Category Archives: Environment

NBC's Matt Lauer, on Tuesday's Today show, blamed America's "appetite for oil" as the reason for the spill in the Gulf and asked former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw if the country will finally "take away the proper message" from the mess? For his part Brokaw responded that he hoped "young people who are coming of age" and entering public service and the corporate world will view the spill as a "defining moment" and warned if they didn't make the needed changes "we're gonna have these kinds of ecological disasters in waves coming year after year."

The following exchange was aired on the June 29 Today show:

MATT LAUER: Yeah I want to touch back on this oil spill as, before I let you go. You know we're, we're seeing the blame game. A lot of blame going around. We're seeing the villainization of a major corporation. We're seeing the limit of our technology-

TOM BROKAW: Right.

LAUER: -played out in front of our eyes. But on that live camera, right there, we're seeing something else. We're seeing our appetite for oil. And do you think at the end of all this Americans are gonna take away the proper message?

BROKAW: I hope so. I really believe that younger people are gonna be much more affected by all of this than people of a certain age, that includes you and me. Because we've grown up used to the idea of having oil and relying on it. I think young people who are coming of age who may want to go into public service at some point or go into the corporate world, this is a defining moment in their lives and they're going to be thinking about this in a much different fashion than the rest of us might. And I think if anything good comes out of that, that might be the case. A new generational wave of determination to find an alternative to fossil fuel. I think that the oil blow-out is a metaphor for our times. It's complex. It's everything that we've been told has turned out not to be true and it really is a signal to the rest of us that we've got to do something about energy and the future or we're gonna have these kinds of ecological disasters in waves coming year after year, decade after decade.

Robert Redford, one of the most popular and succesful actors of our age, has joined with other entertainers, including Sir Paul McCartney and Rosie O'Donnell in encouraging the Obama administration to actively politicize the Gulf crisis and use it to push through on energy policy.

In an interview with ExtraTV, Redford said that Obama should "Grab this moment in history and get a decent energy policy." He also said "Here's a moment in our history where he [Obama] should grab leadership and run with it."

He said that "We blew it in the late seventies," referring to laws like the National Energy Act, National Energy Conservation Policy Act and the Energy Policy and Conservation Act made in the wake of the OPEC embargo and the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster.

Redford has long combined his interest in liberal and environmentalist politics with his career as an actor and film maker, producing The Motorcycle Diaries, based on the memoir by Che Guevara and contributing money to Democratic candidates 58 percent of the time.

He added that the government needs to start planning for the end of oil and sustainable energy now. Apparently, the failure of the plans from the 70's does not phase his faith in the ability of the government to plan energy policy. He did say that BP is responsible for the spill and the government needs to make them pay.

Meanwhile, unlike McCartney, O'Donnell and Redford who urge political action, Kevin Costner has funded the development of machines which can aid tremendously in the clean up, using centrifuges to separate up to 99 percent of oil from water, despite prohibitive federal regulations preventing them from being developed. Costner has contributed money to Al Gore's past campaigns and campaigned for Obama in Colorado.

At least one celebrity is doing something useful regarding the spill.

With the passing of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, the defining narrative among politicos will — after a few hours’ decorum — emerge as does Byrd = Kennedy? That is to say that, while so many West Virginians would never vote against Byrd, now that he’s gone there are plenty of the same Blue State voters who would vote against a non-Byrd Democrat in this Age of Obama.

I don’t follow West Virginia politics closely but assume their version of Scott Brown would be Rep. Shelley Moore Capito. His or her identity, as well as whether the same phenomenon would play out, likely depend on if the election is held this fall, vs. 2012: there are some murky legal issues to sort through involving how long a placeholder would hold the seat. Still I’m pretty sure it will be someone staunchly anti-cap-and-trade (in both parties, in fact; the last West Virginia politician to show insufficient zeal against the scheme, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D), recently lost in a primary).

Cap-and-trade of course is the vehicle by which the president vowed to cause your electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket” as part of his effort to “bankrupt” the coal industry and anyone who sought to continue burning coal for that one-half of our electricity that it provides. Incidentally, today’s Wall Street Journal also notes how Obama’s anti-coal jihad just cost about 1,000 jobs in Wisconsin; West Virginia needs no such reminders yet as they pile up they also cannot help but be relevant.

How strongly West Virginia can inveigh, through its congressional representation, against this cruel ideological push is of increasing importance right now. Democrat staff are increasingly bold in their discussion of suckering Republicans into helping them pass it in a lame duck session, without having to vote on it in the Senate until after the elections.

The vehicle for said suckering is a “must-pass” Gulf spill bill — not that what is being proposed would have done anything to prevent the latest disaster of a company, BP, that like Enron lost the plot and fell apart as a result, any more than the financial services “reform” would have prevented the Fannie- and Freddie-precipitated meltdown.

From today’s E&E Daily story (subscription required):

What Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) puts in the Senate climate and energy bill, and what gets added on the floor, may not matter as much as simply whether some bill passes.

In the end, a joint House-Senate conference committee will likely hammer out the final version of the bill. That might not take place until a “lame duck” session after the November election, when much of the political pressure on lawmakers has dissipated.

Which means that despite the oft-repeated assertion by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) that “cap and trade is dead,” the House’s bill based on cap and trade could be back in play — someday, given the right conditions. Even if they do not enact cap and trade, Democratic leaders could use a conference to ratchet up the climate regultions [sic] past what the Senate agreed to and beyond what Democratic House centrists want.

“We have a lot of wiggle room in conference,” said a House Democratic aide.

And it could be hard for centrists in either party or either chamber to walk away from the bill if they have taken the risk of voting for it on initial passage.

“Once you get to conference, it’s an up-or-down vote,” said Norm Ornstein, a veteran congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “People who vote against it have to explain why they voted for it before they voted against it.”

That lame duck strategy is little more brazen than the Democrats’ efforts to cram-down the health care takeover. Indeed, not only will embittered losers have nothing else left to lose given the elections will be behind them. Worse, given that many Dems will be out of jobs by that point, they actually will be in a bidding war for ambassadorships or other sinecures by doing Obama a solid and seizing the ever-closing Obama Window to “fundamentally transform America”.

So the Dems think the Senate will pass a “Gulf spill” bill, the prospect of any vote against which they Dems are already styling as a vote for BP and Big Oil (they don’t say how). Then this will be merged with the House “energy” bill which was the 1,400 page monstrosity bearing cap-and-trade, among other odious delights of the Left.

It seems unlikely that Sen. Byrd would smile on this abuse of the rules of our representative democracy, but there you have it. His party will be against BP before they are for it…BP having invented carbon cap-and-trade with Enron, aggressively lobbying until this very day for the payoff it is designed to provide them.

The only issue is whether the Republicans are absorbing the message: the Dems are digging a political pit and layering its top with rhetorical palm fronds, certain that the Republicans will stumble into the “must do ’something’!” trap and pass a “Gulf spill bill”, with every sentient being knowing full well this is the Senate Dems’ ticket to a cap-and-trade, lame duck conference. And enactment of their last remaining high profile Power Grab.

Sadly, neither history nor the utterances of one Senate Republican to date provide any succor that they are on to the game.

The guys at the Glenn Beck radio show had some fun at Al and Tipper Gore's expense Thursday creating a mock interview where the host questioned the separated couple about the former Vice President's antics with a masseuse in a Portland hotel room back in 2006.

The role of the Global Warmingist in Chief was marvelously played by Pat Gray with Stu Burguiere doing an adequate Tipper.

The interview began with Beck asking the Nobel Laureate what happened in the hotel Lucia that fateful evening.

Al/Pat deliciously responded, "The global warming just became overwhelming as I was receiving massage" (video follows with more highlights and commentary):

When Tipper/Stu was introduced, Al/Pat asked, "Do you remember the time when I read you poetry? When I said, 'I was a child and she was a child in this kingdom by the sea. But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee.'"

Tipper/Stu responded, "That really brings back memories."

Yes, Al reading Edgar Allan Poe poems to Tipper. Somehow you imagine them being more "The Raven" than "Annabel Lee," but I digress.

Later the couple renewed their claim that "Love Story" was indeed about them despite the convenient truth that Tipper didn't die of cancer.

But the highlight had to be Tipper/Stu's marvelous haiku, "Get your hands off me. Why do you touch my buttocks? Mother Earth cries rape."

Now THAT'S poetry.

Nice job, guys! 

CNN's Carol Costello and Jim Acosta revealed their disdain for a federal judge's decision to overturn the Obama administration's 6-month moratorium on offshore drilling when the expert they interviewed on the June 25 "American Morning" made a convincing case against the moratorium.

Tom Bower, an author who has written extensively on the oil industry, tried to explain the devastating economic impact the moratorium would inflict on an already beleaguered industry, but Costello and Acosta were blinded by ideology: "But isn't safety more important than money?" queried Costello. "Because, I mean, these oil companies make massive amounts of money each day."

Bower, author of "Oil, Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Century," drew the ire of Costello and Acosta for calling the Gulf oil spill an "aberration" and noting the oil industry's "phenomenal" overall safety record.
    
"But that's what they say, it is just an aberration, but the BP disaster happened," argued Costello. "Nobody thought that could happen either. So, it's just not logical, is it, that argument?"

"What do you mean they're doing a very good job on the whole down there?" demanded Acosta. "I don't know what that means. In what sense? You know, I mean, this entire body of water is at risk right now. It has been poisoned. And I'm just curious, what do you mean by doing a good job?"

Taking aim at Republicans and moderate Democrats like Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.) who continue to support offshore drilling, Acosta asked Bower: "I'm just curious, you know, is there a little bit of a having your cake and eat it too, when it comes to some of these Gulf Coast politicians saying we want the jobs and the protection from any environmental impact at the same time?"

Loaded questions designed to advance the White House's narrative reflect Acosta's underlying liberal tendencies.

Costello also parroted the Obama administration's narrative:

Well, let's talk about this moratorium because, and I'm just going to play devil's advocate here. Let's say -- I mean, what's wrong with these oil companies to stop drilling in the deepwater, these 33 wells, for four more months? Because that's all we're talking about when you take the moratorium in its entirety. What's wrong with that?

Bower's response, unlike Costello's sputtering rant, was succinct and nonpartisan:

Well, the cost. We see each oil platform, each rig costs at least half a million dollars a day, and often more, and they just can't afford that sort of equipment lying idle and the contractors will find other places around the world who want the rigs, and they'll just take them there, so there's just no choice.

After dismissing the expert, Acosta, turning to Costello to offer his informed opinion, lamented that "it just doesn't feel right, you know, to say that as a whole, the industry's just doing a great job down there."

The transcript of the segment can be found below:

CNN
American Morning
6/25/10

6:41 a.m.

CAROL COSTELLO, co-host: The Obama administration loses another effort to put a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. But does lifting that ban serve our nation's best interests? You know, Bonnie is talking about this storm coming in.

JIM ACOSTA, co-host: Yeah.            
        
COSTELLO: Wouldn't it be a good idea if they continue to stop drilling on those 33 rigs -- you know that are affected by this?

ACOSTA: It's another potential complication for this whole thing.

COSTELLO: Yes. We're going to get really into that with author Tom Bower, who has written a lot on BP and the oil industry. It's 41 minutes past the hour.

[...]

ACOSTA: Welcome back to the "Most News in the Morning." You know, a showdown looms this morning over offshore drilling. A federal judge denied the administration's request to postpone an order that would end a six-month moratorium.

COSTELLO: That means if anyone wants to start up the deep water drills, they certainly can, but the White House says it will introduce a new ban in a few days. We wanted to know what a moratorium really means for safety though. Is it really necessary? Joining us from London this morning: Tom Bower, who is the author of "Oil, Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Century." Good morning, sir.

TOM BOWER, author of "Oil, Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Century": Good morning.

COSTELLO: Well, let's talk about this moratorium because, and I'm just going to play devil's advocate here. Let's say -- I mean, what's wrong with these oil companies to stop drilling in the deepwater, these 33 wells, for four more months? Because that's all we're talking about when you take the moratorium in its entirety. What's wrong with that?

BOWER: Well, the cost. We see each oil platform, each rig costs at least half a million dollars a day, and often more, and they just can't afford that sort of equipment lying idle and the contractors will find other places around the world who want the rigs, and they'll just take them there, so there's just no choice.

COSTELLO: But isn't safety more important than money? Because, I mean, these oil companies make massive amounts of money each day.

BOWER: Well of course, safety is critical. As we've now seen, the catastrophe follows if these are not safe. But on the whole, all the oil corporations are working safely. This is just an aberration.

COSTELLO: But that's what they say, it is just an aberration, but the BP disaster happened. Nobody thought that could happen either. So, it's just not logical, is it, that argument?

BOWER: We don't stop driving on the road because of a car crash. People carry on driving and people walk up staircases and fall down them, but we still walk up stairs. So in the end --

ACOSTA: Totally different when you're talking about an entire body of water as important as the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, the question that I have is we've heard the governor of Louisiana, and I'm sure you watch him closely as well, Bobby Jindal, you know, talk about why this moratorium should be lifted for the sake of jobs and so forth. But at the same time, the governor is saying we need to built berms, we need to do all these other things to protect our coastline, and I'm just curious, you know, is there a little bit of a having your cake and eat it, too, when it comes to some of these Gulf Coast politicians saying we want the jobs and the protection from any environmental impact at the same time?

BOWER: Look, I'm not an apologist for the oil industry, but I must tell you that on the whole, their record is very good. And America needs the oil, it needs the gas, and the product in the Gulf has been superb, and they're doing very good job down there on the whole. So, you know, just like we don't stop fly when a plane crashes, you just got to improve the regulation --

ACOSTA: What do you mean they're doing a very good job on the whole down there? I don't know what that means. In what sense? You know, I mean, this entire body of water is at risk right now. It has been poisoned. And I'm just curious, what do you mean by doing a good job? Because the other day, there were CEOs from the entire oil industry testifying on Capitol Hill saying that if they were to also engage in deepwater oil drilling, they essentially have the same plan of action in place if there is a major catastrophe, which is, well, we just have to, you know, see if we can plug the hole.

BOWER: Look, again, I can only say I'm not an apologist for the industry, but they are extracting amazing amounts of oil from the most difficult conditions. You got to ask why they're in the Gulf and not getting it from Mexico, Venezuela or Russia. That's one of the great issues.

ACOSTA: Are you saying that we basically put ourselves in this position? I mean, is that your point?

BOWER: I think the countries have gotten the oil to put America in that position. But on the whole, they have done a very good job in the Gulf and the executives who testified on the Hill like (INAUDIBLE) have not had these sort of catastrophes that BP is just having. So, I got to repeat on the whole, they've done an amazing job to find oil and gas there, and they are bringing it out safely. The point is that the administration discovered that the regulators, the MMS have done a very poor job so the government has got some of the blame here. They've let the oil corporations get away with murder for too long. They've now learned a lesson. They'll clearly have much better regulations down in the Gulf and elsewhere as well, because, believe me, they're going to have to start digging for oil and drilling for oil off other coastlines around the U.S. again in the near future because America needs the oil.

COSTELLO: Funny you mentioned that because BP is doing that, you know, off the shores of Alaska and it's doing this maneuver where they're drilling it's three miles offshore, they drilling down very deeply, and then they're going to make a horizontal line, something that's never been done before. So, BP, itself, is being allowed to go ahead with this process when we know that BP doesn't have it together when it comes to extreme disasters and how to fix things.

BOWER: You're absolutely right. The horizontal drilling is really quite well established now. There's nothing new on that. That is a very effective way of getting huge amounts of oil out which previously would have got lost. But I think BP has learned a lesson. I don't think they're going to make that sort of error again. They're going to be more careful than ever. They can't afford another catastrophe nor can any other oil corporation. I mean, you just got to set the seed that of course oil is a very risky business as I show in the book. What they've done down in the Gulf is quite phenomenal. This is a catastrophe which never should have happened. Everyone is learning lessons. They're going to do their best to prevent it from happening again, but the government has got as much responsibility now as the oil corporations to make sure that the regulations are there and enforced.

COSTELLO: Tom Bower, many thanks to you this morning. We appreciate it.

BOWER: Pleasure.

ACOSTA: I'm not sure I agree that they're doing a bang-up job down there, but that's just my take on it.

COSTELLO: You mean BP or the oil industry as a whole? Because I think he was separating them out.

ACOSTA: I think he was trying to separate it, but it just doesn't feel right, you know, to say that as a whole, the industry's just doing a great job down there.

COSTELLO: It's sort of like you have to trust them that catastrophes similar to what's happening with BP doesn't happen again. And the oil companies are saying, "well, we have a great safety record." But BP said that, too.

ACOSTA: Yes. We can't go on like this. We'll move on.

--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow you on Twitter.

In the wake of the BP oil spill, efforts have been afoot on the part of the Obama administration to ban drilling off the U.S. coast outright, ostensibly to stop future disasters like that which continues to unfold in the Gulf.

Part of the rationale for such a proposed moratorium is the notion that BP’s practices were not uniquely bad among industry actors, but rather typical and common—a conclusion that appears to be reinforced by a cursory glance at records obtained from the Department of the Interior, as written up by Greenwire today:

To look at the safety records of the offshore drilling companies before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank on April 20, there was little difference between BP America Inc. and its peers in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

But in a revelation that Big Government readers are unlikely to find surprising, sources tell Capitol Confidential that a broader review of relevant governmental data demonstrates that in fact, BP had a far worse record on safety matters than other oil companies.

Indeed, by one measure, BP’s practices were exponentially less safe than those of environmentalists’ favorite oil industry bogeyman— Exxon-Mobil—a conclusion BP opponents say may support the proposition that a lighter touch regulatory approach, which does not punish companies with good safety records and standards, is more appropriate than a ban.

According to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) data compiled and detailed to Capitol Confidential, two refineries owned by BP accounted for an astonishing 97 percent of the most serious violations flagged by government inspectors in the last three years.

Furthermore, of a total 862 citations issued between June 2007 and February 2010 at the two refineries, a stunning 760 were deemed “egregious willful,” with a further 69 classified as “willful.”  Shockingly, Exxon-Mobil—widely considered by many environmentalists and liberals itself to be the ultimate bad actor—received only one “egregious willful” citation.  Why did OSHA cite BP for more “egregious willful” violations than other companies?  Capitol Confidential’s sources indicate that BP, unlike other companies, not only messed up; the company had also failed to take corrective action when problems were flagged.

In addition, of about 850 “willful” violations among refiners cited by OSHA during the period for which data was provided and analyzed, BP accounted for nearly 830 of them.   While OSHA has previously said its concerns are not restricted to BP, OSHA citations, regardless of level, have been heavily imbalanced in BP’s favor.  Between June 2007 and February 2010, Sunoco Inc., ConocoPhilips and Citgo, had been issued just over 100 citations each, with just a handful being deemed “willful.”

This data deserves to be highlighted, sources say, for various reasons.  First, a moratorium threatens thousands of jobs across the Southeast, opponents charge unjustifiably, and closes off energy production in an “anti-capitalistic” fashion.  Second, however, BP critics say that in the absence of a review of the full data, BP may be being let off too lightly in the court of public opinion and dismissed as “just another oil company,” when in fact, much of the data suggests that is not so.

For now, the Obama administration’s proposed moratorium has been forcibly shelved, but as debate continues over BP’s role in the disaster, this data is bound to get a better airing—especially by those who charge that BP’s practices are neither best, nor emblematic of the oil industry, and who resent being tarred with the BP brush.  Likewise, government’s role in preventing this disaster rather than enabling an actor now universally regarded as “bad” is likely to bear further scrutiny.

The ramifications of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have not even begun to surface. We will be dealing with the ecological damage for years as the prime nesting grounds for shrimp, oysters and countless other varieties of sea life are destroyed by the leak at the bottom of the ocean that nobody seems to be able to deal with.

The economic damage is another entirely different animal that is going to rock the Gulf Coast and head inland with reverberations that will be seriously felt around the whole country.

The Obama administration is completely lost on how to deal with the spill and the president seems helpless except to appoint commissions and place blame anywhere except 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I know that an oil leak at this depth has never had to be dealt with before and is a seriously difficult thing to fix, but somewhere on this earth, somebody knows how to fix it and it's high time to find him or her.

The other part of the equation, the cleanup, is a horse of a different color and there are literally hundreds of ways to go about that, practical and simple methods that seem to either go over or under Obama's head.

I've seen demonstrations on television using things as mundane as the hay I feed my animals to clean up the oil. There are fabrics that have been developed that soak up the oil and reject the water and there is any number of machines people have come forward with, but none of them are appearing on the horrible scene on the Gulf Coast beaches.

Why is Obama afraid to let common citizens test the methods they've come up with, what could it possibly hurt.

Let's just use a little cowboy logic in this situation.

Bring all these people with ideas to the Gulf Coast, give them all a stretch of water to work with and see which ones work the best.

That's so simple and what can it hurt? Let the people try out their ideas. If they don't work they can simply be disregarded without any harm to anybody. If they work the can be deployed en mass.

I know the walls of the White House are covered with ivy league diplomas and Nobel Prizes, but there isn't enough common sense in that bunch to change a spark plug.

It's time for the politicians to stop using this crisis for an excuse to raise our taxes and advance their confounded socialist agenda.

It's time for them to get out of the way and let the people with the practical ideas have a go at cleaning up this mess.

And by the way President Obama, the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf is nothing less than pure dumb. You're taking the last vestige of economic hope away from people who have no way left to make a living because no matter how much money British Petroleum ponies up, it's going to run out way before those shrimp and oyster beds come back and long before the tourists start streaming back to the Gulf Coast.

Stopping the drilling is nothing less than cheap political pandering and another sign of the total lack of experience in your administration.

Just more proof of your lack of understanding and just how baffled you are by your job.

You're lost, Mr. President. Why don't you admit it and look for some help among the great, unwashed masses. I think you'd find that we're pretty dern good people who have been solving problems for generations.

Maybe you can't 'plug the damn hole" but you can get out of the way and let some people with the common sense your administration lacks come in and do something right for a change.

And believe me, it would really be a change.

On the June 24 "American Morning," CNN's Carol Costello trumpeted a "revitalized" environmental movement that is hoping the Gulf oil spill will "change the way we feel about oil" and is aggressively lobbying Congress to pass radical climate change legislation.

Previewing the "Gut Check" segment, Costello gleefully teased, "Coming up next, environmentalists are revitalized and it's over the Gulf oil spill. Could this disaster be what we need in this country to change the way we feel about oil?"

In lockstep with the Left's environmental agenda, the fill-in anchor pondered whether the Gulf oil spill would crystallize support for a climate bill or would "it be back to business as usual?" Costello articulated the same phrase environmental groups frequently employ to manufacture a false sense of urgency around their liberal initiatives.

Interviewing David Rauschkolb, founder of Hands Across the Sand, a liberal group opposed to offshore drilling, Costello praised the forerunner to Rauschkolb's new group – Earth Day – for "strengthening the Clean Air Act and helping President Nixon create the Environmental Protection Agency." Costello did not reach out to conservative critics who argue that draconian environmental regulations stymie economic growth and breed unemployment.

Costello also claimed that the Sierra Club, a juggernaut in the environmental movement, capitalized on conservative criticism to generate public support for liberal causes.

"When Rush Limbaugh blamed environmentalists for forcing onshore drilling offshore, the Sierra Club used Limbaugh's comments to raise $120,000 and 110,000 signatures for climate legislation," contended Costello, who failed to address the substance of the conservative talk show host's argument.

Further hyping the fringe environmental movement and its toxic agenda, Costello noted Clean Energy Works's robust lobbying campaign for "clean energy legislation" and GreenPeace's contest to design a new BP logo, without labeling either of these liberal organizations appropriately.

Back in the studio, co-host John Roberts sensibly stated that America "can't stop drilling because we're not going to stop driving cars." Channeling her inner liberal, Costello would not let her colleague's simple logic deprive her of her wide-eyed optimism: "That's true but will it drive something like climate change legislation? We just don't know yet. That's what environmentalists are hoping."

A full transcript of the segment can be found below:

CNN
American Morning
6/24/10

8:37 a.m.

CAROL COSTELLO, co-host: Coming up next, environmentalists are revitalized and it's over the Gulf oil spill. Could this disaster be what we need in this country to change the way we feel about oil? We'll try to answer that question in a "Gut Check" coming up next. It's 37 minutes past the hour.

JOHN ROBERTS, co-host: 41 minutes after the hour. A growing number of environmentalists are hoping that the oil crisis in the Gulf will change how Americans treat the environment. We've seen that kind of quick reaction after disasters in the past.

COSTELLO: I know, you know, Earth Day was born out of an oil disaster. So we wondered: will people really care? Will it change the way we feel about oil or will it be back to business as usual? A "Gut Check" for you this morning.
            
It's called Hands Across the Sand. Back in February it drew 10,000 Floridians in protest of offshore drilling. This weekend, Hands says it goes international: 599 American cities will take part, as will 20 countries.

DAVID RAUSCHKOLB, Hands Across the Sand: I believe this is a huge opportunity for us and it's time we take control of our energy future.

COSTELLO: David Rauschkolb hopes Hands will be the catalyst Earth Day was back in 1970. It was born after an oil spill in California and is credited for strengthening the Clean Air Act and helping President Nixon create the Environmental Protection Agency. The Clean Energy Works Campaign has hopes too – its launched an ad campaign pushing for clean energy legislation. GreenPeace is actively using the spill as a catalyst too, its members so intent to do something a contest to design a new BP logo has attracted half a million visitors to its Web site. The Sierra Club site is hot too. When Rush Limbaugh blamed environmentalists for forcing onshore drilling offshore...

RUSH LIMBAUGH, conservative radio host: When do we ask the Sierra Club to pick up the tab for this leak?

COSTELLO:...the Sierra Club used Limbaugh's comments to raise $120,000 and 110,000 signatures for climate legislation.

MICHAEL BRUNE, Sierra Club: This is our chance to actually move beyond oil and the outstanding question – the question that remains – is whether or not President Obama will seize this opportunity and get us off oil once and for all.

COSTELLO: While all the passion sounds good for who critics would call "tree huggers," is it real? Psychologist Jeff Gardere says while oiled birds, dirtied beaches, and black tides will raise awareness, it may not last. After all, there are government regulators already in place who are supposed to prevent disasters like this and didn't. So why bother? Environmentalists get that but say this disaster will cut through the cynicism.
                
BRUNE: We've set the ocean on fire, we've put thousands of fishermen and women out of work. The coastal tourism economy is collapsing and all of this is happening in slow motion.

COSTELLO: It may be happening in slow motion, but Americans have a complicated relationship with oil, and nowhere is that better demonstrated than in Louisiana – they're angry at BP but they sure don't want the oil industry to go away.

ROBERTS: You're right, there's so many people down there – one side of the family is in the fishing industry or the  tourism industry and the other side of the family is in the oil industry. They know that they have to co-exist. I mean, anything that raises awareness of the environment is a good thing, but you know, you've got to have – you can't stop drilling because we're not going to stop driving cars.

COSTELLO: That's true but will it drive something like climate change legislation? We just don't know yet. That's what environmentalists are hoping.

--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

As Interior Secretary Ken Salazar prepares a new moratorium on offshore oil drilling after the last one was shot down by a federal judge Wednesday, lost on the media seems to be Salazar's dishonesty in promoting the policy thus far. Very few have reported that he misrepresented the position of a team of experts designed to look into the costs and benefits of the moratorium.

In reality, the seven-member panel, recommended by the National Academy of Engineering, said Salazar's proposed moratorium would be "punishing the innocent." The policy "will not measurably reduce risk further," the panel explained, "and it will have a lasting impact on the nation's economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill."

Despite the panel's clear opposition to the policy, Salazar implied that they supported the moratorium. Salazar was forced to apologize after the panel publicly rebuked the Secretary's implications. "The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct," said one member of the panel, "but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions."

Even the judge in the case, Martin Feldman, noted that Salazar's statement was "misleading" and "factually incorrect."

Michelle Malkin took it one step further. "Salazar lied," she claimed in her syndicated column on Wednesday. "Salazar committed fraud. Salazar sullied the reputations of the experts involved and abused his authority." She reiterated this sentiment in a hard-hitting Hannity segment last night.

But only a day after Salazar apologized for at the very least misrepresenting the panel's views, he once again cited the panel's support for the moratorium in arguments filed in federal court. DOI's legal team wrote that the Department's policies had been

prepared with the benefit of consultations with experts from state and federal governments, academic institutions, and industry and advocacy organizations. As a result of that wide-ranging review, and the five-week discharge of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico that preceded it, the Secretary concluded that “offshore drilling of new deepwater wells poses an unacceptable threat of serious and irreparable harm to wildlife and the marine, coastal, and human environment…”…Consequently, Secretary Salazar ordered a brief six-month moratorium on one particular segment of oil-drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf that uses similar technology to that used on the Deepwater Horizon, in order to give industry and the agencies time to assess how best to address the findings and recommendations contained in the Safety Report.

Now, that argument is technically correct. The only element of DOI's proposed policies that the panel objected to was the moratorium. The panel made sure to note that "we broadly agree with the detailed recommendations in the report." The moratorium was the only policy to which it strongly objected.

But by noting that the recommendations as a whole were created after extensive consultation with the panel, and then touting the moratorium as the primary policy recommended, the legal team implied in hardly ambiguous terms that the panel had recommended the moratorium, which it obviously did not.

The media so far have almost completely ignored Salazar's continued use of dishonest and misleading statements in an effort to promote a moratorium.

"In a sane world, Salazar’s head would roll," Malkin wrote. "In Obama world, he gets immunity." And in the world of the mainstream media, apparently, he is completely ignored.

The extraction of shale natural gas is set to become a major growth industry in the United States.  Recently, Amy Myers Jaffa wrote in the Wall Street Journal that natural gas could become “the game-changing resource of the decade.” Already Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Louisiana, and other states are beginning to reap the economic benefits of a natural gas boom.  A study by Penn State University predicted that the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania alone will be responsible for the creation of 111,000 jobs and for bringing in an additional $987 million in tax revenue to the state by 2011. Natural gas extraction has been one of few industries growing (without government subsidies) during this recession.

However, this promising “game-changer” is under attack.  Some assert that the extraction of shale gas is harmful to the environment.  Josh Fox’s documentary “Gasland,” airing on HBO this week, is full of misleading allegations, inaccuracies, and occasionally outright lies.   Fox, for instance, alleges that Dunkard Creek fish were killed from natural gas drilling (the EPA and West Virginia Department of Environment Protection cite other causes), that residents of Dish Texas grew ill from gas drilling (the state Department of Health disagrees), that no one knows what goes into fracking fluid (though a complete list is available online), and numerous other myths.

When fracking is carried out responsibly under current regulations, the process poses no threat to humans or to the environment.  Fracking has been well documented, with no confirmed cases of groundwater contamination in 1 million applications over 60 years. Further, over 98% of the fracturing fluid is composed of water and sand, with most of the remaining 2% presenting low to very low risks to human health and to the environment.  An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study determined that fracking posed no danger to water quality.  In Pennsylvania, eight federal and eleven state laws regulate drilling, and hundreds of inspectors routinely inspect each drilling site.

These environmental scare tactics are often used by those who simply want to tax the emerging industry to fund ever-growing government spending.  In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell has pushed a severance tax on natural gas, under the aegis of environment protection, though 90% of the funding would go directly to fill a budget deficit.  In fact, natural gas would be taxed to subsidize the energy providers Gov. Rendell favors. While many states do have severances taxes on natural resources, those that have been successful in letting these industries flourish have delayed taxes until firms became profitable, lowered tax rates in hard-to-drill areas, and used severance taxes to lower other state taxes.

Many expressing concern about natural gas drilling are well-meaning stewards, and due vigilance to protect the environment is always warranted.  Yet the push to regulate and tax this “game-changing” resource to death is driven by special interests who feed off government spending and mandates.  These rent-seekers are attacking job creators who are simply trying to keep the government from taking more of the money they’ve earned through developing clean and affordable energy.

A federal judge has, for the moment, spared already-suffering Gulf state residents from the brunt of President Obama’s most recent anti-energy Power Grab. It has enjoined the administration from implementing its moratorium on deepwater drilling. The Order is here, and the Opinion here.

The administration has vowed to appeal. Regardless of the outcome, this victory is temporary. As I detail in Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America, Obama and his administration are committed to strangling domestic energy production. At the same time they promise to also clamp down on the cost of consumption, all in a way that makes our last energy-poverty president, Jimmy Carter, appear a free-market pioneer.

This was telegraphed immediately after Obama’s inauguration by his by administration revoking massive tracts of public land from possible lease for domestic energy production, even to the point of suspending lease agreements already struck.

None of this is either accident or coincidence, but affirmed as a deliberate plan by Obama’s concurrent clamp-down on families’ access to energy with a cap-and-trade scheme he vowed would cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket”. Though he dared not speak the scheme’s name, Obama renewed his support for it in his Oval Office speech last Tuesday by praising the House-passed bill.

Then, he also restated his threat of imposing central planning in the guise of the state engineering a “green economy”. Although last week he also suddenly dropped reference to his specific European models – because those countries like Spain have now admitted the devastation they caused, after his praise brought scrutiny – we know that even Europe has refused to ban production of domestic energy resources.

From the moratorium blocked by a federal judge today, pending appeal by Obama, to the planned “lame-duck” Congress-wide passage of the “cap-and-trade” energy tax, Obama is affirming all that he telegraphed and which is laid out in detail in Power Grab.

While the White House really, really wants you believe that they have their boot on the neck of BP, it turns out that a key Administration official had his head inserted somewhere else just three short years ago. Do you think NOBEL LAUREATE (and Secretary of Energy) Steven Chu still thinks BP is going to help save the world?

This is one of the ironies of the disaster in the Gulf. From all available evidence, BP is as committed as anyone to the “comprehensive energy reform” agenda of the White House. No doubt this reflects both political realism and market opportunism on their part, but BP’s 2009 “Road Map for America’s Energy Future” could have been written by John Kerry. Higher energy prices, cap and trade? Bring it on, says BP.

And this isn’t a recent shift on BP’s part. Here’s embattled BP Chairman Tony Hayward back in June 2007:

From BP’s perspective, the evidence that climate change is happening, and that it is manmade, is mounting all the time. As the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found, the evidence is almost overwhelming. We could wait until the science is 100% certain, but BP believes that, as an energy company, it has a duty to act pre-emptively. When you balance the likely impacts of not taking action against the real opportunities that exist to take action, it is difficult to believe that humanity will not move towards a solution to climate change…

We need to ensure that the costs of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are included in the price we pay for everything – whether it be a television, a train journey, or switching on a light – all should reflect the cost of emissions in their price.

This can be achieved through a Cap and Trade system, taxation, or regulation.

So it makes perfect sense that back in 2007 Steven Chu and UC Berkeley would be more than happy to accept a $500 million investment from BP to form the Energy BioSciences Institute. The relationship between Chu and BP was so cozy in fact that Chu subsequently brought on BP’s Chief Scientist Steve Koonin as an undersecretary at the Department of Energy.

My guess is that this history – and these relationships – played a part in the Administration’s initial confusion over whether BP was a “partner” in the effort to resolve the Gulf spill. Because for many within the Administration BP had been one of the good guys.

This also explains why BP has been so willing to prostrate themselves in front of their Democratic overlords in Congress and the White House. Here they thought they were trusted partners in saving the world from impending climate disaster. It turns out that their allies in the Obama Administration might soon be the only thing saving BP from the anger of a raging public…and insolvency.

Editor's Note: The following originally appeared at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.

Appearing on CNN with Anderson Cooper, film director Spike Lee implored President Obama to infuse his handling of the Gulf oil spill with more emotion. Demonstrating the astute analysis we have come to expect from the director, Lee implored Obama to “one time, go off.”

Perhaps he is of the same mind as Bill Maher, that the authentic black man is one who is always armed and resorts to violence and loud-talking when things do not go his way. (Note to self: On the way home from the liquor store, I must pick up my Glock from the gun shop.)

