Rachel Maddow delivers her "fake presidential address" -- the one she says Obama should have given instead of the one he did give.
There might be, as Maddow might put it in her playful way, "a wee bit of a problem" with the constitutionality of point No. 2 (commandeering BP to conduct world-wide boom training for everyone). But otherwise? Better than the one delivered from the balcony of the presidential basilica in Washington D.C.:
PENSACOLA, Fla. - President Obama wrapped up his fourth tour of the Gulf Coast today. Tonight he will address the Nation from the Oval Office at 7 p.m. He is expected to reassure the country that his administration has the oil spill in the Gulf under control.
This was President Obama's first tour of our area since the oil started coming ashore. In a speech at Pensacola NAS, President Obama assured local residents and business owners that recovery of this area will happen. "I want the people of this region to know that my administration is going to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to deal with this disaster," he said.
substituted full video from WhiteHouse.gov 6-16 pm
Full text of President Obama's remarks on Pensacola Beach:
_______________________
Remarks by the President After a Briefing with Admiral Thad Allen and Local Officials on the BP Oil Spill
Fish Sandwich Snack Bar, Pensacola, Florida
9:48 A.M. CDT
THE PRESIDENT: We just had a very useful discussion, and I want to thank Governor Crist and the congressional delegation, as well as our owner here, Mike Pinzone, of this wonderful facility overlooking this beautiful beach. I want to also thank the mayor of Pensacola for his hospitality.
What we’ve done is to try to find out from local business owners, local officials, as well as state officials like Alex Sink and Senator LeMieux and others, how the response can be most effective here specifically in Florida. And when you look out over this unbelievable beach, one of the things that you can see is that so far at least this beach has not been affected.
This is a still place that’s open for business and welcoming so vacationers and people can have a wonderful holiday here. And I know the mayor wants to emphasize that. But there are obviously fears about the oil that is offshore.
And what we emphasized was that we’re going to be doing everything we can -- make sure that there are skimmers out, there are booms out, and a response to keep the oil offshore. But even if we do the best possible job on that, what the mayor described, what Mike described as a local business owner here, is that they’re still being affected by perceptions -- that business has dropped off as much as 40 percent in this area. And that has an impact on the entire economy. You saw the same thing yesterday when we were in Alabama and Mississippi.
So a couple of things that we’ve done. Number one, to make sure that there is a nimble and effective local response, Thad Allen has now assigned deputy incident commanders to each of the individual states, so Florida will have its own deputy incident commander, as Mississippi and Alabama do.
In addition to the sites in Houma and in Mobile, we’re also going to set up an incident management team in Tallahassee, here in Florida. All this is designed to make sure that on the federal response we are able to work and make decisions at a local level in response to the suggestions of people who know the communities best and know the waters best. And my expectation is, is that we’re going to see a lot of good ideas coming from the local area that we can implement right away, as opposed to waiting until it goes all the way to the top.
But the other thing that we’re hearing here is the same thing we heard yesterday, which is businesses need help right now. I’m going to be addressing this this evening, the issue of how we can make sure that claims to businesses that have been affected are responded to quickly and fairly.
I’ll be meeting with BP chairmen and officials tomorrow to discuss the stories that I’ve heard from people like Mike. Mike has put in all the paperwork. In fact, he has documented more than amply the fact that his business has been deeply affected by this crisis, but he hasn’t received the compensation that he needs to make sure that his business stays open.
And I told Mike -- and I want every business person here in Florida to know -- that I will be their fierce advocate in making sure that they are getting the compensation they need to get through what is going to be a difficult season. But what I described for them is the fact that if we can get through this season, cap this well, mitigate the damage -- we’re not going to eliminate it completely; there’s going to be damage to the shoreline -- but if we can reduce it as much as possible, help businesses get through this season, clean it up, by the time we get to next season there’s no reason why this beach behind us is not going to be as beautiful as ever, and Pensacola and other coastline communities across Florida won’t be thriving as they always have.
So the key right now is just to make sure that people like Mike are helped, that they’re able to get through what’s going to be a tough time. And I told him and I told the governor and all the other Florida officials here that we’re not going to go away. We’re just going to keep on at this until we are able to not only get back to normal, but maybe even get better than it was before this crisis.
So I appreciate everybody’s input, and we look forward to continuing to work with you on this enormous challenge.
A long, long time ago when we were in college we snagged a plum part-time job as an attendant on the "women's ward" of the University's psychiatric hospital. In those days, psychiatric hospital wards were segregated by sex -- to keep the patients from having any fun with each other, we suppose.
The vast majority of women in-patients suffered from depression in varying degrees. For an impecunious undergraduate student, attending to them was a breeze. The pay was good, the hours perfect, and the work required no more hard labor than occasionally holding a patient down while the doctors tortured them with electro-shock "therapy."
Mostly, attendants on the women's ward where we worked were expected to play bridge with the patients. It was a card game we, personally, had never played before. We learned the rules fast.
But the supervising ward nurses put us under instructions to let the patients win their bids as often as reasonably possible. Apparently, the hope was winning at cards would lift their spirits. As you can imagine, we became a terrible bridge player.
Irrelevant aside: ECT is a dirty business, as the saying goes, but someone almost no one, as it turns out, has to do it. Today, treatment is so much more scientifically advanced with the administration of commercially-advertised psychotropic drugs that numb the nation, don't you think? No? Well then, maybe there's more than just oil clean-up that's been neglected in our corporate culture's headlong rush for newer and newer technologies generating higher and higher profits.
We were reminded of all this today while reading PNJ columnist Reginald Dogan's self-confessed "jaded" view of the presidential visit:
Obama's visit — much like visits by every president before and after him — is nothing more than a dog-and-pony show.
They stop in a little town. Block streets. Shut down traffic. Tie up law enforcement for hours only for a couple minutes of face time and sound bites that, when it's all said and nothing's done, are really much ado about nothing. * * * Seen one, seen them all.
In all truth, a presidential visit to Pensacola is usually more trouble than it's worth. I'd rather have a V-8.
Now, there's a man who needs to play a bridge game with us to cheer him up. Mr. Dogan is hardly alone, however. Almost everyone we know on the beach, in town, and even strangers we've come across are showing signs of something that looks to us very much like clinical depression.
