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It's funny how right-wing talkers and their Beltway Village cohort really hate it when you point out how the lax regulatory oversight that resulted in the horrific Gulf oil spill originated in the Bush/Cheney administration.

Today at President Obama's press conference, it was Villager Chip Reid's turn to be all offended:

REID: Secondly with regard to the Minerals Management Service, Secretary Salazar yesterday basically blamed the Bush administration for the cozy relationship there.

And you seemed to suggest that when you spoke in the Rose Garden a few weeks ago when you said, for too long, a decade or more -- most of those years, of course, the Bush administration -- there's been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and federal agency that permits them to drill.

But you knew as soon as you came in, and Secretary Salazar did, about this cozy relationship. But you continued to give permits -- some of them under questionable circumstances. Is it fair to blame the Bush administration? Don't you deserve some of that?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well -- well, let -- let me just make the point that I made earlier, which is, Salazar came in and started cleaning house, but the culture had not fully changed in MMS. And absolutely, I take responsibility for that. There -- there wasn't sufficient urgency in terms of the pace of how those changes needed to take place.

There is no evidence that some of the corrupt practices that had taken place earlier took place under the current administration's watch, but a culture in which oil companies were able to get what they wanted, without sufficient oversight and regulation, that was a real problem. Some of it was constraints of the law, as I just mentioned. But we should have busted through those constraints.

This was just too much for Megyn Kelly and her right-wing pal Mike Gallagher, who devoted a post-conference panel on Fox bewailing how wrong it was for anyone to blame poor George W. Bush for any of this.

Gallagher burst into crocodile tears, saying it was wrong for people to blame Obama now -- because they shouldn't have been unhappy with Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina, either:

Gallagher: There has been way too much finger-pointing going on, and frankly, as a Bush supporter, it frustrates me to see Obama critics do the same kind of thing that people try to do with George Bush. Now, having said that, it does seem like that answer was trying to again have Barack Obama point the finger of blame at the Bush administration to some degree. It's regrettable. All of this finger-pointing is counter-productive.

You know, we could have done one of two things, Megyn with this horrible oil spill -- we could have reacted, or we could have responded. Now that finally this flow has stopped, may we go forward and respond and be proactive and, and learn from what went wrong.

But this was a tragic accident that should not have been laid at the doorstep of either George Bush or Barack Obama, or even BP for that matter! No one wanted this to happen, they did everything they could to respond appropriately, and I think the blame game has just been absolutely appalling. And it's very distressing, and it breaks my heart to see what's happened the past few days.

Yeah, we can't blame BP because they didn't want it to happen -- they just decided to take the cheaper and far riskier route when drilling this well, thanks to the handy green light they got from the Bush/Cheney MMS.

Fortunately, the panel's token liberal, radio host Mark Levine, managed to make the salient point about all this:

Levine: Look, we've learned one thing -- if you don't learn from history, you're condemned to repeat it. The Republicans and conservatives have a philosophy -- they'll tell it to you all the time. They don't like any kind of government regulation, they trust corporations to do the right thing, they want government to get off the back of corporations, and not to regulate anything!

And we see what happens. When the Bush administration fills these regulatory agencies with a bunch of people watching porn and not caring, in bed with the oil companies.

This just produced more crocodile tears from Gallagher: "This makes me so sad," he said. Yeah, we bet. So sad.

After all, we recall how right-wing defenders of Bush, for the entirety of his tenure, blamed every conceivable obstacle he faced on Bill Clinton.

The first Bush recession? Clinton's fault. The 9/11 attacks? Definitely Clinton's fault. (Remember The Path to 9/11?) Indeed, they even tried to blame the 2008 Bush recession on Bill Clinton. They never gave up.

And of course, before Barack Obama was even sworn into office, they began calling the last Bush recession "the Obama recession"

Well, as we observed last time we heard this whine:

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Do you ever get the feeling that the Earth is screaming? That's what it feels like to me. Our short-sided policies and greed have already caused so much damage, and it's possible this time we've simply gone too far. Pray, cross your fingers, send good thoughts that this plug works:

If BP fails to plug its ruptured offshore oil well, intense underground pressure would be enough to pump vast quantities of thick brown crude into the Gulf of Mexico for months, even years.