Both Lee and Maher seem to share the opinion of a great many progressives that emotion is the same as leadership and that problems are most easily solved by decree. It is no mistake that following criticism by Lee and others, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was declaring to the media that he had “seen rage from him [President Obama].” Apparently, when Obama gets angry, he clinches his jaw.

Soon after the Gibbs press conference, the President showed up in Louisiana, walked the beach in shirt sleeves and then, with clenched jaw, he spoke of growing up in a culture where the water was sacred. The administration meant this to be a demonstration of leadership. However, in some quarters, this is also known as street theatre.

Still seeking to enhance his “street cred,” the president then appeared on morning television, lowered his pants down below his buttocks, flashed his gold teeth, and announced that he was looking for some tail to kick.

In the meantime, the oil continues to gush from the well and the resulting slick is now the size of a small state.

As it turns out, sending the attorney general to Louisiana and ordering BP to “plug the damn hole” and then “going off” on national television didn’t solve the problem.

If the poll numbers are to be believed, it would also appear that Americans are not impressed with how much booty a president can kick, especially if it is not accompanied by decisive action, which actually addresses the problem. Over the course of the last two months, the president has had several opportunities to take bold and determined action–to be a leader. He has dithered instead.

A few of the missed opportunities:

Fire-booms that were supposed to be a part of any oil-spill response were missing in action. When they were finally located there were too few to do much good.

In the event of a major spill, federal responders had pre-approval to begin burning oil. They waited more than a week before doing a test-burn and then stopped. Experts have suggested that had the burning begun right away, 90% of the oil could have been burned away before it spread.

Thirteen countries have offered the United States the advantage of their technical skills. To date, the Obama administration has declined to take advantage of all of this experience and expertise.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers delayed the building of protective sand-berms until they could study the issue. The administration finally approved six berms, but only agreed to pay for one of them. Government officials say they want to first see if they work. Of course, by that time building more berms won’t do any good.

Two months into the crisis, Admiral Thad Allen, the U.S. official in charge of the Gulf of Mexico crisis, (or is he?), is still talking about asking Congress for a waiver of the Jones Act, which would allow foreign vessels involved in the crisis to operate in American waters. However, that may not do much good. Louisiana boat owners who have volunteered to aid in clean-up efforts are complaining that bureaucratic red-tape is keeping them out of the water.

On a positive note, the president did create another government commission.

Leadership of the statesman variety–as opposed to the shirtsleeves and furrowed-brow-look-of-concern variety–would have the president with a large pair of scissors cutting through the red tape. A leader scours the private sector for the most knowledgeable folks he can find and asks for their help. He gets on the phone with our allies and says, “Yes! Please send me your experts!” He says to the governors of the Gulf States, “Tell me what you need.” Leadership is putting aside political agendas and mobilizing the power of the executive office in order to solve an immediate crisis.

Leadership doesn’t always need big speeches or street corner bravado. Leadership can be quiet; it can be cool and determined. But if it isn’t focused and it isn’t active, it ain’t worth the price of admission to a “Spike Lee Joint.”

You may have missed President Obama’s euphemism for massive wealth transfers involved in his “green economy” — central planning rebranded — that he said last week he will seek to use the Gulf oil spill to impose. That euphemism was:

“When I was a candidate for this office, I laid out a set of principles that would move our country towards energy independence. Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill –- a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses.”

This is his fourth high-profile use of the phrase “finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy”, most recently his State of the Union speech. I addressed this in Chapter 6, “Green Eggs and Scam: The Wholesale Fraud of ‘Green Jobs’” from Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America:

That is the objective of various “green jobs” schemes: make everything else so expensive as to give life to the uneconomical. But that is incredibly economically harmful.

Also, note what President Obama said in his September 2009 UN “global warming” speech, a comment that should strike anyone who ever took an economics course or simply possessed the capacity for critical thought:

“Most importantly, the House of Representatives passed an energy and climate bill in June that would finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy for American businesses and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

The key word there is that lawmakers passed a scheme to make inefficient projects “profitable”, not “cost-effective”. That’s corporate welfare. These mandates and subsidies would , however, add value to the investment portfolios of many leading lights among Obama’s allies, such as George Soros who, by chance, soon revealed plans to sink one billion dollars into “green jobs” schemes. Lo and behold, another of his investments, the Center for American Progress, furiously pushes “green jobs” schemes.

Recall the sage from Team Soros, Mr. [Andrew] Light, who assures us that these mandates are “gonna spur new innovation, which is gonna reward smart investment, and which is gonna make alternative energy sources competitive” with things that actually work. No. The laws of physics remain undefeated. All they will do is impose the agenda admitted to by Van Jones and his Blue-Green allies, and seize your wealth to reward the purely speculative among Obama’s Wall Street supporters underwriting the green campaign.

Via the Associated Press (link may be dynamic and subject to change): 

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.

The White House says President Barack Obama's administration will appeal.

Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.

This later paragraph from AP's breaking news report explains why I believe Ken Salazar's dissenting experts from the National Academy of Engineering may have influenced the judge's outlook on the case:

Feldman says in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the moratorium. He says it seems to assume that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

Feldman's take seems to mirror the language of the dissenting experts.

Investors Business Daily editorialized on Salazar's moratorium imposition travesty on June 10:

Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did.

According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27 report to the president said the seven experts "peer reviewed" his recommendations, including a six-month ban on drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet. The experts say the report they reviewed suggested stopping only new drilling in waters deeper than 1,000 feet.

The reviewers for Salazar's report were provided by the National Academy of Engineering. Their joint letter says that while they agreed with the report's various safety recommendations, "we do not agree with the six-month blanket moratorium on floating drilling. A moratorium was added after the final review and was never agreed to by the contributors."

One panelist, Bob Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, said in an e-mail: "Moratorium was not a part of the ... report we consulted-advised-reviewed." The academy's Ken Arnold was less subtle, saying: "The secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions."

The panelists simply oppose the announced moratorium. "A blanket moratorium is not the answer," the letter says. "It will not measurably reduce risk further, and it will have a lasting impact on the nation's economy, which may be greater than that of the oil spill. We do not believe punishing the innocent is the right thing to do."

Neither do we, and frankly we're tired of the deliberate manipulation of facts and truth in the name of protecting the environment ...

Even the Associated Press finally broke down and covered the dissenters' outcries yesterday, while still somewhat concealing the full scope of their objections:

The scientists, who had consulted with Salazar on a May 27 report on drilling safety, said the Interior Department falsely implied that they had agreed to a "blanket moratorium" that they actually opposed. The scientists said the drilling moratorium went too far and warned that it may have a lasting impact on the nation's economy.

A spokeswoman for Salazar said the May 27 report was not intended to imply that all experts from the National Academy of Engineering had agreed to the moratorium.

"By listing the members of the NAE that peer-reviewed the 22 safety recommendations contained in the report, we didn't mean to imply that they also agreed with the moratorium on deep-water drilling," said spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff.

Sure, Kendra.

Though it's only one step, it may very well be that thanks to the stink raised by the NAE experts and outlets like the Wall Street Journal, IBD, and many center-right blogs, the nation might start getting the energy sector of its economy back in gear.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

One of the reasons windmills cannot generate energy efficiently is that the wind doesn’t always blow — and when it does blow, bureaucrats pay wind farms to shut down: Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are [...]

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse…

Last week Barack Obama told Politico that the BP oil spill was like 9-11–
But, it’s been over 60 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and he’s only sent 20 of 2,000 US oil skimmer boats to the coast of Florida.

Senator George LeMieux of Florida told the Shark Tank that there are only 20 skimmer boats off the coast of Florida out of 2,000 available skimmer boats in the United States. Lemieux says that Obama is afraid to move them to Florida because there won’t be any in place in case there is an oil leak somewhere else.

…That sounds like Obama.

Via the Shark Tank:

Senator Lemieux is keeping a count on the number of skimmer boats the adminstration has working off the Florida coast on his website:

Yesterday, Senator Lemieux requested a daily skimmer count update from the adminstration.

There have been calls to bring in more skimmer boats for at least two weeks but they have been ignored.

22 Countires have also offered to bring in their skimmer boats.
Florida News Capital reported:

Florida has a new point man to help speed up the response efforts to the BP oil leak. U.S. Coast Guard Commander Joe Boudrow (Boo-Dro –oh) will work to secure more equipment and help organize beach clean up efforts for the state. As Whitney Ray tells us, his first marching orders… bring more skimmers to Florida.

CNN correspondent Jeanne Moos has a penchant for quirky, off-beat reporting, but what happens when the eccentric newswoman gives a more accurate picture of important events than the serious journalists?

While media outlets relentlessly denounced BP CEO Tony Hayward for taking Saturday off to participate in a yacht race, they mostly glossed over or completely ignored President Barack Obama's Saturday golf outing with Vice President Joe Biden.

It was left to CNN's resident humorist to connect the dots.

"It's the yachting versus golf smack down, round one," declared Moos. "BP's CEO gets pummeled for taking a day off to watch his yacht race...CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller says already President Obama has played 39 rounds of golf, compared to the 24 George Bush played his entire presidency."

Moos's evenhanded coverage of Obama's and Hayward's weekend misadventures contrasted markedly with reports filed by network news correspondents. ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi covered the outrage surrounding Hayward's yachting, but ignored criticism of Obama's golfing. CBS anchor Charles Osgood parroted White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's derision of Hayward, but failed to present an Obama critic.

The grown-up journalists might have selfishly ignored Obama's 39th round of golf since taking office, but as Moos reported, at least the children shared both sides of the story.

"My mom doesn't take breaks like every two months," proclaimed one child. "You don't really need to take a break every two months to go see a yacht race."

"President Obama? I'm not sure he should actually be golfing right now," argued another.

The transcript of the segment can be found below:

CNN
American Morning
6/22/10

6:54 a.m.

KIRAN CHETRY, co-host: 54 Minutes past the hour. Time now for the most news in the morning with Jeanne. BP's CEO did manage to find cleaner waters over the weekend and many said it was a major PR fail for the company.

JOHN ROBERTS, co-host: But many critics are saying that the president can't say anything about it until he puts down the golf clubs. Here's Jeanne.

JEANNE MOOS, CNN correspondent: It's the yachting versus golf smack down, round one. BP's CEO gets pummeled for taking a day off to watch his yacht race.

JOY BEHAR, co-host of "The View": How dare he just take off.

Sen. RICHARD SHELBY (R-Ala): The height of stupidity.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: How do you spell fool?

MOOS: But before you could spell it – BP's CEO – President Obama's golfing came under attack.

DANA PERINO, former George W. Bush press secretary: Almost five hours on the golf course with Biden.

ELIZABETH HASSELBECK, co-host of "The View": And it shouldn't have been eight times between the spill and now.

MOOS: Actually, seven times. CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller says already President Obama has played 39 rounds of golf, compared to the 24 George Bush played his entire presidency, including some that got into a Michael Moore film.

Former President GEORGE W. BUSH: Stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.

MOOS: And while some equate president Obama's golf to Tony Hayward's yachting – two different men, two different jobs, one management style – the president's defenders note a big difference.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: That's the thing, he didn't create that mess that is there. What do they want the man to do? Put a wetsuit on and go down and fix that pipe?

MOOS: Meanwhile, Politico pondered the really important question, why is Tony Hayward's yacht names "Bob"? Wondering if it has anything to do with the Bill Murray movie, "What About Bob?" Sailor so scared he has to be lashed to the mast. Now Tony Hayward is being lashed.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I really think it was a disgrace.

MOOS: On the other hand, surprisingly it was the first day off he's had in two months.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I really don't care.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Too bad. Look what he did.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Every day of his life is a day off.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think he's probably due for a little down time.

MOOS: But downtime on the water can be a downer. Remember when presidential candidate John Kerry went wind surfing and it ended up in an attack ad.

ANNOUNCER: Whichever way the wind blows.

MOOS: BP's CEO is being mocked in an animation by a Taiwanese tabloid website. He sits on the beach sending out a drink to a guy drowning in oil, from the mouths of babes.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: My mom doesn't take breaks like every two months. You don't really need to take a break every two months to go see a yacht race.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: In the two hours it takes to golf or to go yachting, another 1,000 to 10,000 tons of oil could leak out.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: President Obama? I'm not sure he should actually be golfing right now.

MOOS: Just plug the darn hole, Mr. president. Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

Recent reports of Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, inspecting the beaches of Miami seem to be more of a photo oops than anything else.   Obviously, I’m sure he’s concerned with his state, the revenue lost from canceled vacations, and the impending negative effects environmental disaster from the BP oil spill, it remains curious, though, why he hasn’t been back to the Gulf coast since early June.   Instead he has recently traveled to Miami and Disney World–in central Florida–to address the spill.  Yes, he’s touting that Florida’s hot spots are safe, but more attention needs to be paid by the governor to the Gulf coast.

Meanwhile, the Florida beach report states:

The beaches and waters at tourist hot spots like Destin, Fort Walton Beach and Okaloosa Island are open, according to the Emerald Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, which represents the three destinations.

“The air here is also still fresh and clean, with no smell of oil whatsoever,” the bureau’s website said.

This beaches may very well be open, but the conditions of the beaches are debatable.  Swimmers I have interviewed at Destin have reported being covered in a gloss of oil after swimming in the Gulf, the water is not clear, and piles of oil-soaked dead seaweed have washed up on the shore.

Additionally, this is what the Destin shore looks on June 17, 2010.  This picture is not algea, it is of oil-soaked seaweed washing up on the beaches in large quantities.

They may want to change the beach report and Governor Crist, you may want to schedule another trip up to the panhandle for evaluation purposes and get some engineers and other experts in to protect your state.

On his first day in office, January 20, 2009, President Barack Obama issued a statement on the White House Web site promising Gulf Coast residents that his administration would not fail them like he accused his predecessor President George W. Bush.

Eighteen months later, those arrogant words are coming back to haunt Obama as the Gulf Coast is facing the third month of failure by Obama to marshall sufficient resources to protect the region from the massive BP oil spill.

“President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.”

Politico reported the statement the day it was posted to a White House page titled “Additional Issues.”

Since then, the White House has edited the comment to remove the personal insult to President Bush so that it now reads:

“President Obama will keep the broken promises to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur. Within weeks of his inauguration, he made a renewed commitment to partner with the people of the Gulf Coast to rebuild now, stronger than ever.”

Based on the Politico report, the White House also edited out verbiage bragging about Obama’s post-Katrina trips to the region:

The site also points out that Obama “visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region” and worked with the Congressional Black Caucus to help rebuild in the aftermath of Katrina.

The Obama administration has left a destructive trail of catastrophic failures in its wake over the BP oil spill, beginning with its failure to ensure that an adequate disaster plan was in place for BP’s Deepwater Horizon well to its failure to secure enough skimmers and booms to prevent the spill from reaching the shores of the Gulf states.

Obama had to be shamed into making his first overnight trip to the Gulf states last week. It took nearly two months for him to speak directly with BP executives. It wasn’t until last week that he acted like he was engaged, but even then he only spent half the week on the spill. The other half he spent on the golf course and at a ball game.

Obama’s response has been called “lackadaisical” by RNC Chairman Michael Steele who called on Obama to rein in his leisurely lifestyle until the leaking oil well is plugged.

Since the oil well blew on April 28, Obama has taken two vacations, played seven rounds of golf, entertained the pop star Bono and been entertained by Paul McCartney. He has also attended the theater several times, a Major League basball game, political fundraisers and has hosted several White House parties and barbeques.

Yet Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel ripped BP CEO Tony Hayward this weekend for taking one day off for a yacht race in Britain.

Team Obama is putting the word out to the media they think they’ve done enough on the oil spill with last week’s half-week effort and the resulting $20 billion shakedown of BP and are ready to move on. The Atlantic’s White House stenographer Marc Ambinder previewed the Obama administration’s attitude last night:

MOVING ON?: The White House hoped Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s appearance on Meet the Press would be seen as a pivot away from the debate about Obama’s crisis management. But with four visits to the Gulf and the BP escrow deal on the books, whether the administration can successfully turn to non-BP subjects remains to be seen. The variables: if the administration can begin to contain the oil, people will start to focus on other things as well.

The Washington Post picked up the ball for Team Obama this morning with an article titled “Turning the Corner on the Gulf Spill?:

Has the president turned the corner on the oil drilling crisis?

This week’s schedule for President Obama suggests that the White House believes he has. After dominating the conversation in Washington all last week, the environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico does not appear front and center on the White House calendar.

…the administration is clearly expecting — maybe hoping — that the intense public attention on the spill fades a bit, starting with this week, giving them a chance to turn to other subjects.

…Is it logical to expect that those subjects will replace the seemingly endless cable news chatter about the oil spill? Perhaps not. There is, after all, the never-ending video of the oil that continues to gush out of the bottom of the sea.

Is The Post channeling the White House view that that the oil spill has now been reduced to “cable news chatter” and a Web cam of the leak so the administration can now turn its attention away from the millions of Americans on the Gulf Coast whose lives and businesses have been ruined?

It would appear so.

“Never again,” promised Obama on his first day in office.  Never again.

Last week, Congresswoman Giffords met with General Patraeus on Capitol Hill. This meeting took place after we have lost over thirty American soldiers in Afghanistan this month. The burning question on Ms. Giffords’ mind was: what are we doing to “green” our bases?

This is a disgrace. Ms. Giffords sits on the House Armed Services Committee and yet seems to be unaware of the ever-changing and deteriorating situation in our longest war ever – Afghanistan. Instead, she used that meeting for political grand-standing to please the Obama Administration.

Ms. Giffords, my Democrat opponent in the race for the 8th Congressional District, has little respect for the gravity and seriousness of her office. In November, she will answer for that.

With Comrade Obama all but declaring war on the oil and coal industries that make our cars go and the lights come on, it’s a good thing that his fellow moonbats have the smarts to generate power by other means. The E Rope, for example: Besides being good for your flubber, skipping seems to be a [...]

Louisiana residents have been hit hard. In his first Oval Office address, Obama refers to the aftermath of the recent explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig as “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.” Still, the “man-made disaster” that Washington bureaucrats have inflicted in its aftermath may prove more damaging to the economy.

At the end of his speech, Obama turned calamity into political opportunity:

“Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own destiny…”

Obama wants more spending and the passage of a sweeping cap- and- trade bill. The Washington Times claims this

“would represent the greatest expansion of state power in U.S. history. The government would directly regiment and control industry… [and effectively erect] a green nanny state based on central planning and bureaucratic corporatism…”

We already have unsuccessfully tried the move to greater energy independence with ethanol, says Charles Krauthammer. He also reminds us that Obama repeatedly cited Spain for its blossoming clean energy industry.

“Spain, now on the verge of bankruptcy, is pledged to reverse its disastrously bloated public spending, including radical cuts in subsidies to its uneconomical photovoltaic industry.”

The fact is that petroleum is very portable and energy dense. As of now, we have no renewables nearly as efficient as fossil fuels.

Still, Obama declared that we’re desperate:

 “Part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean is because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.”

More like running out of places the government will let us drill.

“Running out of places on land? What about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the less- known National Petroleum Reserve- 23 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope, near the existing pipeline and designated nearly a century ago for petroleum development- that have been shut down by the federal government? Running out of shallow water sources? How about the Pacific Ocean, a not inconsiderable body of water, and its vast U.S. coastline? That’s been off- limits to new drilling for three decades. We haven’t run out of safer and more easily accessible sources of oil. We’ve been run off them by environmentalists. They prefer to dream green instead…”

If government would just get out of the way, the free market would guide us to a better energy future. As Hayek warned us, policy application of this magnitude fails because of the inherent limits of human knowledge.

Amidst all the political jockeying over the BP catastrophe, the main players are missing what is really uppermost on America’s mind: It’s the spill rate, stupid. It’s jobs, stupid. It’s the economy, stupid. And none of it is happening.

All eyes in Washington, Wall Street, and Main Street were turned this week to the congressional show trial featuring beleaguered BP CEO Tony Hayward. Hayward was a disaster. He played dumb. He stonewalled. And he never got honest about the colossal failure of human judgment at BP that caused this catastrophe.

But folks, seriously, what did you expect? Before this thing is said and done, Hayward and others at BP may very well be criminally indicted by the Justice Department. Hayward could eventually do hard time for all I know. So, of course, he stonewalled. Thank Eric Holder.

What Hayward should at least have done is talk about the progress being made in capping the spill rate, which is gradually going down. To most Americans, and especially those in the Gulf, it’s the spill rate of capture that matters most. Hayward also should have talked about the new BP relief well, which could be up and running in less than a month, to end this disaster. That would be great news for America, and her economy and stock market. Plus, he could have mentioned that BP is hiring thousands of workers to fill new jobs in the cleanup effort.

But Hayward was lawyered to the gills, which doesn’t make anyone happy, including me. And that’s precisely why these congressional show trials leave me bored, tired, and depressed.

And oh, by the way, what’s the role of Congress in this catastrophe? What exactly is it doing besides presiding over these show trials? Doesn’t it have oversight authority when it comes to the Minerals Management Service that utterly failed to regulate the safety of BP’s deep-water drilling operations? Why aren’t more people talking about this?

And why in the world hasn’t Congress suspended the Jones Act, thereby allowing foreign-flag tankers into the Gulf area? What is it waiting for? We’re basically two months into this never-ending disaster. The Gulf cleanup could have been greatly aided by at least 15 foreign countries that were instead spurned after offering their tankers and other equipment. Why aren’t we accepting these offers of help?

And where, really, is the president in all this? Speaking to the nation from the Oval Office earlier in the week, he failed to declare a Jones Act waiver, and he made no call for a task force of hands-on oilmen from the likes of ExxonMobil and other big oil sisters who actually know what they are doing.

Another problem with Obama’s address was his arrogant announcement that he would inform BP’s CEO “that he is to set aside” an asset amount ($20 billion) for the government-run escrow fund to pay for the spill damages. Trouble is, there are no laws to permit our government to force such financial retribution. Not even a new TARP, at least not yet. Did someone say nationalization?

The government has no right interfering with the financial decisions of a private, shareholder-owned corporation. This sounds like GM and Chrysler all over again. Or maybe health insurers, pharmaceuticals, private investment funds, and multinational corporations. And it could end up having a serious and chilling effect on corporate investment.

Look, at least BP already agreed to pony up. Why should the government control this? Isn’t this another case of the Obama administration bullying, taxing, and regulating business as part of a social agenda to redistribute income and power from private enterprise to government? It’s a war on profits and capital.

Consider this: American companies are sitting on an astonishing pile of $1.5 trillion in unused cash. Why aren’t they investing to create new jobs? Well, it’s because massive tax and regulatory threats coming out of Washington have created a tall barrier of disincentives and uncertainty that is blocking the normal efficiency of the free-market capitalist system.

The instincts of our free economy are to promote growth. But when government blunts these instincts, the system ceases to work efficiently.

Americans do not want a cap-and-trade system. What they do want is a full-throated and comprehensive energy plan conducted on all fronts — carbon and non-carbon — that would unleash energy entrepreneurs and existing businesses to create more power and more jobs and more economic growth. Besides stopping the spill, this is the key point that Obama misses.

So, if BP is dirty, and if BP is incompetent, then so is Congress. And so is the White House, as far as I’m concerned.

The BP story is a total outrage. Once again America is not getting what it needs.

Expressing disapproval with some Obama administration actions, many on the right — and some on the left — are complaining that the executive branch wields far too much power.  Similarly, when President George W. Bush was in power, many on the left — and some on the right — complained that the executive branch wielded far too much power.  Seeing this bipartisan concern for unbridled expansion of presidential power and wishing to start restoring the office to its Constitutional limits, Congressman Geoff Davis (R-KY) has introduced the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act.

The REINS Act would require Congressional authorization for any new Major Rule proposed by the executive branch. It now has now has 57 cosponsors, including noted Constitutionalist Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).  It also enjoys the support of the Chamber of Commerce.  Under REINS, the numerous proposed regulations pertaining to health care, climate change, energy, financial regulation, and our economy would have to be submitted to Congress for approval.   REINS would continue to allow the executive agencies charged with writing rules to propose draft rules, but would end the delegation of Congressional authority that has enabled these agencies to enact them unilaterally.

Our Founding Fathers recognized the pitfalls of an all-powerful chief executive.  Fearing tyranny, our nation did not even have a president until 1789, preferring instead strong states, a weak Congress operating under the auspices of the Articles of Confederation, and no executive branch at all.  As this proved to be too weak for national cohesiveness, our founders drafted the Constitution to provide the nation with three co-equal branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial.  All three were to operate within the limits defined by the Constitution.

Our founders took great care in limiting presidential power.  Presidential power is limited to the powers granted by Article II of the Constitution.  As further protection against tyranny, our founders created a system where the president is chosen by the Electoral College rather than via direct election.  This was partly to keep the president from exceeding the authority granted by the Constitution by claiming a popular mandate.  The Constitutional system kept presidential power largely in check (temporary wartime expansions under President Lincoln and President Wilson being very notable exceptions) until the election of President Franklin Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt greatly expanded the power of both the presidency and the entire federal government.  He was the first president to submit legislation directly to Congress.  When much of this was overturned by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, FDR reacted by bullying the Court with threats to pack it with New Deal supporters.  Once the Court started upholding New Deal legislation, FDR used this green light to expand the office of the presidency well beyond its Constitutional bounds, shifting federal power from Congress and the Supreme Court to the executive branch in the process.  Most presidents since FDR have sought to further expand the power of the office.

President Obama has continued this expansion of executive power.  He has given a great amount of power to unelected bureaucrats within the executive branch and has then, in effect, created law via the regulatory process.  No Congressional approval was sought for any of these actions.

Congress is finally fighting back.  When introducing the REINS Act, Congressman Davis shared this disturbing information:

Last year, the federal government issued 3,316 new rules and regulations.  That is roughly 1.6 rules per working hour or 12.8 rules per working day!  In many instances, federal rules impose substantial compliance costs on individuals, businesses, and State and local governments.  Rules with at least $100 million of annual compliance cost or effect on the economy are classified as “Major Rules.”  In 2009, federal agencies issued 78 Major Rules.

The regulatory process has increasingly ceded power to unelected bureaucrats for major decisions that can affect all Americans.  Take for example the Democrats’ government takeover of health care.  This poorly drafted legislation repeatedly requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to create regulations in areas ranging from what is required for “qualifying health plans” to the determination and disclosure of nutritional information for standard menu items in restaurants.

The American people agree. In February, a CNN poll found that 56% of Americans believe the federal government is so large that it threatens the freedoms of ordinary citizens.  It is time for Congress to assert its Constitutional role in federal governance.

CHURCHVILLE, VA—I can’t help but praise Michael Specter’s new book: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. Specter warns that we live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically-modified food grains. Childhood vaccines have [...]

A Friday report by reporters Matthew Lee and Eileen Sullivan indicates that there is a serious shortage of critical thinking skills over at the Associated Press, or a serious desire to run interference for the Obama administration no matter how ignorant doing so makes the wire service's reporters appear.

Lee and Sullivan try to excuse the State Department's inaction on the vast majority of roughly 60 specific offers of assistance from over twenty nations, many of which go back to late April and early May (detailed in a 4-page State Dept. PDF here), because almost all of the offers are being made with an expectation that the costs of such assistance will be reimbursed. By my count:

• 15 of those assistance offers involve the provision of "containment boom" to protect beaches, shoreline, and other sensitive areas.
• Roughly 10 of those 15 containment boom offers are over a month old, and a few were made on or before April 30, over fifty days ago.
• Out of all 60 offers made involving all forms of goods and services, roughly a half-dozen have been accepted.

The reason Lee and Sullivan cast these offers as proof of a "double standard" is -- wait for it -- because the U.S. doesn't get reimbursed when it provides aid in natural disasters like earthquakes, and because many of the countries involved, several of which are dirt poor, receive American foreign aid.

Here are the petty pair's first few paragraphs:

Cleanup aid from overseas comes with a price tag

At least 22 nations - including Britain, where BP is based - have offered oil-collecting skimmers, boom, technical experts and more to help the U.S. cope with its worst-ever environmental disaster. But their generosity comes with a price tag.

The State Department confirmed that nearly every offer of equipment or expertise from a foreign government since the April 20 oil rig explosion would require the U.S. to reimburse that country.

The offers reveal a hard truth about the United States' international friendships: With the U.S. widely regarded as the world's wealthiest nation, there is a double standard regarding foreign aid after a crisis, especially with offers from relatively poor countries.

... U.S. disaster aid is almost always free of charge; other nations expect the U.S. to pay for help.

Here is one of the examples the AP pair cited:

China offered containment boom for a price. When a major earthquake struck in northwest China in April, the U.S. quickly gave $100,000 for relief supplies, and after another major earthquake in southwestern China in 2008, the U.S. donated $500,000 through the U.S. embassy in Beijing to the Red Cross ...

Last time I checked -- and regardless of how one views our current relationship with China -- earthquakes aren't caused by industrial accidents at private companies willing to pay for the costs of their actions.

It's as if BP and its promises to pay all of the costs of the cleanup, including, as of when the AP reporters wrote their story, its "voluntary" agreement to set up a $20 billion shakedown fund -- er, "escrow account" -- don't exist. Even if you cut State a little slack because agreeing on proper reimbursement levels takes a bit of work, the real story here is that a vast array of assistance has been held up for no good reason while the environmental situation in the Gulf continues to deteriorate -- and environmental groups, in their virtual stone silence, prove that they are really branches of the Democratic Party who aren't primarily interested in clean air and water.

In a Friday press briefing the AP reporters were aware of (because their report contains a quote from that briefing), State Department spokesman Mark Toner even acknowledged BP's reimbursing role:

I believe these assistance offers, if you will, are being repaid by BP on a reimbursable basis, so – look, what we’re concerned with right now is getting these types of assistance, as they become available and as they’re useful to our cleanup operations, getting them into action so they can clean up the Gulf.

Sorry Mark, if your bosses in the government were so concerned, they would have acted on these offers weeks ago.

The idea that those running the still-richest country in the world are resisting the idea of having to pay legitimate amounts for goods provided and services rendered -- fully knowing that BP will ultimately reimburse them -- while a steadily worsening environmental emergency marches on is intensely offensive. It's enough to make one think that more than mere incompetence is involved. One doesn't want to accuse the administration of wishing that things get worse in hopes that doing so might make parts of their political agenda more achievable, but the delays in accepting help, in combination with President Obama's sickening opportunism during his national address Tuesday evening -- spending over one-quarter of it (about 750 of 2,700 words) promoting "a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill" -- move what would ordinarily be considered an outlandish accusation into the realm of the sadly possible.

Lee's and Sullivan's excuse-making is equally inexcusable. Do I even need to note that if these kinds of hold-ups had occurred under a Republican or conservative administration, Lee, Sullivan, the AP, and most of the rest of the establishment media wouldn't be making pathetic attempts at justifying them. Instead, they'd be finding Democratic politicians who would be calling for heads to roll and going way beyond speculations concerning the underlying motivations -- or issuing the calls and making the accusations themselves.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Cynthia Tucker believes Americans are the enemy of the nation moving in a new energy direction because of what she called our addiction to oil.

As the discussion on this weekend's "The Chris Matthews Show" moved to why President Obama hasn't attacked energy policy much like Eisenhower did the space program, Tucker said, "One of the differences between the '50's when Sputnik was launched and now, that was a battle against Communism."

She continued, "It's always much easier to rally Americans against an external threat, an external enemy."

And sadly continued, "In this case, the enemy is us. Americans are addicted to petroleum. We use way too much oil" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CYNTHIA TUCKER, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: And one of the differences between the '50's when Sputnik was launched and now, that was a battle against Communism. It's always much easier to rally Americans against an external threat, an external enemy. In this case, the enemy is us. Americans are addicted to petroleum. We use way too much oil. So it's a little harder for the president to turn around and call on Americans to sacrifice. You remember what happened to Jimmy Carter when he did that.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Exactly.

TUCKER: Now I happened to think Jimmy Carter was right.

HOWARD FINEMAN, NEWSWEEK: Because you're from Georgia.

TUCKER: Well, if he had done the things that, if we had done the things that Carter called for then, we may not be looking at this huge oil spill now.

Yeah, that Carter sure was a genius when it came to energy policy.  

I guess Tucker has conveniently forgotten that Carter presided over some of the most expensive oil prices in history with the exception of the last decade when demand from China exploded.

The following inflation-adjusted chart will give readers an idea of just how harmful Carter's energy policies were on Americans' wallets:

 

But even that's somewhat beside the point, as likely far more important was Tucker's classic liberal view that Americans' desire for oil makes us the enemy.

Why can't these folks understand that energy has become as much a human necessity as food, water, and shelter? Our appetite for oil is no more of an addiction than is our desire for sustenance, hydration, and a roof over our heads.

With this in mind, it would be far more acceptable to be called an enemy by folks like Tucker if they would all completely cease their use of petroleum products.

Until that point, this is just another liberal employing the typical "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" mantra.

When you start calling your countrymen enemies, you'd better behave in a fashion that separates you from that which you consider abhorrent or you should just keep your caustic opinions to yourself. 

The presidential commission tasked with investigating the BP oil spill is so short on technical expertise and packed with left-leaning politicians and knee-jerk environmentalists that even the Associated Press's resident ClimateGate apologist Seth Borenstein is concerned.

On December 12, 2009, over two weeks after the ClimateGate e-mails first appeared, Borenstein wrote that "the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions." What part of Kevin Trenberth's famous October 12, 2009 assertion that "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t" did Seth not understand?

Nonetheless, non-skeptical Seth is somewhat taken aback at the lack of expertise in the spill commission's membership:

Obama spill panel big on policy, not engineering

The panel appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is short on technical expertise but long on talking publicly about "America's addiction to oil." One member has blogged about it regularly.

Only one of the seven commissioners, the dean of Harvard's engineering and applied sciences school, has a prominent engineering background - but it's in optics and physics. Another is an environmental scientist with expertise in coastal areas and the after-effects of oil spills. Both are praised by other scientists.

The five other commissioners are experts in policy and management.

The White House said the commission will focus on the government's "too cozy" relationship with the oil industry.

Geez, why even put together a commission when it's already been told what one of its key conclusions must be?

Brief descriptions of each person on the commission are at a separate AP link (the full White House announcement is here):

• Co-chairman: Former Democratic Sen. and Gov. Bob Graham of Florida. He often has pushed for a drilling ban off the Florida coast.
• Co-chairman: William K. Reilly, Environmental Protection Agency administrator under President George H.W. Bush and during the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989.
• Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
• Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science.
• Terry Garcia, a National Geographic Society executive and former chief lawyer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under President Bill Clinton.
• Cherry Murray, dean of Harvard's engineering school and former president of the American Physical Society.
• Frances Ulmer, chancellor of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and former Democratic lieutenant governor of Alaska.

I suspect that a plentiful track record of environmental radicalism and far-left progressive tendencies present in several commission members will be discovered in the next several days.

Anyone hoping that co-chairman Bill Reilly will provide a dose of moderation will get a reality check by going to his still-present bio at the EPA's web site, where the following was found:

Perhaps the most significant failure of the Reilly Administration, as Reilly suggests below, was that EPA was unable to garner the unalloyed support of the Bush Administration during the second half of that Administration's term. This was largely due to the inability of the Agency to muster the politically valuable praise of the Administration's environmental efforts by environmental organizations. As a result, the Bush Administration chose to work more closely with elements of its constituency that would provide political support during the 1992 election season. As a result, EPA found its agenda stifled in the White House and its credibility compromised before Congress.

After leaving the Agency during the final days of 1992, Reilly returned to World Wildlife Fund.

The "EPA found its agenda stifled"?

Just a cotton-pickin' minute. The "EPA's agenda" is supposed to be the agenda of the person running the executive branch, i.e., the President. It's clear that the EPA hasn't seen things that way for a long time. This is a bureaucracy that has instead and for decades viewed itself as its own independent branch of government accountable to no one.