Talking with new and old friends has been like that ever since. As the oil neared Dauphin Island two weeks ago, one friend emailed us (with a header that reads "Depression"):
This is very ominous ... . I think my idyllic days of swimming in the Gulf and walking on the beach are gone for the foreseeable future. It is just so... SENSELESS!!!!!!!!!!!!
A week later we hosted a cookout for a dozen friends. The talk was mostly about the oil spill, petroleum-poisoned seabirds, dead fish, lying corporate executives, the scary hurricane season forecasts, man's inhumanity to man, and original sin. A great time was had by all, as you can tell. It's a wonder no one brought up Darfur.
The steaks were great, though, and the drinks seemed to slightly improve everyone's spirits from deep despondence to mind-numbing inebriation; not unlike ECT, in fact.
Just the other night another beach friend emailed us:
Emotionally I'm still in the depression stage of the Kubler Ross scale. I'm just waiting for them to start talking about the use of a nuclear blast to stop the leak. {{{sigh}}}
The reactions of local residents seem to be very much like those we cataloged back in 2005, after hurricanes Ivan and Dennis ["Post-Tropical Depression"]. Then, even with most of the storm-ruined houses still visible and some streets lined with heaps of rubbish piled as high as a two-story building, we could write with conviction:
Still, however slowly, recovery is underway. Homes and businesses are beginning to be rebuilt. The community will rebound sooner or later.
There is a difference this time. Most of the people we've interviewed and friends who've email us are not convinced this time that they will see a "rebound." Not in their lifetimes, anyway.
The truly nefarious thing about this oil spill is that it has robbed so many coastal residents of confidence in the future. Just as it seems to have robbed Reginald Dogan of his customary optimism. The only thing Dogan says would impress him is if "the president steps into the Gulf, walks across the water and magically plugs the Gulf oil spill, then that would be something worth seeing."
That's pretty close to the hopeless range of possibilities the women patients we knew thought they saw ahead of them. The despair evident in Dogan's column is just as unrealistic.
The root error he makes is that he is pretending to suppose that President Obama is here to personally plug the leaking BP oil well. That's nonsense, of course. It's the very sort of forlorn tantrum we might have expected from one of our inconsolably despondent patients at the bridge table. Except, it's not really a tantrum; it's a cry for help.
Most of what any president does could be done at least as well -- and often better -- in the Oval Office. Obama came here to the Gulf Coast primarily, we think, to give us a dose of what we need most: the will to carry on.
In circumstances like that, effective therapy begins "by establishing a supportive therapeutic environment which is positive and reinforcing for the individual." The people of the Gulf Coast need that right now more than ever. And that's one thing a president cannot do as well in the Oval Office.
Educating the [patient] within the first session or two is usually the next step about how depression for many people is caused by faulty cognitions. The numerous types of faulty thinking that we as humans do are discussed (e.g., “all or nothing thinking,” “misattribution of blame,” “overgeneralization,” etc.) and the [patient] is encouraged to begin noting his or her thoughts as they occur throughout the day. This is imperative to further success in treatment, for the individual must understand how common and often these thoughts are occurring during a single day.
Here's hoping President Obama's visit is more uplifting and educational than a game of bridge with the ward attendants. Reggie, we need you back. Get well soon. minor edit 6-15 am
Temperatures should moderate slightly today and wind and water conditions will be much the same as yesterday: a light breeze and relatively calm waters. Except for moderately increased cloud conditions and a continuing Southwest-to-Northeast very light breeze, these are very nearly ideal conditions for any community facing an aggressive oil slick.
2. Oil in Pensacola Bay.
Yesterday afternoon, Southwest winds (bad) remained light (good). A very light chop (good) caused only small, scattered whitecaps (bad). Short of absolutely dead-still conditions, that's about as good as it gets this time of year in Pensacola.
Nevertheless, a large oil slick breached the orange booms at the head of Pensacola Pass, slipped past skimmers, divided at the western edge of the Gulf Breeze peninsula and now is sloshing around Pensacola Bay and Santa Rosa Sound.
Oil sheens were spotted as far inshore as the Bob Sikes Bridge on Santa Rosa Sound. Scattered clusters of tar balls, red weathered crude and mousse were observed across much of Pensacola Bay as well as inside Little Sabine Bay. Oil seeped into the grass beds in and around Lafitte Cove, where Pensacola Beach's Peg Leg Pete's restaurant is located. * * * During a ride aboard a Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission boat Monday afternoon, [Pensacola News Journal] reporters saw a 100-yard-long swath of quarter-sized brown tar balls floating more than a mile inside of Pensacola Pass.
3. What's Lies Beneath Mobile Bay?
In Mobile Bay, Ben Raines reports, the Mobile Press-Register on its own used depth finders to locate "dozens of places with... unusual readings at depths ranging from 10 feet to nearly 50 feet at the bottom of the ship channel."
In some cases, the anomalous readings began just below the surface and continued down to depths of 20 feet or more. In other cases, depth finders showed what appeared to be a layer of material floating above the seafloor, separated from the bottom by about 4 feet of water. * * * The areas yielding the unusual readings appeared to have defined edges. Moving away from the areas caused the depth finder image to return to normal. In some cases, areas with the abnormal readings were perhaps 20 feet across. In other cases, they were 100 yards or more across.
Divers descending to twenty feet below the surface found "nothing but murky water." No fish, no visible oil, no vegetation. Dauphin Island sea Lab's George Crozier "said that he was intrigued by the unusual readings."
He told the newspaper, "I don't know if that is oil down there. We'll send the boats out and try and get some samples taken."
That's the hotel that hides a charming nineteenth century railroad depot beneath its ample skirts, so visitors won't know it's there. The best view the Crowne Plaza offers guests, we would imagine, is a stunning look right in your face of Pensacola's hideous all-cement Convention Center. Just beyond that is St. Michael's Cemetery.
As the late Willie Junior once said, only in Pensacola would you see politicians building a convention center next door to a bunch of dead bodies. Willie may have been guilty as charged, but he was a funny man.
Staying at the Grand is so conventional. No change we can believe in. Visiting dignitaries, business tycoons, books authors on tour, and politicians always wind up there.
