Thursday, June 17, 2010

Testing the Waters: Whatever Water is Left

After what has become the biggest MAN MADE oil spill of all time, caused by corporate greed and irresponsibility, with no back up plan whatsoever, censoring the media, propagating lies, 11 oil rig workers dead, and a growing number of spill cleanup workers getting sick, Republicans are feeling sorry for BP... and want us to do the same.

John Boehner suggested last week that BP should be held responsible for everything that has happened and should have to pay for all damages along with the Federal Government (code for American Taxpayers). Boehner who falls very deep into the pockets of lobbyists, especially oil lobbyists, stood by those comments for about an hour or so, before recanting them that same day.

Today, another Republican Congressman, Joe Barton from Texas, the most Pro Oil state of them all, apologized to the BP CEO for what he called the government shakedown (code for financial accountability) of the oil company. Which after a short period of time he retracted his comments and wanted the record to be clear he believes BP should be held responsible.

This is the worst political strategy EVER. We have constant news feeds of the oil gushing into the ocean at an obscene gallons per hour ratio. The leak hasn't been capped and neither have the GOP's mouths. The overwhelming majority of the country despises this company. BP gas stations are having trouble getting customers to buy their gas, even when a competing gas station isn't right across the street.

The CONSERVATIVE mainstream media has been pumping the storyline of Democrat losses in the 2010 midterms over and over again. The Democrats aren't going to lose their majority and at this rate could actually pick up seats.

The Republicans shot down a bill that would raise the liability of Oil Companies for spills from $75 million to $10 billion. Republicans argued that would put a lot of oil companies out of business if they spilled and couldn't afford to pay it.

So what did Obama do...

He outsmarted us all. He gave a worthless, say-nothing-but-the-conventional, we'll-get-through-this-crisis speech, and had a closed door meeting with BP execs. Couldn't raise the cap to 10 billion that'd be too much. While everyone was panning his speech he had BP commit $20 billion for an account solely to reimburse residents and businesses hurt by the spill and has a check from BP for $69 million for the cleanup... so far. He made a point that this issue, much like the deep water oil pipe, has no cap.

He doubled down on the Republicans and won. Who is fighting for the American People? It's not the Republicans. We know who they're fighting for. With new numbers showing a rise in support for Health Care, something that will be hard for Republicans to take credit for when they've deemed it OBAMACARE, is building support for the Democrats chances in the midterms at the right time. What sort of message will the Republicans be sending to their constituents in the first week of November? Something they're becoming very good at doing lately - issuing ANOTHER APOLOGY.