Remember Tony Hayward, the cartoonishly detached BP CEO that provided the only temporary relief (in the form of relentless mockery) from the unending agony of the BP oil disaster? He’s back, unfortunately, and he’s eating seafood. Even more scandalous, there was a pretty girl within thirty feet of him while he did it! TMZ has the Pulitzer-worthy investigation.

Jimmy Buffett, a vocal supporter of President Obama, recently told the Associated Press that he basically blamed the BP oil disaster former President Bush, who had been criticized for having a close relationship with the oil industry. “To me it was more about eight years of bad policy before (Obama) got there that let this happen. It was Dracula running the blood bank in terms of oil and leases,” he said. Cue outrage on Fox and Friends this morning in 3…2…1…

Seventy-nine days later, though the BP Oil Disaster is still raging, the energy giant’s new July 27 timeline has given some a cause for optimism. But a new Associated Press investigation shows we might have more problems to worry about: 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico run the risk of “leaking even more crude into water already tainted by the massive BP spill.”

The Economist magazine’s June 19 issue features a dramatic “Obama v BP” cover. Standing at the coast, President Barack Obama is alone, head down, with the oil rig in the background. But it turns out, Obama wasn’t actually alone. Now, The Economist is getting criticism for a digitally altered cover.

When South Africa brought us the World Cup, the country also introduced the rest of the world to vuvuzelas (you know, those buzzing horns you can hear in the background of every single match). Sure, vuvuzelas can be fun at sporting events, but could they serve a larger purpose? The Vuvuzelas for BP project seems to think so.

While there’s no question that President Obama inherited a lot of problems when he took oath, there is question as to who’s responsible for problems like the financial crisis, a weak economy, and lax regulatory policies that may have lead to the (oil disaster.) “Blame Bush!” is an oft-cried meme, both by Democrats and the Republicans decrying the tactic. But as Jon Stewart points out, blaming a previous administration isn’t new. Himm…I wonder if the GOP ever blamed the Clinton administration, because that could certainly make them look sort of silly.

In the event that you needed even more visual evidence of the catastrophic environmental impact of the BP oil disaster there is this video which shows an individual pulling an oil covered dolphin from a Pensacola beach. Alas, the dolphin did not survive its rescue, dying on its way to a local rescue facility in Panama City.

Former President Bill Clinton was one of the speakers today at the Global Forum being hosted by Fortune, CNN, and Time in South Africa. During his time there, he discussed such hotbed issues as our budget (which he called “broken”), as well as the oil disaster in the Gulf. While discussing the spill, Clinton both defended the current president’s handling of the issue as well as contradicting the Obama administration’s clean up plans.

The horrors of the environmental devastation in the Gulf of Mexico are very real, but, fortunately, the assault is only coming from the ground– not the sky. YouTube video recently started making the rounds of what looked like “oil rain” falling in Louisiana, the sheen clearly visible on the ground. The problem? It’s not possible to rain oil– and Rachel Maddow explains why.

The media went nuts over the never-ending tennis match in Wimbledon this week, and Daily Show host Jon Stewart noticed that the endless narrative of that story had a lot in common with some other stories in the news. Dubbing them “Endless Bummers,’ with no end in sight, he included war in Afghanistan, bubbling up recently over the McChrystal sacking and replacement by General Petraeus. Oh and there’s that BP oil disaster that’s, er, continuing to bubble up as well.

BP made waves when they made an issue of using the $20 billion escrow fund only for “legitimate” claims from workers in the Gulf coast, making skeptics concerned with what the company will deem legitimate. Well, how’s this for legitimate? Strippers from the Gulf coast region are demanding payments from the company, claiming that the fall in tourism in the region has devastated their industry. Bill O’Reilly investigates.

An enterprising gentleman recently uploaded video that he shot of family frolic on the once-pristine shores of the Florida Panhandle (specifically Destin Beach.) Of course they are “once pristine” due to the BP oil disaster that has left what seems like an infinite amount of “tar balls” on the formally white sands. But that’s the not worst part of the following video – its the plaintive wail of what seems to be a four year-old girl asking her mommy to “get it off me.”

Throughout the entire ordeal unleashed on the residents of the Gulf Coast since the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded, the main priority has been to, as President Obama put it, “plug the damn hole.” But now some geological experts believe that making an attempt to keep the oil from rushing to the surface may put so much pressure on the seafloor that the well may collapse into itself, making the situation worse than it is now.

In North Carolina’s GOP runoffs for the 13th Congressional District last night, Bill Randall took home the win–and decisively so, with about 58 percent of the vote. Yet what stands out about the tea partier’s win is that he is an oil spill conspiracy theorist, according to TPM.

At almost the same exact time as BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg’s “small people” remark, an eerily similar gaffe was taking place just across town. Former Senator and Deficit Commission Co-Chair Alan Simpson got into an impromptu, on-camera debate over social security, and repeatedly referred to its recipients as “lesser people.” Now, some are calling for Simpson’s removal from the commission. I asked Robert Gibbs about it at yesterday’s White House briefing.

It seems that every time someone in the GOP expresses some radical libertarian idea, the rest of the party scatters as far from the person as possible. And like a brave firefighter to a burning building, John Stossel rushes in to save the embers of his beloved philosophy. He arrived on the O’Reilly Factor tonight with fistfuls of red-hot free market capitalism, calling the $20 billion BP escrow account a “thuggish Chicago shakedown,” by “Vladimir Obama.”

Darryl Willis is the Vice President of resources at BP America. More recently, he became the face of the corporation as advertisements featuring CEO Tony Hayward failed to connect for some reason. Willis visited The Situation Room today to explain further his role in the company, and how victims of the oil disaster can claim some of the $20 billion the company has set aside for those most affected.

Congressman Steve Scalise, as many in the Louisiana delegation, has been making the media rounds to discuss both the general status of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and, specifically, Texas Rep. Joe Barton‘s apology to BP (and meta-apology to America). On Hardball tonight, Chris Matthews challenged Scalise to condemn Rep. Barton’s comments which, coincidentally, happen to align with Rush Limbaugh‘s.

If you were going to put money on someone taking a shot at defending BP CEO Tony Hayward, Ann Coulter would be a strong bet. Not that she thinks too highly of him at all, but at least his yachting excursion over the weekend was the first since the BP oil disaster began, unlike President Obama, she argues, who is on his seventh golf game since the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

There is such a thing as looking too hard for the upside to things, and BP has apparently discovered it. Benoit Faucon at The Wall Street Journal somehow got a look at an excerpt from Planet BP, an online publication exclusively for BP employees, in which a “BP reporter” put one of the most outrageous [...]

On the evening of the day that Joe Barton apologized to BP CEO Tony Hawyard for having been “shaken down” by the White House for $20 Billion, Jon Stewart sort of explained Barton’s obtuse behavior by putting him on the cover of Disdainful Asshole Digest. But last night Stewart revealed that there was more hay to be made with Barton’s comments, or more specifically how many GOP leaders had gone back and forth on the sentiments expressed by the Texas congressman.

Over the weekend, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel drew fire from Sarah Palin when he remarked at length that Rep. Joe Barton‘s (R-TX) apology to BP was representative of her party’s governing philosophy. At today’s White House briefing, I asked Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton (Robert Gibbs was watching the World Cup) if he could give us a relatively uncensored readout of Rahm’s reaction. Before responding, he said “If only Vice President Biden were here today…”

Rep. Joe Barton wasn’t the only member of Congress uncomfortable with the government agreeing with BP to put $20 billion into an escrow fund for claims of the victims of the BP oil disaster. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann expressed some concern with the account also, calling for BP not to be the government’s “chumps” and warning about federal overreach. She visited Bill O’Reilly last night, who did not sympathize with Bachmann or BP in the least.

The news from the Gulf is dire. No, not the news about the cleanup progress, which is going– actually, fairly well considering who is in charge. It’s the situation with BP’s on-the-ground cleanup crews that is troubling, as managers are giving journalists a hard time for being on public beaches while telling employees not to answer questions. This from WDSU’s Scott Walker, who was interviewed on Countdown last night about his experience covering the disaster.

Texas Congressman Joe Barton‘s apology to BP– and apology for his apology to BP– somehow managed to be the most egregious statement in an event that featured five hours of BP CEO Tony Hayward speaking. And after being scolded by mostly everyone in both the media and his home turf of politics, Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer gave him an award for his achievement: the Most Politically Stupid Statement of the Year award.