Some years ago a good friend of ours came through Pensacola. His publisher put him up at what was then known, simply, as the Grand Hotel. After the obligatory semi-formal author's dinner, we rescued him from all the hangers-on who wanted autographs and brought him out to the beach.
There, he spent the night amiably chatting with half a dozen of our friends in the locally famous driveway of our next door beach neighbor, Jamo Pihakis. Jamo, some people claim, lives in his garage.
However that may be, friends from all over the island drop by his place nightly to engage in that nearly extinct, pre-television custom known as "neighborly conversation." It's one of the most enjoyable charms of beach life. And, it's free! Later, our friend said it was one of the most enjoyable nights he'd ever spent on book tour.
Heck, if we'd known President Obama preferred cement, we're sure Jamo would have offered to bed him down in the driveway.
5. Cement Job.
Speaking of cement, New Orleans Times-Picayne's Rebecca Mowbray Monday had a superb article yesterday summarizing the similarities and differences between BP's oil well disaster on April 20 and the "blowout of Australia's Montara well" in August, 2009.
The Australian oil spill was in shallow water and it wasn't attributable to failure of blowout preventer (because there wasn't one). But, Mowbray writes, "what they do have in common is problems with the cementing job on the well, an oil release and missteps in shutting down the well and dealing with the oil."
Note to readers: We'll try to update the blog later today, after the president leaves our oil-stained beach. minor edit 6-15am
Details are still sketchy and conflicting about President Obama's fourth trip to the Gulf Coast. He will be in Pensacola Tuesday, the PNJ says. And he will address the nation Tuesday night. That much seems certain.
CNN and the Associated Press separately are reporting this morning that he will return to Washington Tuesday night to "address the nation..." There are a few scattered reports that he will stay in Pensacola. The PNJ is reporting late this morning that traffic on Highway 98 through Gulf Breeze and across 3-mile Bridge will be closed Tuesday morning from 8 to 11 am.
If the president does stay in the Pensacola area it probably would be Monday night but it's anyone's guess where. We'd like to think it would be somewhere along Pensacola Beach. With just two road entrances to the island, security to protect the president from all the right-wing nuts around here would be easier.
Whadda ya think? If you were President Obama, would you rather stay in Julian MacQueen's Hilton Hotel with room service from its very fine H2O restaurant, or Republican Robert Rinke's Portofino condo complex where $10,000-a-week units now are so cheap you could put up the entire White House press corps for peanuts, or Jimmy Buffett's brand-spanking new, almost-ready-to-open Margaritaville Beach Hotel? (See left) The staff might be a little green, but the view of the oil slick should be breath-taking.
We'd be happy to offer President Obama the guest room in our humble home, but the BP oil catastrophe has She Who Must be Obeyed feeling stressed out lately. And, it might undermine her recent vow to follow Erma Bombeck's advice, which a friend says she imparted as she was dying, to "entertain more and clean less."
Actually, that's not an accurate quote and the late Ms. Bombeck didn't write it as she was dying. But shsh! Don't tell her. Life has been good lately as we entertain our friends, even if "the carpet is stained or the sofa is faded."
3. Shrimp Boats Are A-Skimming, They're Skimming Today.
The BP oil spill is giving new life to the very first, truly terrible Country-Western tune we can remember hearing as a child. "Shrimp Boats Are A-Coming" is a classic of this dubious genre. But it sounds a lot better if you slightly alter the idea to include the "collection of heavy, thick, dispersant-treated oil," as Rick Outzen reports an oil spill subcontractor has done:
The crew of one of the thousands of Vessels of Opportunity (VOO) working in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill recently recovered approximately two tons of tarball material in the Gulf of Mexico.
The recovery was the result of the kind of creative thought and innovation at work among the more than 27,000 people working around the clock in the Gulf of Mexico in the largest oil spill response in U.S. history.
Designed by Gerry Matherne, a BP contractor and nearshore task force leader, the idea is simple. A shrimp boat with outriggers on each side drags mesh oil-collection bags made of perforated webbing near the ocean surface. As the boat trawls to collect oil patches, the bags, attached to an aluminum frame, collect oil. When filled, the bags are disconnected from the frame by crew on support vessels, and then towed to a lift barge for hoisting into a collection barge.
Apparently, praise is pouring in: "creative" ... "efficient"... "effective"... "a great example of the heart and soul of the response." Rick has more, including a photo of showing some of the collected oil.
4. Florida Fishing Closed.
Late Sunday afternoon, state agencies "issued an executive order" temporarily closing about 27 miles of coastal state waters "offshore of Escambia County." The harvesting of "saltwater fish, crabs and shrimp" is banned, although "catch and release" is permitted.
A map has been issued showing the extent of the fishing ban (see above). Locally, the Pensacola Beach Fishing Pier (left) remains open for sight seeing and catch-and-release fishing.
5. Hurricane Watch.
A tropical wave of interest to hurricane watchers has formed about 1,400 miles East-Southeast of the Windward Islands. The National Hurricane Center said this morning that conditions are thought to be "conducive for development during the next day or so."
Computer spaghetti forecast models at this point are, so to speak, all over the map:
In addition to the National Hurricane Center, a useful web site for those who want to keep abreast of tropical developments is Jim Williams' HurricaneCity.com. Another is Central Florida Hurricane Center. Both have been at it for over a decade. We've found them essential resources in tropical times like these: reliable, responsible, and well informed.
Jim also maintains "Cane Talk," a message board where quite a few storm chasers, hurricane gurus, and others (including some Pensacola Beach residents) share storm information, answer questions from readers, and hash out where they think storms are headed. Spend a little time there and you'll soon figure out who has a good crystal ball and who is in need of serious counseling.
As yesterday, the forecast for today and the coming weekend is hot and mostly dry, with a moderate surf. Perfect beach weather, except for the light south winds, which will likely push the oil even closer to us.
President Obama will visit Pensacola Monday, the White House announced late yesterday. A specific itinerary has not yet been released. We're guessing he will want to see Perdido Bay or Pensacola Pass, the westernmost points of vulnerability for Florida. This can be done from the vantage points either of the mainland or Santa Rosa Island.
Before the president arrives, his White House Director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, will be holding a live chat in Washington today. It's scheduled to start at 11:30 Central Daylight Time. Click here for instructions on how to listen in or submit questions.