If it wasn't obvious then, it's certainly obvious now, based on the free pass the environmental movement has given to president, that, as Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds wrote a week ago:

Environmentalists, like feminists, are just another arm of the Democratic establishment: “running dogs” to be loosed or reined in as politics require.

Any GOP attempts "to work more closely" with environmental leaders are thus predestined to bear no fruit.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

The other day President Obama gave BP an ultimatum, he met with BP executives for the first time, and squeezed $20 billion from the company.  He also made a prime-time bomb of a speech.  Moreover, in that short period, Tony Hayward has been demoted, a part-time czar has been appointed, and it is now reported that claimants are being turned away.

The success the Obama administration had in getting the oil spill live feeds off the front pages of websites and cable news stations and cause the change in the narrative from millions of gallons of oil gushing to a seemingly more proactive, authoritative, and administrative role in managing the devastating situation is remarkable.  At last, PR success.

There is, however, a major problem with all of this:  the oil is still gushing from the well and now there are large amounts of methane causing dead zones.  The “damn hole” is not plugged.

To review, BP confirmed that oil was gushing at a rate of 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day, which would be equivalent to 1,470,000 to 2,520,000 (million) gallons per day (42 gallons equals 1 barrel).  Presently, the oil continues to flow, but the rate is unknown as reported by CNBC on June 11:

Under the current system, a containment cap placed atop the gushing well pipe a mile below the ocean surface is funneling some of the escaping oil and gas from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to the surface to be collected in ships.

An undetermined amount of oil continues to escape from the cap into the ocean.

Researchers say new figures for the blown-out well show the amount of oil gushing out may have been up to twice as much as previously thought. That could mean 42 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have already fouled the Gulf’s fragile waters.

It’s seems as though so many have forgotten that the well is still leaking profusely, even though some of the oil is being captured by BP.  The MSM has adopted the Obama narrative once administration officials were able to finalize the PR maneuvers.  There are two main factors that you must remember with this administration:  they are PR masters and they will never let any crisis go to waste.

So, let’s get one thing straight:  millions of gallons of oil continue to leak into the Gulf of Mexico.  The leak has not been contained and officials cannot say for sure how many gallons continue to flow.

And what was the reason we didn’t accept the Dutch’s help within the first three days of the oil spill?  Oh yes, windmills.

Some people have always occupied themselves in crying out that the end is near. This sort of thing has been going on for millennia. But lately, it seems to me, the volume of such doom-saying has risen markedly. Websites that feature apocalyptic forecasts have grown like weeds on the Web, and at least one well-known libertarian site has shifted from more analytical material to heavy doses of gloom-and-doom. An odd aspect of this increasing tendency toward Chicken-Little-ism is that it now comes for the most part in two completely different versions. Let’s call them the Left Version and the Right Version.

The Left Version, of course, has been bombarding us for the past forty or fifty years mainly as a warning of imminent environmental catastrophe ― of near-term exhaustion of natural resources, terminal ruin of a hyper-polluted physical environment and, most recently, overheating of the earth’s atmosphere with countless attendant climatic disasters. Leftists who peddle this terrifying prospect seek to allay the threat by ceding totalitarian powers to government officials who in their copious wisdom will save the day, if only narrowly and at the cost of our liberties and our modern standard of living.

The Right Version has resided for decades more in the shadows cast by millenarians, goldbugs, and self-anointed financial gurus than in the bright media glow that has illuminated the leftists’ prophecies. Recently, however, many more people seem to have concluded that the only sane course is to forsake all hope for the continuation of socio-economic life as we have known it, and hence that preparation for a complete social and economic meltdown ― Greater-than-Great Depression, hyperinflation, dollar collapse ― obliges us to stock up on guns, ammo, gold, and a larder full of dried beans and other survivalist goodies.

It is interesting that although many people take an ominous forecast more or less seriously, they have embraced dramatically different conceptions of the nature of the impending doom. Are those who foresee the future so differently living in the same world? If so, how can they have come to such clashing conclusions about the events to come?

The answer, I believe, has to do with ideology, which I have long defined as a somewhat coherent, rather comprehensive belief system about social relations, noting that each such system has four distinct aspects: cognitive, moral, programmatic, and solidary. Ideologies permit people to understand, evaluate, and cope with a social world otherwise too vast and complicated to comprehend. If two persons embrace starkly different ideologies, they can easily arrive at starkly different visions of future developments, even when presented with the same information.

Can objective facts and established scientific theories cut through all of this ideological noise, substituting the pure, harmonious tones of truth for the cacophony of wild-eyed, mutually inconsistent ideologies? No, they cannot. In the determination of human beliefs, ideological outlooks and propensities have the power to override virtually any kind of inconsistent information or knowledge. Decades may pass, yet the Club of Rome remains as convinced as ever that environmental and natural-resource disasters are imminent. Stock markets may soar by multiples while confirmed “bears” never lose their faith that selling short is the road to financial paradise ― hedge-fund manager Michael Berger defrauded a multitude of trusting investors, not to mention tricking the government regulators, and drove his firm Manhattan Capital into bankruptcy because he could not surrender his bearish convictions even during a prolonged run-up in stock prices in the late 1990s.

So, the answer to my previous question is, yes, different sets of people in effect do live in different worlds, notwithstanding their physical coexistence on planet earth during extended time spans. And therefore you’ll have a devil of a time disabusing any of them of their cherished visions. Strange to say, many people fall in love even with their preferred brand of apocalypse. Doomster Paul Erlich might have lost his famous bet with Julian Simon, but he never “cried uncle.” As Ed Regis wrote in Wired:

A more perfect resolution of the Ehrlich-Simon debate could not be imagined. All of the former’s grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events. Ehrlich was wrong about higher natural resource prices, about “famines of unbelievable proportions” occurring by 1975, about “hundreds of millions of people starving to death” in the 1970s and ’80s, about the world “entering a genuine age of scarcity.”

In 1990, for his having promoted “greater public understanding of environmental problems,” Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award.

And so it goes.

If you want to load up on gold, who am I to tell you that you’re making a bad bet? I don’t know what the price of gold, or anything else, will be in the future. (I also happen to believe that nobody else knows, or can know. Someone who knew the course of future prices could easily and quickly acquire the wealth of Croesus simply by making appropriate transactions in the futures markets.)

What I do know is that for thousands of years, some people have been telling their fellows that the end is near, and although some terrible things did happen from time to time, hardly ever did they prove to be as catastrophic as the prophets’ most foreboding warnings had foretold. The sky never rained blood, the oceans never boiled, the ground never rose up to crush squealing humanity between heaven and earth. Of course, as David Hume has taught us, this history is no guarantee that such an apocalypse won’t happen. Nevertheless, I am inclined to make my bets on the basis of a somewhat more temperate outlook.

For taxpayer-funded PBS, the blueprint for America's future is centered on advancing the Obama administration's taxpayer-funded green agenda. In the June 17 installment of "Blueprint America," Miles O'Brien, a "NewsHour" special correspondent, hailed Dubuque, Iowa as the "city of the future" for transforming itself into a liberal beacon of environmental sustainability.

O'Brien's piece showered Dubuque with praise as it promoted the city's liberal environmental initiatives, which the correspondent noted are bankrolled with taxpayer dollars courtesy of the Obama administration's economic stimulus package.

"The people in this old factory town along the Mississippi have signed on to a unique experiment," explained O'Brien. "They're attempting to turn Dubuque into one of the nation's most sustainable cities."

Listing the city's seemingly countless awards for "livability" -- a term the PBS reporter struggled to define -- O'Brien championed President Barack Obama's budgetary boondoggle for the bountiful fruit it has given to Dubuque:

The streets, sidewalks, bike lanes, and even public transit are all on their way, now that Dubuque has landed a $5.6 million chunk of last year's federal economic stimulus package. Buried in that bill is a tiny pilot program for infrastructure projects just like this. It's meant to promote the Obama administration's vision for smart growth. Last fall, three members of the Obama Cabinet came to Dubuque to promote their livability agenda.

The only skeptical resident O'Brien could find was Bill Hammel, but the former city councilman was more concerned about outsourcing than Mayor Roy Buol's liberal environmental agenda, which the mayor himself admitted is "excellent politics."

Concluding the segment, an optimistic O'Brien portended bright prospects for America's taxpayer-funded green economy: "Back in Washington, the green Cabinet will soon hand out another $600 million worth of grants to cities working on livability programs like Dubuque's."

The full transcript of the segment can be found below:

PBS
NewsHour
6/18/10

7:33 p.m.

JIM LEHRER: Next, another of our Blueprint America reports on infrastructure. Tonight, a factory town bets on a green future. Our story was produced with WNET New York.. The reporter is special correspondent Miles O'Brien.

MICHAEL KAY, resident of Dubuque, Iowa: Good Saturday morning, Michael Kay here at Farmer's Market, Iowa's oldest open-air farmers market, 165 years.

MILES O'BRIEN: Dubuque is one of the oldest cities in Iowa, home to about 60,000 people.

KAY: We're chatting with the mayor of Dubuque, Roy Buol. Hi, Mr. Mayor.

ROY BUOL, mayor of Dubuque, Iowa: Good morning, Michael.

KAY: Good to see you again.

BUOL: Great to be here on a beautiful day.

O'BRIEN: The people in this old factory town along the Mississippi have signed on to a unique experiment. They're attempting to turn Dubuque into one of the nation's most sustainable cities. The man leading the charge is Mayor Roy Buol.

BUOL: Good morning, Rachel.

O'BRIEN: He spent decades working at the factory floor at the town's largest employer, John Deere. Five years ago, he ran for mayor on a green platform and won. How does a guy, a guy who works with his hands at John Deere all those years, become a mayor so interested in the other kind of green, green issues?

BUOL: Well, I can tell you, it all really started for me when my wife and I started being blessed with grandchildren. I just started thinking, you know, what kind of a world are we going to be leaving for future generations, with our consumption patterns and how -- how wasteful we were in our energy usage?

O'BRIEN: Dubuque could have turned out to be a classic Rust Belt story. But, for the past two decades, the city has been working to avoid that fate. Take a quick look: a revitalized river front, a new Convention Center, and a museum. Far beyond the banks of the Mississippi, people are noticing. The U.S. Council of Mayors called Dubuque the most livable small city in America. "Forbes" magazine proclaimed it number-one small city for projected job growth. Even the federal government is calling Dubuque a model for 21st century economic development. Dubuque, Iowa, the quintessential city of the future? Apparently so. So, what is it that makes this place a model for sustainability? Buol believes the model starts with community input. Shortly after taking office, he formed a citizen task force to draw up a blueprint for sustainability.

BUOL: And they brought that back to the city council for our approval, and I think they hit a home run. Today, that plan is looked at by other communities as kind of a benchmark.

O'BRIEN: It's great to have benchmarks, but you also need the bucks. Dubuque has been effective at combining the two.

BUOL: Citizens of Dubuque do hereby proclaim the week of May 8 through the 15, 2010, as AmeriCorps Week in the city of Dubuque, Iowa.

O'BRIEN: When we were here, we witnessed one small example. The city council recognized these young AmeriCorps volunteers here for a door-to-door campaign to install energy-saving devices, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency.

CANDACE EUDALEY, resident of Dubuque, Iowa: I want to make my house efficient.

O'BRIEN: Candace Eudaley is a 25-year-old who was born and raised in Dubuque. This gadget will cut her water usage by 40 percent.

EUDALEY: I don't even think I would know what aerator to buy at the store. So, having them come in with something that can fit -- it was like a universal aerator -- was really awesome.

MILES: Eudaley believes Dubuque is moving in the right direction.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Do you have any plants outside?

EUDALEY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: OK.

EUDALEY: No city is perfect. I have been to a lot of interesting ones, but no one's doing everything. And Dubuque isn't doing everything yet, but it's planning to seriously do everything, and I think do it pretty well.

O'BRIEN: In order to convince younger citizens to stick around, the mayor says Dubuque needs a vibrant, livable downtown.

BUOL: The vision is to turn this area into what we call work force housing. For those young professionals that a lot are coming to town today, we want to redevelop this into housing that they would like to live in at a price that they can afford, and create complete streets to replace what we have here. These streets are 100 years old-plus.

O'BRIEN: Complete streets. This is where the rubber meets the road for rebirth here. The streets, sidewalks, bike lanes, and even public transit are all on their way, now that Dubuque has landed a $5.6 million chunk of last year's federal economic stimulus package. Buried in that bill is a tiny pilot program for infrastructure projects just like this. It's meant to promote the Obama administration's vision for smart growth. Last fall, three members of the Obama Cabinet came to Dubuque to promote their livability agenda.

RAY LAHOOD, secretary of transportation: This is an opportunity for you to say to your kids you can now come back to Dubuque, because there are some opportunities here.

O'BRIEN: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was flanked by his counterparts at the Environmental Protection Agency and Housing and Urban Development, the so-called green Cabinet.

LAHOOD: The definition of livable communities, people ask us all the time, what does it mean? It's a community where you can live, you can go to the grocery store, the drugstore, the doctor's office, you can get all over – all around that neighborhood and around the city without ever having an automobile.

O'BRIEN: That last point is really important. It represents a big policy shift in Washington where, for decades, transportation funding was inextricably linked to building new highways, which created the suburbs and sprawl. To get people back downtown, Mayor Buol recently cut a deal.

BUOL: The addition of 1,300 people in our downtown work force will most certainly accelerate the realization of our vision for a revitalized warehouse district.

O'BRIEN: The city of John Deere's big green machines is now also home to Big Blue. IBM recently moved in to this newly refurbished energy-efficient landmark building. Turns out IBM came here in part because Dubuque's philosophy synchs up nicely with one of the corporation's new ventures.

IBM ANNOUNCER: On a smarter planet, we can analyze all the data we now see.

O'BRIEN: IBM intends to develop and sell technology to help
cities run more efficiently. V.P. Robert Morris says Dubuque is the perfect place to beta test these new product ideas.

ROBERT MORRIS, IBM vice president of services research: So it became a double attraction to us, just not the attraction of doing an I.T. delivery center, but also the attraction of saying, hey, this could be America's most advanced or most integrated or most innovative smarter city.

O'BRIEN: So, the one-time factory town in the Midwest becomes
this is incubator, this laboratory for the city of the future. It's an ironic twist, and it leaves a lot of people a little bit uneasy. What happens if this partnership goes south?

BILL HAMMEL, former Dubuque city councilman: When IBM was making this great announcement for Dubuque, they were also laying off 5,000 people in the United States, and those jobs went overseas. So, when IBM gets this is thing up and running, are -- are those jobs going to get pulled out and sent overseas? And, if they are, that's going to be a hell of a void to fill in Dubuque.

O'BRIEN: Bill Hammel is a retired firefighter and former city councilman. He's worried that a $50 million incentive package may be too high a price to bring IBM to town.

HAMMEL: If IBM were going to stay here, it would be great. But it seems like it cost an awful lot of money. They're not hiring that many Dubuquers.

O'BRIEN: Why did IBM get such a special deal, and was it worth it?

BUOL: You know, I think it was what we had to do to compete with other communities that were trying to lure IBM. At the end of this year, we're going to have 1,300 IBM employees in the city, with an annual total payroll of about $60 million, turning over in our community, you know, the restaurants downtown, the housing, that kind of money, every year in the city of Dubuque.

O'BRIEN: I'm sure it would be accurate to say you wouldn't be here were it not for those incentives, right?

MORRIS: The incentives certainly help, but just as important as the incentives were the approach that the town took towards strengthening and making the city more sustainable. It wouldn't help us if we brought jobs here and then, several years later, found that our people didn't want to live here.

O'BRIEN: Bill Hammel remains skeptical.

HAMMEL: As far as livability, you look around Dubuque, it's clean, fairly friendly people. So, to me, that's what makes Dubuque livable. But this sustainable stuff, livable, that – those are buzzwords. They don't mean anything.

O'BRIEN: But, for many in town, those same words have meaning.

EUDALEY: I did not think I was going to be here when I was 25. I definitely didn't think, oh, yes, when I – like, when I was in high school, this wasn't where I was going to be. But I think it's getting to be a place where I want to be. So, I may be here for quite a while.

O'BRIEN: The verdict is still out on Dubuque's sustainability initiatives. But one thing is for sure. Sustainability is good politics for you, isn't it?

BUOL: Sustainability is excellent politics. I think it's excellent politics for anyone living in a community where you have involved citizens and given them the information they need to make that decision.

O'BRIEN: Back in Washington, the green Cabinet will soon hand out another $600 million worth of grants to cities working on livability programs like Dubuque's.

--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

Wow, just wow. Never would have seen this one coming, but is one of the standard-bearers of the media elite recognizing the Obama administration's anti-business populist tone is inhibiting the U.S. economy?

On the June 18 broadcast of CNBC's "Squawk Box," NBC "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory was asked to respond to a June 18 New York Times article by David Sanger suggesting the Obama administration may be "overstepping" and discouraging business growth in the United States. Gregory told "Squawk Box" viewers that in his view they were and called it "a real problem."

"It is, certainly beyond Washington," Gregory explained. "You all know it talking to business leaders every day and I do speak to business leaders quite often as well and I hear it time and time again that what you got at the administration are two problems. One, you've got nobody in the inner sanctum of the President's advisers who has ever run a business - who have never run a business. And that's a real problem. I think there's a level of recognition about that being a problem in the West Wing as well. But the rhetoric and the policy substantively, a lot of people feel, is anti-business and getting to a point where it could really discourage businesses in the United States and certainly the multinationals working here as well. That's a problem and I think that element of criticism from Joe Barton, while off the reservation substantively, got to that larger point, which is this populist string."

Gregory elaborated on the lack of business experience in the President's inner circle and explained it has hurt the White House's ability to get solid policy measures in place.

"I think they would like to have more people advising the President who have that business acumen," Gregory said. "But let's call it what it is. They made a decision early on in this financial crisis they were going to demonize anybody from Wall Street. They wouldn't take anybody who had the quote, unquote ‘taint of Wall Street' and that's a problem because you have the expertise that they could have leveraged, brought inside, to try to deal with financial regulation and all the rest. He's going to get financial reforms. But nevertheless, they made the decision, going back to the AIG mess and the bonuses. And that has carried forward."

And Gregory said he thought the White House was second-guessing their decision to take this route.

"I think there is [second-guessing] because I think they recognize that, look they're at a point on stimulus alone, who's going to create the jobs here? Forty-one thousand private sector jobs last month. The private sector has to start to feel like it's got more confidence to lend more, to start more business investment, to stop hoarding cash. And a lot of that is going on - again, I realize you know this better than I do because of the question marks and- all of the uncertainty coming out of Washington and particularly this administration."

A congressional hearing on foreign ships in the Gulf of Mexico turned into a full-scale attack on the Obama administration’s response to the crisis — led by the committee’s Democrats.

Thursday’s hearing came as a growing chorus of critics has accused the Obama administration of unwisely turning away international help for the oil spill cleanup and failing to issue a temporary waiver of the protectionist Jones Act. The hearing came as Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) criticized the administration for bureaucratic hurdles.

Witnesses from the Coast Guard and Maritime Administration attempted to rebut the claims, but their assurances fell on deaf ears. (Video of the hearing.)

At one point, Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) became visibly upset and scolded Rear Adm. Kevin Cook. Moments earlier, the Coast Guard official came under fire from another committee Democrat for not having enough skimming vessels off the coast of Florida.

“I want to make sure we sense the urgency of this moment,” Cummings said. “We have a window of opportunity to save our beaches, save some of our birds, fish and wildlife. And I’m just wondering whether there is that sense of urgency. … When you say something like ‘We’re trying to make arrangements,’ I hate to say it, but that’s not good enough.”

Other Democrats were equally as harsh.

Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.) stopped just shy of accusing the Coast Guard of incompetence. When Cook was unable to answer her questions about the number of skimming vessels available in the United States, she demanded he find out and report back to her.

“How many skimmers do we have? How many are assigned? How many have been offered? When and where? How many have been received and accepted? And how many are available and where? That includes the Coast Guard, private, National Guard and foreign. I mean, you’ve got to know what you have to do something,” Richardson said. “I don’t understand why you don’t have a database to know where your resources are that you can utilize.”

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) said it was unacceptable that her state couldn’t utilize foreign vessels for skimming. She held up pictures of skimmers available in Mexico and Norway that could help.

“We are in emergency mode and we need skimmers,” Brown said. “We need the big ones. I understand they’re available in other countries, including Mexico and Norway. What is the process for the state to utilize these vessels from other countries? … We’re talking about protecting Florida’s coast.”

When Brown asserted there were only 30 skimmers working off the coast of Florida, Cook countered there actually 110. “We don’t have enough,” Brown responded. “What is the process for the state to take advantage of skimmers from other countries?”

At one point during the hearing, Democrats were making a more appealing case for waiving the Jones Act than their Republican counterparts. The 1920 law regulates movement on U.S. waters and between ports, restricting where foreign ships are able to dock. With the State Department acknowledging it has received more than 20 aid offers, critics have questioned why the administration simply won’t suspend the law in a time of crisis.

Deputy Maritime Administrator David Matsuda confirmed there has been one Jones Act waiver request for a foreign deck barge to operate within three miles of the U.S. coast. That request was denied because American vessels could perform the same functions. Matsuda defended the administrative waiver process, noting that case-by-case requests are handled within 48 hours.

Of course, the Obama administration could eliminate the bureaucratic delay entirely by simply following the precedent set by the Bush administration, which waived the Jones Act in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 to transport oil and gasoline throughout the Gulf region. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has the legal authority to suspend the law with Matsuda’s approval.

Matsuda and Cook’s reassurances about the situation in the Gulf left most members unconvinced. Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) pressed the witnesses repeatedly on the Jones Act’s restrictions. Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) read an e-mail he received from a U.S. vessel operator whose help was turned down. And Rep. Frank LoBodino (R-N.J.) said it was shameful the Customs and Border Patrol failed to show for the hearing.

The underlying message from members of Congress: The administration has failed to utilize all the resources — foreign and domestic — at its disposal. Unfortunately for Obama, the witnesses did little to dissuade them of that opinion.

On Wednesday, I posted a piece, drawing attention to what is now obvious even to Maureen Dowd: that, as an executive, Barack Obama is woefully incompetent. In that piece, I noted the propensity of the American people for electing to the Presidency men with ample executive experience – as generals, governors, cabinet secretaries, and the like. I remarked as well on the poor performance of the four Presidents they elected who did not have prior executive experience; and I suggested that it is time for the Republicans to ask who, in their number, has demonstrated a willingness and an ability to take charge and assume what the authors of The Federalist called responsibility.

In the course of the next few days, I propose to say a word or two about three of these Republicans. I will not discuss Sarah Palin, who displayed the requisite vigor and dispatch in her brief stint as Governor of Alaska, and I will not discuss Tim Pawlenty, who, over the last seven years, has shown genuine capacity as Governor of Minnesota. That worthy task I will leave to others – who know more than I do. Today, I will look at Bobby Jindal, Governor of  Louisiana.

Jindal is a remarkable young man. Born in 1971 to parents who migrated to Baton Rouge from India, he entered the freshman class at Brown University when he was twenty, was admitted to Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School when he was twenty-three, and that same year was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at New College, Oxford – where he took an M. Litt. in political science and wrote a dissertation entitled “A Needs-Based Approach to Health Policy.”

Instead of studying medicine or law, Jindal returned from Oxford to Louisiana, became Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals when he was 25 and President of the University of Louisiana system when he was 28, then shifted to Washington, DC where he became Assistant Secretary of  Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation at the age of thirty.

Two years later, he was back in Louisiana – where, in 2003, he ran for Governor in the state’s open primary, led in the first round, and lost in the runoff; where, in 2004, he was elected to Congress with 78% of the vote; where in 2006, was re-elected with 88% of the vote; and where, in 2007, he was chosen Governor, the first non-white man to have been elected to the governorship in that state and the first non-incumbent ever to have made it to the top without a runoff.

Jindal took over in Louisiana two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and put on display the incompetence and corruption besetting the state government and the city government in New Orleans. With dispatch and vigor, he then set out to clean up Louisiana politics, streamline state government, and put the state’s budget in order, all of which, insofar as these things are possible in that state, he did.

In August, 2008, when Hurricane Gustav threatened New Orleans and the Louisiana coast, Jindal’s Louisiana was ready for the crisis, and he and his administration did what his predecessor had notably failed to do at the time of Katrina: arrange for an orderly evacuation of the city and the coastal areas.

In the wake of the oil spill occasioned by BP’s mismanagement of the Deepwater Horizon, he has moved heaven and earth in an heroic effort to protect the Louisiana coastlands. As I pointed out on Wednesday, a poll recently taken by Public Policy Polling shows that, in Louisiana, “63% of voters approve of the job he’s doing,” which is the highest approval rating that this left-liberal polling operation “has found for any Senator or Governor so far in 2010. There’s an even higher level of support, at 65%, for how he’s handled the aftermath of the spill.”

Alexander Hamilton once argued that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Bobby Jindal is nothing if not energetic. He is, in fact, everything that a republican executive ought to be. Put bluntly, he is the sort of man that one would want to have next to one in a foxhole. He is smart as a whip, and he is inclined to take the initiative. If his response to President Obama’s first State of the Union Address left television viewers disappointed, we should keep in mind that, when 2012 comes around, Americans will be apt to pay more attention to demonstrated executive capacity than to eloquence in mouthing pious platitudes.

In a satellite interview with Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) held shortly before 1 p.m. EDT today, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer criticized Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) for denouncing the president for pushing BP to agree to a $20-billion escrow account for oil spill damages as a "shakedown":

So, there's Joe Barton calling the $20 billion in escrow a shakedown, and as you point out, there are people in your district who have lost their livelihoods! They wonder how they can feed their families!

But yesterday, Brewer's MSNBC colleague Ed Schultz used similar language to voice his giddy approval of President Obama's maneuvering [video embedded at right and available as WMV file here]:

President Obama! You are the dude! The president takes the heads of BP behind closed doors, shakes them down for $20 billion, and gets an apology. 

[...]

President Obama went behind closed doors today with Tony Hayward and the other suits from BP and informed them it's time to pay. 

[...]

If you go by today's results, you'd have to say the President of the United States hit it out of the park. In his own way the President of the United States took on a multinational [corporation] shook 'em down for $20 billion for the American people. President Obama got more out of BP than the Congress ever has.

The day before that, just two hours before President Obama's Oval Office address, Schultz told viewers he hoped the president would sound "like a dictator" and would rhetorically speaking, press his "boot on the neck of BP tonight."

For a related blog post by MRC news analysis intern Matt Hadro, click here.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) and MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan on June 17 joined forces to lambaste "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough for continuing to defend President Barack Obama's handling of the BP oil spill.

Scarborough presented a litany of arguments in Obama's defense, but Giuliani and Ratigan countered with specific examples of the president's failed leadership. Regurgitating liberal talking points, Scarborough blamed the crisis on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

"We hear that we had the technology to stop this," Scarborough claimed. "In 2002, though, Dick Cheney and his energy task force said, 'No, we're not going to take an extra step.'"

Giuliani responded with an eviscerating counter punch: "It's important to know as part of the history of this but the reality is, he's been president now for 18 months. It's about time we stopped blaming Bush."

Scarborough thought that the former New York City Mayor would credit Obama for securing from BP a $20 billion victim compensation fund, but instead Giuliani criticized the president.

"I say it was a good deal for BP," retorted Giuliani. "If I can put even a tentative limit on the liabilities, I've helped save my company."

"Democrats only wanted $10 billion," claimed Scarborough. "You can't say something nice about the president?"

"The president has so mishandled this that it will be impossible for me to even describe how horribly handled this was," argued Giuliani. "BP would be more than willing to give $20 billion to get themselves somewhat off the hook."

When pressed by Scarborough, Giuliani gave a detailed explanation for how he would have handled the crisis differently:

First of all, the first thing I would have done is to bring in experts from the industry who are independent source of advice for me...If your father or mother were sick, you would go get a second opinion from an expert doctor. Not from an academician which is what he did. Go ask the question. Has anyone done remediation before? Has anyone done it better than BP? Bring them in. Make them your eyes and ears. Have them watching everything. Maybe they could have gotten the estimate right of the amount of oil that was coming out. It was horrendous. This is a horrible case of malpractice, negligence, gross negligence. They were off by 60 times. That had to infect every wrong judgment you make.

Instead of crediting Giuliani for articulating a coherent plan, Scarborough attempted to deflect and politicize the issue, wondering whether the "malpractice" was "shared by both political parties and the entire Washington establishment over 15 years that has allowed oil companies to drill in areas where they have no backup plan if something goes wrong?"

Ratigan rushed to Giuliani's defense, railing against Obama for failing to consult independent industry experts at the beginning of the crisis:

I actually completely agree with the mayor which is we can talk all day about the problems but until you actually address the matter of the fact that oil continues to go into the Gulf of Mexico, and there are other ways to deal with it that have not been brought in, or have been brought in too late–that is shameful.

When Giuliani took aim at Obama for addressing the oil spill as a political problem, Scarborough jumped to the president's defense.

"It is a political problem," exclaimed Scarborough. "It's a substantive problem, but it's a political problem!"

"He's just dealing with it as a political problem," countered Giuliani. "That's why he went down there only a couple of times at the very beginning. Didn't take charge. We had Gibbs saying for three weeks that BP was in charge. The speech last night, Obama said the federal government's been in charge from the beginning. Well, nobody ever told anybody that for the first four weeks. Maybe they were in charge in secret."

Scarborough then claimed that Obama took charge early on, making the oil spill the "top priority for this government," but Ratigan disagreed, proclaiming, "My biggest criticism of this administration which is why I agree with the mayor when it comes to the response is the incredibly incompetent appearance of the containment strategy."

The transcript of the segment can be found below:

MSNBC
Morning Joe
6/17/10

8:04 a.m.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: $20 billion.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: That's pretty good.

RUDY GIULIANI, former New York City mayor: Even nowadays that's real money. That's real money.

SCARBOROUGH: Let's give the president–

DYLAN RATIGAN: Unless you get it from the Federal Reserve, in which case it's not real money.

SCARBOROUGH: Mr. Mayor, let's make headlines, let's give the president credit right now for being able to get $20 billion from BP without a single lawsuit being filed. What do you say?

BRZEZINSKI: Come on.

SCARBOROUGH: That's pretty good.

GIULIANI: I say it was a good deal for BP.

BRZEZINSKI: Why?

GIULIANI: Divide it by four or five years. What do they make per year? Jim would know this.

JIM CRAMER, CNBC anchor: They make $6 billion per quarter.

GIULIANI: If I can put even a tentative limit on the liabilities, I've helped save my company.

SCARBOROUGH: But they haven't done that yet. They did not waive liability.

GIULIANI: But that's a pretty good indication of it's going to be hard to get above that $20 billion. It gets them–

SCARBOROUGH: Democrats only wanted $10 billion. You can't say something nice about the president?

BRZEZINSKI: There's nothing nice here?

SCARBOROUGH: You can't say, "Mr. President, good job of getting $20 billion?"

GIULIANI: The president has so mishandled this that it will be impossible for me to even describe how horribly handled this was.

SCARBOROUGH: He got $20 billion from people in my backyard. That's pretty good, isn't it?

GIULIANI: He would have gotten with the same leverage in a second. BP would be more than willing to give $20 billion to get themselves somewhat off the hook. Unfortunately, they stepped all over it with a comment that the CEO made.

SCARBOROUGH: What would you have done differently as far as substance goes?

GIULIANI: Every single thing from day one. First of all, the first thing I would have done is to bring in experts from the industry who are independent source of advice for me. I met with some of the–

SCARBOROUGH: The president didn't do that?

GIULIANI: Two days ago I had dinner in Houston, with several people who were top people in the industry. Never reached out. Never, never asked, gee, has Shell done this before? Has Exxon done this before? If your father or mother were sick, you would go get a second opinion from an expert doctor. Not from an academician which is what he did. Go ask the question. Has anyone done remediation before? Has anyone done it better than BP? Bring them in. Make them your eyes and ears. Have them watching everything. Maybe they could have gotten the estimate right of the amount of oil that was coming out. It was horrendous. This is a horrible case of malpractice, negligence, gross negligence. They were off by 60 times. That had to infect every wrong judgment you make.

SCARBOROUGH: Isn't that malpractice, though, shared by both political parties and entire Washington establishment over 15 years that has allowed oil companies to drill in areas where they have no backup plan if something goes wrong?

DYLAN RATIGAN, MSNBC anchor: I'll do you one better. The American people consume four gallons of gasoline for every gallon of gasoline that exists on the Earth. We have the biggest subsidized cost of energy. We have a false price for energy in our country to this day. The cost of the wars is not in the cost of energy. The environmental liability is not in the cost of the energy. None of the liability associated with our lifestyle is actually priced in. For capitalism to work, you actually have to be paying the actual price that represents the actual cost. So if we were actually paying the real cost of energy, we would be incentivized, believe me, to come up with something else. But because of the government and the culture of political expedience subsidies of energy costs everybody's happy to take it so we hire BP to the tune of $6 billion a quarter to figure out–which is not easy, by the way–the technology to drop 18,000 feet beneath the ocean surface to suck oil out so we can continue to enjoy our lifestyle. If you ask me whether it's the obvious failure in the government–MMS is obviously conflicted. Whether it's the obvious fact that we built a sports car that could basically do anything. They had the technology to go to the bottom of the sea but they didn't have a braking system, no way to turn it off which is incredibly reckless. And you put it all together. You find yourself in a situation where everybody's pointing fingers but no one is containing the spill. So I actually completely agree with the mayor which is we can talk all day about the problems but until you actually address the matter of the fact that oil continues to go into the Gulf of Mexico, and there are other ways to deal with it that have not been brought in, or have been brought in too late–that is shameful.

SCARBOROUGH: Do you agree that there are because we have been are defending this White House saying on substance for the most part they've gotten it right, do you agree with the mayor that actually they haven't gotten it right?

CRAMER: I think the mayor is dead on when he says that if they had known that the spill could be 60,000 barrels, which was available if you talk to the former heads of Exxon or if you talk to Boone Pickens, which you asked me to do.

(Inaudible)

GIULIANI: And the people in the industry believe that he hasn't talked to the industry because they're bad guys.

(Inaudible)

GILUIANI: A bunch of bad guys.

CRAMER: They're all bad actors.

GIULIANI: And from the point of view of crisis management, this is an F. You couldn't have done it worse. Some day Harvard will do a study on if you have a crisis like this, these are the things that Obama did wrong. Here are the things to do right. I could go on and on; that was the first mistake that he made. The second mistake that he made was to kind of treat this as a political problem. Which he was doing right up until the speech the other night. Treat it as a political problem.

SCARBOROUGH: It is a political problem. It's a substantive problem, but it's a political problem!

GIULIANI: He's just dealing with it as a political problem. That's why he went down there only a couple of times at the very beginning. Didn't take charge. We had Gibbs saying for three weeks that BP was in charge. The speech last night, Obama said the federal government's been in charge from the beginning. Well, nobody ever told anybody that for the first four weeks. Maybe they were in charge in secret.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, the president said himself though on April 22nd.

BRZEZINSKI: Yes. I just pulled up that.

SCARBOROUGH: On April 22nd he called all the agency heads in and he said, "Okay, listen. This is going to be very bad." It's before–it's before the thing blew out of the water and said this is the top priority for this government. We have to focus on it. This is job number one.

RATIGAN: Where is the containment strategy?

GIULIANI: That's worse because if this was job number one look at the horrible–if this is job number one which I don't think it was because the president was off on vacation twice during all of this, if this were job number one–

SCARBOROUGH: Did you go on vacation Mr. Mayor?

GIULIANI: Did I go on vacation as mayor? No.

SCARBOROUGH: Isn't that a cheap shot? You never went on vacation?

GIULIANI: Not in the middle of a crisis.

SCARBOROUGH:  Ronald Reagan went on vacation. George W. Bush went on vacation.

GIULIANI: Not in the middle of a crisis. This is the second time the president has done that, and I resent it. On Christmas day when we had Christmas bombing, he was on vacation. Remained on vacation for 11 days.

