Grease is the Word

Always the Late Afternoon Client Rush when I set up one of these things…

Tweety’s trying to frighten us about teabaggers, as if we haven’t been paying attention for the past year.

Ladies and gentlemen, Fred Armisen.

Barry provides a litany of failed efforts, neglects to mention failures.

Haven’t heard anything yet that sounds much different than Shrub in NOLA. How’d that work out?

@nojo: Listening on streaming NPR, and he sounds like Armisen.

/Barry almost said “the Deep Muddy”/

Just give me John Travolta dancing. Please!!!!

Can we see that he is wearing Audrey Hepburn’s socks in that still? She hated it but Astaire insisted. And when she saw the rushes she understood.

@Nabisco: I’m waiting for Dwayne Johnson to step in.

That offshore-drilling moratorium — does it apply to existing wells? (Answer: I don’t think so.)

He’s starting to sound like my gas-crisis posts.

Did I mention Steve Jobs this morning? Yes. Yes, I did.

Unmentioned: The Jobs Reality Distortion Field. Barry’s saying Nice Things about “clean energy,” but I’m not hearing details.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I nominate Rev. Wright as my Special Advisor for the Blessing of the Fleet.

“Ohl spill”.

And…

Wait. That’s it?

I’m not sure I heard anything that couldn’t have been stuffed into a press release.

Readers Write on NPR: president of ScrewLafouche Parish lambastes Barry for the moratorium. Sound bite: these companies regulate themselves. Riiight.

The least he could have done is announce that AT&T has fixed the iPhone 4 ordering problem.

Apparently it is “Lahouche” Parish, and she just claimed the Prez was “Sacrificing Americans to advance his agenda”.

Oil and crazee don’t mix.

@Nabisco: Actually, oil & crazee mix quite well.

I may have to listen to the Malaise speech again. I always thought Jimmy was unfairly knocked for that.

/SportJack/

Kiwi penalized for shirtless after-goal celebration. Lefty is gonna have a field day.

Here’s the deal: The oil is still gushing. My estimate above was based on 50,000 barrels, but I’m now hearing 60,000.

Saying that it will soon be “90 percent contained” is an empty promise that can only be verified if it works or not. That will happen when it happens, or it doesn’t. Barry can’t promise that it will, because nobody knows, and previous promises have been unfulfilled.

I haven’t cared much for the “Obama isn’t doing enough” narrative. But this speech didn’t add anything to the mix.

BP had to stop collecting Ohl today for five hours when lightning struck the ship. God’s really amusing himself.

@Nabisco: I heard that idiot. Maybe she and her ilk should be sacrificed to save the rest of us. They’re too stupid to live. Regulate themselves? How’s that workin’ out for ya? Let’s ask the shrimpers and the folks in tourism.

So how did the Eagle do? I missed the whole thing. Now, I’m watching the Arizona gubernatorial GOP debate. Scarily, Jan Brewer is the one making the most sense. And she’s doing it with a smile on her face, in her best kindergarten teacher voice. I expect her to break out a “bless your heart” any second now.

@nojo: No, it doesn’t. Because that would hurt. And, btw, an oilfield services company filed suit in federal court in New Orleans to throw out the moratorium. Hearing on Monday. A bunch of us enviros trying to intervene to save it.

Man, was that speech disappointing. He’s going to tell BP to put some unspecified amount of money into some kind of account. And what if they don’t? And Presidents have been talking about ending oil addiction since that moron Gerald Ford. C’mon, Barry, bring it.

@nojo:
James Fallows has the malaise speech beat: scroll down

Is John Travolta dancing? Oh please oh please.

@SpongeBobtheBuilder: Ah, good. I’ll let the Paid Media deal with it.

Interesting to note that the speech itself was actually well-received at the time, but Jimmy stepped on his own applause with the Cabinet shake-up.

But now I’m curious about the timing: What was happening that led to the speech, which we still remember in some form three decades on, if only for the misattributed topic line?

I ask because I don’t see why Barry chose to squawk at this particular moment, when he was saying more interesting things on location. If he wasn’t going to declare a specific Crisis and call for detailed Action, what was the point?

@nojo:

I couldn’t watch the speech.
Too clusterfuck for me.
Oh how the mighty Unicorn has fallen.

I was a theater projectionist when Grease came out. Ran it several dozen times. Hate that fucking movie.

Missed the President’s speech which was on while I was either on the recliner on the patio reading comix or laying paving stones.

@Dodgerblue: I think someone just forgot to set the pick for his Oval Office roll to the basket.

He should have taken a lesson from David Cameron, who managed to get both BP and The Goal off the headlines by apologizing for U2’s misappropriation of a Plastic Ono Band song title.