Late yesterday, as we mentioned in an update, the government's Flow Rate Technical Group released new calculations of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. As the New York Times reports today, the blue ribbon panel of scientists "essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well" since April 20. The new calculation shows "an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days."
The new estimate is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day. That range, still preliminary, is far above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.
And, needless to say, the new calculation far exceeds BP's lies about 1,000 to 5,000 barrels a day which the corporation was peddling for weeks after the well blew up. Times reporters Gillis and Fountain add:
The higher estimates will affect not only assessments of how much environmental damage the spill has done but also how much BP might eventually pay to clean up the mess — and it will most likely increase suspicion among skeptics about how honest and forthcoming the oil company has been throughout the catastrophe. [emphasis added]
Being a skeptic, frankly, our own suspicions about BP hardly needed to be increased. We know who the enemy is. It has been assaulting our nation's shores for almost two months.
Now, we learn from Mac McClelland of Mother Jones Magazine that BP is stalling the government on two pending requests for (1) the verifying data about damage claims and payments which BP has been loudly touting and (2) a list of clean-up subcontractors the oil company is using. Her article includes ends with an amusing "letter" to the Obama administration:
Remember that one time when BP told the Coast Guard that top kill was working and then the Coast Guard told everyone else and then it turned out that wasn't true? Well, despite every single thing BP has ever said being false, there appears to be zero oversight of the information it's releasing about its cleanup effort. * * * Dear Obama administration: Please tell me that a hungover 30-year-old sitting around in her underwear reading press releases on the couch is not really the first person to ask for verification or at least a spreadsheet backing up BP's stats.
The many miles of sandy beaches along Pensacola Beach and Santa Rosa Island as a whole remain open and vulnerable to the oil sheen and tarballs. As yet, thankfully, little of that has been seen.
Tourists and locals continue to flock to the beach despite media reports of tarballs on the beach. All the swimmers we've talked with, and most of the adults with children, appear alert to the danger.
Still, it's unnerving to see a few adults watching from a distance their toddlers and young ones playing the water's edge. We keep reading that fresh tarballs look like "chocolate" -- and they do. (see below). It's easy to imagine a small child picking one up and shoving it in the mouth.
We've been posting photos of Ft. Pickens and Pensacola Bay over the last month. [See e.g. here, here, here, and here.] Barrier Island Girl, who is a real photographer, has more here, here, and here, among other pages. Few of them show the evil tarballs and none an oil slick. But we know they're coming, and so does the president.
Yesterday at Casino Beach there was almost no evidence of tarballs, although a sheen of oil was reported to be just a mile off shore. Swimmers were cautious, relieved to find the water clean, and eager for fun in the surf.
On the mainland, bays, bayous, and other smaller bodies of water that feed directly into Pensacola Bay are being boomed. Booms can be closed quickly when oil threatens, although they likely will not be effective in a vigorous surf.
Estuaries, wetlands, and lagoons that do not directly feed into vulnerable Gulf waters are left to their own devices. Pictured below is a finger of Hawkshaw Lagoon, separated from Pensacola Bay by a thin rocky barrier.
A must hear: "Fresh Air's" superb veteran host Terri Gross yesterday spoke with ProPublica reporter Abrahm Lustgarten about newly revealed internal corporate documents "from a person close to BP." They are powerful evidence that BP has a deeply ingrained disregard for safety, environmental protection, and equipment maintenance. Click the podcast:
"Independent experts say the pervasiveness of BP's problems... is striking. 'They are a recurring environmental criminal and they do not follow U.S. health safety and environmental policy," said Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA debarment attorney who led the investigations into BP.'"
NOAA's oil spill projection (see map, above) warns northwest winds "are expected to become SE overnight," likely pushing more older tarballs toward Pensacola Beach. For the next three days winds and currents will come from an East/Southeast direction, "inhibiting further eastward movement" and pushing the leading edge of the slick back west, also toward Pensacola Beach. BP's oil spill now has us out-flanked. We can get it from either direction.
2. Manageable Amounts. Along with a general update which looks like it was cobbled together from wire service as well as local reports, the Miami Herald is showing a unique slide show taken yesterday around Pensacola Beach, Ft. Pickens, and nearby environs. The accompanying article adds:
In Pensacola Beach, fewer tar balls appeared to have washed ashore than in previous days since the sticky globs began dotting the sand Friday.
That may be a fortuitous break, as forecasted stormy weather threatened to get in the way of cleanup and monitoring efforts, Escambia County officials said. * * * In Destin, dime-sized tar balls washed ashore on Okaloosa Island for the second day in a row, but only about a dozen of the reddish-gray pieces were found in the powdery white sand.
"It's all been a very manageable amount,'' said Dino Villani, public safety director for Okaloosa County. "We're very fortunate at this point.''
3. Hard Truth.
There has been a lot of caterwauling about a supposed lack of transparency on the part of the Obama administration. Insofar as it appears to have relied on BP in the first couple of weeks for specific details about the magnitude of the oil spill and the company's ability to stop it, we think that critics are probably being unfair. After all, the damn thing was a mile below sea level and then some below that, far from where the nation usually assigns its most sophisticated naval forces.
To be sure, if the Obama administration had dug a bit earlier into the musty old files of the George W. Bush administration, it would have discovered, as ProPublico.com reports today, "Years of Internal BP Probes Warned That Neglect Could Lead to Accidents."
A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.
The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling unit that undermined the company’s publicly proclaimed commitment to safe operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.
Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations - from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas.
But was fifteen months enough time for the Obama administration to unearth the evidence, too, while handling all the other economic, military, diplomatic, and environmental time bombs the Bush administration left behind? We report, those of you who voted for Bush can decide by counting the months on your fingers and toes.
It is true that within about a week after the rig fire and well blowout, the Obama administration as a whole was making it painfully evident to anyone this side of a BP shareholders' meeting that BP was lying and the Government would be stepping in to provide oversight and increased transparency. That's about the same time the Obama administration put Coast Guard Admiral Chad Allen in charge of the Government's response and began openly challenging BP's deceptive PR campaign to minimize the spill.
