It is notoriously difficult to judge a presidency mid-stream.

The Florida Senate race has taken a turn that few people expected thanks to the political impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Just call it the latest in a two month series of public relations disasters by the CEO of BP: (AP)  In what one environmentalist described as “yet another public relations disaster” for embattled energy giant BP, CEO Tony Hayward took time off Saturday to attend a glitzy yacht race around England’s Isle of Wight. As [...]

While BP still struggles to turn off the gusher of oil seeping up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, one of its partners in the Deepwater Horizon is already assessing blame: BP’s three-front oil spill war — on the seafloor, on the Gulf Coast and in Congress — turned into a four-front battle [...]

Congressman Joe Barton’s clumsy, unnecessary, and politically stupid comments at Thursday’s House Committee hearing have already been turned into a television ad: Along the same lines, the Democrat faced with the unenviable task of running against Michelle Bachmann has come out with an ad featuring some of her comments: It’s not clear if this meme [...]

A day after being grilled by a Congressional Committee, Tony Hayward will apparently no longer be the public face of BP on the oil spill: BP’s chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg has told Sky’s Jeff Randall that embattled chief executive Tony Hayward is to have a changed role in dealing with the oil spill. Asked by Randall [...]

Via the TEDblog:  Aerial photos of the oil slick.

One of the most frequently heard stories coming out of the Gulf Region over the past two months is the extent to which bureaucracy is standing in the way of efforts to cleanup the oil spill and prevent it from causing further damage to coast areas. The most recent example of that can be seen [...]

Matthew Simmons, an oil industry insider who has been a prominent proponent of the Peak Oil hypothesis, says that we’re still not being told the complete truth about the oil leaking out of the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico:

Nate Silver uncovers at least one possible reason that Barton feels the need to go easy on BP:  click.

If you thought that Joe Barton and Michelle Bachmann had won today’s prize for dumbest comment by a Congressional Republican, well you haven’t met Congressman Parker Griffith of Alabama: In his opening statement at today’s BP hearing in the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Alabama Republican Parker Griffith downplayed the oil spill: The greatest [...]

To follow on from Doug’s post on Rep. Joe Barton’s apology to BP’s CEO, I noted last night the following, which I have not yet had time to write about. Via the Minnesota Independent: Bachmann calls oil spill victim escrow account ‘a redistribution-of-wealth fund’.  The article quotes Bachman as follows: The president just called for [...]

A new poll taken after the President’s Tuesday address brings bad news for the White House: Washington (CNN) – Six in ten Americans disapprove of how President Barack Obama’s handling the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a jump from last month, according to a new national poll. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey also [...]

The Congressional hearings on the BP oil spill are just starting, but we’ve already got the first headline of the day: WASHINGTON – A leading House Republican accused the White House Thursday of a “$20 billion shakedown” of oil giant BP by requiring the company to establish a huge fund to compensate those hurt by [...]

The President’s promise to kick some backside (and Doug’s post today) made me think of the following clip from Fawlty Towers:  click (through 28:03). Of course, one has to understand that the fellow making the threat is an American.  The episode itself (like the entire series) is a classic.

Last night Jon Stewart did an amusing, and spot-on, piece about the history of Presidential promises of “energy independence:” The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Last week, I noted that the British seemed to be taking the reaction of the Obama Administration, and Americans in general, quite personally, and perceiving it as an attack on Britain as a whole. Well, if their reaction to yesterday’s meeting between White House officials and BP Executives is any indication, the sentiment has not [...]

There was a minor tempest brewed up yesterday when Carl-Henric Svanberg, the Chairman of BP spoke outside the White House after the day-long meeting between BP Executives and White House staffers: “And we care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care. But that is [...]

Via the Guardian:  click.

One of the few concrete ideas to come out of President Obama’s speech last night appears to be a done deal: WASHINGTON — The White House and BP tentatively agreed on Wednesday that the oil giant would create a $20 billion fund to pay claims for the worst oil spill in American history. The fund [...]

While I am picking on the linguistic choices of the president, let me note that I think that “addiction” is the wrong word to describe the relationship between fossil fuels and our society. In the speech he used the term twice: For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction [...]

In his speech last night, President Obama said: The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is somehow too big and too difficult to meet.  You know, the same thing was said about our ability to produce enough planes and tanks in World War II.  The same thing was [...]

The one consistent fact about the Gulf Oil Spill is this; whatever the estimate of the rate of flow from the Deepwater Horizon well, the actual number is much higher: A government panel on Tuesday released yet another estimate of the amount of oil flowing from BP’s damaged well, declaring that as much as 60,000 [...]

President Obama used the prestige of his very first Oval Office speech to report to the American public on Day 57 of the Gulf Oil Spill Crisis, and it was, quite honestly, less than it should have been: WASHINGTON — President Obama summoned Americans on Tuesday to a “national mission” to move away from reliance [...]

Barack Obama isn’t exactly a popular person in Louisiana at the moment: Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama’s handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else- a majority of voters there think [...]

Via FoxSports Southwest:  Ex-Cowboys QBs Aikman, Bledsoe offer solution for clearing oil from gulf. How odd.

At least one element of the plan that President Obama plans to announce in his speech tonight has been leaked, and it sounds very familiar: WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, in his televised speech to the nation Tuesday, will announce the creation of an oil recovery “czar” to oversee progress in siphoning crude from the [...]

