May 5, 2010
Anderson Cooper wonders what the barry administration was doing the first few days of the oil spill.
While everyone outside the barry administration wonders what Anderson Cooper was doing.
It’s fascinating how Cooper, like Herr Olbermann, who tries to portray encyclopedic knowledge of all things barry, have complete amnesia when it comes to barry’s most recent stance on offshore driling.
As usual, all problems lead back to President Bush.
COOPER: Want to bring you up to date on the Gulf oil spill and what we have discovered about the failure of government oversight over the years.
They don’t seem to realize that every time they use the argument that it’s Bush’s fault, they highlight how little barry has done to correct anything. I mean to CHANGE! things.
Investigative journalism:
AC: We’re talking about 210,000 gallons still pouring out every single day. Now, crews today managed a pair of what they call controlled burns, lighting off oil patches near the ruptured wellhead.
We don’t have any pictures of it.
NASA and Google Earth had plenty of photos for CNN and the WH to look at on their Blackberries.
Then he talks with Rice University presidential historian Douglas Brinkley about Michael Brown’s comments on FOX about barry wanting the oil spill to spread so offshore drilling will be shut down…even though barry just weeks ago said he was for it…and the familiar words – bizarre, crazy, conspiracy theory – surface like they always do when somone invokes free speech re: our Dear Leader!
AC: It’s — it’s bizarre and kind of stunning that he — it’s kind of just — I don’t know if crazy is the right word, but, I mean, what do you make of this?
BRINKLEY: Well, Michael Brown was the worst director in FEMA’s relatively short history. But he did an abysmal job handling the Katrina situation. Even the Bush administration later recognized it, Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, canning him. I think he’s a very wounded person, has had some psychological damage from being the pinata of the press back in 2005, and is trying to surface during this particular offshore drilling crisis and offer some kind of conspiratorial theory about President Obama. It wasn’t helpful. It wasn’t smart. And I think we have probably seen the last of him on the TV circuit for a little while.
What can one say about a man who actually believes this?
AC: You know, we really try on this show not to take sides, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, just trying to get facts out there.
And where was CNN?
AC: To me, what we don’t know about the Obama administration’s response to this is, what sort of oversight in the early days — you know, they — the Obama administration is basically saying, look, we relied on BP when they said they sort of had this thing under control, that — that it — the leak wasn’t as good — as big as we later learned it was. It wasn’t until a week or eight days later that, you know, NOAA did overflights and actually saw and figured out, OK, this is actually five times worse than we think it is.
And how many days has it been since that?
AC: We don’t know, it seems to me, at this point what oversight, if any, they had over BP in those early days.
Why not then and why not now?
Though the Coast Guard was on the scene, you know, we don’t know — I don’t know, at least, what level the EPA was overseeing BP? Do you know that?
BRINKLEY:
Yes, to a degree, I know it.
I mean, what’s — what’s occurred, really, is that, I think, because this is such a politicized atmosphere right now, people have to understand, President Obama has been for offshore drilling. He was for it in the 2008 campaign. Just a month or weeks before the BP oil spill, he was encouraging more oil exploration and — and possibly offshore drilling in places like Virginia, and Florida, Alaska.
barry was just being a “bit lax”.
In addition to that, as your earlier report on MMS show, they were being lax, turning a bit of blind eye at MMS and letting companies like BP not have the rigid environmental standards that the National Environmental Policy Act demanded.
Nothing that happens is barry’s fault:
BRINKLEY: Now, a different question is, could the Obama administration have done something?
No.
This is British Petroleum’s oil spill
And what is barry’s answer to every crisis that has happens on his watch?
But what you’re going to have happen out of this is much tighter looking at — not stopping of offshore drilling in the Gulf, but you’re going to have tougher enforcement.
And political expedience will lead the way.
You’re going to have a new MMS that actually does its job. And I think President Obama has got some big political choices. One is, Shell Oil is looking this July to drill off of ANWR in Alaska. It’s very controversial. He has the Outer Continental Shelf Act on his side to stop Shell from doing that and, once and for all, save the Arctic refuge. So you’re going to keep your eye on Shell in Alaska in the coming weeks?
Who does Cooper expect to do the job?
COOPER: I — I mean, I’m still curious to learn who they had on- site in those early days of the spill, you know, watching and monitoring what BP was telling them. That — to me, that will be an interesting thing to see.
BRINKLEY: It’s going to — it’s going to be interesting. But people have to realize, the Gulf of Mexico, it is all sorts of — it’s an industrial zone. And people are drilling all the time, and a lot of offshore oil drilling is done safely.
Humor:
BRINKLEY: Where I think the Obama administration is facing a problem is going to be on its left. Environmentalists saying, “Why weren’t you more strictly enforcing the national Environmental Policy Act?”
And the rest of the folks on the left that he’s disappointed: Women, seniors, LGBT, blacks, peaceniks, unions, independents and barrymedia?
When are they going to get together and admit they have no idea who barry is?
