We Support The Oil Spill

[Vene]

And one more thing, President Obama ran on a platform that included civic engagement and working in the community.  

Hello?  This calamity SCREAMS for that.  His office should be leading the charge on this.  You gotta know there are tons of people out there who would love to travel down and pitch in.  Get a few brains together and come up with a plan to tap into that.  The leak isn't going away soon, there has to be plenty of shit to do.  

I'd honestly love to help with the cleanup (I've got nothing better to do), but there's a few problems, like, I'm in Minnesota and can't afford to travel to the gulf (at least not if I also want to eat). This one's more selfish, but I also don't want to leave the SOs here and I am NOT taking two transsexuals to Louisiana.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

Why not?? Louisianna is where transexuals come from!

[Dimocritus]

Wait... That's an oil spill? And here I was thinking that Zalgo was taking a refreshing swim...

[Vene]

Why not?? Louisianna is where transexuals come from!

Let's put it this way, in Minnesota, they can use the bathroom of their gender, in Louisiana, they'd get arrested.

[Mangrove]

Oil spill = less shellfish = less chance of ruining a kosher diet = greater spiritual purity.

Go BP!

[AFK]

Added bonus, killing the poisonous mercury-laden fish. 

BP, looking out for the pregnant ladies and ladies who wish to become pregnant. 

[Cain]

Reuters is full of shit, oil rig workers giving to Obama doesn't count as BP giving to Obama.

That said, according to Reuters' source it looks like while BP hasn't given its own money to campaigns or PACs anymore, they set up a PAC fund that still has money to give out, about $200,000 a year.  So yeah, BP is gaming the system.

In your haste to discredit the source, you may have failed to notice Reuters did not claim the money was being to Obama by BP, the Center for Responsive Politics did.  You may know them from their website, OpenSecrets.org.  I'm sure if you emailed them to point out the flaws in their analysis and conclusion, they will give it all the merit it is due.

Unless you're just obsfucating for the sake of it, in which case they'll likely just dismiss you as another crank.

[malvarma]

Why not?? Louisianna is where transexuals come from!

I personally volunteer to scrub the oil off of the trannies. 

[East Coast Hustle]

Heh, I'm gonna be that guy who actually has cause to be happy about the oil spill.

What's bad for Florida tourism is great for USVI tourism. The oil spill has literally boosted the VI's economy enough that I can move back this winter and not have to wait another year for the wage-scale to return to normal.

GO BP!!!

They're already noticing a difference?

Also, one of these days I WILL go to St. Thomas and make you be my tour guide.

Yup. Resort bookings are up 12% over last winter, when everybody was forecasting a 5 or 6% increase.

[Cain]

Once again Cram, your satire is undercut by reality:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/06/joe_barton_bp_a.php

When the Texas Congressman apologized to BP for President Obama's unseemly acceptance of a $20 billion settlement with the oil company, even his own party ran screaming from his remarks.

But rightbloggers stayed true to their character: If getting over the Barton PR debacle involved cutting Obama some slack, they just couldn't do it. They'd rather drown.

The Gulf oil spill has been exciting to rightbloggers. No, not because they give a shit about the environment -- come on! These are conservatives we're talking about! -- but because it gave them a chance to pull a double-Katrina on President Obama, thereby avenging the Bush New Orleans debacle.

This strategy showed some signs of traction until Barton spoiled it Thursday by publicly apologizing to BP. His mouth-fart stank the joint up so bad that even his fellow Republicans recoiled from it.

But rightbloggers, bless them, stuck with the story that the BP deal was a "shakedown," They could hardly do otherwise. He was singing from a hymnal they'd already written.

Since before Obama became President, one of the many stops on the rightbloggers' Mighty Wurlitzer has been the notion that, being from Chicago (setting for The Untouchables and other gangster films), Obama is himself a gangster.

Google, at this writing, returns 86,700 results for "Obama" and "Chicago Way," nearly all of them hitting this theme (e.g., "Obama's 'Chicago Way' plunders the private sector").

Obama has been accused of performing all manner of Chicago-style crimes, including shakedowns -- sometimes in cartoons, and sometimes in their literary equivalents.

"Obama using classic Chicago shakedown to rescue his south side buddies at Shorebank/Chicago by extorting Goldman Sachs," declared a CBS MarketWatch discussion. "The Windy City Olympic Shakedown," Michelle Malkin called Obama's attempt to get Chicago the 2016 Olympics. A Hot Air story about Obama and ACORN was called "Anatomy of a Shakedown." Etc.

