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While complaining about President Obama going to Brazil and encouraging them to do more offshore oil drilling, Fox’s Megyn Kelly allows right wing radio talk show host Mike Gallagher to get away with saying there’s no oil remaining in the Gulf after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

GALLAGHER: No, he’s worried about another one because one accident, which by the way, they still can’t find any remaining oil. That was supposed to be the catastrophe that ended our planet. We were all going to curl up and die from the BP oil spill. Remember how that was reported? And now they can’t even find any residue, any oil remaining. It was not the catastrophe that the do-gooders thought it was going to be.

Mike wants the Fox viewers to believe that just because the media refuses to report on the remaining oil, it must have magically disappeared. That wasn't the only ridiculous thing he said during this segment but it certainly was the most outrageous.

I guess no one bothered to show him this, not that it would matter. I imagine he'd still lie about it even if they did. --Oil Still Leaking New Deepwater Horizon Drill Site

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Anyone else going to be shocked if this is not caused by the massive amount of oil and dispersants these poor animals have been exposed to? There has been almost a media blackout in any coverage of what's going on in the Gulf nationally.

More Dead Dolphin Babies Found along Gulf Coast:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the number of dead dolphins found since Jan. 1 in the area affected by last year's oil spill is now 67, with 35 of them premature or newborn calves.

NOAA regional spokeswoman Kim Amendola says five dead calves were reported Friday in Mississippi or Alabama.

Scientists are looking into whether any unusual deaths in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill area may be related to toxins from oil or dispersants. However, they're also investigating whether it could be related to the cold weather or a disease.

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The Republicans really just have no shame. The Democrats asked for unanimous consent in the Senate to pass legislation that would give the BP Oil Spill Commission subpoena power -- and surprise, surprise! Guess who stood up for them and objected? Wingnut Teabagger King Jim DeMint. Republicans don't want BP executives or any of the rest of them to have to testify under oath.

I'd be surprised if that commission was going to yield any news we haven't already heard anyway from those executives who did nothing but stonewall the last time they testified before a Congressional committee, but it looks like the Republicans don't want to take any chances and assure the committee will be toothless.

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It's nice to see this getting some attention in the media again instead of being drowned out completely by nonsense. We're going to be dealing with this disaster for years to come. From Mike Papantonio's blog at Ring of Fire.

Papantonio: Cenk and Pap Go After BP:

The oil just won’t go away. NOAA was forced to admit that they were wrong about 75% of the oil being gone from the Gulf, and they now say that 75% is still in the Gulf. On top of that, BP is attempting to settle claims quickly by forcing those in need of money to sign documents agreeing to not sue the oil giant. Mike Papantonio discusses all this and more on MSNBC’s The Ed Show.

It's amazing how people change their story once you get them under oath isn't it? BP oil spill: US scientist retracts assurances over success of cleanup:

NOAA's Bill Lehr says three-quarters of the oil that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon rig is still in the Gulf environment while scientists identify 22-mile plume in ocean depths

White House claims that the worst of the BP oil spill was over were undermined yesterday when a senior government scientist said three-quarters of the oil was still in the Gulf environment and a research study detected a 22-mile plume of oil in the ocean depths.

Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) departed from an official report from two weeks ago which suggested the majority of the oil had been captured or broken down.

"I would say most of that is still in the environment," Lehr, the lead author of the report, told the house energy and commerce committee.

The growing evidence that the White House painted an overly optimistic picture when officials claimed two weeks ago the remaining oil in the Gulf was rapidly breaking down fuelled a sense of outrage in the scientific community that government agencies are hiding data and spinning the science of the oil spill. No new oil has entered the Gulf since 15 July, but officials said yesterday the well is unlikely to be sealed for good until mid-September.

Under questioning from the committee chair, Ed Markey, Lehr revised down the amount of oil that went into the Gulf to 4.1m barrels, from an earlier estimate of 4.9m, noting that 800,000 barrels were siphoned off directly from the well. Read on...

From The Colbert Report -- "As the shrimp season begins, Michael Blum discusses the human health risks caused by the BP oil spill."

Colbert: That's right. Our inspectors are so good they can detect shrimp taint by smell. Do you know how hard that is? I need a jewelers loop to even see shrimp taint. Although I pride myself on my ability to smell moth balls.

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BP's COO Doug Suttles apparently thinks that most Americans are completely ignorant or that even if they aren't, it's not going to matter because the media and our government are going to allow them to cover up the amount of damage done by this catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr. Suttles gave a press conference this weekend where he downplayed the dangers of the dispersants that have been poured into the Gulf and laid it squarely back on the feet of our government for allowing them to poison the waters. He also claimed that he'd eat the seafood coming out of the Gulf and thinks it's safe. I'd like to personally see for myself someone catch some fish from those waters full of chemicals and watch him eat it and feed it to his children if that's true.