In any event, Obama's public remarks yesterday were straight from the shoulder. We're not talking about his made-for-TV threat to "kick ass" that has the press all in a tizzy, clutching its hankie and making a moue with its mouth. We're talking about his direct public statement immediately following yesterday's cabinet meeting:
[H]ere's what we know: Even if we are successful in containing some or much of this oil, we are not going to get this problem completely solved until we actually have the relief well completed, and that is going to take a couple more months. We also know that there's already a lot of oil that's been released, and that there is going to be more oil released no matter how successful this containment effort is. * * * This will be contained. It may take some time, and it's going to take a whole lot of effort. There is going to be damage done to the Gulf Coast and there is going to be economic damages that we've got to make sure BP is responsible for and compensates people for.
But the one thing I'm absolutely confident about is that as we have before, we will get through this crisis. * * * [N]ot only are we going to control the damages to the Gulf Coast, but we want to actually use this as an opportunity to reexamine and work with states and local communities to restore the coast in ways that actually enhance the livelihoods and the quality of life for people in that area.
It's going to take some time. It's not going to be easy. But this is a resilient ecosystem. These are resilient people down on the Gulf Coast. I had a chance to talk to them, and they've gone through all kinds of stuff over the last 50, 100 years. And they bounce back, and they're going to bounce back this time. And they're going to need help from the entire country. They're going to need constant vigilant attention from this administration. That's what they're going to get.
There surely will be plenty of others who will be conducting autopsies of what went wrong and why. Plaintiff's lawyers, BP corporate defense counsel, book authors, scientists, and voters are among the more important ones. A president's job is to focus on the future and how we can make the most if it.
Yesterday, Mr. Obama gave us an unabashed, candid assessment of where we are and where we will be going. By no means is it pretty. But it does look like the most optimistic, best case scenario we can hope for.
As for the worst case scenarios, see below.
4. Worser Truth.
Things are never so bad that they can't get worse. Ben Raines reports in today's edition of the Mobile Register that a volunteer pilots' environmental group has just returned from a fly-over that confirms BP's "Deepwater Horizon is not the only well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico for the last month."
A nearby drilling rig, the Ocean Saratoga, has been leaking since at least April 30, according to a federal document.
While the leak is manifestly smaller than the Deepwater Horizon spill, a 10-mile-long slick emanating from the Ocean Saratoga is visible from space in multiple images gathered by Skytruth.org, which monitors environmental problems using satellites.
Federal officials did not immediately respond when asked about the size of the leak, how long it had been flowing, or whether it was possible to plug it.
Skytruth first reported the leak on its website on May 15. Federal officials mentioned it in the May 1 trajectory map for the Deepwater Horizon spill, stating that oil from the Ocean Saratoga spill might also be washing ashore in Louisiana.
Officials with Diamond Offshore, which owns the drilling rig, said that they could not comment on the ongoing spill and referred the Press-Register to well owner Taylor Energy Co., which hired Diamond. Taylor Energy officials did not return calls seeking comment.
You can be sure BP and the U.S. Coast Guard know about this. Reporter Raines adds: "Officials at the National Response Center said that the spill had been reported, but would not say when it began." (emphasis added)
More evidence of a lack of transparency? Certainly. It's an oil company, for pete's sake. What do you expect?
You can be sure this second oil well leak is being watched with interest, if not glee, in the corporate lawyer offices and boardroom of BP. Every leaking barrel of oil BP can blame on some other oil company is another barrel of money in the pockets of BP shareholders.
If the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder didn't know about this before, they do now. Sometimes it's smart lawyering to hold your tongue and wait for the other guy to have his say, even though it may frustrate the client (or in this case 330 million anxious Americans). But we can't imagine why the Government isn't publicly addressing this second oil company disaster.
Aerial photos taken by J. Henry Fair are expected to be posted soon on the web site of Industrialscars.com.
5. Worst Truth.
When things are getting worse they can always get 'worser.' Florida's senior senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), made news yesterday when he told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that BP's Deepwater Horizon oil may be leaking from the seabed surrounding the wellhead. The assertion is, as of this writing, unverified.
Bmaz, the nom de blog of a Phoenix attorney who writes for Firedog Lake and Marcy Wheeler's Emptywheel, adds this alongside a video of Nelson's remarks:
This is potentially huge and devastating news. If Nelson is correct in that assertion, and he is smart enough to not make such assertions lightly, so I think they must be taken at face value, it means the well casing and well bore are compromised and the gig is up on containment pending a completely effective attempt to seal the well from the bottom via successful “relief wells”.
In fact, I have confirmed with Senator Nelson’s office that they are fully aware of the breaking news and significance of what the Senator said to Andrea Mitchell.
If and when Senator Nelson's information is verified, it means the hoped-for August "relief well" won't necessarily stop the leak, either.
6. Yet Another Hard Truth.
If all that -- bad weather forecast, a second leaking rig in the Gulf, and rising suspicion (as yet unconfirmed) that BP's Deepwater Horizon well is leaking at the seafloor -- isn't enough to depress you, then contemplate BP'sother ongoing oil leak in Alaska:
While the focus has been on the BP oil rig explosion and crude oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP’s other spill of more than 100,000 gallons of oil in Alaska has been completely overshadowed.The Alaska Pipeline is owned by BP and is dangerously corroded and unmaintained. This neglect caused the pipe to burst and spill gallons of oil off the coast of Alaska.
“No one is watching,” said investigative journalist Greg Palast.
No one watching? Maybe that's because everybody around the world is too busy trying to keep decades of BP neglect from ruining their own shores.
7. Petrol Pols.
Locally, Independent News publisher Rick Outzen answers his mail. Here's a shortened version, as we would have edited his reply:
Florida attorney general Bill McCollum spends too much time writing letters and making self-serving campaign stops. Tell him to go back to the office and not to come out until he files suit against BP.
The governor said it was "pretty definite'' he would call for a legislative special session as early as July to consider a constitutional amendment that would ban offshore drilling off Florida, coupled with the possibility of looking at renewable energy options, in an effort to move toward "more green'' technologies.
Most news journalists are in love with the story. When the story begins, say, with a spectacular explosion followed by a continuing oil leak of historic proportions, they want to know how it all will end. If the story seems be unfolding too slowly for their tastes, they grow querulous and impatient. They want to see the disastrous climax now.