So when it was reported that Obama had cut a deal with the leaky oil company -- that is, he had succeeded at something -- Plan B went into full effect.

"As I write this Monday night," said former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein in the American Spectator last week, "there are rumors around that BP will agree to President Barack Obama's demand that the oil giant 'voluntarily' put about $30 billion into a fund to be administered by the government to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster." Stein referred to the President as a "Caudillo" and a "Duce," and said "Mr. Obama's demand was in the nature of a threat... Is there anyone in Congress to stop him?"

And the moment the BP deal was announced, GOP Representative Tom Price of the Republican Study Committee issued a statement calling it a "Chicago-Style Shakedown."

Now, this was just a press release and a publication in the rightwing equivalent of a trade journal -- a tonic for the troops, not a talking point. The GOP probably expected its major players to keep this one on the down-low, exciting true believers without alienating outsiders. After all, this was an oil company they were talking about -- and surely even the true believers amongst them understood that the American people were not in love with oil companies.

But at the Congressional hearings on Thursday, for whatever reason, Joe Barton, an oil industry puppet from Texas, rose to Ben Stein's challenge. He echoed the "shakedown" line and apologized for it on behalf of a stupefied America to the despised oil company.

Maybe he'd just had a lousy morning. Maybe he'd been programmed badly, and had short-circuited. Whatever the cause, there was no hiding it -- especially with the GOP now loaded with like-minded nuts. "Some Republicans consider BP deal a US 'shakedown,'" announced Reuters, as other GOP fringies such as Michele Bachmann jumped to stand with Barton.

Rightbloggers were go! The American Spectator highlighted the Obama-gangster theme, claiming Obama "has no authority" to enter into such a deal with BP -- just as he had no authority "to cram down Chrysler and GM bond holders for the benefit of the UAW. Law is irrelevant, probably not even considered as an afterthought, by this president."

It's a wonder they didn't whistle down a cop -- but wait, Obama may have bought them off too! Chicago rulez!

"To Obama & Co the BP disaster was music to their ears," said Renew America, "and it is rumored that Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is searching for a songwriter to put music to the title 'Never let a serious crisis go to waste.'"

This Rahm Emanuel quote is a favorite of rightbloggers who seem to think it means something more sinister than ordinary politics. Texas GOP Vote, for example, big backers of Barton, strongly pushed the same angle ("It is a policy of this administration to 'never let a crisis go to waste,' and the Obama 'Oil Spill' speech was a classic Obama performance in which he went from let's plug that hole to let's save the planet." The bastard!). So did the Senate Republican Committee, who put out a video connecting Emanuel's quote not only to the BP deal, but also to universal health care and other abuses of power.

Bliss it was to be alive then! But the Republican establishment, perhaps dazed by the negative reaction, forced Barton to back off his comments.

You'd think rightbloggers, being on the internet and all, would have quickly figured out that this argument wasn't catching fire, and retrenched to one of their other hobby-horses -- Obama's hatred of white people, perhaps, or the socialism of Teddy Roosevelt.

But you'd be wrong! Some rightbloggers did admit that Barton's wording had been perhaps a trifle unfortunate. But by and large, they remained committed to the Lost Cause.

[Doktor Howl]

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Thick-oily-sludge-hits-Florida-beach/ss/events/us/062410pensacolaoil

You know, I'm really having a bit of trouble laughing.  Something's probably wrong with my throat.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

OH MY GOD SOMEBODY SAVE THOSE SHOES!!!!!!!1

[Requia ☣]

Reuters is full of shit, oil rig workers giving to Obama doesn't count as BP giving to Obama.

That said, according to Reuters' source it looks like while BP hasn't given its own money to campaigns or PACs anymore, they set up a PAC fund that still has money to give out, about $200,000 a year.  So yeah, BP is gaming the system.

In your haste to discredit the source, you may have failed to notice Reuters did not claim the money was being to Obama by BP, the Center for Responsive Politics did.  You may know them from their website, OpenSecrets.org.  I'm sure if you emailed them to point out the flaws in their analysis and conclusion, they will give it all the merit it is due.

Unless you're just obsfucating for the sake of it, in which case they'll likely just dismiss you as another crank.

Um, who do you think I was talking about when I said Rueters' source?  According to the CRP, direct contributions from BP is zilch.  Employee contributions are ambiguous, at best, Rueters also failed to mention the PAC that BP is still funneling money through.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

shut the FUCK up and SAVE THOSE GOLD SHOES!!!!!!

[Cramulus]

I wonder if there will be pr0n in which the money shot is the chick's face getting spattered with thick black crude. I'm positive there would be money in that.