Laffy over at The Political Carnival has been keeping in touch with whistleblower and former EPA investigator Hugh Kaufman and here's her latest take on the media coverage of this disaster and the media downplaying the use of dispersants.

“Shame on LSU, shame on Rush Limbaugh, shame on CNN, shame on Anderson Cooper!” + VIDEO

As she noted in this post as well, I'm not sure how much of what BP is being allowed to get away with has to do with fears of what would happen on Wall Street if their company went down and the government's horrid response to this disaster, but it makes about as much sense as anything else I've read and has also been my gut feeling as to why they haven't done more to keep BP in check as well. All I know is that watching what has gone on has made me feel almost as sick as I did when I watched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The people in the Gulf deserve better than this and it looks like they're being hung out to dry again.

This time they might be poisoning all of us if they want to tell us those waters are safe for fishing now. I want to hear that the fish being pulled out of that water along with the water they're saying is safe to fish in doesn't have Corexit in it or petroleum products from the spill. I don't believe for one minute that millions of gallons of oil and dispersants just disappeared and those waters are now safe to fish in and swim in.

VIDEO: “Clues to the Obama Administration’s Passive Response to the BP Disaster”

Transcript of the Suttles press conference below the fold.

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This is really just disgusting. There's no way in hell all of those millions of gallons of oil and dispersants that poured in to the Gulf are just gone. Billy Nungesser, President of Plaquemines Parish, LA is at the end of his rope here and I don't blame him. BP is saying that they can't find any oil and are pulling assets out of the gulf for cleanup and the Coast Guard is letting them do it.

Digby has more on this latest dog and pony show from our media -- Dismissing The Gusher:

I posted yesterday about the emerging meme that the BP disaster was not big deal and today Brad Johnson at Grist puts that meme in perspective. Read on...

As the AC360 segment notes, Billy Nungesser isn't buying this either. They went out there and saw for themselves how much oil is still on the water.

UPDATE: Here's an example of what the residents in Grand Isle are dealing with. The Asphalt Beach in Louisiana (Photos)

KAYE: Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the federal response, said today the nearly constant flights that check for surface oil on the water from the air are barely detecting any oil, beyond thin sheens -- this as BP's incoming CEO, Bob Dudley, said it's time to start scaling back cleanup efforts.

At the same time, he said BP will not abandon Gulf residents once the well is permanently sealed.

But not everyone is buying that promise.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser joins me now.

And Billy, I want to play for you exactly what Bob Dudley said today, and then we will get your response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT DUDLEY: In terms of the effort, no, it's not too soon for a scale-back.

We haven't permanently, finally killed the well. I don't think we will see any more oil going into the beaches.

And where there's no oil on the beaches, you probably don't need people walking up and down with hazmat suits. So, you will see that kind of a pullback, but commitment, absolutely no pullback.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: So, is it time, in your opinion, to scale back on the cleanup efforts?

BILLY NUNGESSER: Absolutely not.

You know, he might be talking about the beaches in Florida. Louisiana is getting slammed. For the last two days, we have oil out there all over, same places and other places we didn't have oil.

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h/t Mugsy:

As if the dispersants themselves weren't toxic enough, the 1.8 million gallons of Corexit 9500 (oil dispersant) sprayed on BP's spill in the Gulf of Mexico breaks down the oil, releasing some of the most toxic chemicals already in the oil into the water, dramatically increasing the toxicity of the spill.

From NBC News Scientists: BP dispersants have made spill more toxic:

Amid growing concern about the use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, a group of scientists working for law firms suing BP says their testing indicates that the dispersants being used to break up the oil are making this spill even more toxic to marine life.

Dr. William Sawyer, a toxicologist, is part of a team of scientists hired by law firms — led by Smith Stag of New Orleans — that are representing Louisiana fishermen and environmentalists.

The scientists collected and analyzed globs of oil, sand, and water from more than a dozen sites in four states along the Gulf.

Sawyer told NBC News that the findings are troubling. "We now have compelling evidence that the dispersant has enhanced and increased the toxicity from the spill," he said.

Last week, a group of independent scientists called for an "immediate halt" to the use of dispersants. In what was called a "consensus statement," they warned that dispersants pose "grave risks to marine life and human health." Read on...