SCARBOROUGH: It was Christmas!

GIULIANI: He is the President of the United States of America.

SCARBOROUGH: They got microphones in Chicago.

GIULIANI: On Christmas evening, the first year that I was the mayor, I left my house and went to the hospital and I spent five hours there because I was the mayor of New York City and I should be on the spot taking charge of something from the very beginning. This has been a gross failure in crisis management. Could not have done it worse.

SCARBOROUGH: Okay. I'm sorry. Didn't mean to–  

GIULIANI: : And you shouldn't be on vacation when a crisis is affecting the country.

RATIGAN: There are two problems here. One is the capping of the well which I think is BP's problem. BP obviously was negligent in the construction of dealing the well. There's a totally unrelated problem, which is the containment problem. And in order to deal with the containment problem, that is the government's problem and you have to know what the flow rate is accurately and early in order to have a containment strategy. So my biggest criticism of this administration which is why I agree with the mayor when comes to the response is incredibly incompetent appearance of the containment strategy.

SCARBOROUGH: That's not monday morning quarterbacking? I mean, who knew?

RATIGAN: The oil is still coming out, Joe. They could still bring–Matt Simmons knew. T. Boone Pickens knew. Booms, put booms around it. Drop a curtain. Put super tankers in the middle and start sucking the oil out.

(Inaudible)

RATIGAN: Booms, curtain, super tanker. Super suck technology. Next question.

GIULIANI: And actually, Joe, it is worse if you're right and they were in charge from the beginning because if they were in charge at the beginning they really didn't know what they were doing. I actually don't think they were in charge. I think their real failure was they trusted BP. And they shouldn't have trusted BP but they trusted BP.

SCARBOROUGH: And let's just say that has been our one critique on substance that perhaps they–two things. One, they trusted BP too much from the beginning. Two, they made a political calculation that if "we go down there, we own the story. It's not BP's story. It's our story." That is a critique I think we'll hear for some time. And can we go right now? Because this is a fascinating conversation. You're actually the first person that's come on this show and when I've challenged them give me substance. Actually you three guys, you're talking specifics about what the president should have done. Let's go to the barni-cam right now. Mike Barnicle. Is he wearing the white sox right now? Are you listening to this?

MIKE BARNICLE, MSNBC contributor: Yeah I am.

SCARBOROUGH: We've got three guys here that are loaded for bear. And they've got some specifics. What do you think?
                        
BRZEZINSKI: Taking shots.

BARNICLE: Let's place all of our faith in BP because they've done such a great job. They're still using the same instruments on oil spills that they were using in California in 1969. If British Petroleum, which they used to call themselves, or any of these oil companies were in charge of technological advancements in our society we would still be using a rotary phone and looking at a 12-inch Bendix TV set.

(Inaudible)

SCARBOROUGH: Do we have the cameraman from "24" now? Mike Barnicle brings up a point but let me ask you again in the role of devil's advocate. We hear that we had the technology to stop this. In 2002, though, Dick Cheney and his energy task force said, "No, we're not going to take an extra step."

GIULIANI: I have no idea what Dick Cheney did, you know, five or six years ago.

SCARBOROUGH: Isn't that important to know? It's part of the story.

GIULIANI: It's important to know as part of the history of this but the reality is, he's been president now for 18 months. It's about time we stopped blaming Bush.

RATIGAN: Hang on, Mr. Mayor. I don't mean to interrupt you but the North Sea has a totally different set of safety standards–totally different governmental standards. These standards have to be taken into consideration.

--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

The day after President Obama’s oil spill speech — in which the President pivoted from the ongoing mess in the Gulf of Mexico to his call for ending our “addiction” to fossil fuels — ABC’s World News obliged the White House’s agenda with a profile of solar cell manufacturer Natcore, whose president, Chuck Provini, says he can cut the costs of solar cells (which are right now too expensive to be economically viable without government subsidies).

But the problem, as ABC correspondent Dan Harris helped frame it, is that this entrepreneur was getting nothing but “blank stares” from the “congressional staffers, lawyers and lobbyists” he met with in Washington, D.C. — as if a venture capitalists and other private investors wouldn’t be tripping over themselves to get in on the ground floor of a process that could actually make solar power viable.

And the hero of the story, as ABC told it, is China’s dictatorship, which has made a deal with the company and will now gain the “hundreds of jobs” that U.S. officials have supposedly squandered by not bankrolling Provini:

DAN HARRIS: There was, however, one place offering help: China. The government flew him over there and made him a very generous offer. (to Provini) Would you say that the Chinese officials made your life easy in this process?
CHUCK PROVINI, via Skype: It's been a pleasure. They've been gracious. They've cut through red tape.
HARRIS: He is about to cut a deal to open a factory that will create hundreds of jobs – jobs that could have been created here....Critics say the federal government needs a big, bold plan to dramatically ramp up our use of clean energy. Until then, they say, we're going to see a lot more American companies like Natcore exporting their promising ideas to places like China.

Does ABC really think that good business ideas require the support of lobbyists, lawyers and congressional staffers? That the free market cannot innovate and economize with at “big, bold” government “plan?”

MRC’s Brad Wilmouth caught the story from the June 16 World News with Diane Sawyer:

DIANE SAWYER: And, in his speech last night, President Obama used the moment to call for less dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels and making sure that China doesn't get all the new jobs in wind and solar power. But Dan Harris heard a story today of one company, one big idea, but in America, no one to say give it a try.

DAN HARRIS: Natcore is a small company based in New Jersey that says it's come up with an innovative new approach to make solar technology better and cheaper, one that its scientists are very excited about. The president of the company – this guy, Chuck Provini – says he was determined to set up shop here in America.

CHUCK PROVINI, NATCORE SOLAR: I live here in New Jersey. I'm a former Marine. I consider myself a good American and a patriot. We wanted to do business in the States.

HARRIS: He went to Washington, D.C., and met with congressional staffers, lawyers and lobbyists, but says he couldn't get the help raising the money that he needed. [to Provini] Were you met with blank stares?

PROVINI: They were very polite. We got polite letters, polite conversations, but it was obvious that there was a major disconnect.

HARRIS: There was, however, one place offering help: China. The government flew him over there and made him a very generous offer. Would you say that the Chinese officials made your life easy in this process?

PROVINI: It's been a pleasure. They've been gracious. They've cut through red tape.

HARRIS: He is about to cut a deal to open a factory that will create hundreds of jobs – jobs that could have been created here. (to Provini, via Skype) You're now in China, as we speak, in the middle of the night, and you're not far away from inking a final deal.
                                
PROVINI: Well, I'm really curious as to how you found me at 2:00 in the morning in Jujo City.

HARRIS: To be fair, it is hard for the U.S. to compete with China's dictatorial government, which essentially runs the entire economy. But still, critics say the federal government needs a big, bold plan to dramatically ramp up our use of clean energy. Until then, they say, we're going to see a lot more American companies like Natcore exporting their promising ideas to places like China. Diane?

SAWYER: A real cautionary tale about the need for a fast track here in America. Dan Harris reporting.

One way or the other, one of us is going to go down. President Obama, by insisting that he will go to the mat on his “green jobs” agenda, which is simply central planning with a coat of green paint, indicates he will risk his presidency on getting the cap-and-trade, gas tax and windmill mandate through the Senate (with a stranglehold on domestic energy production to boot), then through the House again on a conferenced bill.

If he succeeds he will have doomed us; if he fails, politically the effort will have finally, fully exposed him for what he is: a Power Grabbing Statist whose economics are recklessly dogmatic while at the same time ignoring those societies he claims are his model.

Obama reminded us how as a candidate he set out what he called a set of principles, which he acknowledged were passed by the House, in a vote almost precisely one year ago today.

Here is what he said then about cap-and-trade, which the House passed. This discussion occurred in the apparent context of how to mount his and his team’s big-ticket agenda items:

“The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important, and force their representatives to do the right thing. That requires mobilizing a citizenry…And climate change is a great example.”

You got it: this is the community organizer, refusing to allow a crisis to go to waste, but instead seeking to use it to do what he’s trying to do.

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

“Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal-powered plants, you know, natural ga — you name, it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was — they will have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, they will pass that money [sic] on to the consumer.”

That’s right. It’s a staggeringly large tax, which he acknowledged will be borne by consumers. This reflects two signs of economic literacy: the purpose and operation of cap-and-trade, and that businesses pass taxes on to consumers. Until they can’t, of course, then they move.

Oh, speaking of this being a tax, he added:

“This will also raise billions of dollars”.

Please note, that is not “some costs”. That is what Al Gore called a “wrenching transformation of society”.

First, a note about the lack of intellectual honesty in claiming that it was a lack of candor and political courage — both of which he was implicitly manifesting — that have left us relying on the most abundant reliable energy sources man has ever known. No. Physics and economics dictate from where we derive our energy. Not a lack of statism.

Further, we are not as he said running out of oil onshore, and in shallow water. We have generations of oil in oil shale and other “unconventional oil” sources, right beneath our soil. That he has to pretend we do not, and that he is not blocking it, tells you quite a bit of what you need to know about the sincerity of this seizure of a crisis to ensure it does not go to waste.

Which raises his claim that adopting his cap-and-trade statism will “grow the economy.” Absurd.

Consider the following excerpt from Chapter 6, “Green Eggs and Scam: The Wholesale Fraud of ‘Green Jobs’” from How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America: (citations are omitted)

CAN MAKE-WORK “GROW THE ECONOMY”?

Sadly, however, such impacts, whether “opportunity” costs or otherwise, are not pressing considerations in Washington. No, we are now told that by mandating that the American economy be driven by all manner of energy sources that cannot stand on their own, we will “grow the economy.” That is the new, favorite phrase of my young Democratic congressman, Tom Periello. Mr. Periello, like a host of lawmakers desperate to find cover for their 2009 vote in support of the disastrous Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill, has since dedicated countless hours on the House floor and elsewhere to spread this tawdry exposition of economic illiteracy to those masses he and his colleagues hope are desperate or inattentive enough to fall for it….

Sadly, the best case scenario for this claim would be that it is made out of disgraceful ignorance. …

The truth is that even inherently biased administration studies of the “green job” scheme cap-and-trade, by EPA, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the Congressional Budget Office, as well as the independent Brookings Institute, Heritage Foundation, American Council for Capital Formation, and CRA International, agree that these cap-and-trade bills must reduce overall employment and lead to lower incomes than can be had without them. EIA, for example, said that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill destroys 2.3 million jobs on net when fully implemented (in 2030), 800,000 of them manufacturing jobs. Not one cap-and-trade scenario modeled by any of these entities produced net job or income growth from cap-and-trade.

Reckless and disingenuous though the claim is, agenda-driven whizzes in Washington insist that throwing away a billion dollars, confiscated from today’s and future generations, grows the economy—simply because they see a giant hamster wheel research facility go up in their district. But the claim that this will “grow the economy” is made up. These actions will do the opposite.

The government can give us nothing that it has not taken from us. The politics of envy, which underlies much of the “green jobs” hooey, have never been as strong in the United States as in Europe—and that fact gave us a chance for longer than the Europeans to stand firm against all of the promises of free ice cream. Now we are told to look to Europe, but ignore the actual lessons. Instead, accept a fairy tale.

Our German experts [at old-line and state-funded think tank RWI-Essen] summarized for us:

“German renewable energy policy, and in particular the adopted feed-in tariff scheme, has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into the country’s energy portfolio. To the contrary, the government’s support mechanisms have in many respects subverted these incentives, resulting in massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security.”

I then discuss the doggerel, repeated by Obama, of Green Jobs in Red China, briefly excerpted here:

“What might be the most embarrassing aspect to this con is that the same policies supposedly ensuring that particular, politically desired goods will be produced here, because their use is mandated here, actually ensure they’ll be made somewhere else….

The lede in a November 5, 2009, Boston Globe story captured the situation well: “Little more than a year after cutting the ribbon at a new factory in Devens built with more than $58 million in state aid, Evergreen Solar said yesterday that it will shift its assembly of solar panels from there to China.” Ouch. It seems that “In exchange for receiving $58.6million in grants, loans, land, tax incentives, and other aid to build in Massachusetts, Evergreen pledged that it would add

350 new jobs,” which it did. Briefly, only to then “write off $40 million worth of equipment at Devens because of the production shift to China.” The company cited the cost of production here not faced if they build their machines elsewhere. No one told them it wasn’t polite to prove the president wrong, and send green jobs overseas, to make things for use back home in response to mandates making it more expensive to produce here, prompting others to move overseas.

Boy, Obamanomics can be exhausting.”

Tonight’s display, on substance, was sophomoric or uninformed. Politically, it was standard cynical fare.

It is difficult to be amazed by a politician but Obama’s rhetoric Tuesday night in fact betrayed a gobsmacking level of cynicism or ignorance: rationing is not a prescription for growth; the state cannot mandate defeat of the laws of physics. China is installing windmills because Western countries pay them to under Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism, simply because those nations get emission “reduction” crisis for doing so which they need as they’ve discovered they can’t actually reduce emissions without economic crisis driving it (like today) or resulting from it (like in Spain, cited by Obama as his model eight times). And China will stop building windmills the minute we abandon this fetish.

In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again.

Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

Other women and men – think of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Ronald Reagan – were born to take charge. When Harry Truman put a sign on his desk, reading, “The buck stops here,” he knew what he was talking about. As Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, it is vital that we have in our Constitution a unitary executive because, in human affairs, emergencies are commonplace; secrecy, vigor, and dispatch are often requisite; and, in such circumstances, there has to be someone in high office able, willing, and even eager to take responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Americans have an instinctive understanding of what is at stake. Ordinarily, they choose as Presidents men with executive experience – men with a track record in directing affairs that can be judged. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had been prominent generals before they were elected Presidents, and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt had also demonstrated an aptitude for leadership in war.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had held the vice-presidency. Jefferson and Van Buren had also been Secretary of State, and the same can be said for James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and James Buchanan. Monroe had also been Secretary of War, and this was true was well for William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover had managed relief efforts in Europe early in and after World War I; he had served as Food Administrator within the United States after we entered that war; and, from 1921 to 1928, he served as Secretary of Commerce.

Many of the others elected to the presidency had previously held gubernatorial office.

This was true for Jefferson, Monroe, Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, and, if one counts his service as governor of the Philippines, for Taft as well. It applies also to James K. Polk, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, William Jefferson Clinton, and George H. Bush.

The only men ever elected to the presidency who had no executive experience of any sort were Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and the hapless incumbent we have today.

No one – not even, in retrospect, his own political party – thought that Pierce did a decent job. It was during his administration (1853-1857) that the Union began to come apart. Harding is best remembered for the scandals that beset his short-lived administration (1921-1923). And although, thanks to the slavish devotion of his acolytes in the media and in the academy, JFK is in some circles revered, his actual performance in office prior to October, 1962 was deplorable. As Donald Kagan pointed out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall Kennedy was so weak, so irresolute and indecisive, so feckless in his dealings with the Soviet Union that his conduct encouraged Nikita Khrushchev to think that he could get away with introducing missiles tipped with nuclear warheads into Castro’s Cuba and brought us thereby to the brink of nuclear war.

Executive experience does not guarantee wisdom and competence in office. Pierce, Harding, and Kennedy were by no means the only elected Presidents to fall short. But, as the American people generally appreciate, the lack of executive experience is a good indicator of fecklessness to come.

Witness Barack Obama. Leave aside his first year in office. As I pointed out in posts entitled “Barack Obama and the Exhausted Presidency” and “Obama’s First Year,” from the outset, he conducted himself in an irresponsible fashion that is highly unpresidential.

He forgot that, in the larger world, the President represents his country. Out of personal pique, he persistently insulted our friends abroad, displaying disdain for Gordon Brown, stiffing Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, treating Benyamin Netanyahu with open contempt, and turning his back on the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Iran. At the same time, he embraced Hugo Chavez, sucked up to Vladimir Putin, and kowtowed to the rulers of Saudi Arabia and China – all to no avail.

With regard to domestic affairs, he seems not to have recognized that, under our Constitution, it is the President of the United States who represents the national interest; that Congressmen more often than not cater to particular interests; that, if legislation is left to the latter, principle tends to give way to patronage; and that the result can be a profound embarrassment. And so he stood idly by while Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the like drafted legislation – a so-called “stimulus bill” and healthcare reform, each more than a thousand pages in length, each embodying a multitude of corrupt bargains, each threatening to bankrupt the country. And, like a political hack, faithful to his party to the bitter end, he promoted and signed their handiwork.

All of this was obvious long ago, and it was evident as well that, if there were a real crisis, he would check out. This is what he did when Major Nidal Malik Hassan gunned down thirteen Americans at Fort Hood. This is what he did when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down a jetliner at Christmas time. And this is what he did when Faisal Shahzad was found to have planted a bomb in Times Square. All three cases revealed an egregious failure of our intelligence apparatus. In all three cases, the danger had its source in developments within Islam And, in the face of all of this, the President of the United States signaled that he could hardly bear to take a few minutes off from his vacation at the beach in Hawaii, cancel a party or two, or give up his golf game to acknowledge and address the failures of his administration, and at no time has he been willing to level with us about the source of our peril.

Maureen Dowd and those who think that politics is about play-acting – here is her latest column on this theme – lament that, like Spock in Star Trek, No-Drama Obama is simply incapable of displaying any sense of urgency. The real problem is much more serious, for our well-being is to a considerable degree in this man’s hands, and, when things go wrong, he seems not to feel any sense of urgency at all.

The oil spill that began in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April is the latest example. Some say that President Obama is no more responsible for the spill than President Bush was for Hurricane Katrina. This claim is, in fact, untrue. Bush had nothing to do with Katrina. Barack Obama, as President, was responsible for insuring that the regulatory agencies overseeing the drilling operations did their job properly. While campaigning for the presidency, he charged that the Bush administration had, in effect, allowed the oil industry to regulate itself, and he promised that, if he were elected, he would set things right. During that campaign, he took a wad of cash from folks at BP (more than they had ever given any other candidate); and, when the time came to reform the Minerals Management Service, as Tim Dickinson has shown in fine detail in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the new administration’s appointees did nothing of the sort.

Nor was the Obama administration quick off the mark in doing what could be done to contain the spill. Instead, while the govenors in the Gulf states clamored for action, the President played golf and partied and the bureaucracy dithered, delaying by weeks efforts to prevent the oil from coming ashore, from fouling beaches, and killing wildlife. Nearly two months have passed since the accident on the Deepwater Horizon, and to date President Obama has issued no waiver to the Jones Act, which stands in the way of foreign ships with foreign crews helping to contain and suck up the spill.

The environmentalists are reportedly giving the Obama adminstration a pass. By now, they are reliable partisans, and they have their eye on cap-and-trade. The people of Louisiana are much less happy. They recognize the deepwater drilling moratorium imposed by the Obama administration for what it is – a ploy designed to persuade those not in the know that something decisive is being done – and, according to the left-liberal outfit Public Policy Polling, more than three-quarters of the voters in that state still favor offshore drilling. Moreover, half of the voters polled “think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill,” 31% of self-described Democrats agree, and only 35% of those polled give Obama higher marks.

Only one politician has gained ground in the course of this crisis, and that is Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana. The poll recently taken shows that “63% of voters approve of the job he’s doing,” which is the highest approval rating that Public Policy Polling “has found for any Senator or Governor so far in 2010. There’s an even higher level of support, at 65%, for how he’s handled the aftermath of the spill.” Jindal is evidently a man of executive temperament. He is not better placed to deal with the spill than is Barack Obama, but he has done as much to keep it off the beaches and out of the swamplands of southern Louisiana as lay within his power.

As the reports make abundantly clear, Barack Obama did not help himself at all with the speech he gave on Monday night from the Oval Office. As our President plays golf, parties, and pauses from time to time to bloviate and pose for photo-ops, his popularity steadily sinks under the weight of his evident indifference to our security and well-being.

It is high time that Republicans start asking the obvious question: who, in their number, is best prepared to do what this presidential incumbent has no desire to bother with: to take what the authors of The Federalist called responsibility. Governor Jindal may not be at the very top of the list of possible presidential contenders, but he is certainly high on it.

Judge Andrew Napolitano took the helm of the Glenn Beck Show and made a strong case against the Obama Administration’s handling of the oil disaster in the gulf. The Judge detailed how an incompetent government coupled with the crony capitalism of special interests laid the foundation for the current tragedy. Big Government’s Mike Flynn and the awesome pollster Pat Caddell joined in for the discussion.

Plenty of prominent media figures were upset with President Obama over his substandard address to the nation last night (full text). While most are distraught, none seem to be doing what should be the essential journalistic task of the day: pointing out all of the factual misstatements the president made.

So, in absence of a serious attempt at fact-checking from the legacy media, let us undertake some of our own.

In all, the president misrepresented the federal government's--and especially his cabinet's--role in creating the conditions that led to the spill, the state of the nation's oil reserves, and his own administration's involvement with BP. Futhermore, his transition from discussing the Gulf spill to advocating "clean energy" legislation was a huge logical leap, and one that necessarily misrepresents the problems the nation faces with regard to energy.

The latter was perhaps the president's most subtle sleight of hand. He claimed the Gulf spill is "the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America's innovation and seize control of our own destiny."

Now, if the president had stated the spill is a reminder that the nation needs to get off of oil--that disasters like this are an unfortunate, if rare consequence of harvesting crude oil--he would have had a point. But that is not what he said. He claimed the disaster underscores the need for "clean" energy, which presumably does not include coal, the dirtiest of them all. But the Gulf spill has no bearing on coal energy.

Also intended to promote the "clean energy" cause was Obama's misleading statement that "Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America." In fact, as the Heritage Foundation notes, China "will account for nearly 45% of oil demand growth in the next five years, receives 70% of its energy from coal already, and is projected to nearly triple coal capacity by 2030."

Say what you will about clean energy or coal, but the president's advocacy of his own energy agenda despite the facts was unseemly and based on a fallacious argument.

Moving forward, Obama also misrepresented the state of the oil industry itself. He claimed that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserves. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean - because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."

"This howler," writes John Hinderaker at Power Line, "is a favorite canard of Democratic politicians": 

As is so often the case, they are relying on the public's ignorance. Most people don't realize that in the U.S., oil isn't counted as part of our "reserves" unless it is legally available for drilling. Thus, ANWR, to take one of many examples, isn't counted toward the total "reserves." The U.S. government could cause our reserves to skyrocket overnight by opening new areas, on land and in shallow water, to drilling. But the U.S. is the only country in the world that has deliberately chosen not to develop its own energy resources. No one else is that dumb.

So the reason oil companies drill a mile beneath the water is not that there are not ample supplies of crude in other parts of the United States, but rather that the federal government does not permit drilling in so many of those areas.

According to Kiplinger Magazine (by way of the American Thinker), "untapped reserves are estimated at about 2.3 trillion barrels, nearly three times more than the reserves held by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) and sufficient to meet 300 years of demand-at today's levels-for auto, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil."

The misdeeds of the oil industry were, of course, a frequent refrain in the president's speech. But he also misrepresented that industry's culpability by claiming "time and again, the path forward [to further regulation] has been blocked…by oil industry lobbyists."

What the president conveniently neglected to mention, however, was that BP has been an advocate of most of his energy agenda. As the Examiner's Tim Carney reminds us:

BP "has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels…

BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switched to gas.

Though the company left USCAP, it did not stop lobbying for cap and trade, and later "signed off" on Senate cap and trade legislation as well as explicitly lobbied for a higher gas tax. So Obama's insistence the oil industry has opposed relevant regulations tooth and nail is less than accurate.

While Obama was placing as much unearned blame at industry's feet as possible, he was also sidestepping his own administration's complicity in the crisis. He stated towards the beginning of his speech:

A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe –- that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions would be taken.

That obviously was not the case in the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why.

Well, perhaps he should ask his cabinet members--you know, the ones he just put in charge of the new commission investigating the incident. On March 31 in a speech at Andrews Air Force Base, he told the nation that Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and climate czar Carol Browner had assured him that additional Gulf Coast drilling would be safe.

But the president of course did not put the blame at their feet. In fact, as Byron York noted:

[I]n this moment of crisis, Obama is relying on the same team that earlier gave him "the assurance that [offshore drilling] would be absolutely safe" -- advice that he now openly says was wrong. And what is the "green team" telling him now? That it is impossible to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. Politico's Mike Allen channels West Wing thought this way: The Gulf gusher is a battle we can't win. So we had to make this tragedy about something bigger than the liveshot of spewing oil. So having surrendered on the challenge of stopping the oil, Obama tried to redirect the public's attention away from the spill and onto the political debate over a cap-and-trade bill. The short version of the strategy: Give up and change the subject. Like everything else Obama has tried so far in the Gulf crisis, it won't work.

Indeed. 

Remember: The Gulf Oil Spill Is Like 9-11

Three days after the Gulf oil rig explosion, the Netherlands offered to send in oil skimmers to pump oil off of the surface of the ocean. The Obama Administration turned them down because they were not 100% efficient and small amounts of oil would be pumped back into the Gulf with the excess water. EPA regulations do not allow for residue water to contain any oil. So rather than use equipment that was not 100% efficient the Obama Administration chose to let all of the oil run into the Gulf.

This is not just bad policy, it is criminal.

Since the Obama Administration turned down assistance from The Netherlands at least 125 miles of Louisiana coastline has been ruined by the BP oil spill. Tar blobs began washing up on Florida’s white sand beaches near Pensacola days ago. And, crude oil has also been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi.

Clean-up workers pick up blobs of oil in absorbent snare on Queen Bess Island at the mouth of Barataria Bay near the Gulf of Mexico in Plaquemines Parish, La., Friday, June 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The Examiner reported, via Free Republic:

The U.S. Government has apparently reconsidered a Dutch offer to supply 4 oil skimmers. These are large arms that are attached to oil tankers that pump oil and water from the surface of the ocean into the tanker. Water pumped into the tanker will settle to the bottom of the tanker and is then pumped back into the ocean to make room for more oil. Each system will collect 5,000 tons of oil each day.

One ton of oil is about 7.3 barrels. 5,000 tons per day is 36,500 barrels per day. 4 skimmers have a capacity of 146,000 barrels per day. That is much greater than the high end estimate of the leak. The skimmers work best in calm water, which is the usual condition this time of year in the gulf.

These systems were developed by the Dutch as a safety system in case of oil spills from either wells or tankers. The Dutch have off shore oil development and also import oil in tankers. Their economy, just like ours, runs on oil. They understand that the production and use of oil has dangers and they wanted to be ready to cope with problems like spills. The Dutch system has been used successfully in Europe.

The Dutch offered to fly their skimmer arm systems to the Gulf 3 days after the oil spill started. The offer was apparently turned down because EPA regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. If all the oily water was retained in the tanker, the capacity of the system would be greatly diminished because most of what is pumped into the tanker is sea water.

As of June 8th, BP reported that they have collected 64,650 barrels of oil in the Gulf. That is only a fraction of the amount of oil spilled from the well. That is less than one day’s rated capacity of the Dutch oil skimmers.

Turning down the Dutch skimmers just shows a total lack of leadership in the oil spill.

The Obama Administration turned down offers to help clean up the spill from The Netherlands and the British Government just days after the explosion. They didn’t accept the British help because they didn’t have the proper paperwork. The administration still has not given the OK to allow emergency workers to use a Maine company’s oil boom even though they were made aware of the warehouse full of containment boom back on May 21.

Considering moonbats’ obsessions with whales and with all things scatological, it’s surprising that they have only now stumbled upon the substance that could cure the earth of the imaginary global warming crisis — whale droppings: Southern Ocean sperm whales are an unexpected ally in the fight against global warming, removing the equivalent carbon emissions from 40,000 [...]

"Obama Chickens Out on Energy," a disgusted Ben Adler argued to Newsweek's The Gaggle blog readers this morning.

Adler's chief complaint with last night's Oval Office address: Obama didn't call for massive tax hikes to push Americans to make more politically correct spending choices.

The Newsweek writer -- formerly a self-styled "propagandist" for the liberal Center for American Progress -- avoided the T-word until his last paragraph, but he made abundantly clear that he felt that a) American stupidity and short-sightedness was threatening to literally drown Manhattan in rising sea levels and b) Obama was not doing enough to make government force people to make better choices with their own money (emphases mine):

In his address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, President Obama eloquently laid out the case that we have failed to confront our dependence on fossil fuels, and that now is the time for us to do so. Obama acknowledged that our failure to do this so far has been caused not just by obeisance to entrenched interests, but also by "a lack of political courage and candor."

But he failed to use this opportunity to marshal public support for a logical, tangible goal that would reduce our destructive consumption of oil and coal.

[...]

The idea that we can solve this problem of our massive, inefficient energy use through investing more in R&D is ridiculous. We need to start bringing down our emissions immediately, before Manhattan finds itself under water. Spending more money on research into technologies that may or may not be more efficient, and may or may not be economically viable 10 years from now, is insufficient.

There are plenty of technologies, such as driving smaller cars, or hybrids, or taking buses, or living in smaller houses, that do not need to be researched and developed; they just need to be chosen. And they will be chosen if we make indulging in SUVs and McMansions prohibitively expensive, to reflect the social cost of global warming, and the cost of disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion that forced Obama to make this address in the first place.

Obama should know all this, and his decision to pretend otherwise reeks of the same lack of courage and candor he had just lambasted unnamed predecessors for. Tossing out the pain-free idea that we can invest our way out of this problem is politically convenient, but it is not realistic.

Obama swiftly pivoted to sounding like he was filled with steely resolve, saying, "But the one approach I will not accept is inaction." But merely investing in energy research is little better than inaction. What Obama needed to say, if he was willing to stake his presidency on combating catastrophic climate change, as he had previously staked his presidency—and won—on the proposition that Americans are all entitled to affordable health insurance, was that he would not tolerate anything short of a bill that caps or taxes carbon emissions. He did not, and we will all suffer the consequences.

Putting aside for a second the fact that this speech was given about 50 days late, last night’s oval office speech proved that the President is not ready to be honest with the American people.  For the first 30 days of this crisis, President Obama was ignoring the fact that the crisis existed, and now when he uses the oval office to give the people confidence that he is on top of the problem  he spends more time trying to sell cap and trade than discussing capping the well. Essentially, he is still ignoring the crisis.

Lets take a look at the key points of the President’s speech. He begins by trying to convince America that he has been doing a great job at managing the disaster:

“… I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge – a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.”

Nobel prizes have not been impressive since  Obama recived one for doing nothing and Al Gore got one for a hoax.  The key is how the ideas from those great minds are implemented. The President’s management of the crisis has been horrible.  Even the progressive bible  the NY Times trashed Obama’s  management of the crisis:

“The information is not flowing,” Senator Nelson said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.”

In other words,  the leadership and management coming from the executive branch of the government has been a disaster.

“Because of our efforts, millions of gallons of oil have already been removed from the water through burning, skimming, and other collection methods. Over five and a half million feet of boom has been laid across the water to block and absorb the approaching oil. We have approved the construction of new barrier islands in Louisiana to try and stop the oil before it reaches the shore, and we are working with Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida to implement creative approaches to their unique coastlines.”

A little truth Mr. President?  Only after Bobby Jindal said he was going to build the barrier islands whether they were approved or not, was the barrier island  plan approved.

The  President might have come clean and told us  why the United States refused to accept skimmers from the Dutch, or help from any other country. Maybe he could have explained  why miles of oil boom remain in a Maine warehouse despite the fact that the administration was informed of the supply the third week of May.

“… Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.”

While most people would agree that  BP should be paying  for the damage it caused, (BP has promised that it will),  there is no place in the constitution saying that the President has the power to demand a company set aside money in an escrow account? Nor is there a place saying  the POTUS can demand that the account be administered by a third party.  To be honest that clause could be hiding  right next to the clause saying  the government can force citizens to purchase health insurance.

The  demand for BP to freeze money in an escrow account shows a lack of understanding of capitalism. Not allowing BP to spend those dollars on growing its business is limiting the company’s ability to generate the profits  necessary to pay its obligation to the victims of the disaster.

“… Already, I have issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue.”

The drilling freeze is like closing down GM the first time one of its cars is involved in an accident.  Wood Mackenzie Research and Consulting published a report saying the six month moratorium will result in job losses of over 120,000 by 2014. The gulf region is already suffering, as is the American economy, the embargo does nothing but make it worse.

“One place we have already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service. Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility – a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.

When Ken Salazar became my Secretary of the Interior, one of his very first acts was to clean up the worst of the corruption at this agency. But it’s now clear that the problems there ran much deeper, and the pace of reform was just too slow.”

The problem was much worse than the President described.  The Minerals Management Service scandal  broke in September 2008. This crisis did not happen at the beginning of Obama’s administration but  there was a sixteen month window between the inauguration and the oil spill. This was Obama’s problem not Bush’s.

... a larger lesson is that no matter how much we improve our regulation of the industry, drilling for oil these days entails greater risk. After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s oil reserves. And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean – because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.

Mr President you are lying. A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) dated October 2009 proves Obama is lying. The report shows the  amount of  recoverable oil in the U.S. to be 167 billion barrels of oil, not the 21 billion figure pushed by the Democrats.  If exploited that 167 billion barrels could replace America’s  imports from OPEC countries for more than 75 years.

That same report shows that America’s combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal supply is the largest on Earth. America’s recoverable resources are far larger than those of Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th), and Canada (6th) combined. Those estimates don’t include America’s  immense oil shale deposits.

“The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.”

That’s true. China is investing in clean energy, at the same time they are exploiting every possible opportunity to exploit their own resources.  The United States is funding part of their green job investment with the interest payments from the money that China is loaning us.

If the President and his progressive allies allowed the U.S. to exploit our own resources, there would be no need to  spend that $1 billion on foreign oil.

“...The transition away from fossil fuels will take some time, but over the last year and a half, we have already taken unprecedented action to jumpstart the clean energy industry. As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows, and small businesses are making solar panels. Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient. Scientists and researchers are discovering clean energy technologies that will someday lead to entire new industries.”

Here is the  truth about alternate energy Obama forgets to mention. With the exception of  nuclear energy, no alternate energy has been developed that can run this nation as effectively or efficiently as fossil fuels. Nothing even in the same neighborhood. If the economy is “switched over” before a legitimate alternative is developed, the catastrophically higher prices will collapse the economy.

The President is a recent convert to nuclear power, but not a serious one. He has not allowed the approval process to be streamlined, or a way around the objections of his environmental buddies. So even the one real alternative energy cannot be exploited quickly.

“…Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill – a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses.

Now, there are costs associated with this transition. And some believe we can’t afford those costs right now. I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy – because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.”

The bill passed by the House represents the largest tax increase in American history. It also uses  government regulation  essentially  take over every industry that uses fossil fuel (wait, every industry uses fossil fuel).

More than Obamacare, cap and trade represents a takeover of the American economy, that will retard economic growth, and push the already bankrupt federal budget over the edge.

“Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development – and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.”

And some just want to know where the government is going to get the money? It looks like China will get more US interest payments so they can invest in green energy.

“The same thing was said about our ability to harness the science and technology to land a man safely on the surface of the moon.”

Holy Cow, what an original thought!. “If we can land a man on the moon, why cant we find green energy?” Maybe I can use that line for a future post. I will  have to remember that one.  As I will remember the President’s entire speech.  Who knew that one Obama could fit so much bull into just eighteen minutes. The President may get a slight bump from this, but within a week, the stench of the rotting Presidential bull will drive Americans away from the lies he told tonight.

Confirming her membership in Manhattan’s liberal elite, Katie Couric boasted on Tuesday’s Late Show that she plans to follow Tom Friedman’s admonition, that in refusing to move away from oil “we have met the enemy and he is us,” and so she’s realized she “should” buy a Toyota Prius, the favorite of conspicuously superior liberals, or at least a hybrid. Couric recounted how her daughter told her “‘we should turn in the car we have’ and ‘get a Prius or a hybrid.’ And I said, ‘you know, Ellie, we should do that.’ And we're going to look into it.”

(“Prius owners act as if for every mile they drive, they prevent a coral reef from turning into a tidal wave that will hit Manhattan,” Joel Stein quipped in Time back in February.)

“I think Tom Friedman had a great column,” Couric touted, on how “we are responsible for creating this problem” in the Gulf of Mexico “and we have to start contemplating our choices in terms of energy,” so “hopefully something like this will really force people to reconsider their choices.”

She then recited for David Letterman a conversation she had with one of her daughters:

My daughter and I – Ellie is here home from college. She's getting ready to go away tomorrow for two months as a camp counselor. We were talking and Ellie was funny because she was saying, “mom, can we get another car”-- because she’s driving now, to have more flexibility for her. And I said “maybe” and then she said to me today, “you know, we shouldn't get another car and, by the way, we should turn in the car we have,” which is a Chrysler mini-van -- am I hip or what? “And get a Prius or a hybrid.” And I said, “you know, Ellie, we should do that.” And we're going to look into it.

But I think everybody, really, I mean they need to look at themselves and their own habits.

So President Obama is meeting in the White House tomorrow with BP’s chairman. The focus of public discussion of this event has been on it taking until the 57th day or so since the Deepwater Horizon rig caught fire following a well explosion, precipitating the ongoing oil leak.

The more relevant figure is 4,700. If my quick calculation has it right, that’s the number of days since the last time a BP CEO was in the Oval Office.

On that day, August 4, 1997, then-CEO, (then-Sir) John Browne, joined by Ken Lay, met in the Oval with President Clinton and Vice President Gore.

Their mission that day? As revealed in the August 1, 1997 Lay briefing memo whiih I was later provided — having left a brief dance with Enron after raising questions about this very issue — it was to demand that the White House ignore unanimous Senate instruction pursuant to Art. II, Sec. 2 of the Constitution (”advice”, of “advice and consent” fame), and to go to Kyoto and agree to the “global warming” treaty.

Oh, and to enact a cap-and-trade scheme.

Oddly, President Obama tonite will telegraph that he’s really going to stick it to BP tomorrow and give ‘em…the cap-and-trade scheme they concocted with Enron (spare me the hysterics, comrades, as I have detailed and explained in various ways here, here and here, I was in the room).

That is, Congress willing. Possibly you can let your thoughts on the matter, on not letting this crisis go to waste, be known as well?

The current President of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), Ed Chen – who instituted the silliness of having the organization buy carbon credits to offset the travel of this year’s dinner headliner, Jay Leno, as well as for the President’s motorcade (seriously) – is leaving Bloomberg News to lend his shallow liberal advocacy to the left-wing Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

This is the second spin for Chen through the revolving door. He was the long-time White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times when he left the newspaper “to join the NRDC in 2006, but then jumped back into the world of journalism in 2007 with a job at Bloomberg,” Politico’s Patrick Gavin recalled in a Sunday post. (Screen shot is from an April 28, 2005 news conference with President Bush.)

In an e-mail to the Politico’s Mike Allen, Chen trumpeted that at the NRDC he will be able to perform “the Lord’s work” and that he wants to “help public officials find the wisdom and courage to do the right thing to combat climate change before it's too late.”

His e-mail message:

My regret over leaving one of the world's largest -- and certainly the most ambitious -- news organizations is offset by a sense of urgency in resuming doing the Lord's work, particularly after the BP oil spill. That debacle was a divine signal to redouble my efforts to help clean up the environment, help America kick its petroleum addiction, and help public officials find the wisdom and courage to do the right thing to combat climate change before it's too late. So, I'm returning to the Natural Resources Defense Council (in Washington), soon to be reachable at: EChen(at)nrdc.org.

Picking up on the Politico’s post for a Monday night “Grapevine” item, the FNC’s Bret Baier quoted how Politico grasped the obvious, that this latest move “will likely reinforce notions...that all journalists are biased and largely towards Democratic-friendly organizations.”

WHCA officers page with photos of Chen with President Obama.

Chen marks the 16th major media figure to have joined the Obama administration (or an aligned union, or now an aligned left-wing environmental group) -- plus one who traveled through the revolving door from helping the Obama campaign into a news media slot. For the complete list, check my June 7 MRC post:

ABC News's Deputy Political Director Jumps to Left-Wing Union, the 15th Obama Activist Through the Media's Revolving Door

June 10: “After Two Years with Obama, Linda Douglass Returns to News Media”

Baier’s June 14 ‘Grapevine” report:

Bloomberg's Ed Chen is leaving journalism to join the Natural Resources Defense Council, telling Politico the oil spill prompted his decision to resume doing what he called the “Lord's work” in fighting climate change.

Politico noted the ease with which reporters jump between journalism and advocacy seems to be increasing and that it quote "will likely reinforce notions...that all journalists are biased and largely towards Democratic-friendly organizations."

Politico noted that it, too, has struggled with the revolving door. Politico reporter Jonathan Alan left for a short time to work for a Democratic Congresswoman [Wasserman-Schultz] and had said before returning to Politico quote, “I'm hopeful I can advance the Democratic Party's goals and obviously the Congresswoman's goals.”

After wondering on Friday if President Obama should help push energy legislation through Congress, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell continued her cheerleading for a new energy agenda on Monday. On her afternoon show "Andrea Mitchell Reports," Mitchell downplayed the cost of last summer's Cap and Trade bill, and opined that solar energy should be a part of the American energy future.

"Ed Markey's bill–the Markey-Waxman bill–was a year ago, but it is a Cap and Trade bill, as you were pointing out," Mitchell said to guest Ron Brownstein of Atlantic Media. "It doesn't really require us to eat our spinach," she added.

Mitchell introduced the segment by referencing the Oval Office address that President Obama will be delivering Tuesday. "How hard will [President Obama]  press BP, and just how far will he go in proposing new energy legislation?" Mitchell asked.

After introducing Brownstein to the segment, Mitchell pitched the question she had asked of New York Magazine columnist John Heilemann on Friday: is now the time for sweeping energy legislation?

"Strong energy–almost certainly the time to pitch it," Brownstein answered. He added that it is not certain whether a climate dimension will be included in the bill.

The two then discussed Brownstein's recent trip to China and his insights on the country's energy policy.

"China is by leaps-and-bounds going to lap us on solar," Mitchell asserted, and then added that it "should be an American initiative."

Brownstein was able to maintain that while China may be making advances in the alternative energy realm, the country is still heavily dependent on coal and thus continues to oppose international efforts to stop global warming.

Mitchell chimed in once more on China's alternative energy record, "It's extraordinary, and we are falling way, way behind."

The transcript of the segment, which aired on June 14 at 1:16 p.m. EDT, is as follows:

ANDREA MITCHELL: When President Obama addresses the nation tomorrow night, how hard will he press BP, and just how far will he go in proposing new energy legislation? Joining us is Ron Brownstein, political director for the Atlantic Media, and someone who has studied energy more intensively than most of our other colleagues, so we welcome you as an expert on that as well. Let’s talk about–is this the time to pitch strong energy legislation and what are the chances of getting anything passed this year?

RON BROWNSTEIN, Political Director, Atlantic Media: You know, strong energy–almost certainly the time to pitch it. The hard part is going to be–as you were talking about with Congressman Markey, whether there is a climate dimension to that or not. I think from the beginning–right throughout his campaign, the Stimulus bill–the President has been a strong proponent of incentives to develop alternative energy, wind, solar, efficiency. They’ve always been somewhat ambivalent about whether it was politically realistic to couple that with a serious effort to control carbon emissions, which most advocates argue is the key to a long-term transition toward clean energy. But it imposes more immediate costs now than the carrots you can offer to develop things like solar. So I don’t know what we’ll see tomorrow. I assume that there will be something of a pitch there. But are they in the trenches, really telling Harry Reid, look, this has to be a comprehensive bill? It’s always been a little bit back-and-forth from the administration on that.  

ANDREA MITCHELL: And in fact, Ed Markey’s bill–the Markey-Waxman bill, was a year ago, but it is a Cap-and-Trade bill, as you’re pointing out. It doesn’t really require us to eat our spinach, and–

RON BROWNSTEIN: Well, it does have longer-term–I mean, the Waxman-Markey bill was a comprehensive bill that had a variety of incentives for alternatives, for efficiency, but also did have a Cap-and-Trade system which limited the emissions of Carbon Dioxide and the other gasses associated with Global Warming. That hits coal the hardest, harder than it does oil. It would have a big impact over time in moving the U.S. away from a reliance on coal to generate as much of its electricity. It’s impact on oil dependence might be smaller over time, but even that–because so many states rely so heavily on coal. It was always uncertain that you get the sixty votes in the Senate for that, and that’s been the delay. There’s been an entire year, as John Kerry and Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman and others have tried to find any formula that could get you to sixty votes in the Senate, while limiting carbon emissions. They’ve never found it, and now Harry Reid has to make this decision. Is this the moment to try to do it again, or do you do an energy-only bill, or maybe you can’t do anything.

ANDREA MITCHELL: As he’s of course facing his own re-election fight. You just got back from looking at the energy situation in China, and as Bill Gates, Jeff Immelt, last week–

RON BROWNSTEIN: Put out the report–

ANDREA MITCHELL: The CEO, of course, of our parent company GE put out their report on R&D, and Ed Markey has a lot of R&D in this bill that’s been sitting there for a year. You were in the Gobi Desert, where China–

RON BROWNSTEIN: Yes I was. You don’t get to say that everyday.

ANDREA MITCHELL: You know, what a great date line–China is by leaps and bounds going to lap us on solar, which should be an American initiative.

RON BROWNSTEIN: Right. China is a paradox. Because on one hand, they rely heavily on coal, and they’re a threat to any international effort to constrain Global Warming because of that. On the other hand, they have made enormous, specific goals in the area of alternative energy, solar, wind, high-speed rail, others–and they are becoming a serious competitor for those jobs that the President is counting on as a part of his long-term economic strategy. About half of the solar panels in the world are already built in China and Taiwan.

ANDREA MITCHELL: It’s extraordinary, and we are falling way, way behind. Thank you, Ron Brownstein, we are going to stay on this.

Liberals and conservatives attack President Obama for not doing “more” about the oil spill.  This is largely nonsense, given that government is not competent. 

Today, Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr. of the invaluable Cato Institute puts it more eloquently:

“When President George W. Bush had his Katrina moment, the federal government's bumbling response was blamed on him, on the Republicans, and on conservatives. Now it is President Obama's turn. His administration's faltering response to the disaster in the Gulf is attributed to his personal failings, staff ineptitude, communication failures, etc."

These criticisms miss the point.  It’s not about staff ineptitude, etc.

“...this is not because either Republicans or Democrats are in power, but because big government doesn't work. It can't deliver on its promises. Big government overpromises and underdelivers. In reaching to do more, big government accomplishes less. That is not an ideological statement, but an empirical observation.”

It certainly is.  I wish the regulators would see it.  But their grand plans for new financial regulation show their ignorance.

Maybe some will read Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek, who wrote:

"the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

I doubt the regulators will read Hayek, but I’m cheered by the fact that, as I write this, his book The Road To Serfdom is #1 on Amazon.com, where it has been for more than a week!   Apparently some people get the message: our economy is too big and diverse to be managed by central planners.

On Monday's Good Morning America on ABC, co-host George Stephanopoulos discussed President Obama's response to the Gulf oil spill with Democratic strategist James Carville: "Probably no one has been tougher than you on this White House on this response. The President now going back for his forth trip. He's ratcheted up the rhetoric over the weekend. Is this what you've been waiting for?"

Stephanopoulos was referring to Carville's criticism of Obama on the May 26 broadcast: "And it just looks like he's not involved in this!...We're about to die down here!" During his Monday appearance, the on-screen headline read: "Carville Demands Justice; Gulf 'Abused and Neglected'"

However, on Monday, Carville struck a more complimentary tone toward the President, remarking that Tuesday's prime time Oval Office address on the spill could allow Obama "to hit the reset button." Near the end of the segment, Stephanopoulos, a former Democratic strategist himself, asked Carville: "...put on your strategist hat here, has the President contained the political damage?" Carville reiterated: "I think he can hit this reset button tomorrow night. I think he can not contain the political damage, I think he can eliminate the damage. I actually think done properly, there's political value in this, I think that he can help himself a great deal."

While hoping for Obama's political comeback, Carville did speak out against the moratorium on offshore oil drilling: "[Gulf residents are] definitely concerned about this moratorium. This is wrecking the economy down here. What has to be done to get this lifted? How soon can we expect that?" Stephanopoulos continued to tow the liberal line: "...do you really think that's wise given the kind of dangers we're seeing with very deep water drilling?" Carville called for more regulation, but concluded: "I think it's essential to the economy down here....you take fishing and you take petroleum away from this, you don't have a whole lot left."

Here is a full transcript of the June 14 exchange:

7:08AM EST            

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: We're going to turn now to James Carville, he is down in New Orleans. Good morning, again, James. Probably no one has been tougher than you on this White House on this response. The President now going back for his forth trip. He's ratcheted up the rhetoric over the weekend. Is this what you've been waiting for?

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Carville Demands Justice; Gulf "Abused and Neglected"]

JAMES CARVILLE: Well, I hope so, and I think he has a chance to hit the reset button tomorrow night. And there certainly is going to be a lot of interest, a lot of anticipation in what he's going to say. Doug Brinkley has been reporting that the Secretary of Interior said that he's going to address the issue of our vanishing coastline and have a massive public works project. If that's true, that's going to be greeted with – embraced down here and greeted with great approval. But we've got to see, and I think people are very, very anxious. I think they want to hear what the President has to say. And I guarantee you, he's going to have to have a lot of eyes that are glued to the television set tomorrow night. I mean, this is good news. They say they're going to capture 50,000 barrels and I think that they're moving in that direction. But last week, we we're told that the high point was 40,000. So I think these sensors will give people a good, good indication of what's on there. And hopefully, the scientists can give us a definitive answer because every answer we've gotten has been wrong so far. But I'm very encouraged by what I here hear about the ability to capture this oil. I hope it's true and we're just praying that'll be the case.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You mentioned this recovery fund that Secretary Salazar talked to historian Doug Brinkley about. What more, specifically, do you think people on the Gulf are waiting to hear from the President tomorrow night?

CARVILLE: Well, I mean I think that they definitely want to know what's the strategy for cleaning this up? How much oil's been out there? How long do the experts think that this I going to go on? What are going to be the long-term effects on our fishing industry? They're definitely concerned about this moratorium. This is wrecking the economy down here. What has to be done to get this lifted? How soon can we expect that? And the big thing, of course, is what Doug Brinkley, who is a former resident of New Orleans, is reporting is what is going to happen to our wetlands? We're losing wetlands at the rate of the size of Manhattan every year. And if this President seizes this initiative and talks about rediverting the river below what they call Myrtle Grove and reflooding those wetlands, that's going to be a big part of his legacy. That's going to be an enormous thing and that's what people are really looking for here.

STEPHANOPOULOS: James, you mentioned the moratorium on drilling. And I know a lot of politicians down there in Louisiana and across the Gulf are calling for lifting the moratorium. But do you really think that's wise given the kind of dangers we're seeing with very deep water drilling?

CARVILLE: Well, certainly we saw this and I think BP last had something like 700 violations and an Exxon operator had one violation. And I think that, certainly, you would have to have stringent regulations. I think every CEO ought to sign off on it. I think we have to have, you know, top flight engineers come in ensuring safety. But I think this stuff can – is necessary. I think it's essential to the economy down here. And I think properly regulated and properly done, it can be done – nothing can be done risk-free – but I think it can be done much, much better than it was done before. And we're going to have to get back to this, it's just a question of when. It's a very productive field out there and it's killing the economy of south Louisiana. I mean, you take fishing and you take petroleum away from this, you don't have a whole lot left.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, James, we only have a few seconds left, but bottom line, put on your strategist hat here, has the President contained the political damage?

CARVILLE: I think he – I'd rather look forward as we say, and not look back. And you know, I think he can hit this reset button tomorrow night. I think he can not contain the political damage, I think he can eliminate the damage. I actually think done properly, there's political value in this, I think that he can help himself a great deal. It's a complex problem. But he's got to show that he's on top of this thing. That there's a strategy in place. That there's a way to deal with this. And the big thing is, if he's going to estimate something, estimate it on the conservative side because everything else has been overestimated.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, James Carville, thanks very much.

CARVILLE: Thank you.

On Thursday, Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) took to the floor of the Senate and claimed that carbon dioxide -- that naturally occurring gas integral to life on this planet! -- "will be over the next 20 years the leading cause of conflict, putting our troops in harm's way" (transcript and commentary follow):

I'm going to put in the record, Madam President, a host of quotes from our national security experts who tell us that carbon pollution leading to climate change will be over the next 20 years the leading cause of conflict, putting our troops in harm's way. And that's why we have so many returning veterans who want us to move forward and address this issue, so we can create those new technologies that get us off this foreign oil. 

As bonus coverage, here's how this Senator treats higher-ups in the military:

Chris Matthews on Friday got himself marvelously smacked down by a Louisiana Congressman.

In an at times heated discussion about energy policy with Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Steve Scalise (R-La.), the "Hardball" host continually bashed the GOP.

"The smartest move for your party is to screw things up for the next couple of years, right through November, get the country completely bollixed up, and they will vote Republican out of desperation, and you will have more power," said Matthews. "Is that the strategy of the Republican Party this year?"

When Scalise refuted this claim, Matthews added, "If the Titanic sank today, you know what the Republicans would be saying? Don`t be telling the shipping lines they need more life rafts or life preservers."

Scalise marvelously responded, "If the Titanic sank today, I`m sure the president would try to blame it on George Bush" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): 

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Here`s Mitch McConnell`s position, which I think is not a position. He said: "What I believe most of my members, if not all of them, will not be interested in is seizing on the oil spill in the Gulf and using that as a rationale, if you will, for passing a national energy tax referred to down here at the White House as cap and trade."

Now, that`s a negative position. What is the positive position in terms of moving forward? And do you support some kind of negotiation with the Democrats, which never seems to get done in this presidency? You guys -- McConnell from day one has said you guys` platform is no. That`s your platform.

REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D), FLORIDA: That`s right.

MATTHEWS: That`s what...

(CROSSTALK)

REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA), ENERGY & COMMERCE CMT: Well...

MATTHEWS: Is he right? Is McConnell right? The smartest move for your party is to screw things up for the next couple of years, right through November, get the country completely bollixed up, and they will vote Republican out of desperation, and you will have more power? Is that the strategy of the Republican Party this year? Because McConnell says it is. [...]

MATTHEWS: What I see here...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: What do I see? If the Titanic sank today, you know what the Republicans would be saying? Don`t be telling the shipping lines they need more life rafts or life preservers. Don`t get involved with industry telling them what to do. At some point, the government has to intervene, because the private sector is not doing the job. The private sector is what we`re seeing on that live bug every night on television. By the way, Congressman, that`s the work of the private sector without regulation. That`s what it looks like without being taxed heavily.

Actually, what we're seeing in the Gulf of Mexico right now indeed IS the result of an over-regulated industry. If our oil companies were allowed to drill in Alaska AND set up more rigs closer to the coast, they wouldn't be drilling in mile-deep seas.

For some reason folks like Matthews just don't get that! But I digress: 

SCALISE: Well, but the federal government is the regulator, Chris.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Your oil patch people have been getting away for centuries without paying taxes.

You have had the biggest tax breaks in the world because you have controlled the Ways and Means Committee. You have controlled the Finance Committees and the regulating committees to the point there is no regulation of safety.

This is either astonishing stupidity or an out and out lie. The Democrats have controlled both chambers of Congress -- and therefore the Ways and Means Committee as well as the Finance Committees - since January 2007! That's approaching three and a half years.

In fact, Democrats have mostly controlled Congress since oil exploration began in this country. As such, any suggestion to the contrary is absurd.

Fortunately, Scalise had the best line of the night: 

MATTHEWS: You have had your way. So, that works. And we`re seeing it every night on the air.

(CROSSTALK)

SCALISE: If the Titanic sank today, I`m sure the president would try to blame it on George Bush. And we have seen where that has gotten us.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, that`s not useful.

Actually, it's quite useful -- and spot on!

Bravo, Congressman! Bravo! 

From today’s Politico:

As the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history has played out on Obama’s watch, the environmental movement has essentially given him a pass — all but refusing to unleash any vocal criticism against the president even as the public has grown more frustrated by Obama’s performance.

About a dozen environmental groups took out a full page ad in the Washington Post Tuesday – not to fault Obama over the ecological catastrophe but to thank him for putting on hold an Alaska drilling project. “We deeply appreciate your decision. . .,” the ad says to Obama.

“President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,” Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope told the Bangor Daily News last week. “He obviously did not take the crisis in the Minerals Management Service adequately seriously, that’s clear. But his agencies have done a phenomenally good job.”

Some say there’s little doubt that if a spill like the one in the Gulf took place on former President George W. Bush’s watch, environmental groups would have unleashed an unsparing fury on the Republican in the White House. For their liberal ally, Obama, they seem willing to hold their tongues.

“These guys have bet the farm on this administration,” said Ted Nordhaus, chairman of an environmental think tank, the Breakthrough Institute. “There has been a real hesitancy to criticize this administration out of a sense that they’re kind of the only game in town…..These guys are so beholden to this administration to move their agenda that I think they’re unwilling to criticize them.”

The most prominent voices of outrage have come not from mainstream environmental groups, but from the likes of political consultant James Carville, comedian Bill Maher and Plaquemines, La., Parish President Billy Nungesser.

Carville’s call for Obama to hold BP’s feet to the fire has penetrated the national consciousness in a way that comments from traditional environmental groups have not.

“ ‘Who’s your daddy?’ has become the talking point of the crisis so far,” observed Matt Nisbet, a professor of environmental communications at American University, referring to a comment by Carville. “It’s difficult for the national environmental groups to be critics of the administration—they’re working so closely with the administration…..They have reacted cautiously and softly.”

Continue reading here. The one silver lining of the Obama Administration is that it has exposed the blatant hypocrisy of huge swaths of the left. A host of issues that were alleged to have a moral urgency, are suddenly unimportant now that a Democrat is in the White House. The emphasis on these issues in the last few years was simply tactical, a device to help Obama win the Presidency. In the end, it really is all about power.

Bill Maher on Friday compared Americans working for oil companies to the vermin creating and distributing child pornography.

In the "New Rules" segment of his "Real Time" program, the HBO host concluded with a discussion about the "murderous, hateful" oil industry.

"You know, it's Washington gospel that jobs in the private sector are better than government jobs," said Maher.

"But oil jobs are private, and look at the toll this industry takes: cooking the planet; enslaving us to Saudi Arabia; killing animals," he continued.

"Yes, the oil industry creates jobs - so does the kiddie porn industry" (video follows with partial transcript): 

BILL MAHER: New rule - stop talking about jobs being lost in a murderous, hateful industry like it's a bad thing. Now, last week I may have hurt a few feelings when my response to the complaint that jobs will be lost in the offshore drilling business was, "Fuck your jobs." But I meant it. And it goes double for burning coal and chopping down redwoods. Sorry, roughnecks, but eventually you're going to have to find something else to do. Try building windmills. You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash. You know, it's Washington gospel that jobs in the private sector are better than government jobs. You even hear Democrats saying it. But oil jobs are private, and look at the toll this industry takes: cooking the planet; enslaving us to Saudi Arabia; killing animals. If the government hired away all the 58,000 oil workers who work now in the state of Louisiana, and paid them their same salary to work repairing infrastructure and building solar panels, it would cost us $5.5 billion which the Pentagon loses every day in the couch. Wouldn't that be worth it? Is working on an oil rig really that great a job anyway? You spend weeks at a time on a floating well in the ocean. Do you want to avoid your family that bad, take up golf. Yes, the oil industry creates jobs - so does the kiddie porn industry.

Honestly, how low will this man go?

Bill Maher on Friday compared Americans working for oil companies to the vermin creating and distributing child pornography.

In the "New Rules" segment of his "Real Time" program, the HBO host concluded with a discussion about the "murderous, hateful" oil industry.

"You know, it's Washington gospel that jobs in the private sector are better than government jobs," said Maher.

"But oil jobs are private, and look at the toll this industry takes: cooking the planet; enslaving us to Saudi Arabia; killing animals," he continued.

"Yes, the oil industry creates jobs - so does the kiddie porn industry" (video pending, partial transcript follows): 

BILL MAHER: New rule - stop talking about jobs being lost in a murderous, hateful industry like it's a bad thing. Now, last week I may have hurt a few feelings when my response to the complaint that jobs will be lost in the offshore drilling business was, "Fuck your jobs." But I meant it. And it goes double for burning coal and chopping down redwoods. Sorry, roughnecks, but eventually you're going to have to find something else to do. Try building windmills. You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash. You know, it's Washington gospel that jobs in the private sector are better than government jobs. You even hear Democrats saying it. But oil jobs are private, and look at the toll this industry takes: cooking the planet; enslaving us to Saudi Arabia; killing animals. If the government hired away all the 58,000 oil workers who work now in the state of Louisiana, and paid them their same salary to work repairing infrastructure and building solar panels, it would cost us $5.5 billion which the Pentagon loses every day in the couch. Wouldn't that be worth it? Is working on an oil rig really that great a job anyway? You spend weeks at a time on a floating well in the ocean. Do you want to avoid your family that bad, take up golf. Yes, the oil industry creates jobs - so does the kiddie porn industry.

Honestly, how low will this man go?

Speaking to New York Magazine columnist John Heilemann on MSNBC Friday, anchor Andrea Mitchell wondered if the Gulf oil spill could be a political opportunity for President Obama: "Is there an opportunity now to do something real on energy?"Heilemann proclaimed the disaster was "a triggering action for us to try and get toward a greener future...break our addiction to oil..."            

The discussion occurred during the 1PM ET hour on Andrea Mitchell Reports with Mitchell noting how the President was "trying to contain the political damage" from the spill. After she spun the crisis as an "opportunity," Heilemann argued: "I think this is one of these real moments for any president...what better moment is there than this?" Both Mitchell and Heilemann seem to share the philosophy of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Heilemann actually worried that the White House would not exploit the situation enough: "I think that for the White House to do that and not end up with a piecemeal, some kind of small bill – small ball bill – he's got to go really big and turn this into a crusade."  He described the "fear" on the Left that the administration was "going to end up settling for a small solution rather than the big one that really changes, fundamentally, our relationship to energy and the – and our climate."

Mitchell then quoted Heilemann's recent column in New York Magazine:

...you wrote that: "As much as pulling the country back from the economic brink or passing health-care reform, the catastrophe in the Gulf offers Obama a chance to rise to the occasion, and in the process not only validate his conception of progressive, activist, and competent governance but reclaim the visionary mantle that inspired so many during his campaign."

Mitchell agreed with the sentiment and declared: "...it strikes me that this is an opportunity for him [Obama] to change the conversation....[to do] what he arguably does best and show his competence and the big conceptual approach to the energy policy, that would really be a major test of leadership." Heilemann replied: "It would be...he does competency, he also does inspiration really well....he does inspiration terrifically well."

Heilemann concluded: "There's places where he [Obama] can go here and – on both substance and symbolism – that would actually benefit him and what I – as I said, play to his strengths rather than his weaknesses." Mitchell was pleased by all of his political advice for the President: "John Heilemann, that's why we always love to talk to you. Thank you very much."

Here is a full transcript of the June 11 exchange:

1:14PM EST

KEITH JONES [FATHER OF OIL RIG VICTIM]: I don't criticize the President in not having condemned BP or any other party that may have been at fault in the accident. Not yet.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Keith Jones, whose son died on the Deepwater Horizon rig after visiting the White House, as BP tries to cap the oil spewing into the Gulf. President Obama is trying to contain the political damage, but as estimates of the oil continues to rise, what is this political fallout? With us now, John Heilemann, national political columnist with New York Magazine and of course co-author of 'Game Change,' the best-selling book.

John, The President has taken step by step measures to change the policy. Now, he's inviting BP to the White House next week – summoning really – next Wednesday, after saying for days and days, weeks, that there was no need for them to communicate. He met with the families. He went down and spent hours there last week. He's going back on Monday and Tuesday. Is this course correction going to work?

JOHN HEILEMANN: Well, I don't know the answer to that question, but I do think that there is, you know, there's this daunting sense, and I say this not in a way to suggest somehow they were – this is not criticism of the White House. I think for all of us, there's the sense that this thing is –  the scale of it is much larger than anybody thought and I think more importantly, that the time frame for it is now much longer than most people had ever hoped or expected, right?

So this is going to go on for months and months. And so, you know, if tomorrow they capped the well completely, which of course is not going to happen, you would have months of an environmental disaster, an economic disaster, that the President is going to – the political challenge for him and the substantive challenge, is greater, I think, going forward, than it even has been in this last two months.

And so as they've started to realize that, that this is like – he's going to be judged not on whether he capped the – plugged the hole, but on how he deals with this. How does he protect the coastline? What changes does he get through in terms of energy policy? That's where he's really going to be judged and that's where he either win or lose.

MITCHELL: And on energy policy, do you think – where do you come down? Is this an opportunity or is this a real loss in terms of the ability to get something done? John Kerry and  Lieberman say something can be done. There's a competing Lugar proposal that actually Lindsey Graham has signed on to. And a vote this week we saw, where – a fairly narrow vote, 53-47, Senator Murkowski tried to limit the White House's ability to contain emissions and failed. But that was a pretty tough fight in the Senate yesterday. Is there an opportunity now to do something real on energy?

HEILEMANN: Well, I think that the politics of it have gotten more complicated, not less, because, as you know, you know, the notion of opening up some offshore drilling was a key carrot to get Republicans and conservative Democrats on board. At the same time, I think this is one of these real moments for any president, where if there is going to be a triggering action for us to try and get toward a greener future, a different kind of energy future, break our addiction to oil, what better moment is there than this? But I think that for the White House to do that and not end up with a piecemeal, some kind of small bill – small ball bill – he's got to go really big and turn this into a crusade. Lay out a future for American energy, American climate policy, and really drive for that. And I think the fear for people who would like to see him do that is that they're looking at the difficulty of the politics and they're going to end up settling for a small solution rather than the big one that really changes, fundamentally, our relationship to energy and the – and our climate.

MITCHELL: I read, recently, you wrote that: 'As much as pulling the country back from the economic brink or passing health-care reform, the catastrophe in the Gulf offers Obama a chance to rise to the occasion, and in the process not only validate his conception of progressive, activist, and competent governance but reclaim the visionary mantle that inspired so many during his campaign.' You know, it strikes me that this is an opportunity for him to change the conversation so that he's not arguing over whether he's emoting enough or feeling the pain enough. That's not a natural instinct for him, it's the theatrical – he has to do a little bit of that because he is the commander and consoler-in-chief, but if he does what he arguably does best and show his competence and the big conceptual approach to the energy policy, that would really be a major test of leadership.

HEILEMANN: It would be, and look, he also – he does competency, he also does inspiration really well. That's one of the things we know he does well. He doesn't do anger well, but he does inspiration terrifically well. So there's the energy legislation side of this. There's also another side of this, right? Which is there are going to be – we're going to need thousands of people to be down in the Gulf trying to keep this oil from getting further into the wetlands than it already is, from getting onto the beaches in Florida. I say why not start a Gulf Conservation Corps or a Gulf Recovery Corps? And start a new branch of our national service of AmeriCorps and tell them – try to inspire young Americans to take a year off and go to the Gulf to save our natural habitat. There are things he can do that would play to his strengths rather than asking him to do some of these theatrical things that don't play to his strengths and that he, I just think, when he does them he actually looks phony doing them. There's places where he can go here and – on both substance and symbolism – that would actually benefit him and what I – as I said, play to his strengths rather than his weaknesses.

MITCHELL: John Heilemann, that's why we always love to talk to you. Thank you very much.

HEILEMANN: You're welcome. 

Government-mandated green energy is wonderful for the crony capitalists at GE, but not so nice for animals. Not only do the hideous windmills sprouting up on our dime hack birds to pieces, now we learn that solar panels kill off the insects fish need for food. Solar panels might be a cornerstone of green energy, but [...]

President Barack Obama made news on The Today Show when he talked about kicking some ass over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

If he is interested in punishing those responsible for what is shaping up as one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, he should think about giving himself a boot.

While BP is ultimately responsible for the spill (and for cleaning it up), the federal government is a major player in the problem for at least three reasons:

1. It owns the property on which the oil well is located.

2. It regulates offshore drilling. And

3. In order to protect small players in the drilling industry, it capped economic damages from this sort of spill at just $75 million, a way-too-low cap that encourages risky behavior.

“3 Reason Why Obama Should Kick His Own Ass” is written and produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also hosts.

Approximately 2:30 minutes.

Go to Reason.tv for iPod, HD, and audio versions and more information.

Subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel for automatic notification when new material goes live.

The 1960s began with a presidential election between conservative cold warrior Richard Nixon…and the surprisingly conservative cold warrior John F. Kennedy. In terms of the similarity between the two candidates, and the public they represented, this was a high point in national unity. The assassination of JFK began a process that ultimately shattered that unity. During the course of the 1960s, Americans witnessed the split between the liberalism of FDR, Harry Truman, JFK and LBJ, and the rise of the punitive New Left that emerged in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination. As we explore in the latest edition of our Silicon Graffiti video blog, the alpha and the omega of those two forms of American liberalism came less than a month apart, in the summer of 1969...

We all know the BP oil spill is a huge mess. It's going to be costly to clean up - but just how much? And while some outspoken critics are calling for BP to eliminate its dividend, they probably aren't realizing the residual effects.

On the June 10 broadcast of Fox Business Network's "Bulls & Bears," Fadel Gheit, a senior analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., offered a huge estimate. But, he explained what is done is done and that going after BP with harsh penalties, as in elimination of the BP stock dividend, now will hurt a lot of American retirees.

"Couple of things - I mean, it is water under the bridge, it is over and you will have to live with it," Gheit said. "BP will have to live with it. We have to remember one thing -- BP bought 10 years ago, Amoco, Arco, a very large American corporation with a lot of people working for BP today. And the retirees are pensioners from the Amoco and Arco days. So by cutting the dividend we're penalizing completely innocent people that worked very hard for many years. And now, the dividend is the way they support themselves. So, I don't understand."

And he suggested a compromise - not the total elimination of the BP's stock's dividend but that something should come down in the middle. 

"Yes, I understand clearly that we have to set the money aside to clean up and all those things but we have to reach a compromise and not throw [out] the baby with the bath water," Gheit continued. "So there has to be some balance between my view here, BP should cut dividend by at least 50 percent. And I think they will have the financial feasibility to clean up the mess they created."

But over time, the spill would be cleaned up he explained.
"Eventually it will be cleaned up," Gheit said. "It will cost more"

How much more? A lot more, he said.
"I estimate it will cost about $60 billion," Gheit said.

This figure was a bit of a shock to "Bulls & Bears" co-host David Asman: "Wow! $60 billion." And although BP (NYSE:BP) has a market cap of roughly $100 billion, Gheit explained it won't come in one lump sum but over 10 years.
"But it's not going to be in a day or a week or a year," Gheit said. "Might take about 10 years. So, that the present value of the $60 billion is pretty manageable."

It's been more than 50 days since a BP oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana, beginning a massive leak of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Miles of beaches have been soiled and birds, turtles and other sea creatures have died. But the most disturbing pictures of the disaster weren't available to the public for more than 40 days.

That was when many people finally witnessed Louisiana's state bird, the brown pelican, literally covered in thick brown oil. Why so long? Because federal agencies including the Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were preventing the press from reaching many areas affected by the disaster.

CBS, Associated Press, Mother Jones and The Times-Picayune have all complained about local and federal authorities and and British Petroleum contractors inhibiting their reporting.

But while many in the news media blame BP, the real culprit may well be the Obama administration. When asked, Obama and other administration spokespeople say the U.S. government is in charge of the oil spill cleanup.

