Anderson Cooper 360 Review: Week Five Of Live Coverage From The Gulf Of The BP Oil Disaster

Hi everybody. And so it continues. I can't quite believe we're now in the fifth straight week of the 360 kids reporting live from the Gulf. You gotta admire their dedication. It must be getting harder to come up with new angles. BP lies. Things are oily. And so it continues. I hope the public doesn't start tuning out due to feeling of helplessness. But that point is surely around the corner. For now, read producer Ismael Estrada's blog post on where we've been, and then take a jump on down to the bullet points. As always, they have been awesomeness tested:

Tony Hayward went to a yacht race over the weekend. And here I thought he might do something arrogant and out-of-touch.

Not only was the race yet another BP PR blunder, as Anderson Cooper points out, it was also a broken promise since the CEO had promised to stay in the Gulf until the leak was fixed. Of course BP promises are worth about as much as Monopoly money these days, so there's that.

Tonight we were presented with the 857th piece of evidence that BP should not be trusted: an internal memo showing they knew the leak could be as high as 100,000 barrels per day. As you might recall, they started out telling us oil was flowing at a rate of only 1,000 barrels per day. But hey, let's cut them some slack. They were only 99,000 barrels off (of a worst case scenario)! Could happen to anyone. Our anchor's interview with Congressman Ed Markey on the BP memo is below:

Chris Lawrence's piece on BP low-balling claims was obviously frustrating, though not shocking. I hope Stu Scheer gets the money he's owed. Watch the story below:

Billy Nungesser was looking spiffy tonight. Happier too. It's great to hear that at least some things are starting to come together.

Oh 360 and your obsession with celebrities. Will you ever not make me eye roll? That being said, I like a lot of what Robert Redford had to say. Some of it is below (er, ignore the weird edit with Anderson's picture):

Our anchor: "What surprises you about the way BP has handled this so far?" Redford: "Nothing." Finally someone who is rightly not shocked by BP's behavior. And he wants to look at the bigger picture? Can I get a woo hoo?

Redford: "Look, I think one of the reasons we're in this problem is because we have not only have a failed energy policy, but we have an energy policy -- because of the way it was designed by who it was designed by, Cheney -- it's sick and it's dangerous." It's about time somebody went there. By the way, am I the only one who has noticed that Darth Vader has gone quiet? Suddenly he's not too eager to phone up his faithful Politico transcribers. Funny that.

Redford didn't really sell his support of the moratorium. Anderson brought up its unpopularity in the Gulf and all the actor could say was that he was "sympathetic" to the concerns over job loss. He's coming at this from a perspective of an ideal world (which I support), but the people in the Gulf have to live in the real one. Someday we have got to learn how to mesh the two.

Anderson: "And in terms of oversight by the government, clearly the government both under the Bush administration and even under the Obama administration, have not done as much in terms of reforming MMS." Word. If there's one thing I'm mad at Obama about regarding this disaster, it's that. He had almost a year and a half to clean up Bush's mess in that department. He didn't make the mess, but he promised us better government under his watch.

Redford: "Look, all that stuff has come out, and it's painfully obvious what's happened -- the corruption that came with MMS as a result of Dick Cheney and how he engineered this whole thing. You got to get rid of Cheney and all the horses he came in with. You got to get rid of his energy policy. It's bad for our health. It's bad for our economy. It's bad for our future." Pretty much. But I think his failure to include Obama's culpability here dilutes his argument.

Jeffrey Toobin doesn't think the moratorium will be overturned, despite the current lawsuits. I guess I'm glad, though I'm still not sure why they all have to be offline for six months.

I thought Shane Guidry of Harvey Gulf was a much better guest to argue the anti-moratorium side than Julia Reed. I don't agree with all that he said, but a good perspective.

Rob Marciano's piece on releasing the pelicans was awesome. So great to see them flying away safe and clean. I love how adorably excited he was to release some himself. Watch below:

We also got Rob live with some turtles, which was pretty cool as well. I love turtles. In honor of the occasion, I think this calls for the "I like turtles" kid: