Plenty of post-primary day stuff in Morning Jolt, but I pledged to run at least one short item on the spill until it’s fixed, and so today . . .
You Expect Me To Talk?
Permit me a moment of sympathy for Obama; I’m not quite sure what would be gained by a presidential call to the CEO of BP. I presume somebody — Thad Allen? — is talking to BP’s highest levels regularly. Perhaps I’ve grown so underwhelmed with Obama’s talks with other CEOs, or Hugo Chavez, or Medvedev, or Cambridge cops that I’ve been conditioned not to expect anything to come from them.
But here’s the exchange:
Matt Lauer: Have you spoken directly with the CEO of BP?
Barack Obama: I have not spoken to him directly and here’s the reason, because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like the BP CEO, he’s going to say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions . . .
Matt Lauer: In all due respect, that seems strange to me.
Jim Hoft recalls, “Barack Obama unabashedly announced during the 2008 Campaign that he would be willing to meet with the world’s worst dictators including the Iranian Preisident Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez from Venezuela and Kim Jong Il from North Korea in his first year in office “without preconditions.”
Allahpundit, writing at Hot Air: “The One’s logic, such as it is, is that it’s not worth talking to Tony Hayward because he’ll only end up giving him the runaround — a curious position coming from a guy who campaigned on the virtues of “dialogue” and who’s been locked in halting negotiations with Iran for fully 16 months. Even Lauer is openly incredulous. Captain Kickass has nothing to say to a guy who potentially holds the fate of his presidency in his hands? Even after yesterday’s hair-raising Times piece claiming that BP’s effort to cut the leaking riser may have actually increased the flow of oil many times over? I thought this was supposed to be the new, improved, “engaged” Hopenchange.”
Writing at JustOneMinute, Tom Maguire notes the warnings that we don’t know how much oil was leaking, is leaking, or is likely to leak, and starts to wonder how much anyone really knows about what’s going on down there: “Then make no mistake — the President had pessimistic scientists on his team who thought snipping the riser might dramatically increase the flow rate of the leaking well, or else he got advice from a group of erring optimists (or Dr. Leifer is an Erring and Lonely Pessimist). If the pessimists were outspoken, presumably they were overruled by other Administration officials or scientists, not BP. To take a step back, since we don’t know the previous flow rate there won’t be any real way to know whether or how much it increased. But I have a strange feeling that neither BP nor the White House really want to know the new, true numbers. Which would explain Obama’s inability to target BP’s derriere and get the numbers and equipment needed to find an answer.”
Hey, the ubiquitous Leak-Cam is to 2010 as the bottom of the screen News Ticker was to late 2001. What you’re seeing beneath the news anchor or talking head may not actually include any new information, but you feel like you’re watching something dramatic.