The president has openly stated that the federal government is in charge of the oil spill clean up. The Associated Press (AP) reported that "Obama says all steps BP takes to end the huge spill must be approved in advance by the government."

But journalists and the left have blamed BP rather than point fingers up the federal chain of command.

Left-wing magazine Mother Jones called it a "corporate blockade at Louisiana's crude-covered beaches."

Newsweek magazine pointed out the difficulty that photographers encountered when trying to "document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf." In its article, Newsweek placed the blame squarely on British Petroleum from the headline: "BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill" to the quote from a Louisiana photographer who said the prefix "BP" ought to be attached to "Coast Guard" on all the vessels.

"It's a running joke among the journalists covering the story that the words ‘Coast Guard' affixed to any vehicle, vessel, or plane should be prefixed with ‘BP,'" Charlie Varley told Newsweek. "It would be funny if it were not so serious."

It's also not funny that many in the news media and on the left would rather blame BP for controlling federal agencies like the U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) than recognize the similarities between limited media access in the Gulf and Obama's previous actions controlling the press.

Obama also has a long-standing pattern of handling the press, sometimes to the point of blocking access. So now that many reporters are complaining of a lack of access to the oil spill, it is surprising how little blame has been directed at the administration.

During the campaign, he had three reporters from publications that had endorsed John McCain kicked off his plane. Since then he has openly attacked his detractors (including Rush Limbaugh) and was once criticized by a couple reporters (Chip Reid and Helen Thomas) for managing a town hall meeting.

As of February, Obama had held fewer solo press conferences than most presidents -- only George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon held fewer. And he went nearly a year, from July 22, 2009 until last week, without holding a formal news conference.

Despite the failures of regulators at the Minerals Management Service and Obama's own claim that the feds are in charge, a Media Research Center analysis of the oil spill coverage found 95 percent of stories had no criticism of the Obama administration whatsoever (148 out of 157 stories).

Coast Guard, FAA keeps press away from Gulf spill

Even though Newsweek, Mother Jones and others have clearly blamed BP for controlling federal agencies, government officials themselves are the ones that have been turning the news media away.

So far, reporters and photographers from many outlets, including CBS, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Mother Jones and AP have publicly complained about being denied access by local governments and law enforcement, the Coast Guard and the FAA.

"More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts and even flyovers," Newsweek wrote.

CBS released video of a boat of BP contractors and two Coast Guard officials telling their reporters to leave an area on May 20. The video shows one man on the boat saying, "This is BP's rules, not ours." As a company, how could they exert authority over the Coast Guard, and why wouldn't the Obama administration make sure that does not happen? 

AP's Matthew Brown was one of the few to attach some blame to government, not solely BP. Brown wrote that different media organizations were being restricted "though not all have linked the decision to BP. Government officials say restrictions are needed to protect wildlife and ensure safe air traffic."

While there was no mention of Obama in Brown's story, Brown said the Coast Guard and FAA told him that "BP PLC was not controlling access."

It is the FAA that has imposed air space restrictions on miles of coastline, according to The Times-Picayune. Flights in certain areas cannot descend below 3,000 feet - effectively preventing aerial photography of the spill's impact.

Rhonda Panepinto, owner of Southern Seaplane charter service, told the New Orleans paper her husband was told "absolutely no media or press on any planes. The press flights are limited to Saturdays only and only in Coast Guard helicopters."

According to The Times-Picayune, the government decides who can fly and who cannot: "the FAA maintains that BP employees or contractors are not calling the shots on who gets to fly into the restricted air space, saying those decisions are made by the FAA and Coast Guard. But agency spokespeople acknowledge that media access is limited, saying they are only allowing flights into the restricted area that are directly related to the disaster response."

A June 9 New York Times story from cited an incident where the Dept. of Homeland Security told Sen. Bill Nelson's, D-Fla., that no journalists would be allowed to accompany him on a gulf trip on a Coast Guard vessel. Though the Times clearly blamed some government agencies, like DHS, it did not mention the Obama administration at all.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser condemned the federal response to the oil spill calling for Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen to resign. Nungesser also called on Obama to support Gov. Bobby Jindal's EPA request for dredging permits to protect Louisiana. On May 28, ABC's Jake Tapper reported that Nungesser had a private meeting with Obama. Nungesser said Obama "chewed me out" and said "we need to communicate."

"You pick up the phone and call the White House. And, if you can't get me on the phone, then you can go blast me," Obama reportedly said to Nungesser.

The Coast Guard has defended itself, specifically regarding the CBS incident, by saying that the media do have access: "In fact, media has been actively embedded and allowed to cover response efforts since this response began, with more than 400 embeds aboard boats and aircraft to date."

That wasn't sufficient for Ralph Ranalli, chief blogger for WGBH's Beat the Press website. He chalked up the continued access problems up to "cluelessness" on the part of the Obama administration, but criticized the lame response from the Coast Guard. Ranalli said that the CBS clip should have "shamed" the Obama administration into making "a rational plan for media access."

"Embeds are fine in a war zone. But for the federal government to say the media should be satisfied with ride-alongs with an oil company under criminal investigation for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history is insane. It just staggers the imagination," Ranalli wrote.

Newsweek also took issue with such embeds arguing that "even when access is granted it's done so under the strict oversight of BP and Coast Guard personnel."

Who's really in charge?

Media outlets have been determined to blame BP for the lack of access, despite the local and federal governments' involvement.

Unlike many reporters, one green blogger did call the president out on the Mother Nature Network. Karl Burkart, an architect and blogger about green technology, pointed out that "The Coast Guard, as one of the branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, answers to the commander in chief - President Obama." Ultimately Burkart said he "believed" Obama was "aiding and abetting" BP.

But the question remains, is the White House powerless to control federal agencies like the Coast Guard? Or unwilling - because more coverage would mean more potential criticism for Obama? Or are these agencies puppets in the hands of BP? No matter the option, things don't look good for the administration.

Robert Gibbs, WH press secretary, deflected criticism of the administration on CBS's "Face the Nation," May 23 saying "There's no doubt that we have had some problems with BP's lack of transparency."

But the White House has been careful to claim that they've been charge of the clean up operations. Carol Browner, Obama's energy and climate czar, said on "Meet the Press" May 30, "the government's been in control from the beginning ... don't make any mistake here, the government is in charge." (Watch video)

Obama told AP the same thing, saying that BP had to get permission from Washington for all the clean up. So it stands to reason that the White House wouldn't have trouble telling BP to allow the media unfettered access to report on the oil spill if it wanted to.

But the Obama administration has a history of managing the press. Despite an often-"fawning" news media that helped get him elected, the president rarely holds formal news conferences. According to Byron York, Obama has done fewer brief Q&A sessions than Bush or Clinton.

Even at a bill signing for the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act May 18, Obama refused to answer questions from CBS's Chip Reid.

Reid asked, ""Speaking of press freedom, could you answer a couple of questions on BP?"

Obama replied, "You're certainly free to ask them, Chip." When Reid pressed further asking, "Will you answer them?" Obama said flat-out: "We won't be answering."

York said that former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino was astounded by Obama dodging the press. "I think it is astonishing that there isn't carping about this from the press every day," Perino said. "Believe me, they would have nailed us to the wall."

Reid, along with liberal Helen Thomas, also challenged Obama for a "tightly controlled" town hall meeting in July 2009.

"The concept of a town hall is to have an open public forum, and this sounds like a very tightly controlled audience and list of questions," Reid said to Gibbs. "Why? Why do it that way?"

Later in that White House briefing even liberal journalist Helen Thomas accused the administration of "a pattern of controlling the press."

During his presidential campaign, Obama kicked three reporters off the press airplane -  all from conservative papers. ABC wrote, "the papers are calling foul, claiming they were targeted for their editorial-page positions and kicked off while nonpolitical publications like Glamour and Jet magazines remained on board."

The Washington Times, New York Post and Dallas Morning News were eliminated from the airplane.

Since taking office, the Obama White House has hit back hard at critics in the media, including Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and CNBC's Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer. According to Limbaugh, Obama has simply been following the liberal Saul Alinsky strategy: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Jonathan Martin of Politico agreed, saying on March 4, all this isn't coincidence; it is an effort to frame Limbaugh in the Alinsky mode.

After Santelli's rant about bailouts, Gibbs suggested that the CNBC floor reporter didn't understand Obama's mortgage plan. Gibbs also criticized Cramer and attempted to discredit him.

But each of these actions by Obama, Emanuel or Gibbs has triggered a media-feeding frenzy and ensuing grassroots efforts to capitalize on the media attention and destroy the target.

Like this article? Sign up for "The Balance Sheet," BMI's weekly e-mail newsletter.

On Wednesday's Rick's List, CNN's Rick Sanchez twice highlighted how "several Republicans want to keep the cap on what oil companies pay for spills at $75 million" and how apparently that's about "how much they [oil companies] spend on campaign contributions to politicians each year," but omitted that President Obama was the top recipient of money from BP during the 2008 election cycle.

Sanchez first made those statements during a segment just after the beginning of the 3 pm Eastern hour, as he reported on left-wing organization Code Pink's interruption of a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee earlier on Wednesday. Before playing a clip of the protest, the CNN anchor stated how Diane Wilson "disrupted a Senate hearing this morning by pouring oil all over herself." He continued that Wilson "was arrested, but not before she interrupted Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is tied, many would argue, to big oil in Alaska."

Sanchez didn't mention that the protester is one of the co-founders of Code Pink. However, CNN.com's article on the protest did acknowledge that Code Pink released a statement from Wilson on her publicity stunt.

After playing the clip of the protest, the anchor tried to further tie Murkowski and other Republican senators to the oil industry: "Murkowski, by the way, is one of several Republicans who want to keep the cap on what oil companies pay for spills at $75 million. Imagine that for a moment- they would only pay $75 million, if they chose to, after all the damage that's been done in the Gulf of Mexico, which is, ironically enough, about how much they spend on campaign contributions to politicians each year."

Speaking of campaign contributions to politicians, a May 5 article on CNN.com recognized that "the top recipient of BP-related donations during the 2008 presidential election was Barack Obama, who collected $71,000, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics." Despite all his attention on Republicans, Sanchez didn't give this key detail.

The same Center for Responsive Politics noted on its OpenSecrets.org website that "individuals and political action committees affiliated with oil and gas companies have donated $238.7 million to candidates and parties since the 1990 election cycle." That's just under $12 million per year over 20 years, so one wonders where the CNN anchor got his figure from.

Sanchez didn't use his "tied to big oil" line during his recap of the report just after the top of the 4 pm Eastern hour, but repeated his statement about Murkowski and the "several Republicans." He again failed to mention Wilson's membership in Code Pink.

SANCHEZ: First of all, I want to show you something that might illustrate the frustration with the oily mess in Gulf of Mexico the best. this is Diane Wilson, a distraught shrimper. She wrote a book about the environmental impact in the Gulf. She disrupted a Senate hearing this morning by pouring oil all over herself right there in front of all these folks. She was arrested, but not before interrupting Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Here it is.

SENATOR LISA MURKOWSKI: It's been a couple weeks now since you have been before the committee. I think last time you were here, the oil from the (unintelligible)-

DIANE WILSON (off-camera): We're tired of the bailouts and we're tired of being dumped on in the Gulf. I'm a commercial fisherman from the Gulf of Mexico, and we're tired of being dumped on.

SENATOR JEFF BINGAMAN (off-camera): Let me announce to the protesters to please exit the room and allow us to proceed with our hearing.

MURKOWSKI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SANCHEZ: 'We are tired of being dumped on.'

Murkowski, by the way, is one of several Republicans who want to keep the cap on what oil companies pay for spills at $75 million. Imagine that for a moment- they would only pay $75 million, if they chose to, after all the damage that's been done in the Gulf of Mexico, which is, ironically enough, about how much they spend on campaign contributions to politicians each year.

Joe Scarborough continued his open defense of the Obama administration’s response to the BP oil spill, on Wednesday’s “Morning Joe.” Facing off against Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), Scarborough called comparisons of the president’s handling of the current crisis with Bush’s handling of Katrina “obscene.”

“Behind the scenes, President Obama from day one was actually very engaged,” Scarborough argued. “[Obama] told his White House staff ‘This is job one,’ ordered all of the agencies to throw the full force of the federal government behind this. I mean...we’ve got the minutes of the meeting from April 22 where he said that.”

Rep. King countered that the administration lacked style in its handling of the crisis, and took eight days to declare it a “matter of national significance.”

Though Scarborough said that President Obama has done everything of “substance” to respond to the spill, King also asked Scarborough what more President Bush could have done to handle the Katrina crisis.

“What could George Bush have done?” Scarborough asked. “A hell of a lot.”

“This is one of the most obscene comparisons, between Katrina and BP,” Scarborough spat out. “I was on the ground from day one. I can tell you the federal government was not there. The state government was not there. The local government was not there.”

“No, you’re wrong, You’re wrong. That is not FEMA’s job,” Rep. King shot back. “That is the job of the mayor and the governor for the first two or three days.”

A transcript of the show’s segment is as follows:

MORNING JOE
June 9, 2010
8:06a.m.–8:09a.m.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But–but–but Peter, you do understand–you do though understand, Peter, that behind the scenes President Obama from day one was actually very engaged, told his White House staff ‘this is job one,’ and ordered all of the agencies to throw the full force of the federal government behind this. I mean we’ve got that actual–we’ve got the minutes of the meeting from April 22 where he said that.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: It’s actually also in a press release released to the media.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Right. So is this about substance, or is this about style?

REP. PETER KING (R-N.Y.): It’s both. It’s about leadership. And the fact is, it did take them–what–eight days to even declare this a matter of national significance. You know, leadership and style–Ronald Reagan had it, Franklin Roosevelt had it, John Kennedy had it, Bill Clinton had it in Oklahoma City. And you have to show–you have to connect with the American people. If you lose the American people on an issue like this, you’re going to hurt your administration, you know, for the next two years.

SCARBOROUGH: So Peter, let me ask you, technically, can you name one thing that you would have done if you were running the White House operation technically, that Barack Obama did not do?

REP. KING: I would have paid more attention to Gov. Jindal. I think Gov. Jindal is showing leadership, in fact, he wanted those berms off the coast. I think that is something that should have been done, that should have made more attention to him–

SCARBOROUGH: But–but–but–but if you put the berms off the coast, that pushes the oil over to Mississippi. That may be great for Louisiana. I don’t think Haley would have liked that a whole hell of a lot.

REP. KING: Well...the President should have engaged with Gov. Jindal. He didn’t engage with the Louisiana delegation, didn’t engage with Gov. Jindal, and he stayed away. And again, what more could President Bush have done with Katrina? The fact is, people like you are very critical of him.

(Crosstalk)

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Let me tell you–I’ll gladly tell you. I went down to Katrina the day after, and I can tell you unlike Florida, the year before, where we had four hurricanes, FEMA wasn’t there on the ground. The National Guard wasn’t there on the ground.

(Crosstalk)

SCARBOROUGH: This is one of the most obscene comparisons between Katrina and BP. I was on the ground from day one. I can tell you the federal government was not there. The state government was not there. The local government was not there. I saw children walking around in dirty diapers that they had been wearing for three days, four days. I saw kids wandering the streets of Biloxi and across Louisiana without any water, three days into it. What could George Bush have done? A hell of a lot.

REP. KING: No, you’re wrong, you’re wrong. That is not FEMA’s job. That is the job of the mayor and the governor for the first two or three days.

(Crosstalk)

REP. KING: And you’re wrong, you’re wrong.

SCARBOROUGH: No I’m not wrong! Peter! I’m in Pensacola, Florida. We have Ivan the year before and they’re flying supply planes in from Washington, D.C. the next day. Come on, Peter. I don’t tell you what’s happening in Long Island Sound. Don’t tell me what’s happening on the Gulf Coast.

REP. KING: Joe, I’m telling you that everything that was done could have been done, until– the federal government does not come in until the third or fourth day. There was a failure of leadership by Mayor Nagin, by Governor Blanco, and Haley Barbour did a great job in Mississippi, Bob Riley did a great job in Alabama.     

When a protectionist law is enacted and nearly a century later it is inhibiting a recovery from major ecological catastrophe, it's probably time to scrap it or at least temporarily waive it.

But instead a nearly century old provision known as the Jones Act of 1920 is wielding the wrath of unintended consequences. According to the Heritage Foundation, this protectionist measure was put in place to defend the American maritime industry, but is endangering far more jobs than it is protecting.

"The Jones Act, which is supposedly about protecting jobs, is actually killing jobs," Heritage co-authors James Dean and Claude Berube wrote in a June 8 The Foundry post. "The jobs of fishermen, people working in tourism and others who live along the Gulf Coast and earn a living there are being severely impacted. There are also additional private sector jobs which are NOT being created in the United States since the Jones Act effectively prices U.S. based companies out of the ability to be competitive on the competitive global market. As we strive to develop new technologies for a cleaner environment at sea, the Jones Act continues to hobble our own capabilities, sometimes with devastating results."

And CNBC's Rick Santelli also noted this impediment to recovery. According to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, European firms could complete the task in four months, rather than an estimated nine months if done only by the U.S., and just three months if working with U.S. firms.

"They are playing this war of words," Santelli said on CNBC's June 9 "Closing Bell." "Just consider this, there's an old law on the books Ron, called the Jones Act of 1920. I've looked at three articles in a Belgian newspaper. They have special ships that could make a big difference in cleaning this up. But they were told by the State Department that they can't because that act, Jones of 1920 prohibits ships that aren't made in the U.S. to do such things in U.S. waters."

And Dean and Berube suggest the law should be done away with altogether.

"The Jones Act needs to be waived now in light of this catastrophe and permit those whom we have helped and cooperated with in the past to assist us in our need," they wrote. "After waiving the Jones Act for the Gulf clean up effort, Congress and the administration should repealing it all together."

When a protectionist law is enacted and nearly a century later it is inhibiting a recovery from major ecological catastrophe, it's probably time to scrap it or at least temporarily waive it.

But instead a nearly century old provision known as the Jones Act of 1920 is wielding the wrath of unintended consequences. According to the Heritage Foundation, this protectionist measure was put in place to defend the American maritime industry, but is endangering far more jobs than it is protecting.

"The Jones Act, which is supposedly about protecting jobs, is actually killing jobs," Heritage co-authors James Dean and Claude Berube wrote in a June 8 The Foundry post. "The jobs of fishermen, people working in tourism and others who live along the Gulf Coast and earn a living there are being severely impacted. There are also additional private sector jobs which are NOT being created in the United States since the Jones Act effectively prices U.S. based companies out of the ability to be competitive on the competitive global market. As we strive to develop new technologies for a cleaner environment at sea, the Jones Act continues to hobble our own capabilities, sometimes with devastating results."

And CNBC's Rick Santelli also noted this impediment to recovery. According to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, European firms could complete the task in four months, rather than an estimated nine months if done only by the U.S., and just three months if working with U.S. firms.

"They are playing this war of words," Santelli said on CNBC's June 9 "Closing Bell." "Just consider this, there's an old law on the books Ron, called the Jones Act of 1920. I've looked at three articles in a Belgian newspaper. They have special ships that could make a big difference in cleaning this up. But they were told by the State Department that they can't because that act, Jones of 1920 prohibits ships that aren't made in the U.S. to do such things in U.S. waters."

And Dean and Berube suggest the law should be done away with altogether.

"The Jones Act needs to be waived now in light of this catastrophe and permit those whom we have helped and cooperated with in the past to assist us in our need," they wrote. "After waiving the Jones Act for the Gulf clean up effort, Congress and the administration should repealing it all together."

California’s Air Resources Board (CARB)—long considered a foe of conservatives nationwide— has shelled out close to $800,000 to bolster its latest pet “green” initiative, Capitol Confidential has learned.

A study released last month, which draws positive conclusions regarding CARB’s favored “feebates” program, cost a whopping $796,641 according to a document found at CARB’s own site.  That has some observers scrutinizing CARB’s activities thinking it could come under renewed and sustained criticism.

California is currently mired in a fiscal morass that seems almost intractable, with many in the Golden State blaming overspending by government for the state’s fiscal woes.  Assembly Democrats have proposed plugging the state’s budget hole via $9 billion in loans, whereas Senate Democrats want to suspend $2 billion in corporate tax reductions, among other measures; the state budget deficit, meanwhile, is reportedly as big as $19 billion.

The “feebates” program is a CARB priority, however.  The agency sees slapping a tax on new, higher-emissions cars purchased by Californians, while offering a rebate on new, lower-emissions cars, as a key to combating climate change.

But California’s steps to curb climate change, including AB 32, have recently been taking a lot of incoming fire with the state’s finances, and economy, in the hole.  “There is a sense, even among some Californians who generally do consider themselves ‘green,’ that they’ve gone too far,” a California political source told Capitol Confidential.  “CARB in particular has come in for a lot of criticism, and their dropping this sort of money on a study that seems designed to validate their pre-existing conclusions is probably not going to help, especially when voters are angry about 12 percent-plus unemployment and the budget situation.”

Moreover, the substance of the “feebates” program is likely to anger fiscal conservatives, as well as automakers.

Anti-tax advocates say it will raise taxes both directly—i.e., for purchasers of less efficient cars—and indirectly.  In France, where “feebates” have also been used, critics say rebates wound up exceeding taxes paid, and the result, says one individual tracking the proposal with whom we spoke, has been generalized taxpayer subsidization of the program.  In Canada, meanwhile, the “fees” arising under their “feebates” program have reportedly been kept in place, but expensive rebates were ended.

Automakers, for their part, seem to see the proposal as unnecessary and redundant.  According to Dave McCurdy, President and CEO of the Auto Alliance, “automakers are [already] investing heavily in more fuel-efficient autos” which should mean that what some describe as government coercion is not in fact necessary to get consumers to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles that emit less.

Still, CARB is expected to pursue the “feebates” program, relying on its costly survey to justify its actions.

I believe the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the fault and responsibility of British Petroleum, and I believe they should be held accountable and made to pay for stopping the leak, cleaning up the water, beaches and wetlands, even if it takes every cent the company makes for the next ten years.

I believe that they should be sued by the feds, the state government and the families who are suffering from the millions of gallons of crude oil that's not only poisoning their waters but also threatening their very way of life.

And having said that, I want to say this.

Now is not the time for lawsuits, finger pointing, meaningless meetings and bureaucratic BS.

Now is the time for action and all energy should be focused on getting the spill stopped and the mess cleaned up.

Eric Holder's presence on the Gulf Coast is about as useless as mammary glands on a boar hog. The time will come for lawsuits and plenty of them, but right now anything that distracts from fixing the catastrophe in the Gulf should be put on the back burner.

If Holder wants to do something useful he should investigate the Sestak situation. Fat chance of that.

And if President Obama wants to do something useful he should cut through the bureaucratic red tape that seems to throw a roadblock in the way of anything anybody wants to do to remedy the situation.

Governor Bobby Jindal has been screaming for weeks that he needs containment equipment, and he wants to dredge sand and build some barriers to stop the oil slick before it gets on shore.

He has been denied his request by the government. They say it's because there has not been an environmental study done as to what the effects would be.
The truth of the matter is that by the time the lethargic Obama Administration gets around to doing something meaningful there may not be an environment to protect on the Louisiana coast.

Obama's policy seems to be, do nothing and let nobody else do anything.

People, can you imagine what would happen if America was to have a major terrorist attack. Would there have to be an environmental study before we respond or would Obama send Holder to sue the terrorists. Oh I forgot, he doesn't sue terrorists, he defends them.

Besides, it would probably be George Bush's fault anyway.

This country is leaderless. The incompetency of the Obama Administration is putting this nation in terrific and immediate danger.

Somewhere on this planet there is someone who knows how to stop this leak. It may not be a politically correct method and it may not be something Obama can take credit for but there is a way to do it and the federal government should put away politics. Swallow their pride and put out the call for help.

People of the Gulf Coast please know that my heart is with you, my prayers are for you and I know what kind of people you are. You'll never give up.

I only wish you could get some sensible help from the government you pay taxes to.

The mainstream media seem to have boiled down the president's reaction to the Gulf spill to two caricatures: either he has failed to satiate public appetites by feigning outrage, or he is succeeding by acting angry. Whereas journalists rightly expected President Bush to do something about Katrina--and excoriated him when he supposedly didn't do enough--the media seem content listening to Obama speak.

That the president may not be doing everything in his power, like, say, meeting with the CEO of British Petroleum, seems not even to cross their minds. So the only critique of the president that remains is one of style. By focusing on what the president has said--rather than what he has done--and how he has said it, the media have diverted (albeit unintentionally) attention from the administration's actual response to the spill to its emotional and verbal response.

Obama and his predecessor both accepted responsibility for the spill and Hurricane Katrina, respectively. But the mainstream press took the former at his word; they rightfully held him accountable for his administration's actions. No such accountability is present in the media's reporting on Obama's response to the Gulf spill.

"I as president am responsible for the problem, and for the solution," Bush stated. Obama echoed this sentiment late last month, when he said, "I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down."

Now contrast, by way of example, the two New York Times headlines covering the respective admissions of responsibility. "Responding to Spill, Obama Mixes Regret With Resolve," the Times's editors wrote on May 27. That tone stands in stark contrast to this headline, from September 16, 2005: "Bush admits Katrina response was inadequate".

The Times captured the spirit of the media's coverage. In Bush's case, the concern was with what had and had not been done. But today the same journalists seem more concerned with what the White House is saying about the spill than with what it is doing about it.

Some, such as MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell, have even bemoaned how badly the administration feels about the situation. White House staffers are apparently having nightmares in between beer pong games. If Obama hasn't succeeded at solving a problem, the media narrative goes, it is because the problem cannot be solved, not because he has failed in any way. After all, he caaaares.

After the president claimed he was looking for "whose ass to kick" in an interview with Matt Lauer on Monday, the media seized on the statement as a tangible example not just of the president's new commitment to mitigating the disaster, but even as an example of his hands-on attitude towards the spill.

NewsBusters reported Tuesday on network TV journos going gaga over the president's newfound combativeness. "In a TV interview aired today, the President said if BP's CEO worked for him, he'd be fired," stated Katie Couric. So Couric parroted the president saying what he would do in a hypothetical situation with a person with whom he has not actually met in the 50 days since the spill began.

Obama's kick-ass quote or his hypothetical threats against Tony Hayward have been touted as proof that the president is responding to the public demands that he do domething about the spill. But Obama still has not done much of anything. That fact seems lost on the media.

So readers are left shaking their heads when the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder says this:

The American Prospect's Adam Serwer notes today, "One of the things I used to like about the president is that he always seemed indifferent to village demands that he acquiesce to whatever empty political gesture they wanted him to make."

Well, Serwer can relax.

President Obama did not conjure up the posterior metaphor on his own. He turned Matt Lauer's "butt" into an "ass," and his annoyance seemed to be more a consequence of Lauer's questions than of any effort to appear angry.    Appearing angry and appearing engaged are two different things. The White House understands how anger can be appropriately channeled and employed, but at this point, they are eager for the public to see the president as engaged -- as problem solving.

If President Obama hadn't said "ass," then he'd be accused of not being angry enough. Because he did say "ass," he's accused of titrating his response to criticisms that he's not angry enough about the oil leak. The man cannot win.

Well yes, as Ace notes, "he can win -- he can do something about the oil slick."

Not just talk about it or "strike the right emotional notes," but actually do something about it, something tangible, something real, something with real-world impact.

That's how he "wins," dude. And that, I'm sad to report, is the only way he wins.

But for media personalities so used to covering a president whose tongue won him the White House, talking has supplanted action. Obama talking is Obama acting. Hence before the president's kick-ass moment, the public's sour mood towards the Gulf spill response was due to Obama's failure to adequately communicate how well he has been doing.

Now that he has succeeded in communicating, the narrative goes, he has simply succeeded. Why anyone would continue to deny him credit accordingly is completely lost on these pundits.

Ace hits the nail on the head:

So, that's what we have going on. We are allowed two permissible storylines -- Obama's not emoting enough, or Obama's emoting just enough -- and the MFM won't entertain other storylines, like, "This has nothing at all to do with emoting, but rather to do with reality and real-world achievements."

The President of the United States is looking for an ass to kick.

“I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar,” he said Monday, “we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

He is so embarrassing. What president talks with such false braggadocio? Would a Republican dog catcher get away with such vulgar invective? He is a disaster, and he lashes out when he is called out on any of his too-numerous-to-recount-here failures.

Bush was eviscerated, crucified for showing more competence in his pinky toenail during Katrina than Obama has demonstrated in the whole of this short, painful presidency. The media’s silence on his fumbling and stumbling is absolutely corrupt. If anyone should be impeached, it ought to be those useful idiots and fellow travelers. It is now a 24-hour bash BP news cycle.

Sarah Palin said:

50 days in, and we’ve just learned another shocking revelation concerning the Obama administration’s response to the Gulf oil spill. In an interview aired this morning, President Obama admitted that he hasn’t met with or spoken directly to BP’s CEO Tony Hayward. His reasoning: “Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he’s gonna say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions.”

Sounds as if Obama doesn’t have much confidence in BP. He is right about that, since BP has been responsible for a large number of accidents in the last few years. The Washington Post reports this: “BP has had more high-profile accidents than any other company in recent years. And now, with the disaster in the gulf, independent experts say the pervasiveness of the company’s problems, in multiple locales and different types of facilities, is striking.”

But Obama’s suspicion of the company is newly minted. Palin points this out:

And yet just 10 days prior to the explosion, the Obama administration’s regulators gave the oil rig a pass, and last year the Obama administration granted BP a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) exemption for its drilling operation.

And it was not Tony Hayward, it was Obama who did nothing for days, weeks, while whole swaths of coast were destroyed. He used the opportunity to kill all offshore drilling. So many bright, creative ideas were tossed aside, much the way Obama has tossed aside all things redolent of capitalism, American exceptionalism and American sovereignty. Such incompetence is indicative of complete stupidity and head-in-posterior paralysis, or something more sinister and destructive. Either way, it ain’t good.

I think it’s the former … he’s a dolt. But he is also a true believer in hard-left socialism. And in any crisis, the policies of the left always fail, without exception because you need the producers, the object of the left’s destruction.

Predictably, Obama is going after the producers: not even an hour after the media went into vacation mode for the Memorial Day weekend, so that what would be done would be largely out of sight, the House of Representatives votes 215 to 204 to increase the tax on every oil barrel from 8 cents to 34 cents.

This will cause across-the-board inflation, as everyone tries to make everyone else absorb the cost of the increase. It is a new impossible burden placed on American businesses.

Where is all the money they have already sucked out of the guts of this great nation? Where the hell is all our dough?

They are robbing us blind. And Obama is blaming George W. Bush for the spill. Got that?

Obama has also seized the opportunity of this disaster to say no to new oil drilling. Nothing like using a crisis to aid and abet the global jihad, which is financed by our oil revenue, and to hold America hostage to jihad oil-producing countries.

He also sent SWAT teams to the Gulf “to inspect all platforms and rigs.” SWAT teams? Was the oil leak a terrorist attack? Or is this just more sabotage to kill any oil drilling and exploration in the United States?

The ass that Barack Obama should be kicking is his own.

So. The White House sent EPA chief Lisa Jackson over to HuffPo to slam (smear?) the Murkowski resolution set to be voted on in the Senate on Thursday, which is designed to block a Power Grab by EPA and thereby to maintain our Constitution’s separation of powers.

The White House then followed this by threatening to veto the resolution if it passes.

In both cases, Team Obama tie S.J.Res. 26 to the Gulf oil spill and argue that, by blocking EPA’s claimed authority to regulate greenhouse gases, this exercise of the Congressional Review Act would cruelly block the administration’s diligent and dedicated campaign to reduce our dependence on oil and reduce the risk of such spills in the future.

Huh? Far from sounding familiar (at least, before this newest revision of the reasons for the “global warming” agenda was rolled out last week), this should sound somewhat newfangled.

In fact here we see that the “global warming” agenda — that had already morphed into a “climate change” agenda before it was an energy tax to create new jobs (because we all know that’s what tax increases do, silly) — is actually aimed at stopping oil spills. And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, Winston.

What we have now is a pristine case study of there being no good reason for an agenda, as proved by the fact that the reason for the agenda (read: excuse) keeps changing.

In what was surely little more than an exercise in cynicism, I performed a quick search to see just how deeply embedded are these real reasons for what has for years been a “global warming” regulatory agenda. It turns out that EPA forgot to cite them as the reason for, or even related to, its “Endangerment Finding” (that the Murkowski Resolution would block).

OK. To be generous beyond a fault, let’s say they cited these real reasons one half of one time. In 52 deathless pages of background and “global warming” hysteria.

Go ahead. Perform a word-search yourself. You’ll see the following:

“warming” — 82 invocations

“temperature” — 117 invocations

“climate change” — 259 invocations

“dependence” (or “independence”; or “depend” in any relevant way) — 0

“spill” — 0

“drill” or “drilling” — 0

“oil” — 1 relevant usage, but which, well… refers to a different rulemaking altogether, as part of EPA’s lengthy discourse of the regulatory context (see very bottom of page 5 of 52).

“automobile” — see “oil”, above; the same discussion dragged “fuel economy” into the mix.

It turns out that at the time, in promoting the “Finding” that the Murkowski resolution seeks to block, the administration actually forgot to make what are now apparently its marquee arguments for the thing. At least, to listen to their keening in opposition to the measure.

Quite a week these people are having. Quite a week. Stay classy, Team Obama.

UNBELIEVABLE! How’s this for HOPE AND CHANGE?

Tar blobs began washing up on Florida’s white sand beaches near Pensacola this past weekend. Crude oil has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and has impacted about 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.

It didn’t have to be this way.

(Reuters)
There are miles of floating oil containment boom in warehouse right now and the manufacturer Packgen says it can make lots more on short notice.
There’s just one problem… No one will come get it.

Maine Governor Baldacci visits Packgen to see the manufacturing of Oil Containment Booms, as well as lend his support to the people of Packgen and the Gulf Coast.

Gregory Sullivan at Pajamas Media reported, via Instapundit:

John Lapoint of Packgen in Auburn, Maine, says he’s got plenty of floating oil containment boom and can make lots more on short notice. There’s just one problem: no one will buy it from him.

He’s already had a representative from BP visit his factory and inspect his product. The governor of Maine, John Baldacci, visited the facility and made a video plea to no one in particular to close the deal. Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins wrote a letter on May 21 to the secretary of the Interior, the administrator of NOAA, and the commandant of the Coast Guard to alert them to the existence of Packgen, their supply of boom, and their demonstrated capacity to make more. I have no idea if those are the correct persons and agencies to notify about the manufacturing capacity and the availability of boom. One wonders if the senators know.

While it is not easy to clean up an ocean oil spill, it is not a complicated procedure. In the open ocean, chemicals can be sprayed on slicks to try to disperse them. For the most part, oil floats, so it can sometimes be ignited and burned to lessen the amount that might reach a more sensitive area than the middle of an ocean. Out in open water, you can use booms (temporary floating barriers), but the wind and wave action makes it pretty difficult to place them and keep them there. When you get in closer to shore, where the oil is likely to do the most damage but the water is generally calmer, the best way to deal with it is to place flexible booms in the water, against which the oil will collect, and then run skimmers, a sort of pump that vacuums up and separates the oil from the water. Then you mop up what makes it to the shore as best you can.

…Oil collected against a boom is fairly easy to process and recycle. Sorbent booms, designed to collect oil at the water’s edge, are made from materials that absorb oil but not water — unlike hair. Oil full of hair or straw lapping against a shoreline is a HazMat nightmare. And sorbent boom is not in short supply anyway.

…Packgen’s main business is not making oil boom. They make specialty packaging materials for shipping and storing environmentally sensitive materials. But when Packgen’s president, John Lapoint, saw the BP oil spill in the news, he understood right away that to have any hope of containing the oil drifting towards the shoreline, lots of floating boom would be necessary.

It didn’t have to be this way. Our southern shores could have been spared.

If Barack Obama really wants to find some ass to kick. It may be his own.

