One explanation put forth for why President Obama and his aides are so upset with the liberal base of the Democratic Party is that they believe Obama has achieved legislative success rivaling that of President Lyndon Johnson, but the base does not appreciate this success. Even NPR’s Mara Liasson easily refuted the “success” aspect of the comparison, but the comparison to LBJ is an especially poor choice for a number of other reasons, as well.

My letter to the White House this week:

Dear Ms. Browner,

During the week of August 4, 2010, you served as the administration’s principle spokesperson appearing on multiple national television programs, including NBC’s Meet the Press and ABC’s Good Morning America, to report findings from the interagency BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget. You stated repeatedly that “the vast majority of the oil appears to be gone.”

This week, multiple independent scientists have released calculations and investigations that show quite the opposite:

* from the University of Georgia that upwards of seventy nine percent of the spilled oil still remains in the Gulf

* from the University of South Florida oil found on the bottom of the ocean in a vast area of subsea canyons some 40 miles from the Florida panhandle

* and from the Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institution, published today in Science, new mapping of the disputed massive underwater plumes of oil.

Carol Browner helped BP and the Obama administration to spread the misinformation that 75 percent of the oil from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is “gone”. Scientists at the Georgia Sea Grant counter that up to 79 percent of the oil that entered the waters of the Gulf is still there and capable of having further environmental impact.

I call bullshit on Carol Browner’s media blitzed fib. Now if only I could ground a few government officials and put some BP/Transocean/Halliburton personnel in time out.

After the New York Times reported today that numerous drilling permits were still being issued for new drilling activities notwithstanding the supposed “moratorium,” the White House explained the word “moratorium” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Two disasters flared up this week, one environmental, the other political. Off the coast of Louisiana, oil from a sunken rig is leaking as much as five times faster than scientists originally judged, and the spill reportedly reached land last night. And in Washington, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) jumped from his partnership with Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) just before the scheduled release of the draft of a new Senate climate bill.

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

Seven months out from the midterms, electoral anxieties are hampering potential climate change legislation. Election years are a time to pass easy, politically popular policies, and climate change legislation does not fit that bill. For the Senate’s climate change legislation to have a chance, Congress has to sweep through the financial overhaul faster than any bill in its history. Otherwise, politicians’ focus will shift to the midterms before they pass a climate bill.