If they can't have it, then some of them turn to writing peevish headlines like the one in today's Pensacola News Journal ["Where's the Oil?"] and captious complaints like Cain Burdeau's lede for the Associated Press: "For a spill now nearly half the size of Exxon Valdez, the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is pretty hard to pin down."
To be sure, Burdeau quickly returns to the objective voice of the Impartial Journalist and tells us exactly where the oil can be found, just as shown by the imagery (above) at the Center for Southeast Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) of the University of Miami:
Satellite images show most of an estimated 4.6 million gallons of oil has pooled in a floating, shape-shifting blob off the Louisiana coast. Some has reached shore as a thin sheen, and gooey bits have washed up as far away as Alabama. But the spill is 23 days old since the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and killed 11 workers, and the thickest stuff hasn't shown up on the coast.
Still, Mr. Burdeau can't help himself from continuing to carp, "So, where's the oil? Where's it going to end up?"
This chronic impatience well may account for the chronically lousy job journalists do with news stories that don't lend themselves to a quick wrap-up. We're thinking, for example, of global climate change, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Dick Cheney's still-secret meetings with oil industry executives at the outset of the George Bush administration, and the century-long collapse of the Chicago Cubs.
Like children, one suspects the attention span of journalists grows shorter with every new television season. We don't know what's to be done about it. Somehow, the news mavens must find a way to sustain their own interest in slow to develop, long-lasting disasters if the public is to be expected to pay attention.
2. Out of Sight, Out of Life.
Though the whereabouts of the oil spill may be out of sight for most journalists, that doesn't mean it's disappeared or that it's a benign presence. National Geographic points out ["Dead Zone in the Making?"] that --
Even if oil never washes up in the refuge, the region's birds may be silenced if the crude lingers deep in the Gulf of Mexico, experts say.
That's because 5,000 barrels of oil (210,000 gallons, or 794,937 liters) a day are thought to be bleeding from a damaged wellhead at the nearby site of the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster. All that oil is poisoning the less photogenic creatures—plankton, sand crabs, and fish larvae, among others—at the base of the region's food web, Schweiger noted.
If the oil spill can't be contained, the Gulf of Mexico could have another "dead zone in the making," according to Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)
As surely as disaster will follow if we continue ignoring the scientific data on global warming, BP's oil spill will have catastrophic consequences up and down the western hemisphere's food chain if Americans do not learn from it.
For anyone using the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound as a visual reference point, it might look as though the Gulf spill so far is a dodged bullet.
But the differences between the two events are significant, cautions Michelle Wood, a marine biologist who recently became head of the ocean chemistry division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic and Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. Not the least of those differences is the seascape into which the oil is flowing.
The Exxon Valdez spill involved a large, single, intense pulse of oil into Prince William Sound – "a shallow, near-shore environment with a rocky coast," she explains. The heavy crude had lots to cling to as it came ashore. In the Gulf, "spill" is a so-far continuous infusion of a lighter grade oil, which at least initially forms a foamy mousse rather than tarry blobs. And so far, the oil has remained far at sea. * * * The system is chaotic enough that given enough time, say 90 days, oil in some form could wind up anywhere from the Mexican Coast to Palm Beach, research suggests. * * * Once it reaches the surface, currents and ever-shifting winds can carry the oil just about anywhere, adds Peter Niiler, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., who has conducted extensive studies of current patterns in the Gulf.
Results of a 5-year experiment by Peter Niiler of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., give some idea of who along the Gulf Coast most likely will be effected: everyone.
In a five-year experiment in the late 1990s, Dr. Niiler and a colleague dropped between 700 and 800 drifters – devices to help track currents -– into the Gulf at locations where offshore drilling was taking place.
Within 90 days, the drifters could be anywhere in the Gulf, including Mexico or even as far away as Miami Beach, he says.
4. Floating "Vessels."
Speaking of unpredictable drifting, this week hundreds of lawsuits were filed against BP, Transocean, and Halliburton over the mounting losses caused by the continuing oil spill. The oil corporations are responding with legal filings in Houston which allege that oil platform owner Transocean enjoys limited liability under an 1851 act of Congress still on the books and as owner of the oil platform its liability is limited to no more than $27 million.
1851? That's the year Herman Melville published Moby Dick! This is, as the saying goes, an argument only a lawyer could love. Transocean became a foreign company two years ago when it moved its headquarters from the U.S. to Switzerland. It owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that blew up on April 20.
Because underwater drilling rigs can be floated from one well to the next, the argument goes, it is a "vessel" at sea. Accordingly, Transocean is arguing that it is protected by "Limitation of Liability Act of 1851" and owes the entire universe of claimants no more than a grand total of $26 million and change.
Under the LLA of 1851, a vessel owner is liable only for the post-accident value of the vessel and cargo, so long as the owner can show he or she had no knowledge of negligence in the accident, maritime lawyers say. Since “the remains of the. . . Deepwater Horizon now lay sunken” about a mile deep in the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the value of the rig and its cargo comes to no more than $26,764,083, Transocean claims in the filing. Before the accident, the rig was worth around $650 million.
Federal court procedural rules make special provision for admiralty lawsuits. Under Supplemental Rule F (9) --
The complaint shall be filed in any [Federal court] district in which the vessel has been attached or arrested to answer for any claim with respect to which the plaintiff seeks to limit liability; or, if the vessel has not been attached or arrested, then in any district in which the owner has been sued with respect to any such claim. When the vessel has not been attached or arrested to answer the matters aforesaid, and suit has not been commenced against the owner, the proceedings may be had in the district in which the vessel may be, [1]but if the vessel is not within any district and no suit has been commenced in any district, then the complaint may be filed in any district. For the convenience of parties and witnesses, [2] in the interest of justice, the court may transfer the action to any district; if venue is wrongly laid the court shall dismiss or, if it be in the interest of justice, transfer the action to any district in which it could have been brought. If the vessel shall have been sold, the proceeds shall represent the vessel for the purposes of these rules. [numerals added]
You can see where this likely is headed. One obvious point-counterpoint is [1] because "the vessel is not within any district" Transocean (and BP, following it) are seeking the oil-friendly venue of Houston, Texas. But [2] lawyers representing hundreds of individual claimants and perhaps tens upon tens of thousands of potential class members likely will be claiming "the interests of justice" require all their cases be returned to a Multi-District court panel in Louisiana.
