyway? I'm thinking the latter, but I thought the difference was interesting.

 

Watching but worried.

How fast does the capsule go?

 

Same here, but I can't stop myself.

 

the rescue worker that is going down has some stones

 

They said about 40 minutes to go down, & 20 minutes to come up.