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Lawrence O'Donnell talks to EPA whistleblower Hugh Kaufman about the claims that the oil is now "disappearing" from the Gulf of Mexico. There's no way in hell that much oil just goes away. Digby's got more on this here The Good News Is The Poison:

BP seems to have ably headed off the worst of the PR disaster by keeping the worst of the oil more or less off the shoreline. The actual disaster may have been made worse by the use of toxic chemicals. So it's all good.

That's what they want us to believe anyway. We need more Hugh Kaufman's out there to counter this nonsense.

O‘DONNELL: Today is day 100 of the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, and a whistle-blower has come forth from the Environmental Protection Agency, charging the EPA with helping BP to downplay the environmental impact of its supposed cleanup efforts. You will meet him in a moment.

But if the cleanup has been compared to letting the criminal clean up the crime scene—we begin our fourth story tonight with news about the cops.

“The Washington Post” reports that federal agents who call themselves the BP squad are investigating whether BP, Transocean, or Halliburton, even before the blowout, lied to regulators, obstructed justice, or faked the test results for their equipment—including the blowout preventer that, needless to say, failed to prevent a blowout. Specifically, sources told “The Post,” investigators are asking whether inspectors at the Minerals Management Agency went easy on the rig and why.

BP, yesterday, revealed that it is now the subject of an investigation by the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, into something—no word yet on exactly whether that is related to the spill.
And while Jane Lubchenco, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says the oil is becoming harder to find, the Natural Resources Defense Council‘s annual report on beaches found no downturn in the number of beach closures or advisories since the spill was capped. The NRDC reports that the number of beach closures and advisories this year, 2,200, is roughly 10 times more than last year. And it predicts that the impact will last for years.

And in a cable news exclusive, that whistle-blower we mentioned joins us now. EPA senior policy analyst, Hugh Kaufman, is a veteran and legend of the agency, having had a hand in Love Canal and the creation of the Superfund and helped expose the EPA cover-up of air quality at ground zero.
Mr. Kaufman, what should we know about the dispersants used in the Gulf that the EPA isn‘t telling us?

KAUFMAN: Well, first of all, the dispersants mixed with the oil and the water is extremely toxic. Sweden has done studies on this. Israel has done studies on this.

And the only real purpose of using so many dispersants with the oil was to cover up the volume of oil that was released from that well. So, that and lying about how much is coming out was a mechanism to help BP save billions of dollars in fines.

O‘DONNELL: Should they have not used dispersants at all?

KAUFMAN: That‘s correct. If they did not use dispersants, they would have been able to get most of that oil off of the surface and would not have endangered all of the fish and ecosystem underneath the water that now will be affected for decades on down the line.

I was listening to some of the, quote, “experts” who are being paid by BP at universities who are saying that the oil has disappeared. It hasn‘t disappeared. It‘s throughout thousands of square miles in the Gulf, mixed with dispersants, and because the temperatures down there are so cold, they‘re going to be around for decades.

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Anderson Cooper went back to what he does well rather than covering politics and covering what's going on the Gulf with this disaster BP has caused. His panel discussed a number of really important issues in this interview which deserve more time devoted to them by our "mainstream media". That said Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser's question is one that stood out to me that needs to be hammered on. I've seen no answers to it from anyone running the show with this disaster in the Gulf, and his question was why has the Coast Guard been acting like a P.R. firm for BP?

It's about damned time someone said it out loud on a major news network. I for one would love for that question to be answered. I'm quite sure everyone living in with that oil still coming ashore would like for that to be answered as well. I'm not optimistic we'll ever get an honest answer without subpoenas being issued to find out and I'm not holding my breath to get any from Eric Holder any time soon either.

Here's transcript of the full interview via CNN.

COOPER: Billy, I read a report that some folks are finding it harder to find oil now on the surface. Is that what you're hearing as well? And, if so, where's the oil? What does this mean? Is this all good news, that it's all dissipated?

NUNGESSER: Well, it's good news.

You know, we expected this storm to bring a lot of oil ashore. The storm actually broke up before it came ashore, and it really wasn't much of a storm. So, that was good news.

But I think the way this thing is being played up is like the oil is over because we didn't have oil after one small storm. There was a sheen out of Saint Bernard today. There is some on the inside of one of the islands.

But, to take a helicopter ride with the Coast Guard and BP, and think this is over -- we met tonight with the parish presidents. We feel like we're going to get hit real soon here with an exit plan and not wait this thing out. There's oil offshore. It took six weeks to come ashore. It's not going away any time soon just because they stopped the leak.

We're glad they did. We're glad we got people out there picking up, but we shouldn't call this thing over just yet.

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