If even BP’s backup plans fail, it would cause a pollution disaster "heretofore unseen by humanity," said one expert.

It is this rapidly accelerating realization that is giving BP’s attempt Wednesday to cap the well new political and environmental urgency.

The worst-case scenario is hoped and believed to be a continued flow of 5,000 barrels per day, and by some estimates vastly more, until August, when BP completes “relief wells” to intercept the damaged well.

But, experts say, there are no sure things when operating equipment a mile under the water and 13,000 feet below the ocean floor.

Professor Tad Patzek, who heads the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas-Austin, gives the relief well a 90 percent chance of success. But he’d rather not consider the other 10 percent.

“As a petroleum professional, I don’t even admit the possibility that that might be possible,” he said when asked about a failure to stop the flow. “That would be an environmental disaster of a caliber that was heretofore unseen by humanity.”

Patzek estimates at least 20,000 barrels of oil and an equal amount of gas would flow daily for years from the reservoir, which he estimates to hold roughly 50 million to 100 million barrels.

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Michael Ware reporting from Afghanistan, Sept. 2009

All things CNN:

We won't be seeing any more of Michael on CNN...

In addition to having taken a break recently in order to work on his book, it is no secret that he has been grappling with PTSD, brought on from the hellish years he worked in Baghdad. I was told that, unfortunately, when he needed more time off in order to deal with things, his request was denied. So he will not be returning.

While it is a huge loss for us (and for CNN) I am extremely relieved that he chose to take care of his own needs first. And while I sincerely hope that he will return to US television someday on another network, it is far more important that he gets the care he needs.

His work for CNN over the past four years has been an astonishing and brutally honest look at the causes and results of war. Not easy subject matter to watch… but he made us care. His urgency and passion burst through our television sets and made us pay attention, made us want to understand.[..]

And exactly how does a news organization justify (to themselves, even!) not giving their war correspondents whatever they need in order to deal with their wounds, whether they are visible ones or not? If ABC had treated Bob Woodruff so callously, there would have been hell to pay. I don’t doubt they wanted him back in the field ASAP — doubly so after losing Christiane Amanpour — but don’t force him to make a choice between getting better and getting paid. That just sucks. Surely it would be better to have him off the air but still yours once he is ready to come back than to have him off the air and someone else’s upon his return? So not only has CNN made a callous move here, they have made a stupid one, as well.

What a tremendous asset he has been to CNN. And how foolish they are to lose him.

Michael War was a breath of fresh air with his reporting in the Gulf. Look at how he blew past the empty rhetoric of Bush and generals,Petraeus, Condi Rice, Lieberman and McCain with brutal and unflinching honesty about the conditions there. I can only imagine the nightmares he still endures. And CNN's response to his pain (which Men's Journal covered in Dec. 2008 in a powerful interview with Ware) was to tell him he wasn't allowed any more time to come to terms with the death and destruction he saw daily for years for their benefit. Instead, they hire one of the great armchair soldiers, Erick Erickson.

C&L sends our best wishes to the family and friends of Martin Bosworth, who passed away yesterday.

Martin was a strong and clear voice, gifted writer and valuable advocate in the progressive blogosphere. He was a founding member of Scholars&Rogues, Boztopia.com and the Managing Editor of ConsumerAffairs.com An official cause of death has not been announced, but it is believed he died of a heart attack. Martin was just 35.

Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal and Elana Levin at Daily Kos honor Martin's memory. He will be missed by many.

One of Martin's more recent posts speak to the urgency of fixing our broken health care system after a health scare of his own pointed out its glaring deficiencies:

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Obama's tax proposal has disturbed Wall Street so much, according to this New York Times story, that the CEOs are going over the heads of their own lobbyists to plead their case directly with senators. (Perhaps even lobbyists draw the line at outright bribes?) This was my favorite sentence in the entire story: "The big banks, the lobbyists say, have become increasingly alarmed that the legislative process may move in unexpected directions outside their control."