And that is just one coupling of the arguments. There will be many more -- whether an oil rig fixed to the ocean floor is a "vessel;" if so whether it was within a federal court "district" other than Southern Texas; whether on balance "the interests of justice" of injured claimants outweigh those of needy oil companies; whether the insurance proceeds to be paid fix a minimum value for the rig; etc., etc., etc. And each of those seemingly dry procedural arguments are, in theory, subject to appeal in higher courts.
The WSJ sums up --
[I]n actuality, the Act very rarely helps companies limit liability. It can, however, allow a defendant to gain some control over the legal process, since a judge could place a stay on all pending litigation, which would then have to be refiled in the federal court where the limitation of liability was sought. Vessel owners routinely seek protection under the act following accidents at sea, lawyers said.
Pensacola Beach residents who've had experience with property insurance claims law after the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 will recognize what's really going on here. The oil companies are sending a message: 'If you think the environmental effects of the BP oil spill are destined to last a lifetime, wait until your great-grandchildren live long enough to see the end of your lawsuit.'
Standing on the White House lawn, Barack Obama can throw all the "angry" fits he wants over the "ridiculous spectacle" of oil companies publicly blaming each other during congressional hearings. Obama is a lawyer. He knows what's really going on in the courtroom clinches. The oil companies are a tag-team, united in one purpose: to beat down all the fishermen, unemployed service workers, tourist-dependent businesses, beach front property owners, and other claimants.
They'll need a lot more from the president than angry rhetoric.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) late yesterday banned commercial and recreational fishing "for a minimum of ten days in federal waters most affected by the BP oil spill, largely between Louisiana state waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River to waters off Florida’s Pensacola Bay." Locally, that grounds fishing boats that put out to sea for fish warehouses and commercial sellers as well as charter fishing boats. According to NOAA:
[T]here are 3.2 million recreational fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico region who took 24 million fishing trips in 2008. Commercial fishermen in the Gulf harvested more than 1 billion pounds of finfish and shellfish in 2008.
All "finfish, crabs, oysters and shrimp" are included in the ban. NOAA scientists will continue evaluating the "evolving nature" of the spreading river of oil and will "re-evaluate closure areas" as "appropriate."
2. All of Florida May Be Affected.
Concerns are growing, as we mentioned yesterday, that the oil spill could spread from the Northwest corner of Florida all the way south to the Keys. Now, Duke University coastal biology expert Larry Crowder has weighed in:
"There's a real potential there, a big problem," he told Sarah Larimer of Associated Press. "The biggest concern I would say from a Florida perspective is that once the oil gets entrained on the Loop Current it will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."
As Larimer explains:
The Gulf's waters come through the Yucatan Strait between Mexico and Cuba, then circulate in what's called the Loop Current, before sweeping south along Florida's west coast. There they head into the Florida Straits and pass along the string of islands that make up the Florida Keys eventually to form the Gulf Stream, the world's most powerful sustained ocean current. The force sweeps up the East Coast of the United States before ending in the North Atlantic.
"The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our gulf states and it could extend for a long time,” Mr. Obama said. "It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home."
To be sure, Obama was (sigh, once again) trying to triangulate a political compromise with Republican right-wing senators, including Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. But how much longer can he get away with treating Republican recusants more kindly than the Democratic faithful like Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL)?
4. How Deep Is the Ocean?
That's the title of an old torch song by Irving Berling. It's also the lyric to new questions being raised right here in Pensacola.
Papantonio also said that the Deep Horizon well was only permitted to be 18,000-ft. deep, but BP was drilling the well to 25,000-ft. "This screwed up all the permutations on how to deal with this problem," says Papantonio. "The engineers were thinking the well was only at 18,000 ft."
It's not clear from Rick's report where Papantonio gets this information. The BP drilling application which we referenced Saturday explicitly mentions a "depth limit" for the exploratory well of "5,328 feet bml," or below the mud line. Perhaps the actual permit was more restrictive. Or, perhaps, something was lost in translation.
In any event, public scrutiny of every promise BP Corp. made to, and permission it received, from the governing Mineral Management Services agency is warranted. This is the same agency, after all, which during the Bush Administration years was having sex and drug parties with employees of the very energy companies they are supposed to regulate. When it comes to MMS, everything it has done bears thorough investigation.
5. Sans Safety Valve.
In the same interview, Outzen reports Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. also complained that:
[T]he BP well not only didn’t have the acoustical, emergency valve that could have shut it off, but was also lacking a deep-hole valve that would have also been able to stop the leaking of 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico.
“The acoustical valve is a device required all over the world,” says Papantonio. “In Norway, you can’t drill in the ocean without one.”
In a companion article, Outzen also reports Papantonio saying, "BP... 'parachuted' a corporate team into the Gulf Coast area that is offering local fisherman $5,000 to use their boats." The contracts contain fine print that purports to "prevent the fisherman from suing BP."
That ugly display of BP's corporate ethics has been well established in the past twenty-four hours. Last night, the Mobile Register reported
BP had distributed a contract to fishermen it was hiring that waived their right to sue BP and required confidentiality and other items, sparking protests in Louisiana and elsewhere.
So, BP is running a "fine print" scam. Alabama Attorney General Troy King "has told representatives of BP that they should stop circulating settlement agreements among coastal Alabamians." A mere spokesman for BP by email told the Mobile Register the company "will not enforce any waivers that have been signed in connection with this activity."
Yeah, right. The fishermen now have word of a PR flack-catcher. That'll stand up in court about as long as the Marx Brothers' "Sanity Clause."
7. Unrepentant Scoundrels.
Über right-wing crazies Bill Kristol, Neil Cavuto, and the entire Fox News team in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster think oil companies now should be allowed to drill closer to the Gulf coast. Really, they do.