Is anyone else reminded of this photo?

CNN anchor Dr. Sanjay Gupta refreshingly made an implicitly pro-life argument during a report about how toxic chemicals possibly affect the unborn children: "Here in the womb, enveloped in darkness and warmth, a baby's life begins in earnest. It is a sacred space: pristine, insulated, more than nine months of safe refuge from the world outside" [audio available here].

Dr. Gupta made that statement as he gave a voice-over for the first segment of his "Toxic Childhood" special, which first aired on Thursday evening at 8 pm Eastern. CGI of a baby in the womb played as he described the "sacred space." The anchor continued on this note in his first question to Dr. Frederica Perera of Columbia University: "We imagine a baby sort of nice and safe and tucked away in the womb, impervious to all the assaults that occur on the body. You say, not so fast?" So Gupta twice referred to the unborn human as a "baby."

Despite this pro-life language, the CNN anchor failed to mention the liberal affiliation of the Environmental Working Group, an organization whose study he cited during the report, and how they are a project of the Tides Foundation. On two earlier occasions as well, Gupta leaned towards the pro-abortion side.

During a December 19, 2008 segment, he included only one pro-life voice among several statements and clips from pro-abortion groups opposed to the expansion of health care workers' right not to participate in controversial procedures such as abortion and in-vitro fertilization. The doctor also failed to correct former President Clinton after he repeatedly referred to human embryos as not being fertilized during a March 11, 2009 interview.

Over the past year, CNN has slanted several times towards the pro-abortion position. Correspondent Carol Costello's June 2, 2009 report highlighted a prediction by former Washington Post reporter Cynthia Gorney that there would be a "huge backlash" against pro-lifers after the murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller. CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin fretted in a November 23, 2009 column that "abortion, as the academics like to say, is being marginalized."

Earlier in 2010, CNN.com attacked black pro-lifers and anchor Kyra Phillips conducted a softball interview of a woman who Tweeted her abortion as it took place.

On the other hand, CNN's Anderson Cooper spotlighted a woman who decided not to abort her infant daughter despite her severe genetic defects during a June 2, 2009 interview.

If liberals are to be believed, we must forsake the abundant and highly efficient energy sources lying unused under our feet, and take a great leap forward into the realm of green technology. This is dominated by windmills, which until recently were regarded as quaint remnants of the Middle Ages. Wind energy doesn’t generate much power, [...]

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour claims that the media's coverage of the Gulf oil spill is doing far more damage to his state's economy than the spill itself.

"The coast is clear," Barbour quipped on Fox News Sunday. "The truth is we've had virtually no oil." Barbour criticized media coverage generally, and Fox in particular. Shep Smith, whose show airs at 4pm and 7pm on weekdays, has been one of the loudest voices reporting on the spill.

Barbour claimed the media are responsible for "the biggest negative impact" on Mississippi. "The average viewer on this show thinks that the whole coast from Florida to Texas is ankle deep in oil," he added, and "of course it's very, very bad for our tourist season."

Though Barbour's complaints are legitimate, the issue is not black and white. The media did a very poor job of covering the Nashville flood last month.

It seems that Barbour's real gripe is with the format of cable news. The news cycle often encourages sensationalism. If the Mississippi coast is as clear as Barbour claims, his state's economy could be a victim of that format.

But somewhere there is a line--and this is a never-ending quagmire in journalism--between reporting fully and accurately, and acknowledging the potential damage such reporting can inflict. Where would you draw it?

Transcript:

WALLACE: Now let's get reaction from one of the leaders along the Gulf Coast, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who joins us from the state capitol in Jackson. Governor, how badly has your state been hit both from oil washing up on the shore and also the impact on small businesses, from hotels to fishermen, who have been impacted by the spill?

BARBOUR: The truth is, Chris, we have had virtually no oil. If you were on the Mississippi Gulf Coast any time in the last 48 days you didn't see any oil at all. We have had a few tar balls but we have tar balls every year as a natural product of the Gulf of Mexico. 250,000 to 750,000 barrels of oil seep into the Gulf of Mexico through the floor every year. So tar balls are no big deal. In fact I read the Pensacola or the Florida beaches, when they had tar balls yesterday, didn't even close, they just sent people out to pick them up and throw 'em in a bag.

The biggest negative impact for us has been the news coverage. There has been no distinction between Grand Isle and Venice and the places in Louisiana that we feel so terrible for that have had oil washing up on 'em. But the average viewer of this show thinks that the coast from Florida to Texas is ankle-deep in oil and of course it's very, very bad for our tourist season and that is the real economic damage.

Our first closure of fisheries in mississippi waters came just earlier this week after about 45 days. So, I may -- it may be hard for the viewer to understand but the worst thing for us has been how our tourist season has been hurt by the misperception of what is going on down here. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is beautiful. As I tell people, the coast is clear, come on down!

Since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up on April 20, President Obama has been rightly and roundly criticized for his lethargic, passionless, and ineffective response to the crisis.  We’re now into the 7th week of this catastrophe, and the president still looks weirdly disengaged: not only that he either doesn’t know what he’s doing or isn’t that interested in the crisis.  It’s that he looks like he doesn’t belong in the job.  He looks like a little boy stomping around the house wearing his father’s suit and shoes.

Stung by the attacks on his competence, character, and emotionlessness, Obama contrived some “passion” the other day.  In an interview with the “Today” show, he said, “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar.  We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

Oh no!  Anything but a Bama ass-kickin’!  The terror of that prospect I’m sure has BP shaking in its boots. (By the way, running college seminars is ALL the Bama knows how to do, so he probably should be doing that.  Maybe some college senior somewhere has a Descartes-inspired idea on how to plug the damn hole.)

Rule #1 in politics:  Do not try to be something that you’re not.When President George H. W. Bush was running behind Bill Clinton in 1992, he went into a grocery store and pretended to love beef jerky.  You know: to demonstrate that he was just a regular guy.  The problem was: he wasn’t just a regular guy.  He was Andover and Yale and the Eastern establishment.  His father had been a U.S. Senator.  Bush didn’t even know what beef jerky was, for crying out loud.  He lost the election.

Obama trying to show he’s an angry avenger when he’s essentially an automaton isn’t going to work either.  He is Carlton Banks, not Suge Knight. He’s a navel-gazing, community organizing law professor, not a put-a-cap-in-your-ass gangbanger.  He should stop with the phony theatrics
and be who he is. The problem with that is that he’s a community organizing law professor, not an American president.

Maybe President Barack Obama watched a little too much of the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night. The language seems to have rubbed off.

Paul Bedard at U.S. News and World Report caught an interesting exchange on CNBC this morning about Obama's use of "ass" in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer. Obama asserted to Lauer that he wanted to know "whose ass to kick" over the oil spill in the Gulf.

Squawk Box co-host Becky Quick criticized President Obama for using "the A word" on the Today show, saying he set a bad example for kids.

"If you're the president of the United States and you go on the Today show, which is a morning show, where you're going to have a lot of kids who are sitting around watching this, I think you choose your words a little more carefully," Quick said.

"I think using the a-word on the Today show when you're talking to Matt Lauer, yeah, that disturbs me," Quick said.

Quick said that it's "silly" to use inappropriate language to prove that you're mad.

(h/t Paul Bedard)

Maybe President Barack Obama watched a little too much of the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night. The language seems to have rubbed off.

Paul Bedard at U.S. News and World Report caught an interesting exchange on CNBC this morning about Obama's use of "ass" in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer. Obama asserted to Lauer that he wanted to know "whose ass to kick" over the oil spill in the Gulf.

Squawk Box co-host Becky Quick criticized President Obama for using "the A word" on the Today show, saying he set a bad example for kids.

"If you're the president of the United States and you go on the Today show, which is a morning show, where you're going to have a lot of kids who are sitting around watching this, I think you choose your words a little more carefully," Quick said.

"I think using the a-word on the Today show when you're talking to Matt Lauer, yeah, that disturbs me," Quick said.

Quick said that it's "silly" to use inappropriate language to prove that you're mad.

(h/t Paul Bedard)

Maybe President Barack Obama watched a little too much of the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night. The language seems to have rubbed off.

Paul Bedard at U.S. News and World Report caught an interesting exchange on CNBC this morning about Obama's use of "ass" in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer. Obama asserted to Lauer that he wanted to know "whose ass to kick" over the oil spill in the Gulf.

Squawk Box co-host Becky Quick criticized President Obama for using "the A word" on the Today show, saying he set a bad example for kids.

"If you're the president of the United States and you go on the Today show, which is a morning show, where you're going to have a lot of kids who are sitting around watching this, I think you choose your words a little more carefully," Quick said.

"I think using the a-word on the Today show when you're talking to Matt Lauer, yeah, that disturbs me," Quick said.

Quick said that it's "silly" to use inappropriate language to prove that you're mad.

(h/t Paul Bedard)

Maybe President Barack Obama watched a little too much of the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night. The language seems to have rubbed off.

Paul Bedard at U.S. News and World Report caught an interesting exchange on CNBC this morning about Obama's use of "ass" in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer. Obama asserted to Lauer that he wanted to know "whose ass to kick" over the oil spill in the Gulf.

Squawk Box co-host Becky Quick criticized President Obama for using "the A word" on the Today show, saying he set a bad example for kids.

"If you're the president of the United States and you go on the Today show, which is a morning show, where you're going to have a lot of kids who are sitting around watching this, I think you choose your words a little more carefully," Quick said.

"I think using the a-word on the Today show when you're talking to Matt Lauer, yeah, that disturbs me," Quick said.

Quick said that it's "silly" to use inappropriate language to prove that you're mad.

(h/t Paul Bedard)

The roundtable panel for today's Morning Joe took a stab at President Obama's frustration with the media for being critical of his BP oil spill response. The segment began with a clip of President Obama's testy, self-defensive comment to NBC's Matt Lauer, wherein the commander-in-chief  blustered that he was determined to learn "whose ass to kick" for the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin found the President's anger at the media "ironic" because, "no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For him, this is a new experience." [WMV video available here; MP3 audio available here]

Host Joe Scarborough seemed to share Halperin's sentiments and argued that the President needed to "grow a layer of skin" because: "If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in the face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it."

What's really staggering is that while some in the mainstream media are starting to realize how much the press have gone easy on Obama, they're announcing these revelations with a sense of detachment from the problem, as though it’s merely an observation, not an indictment.

The following exchange was aired during the June 8 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

MARK HALPERIN: You're a big fan of irony, I know.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I am.

HALPERIN: I think it's ironic, the President

SCARBOROUGH: the most ironic being on Cable News right now.

HALPERIN: I think it is ironic; the press is hounding the President, get mad, get mad! You know what finally seemed to have gotten him mad? The press.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, the press always gets him mad. All he needs to do is focus on the press, channel the press.

HALPERIN: Right, then the anger will burble up.

NORAH O'DONNELL: But he also pointed out in that sound bite, too, he was down there a month ago. And remember, he went right after the white house correspondents dinner. He was down there the next day and he wanted to remind everybody, including the press, most of who didn't make that trip, the white house corps, that he was there then.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yes, Yes!

SCARBOROUGH: You know what never really understood about this President or any Democratic President, like Bill Clinton, like 95% of the press votes for you. And They really do. Even Barack Obama joked about it. Most of you followed me, all of you voted for. He's right, they did! How could he hate the press? If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it.

HALPERIN: Now, remember, David Axelrod warned him when he was thinking about running for president. Do you have skin thick enough to do this? And look, no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For Him, this is a new experience.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, wait there was a close second. Oh, wait a second, I’m wrong - There wasn't a close second. It was unbelievable. So my only -- yeah. Grow a layer of skin. Throw away your thin skin. Don't be so thin skinned here. Come on, seriously. You're right.

BRZEZINSKI: All he did was make the point.

SCARBOROUGH: Wah, wah, wah

BRZEZINSKI: STOP. No, he made a good point.

HALPERIN: I think as much as he's annoyed with the press, I think yesterday he started to show optimism about bringing the gulf back. I think that's vital. He's got to be uplifting with all this and say we can get this done.

SCARBOROUGH: Again, I think it was a good idea.

BRZEZINSKI: We'll dig into the story. What is happening down in the gulf.

SCARBOROUGH: I am all for swearing and saying inappropriate things.

The roundtable panel for today's Morning Joe took a stab at President Obama's frustration with the media for being critical of his BP oil spill response. The segment began with a clip of President Obama's testy, self-defensive comment to NBC's Matt Lauer, wherein the commander-in-chief  blustered that he was determined to learn "whose ass to kick" for the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin found the President's anger at the media "ironic" because, "no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For him, this is a new experience." [WMV video available here; MP3 audio available here]

Host Joe Scarborough seemed to share Halperin's sentiments and argued that the President needed to "grow a layer of skin" because: "If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in the face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it."

What's really staggering is that while some in the mainstream media are starting to realize how much the press have gone easy on Obama, they're announcing these revelations with a sense of detachment from the problem, as though it’s merely an observation, not an indictment.

The following exchange was aired during the June 8 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

MARK HALPERIN: You're a big fan of irony, I know.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I am.

HALPERIN: I think it's ironic, the President

SCARBOROUGH: the most ironic being on Cable News right now.

HALPERIN: I think it is ironic; the press is hounding the President, get mad, get mad! You know what finally seemed to have gotten him mad? The press.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, the press always gets him mad. All he needs to do is focus on the press, channel the press.

HALPERIN: Right, then the anger will burble up.

NORAH O'DONNELL: But he also pointed out in that sound bite, too, he was down there a month ago. And remember, he went right after the white house correspondents dinner. He was down there the next day and he wanted to remind everybody, including the press, most of who didn't make that trip, the white house corps, that he was there then.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yes, Yes!

SCARBOROUGH: You know what never really understood about this President or any Democratic President, like Bill Clinton, like 95% of the press votes for you. And They really do. Even Barack Obama joked about it. Most of you followed me, all of you voted for. He's right, they did! How could he hate the press? If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it.

HALPERIN: Now, remember, David Axelrod warned him when he was thinking about running for president. Do you have skin thick enough to do this? And look, no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For Him, this is a new experience.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, wait there was a close second. Oh, wait a second, I’m wrong - There wasn't a close second. It was unbelievable. So my only -- yeah. Grow a layer of skin. Throw away your thin skin. Don't be so thin skinned here. Come on, seriously. You're right.

BRZEZINSKI: All he did was make the point.

SCARBOROUGH: Wah, wah, wah

BRZEZINSKI: STOP. No, he made a good point.

HALPERIN: I think as much as he's annoyed with the press, I think yesterday he started to show optimism about bringing the gulf back. I think that's vital. He's got to be uplifting with all this and say we can get this done.

SCARBOROUGH: Again, I think it was a good idea.

BRZEZINSKI: We'll dig into the story. What is happening down in the gulf.

SCARBOROUGH: I am all for swearing and saying inappropriate things.

The roundtable panel for today's Morning Joe took a stab at President Obama's frustration with the media for being critical of his BP oil spill response. The segment began with a clip of President Obama's testy, self-defensive comment to NBC's Matt Lauer, wherein the commander-in-chief  blustered that he was determined to learn "whose ass to kick" for the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin found the President's anger at the media "ironic" because, "no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For him, this is a new experience." [WMV video available here; MP3 audio available here]

Host Joe Scarborough seemed to share Halperin's sentiments and argued that the President needed to "grow a layer of skin" because: "If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in the face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it."

What's really staggering is that while some in the mainstream media are starting to realize how much the press have gone easy on Obama, they're announcing these revelations with a sense of detachment from the problem, as though it’s merely an observation, not an indictment.

The following exchange was aired during the June 8 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

MARK HALPERIN: You're a big fan of irony, I know.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I am.

HALPERIN: I think it's ironic, the President

SCARBOROUGH: the most ironic being on Cable News right now.

HALPERIN: I think it is ironic; the press is hounding the President, get mad, get mad! You know what finally seemed to have gotten him mad? The press.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, the press always gets him mad. All he needs to do is focus on the press, channel the press.

HALPERIN: Right, then the anger will burble up.

NORAH O'DONNELL: But he also pointed out in that sound bite, too, he was down there a month ago. And remember, he went right after the white house correspondents dinner. He was down there the next day and he wanted to remind everybody, including the press, most of who didn't make that trip, the white house corps, that he was there then.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yes, Yes!

SCARBOROUGH: You know what never really understood about this President or any Democratic President, like Bill Clinton, like 95% of the press votes for you. And They really do. Even Barack Obama joked about it. Most of you followed me, all of you voted for. He's right, they did! How could he hate the press? If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it.

HALPERIN: Now, remember, David Axelrod warned him when he was thinking about running for president. Do you have skin thick enough to do this? And look, no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For Him, this is a new experience.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, wait there was a close second. Oh, wait a second, I’m wrong - There wasn't a close second. It was unbelievable. So my only -- yeah. Grow a layer of skin. Throw away your thin skin. Don't be so thin skinned here. Come on, seriously. You're right.

BRZEZINSKI: All he did was make the point.

SCARBOROUGH: Wah, wah, wah

BRZEZINSKI: STOP. No, he made a good point.

HALPERIN: I think as much as he's annoyed with the press, I think yesterday he started to show optimism about bringing the gulf back. I think that's vital. He's got to be uplifting with all this and say we can get this done.

SCARBOROUGH: Again, I think it was a good idea.

BRZEZINSKI: We'll dig into the story. What is happening down in the gulf.

SCARBOROUGH: I am all for swearing and saying inappropriate things.

The roundtable panel for today's Morning Joe took a stab at President Obama's frustration with the media for being critical of his BP oil spill response. The segment began with a clip of President Obama's testy, self-defensive comment to NBC's Matt Lauer, wherein the commander-in-chief  blustered that he was determined to learn "whose ass to kick" for the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin found the President's anger at the media "ironic" because, "no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For him, this is a new experience." [WMV video available here; MP3 audio available here]

Host Joe Scarborough seemed to share Halperin's sentiments and argued that the President needed to "grow a layer of skin" because: "If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in the face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it."

What's really staggering is that while some in the mainstream media are starting to realize how much the press have gone easy on Obama, they're announcing these revelations with a sense of detachment from the problem, as though it’s merely an observation, not an indictment.

The following exchange was aired during the June 8 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

MARK HALPERIN: You're a big fan of irony, I know.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I am.

HALPERIN: I think it's ironic, the President

SCARBOROUGH: the most ironic being on Cable News right now.

HALPERIN: I think it is ironic; the press is hounding the President, get mad, get mad! You know what finally seemed to have gotten him mad? The press.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, the press always gets him mad. All he needs to do is focus on the press, channel the press.

HALPERIN: Right, then the anger will burble up.

NORAH O'DONNELL: But he also pointed out in that sound bite, too, he was down there a month ago. And remember, he went right after the white house correspondents dinner. He was down there the next day and he wanted to remind everybody, including the press, most of who didn't make that trip, the white house corps, that he was there then.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yes, Yes!

SCARBOROUGH: You know what never really understood about this President or any Democratic President, like Bill Clinton, like 95% of the press votes for you. And They really do. Even Barack Obama joked about it. Most of you followed me, all of you voted for. He's right, they did! How could he hate the press? If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it.

HALPERIN: Now, remember, David Axelrod warned him when he was thinking about running for president. Do you have skin thick enough to do this? And look, no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For Him, this is a new experience.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, wait there was a close second. Oh, wait a second, I’m wrong - There wasn't a close second. It was unbelievable. So my only -- yeah. Grow a layer of skin. Throw away your thin skin. Don't be so thin skinned here. Come on, seriously. You're right.

BRZEZINSKI: All he did was make the point.

SCARBOROUGH: Wah, wah, wah

BRZEZINSKI: STOP. No, he made a good point.

HALPERIN: I think as much as he's annoyed with the press, I think yesterday he started to show optimism about bringing the gulf back. I think that's vital. He's got to be uplifting with all this and say we can get this done.

SCARBOROUGH: Again, I think it was a good idea.

BRZEZINSKI: We'll dig into the story. What is happening down in the gulf.

SCARBOROUGH: I am all for swearing and saying inappropriate things.

Discussing the Gulf oil spill on Saturday's CBS Evening News,  liberal historian Douglas Brinkley fretted over President Obama's left-wing agenda being in jeopardy: "...he was on a roll with the health care legislation. There was a great hope that before the election he was going to get some things done in Washington. This hit, and I think for President Obama, the spill was an inconvenience."

At the top of the segment, anchor Jeff Glor cited the latest CBS News poll showing that only 38% of Americans approve of Obama's handling of the spill and wondered if "the oil spill defines the President's legacy?" Brinkley replied: "I have no doubt that he spends every hour micro-studying what's going on in the Gulf, but part of leadership is to get on the back of the flatbed Ford and rally the country with the speech." He explained how Obama "...wanted to farm it out. It was B.P.'s problem." But warned: "You don't want to be Jimmy Carter, holed up in the White House during the Iran hostage crisis."

Brinkley went on to hope that "...future generations will say...the Obama administration marshaled the strength of the American people and did the greatest environmental cleanup the world has ever seen." He proclaimed: "This is a turning point in history. The urban president from Chicago is going to have to become the environmental president of the moment."

Here is a full transcript of the June 5 segment:

6:50PM EST

JEFF GLOR: The President just passed 500 days in office and he may have reached a critical moment. The latest CBS News poll shows 38 percent of the Americans approve of the way the Obama administration is handling the oil spill, but more, 44 percent, disapprove.

For perspective tonight, we're joined from Austin, Texas by presidential historian, author, and CBS News consultant, Douglas Brinkley. Doug, always good to see you, my friend. Let's start with a question about the President. You think this is a critical time. Is it possible or even probable, in your opinion, that the oil spill defines the President's legacy?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: There's no question that this is a big event in American history, how the presidents act in a time of crisis is how historians will regard them. I have no doubt that he spends every hour micro-studying what's going on in the Gulf, but part of leadership is to get on the back of the flatbed Ford and rally the country with the speech.

GLOR: Doug, right now is the President shaping events, or being shaped by them?

BRINKLEY: I think he was being shaped by the event. Look, he was on a roll with the health care legislation. There was a great hope that before the election he was going to get some things done in Washington. This hit, and I think for President Obama, the spill was an inconvenience.

You kind of wanted to farm it out. It was B.P.'s problem. But there's no such thing as spending too much time in the Gulf south right now. You don't want to be Jimmy Carter, holed up in the White House during the Iran hostage crisis. This is not a time to be seen dealing with other issues.

The President, rightfully, has canceled a trip to Asia. The cleanup effort needs to be coordinated in a way that future generations will say an awful thing happened in the Gulf of Mexico, but the Obama administration marshaled the strength of the American people and did the greatest environmental cleanup the world has ever seen.

GLOR: Doug, as you know, the President has made some increasingly critical comments about B.P. Does this ultimately become a battle of the President versus B.P.?

BRINKLEY: It should never be that. President Obama represents the United States of America. We are the power. B.P. is nothing but a little fly-speck company. Some people think they're big, but they're nothing compared to the power of the United States. This is a turning point in history. The urban president from Chicago is going to have to become the environmental president of the moment.

GLOR: Doug Brinkley joining us from Austin, Texas. Doug, always good to see you, thanks so much.

BRINKLEY: Thank you, Jeff.

Promoting his latest HBO special on Monday's CBS Early Show, comedian Robert Klein turned his attention to the Gulf oil spill and who's to blame: "...we're all to blame. We're pigs. It's a parable for us. American pre-imminence is not guaranteed and unless we learn that this stuff has dangers – where are all those 'drill, baby, drills' now?" [Audio available here]

Those comments were prompted by co-host Harry Smith remarking: "BP would be such a spectacular target for your lampooning." Klein went on to add: "...all that oil that's fouling everything, it probably wouldn't run the automobiles in Texas for one day." Smith chimed in: "An hour." Klein proclaimed: "...it's minuscule, that's how much we use of that stuff. So let's get off it. I mean, and it's coming back to us in bullets, everybody knows this. But Americans have a memory of about 12 seconds."

On CBS's Sunday Morning program, a 'Fast Draw' segment by cartoonists Mitch Butler and Josh Landis similarly scolded Americans for wasting energy. Landis warned: "Our hunger for energy is driving oil companies to drill deeper and more dangerous wells..." Butler remarked: "Thankfully, these days everyone's talking about going green and saving energy. We know to ride bicycles to work instead of driving a car, don't use that air conditioner on a hot summer day. Air travel uses way too much energy. So don't take that vacation." However, Landis lamented: "...most Americans don't make enough of these kinds of sacrifices to save a meaningful amount of energy."

Butler noted: "America is only 5% of the global population but we use about 25% of the world's energy." Landis concluded: "And all that oil that's been pouring into the Gulf, the estimated 40 million gallons that's spilled so far, well, that's about the same amount America consumes in a little over one hour." Maybe Klein and Smith were watching Sunday Morning for their energy facts.

On the Early Show, in addition to bashing Americans for their energy usage, Klein described one of his favorite comedic targets: "...one of my main targets are these hypocritical infidelities, politicians who, you know, pray in the morning in their little residence and shtup everybody else's wife at night, you know." He cited former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer as an example of the fact that "people believe their own PR" during such scandals. Smith remarked: "Be careful of sanctimony."

Klein then seemed to regret using the New York Democrat as an example of hypocrisy: "Well he wasn't – he was just a little depraved for a moment there, I guess." He identified the real hypocritical adulterous politicians, all Republicans: "But, you know, these guys like Craig and Vitter and Governor Sanford..."

Smith concluded the interview by reminding viewers to watch Klein's HBO special: "...we will look forward to seeing your show on HBO, Unfair and Unbalanced, Saturday, June 12th on HBO at 10:00PM Eastern/11 Pacific Time. Really great to see you."

Here is a portion of Smith's June 7 interview with Klein:

8:40AM EST

HARRY SMITH: As you set about doing a new show like this, do you just let the currents of current events take you where it will or do you usually have an idea ahead of time, this is where this show will go?

ROBERT KLEIN: Well, it's always organic. I mean, I'm getting older now. I started, I'm now a geezer. I mean I've geezer-ized over the years, so my interests change a little. But when I do any kind of politics on my shows, I do it in a kind of historical perspective, not something that'll be forgotten next week.

SMITH: Right.

KLEIN: But, you know, one of my main targets are these hypocritical infidelities, politicians who, you know, pray in the morning in their little residence and shtup everybody else's wife at night, you know.

SMITH: There is that, it kind of never goes away.

KLEIN: You know, people believe their own – Spitzer, I mean people believe their own PR or-

SMITH: Be careful of sanctimony, is always the-

KLEIN: Well he wasn't – he was just a little depraved for a moment there, I guess. But, you know, these guys like Craig and Vitter and Governor Sanford, you know, Argentina, 'tell them on I'm on the Appalachian trail, I'll be back in four days. Senor, my baggage.'

SMITH: You know what, it's only – I almost said unfortunate – but BP would be such a spectacular target for your lampooning.

KLEIN: May I say that, you know, all this who's to blame and all the blame, we're all to blame. We're pigs. It's a parable for us. American pre-imminence is not guaranteed and unless we learn that this stuff has dangers – where are all those drill, baby, drills now? What, was there a dental convention? I mean, I want to see them pay for what – you can't just do it. If you don't have the technology to cap it at that it depth, it shouldn't be done. You know, all that oil that's fouling everything, it probably wouldn't run the automobiles in Texas for one day.

SMITH: An hour.
    
KLEIN: I mean – an hour. I mean, it's minuscule, that's how much we use of that stuff. So let's get off it. I mean, and it's coming back to us in bullets, everybody knows this. But Americans have a memory of about 12 seconds. You know, you couldn't get a Toyota prius, then gas went down. Forget it. Too many Prius's. And you can't stop a Prius. That's another thing.

SMITH: Robert Klein, we will look forward to seeing your show on HBO, Unfair and Unbalanced, Saturday, June 12th on HBO at 10:00PM Eastern/11 Pacific Time. Really great to see you.

KLEIN: A great pleasure, Harry. Thank you.            

SMITH: You bet.

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The sun is currently producing fewer sunspots than it has in more than a century. Florida State researchers tell us this may predict bad U.S. hurricane seasons. They say that when the sunspot numbers peak, within the (roughly) 11-year sunspot cycle, the U.S. has less than a 25 percent chance of being hit with [...]

How's this for outside-the-box thinking - use nuclear explosives to stop the BP oil spill that is ravaging the Gulf Coast?

According to some of the panelist on Fox News Channel's "Forbes on Fox," using nuclear materials would be a more expeditious way to solve this calamity.

"That's right, nuke it." "Forbes on Fox" host David Asman said on the show's June 5 broadcast. "Some scientists do advocate this. The Soviets apparently succeeded in doing it. Here is the video they say actually shows it. And now some at ‘Forbes' agree, nuke it.

Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes magazine, was one of the strongest proponents of using nukes for fear that the relief well option could be thwarted by a hurricane.

"Well David, this is the kind of option you really have to put on the table. Why? The leak has been going for seven weeks - 500,000 gallons of oil a day," Karlgaard said. "Tar balls are showing up on the coast of Florida. The only sure-fire option to stop it is a relief well which is ten weeks away and that puts you in August hurricane season. So we might as well look at something with an 80-percent success rate according to the Russians.

Another advocate of this method was Neil Weinberg, the executive editor of Forbes. He didn't necessarily say it was a sure-fire means, but said it should be an option left on the table.

"Well obviously David, the conventional ways to solve this have not worked," Weinberg said. "So, why not consider some unconventional ones? I will admit, I am a little bit nervous about this, but we shouldn't have a nuke-ophobia here. I mean, we have nuclear power plants in our backyards. We have nuclear submarines. Just because something is nuclear, that is detonated well below the sea, doesn't mean that it is going to contaminate anything."

Forbes magazine Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes wasn't quite on board with this line of thinking.

"I can see the tourist posters in the future for the Gulf," Forbes said. "In addition to the oil, you can have warm water and radioactive water.

He explained the Soviets could have afforded to take such a chance with nuclear explosives, but in a volatile political situation, doing so just isn't feasible.
"So, the Soviets can get away you might say, playing nuclear Russian roulette with things like natural gas and the like," Forbes continued. "But, this is in the ocean and never done before. I don't think it's ever really been modeled before. So, politically the idea is a bomb and radioactive. Not going to happen."

Chuck Todd “hated” to say it but just had to get it out anyway–would the BP oil spill, arguably the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history, be a “missed opportunity” for Congress to capitalize on “disaster” to enact energy legislation should it fail to do anything in its wake?

Discussing what the reaction of Congress and the Obama administration should be to the spill during an interview with Tom Daschle on MSNBC's June 4 “Daily Rundown,” Todd asked:

So if energy legislation isn’t taken up and dealt with, this would basically be–I hate to put it this way–a wasted disaster?

“Exa–well, I can see why you hate to put it that way,” Daschle responded, seeming to highlight Todd’s arguably Rahm Emanuel-inspired Freudian slip as controversial.

Todd agreed, then quickly rephrased his question. “But, [was it] a missed opportunity?”

Earlier in the interview, Daschle argued that Congress should take the initiative to push energy legislation into the spotlight.

We’re going to have to find ways with which to create a better regulatory framework to make sure this never happens again. And oh, by the way, we ought to be talking about [a renewable energy standard].

The transcript of the segment is as follows:

THE DAILY RUNDOWN 6/4/10 9:16:36am–9:18:00am

CHUCK TODD, anchor: Alright, Congress has been out this week. They’re going to come back. Democrats still in charge. What should they be doing in regards to this oil spill right now? Obviously, they’re just sort of sitting back, and this is going to be a legislative role that they’re going to make, whether it’s dealing overall with the big energy picture, or with some immediate concerns. What is it that you would be doing as leading the Senate right now, coming back, next week, where do you focus?

Former Senate Majority Leader TOM DASCHLE: Well this gives new life to the energy legislative schedule. There’s no question. I would make this the showpiece. I would make this the center of the entire effort. I’d say look, we’re going to have to deal with this issue. We’re going to have to find ways with which to create a better regulatory framework to make sure this never happens again. And oh, by the way, we ought to be talking about an RES. We ought to be talking about an alternative source of–

TODD: What’s RES, by the way?

DASCHLE: Renewable energy standard.  

TODD: Okay...

DASCHLE: But we’ve got to find ways with which to deal with energy policy in a broader context, making this the real anchor of that effort.

TODD: So if energy legislation isn’t taken up and dealt with, this would basically be–I hate to put it this way–a wasted disaster?

DASCHLE: Exa–well, I can see why you hate to put it that way–

TODD: Yeah, you don’t want to put it...but, a missed opportunity?

DASCHLE: Exactly. This is an opportunity to say, look, we know–we’ve known for years we’ve got problems here. Let’s use this as our catalyst, as our way to address not only this issue, but the larger context.

At the top of Wednesday's CBS Evening News, during a report on the Gulf oil spill, correspondent Mark Strassmann found a silver lining: "The good news: since President Obama's visit to Grand Isle [Louisiana] last Friday, local officials report better coordination with BP and federal agencies."

Strassmann went on to add: "Since the President's visit, the local fire chief says there are three times as many response workers on this island. He also says while local response leaders and national response leaders may have disagreements, at least now once a decision is made everybody's marching in the same direction."

Meanwhile, in a story minutes later, correspondent Ben Tracy discussed the public backlash against oil company BP: "On YouTube, anger at BP is just a mouse click away....The Facebook page calling for a boycott of BP now has nearly 300,000 followers." Tracy pointed out: "BP is about to launch a multimillion dollar television PR campaign. But the company has not been getting much help from its CEO who at times seems tone deaf to the loss of life and livelihood in the Gulf." The broadcast featured no mention of any backlash against the Obama administration.

A May 26 Media Research Center study found that in the first month of the spill, only 5% of network evening news stories on the disaster centered on or mentioned criticisms of the Obama administration's response.

In his report, Tracy touted calls from the left-wing environmental group GreenPeace for more regulation on the oil industry: "GreenPeace says instead of a boycott people should press Congress to regulate offshore drilling." A clip was played of the organization's research director, Kert Davies: "The most important thing that's going to hurt BP over the long haul is more regulation. More oversight. More investigation of their misdeeds."

Here is a portion of Strassmann's June 2nd report:

6:32PM EST

MARK STRASSMANN: On barrier islands off Mississippi and Alabama, an oil cleanup is under way. The good news: since President Obama's visit to Grand Isle last Friday, local officials report better coordination with BP and federal agencies.

CHAISSON: It's kind of like a wife and a husband fighting. You don't get a divorce, you fix your problems. And that's what we've agreed to do.

STRASSMANN: Since the President's visit, the local fire chief says there are three times as many response workers on this island. He also says while local response leaders and national response leaders may have disagreements, at least now once a decision is made everybody's marching in the same direction.

Here is a portion of Tracy's report:

6:37PM EST

BEN TRACY: After the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, a one-day boycott did nothing to dent that company's bottom line, so this time around GreenPeace says instead of a boycott people should press Congress to regulate offshore drilling.

KERT DAVIES [RESEARCH DIRECTOR, GREENPEACE]: The most important thing that's going to hurt BP over the long haul is more regulation. More oversight. More investigation of their misdeeds.

TRACY: BP is about to launch a multimillion dollar television PR campaign. But the company has not been getting much help from its CEO who at times seems tone deaf to the loss of life and livelihood in the Gulf.

TONY HAYWARD: There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I'd like my life back.

TRACY: Today in several major newspapers, the company ran a full-page ad saying 'We will continue working for as long as it takes. And our efforts will not come at any cost to taxpayers.' But it's the price already being paid in the Gulf that has so many so upset.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research believes that oil from the leaking deep water rig in the Gulf of Mexico could impact much of America's East Coast by summer.

As reported by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Thursday, scientists using a detailed computer modeling program have created a video image of what they feel is possible in the coming months.

"'I've had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?'" says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock, who worked on the study. 'Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood'" (video follows with more of this report and commentary): 

The computer simulations indicate that, once the oil in the uppermost ocean has become entrained in the Gulf of Mexico's fast-moving Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida's Atlantic coast within weeks. It can then move north as far as about Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream, before turning east. Whether the oil will be a thin film on the surface or mostly subsurface due to mixing in the uppermost region of the ocean is not known. [...]