Heh. We can only hope so:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s proposals to tax and curb the activities of Wall Street have thrown an unpredictable element into the debate over financial regulatory reform. They also have touched off an intensive new round of lobbying and raised questions in Congress over whether his plan will add urgency or merely bog things down.

For two months, four pairs of Senate Banking Committee members — each with one Democrat and one Republican — have been meeting behind closed doors to reach a bipartisan compromise on regulatory reform. The House already adopted its version, largely along partisan lines, in December.

The new White House approach has already prompted the Senate panel, led by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, to interrupt those negotiations. On Tuesday, in the first of several hearings on Mr. Obama’s proposals, the committee will hear from Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, and the deputy Treasury secretary, Neal S. Wolin.

Olympia Snowe said she would vote for the Baucus bill and she did.

She has voted and the bill has passed 14-9.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the lone Republican to support the package. "My vote today is my vote today. It doesn't forecast what my vote will be tomorrow," she said, although her vote does keep her at the negotiating table and at the center of the health care reform debate. Snowe risked marginalizing herself with a no vote.

The year after both Truman and Clinton's failed efforts, the Republican Party retook control of Congress and any hope of reform faded to minority status. President Obama intends to avoid the same fate.

With the bill having officially moved through the panel, deliberations will migrate to the Capitol, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will huddle with Senate leaders to merge the finance bill with a more generous version from the health committee which passed earlier this year.

There are more votes to come in the Senate, so this thing is far from over.

And she is getting heat from the GOP for her vote and are looking to strip her of a chance at a chairmanship. Adam Green writes:

From The Hill, "Sens: Snowe may be risking a high perch on healthcare reform vote":

Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) is risking a shot at becoming the top Republican on an influential Senate committee by backing Democratic healthcare legislation, according to senators on the panel.

..."A vote for healthcare would be something that would weigh on our minds when it came time to vote," said a Republican on Commerce, who said Snowe would otherwise be assured of the ranking member post if not for the healthcare debate.

Wow. The GOP is doing something to her that we've been asking Harry Reid to do to Holy Joe. Remember when we asked Reid to strip Joe of his chairmanship because he campaigned with McCain?

Harry told us that Lieberman is with the Dems on everything except the war?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday he's still trying to keep Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman within the Democratic caucus despite anger over Lieberman's support of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

While he has opposed Democratic efforts to end the war in Iraq, "Joe Lieberman votes with me a lot more than a lot of my senators," Reid told CNN's "Late Edition."

Here's Joe attacking the public option.

Lieberman is a big NO on the Public Option, now calls it 'universal access' for health care. I'm NOT kidding

Lieberman has been standing in the way of health-care reform all along.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman affirmed on Tuesday what progressive health care reform advocates have long feared: At this juncture, he is likely to oppose a public option for health insurance coverage.

--

For Democrats, it was a shot to the gut -- the latest so-called centrist lawmaker from within their own party ranks speaking out against one of their most cherished aspects of health care reform. For all the angst Lieberman has caused within Democratic circles the past few years, he was supposed to be an ally on domestic issues.

He also joined the Republicans when they said they wanted to slow things down.

We want Lieberman stripped if he stands in the way of an up-or-down vote, but as usual the Democratic leadership refuses to dig in.

From Politico, "Dem leaders brush off the left":

Now, more than 79,000 people have signed a Progressive Change Campaign Committee petition urging Reid to strip the chairmanship of any Democratic senator who votes to filibuster health care reform.

The response from Reid’s No. 2, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): "We’ve never done that. We’re not going to do that."

Durbin said the petitioners needed to "count to 60 and understand we need to be together, and there are times when we need to work out our differences."

"This is a silly and unnecessary distraction that is not going to happen — period," added a Senate Democratic leadership aide. "Given how important this is to the rest of his agenda, it is up to President Obama to help the leadership to hold the caucus together."

The GOP threatens Snowe and the Dems do nothing to the appeasers of the obstructionist right. It's infuriating.