A discouraging AP report by Seth Borenstein suggests if you sat down and modeled a "worst case" kind of oil spill, the BP Deepwater Horizon would be it:
Experts tick off the essentials: A relentless flow of oil from under the sea; a type of crude that mixes easily with water; a resultant gooey mixture that is hard to burn and even harder to clean; water that's home to vulnerable spawning grounds for new life; and a coastline with difficult-to-scrub marshlands.Gulf Coast experts have always talked about "the potential for a bad one," said Wes Tunnell, coastal ecology and oil spill expert at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
"And this is the bad one. This is just a biggie that finally happened." * * * The first analysis of oil spill samples showed it contains asphalt-like substances that make a major sticky mess, he said. This is because the oil is older than most oil in the region and is very dense.
This oil also emulsifies well, [LSU Professor Ed] Overton said. Emulsification is when oil and water mix thoroughly together, like a shampoo, which is mostly water, said Penn State engineering professor Anil Kulkarni.
It "makes a thick gooey chocolate mousse type of mix," Kulkarni said.
And once it becomes that kind of mix, it no longer evaporates as quickly as regular oil, doesn't rinse off as easily, can't be eaten by oil-munching microbes as easily, and doesn't burn as well, experts said.
That type of mixture essentially removes all the best oil clean-up weapons, Overton and others said.
If that weren't enough, it's now spawning season for fish and time for marshland plants to fragment, bud, and otherwise reproduce; the windy weather and strong currents offshore have been unfavorable; the river of oil will overwhelm many marshlands that are harder to clean than sandy beaches; and, of course, a new hurricane season is looming.
On this last point, LSU professor Ed Overton says, "A hurricane is Mother Nature's vacuum cleaner. Normally it cleans things up. But that's not a solution with a continuing spill."
2. Who Could Have Predicted?
We commented the other day about all the similarities between BP's Deepwater Horizon oil leak and the oil platform disaster last year in Australia's Timor Sea.
An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history, drilling experts said Thursday.
The process is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. Cement, pumped down the well from the drilling rig, is also used to plug wells after they have been abandoned or when drilling has finished but production hasn't begun.In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn't known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast.
Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which was leased by BP PLC, the British oil giant. * * * Houston-based Halliburton is the largest company in the global cementing business, which accounted for $1.7 billion, or about 11%, of the company's revenue in 2009,
3. Come Monday.
The Pensacola News Journal reports the river of oil from BP's Deepwater Horizon well is expected to reach Pensacola as early as Monday. Also from the Pensacola News Journal, Escambia County Commissioners have come up with what they call a "plan" to seal off Pensacola Bay's East Pass.
It looks to us more like a Hail Mary pass:
The plan is to use about 30,000 feet of boom — now at Pensacola Naval Air Station, a staging area for oil company BP's response to the slick — and BP's resources to set up a "V-shaped" barrier across East Pensacola Pass to catch the oil.* * * The hope is that the floating pools of oil coming into the pass will funnel into the center point of the "V," where there will be a "skimmer" or collection area where the oil can be removed, Turpin said.
On its web site, the News Journal is running a suspiciously cheesy-looking map showing a large, red-colored "V" superimposed on what seems to be an old NOAA satellite photo of the East Pass into Pensacola Bay. (Click here or on the image to the left). Better than nothing, perhaps, but if that's all the local governments have, good luck to us. 4. Boom-Boom.
As the Mobile Register reported late last night, typically --
About 1 foot of the boom sits above the surface. Waves taller than that can lap over a boom, something that had been reported Friday off the coast of Louisiana.
The tides will be over 1 foot on Monday, but moderate after that. However, Weather Underground (working as everyone does from NOAA data) is forecasting vigorous seas of 5 to 9 feet through Monday. it will be subsiding to a "light chop" of 2 to 3 feet by Wednesday. Wavefinder more or less agrees.
The nefarious thing, of course, is that no one can forecast the seas for the next three months, which Senator Bill Nelson identifies as the time it will take to drill a new hole and seal off the leaking Deepwater Horizon leak. And that assumes the wellhead doesn't blow.
Bring on the booms, but no one should expect them to be more than a band-aid on the bleeding rivers of oil.
Speaking of tides, J. Earle Bowden, justly known as the "Father of Gulf Islands National Seashore," understandably takes just about every politician in Florida to the woodshed -- along with President Obama -- for promoting an "oily future" for our "vulnerable Florida beaches" and "potentially shattering the state's mostly clean tourism economy."
Obama he derides as "Mr. Green, playing into the political intrigue, throwing proponents a bone, echoing McCain's willingness to pollute coastal waters to help wean America from its Mideastern obsession." Coming in for a double dose of venom are Governor Charlie Crist, Congressman Jeff ("Mr. Oil Spill") Miller, and those "South Florida politicians who seek to please the Big Oil lobby."
Bowden rants:
I cannot believe insensitive politicians, including Rep. Jeff Miller and U.S. Senate aspirant Charlie Crist, buying John McCain's "Drill, Baby! Drill!" desperation pitch before his campaign for the presidency was shipwrecked on the tides of Obamadom.
Oddly, it's becoming almost impossible to find anyone here in Tea Party country who will admit to having joined in that "drill, baby, drill" chorus. Just yesterday, we found ourselves being passed by a pickup truck that was sporting a "drill, baby, drill" bumper sticker, half-torn off.
We take that as sign that very soon now, all the oily politicians and their Tea Party supporters will be madly trying to erase their despicable records.
Reality is so unfair to right-wingers.
6. Blame Game.
It appears no one -- not BP, not escambia County, not even the federal government -- knows what the hell to do about the river of oil flowing over the Gulf Coast for what may be several months. So, instead of sucking their fingers, federal officials have begun pointing them at BP Corp., and corporate officials are quietly trying to stick them in the eye of federal government's MMS.
At the heart of the story is BP's February, 2009 application to commence drilling at the Deepwater Horizon site. The multi-page application is here in pdf format. Below are some tantalizing excerpts we captured on the screen. Click on each image to read the original.
BP doesn't have a Deepwater Horizon "blowout scenario plan"
But BP does claim to have the "capability to respond" to the "worse-case scenario"
It looks like there's plenty of blame to go around:
U. S. Mineral Management Services "required" to "inspect" and ensure "compliance"
If BP's word can be trusted -- no sure thing -- the well also complied with Louisiana and Mississippi state law:
The Deepwater Horizon purportedly complied with Louisiana legal requirements:
