Report on president’s visit to Louisiana

The Amarillo Independent has e-mail access to reports from pool reporters covering President Barack Obama’s visit to Venice, La. to assess the impact of the massive oil flow from BP’s now-sunk Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

According to Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post:

Obama emerged from his hour-long meeting inside the Coast Guard station into a light drizzle that instantly became a downpour the moment he stepped outside.”

He walked to a driveway to shake hands with a line of Coast Guard members waiting to meet him, then strode to a podium to make remarks. Speaking in the driving rain — and joking about it at one point — Obama began with a statement on the Times Square incident, calling it a potentially deadly act but refraining from calling it terrorism.

He took no questions.

On the Gulf Coast, he described the oil spill as a massive and potentially unprecedented disaster, and went through the federal effort — saying, again, that the administration had been prepared for the worst from the start. The comments at the podium were broadcast live on TV and there will be a transcript. The logistics of this trip are such that a quickie transcript is impossible for now.

After speaking, Obama boarded the motorcade and drove to do an OTR nearby, meeting with a group of five fishermen under a tent by the roadside. Accompanied by the president of the local parish (county), Obama talked to the men about the recovery effort and said the first priority is plugging the oil spill. After that, he said, protecting the estuaries would be the next priority. And he assured them that BP is on the hook to compensate for financial losses. Obama summoned Thad Allen to join him in talking to the men at one point.