CNN says Dennis Blair is resigning; BBC says he is being “replace(d).” Interesting disconnect in terminology there! I also think it’s interesting that, among the BBC’s laundry list of recent spy snafus, they didn’t include this doozy.

Meanwhile in intelligence failures,

(BP) spokesman Mark Proegler said Thursday that the siphon is now drawing about 5,000 barrels a day up to a ship on the surface. That’s as much as government and company officials had estimated the spill was pouring into the Gulf every day for a month. Proegler declined to estimate how much more oil was escaping.

…yeah, I bet he did. I’ve been pretty disgusted with the government’s complacency in regards to BP’s stranglehold on information. I understand that a lot of that complacency was built into the system— this  is, after all, the same regulatory regime that capped potential monetary damages, ostensibly to ensure “Mom and Pop,” smaller oil company firms could still compete in the offshore environment. Any system stupid enough to have ever bought that logic probably has a lot of stupid built into its peripheries.

But seriously— CBS had Coast Guard officials blocking camera crews from filming polluted beaches, with the officials insisting “(these are) BP’s rules, (they’re) not ours.” Whose damn Coast are you Guarding? The insinuation clearly seems to be its not “ours” either.

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