Ezra Klein wonders if Politico’s description of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) as a “wonk” makes sense:

But maybe I’m missing something on Cantor and my readers can enlighten me. Is he known for mastery of a particular issue? Does he have some really smart policy initiatives that he’s promoting in the House? What’s the deal here?

via Ezra Klein – Is Eric Cantor a policy wonk?.

Prior to Ezra’s musings, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough came right out and said he heard from all his Republican friends on the hill that House Majority Leader John Boehner is known to be “lazy” and then he attempted to force Politico’s Jim Vandehei to admit he’s heard the same about Boehner from GOPers on Capital Hill as well. Vandehei demures and instead claims that the younger members of the GOP caucus just don’t feel Boehner’s ideas are fresh enough. Watch Vandehei awkwardly dance around Scarborough’s assertions:

As she often does, Rachel Maddow says it best.

Rolling Stone gets McChrystal to give his honest opinion of members of the Obama Administration.

Gen McChrystal also appears to joke in response to a question about the vice-president.

“Are you asking about Vice-President Biden?” McChrystal asks. “Who’s that?”

An aide then says: “Biden? Did you say: Bite Me?”

Another aide refers to a key Oval Office meeting with the president a year ago.

The aide says it was “a 10-minute photo op”, adding: “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was… he didn’t seem very engaged. The boss was pretty disappointed.”

Gen McChrystal himself says: “I found that time painful. I was selling an unsellable position.”

Another aide refers to national security adviser, James Jones, as a “clown stuck in 1985”.

Of an e-mail from US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, Gen McChrystal says: “Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke… I don’t even want to open it.”

Last year’s Afghan strategy review by the new president was detailed and drawn out, with Gen McChrystal finally getting an additional 30,000 US troops from Mr Obama.

Analysts say Gen McChrystal disagreed with the pledge to start bringing troops home in July 2011.

Meanwhile the US congressional report says that trucks carrying supplies to US troops allegedly pay the Afghan security firms to ensure their safe passage in dangerous areas.

The convoys are attacked if payments are not made, it is alleged.

via BBC News – US general McChrystal sorry for Rolling Stone ‘error’.

Sound familiar? Remember McChrystal’s speech in October 2009 speech in London?

An adviser to the administration said: “People aren’t sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn’t seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly.”

In London, Gen McChrystal, who heads the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces, flatly rejected proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against al-Qaeda.

He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to “Chaos-istan”.

When asked whether he would support it, he said: “The short answer is: No.”

He went on to say: “Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support.”

The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House.

via White House angry at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan – Telegraph.

It seems the White House aide may be the naive one and McChrystal is an upstart who understands Washington politics well enough. Or maybe McChrystal is the angry guy who vents every smoke break. Either way, his disdain for the strategy he has been tasked to execute needs to be dealt with by the Administration since he cannot deal with it himself.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s being dealt with.

An angry President Obama summoned his top commander in Afghanistan to Washington on Tuesday after a magazine article portrayed the general and his staff as openly contemptuous of some senior members of the Obama administration.

An administration official said the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, would meet with President Obama and Vice President Biden at the White House on Wednesday “to explain to the Pentagon and the commander in chief his quotes in the piece,” which appears in the July 8-22 edition of Rolling Stone. General McChrystal was scheduled to attend a monthly meeting on Afghanistan by teleconference, the official said, but was directed to return to Washington in light of the article.

via McChrystal Is Summoned to Washington Over Remarks – NYTimes.com.

Courtesy TPMtv.

At least five were found by the congressional report.

‘Questionable Decisions’

BP, the biggest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, made five “questionable decisions” aimed at cutting costs and speeding completion of an overdue project in the days and weeks preceding the disaster, U.S. Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Bart Stupak of Michigan wrote in a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward that was released yesterday.

via Exxon Distances Itself From BP’s `Dramatic Departure’ in Gulf – Bloomberg.

And it looks like BP’s management was directing all the corner cutting.

BP also apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton’s recommendation to use 21 “centralizers” to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. Instead, BP used six centralizers.

In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: “It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this.” Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: “Who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.”

via Documents reveal BP’s missteps before blowout – Disaster in the Gulf- msnbc.com.

This is directly contrary to the claims of BP’s CEO on the Today Show (video below) in early May where he blames TransOcean (who owned the rig, not the well which is what failed) and left the window open to further spread blame to well construction subcontractor Halliburton.

Areas the government could be probing include whether the companies violated any regulations, whether they subverted the regulatory process by seeking favors with Minerals Management Service or other Interior employees, or whether BP acted criminally by keeping away cameras that could have revealed earlier the extent of the spill, Green said.

“They’re going to be looking for evidence of criminal malfeasance,” Green said.

via BP, Halliburton, Transocean Build Legal Teams – NYTimes.com.

At the bottom of all this, I agreee with Joan Walsh when she says that the Obama Administration substantially associated themselves with offshore drilling by lifting the ban on new offshore drilling without truly reforming MMS.

– from delays in cleaning up the Minerals Management Service, distrusting scientists who correctly reported the spill was much bigger than BP said, and waiting more than a week to declare the crisis “an Oil Spill of National Significance,” which corralled new services. Maybe the most damning section of Dickinson’s piece comes when he quotes the president proudly announcing he’d reversed his stand against offshore oil drilling. “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” the president said. “They are technologically very advanced.”

via Protecting the Obama brand – Joan Walsh – Salon.com

We know now, that explode, spill, gush, leak is exactly what oil wells can do when run by irresponsible leadership cultivated by CEO Hayward’s BP and deregulated by an understaffed and business friendly MMS. The lesson here is pro-economy is not exactly pro-business. Pro-business is allowing companies to do what they want to make the most money as they exist. Pro-economy is promoting a business environment that is safe and fair to workers and able to grow and fail without destroying other sectors of our economy. The Obama Administration trusted BP’s guidance during the early weeks of the spill and that was more pro BP than pro US economy.