“Now if you’ll excushe me, I need to finish drinking the resht of this Shterno!” <hic> <faceplant>
Apparently so.
[quote=“elucidator, post:19, topic:543563”]
And this just in…
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/17/miller-barton-step-down/
(Lefty site, you know the drill.)
GOP Rep. Jeff Miller calls for Barton to step down from top committee spot over BP comments.
Offered WITH comment.
I’m tired of hearing that Republicans want to just pat BP on its little head and ignore it. It just ain’t so, Joe, and I’d like people to stop repeating that bullshit. Yeah, we have idiots in our group, like Barton, and the libs have idiots in their group, and we’ve all got to stop assuming that the idiots speak for the whole group.
Barton doesn’t agree with your agreement with him. 
In any case he was insinuating the $20 billion was a bribe for the administration, which is wrong. I guess you somehow failed to pick up on that.
I see you didn’t read what I said about this kind of wording in post #18.
The money would have to be monitored anyway and it was going to have to be administered somehow regardless of when the fund is set up. Obama’s been slammed by many people on the right and left for being a pussy and not taking strong enough negotiating stances, so with some amusement I will point out that he did exactly the right thing here: he negotiated from a position of strength. Everybody blames BP for this crisis (and it’s mostly BP’s fault) and BP wants to look like it’s making good while their CEO got ready for his Congressional nailing, so Obama was able to make them to promise to put the money aside now. Why shouldn’t he strike when the iron is hot here?
Not that I think the outrage against BP was going to die down much in the next month or two, but if you apply some common sense you’ll see what would have happened otherwise: while BP plugs the leak, it continues to obfuscate how much oil escaped, and gets its legal team to do an estimate on how much damage it caused. It lowballs the figure as much as possible and then begins lobbying Congress and begging like so: “We spent so much money fixing the well that we couldn’t possibly give more than [make up your own amount, but figure it’s approximately the spare change they found in the executive washroom and the wheel well of the company jet.] We’re dreadfully sorry but that’s all we can pay. Otherwise you’ll bankrupt us and put us out of business. Think of what you’re doing to our employees and the brave pensioners of the United Kingdom? Why do you hate [del]America[/del] Britain?”
You didn’t finish this sentence. I’m kind of ambivalent about that. On the one hand I’m curious about what you were going to say, but on the other I realize it was probably going to be stupid.
Call me crazy, but a company that spills millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico because of negligence and greed is nobody’s friend. Whoever “us” is. I assume this is a commentary on BP’s donations to Obama’s campaign, since big oil is generally not considered an ally of the left. In which case I’ll point out that large corporations usually donate to both candidates in U.S. presidential elections, and if they gave more to Obama, it’s probably because they saw he was going to win. BP groups and employees gave Obama a total of $77,051 during his time in the Senate, and gave $44,899 to John McCain. In general they gave money to the presidential candidates and people from states with major oil interests like Alaska, Louisiana, and Ohio. No big surprise there.
The world is not black and white, but you appear to be arguing that white is black. He’s getting BP to agree to clean up a mess it made. That seems just to me.
Don’t forget the Republican study Committee.
You forgot the Republican study Committee.
That’s 110+ Republican idiots in the House of Representatives alone.
If these are your best and brightest, Imagine what the national figures are! :eek:
It is nowhere near enough ,but it is a start. If BP can lawyer up and fight all the cases, people will have their lives destroyed before they see a penny. The idea is to provide some immediate relief for the people BP harmed.
This again shows who the repub work for. It is not the American people.
It would appear that various other Republicans jumped on Barton until he (kinda, sorta) apologized for apologizing. Among the comments on fivethirtyeight’s article on Barton’s contributors, a poster linked to a new site dedicated to helping Barton with his new hobby:
They talk about Obama giving BP a Chicago-style shakedown like it’s a bad thing.
I’m curious as to what the conservative blogosphere thinks of all this (and thus, by extension, the oil spill, at least in certain aspects - it’s obvious what they think of Obama and his actions). I’d look myself, but, well, I’m trying to keep my blood pressure down. 
But so often they do. I can point to a couple of voices of reason in the Democratic party that get center stage somewhat regularly, I don’t know if i can say the same for the Republican party.
I love this page.
I’m going to do everything I can to work “Here, have a pelican” into as many conversations as possible.
Go Biden!
The repubs are running with this story. They had some on CNN saying Obama did not have the authority to demand BP kick in 20 bill. He did not. He used persuasion and a little pressuring. He could not force BP too kick the money in.
But Limbaugh and his ditto heads are saying Obama was acting unconstitutionally. Much of the right wing talk machine is organizing behind Barton and BP. You just have to protect the poor defenseless international corporations from the terrible lefties. Screw the people of the gulf.and the animals and the oil covered waters and beaches. They are just a petty annoyance.
If Obama gets caught on tape saying, “We need more than that; you wouldn’t want anything to happen to your other wells, wouldja?,” I’d vote for him twice in 2012.
Hell, make it three times.
I try to stay away from the right wing punditry machine as much as possible, so can you link to some examples? I almost don’t want to know…
That was an excellent performance. Top notch. Unscripted and from the heart.
Biden was really good in that video.
Much more controlled and statesmanlike than I expected.
I know the GOP’s strategy is to demonize Mr. Obama, but this is pretty obvious even to the usual sleep-walking US citizen.
Or it should be.
It just hit me. They are mad that BP did not tell the President of the United States to go pound sand and if someone’s affected take us to court. BP failed them! :smack:
(Also, it seems in their worldview, the only reason to ever hand over money for the benefit of third parties is if forced or threatened – not because it’s the right thing, not because maybe you want to turn down the public opinion heat and create good will, only under compulsion of law.)