BP Gulf Oil Spill

Plenty of prominent media figures were upset with President Obama over his substandard address to the nation last night (full text). While most are distraught, none seem to be doing what should be the essential journalistic task of the day: pointing out all of the factual misstatements the president made.So, in absence of a serious attempt at fact-checking from the legacy media, let us undertake…

A tale of two disasters: On ABC’s Good Morning America this morning, weatherman Sam Champion’s piece included reaction from several residents of Florida, Alabama and Louisiana to President Obama’s oil spill speech, and found three outright critics and no defenders of the administration’s handling of the disaster. One woman exclaimed: “What I would have liked to heard from him – that he actually…

"Obama Chickens Out on Energy," a disgusted Ben Adler argued to Newsweek's The Gaggle blog readers this morning.Adler's chief complaint with last night's Oval Office address: Obama didn't call for massive tax hikes to push Americans to make more politically correct spending choices.The Newsweek writer -- formerly a self-styled "propagandist" for the liberal Center for American Progress -- avoided…

Guess Mike could always get a gig with the Vienna Boys Choir . . . If MSNBC libs like Olbermann and Matthews were surprisingly critical of Pres. Obama's speech last night, PBO can apparently count on one defender at the network: Mika Brzezinski.  So fiercely did Brzezinski go after Mike Barnicle on Morning Joe today for his criticism of the speech, that the panel agreed poor Mike had been "…

Confirming her membership in Manhattan’s liberal elite, Katie Couric boasted on Tuesday’s Late Show that she plans to follow Tom Friedman’s admonition, that in refusing to move away from oil “we have met the enemy and he is us,” and so she’s realized she “should” buy a Toyota Prius, the favorite of conspicuously superior liberals, or at least a hybrid. Couric recounted how her daughter told her…

President Barack Obama's Oval Office address about the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico certainly impressed George Stephanopoulos, though that's not a difficult achievement for the favorably pre-disposed Democratic operative turned network political expert. ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC were all back to regular programming two minutes or less after Obama finished, but that was enough time for…

Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann isn't exactly known for her reticence on the news of the day. And when it comes to the White House's handling of the BP oil spill disaster, Bachmann had some harsh words for President Barack Obama. Speaking at the June 25 Bloggers Briefing at the Heritage Foundation, Bachmann pointed out how she thought it was peculiar that all the comments coming out…

Appearing on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Tuesday, Politico columnist Roger Simon described a recent interview with President Obama: "...he showed a genuine irritation....when people like Bobby Jindal, you know, standing up, screaming about more federal action...a small-government, no federal aid kind of guy. And the President is calling out those people for hypocrisy."Simon was discussing…

When asked what President Obama needs to do to prove to Americans that his administration is on top of the Gulf cleanup, Ed Schultz pressed that the President needs to call the shots and go "dictator" in his dealings with BP."I think the President has to make it very clear to the American people tonight, Chris, that we're not going to be stuck with the bill on this," Schultz said about the BP oil…

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs made the rounds on the network morning shows on Tuesday, ahead of President Obama's prime time Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill. While he had confrontational interviews on CBS's Early Show and NBC's Today, on ABC's Good Morning America, co-host George Stephanopoulos made sure Gibbs's appearance was low-stress.Stephanopoulos kept the questions…

PolitiFact on Tuesday confirmed NewsBusters' claim that Democrat strategist Donna Brazile badly misrepresented the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 while a guest on Sunday's "This Week."As NewsBusters reported that day, Brazile said in defense of President Obama's pathetic response to the Gulf Coast oil spill, "The administration has been constrained by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which basically…

Poor Barack Obama. Being president can take a lot out of him. That's why he needs  to relax on the links, and relieve some stress into his golf game. No problem, says the Washington Post, the Gulf Spill can wait. This is the same Washington Post that berated President Bush for golfing while an armed conflict was taking place…in Israel.Not that suicide bombings in Israel are an unserious matter,…

With the federal government - both on Capitol Hill and in the White House - beginning to take investigative and punitive action against BP (NYSE:BP), the future of the company, at least in the United States, is in peril. On CNBC's June 14 "The Kudlow Report," John Kilduff, a CNBC contributor and the vice president of MF Global was asked by host Larry Kudlow about a potential debarment from…

The current President of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), Ed Chen – who instituted the silliness of having the organization buy carbon credits to offset the travel of this year’s dinner headliner, Jay Leno, as well as for the President’s motorcade (seriously) – is leaving Bloomberg News to lend his shallow liberal advocacy to the left-wing Natural Resources Defense Council (…