Color me gleeful. The above is, apparently, a direct quote from Axelrod. Coming as it did on the heels of "Knowing that Bloomberg is a family news service, I can’t share with you what he said," we can only hope it was a rough paraphrase of Obama's thoughts on BP's oil spill.
And the Bloomberg article is totally worth reading. Let's all give a big tip of the old derby to Kitty for posting this in Knights of Dusk's diary. Which diary was that? The one in which we learned of the second head to roll at MMS, that of Elizabeth S. Birnbaum.
But the Bloomberg piece has so, so much more. And there's to be a presser at 12:45 Eastern to boot!
Update: looks like C-SPAN's livefeed is up...any minute now. It's also here and Tweety and Wolf are covering it as well.
Obama today will extend to six months a moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling, announce news standards to strengthen oversight of the industry and enhance safety, cancel a lease sale off the coast of Virginia and delay oil exploration off the coast of Alaska, a White House aide said.
...Salazar said on May 19 he plans to replace the MMS with three agencies, separating energy development, enforcement and revenue collection. The reorganization will take 30 days to complete, he said.
As for BP, Axelrod said...Obama intends to hold BP "fully accountable for this, and fully accountable for the damage that they have done, fully accountable for their role in the accident."
And in other news, we learn that we have independent estimates of the flow rate. Best of all, the topkill seems to be working -- quick...everybody knock on wood! That's got a liveblog, too.
In any event, this is a lot of good news on what has been one damn dreary subject. So squidgle on down into your chairs and grab the popcorn; I want to see President Obama forget he's on a family news channel. C-SPAN will have the goods, of course.
Pee ess: Phil S demanded a poll, so let's make this even more interesting: