4th time: See Obama see the oil spill. Hear Obama talk the oil spill. So, what'll he say tonight?

What are you doing over here reading about the oil spill's impact on the faltering Obama presidency when he spent the night on the Gulf coast to help distract your attention away from all the things that haven't happened during his watch over the nation's worst environmental disaster ever?

That's not what the Illinois White House team wants you to do. Wherever the president goes the media follows -- except no photos allowed of his Sunday golf outings. His activities are supposed to be the all-powerful public agenda-setter. Except, oops, they aren't. Even with Barack Obama's first Oval Office address to the nation set for tonight. Chances are he won't be sitting like this at his historic desk.

Here's the deal: For whatever reason -- wishful, political or ignorance because oil spills are a relative rarity in Obama's old South side Chicago state Senate district -- the nation's Top Talker was late to be seen reacting seriously to the gooey catastrophe.

Nine days elapsed before he could fit a look-see in between mini-vacations and DNC fundraisers and this summer's White House music presentations and a White House picnic for Congress and graduation warnings about making excuses in life and re-campaigning for his healthcare legislation, which so many of us thought he had already signed.

By the time Obama made his first Louisiana trip and didn't see one drop of oil, Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal was nine days into his now eight-week full-time devotion to directing and listening and talking and consoling.

As one result, Magellan Strategies' new poll of 1,030 likely general election....

...voters in the once-staunchly Democratic state of Louisiana finds the GOP governor's approval rating at 66% while 60% now disapprove of the president's spill job.

The nation's CEO did get out the Costa Rica proclamation on Monday. And he's already laid on yet another fund-raising trip to assi$t Harry "Won't You Please Help a Poor Majority Leader?' Reid in Nevada next month, according to the all-knowing columnist Jon Ralston there.

But Obama has been unable yet to find time to talk with BP's CEO, nearly 60 days into the crisis, raising serious questions not about his campaigning ability but about his leadership ability once he's won the office. Such articles appeared here about why he keeps BP as a whipping boy and over here about no longer walking on water and over here on how his lack of leadership corrodes trust in government and over here as the federal government is exposed as an empty Wizard of Oz and over here, even from Jon Stewart

ABC News' perceptive Rick Klein notes how Obama is now reacting to the mess in precisely the jumping up-and-down manner he once said was unnecessary.

Now, how would a pro politician react to these troubled times as the needle on the nation's Dial of Blame gauge begins to swing inevitably toward his truly? Well, a real pol would....

....seek to change the subject. Oh, geez, no, not back to those seedy White House job offers to buy some fellow Dems out of their primary challenges. We've already changed off that subject.

The pol probably won't go back for now to Arizona's tough illegal immigrant law, since polls show Americans overwhelmingly think the state's got a pretty good idea and are right to be frustrated over a porous federal border with Mexico.

Maybe another jobs bill? Bragging about forcing the new healthcare law through won't help since nearly 60% now want it repealed. And it would be seriously uncharacteristic for the Harvard grad to apologize for dropping the oil ball early on.

For the Oval Office chat he's got to have stats for sure, some reference to a "previous administration" and quotes from real-live coast fishermen. But Obama also needs some seemingly new newsy initiative to draw attention over there. Much talk about the future; yes, it's bad now but someday it'll be even better than before and meanwhile we are gonna be dad-gummed certain that BP will pay all the costs.

Obama certainly won't try explaining Rahm Emanuel's five years of rent-free living in a BP adviser's apartment. Or how the administration approved the well that blew out. They'll likely save leaks about Obama's manufactured verbal confrontation with BP folks until Wednesday.

Hey, what about clean energy as a feel-good distraction to American minds off today's mess toward the future? "The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a new future," Obama wrote supporters in an e-mail late Monday.

That could start a pretty good fight. The media loves heat above all else, though anything green is good. So, after a number-filled recounting of all that the feds have done, ignoring the reality that it hasn't done one thing to stop the underwater oil flow, watch for some new proposal like that tonight.

The good news for the Democrat is that a new Gallup poll finds his national approval rating holding steady, down only one point from a week ago. 

The bad news is that approval rating now hovers at 46%, the same as two weeks ago when the commander-in-chief skipped Memorial Day services at Arlington National Cemetery for Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Illinois, where the service was canceled.

But 46% is still Obama's lowest approval rating so far in his first term, now 35% complete.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos; Jae C. Hong / Associated Press; Pete Souza / White House (file); Associated Press (Obama takes time to chat with fans in Gulfport, Miss. when he went to see the oil spill again).

