This interview is an example of why I hate seeing liberals go on Fox even if Thom Hartmann did get to make a few good points during the segment. The interviews are always stacked against them with the framing from the host as it was here and Hartmann really doesn't get a chance to fully explain why former Bushie Brad Blakeman is a huge flaming hypocrite even though he does get the shot off at the end that he agrees with him with his "full-throated" call for big government.

Blakeman and Hartmann were asked to comment on President Obama's response to the disaster in the Gulf and to some of Reagan flack Peggy Noonan's column criticizing the President. Blakeman responds with a whole lot of projection and calls President Obama incompetent and demands that the government should be doing more about the spill.

Thom Hartmann admits that President Obama has not done everything he could have when it comes to managing the PR on the response, points out that it was the limit on the cap for liabilities that encouraged the oil industry to take these kind of risks in the first place, that it was the Dick Cheney energy policy that allowed for them to not install the acoustic blowout preventers that might have averted the accident like they have in Norway and Brazil and that if we had some of the regulations like they have in Canada where they're required to drill a relief well has to be drilled at the same time as the main well in environmentally sensitive areas this disaster would not have happened.

After another attack by Blakeman where he completely ignores everything Thom just said, Hartmann notes that he's glad to see Blakeman now supports big government coming in and helping to fix the problem.

Note to Thom Hartmann... if you're going to go on Fox, don't say you agree with Brad Blakeman about anything. And when he does something like he did here and starts screaming about how the government needs to fix industries' screw ups after government fails to regulate them, call him a hypocrite to his face and ask him if he now supports regulating the oil industry since they're obviously not capable of regulating themselves and forcing them to put the safety measures in place which is the only thing that would have prevented this. Not screaming that the government didn't do enough later.

I keep hearing these people from Mary Matalin to Blakeman to you name it saying the government needs to do more, but they rarely say what those things are. Any time any of these anti-regulation hypocrites opens their mouth on the television, they need to be asked specifically what they think the government should be doing.

I'm no expert but I've done posts on Kevin Kostner's oil-extracting machine, Mike Papantonio and the Shell Oil exec suggesting bringing tankers in to clean out the oil that's already in the ocean. I also posted on Think Progress' suggestion that we get other experts in there besides BP to help take control of this mess since BP is obviously too invested in worrying about their own liability right now to be trusted.

There's been plenty of criticism as to whether any of those ideas will work or not to clean up the mess and I don't mind that one bit. We're all looking at this from the outside and just trying to make sense of what's going on.

Sadly if liberals had their way, we would not even need to be discussing those options right now. The industries would be regulated in the manner Thom suggested and that the oil industry flack Rayola Dougher scoffed at and called impossible while crying about more regulations when asked about drilling relief wells at the same time as the main wells. Heaven forbid other countries are doing this but we can't. Instead we're left watching this oil pour into the Gulf and sitting there helpless for months while they drill relief wells that they could have had in place already but the industry didn't want to spend the money to do that.

Until the Brad Blakeman's of the world and his cohorts explain to us how government acting after the fact and not before an emergency is the way to go and exactly what they would be doing now to fix this, they have no credibility to complain about government not doing their part now.

They don't want government to work to prove that private industry should rule the world unfettered and safety, worker's rights, regulations and concern for anything besides profit be damned. Well, you got your wish Brad. Here's your free market in all its glory, except it's not free is it? Now you're calling the President of the United States incompetent because he can't fix your free market disaster after it blows up in your face. Quit telling us we don't need any stoplights and then bitching about the car accidents after they happen and someone was stupid enough to listen to you. It's extremely tiresome.