It's all about that up-or-down vote, and it's something we need to push hard on, as Digby says:

Anyway, those last comments probably tell us where the filibuster issue is, in my opinion. The leadership aide says that Obama needs to step up to twist those arms, which one assumes from the comment, he is not doing. And Dick Durbin, who is Obama's staunchest supporter in the Senate, is basically saying that nobody's going to play hardball. So, there you have it. At least for today.

As I've been writing for a while, it's all about cloture. There's no need for them to vote for the final bill, they just need to allow their president and the people of the United States to have a simple up or down vote on health care reform. And there is a cluster of egos in the centrist caucus (not the least of whom is Holy Joe) that is getting ready to stamp their little feet and hold their breath until they turn blue unless someone, goddamn it, finally understands that they are the most important people in the world.

Please sign Adam Green's petition to Harry Reid:

I'd expect weakness from Reid and lameness from Lieberman/Bayh/Landrieu. Dick Durbin being completely unstrategic -- I wouldn't have expected that as much. Shame on him. Tomorrow, the PCCC delivers our petitions to Harry Reid telling him to get a backbone. Sign it here.

BBC:

Climate change campaigner Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Congratulations to Al Gore! His office has issued this statement (from an email):

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis--a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

Paul Krugman: (reg req)

Apologists for the administration will doubtless claim that blame for the lack of progress rests not with Mr. Bush, but with the inherent inefficiency of government bureaucracies. That's the great thing about being an antigovernment conservative: even when you fail at the task of governing, you can claim vindication for your ideology. But bureaucracies don't have to be this inefficient. The failure to get moving on reconstruction reflects lack of leadership at the top.

Mr. Bush could have moved quickly to turn his promises of reconstruction into reality. But he didn't. As months dragged by with little sign of White House action, all urgency about developing a plan for reconstruction ebbed away.

Mr. Bush could have appointed someone visible and energetic to oversee the Gulf Coast's recovery, someone who could act as an advocate for families and local governments in need of help. But he didn't. How many people can even name the supposed reconstruction "czar"?

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Tweety makes like McClellan and defends Cheney's delayed press notifications. There's more of Gregory and Scotty. Did Chris actually think that it would have been a walk in the park for Scotty today?

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (vid and transcript by David Edwards)

Now I am probably not telling you anything new in this title, but when I saw this op-ed by William Kristol in his Weekly Standard magazine (hat tip to Matt Y), I just suddenly got this pounding headache and resulting furious reaction.

In areas where policies are still being debated--in foreign policy in particular--conservatives need to keep urging Obama to do the right thing. We are disgusted with Obama's irresoluteness on Afghanistan. But we continue to urge that he side with the experienced military leaders he's been fortunate to inherit against the second-guessing of political hacks (and of failed ex-generals turned political hacks). We conservatives want American soldiers to win wars, American interests to prevail, and American principles to flourish. We want the bad guys to lose. We're happy to work with President Obama to defeat them--and we only wish he shared our clarity and urgency about accomplishing that task.

That is to say, Obama should only listen to active duty generals like Petraus (USCENTCOM), Odierno (Iraq), and McChrystal (Afghanistan), not "failed ex-generals turned political hacks" such as former generals Karl Eikenberry (US Ambassador to Afghanistan) and James Jones (National Security Advisor). The latter have, of course, counseled caution before engaging deeper into Afghanistan. To be more specific, the Republican political line seems to be "yeah, we always do what our generals tell us to do - so long as their statements support indefinitely continuing the wars in the Middle East." What a ridiculous little man he is.

As far as Kristol's other statement - he wants American soldiers to win wars and American interests to prevail - I really want to haul back and punch him hard in the stomach. If you cared one iota about the American soldier, you slime, you base villain, you would have been pestering the CheneyBush administration as to its inability to put adequate numbers of American troops into Iraq and Afghanistan and its refusal to grow the military force to the numbers required for a long post-war occupation. Now we have military families breaking up, military suicide rates going ever upward, promotions for any officer with a pulse, military modernization programs on hold because of mounting operational costs, and a trillion-dollar bill that was never adequately planned for,largely due to the CheneyBush administration's inability to close the deal after eight years of continued combat.

You clearly have no respect for the American soldier or for American interests. In fact, if you were working directly against the American soldier and American interests, you could not be doing a better job.