Via the BBC:  US oil spill: Mapping the oil slick.

A long-running annoyance of mine is the need for partisan critics of the president to wail about the president taking a vacation/playing golf/whatever. I would note that I have felt this way since Reagan (or, basically, since I have really been paying attention to these things). The latest example (via Jim Hoft):  Obama Tells Politico [...]

Last week, the financial markets seemed to finally start taking into account the possibility that the Gulf Oil Spill may force BP to seek protection in Bankruptcy Court: Pelicans, dolphins and other wildlife may not be able to escape the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, but investors in the corporation responsible for it [...]

Following up on Alex’s piece last night about the Obama Administration’s decision to back an effort by Japan and other nations to lift the international ban on whaling, the Sunday Times of London reveals this morning that Japan has engaged in questionable conduct as part of it’s effort to get the ban lifted: A SUNDAY [...]

On several occasions since oil started coming close to the Gulf Coast, members of the media have complained that they were being prevented from fully covering the story by BP workers or private security guards. When ABC’s Jake Tapper mentioned this to Admiral Thad Allen, the White House’s “man in charge” of the oil spill [...]

The Obama Administration is apparently working to lift the international moratorium on whale hunting. The Obama administration is leading an effort within the International Whaling Commission to lift a 24-year international ban on commercial whaling for Japan, Norway and Iceland, the remaining three countries in the 88-member commission that still hunt whales. The administration argues [...]

One of the most striking developments over the past several days has been news of the way that some Britons seem to be reacting to American anger at BP. It started with statements from Boris Johnson, the always outspoken Mayor London, who accused President Obama of using “anti-British rhetoric:” Boris Johnson has warned that the [...]

The New York Times’ Ron Lieber explains why the various movements calling on people to respond to the Gulf Oil Spill by boycotting BP gas stations doesn’t actually accomplish anything: Advocacy organizations like Public Citizen urge consumers to stay away from BP stations. About 550,000 Facebook users have clicked the “Like” button on the Boycott [...]

The BP/Baghdad Bob montage at the start of this clip is worth a look.   The Lewis Black interview, however, not so much.  While I think that Black can sometimes be extremely funny, interviewing him about the oil spill on a news show is just plain silly.   Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and [...]

A government panel is painting a far bleaker picture of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill: A government panel on Thursday essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into [...]

Hilarious and sad at the same time.

The first political casualty of the Deepwater Horizon disaster appears to have been the quasi-populist fervor for increased offshore oil drilling: Just a quarter of Americans back expanding offshore drilling in the wake of the BP oil spill, and most fault federal regulators for the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a [...]

Via ABC News:  Oil Spill Expert: BP Is ‘Groping In the Dark’

More bad news for the Obama Administration in a new ABC News poll about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill: By more than a 2-to-1 margin, Americans support the pursuit of criminal charges in the nation’s worst oil spill, with increasing numbers calling it a major environmental disaster. Eight in 10 criticize the way BP’s [...]

In an interview that will air tomorrow morning on Today, President Obama displays another example of what appears to be the “tough talk” strategy the White House adopted late last week on the Gulf Oil Spill: (CNN) — President Barack Obama bluntly defended his administration’s response to the undersea gusher fouling the Gulf of Mexico [...]

Last weekend, British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward got himself into no small degree of trouble for saying that he hoped the Gulf Oil Spill was over with quickly because “I’d like my life back.” This weekend, BP is out with an ad that seems to be causing more public relations problems for the embattled company: [...]

Via the BBC:  BP cap captures ’10,000 barrels’ a day in US Gulf A containment cap on a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico is now funnelling off 10,000 barrels of oil a day, BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward says. The amount has risen since Saturday, and implies more than half the estimated 12,000 [...]

Via the AP: Health officials: Beachgoers stay out of the water Dr. Donald Williamson, Alabama’s state health officer, said Friday the advisory applies to all of Alabama’s beaches and the bay waters adjacent to Fort Morgan on the Baldwin County shore. He said oil from the spreading BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico is [...]

Using Google Maps, someone has created an application that lets you see just how big the Gulf Oil Spill would be if it was centered in any other location on Earth. I dropped on Warrenton, Virginia: Yikes H/T: Bruce McQuain

Pundits such as  James Carville, Chris Matthews, Peggy Noonan, and Maureen Dowd have given President Obama a lot of heat lately for his response, or lack thereof, to the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and what’s becoming clear is that the longer this story goes on, the more that his entire Presidency is becoming consumed [...]

Texas Congressman Ron Paul thinks that the media and the public are being too hard on President Obama for his response to the Gulf Oil Spill: Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican lawmaker from Texas, said that people were expecting too much from the president in his ability to react to the ongoing spill into [...]

I’ve made no secret of my general disdain for Sarah Palin. But even populist attention whores sometimes shine the spotlight where it belongs. And she’s a far more right than wrong when she says “Drill, baby, drill” could very well have mitigated or even prevented the Gulf crisis. One has to be especially purblind no [...]

The market is beginning to speak when it comes to British Petroleum: As BP hacked away at a pipe gushing oil at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, investors sawed off 15 percent, or $21.1 billion, of the company’s market value Tuesday. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., during a trip to the Gulf [...]