Peacock and her colleagues stress that the simulations are not a forecast because it is impossible to accurately predict the precise location of the oil weeks or months from now. Instead, the simulations provide an envelope of possible scenarios for the oil dispersal. The timing and course of the oil slick will be affected by regional weather conditions and the ever-changing state of the Gulf's Loop Current-neither of which can be predicted more than a few days in advance. The dilution of the oil relative to the source will also be impacted by details such as bacterial degradation, which are not included in the simulations.

Frightening to say the least.

Exit questions: Is this a likely scenario in the coming months or excessively dire? Assuming the former, what impact would this have on the economy and the elections in November?

 Is California in a contest?  Watching its legislators, I wonder if they compete with other state lawmakers to see who can bankrupt their state first.  

 Felicity Barringer reports that California’ State Assembly has passed a bill that will:

 “not only ban plastic bags from pharmacies, groceries, convenience stores and liquor stores, but also to make retailers charge at least a nickel for paper bags — which must include recyclable content. … California has gone further toward an overall ban than any other state.”

 Supermarkets are not fighting the law.  When dumb rules apply to all businesses, they just pass the cost on to consumers.  But now several California cities passed their own bans, and the confusion annoys store managers. 

"This multiplicity of local laws prompted the California Grocers’ Association, which counts retailers like Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Costco, Whole Foods and 7-Eleven among its members, to seek the kind of uniformity the Brownley bill offered. The American Chemistry Council, however, remains opposed. “The last thing California consumers need right now is to have what amounts to a $1 billion tax added to their grocery bills,” the group’s senior director, Tim Shestek, said in a statement. He added, “It’s astounding to think the Legislature is seriously considering creating a new $1 million bureaucracy to monitor how people choose to pack their groceries."'

 David Harsanyi of the Denver Post says that the ban is utterly pointless.

 “Plastic bags account for under 1 percent of our refuse.  So it's not that big a deal to begin with.  But more than that, in places where they do ban plastic bags, we find that people start buying more plastic bags.  People need some sort of bag.”   

Right. An Irish garbage bag manufacturer said after a tax on grocery store bags went into effect:

“We’ve experienced a growth [in sales] of 300-400%. It’s been phenomenal. You can trace it back to when the bag levy came in.”

 The Times story says:

 “Plastic bags are associated with litter, ocean-borne waste and harm to marine mammals that ingest them or become entangled in them…”

 In fact, the idea that many marine mammals die from plastic bags comes from a misinterpretation of a 23-year-old Canadian study that didn’t even mention plastic bags. The author of a 1997 study on the subject said:

“The impact of bags on whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals ranges from nil for most species to very minor for perhaps a few species. For birds, plastic bags are not a problem either."

 Someday, the world will cite California as a role model for self-destruction. 

Today, however, environmental correctness is powerful:

"China and Bangladesh already have plastic bag bans in place, and the United Nations has called for the bans to go global."

The American lawyers who flock to Guantanamo Bay to represent captured terrorists are simply fulfilling their duty to provide representation, it is often argued by those who seem to enjoy mucking up efforts to curtail future terrorism. But once representing the American beverage giant Coca Cola makes Attorney General Eric Holder a “corporatist” who’s going to “do the Devil’s work” and only “pretend” to go tough on BP after the oil spill, lefty talk radio host Mike Malloy (a onetime CNN news writer) argued Wednesday night. (Audio here.)

I guess you know this by now, the, uh, Justice Department under Eric Holder who defended, uh, was it Coca-Cola, against murder charges in, uh, South America? Good old Eric Holder, another corporatist, who, uh, is going to do the Devil’s work now and pretend that he is conducting a criminal investigation into the events that led to the oil gush?

For their part, the big three network evening newscasts reported Holder’s announcement of a “criminal investigation” against BP during their Tuesday night broadcasts, but only CBS’s Chip Reid struck what could be called a skeptical note about the Obama administration’s motives in publicly touting the investigation after a week of criticism about the federal government’s less-than-effective handling of the matter.

“The barrage of attacks on BP may be motivated in part by politics,” Reid assessed on the June 1 Evening News, an attempt to make the company “a villain to distract from a growing chorus of criticism of the President who has visited the Gulf only twice in 43 days.”

On ABC, anchor Diane Sawyer was much milder, asking whether “declaring BP a potential enemy” might “make it harder” for the administration to work with them on a solution. (Ever the Obama sycophant, George Stephanopoulos assured her that threatening BP would actually make things better.) And on NBC, correspondent Anne Thompson offered no second-guessing of the administration, just a couple of sentences matter-of-factly noting Holder’s announcement.

Here’s more of how the network evening newscasts covered Holder on Tuesday, arranged from the least skeptical (NBC) to most skeptical (CBS):

ANNE THOMPSON: This environmental disaster is now the focus of the Justice Department, confirming today both criminal and civil investigations into the oil rig explosion and the crude that now taints Louisiana’s coast.

Mr. ERIC HOLDER: We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who has violated the law.

#ABC's World News

DIANE SAWYER: If the administration is now declaring BP a potential enemy here, what does this do to the cleanup? Does it make it harder?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well that’s the question I asked the Attorney General. And he said quite the contrary. Not only does BP have an interest to clean this up for their own reasons, but also that that would be taken to account in any civil or criminal proceeding, but there’s a lot of politics at play here as well, Diane. The White House, the administration believes that BP hasn’t been fully straight in all their press conferences and they don’t want to get saddled with BP’s problems.

# CBS Evening News

CHIP REID: The barrage of attacks on BP may be motivated in part by politics.

JOHN DICKERSON, POLITICAL ANALYST: This administration is doing what every administration under fire does, which is to defend themselves, and then also deflect the blame to someone else. Here they’ve got a ready villain, and that’s BP.

REID: A villain to distract from a growing chorus of criticism of the President who has visited the Gulf only twice in 43 days. Even some supporters of the President including General Colin Powell have criticized his slow response....The relationship between the White House and BP has clearly moved into a new and hostile phase, leaving many people wondering how they`re going to work together to respond to this disaster.

The American lawyers who flock to Guantanamo Bay to represent captured terrorists are simply fulfilling their duty to provide representation, it is often argued by those who seem to enjoy mucking up efforts to curtail future terrorism. But once representing the American beverage giant Coca Cola makes Attorney General Eric Holder a “corporatist” who’s going to “do the Devil’s work” and only “pretend” to go tough on BP after the oil spill, lefty talk radio host Mike Malloy (a onetime CNN news writer) argued Wednesday night. (Audio here.)

I guess you know this by now, the, uh, Justice Department under Eric Holder who defended, uh, was it Coca-Cola, against murder charges in, uh, South America? Good old Eric Holder, another corporatist, who, uh, is going to do the Devil’s work now and pretend that he is conducting a criminal investigation into the events that led to the oil gush?

For their part, the big three network evening newscasts reported Holder’s announcement of a “criminal investigation” against BP during their Tuesday night broadcasts, but only CBS’s Chip Reid struck what could be called a skeptical note about the Obama administration’s motives in publicly touting the investigation after a week of criticism about the federal government’s less-than-effective handling of the matter.

“The barrage of attacks on BP may be motivated in part by politics,” Reid assessed on the June 1 Evening News, an attempt to make the company “a villain to distract from a growing chorus of criticism of the President who has visited the Gulf only twice in 43 days.”

On ABC, anchor Diane Sawyer was much milder, asking whether “declaring BP a potential enemy” might “make it harder” for the administration to work with them on a solution. (Ever the Obama sycophant, George Stephanopoulos assured her that threatening BP would actually make things better.) And on NBC, correspondent Anne Thompson offered no second-guessing of the administration, just a couple of sentences matter-of-factly noting Holder’s announcement.

Here’s more of how the network evening newscasts covered Holder on Tuesday, arranged from the least skeptical (NBC) to most skeptical (CBS):

ANNE THOMPSON: This environmental disaster is now the focus of the Justice Department, confirming today both criminal and civil investigations into the oil rig explosion and the crude that now taints Louisiana’s coast.

Mr. ERIC HOLDER: We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who has violated the law.

#ABC's World News

DIANE SAWYER: If the administration is now declaring BP a potential enemy here, what does this do to the cleanup? Does it make it harder?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well that’s the question I asked the Attorney General. And he said quite the contrary. Not only does BP have an interest to clean this up for their own reasons, but also that that would be taken to account in any civil or criminal proceeding, but there’s a lot of politics at play here as well, Diane. The White House, the administration believes that BP hasn’t been fully straight in all their press conferences and they don’t want to get saddled with BP’s problems.

# CBS Evening News

CHIP REID: The barrage of attacks on BP may be motivated in part by politics.

JOHN DICKERSON, POLITICAL ANALYST: This administration is doing what every administration under fire does, which is to defend themselves, and then also deflect the blame to someone else. Here they’ve got a ready villain, and that’s BP.

REID: A villain to distract from a growing chorus of criticism of the President who has visited the Gulf only twice in 43 days. Even some supporters of the President including General Colin Powell have criticized his slow response....The relationship between the White House and BP has clearly moved into a new and hostile phase, leaving many people wondering how they`re going to work together to respond to this disaster.

If you’ve been watching the fiasco surrounding the oil spill in the gulf, you already know the mainstream media meme that has cropped up around it. “Yes, President Obama has failed to stop the spill thus far,” the press tell us. “Yes, he’s demonstrated that his promises of supreme competence were overblown. Yes, his leadership has become so questionable that even James Carville has attacked him for it. Yes, some of the alternatives being offered in spite of all of this are being ignored, and yes, President Obama has failed to inspire confidence among everyday Americans about his ability to handle this crisis. But one thing we will not deny is that President Obama cares. He is a man of deep humanity, and deep empathy (and where have we heard that word before) for the suffering of those affected by the spill, and he cares.”

What I am about to ask will require readers to engage in a supreme act of charity: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, all the evisceration which Rush Limbaugh and every other conservative commentator have piled on this administration, all the evidence that the media will never believe anything but the very best about this President even as he takes this country down the road to serfdom at a speed that would make Dale Earnhardt Jr feel queasy, and despite all the emotionless, meaningless, platitude-laden babble that the President has been spewing since the spill began, I want the readers to assume, just for the sake of argument, that the media is telling the truth. Despite what appear to be severe rhetorical and emotional shortcomings in his speeches and his own bearing, imagine that underneath the hyper-rational mask, President Obama really does care.

So what?

Has that “caring” done anything to stop the spill? Has it given President Obama one single, solitary constructive idea about how to solve the problem (other than “Plug the Hole,” that is)? Does President Obama have the ability to fly out to the Gulf Coast and, like Ma-Ti in Captain Planet, dissolve the oil with nothing but the magically empathic effusions of his beating heart? And if not, then even if we concede that President Obama cares about those affected by this crisis,  how is that remotely relevant to his ability to solve it? As per the usual liberal tag line, we are expected to believe that President Obama’s good intentions alone should assuage us of his competence, but have they done anything at all? The answer is as devastating as it is obvious: No.

And while we’re on the subject, let me ask another question. Who is it that has been coming up with ideas to solve this crisis? Is it the usual heroes of the Left, such as the environmental movement, the labor unions or the anti-globalization movement? Of course not – the people who are being tasked with solving this, and who have been trying all along, have been precisely the people that the Left, and their allies in the mainstream media, want us to believe lack empathy! It was not the Department of the Interior that came up with the Top-Kill method that, for a while, slowed the oil spill, or who have been tirelessly working to find ways to fix the problem even after that method failed.

It was the supposedly evil, profiteering corporation British Petroleum. It was not community organizers who provided aid, supplies and supervision during the crisis, nor was it they who even liberals called on to monitor the problem. It was the Coast Guard, a branch of the military, which as any Leftist will tell you, is a collection of homophobic, sexist, racist, bloodthirsty timocrats without a soul. It was not and is not a Democratic Governor who is overseeing the clean-up and trying his best to come up with ways to solve it because his job as a public servant depends on it. It is the supposedly heartless, Medicare-slashing, speech-flubbing alleged exorcist Republican Bobby Jindal! It is not ACORN that is thanklessly slaving away providing philanthropic aid and money to the aggrieved Gulf Coast. It is that horrible collection of “faith-based” hankerers after theocracy, ie Christian charities!

And finally, at least if some former members of the Department of the Interior are to be believed, it was not Barack Obama who came up with the strategy that is presently being employed to respond to this crisis with regard to the population. It was the Bush administration that did so in its response to Katrina, a strategy which allegedly demonstrated the heights of callousness on the part of the President, especially towards black people, as one undisciplined observer suggested.

Hey Kanye, Imma let you finish, but President Bush was the most caring President of all time! Of all time! And if you don’t believe me, ask Barack Obama, who seems to be lifting his playbook.

This tragedy is one that deserves all of our attention, naturally. And it is one about which we all should care, the President included. But that’s not enough. Solutions are demanded, and at the risk of making myself the object of a Care Bear stare, care doesn’t meet a bottom line, or save lives. Only hard work, diligence and hardheaded realism can do that. A pity that this administration is so short on all of the above.

British Petroleum's (BP) reputation has been marred by the April oil rig explosion and subsequent oil spill which is still gushing more than 40 days later. But according to The Washington Post, the reputation of some left-wing environmental groups has also been polluted by the incident.

"[T]he Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners. The Conservancy also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years," Joe Stephens wrote for the Post May 24.

It's not just Nature Conservancy either, the Post found $2 million in donations to Conservation International and relationships between BP and other lefty activist groups Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Sierra Club and Audubon.

"The crude emanating from BP's well threatens to befoul a number of alliances between energy conglomerates and environmental nonprofits. At least one group, Conservation International, acknowledges that it is reassessing its ties to the oil company, with an eye toward protecting its reputation," the Post said.

This was front page news at The Post on May 24, but received only silence from other mainstream media outlets including the three broadcast networks. Even after the oil spill, when the networks interviewed experts from two of the groups that had partnered with BP, reporters failed to make the connection. In the past, the research of conservative organizations has been undermined by reporters for such corporate contributions.

NBC's "Today" consulted "scientists" from the Nature Conservancy on May 8 as many coastal communities feared damage from the spreading oil spill. Reporter Mike Taibbi examined artificial reefs off the Gulf coast and spoke with the group who said, "All we're trying to do is restore some of the injustices we have done to it in the last few decades."

Taibbi didn't mention the BP/Nature Conservancy partnership in his report.

Sierra Club's ties to BP also escaped the notice of CBS "Morning News" on April 29, when the network interviewed the group's director of land protection, Athan Manuel, about the oil spill in the Gulf.

Manuel told CBS, "We've always said that oil and gas drilling is a dirty and dangerous business, both in terms of pollution, but also in terms of what damage can be done to workers and to the environment."

"NBC Nightly News" also interviewed Manuel on March 31 (before the oil spill). Manuel expressed opposition to Obama's call for "expansion of drilling" as "too aggressive." "[D]rilling is just a dirty and dangerous business that we think is incompatible with our coastlines and our beaches," Manuel claimed.

Yet in 2007, the Sierra Club joined forces with many liberal environmental groups and companies including BP Wind Energy to create the American Wind & Wildlife Institute.

Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy and many other eco-groups like it have been uncritically treated as experts for years by the mainstream news media. The networks brought their spokesmen on to discuss a range of issues - from global warming, to land preservation. In contrast, conservative groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and scientists including Patrick Michaels have been undercut by network reporters.

"Public awareness [about global warming] lagged behind, partly because of a disinformation campaign funded by the fossil-fuel industry," ABC's Bill Blakemore said on "World News" Sept. 23, 2007. During his statement, Blakemore aired video footage of a CEI commercial, insinuating that it was "disinformation."

Liberal Anger at Green Groups Mostly Ignored

The revelation that BP was heavily tied to eco-groups like Conservation International and Nature Conservancy angered many of their supporters, yet the networks and other major papers have so far failed to report the relationships between green groups and BP.

The Post quoted Reagan De Leon of Hawaii who had called for a boycott of "everything BP has their hands in," before finding out that the oil company had its hands in the Nature Conservancy. "Oh, wow," De Leon reacted, "That's kind of disturbing."

According to the Washington City Paper's blog, there was a "deluge" of angry comments from members of Nature Conservancy including Cindy D. who "accused the organization of censoring comments to its blog." One commenter on City Paper called Nature Conservancy a "whore."

City Paper pointed out that BP spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" to "transform its image from that of a dirty old oil company into ‘Beyond Petroleum' - a company so environmentally friendly it had transcended oil drilling (and spilling) for happy, sunny and clean technologies such as wind and solar."

They also noted that the environmental groups "trumpeted their ties to corporations, arguing that these partnerships lead to better corporate environmental policies and less damage to the planet."

That's exactly how the relationship between BP and Conservation International was framed by ABC's "Nightline" back in 2002.

Fill-in anchor Chris Bury introduced the segment calling it an "exception" from the stories about rich and famous people doing "trivial" things. This was different, "rich and powerful and famous people trying to create something of lasting value."

Bury was talking about the "highly aggressive environmental organization" Conservation International partnering with a number of prominent businesspeople, actors, athletes and others to purchase and protect millions of acreage around the world.

"[T]ogether, with other environmental groups, they have launched an extraordinary, planet-sized experiment," correspondent Robert Krulwich said. That alliance included the head of British Petroleum, according to ABC.

Media Hypocrisy: Conservative Groups Blasted for Ties to Exxon

In news reports, eco-groups (like all the ones tied to BP) were rarely labeled negatively. Words like "naturalists," "conservationists," and occasionally "auto-industry watchdog" have all been used to describe the groups' liberal missions. On the other side, CEI and Cato Institute fellow Patrick Michaels have been labeled with disparaging terms like "denier" and statements about funding were used to undermine them.

In 2007, ABC's Bill Blakemore alleged that CEI was behind a "disinformation campaign" that had prevented more people from understanding the threat of global warming.

"Public awareness [about global warming] lagged behind, partly because of a disinformation campaign funded by the fossil-fuel industry," Blakemore said on Sept. 23, 2010, while airing footage of a pro-carbon dioxide commercial from CEI.

Blakemore, a longtime advocate of global warming alarmism, didn't include anyone from CEI or the fossil-fuel industry to respond. According to MSNBC.com, ExxonMobil stopped funding CEI in 2006.

NBC's primary global warming alarmist Anne Thompson also undercut CEI on Aug. 15, 2007. After presenting the argument that "science" showed man has a role in global warming, Thompson said, "Getting to that point involved fighting interest groups fueled by powerful companies, including oil giant ExxonMobil."

"The Union of Concerned Scientists says ExxonMobil, gave almost $16 million over seven years to denier groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute," Thompson continued. The Business & Media Institute's parent organization, the Media Research Center, was also listed by the Union of Concerned Scientists among the groups receiving funds from ExxonMobil.

In addition to using the pejorative term "denier," to label CEI, Thompson failed to mention that Exxon had stopped funding the non-profit organization.

A similar media contradiction happened when the news media labeled the grassroots Tea Party movement as corporate-sponsored "Astroturf" or fake grassroots. At the same time, the media have all but ignored the issue of corporate sponsorship of the left-wing green movement.

And one has to look no further than Earth Day 2010 to see the corporate fingerprint on so-called green activist efforts. Major U.S. corporations like Proctor & Gamble, Siemens, Wells Fargo, AT&T, UPS, Philips and Ford all had a major presence at the so-called Earth Day "Climate Rally" on the National Mall back on April 25. That's in addition to a sponsorship from NASA, a federal government entity and media outlets, including The Washington Post and Gannett's USA Today.

Even though that fits the left's own definition of "Astroturf," the news media refused to apply the term to those efforts.

 

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On Wednesday's Rick's List, CNN's Drew Griffin pressed former Clinton administration official Robert Reich on his call for a federal takeover of BP and its efforts against the Gulf oil leak. Griffin first questioned Reich if his proposal was serious, and later stated that the Democrat's idea "sounds not only highly illegal...but seems to me to smack of something that we might see in Venezuela" [audio clips available here].

The CNN personality, who was filling in for anchor Rick Sanchez, brought on the current University of California, Berkeley professor to discuss his proposal, which he first made in a May 31 column (as noted by Jeff Poor at MRC's Business and Media Institute). After summarizing Reich's position, that it was "time for the government to seize control of BP and take over the company's oil spill recovery efforts in the Gulf," Griffin bluntly asked the former labor secretary, "I've got to tell you, I have always considered you a very serious person, but this doesn't sound serious to me at all. Are you serious about this, or was this some kind of a joke to get things going?"

When Reich made it clear that he was being completely serious, the substitute anchor upped the ante: "But to take over a company like this sounds not only highly illegal and counterproductive, but seems to me to smack of something that we might see in Venezuela or in Russia under Putin." The Democrat brushed Griffin's concern aside: "Oh, please- you know...a temporary receivership is not a wild legal remedy. In fact, it's undertaken...quite often, and even without statutory authority....I'm not suggesting the President do this if there's no statutory authority, no congressional action. But even without statutory authority, you've had presidents like Harry Truman take over the entire steel industry in a national emergency."

Later in the interview, Griffin again questioned the soundness of Reich's proposal: "So, Mr. Secretary, just to wrap this up, a temporary receivership- put the power in the hands of the government, somehow appoint somebody who would be the government's CEO of this oil company, and then run the operation from there? That sounds incredibly time-consuming and a waste of precious time."

The CNN correspondent's hardball treatment of Reich is a study in contrasts when compared to Sanchez, whom he was substituting for. During a September 10, 2009 interview of Senator Bernie Sanders, the CNN anchor seemed to endorse the Vermont socialist's call for public financing of elections and railed against the influence of the rich in politics.

The full transcript of Drew Griffin's interview of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, which began 42 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour of Wednesday's Rick's List:

GRIFFIN: It is time for the government to seize control of BP and take over the company's oil spill recovery efforts in the Gulf. Seriously, that's what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says. We were talking about his reasons before the break. Now, let's break it down with the man himself, Robert Reich, now professor of public policy at the University of California. He joins us live from Berkeley. Professor- Secretary, I've got to tell you, I have always considered you a very serious person, but this doesn't sound serious to me at all. Are you serious about this, or was this some kind of a joke to get things going?

REICH: I don't think this is a joking matter at all. I mean, we have here one of the most serious environmental dangers- catastrophes faced by this country in history, and yet the effort to stop this spill is in the hands and under the control of a private, for-profit company, answerable to shareholders. That is an untenable proposition. BP's expertise is certainly relevant. Its knowledge is certainly relevant. I'm not saying that that expertise and knowledge should not be applied. But the government does have to be in the position of weighing the risks and benefits, and also, making sure the public is getting the right information, and also, making sure that all resources that BP has are being put to stopping this leak.

GRIFFIN: But to take over a company like this sounds not only highly illegal and counterproductive, but seems to me to smack of something that we might see in Venezuela or in Russia under Putin.

REICH: Oh, please- you know, this is- a temporary receivership is not a wild legal remedy. In fact, it's undertaken a great- quite often, and even without statutory authority. And, by the way, I'm not suggesting the President do this if there's no statutory authority, no congressional action. But even without statutory authority, you've had presidents like Harry Truman take over the entire steel industry in a national emergency. No, this is very, very specific, and it is very important that the Obama administration have the power- the legal power- to order BP to do what is necessary- to also get to the bottom of all of the facts, and make sure that BP uses all of its resources.

GRIFFIN: I think you would agree that- I mean, priority number one has to be to stop that leak, and the President has said that is where both- the President, the administration, the government- and BP's concerns merge. There is no upside-

REICH: Well, Rick [sic], I think that- you know, with due-

GRIFFIN: For BP to allow this to continue.

REICH: Well, with due respect, I don't think BP's interests are exactly the same interests as the United States [unintelligible]-

GRIFFIN: You don't think they're doing everything they can to stop this leak?

REICH: Well, no. In fact, BP has shown time and again- its history in the United States with regard to explosions, worker safety, the spill on the North Slope of Alaska. It is willing to cut corners, in terms of making a profit. And now, other companies have not had nearly as bad a safety and environmental record as BP. But given BP's record, how can we entirely entrust this operation to BP? It simply doesn't make any logic. BP was responsible for this, and BP needs to be under federal control, at least until this is cleaned up. Now, again, I'm not suggesting this is a permanent receivership. I'm suggesting a temporary receivership because this is such a national emergency.

GRIFFIN: The President- the administration has been criticized for not doing enough. Certainly, that's coming out of the governor of Louisiana. Do you think that the response- whether or not BP or the government is in charge- the response of the federal government in cleaning up and trying to get containment on this- has been enough?

REICH: Well, cleanup is a separate task. That's a very, very important task, and whether the federal government is doing enough or can do more right now- frankly, I don't know. But in terms of containing the spill, I don't see that the federal government is doing nearly what it could do, and that's precisely why I think it's so important to make sure that all of the assets that BP has- all of the information it has, all of the expertise it has- are directed to this one objective of containing the spill. Right now, BP is saying we're not going to be able to do this until August. Well, by August, we are going to have even a larger environmental hazard on our hands. I don't recommend this lightly. I would not have recommended this if BP had been able to contain the spill up until now. But again and again, BP shows that it is either unwilling or unable do it- and, again, I worry that its loyalty, its primary responsibility, is to its shareholders, and not to the health, safety and environmental protection of the United States.

GRIFFIN: So, Mr. Secretary, just to wrap this up, a temporary receivership- put the power in the hands of the government, somehow appoint somebody who would be the government's CEO of this oil company, and then run the operation from there? That sounds incredibly time-consuming and a waste of precious time.

REICH: Well, look, I'm not suggesting in any way that we wait. In other words, we ought to- BP ought to be doing just exactly what it's doing now. The government ought to do what it's doing now. But alongside, we need to have government take BP's operations over, at least until this is solved. I mean, again, the analogy of Three Mile Island comes to mind. The analogy of any major corporation that was threatening because of its malfeasance or its nonfeasance- threatening the safety, health and environment of the United States. No president can simply allow this kind of operation to be completely under the control of the people who created the problem to begin with.

GRIFFIN: Controversial. Thanks for joining us. Secretary Reich from California- thanks for joining us.

REICH: Thanks very much.

On Wednesday's Rick's List, CNN's Drew Griffin pressed former Clinton administration official Robert Reich on his call for a federal takeover of BP and its efforts against the Gulf oil leak. Griffin first questioned Reich if his proposal was serious, and later stated that the Democrat's idea "sounds not only highly illegal...but seems to me to smack of something that we might see in Venezuela" [audio clips available here].

The CNN personality, who was filling in for anchor Rick Sanchez, brought on the current University of California, Berkeley professor to discuss his proposal, which he first made in a May 31 column (as noted by Jeff Poor at MRC's Business and Media Institute). After summarizing Reich's position, that it was "time for the government to seize control of BP and take over the company's oil spill recovery efforts in the Gulf," Griffin bluntly asked the former labor secretary, "I've got to tell you, I have always considered you a very serious person, but this doesn't sound serious to me at all. Are you serious about this, or was this some kind of a joke to get things going?"

When Reich made it clear that he was being completely serious, the substitute anchor upped the ante: "But to take over a company like this sounds not only highly illegal and counterproductive, but seems to me to smack of something that we might see in Venezuela or in Russia under Putin." The Democrat brushed Griffin's concern aside: "Oh, please- you know...a temporary receivership is not a wild legal remedy. In fact, it's undertaken...quite often, and even without statutory authority....I'm not suggesting the President do this if there's no statutory authority, no congressional action. But even without statutory authority, you've had presidents like Harry Truman take over the entire steel industry in a national emergency."

Later in the interview, Griffin again questioned the soundness of Reich's proposal: "So, Mr. Secretary, just to wrap this up, a temporary receivership- put the power in the hands of the government, somehow appoint somebody who would be the government's CEO of this oil company, and then run the operation from there? That sounds incredibly time-consuming and a waste of precious time."

The CNN correspondent's hardball treatment of Reich is a study in contrasts when compared to Sanchez, whom he was substituting for. During a September 10, 2009 interview of Senator Bernie Sanders, the CNN anchor seemed to endorse the Vermont socialist's call for public financing of elections and railed against the influence of the rich in politics.

The full transcript of Drew Griffin's interview of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, which began 42 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour of Wednesday's Rick's List:

GRIFFIN: It is time for the government to seize control of BP and take over the company's oil spill recovery efforts in the Gulf. Seriously, that's what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says. We were talking about his reasons before the break. Now, let's break it down with the man himself, Robert Reich, now professor of public policy at the University of California. He joins us live from Berkeley. Professor- Secretary, I've got to tell you, I have always considered you a very serious person, but this doesn't sound serious to me at all. Are you serious about this, or was this some kind of a joke to get things going?

REICH: I don't think this is a joking matter at all. I mean, we have here one of the most serious environmental dangers- catastrophes faced by this country in history, and yet the effort to stop this spill is in the hands and under the control of a private, for-profit company, answerable to shareholders. That is an untenable proposition. BP's expertise is certainly relevant. Its knowledge is certainly relevant. I'm not saying that that expertise and knowledge should not be applied. But the government does have to be in the position of weighing the risks and benefits, and also, making sure the public is getting the right information, and also, making sure that all resources that BP has are being put to stopping this leak.

GRIFFIN: But to take over a company like this sounds not only highly illegal and counterproductive, but seems to me to smack of something that we might see in Venezuela or in Russia under Putin.

REICH: Oh, please- you know, this is- a temporary receivership is not a wild legal remedy. In fact, it's undertaken a great- quite often, and even without statutory authority. And, by the way, I'm not suggesting the President do this if there's no statutory authority, no congressional action. But even without statutory authority, you've had presidents like Harry Truman take over the entire steel industry in a national emergency. No, this is very, very specific, and it is very important that the Obama administration have the power- the legal power- to order BP to do what is necessary- to also get to the bottom of all of the facts, and make sure that BP uses all of its resources.

GRIFFIN: I think you would agree that- I mean, priority number one has to be to stop that leak, and the President has said that is where both- the President, the administration, the government- and BP's concerns merge. There is no upside-

REICH: Well, Rick [sic], I think that- you know, with due-

GRIFFIN: For BP to allow this to continue.

REICH: Well, with due respect, I don't think BP's interests are exactly the same interests as the United States [unintelligible]-

GRIFFIN: You don't think they're doing everything they can to stop this leak?

REICH: Well, no. In fact, BP has shown time and again- its history in the United States with regard to explosions, worker safety, the spill on the North Slope of Alaska. It is willing to cut corners, in terms of making a profit. And now, other companies have not had nearly as bad a safety and environmental record as BP. But given BP's record, how can we entirely entrust this operation to BP? It simply doesn't make any logic. BP was responsible for this, and BP needs to be under federal control, at least until this is cleaned up. Now, again, I'm not suggesting this is a permanent receivership. I'm suggesting a temporary receivership because this is such a national emergency.

GRIFFIN: The President- the administration has been criticized for not doing enough. Certainly, that's coming out of the governor of Louisiana. Do you think that the response- whether or not BP or the government is in charge- the response of the federal government in cleaning up and trying to get containment on this- has been enough?

REICH: Well, cleanup is a separate task. That's a very, very important task, and whether the federal government is doing enough or can do more right now- frankly, I don't know. But in terms of containing the spill, I don't see that the federal government is doing nearly what it could do, and that's precisely why I think it's so important to make sure that all of the assets that BP has- all of the information it has, all of the expertise it has- are directed to this one objective of containing the spill. Right now, BP is saying we're not going to be able to do this until August. Well, by August, we are going to have even a larger environmental hazard on our hands. I don't recommend this lightly. I would not have recommended this if BP had been able to contain the spill up until now. But again and again, BP shows that it is either unwilling or unable do it- and, again, I worry that its loyalty, its primary responsibility, is to its shareholders, and not to the health, safety and environmental protection of the United States.

GRIFFIN: So, Mr. Secretary, just to wrap this up, a temporary receivership- put the power in the hands of the government, somehow appoint somebody who would be the government's CEO of this oil company, and then run the operation from there? That sounds incredibly time-consuming and a waste of precious time.

REICH: Well, look, I'm not suggesting in any way that we wait. In other words, we ought to- BP ought to be doing just exactly what it's doing now. The government ought to do what it's doing now. But alongside, we need to have government take BP's operations over, at least until this is solved. I mean, again, the analogy of Three Mile Island comes to mind. The analogy of any major corporation that was threatening because of its malfeasance or its nonfeasance- threatening the safety, health and environment of the United States. No president can simply allow this kind of operation to be completely under the control of the people who created the problem to begin with.

GRIFFIN: Controversial. Thanks for joining us. Secretary Reich from California- thanks for joining us.

REICH: Thanks very much.

It was bound to happen and no one can really blame them for doing so, but someone eventually had to determine who the political winners and losers are for the tragic circumstances surrounding the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Looking forward to the upcoming election cycle, MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough determined the time was right to take a stab at it, although reluctantly on his June 2 broadcast.

"[W]e will stay with BP for one second but talk about presidential politics and I know this will be offensive to some people but it's just a reality that there is somebody in the White House, somebody in the Democratic Party, somebody in the Republican Party that's trying to figure out the political impact of this environmental tragedy. And we were talking with Chuck Todd last hour about how it ramps up when the oil starts washing on Florida shores, Chris. That makes this a much bigger political event in terms of presidential politics, like it or not."

Conventional wisdom might suggest this is bad for the Democratic Party, with a Democratic president, Barack Obama at the helm of the federal government. By default, the advantage would go to a Republican candidate for that reason. But not so according to MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews. Matthews argued Charlie Crist had an advantage, since his Republican opponent Marco Rubio wasn't eager to condemn all forms of offshore drilling immediately following the incident. And Scarborough, a former Florida congressman, agreed.

"Well, I think in the first instance, I think Charlie Crist will probably be elected governor [senator]," Matthews said.

"I agree," Scarborough replied.

Matthews cited Crist's language in recent days suggesting pause should be given to drilling off the coast of Florida. However, Crist didn't interject the politics into it like Matthews did - praising Crist for not being an "ideologue."
"I think he's going to be tough on offshore drilling, absolute ban on it," Matthews continued. "He's very quick off the spot. He's not an ideologue. And maybe this is one of the opportunities in the country to see the advantage of non-ideologues, people who are quick at just responding to new things and doing the smart thing."

Crist's opponent, Rubio was asked by Fox News "Your World" host Neil Cavuto on his June 1 program about Crist's and Obama's handling of the oil spill situation, as his senatorial opponent is the sitting governor. Rubio was hesitant critique the administration, similar to the way the Bush administration was attacked following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

CAVUTO: Marco, your quick thoughts on, not only your governor, but how the president has handled this Gulf oil spill?
RUBIO: Well, it's unfortunate, first of all, that our technologies have not advanced enough to deal with issues like this. And I think we're dealing with the sad consequences of it. I think the White House, as weeks go by, we're going to learn more and more about what was done wrong in this regard. But this is - understand, this is a party and - and folks in this administration who spent a lot of time attacking the Bush administration's reaction to Katrina, which is an unforeseen thing. This one happened, and nothing happened for weeks thereafter. And, so, I think, as time goes on, we're going to learn more and more about what should have been done. And - and let's wait for that to start coming out a little bit more.

Rubio was asked by Cavuto what his thoughts were about Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder failing to extend an invitation to Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum in a meeting on June 1 with the attorneys general from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. And Rubio, unlike Matthews' "ideologue" assessment wasn't as quick to pass judgment on the Obama administration.

CAVUTO: I know you have got to skedaddle here, but Florida's attorney general was left out of this Eric Holder powwow with AGs and legal types on - on looking at criminal actions against those who - who brought the spill on. What did you make of that?
RUBIO: Well, I hope it's not a partisan thing, and I hope it's not electoral politics coming into play. The truth is, Florida has a huge stake at play in what is happening in the Gulf region. It impacts tourism in our state. And - and so, we're - we're - we're deeply involved and care a lot about it. And I hope General McCollum is included in future conversations.