Comments

[Frank Mahavolich]

There is growing evidence that the BP oil spill may be impossible to plug, because there is a leak in the well casing 1,000 feet beneath the ocean floor. If so, not even relief wells are likely to stop the flow in the foreseeable future. If the flow continues for more than a few more months it could turn into an extinction event of millennial proportions.
On the Canadian website Global Research, the writer of "Washington's Blog" writes that the May 31st edition of the Washington Post reported that, "Sources at two companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the well below the seafloor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations." The Post quotes a BP official who, insisting on anonymity, said, "We discovered things that were broken in the sub- surface." He said that the mud plug was taking the oil "out to the side, into the formation."

The broken underwater casing may have been what prevented the mud that was injected into the well from getting far enough down the well to overcome the pressure from the escaping oil and gas.

The website quotes Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) as saying, "We're looking into something new right now, that there's reports of oil that's seeping up from the seabed, which would indicate, if that's true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous with what we're facing."

This statement was part of an interview with Nelson by Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC, who said, "Now let me understand better what you're saying. If that is true that it is coming up form that seabed, even the relief well won't be the final solution to cap this thing. That means that we've got oil gushing up at disparate places along the ocean floor." And this gushing oil will be likely to kill whatever marine life it comes in contact with.

Global Research quotes oil industry expert Rob Cavner as saying, "The real doomsday scenario here is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of pipe. Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together. If it comes into the formation, basically, you've got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the sea floor. And that is the doomsday scenario."

Nobody knows the extent to which toxic chemicals will rise into the air and be deposited in rain, or the degree to which the alteration of the oceans will change the weather, or how much oceanic oxygen exchange will be destroyed by the spill. But all of these things must happen, and if the spill cannot be stopped even by relief wells, then these effects will cause profound but immeasurable changes in the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.

[bunky]

You are just blowing wind andrew,please
stop it. nothing constuctive, just decided
to jump on the negative band wagon.

[Alan MacDonald]

“What should Obama say tonight about the Oil Disaster?”

Like the one word advice that Dustin Hoffman received in "The Graduate",
Obama should level with and advise the American people;

"I've got one word to share with you folks. Our future and survival
depends on confronting it. Just one word to say to you --- EMPIRE."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHGCvJjat1E&feature=related

Here's my slightly more explanatory answer to the NYTimes' article, ""Obama
Plans to Force BP's Hand on Oil Spill Fund", on what Obama must say:

"First, it's not a 'SPILL' and should never be referred to as such, since
doing so merely helps the global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE's
continuing propaganda war against all of us, our children, 'our' former
country, 'our' former democracy, our dying environment, our assaulted earth,
and our very species.

Obama's coming address will mean absolutely nothing (except that he is a
pawn of this global EMPIRE) unless he "Breaks the Silence" (as Martin Luther
King did in 1967 at Riverside Church, and JFK did in 1963 at American
University) about the disguised EMPIRE which is the proximate CAUSE of all
foreign and domestic "Sorrows of Empire" [Chalmers Johnson], such as all the
EMPIRE-CAUSED; imperialist foreign war crises, domestic financial crises,
global environmental crises, economic oppression crises, social injustice
crises, torture crises, spying crises, 'police-state' tyranny crises,
'targeted assassination' crises, unSupreme Court
unlimited corporate cash crises, the overall democracy crises, and
all inhumanity crises directly CAUSED by this inhuman global corporatist
EMPIRE."

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

[George]

No photos are allowed of Obama's Sunday golf game? What about his Monday golf game? What about his Tuesday golf game? What about his Wednesday golf game? What about his Thursday golf game? What about his Friday golf game? What about his Saturday golf game? A good hole-in-one will stop that pesky oil leak. Fore!

[jnsesq]

Don't tell me that even some of the hired help at the LAT is beginning to see the light (as it passes through the gossamer person of the nation's alleged chief executive). Naaaah... Must be one of those brief lovers' spats. Imagine the make-up journalism sex when it's over!

Amendment 28 to the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, And Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ."

[quotidian]

He had the nerve to compare it to 9/11.

[California Red]

Wow. Pretty cutting commentary. That kind of talk will probably get you uninvited to a lot of parties.

[Ev]

Wonderful. You want the Government to clean this up? Why can't the invisible hand of the God Almighty Market do it? Or are you being consistent, profits are privatized, costs are socialized.
We know how the Bush family handles spills, they ignore them and help the responsible pay a dime on the dollar to the victims 20 years late after many of the victims died.

[Windfall]

Still no comment from Clueless Comrade Barry on the WSJ report that existing regulations would have prevented this disaster had they been followed… or enforced… because the regulator who allowed BP to cut corners turns out to be an appointee of our Clueless Comrade.

Fault for both the impotent response as well as the creation of the problem in the first place lies squarely at the feet of our Professor-In-Chief who, incredibly, after seven weeks, still has no plan either to plug the hole or clean up the mess.

Other than vilifying BP to make political cover for his own incompetence, he has done nothing to find a solution. Once the teleprompter readings are over, the best our self-proclaimed “Best and Brightest” can do is play golf, shoot hoops, take vacations or sit for private concerts.

This would be Master of the Universe - who envisions himself as capable of running anything and everything – is, in fact, walking around the West Wing blind without a cane… except for when he is holding one of his bi-weekly galas.

Since all criticism of our first “post-racial” president is immediately deemed to be racist, the only thing we have left to say is…

Heck-of-a-job, Barry!

[Axis of limbo]

Actions is what was required,but the 21 st century Demosthenes just kept on
talking in such a style that is fast starting to sound as pleasant as 10000
vuvulezas.

[Ray]

True Louisiana was once staunchly Democratic but we got rid of that governor and up until the spill wanted to get rid of Jindal. We didn't even bother voting for Obama, we overwhelming voted for McMain.

[Listen]

Wednesday Obama will for the first time since the oil spill, talk to BP's CEO because he was forced to do so. He has refused to accept help from other qualified countries. It's BP's fault but Obama did not take the lead and protect this country from the oil spread. Tonight he will do what he always do, he will campaign for something or someone and tell the American people what he think they want to hear.

[Listen]

Thanks Andrew Malcolm, for your great commentary about Obama and some of his political pals. Very true.

[ree]

I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER OBAMA SPEECH. IT WILL BE MORE OF THE SAME PROMISES AND LIES BUT NO ACTION.

[Rhonda]

For those of you who think this was all about "imperialism" OMG! Are you kidding me? Deep water drilling began under the Clinton Admin because of pressure from the environmentalist who didn't want drilling close to shore where it's more safe and there's more tested experience. The enviro-nazis don't seem to "get" that buying oil from countries which have no love for us is far more dangerous than drilling in our own country, idiots. Then, we have Obama who knew from the beginning the magnitude of the disaster and was TOLD on day 2 that it would be months to control the spill. It took him 5 weeks to contact the victims families, that's compassion for you. In that first ten days, he sent lawyers to the Gulf long before the oil had reached shore. Then, we have the fact that the location is in federal jurisdiction and he didn't do what he was required to do: didn't locate available boom and send it down there, nor ships with skimmers, nor allowing for berms. He wanted to be sure everyone was layered up though. He allowed the "spill" to worsen by doing NOTHING because his agenda is to demonize the oil companies. We don't know the particulars of the explosion yet, but he still condemns THEM when it was HE who allowed the disaster to develop. You see, it's all smoke and mirrors. The information about his role in this is out there, look for it. Also, the head of MMS was hired by Obama Admin, she used to work for BP. Last Sept. her department spent $550,000 to study giant squid and whether Sperm Whales feed on them. Why was the Minerals Mgt Serv spending over a half million of taxpayer dollars on an animal study. I thought their job was about MINERALS! Take a look at the wasting of our tax money that this administration has been doing! Take a look at which law makers have voted for all of the wasted tax $ in the so-called "stimulus bill". Where are the freakin jobs? Wake up, this administration is not only incompetent but corrupt. Do you know who wrote the stimulus bill? Who wrote the health care bill, have you looked THAT up? Educate yourselves!

[Captain Obvious]

"But 46% is still Obama's lowest approval rating so far in his first term, now 35% complete. "

Let's make that his ONLY term...

[WinSol]

No more speeches from O'Hamster. All he does is talk . . and campaign . . and lie. . . transparently. This emporer has no clothes, no plan, no support, no experience and no clue. He & his czars are flying the country into the ground and they could care less. After all, there's golf to be played.

This fool will make his mark on history alright. As the absolutely worst modern-day President ever.

Perhaps we've all learned a lesson and it'll never happen again?