Tone Deaf Or Just Plain Stupid?

Today's Congressional hearing on the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster included an apology from Congressman Joe Barton (R-Tex) to Tony Hayward, the BP CEO who has been a walking talking PR nightmare for the oil giant. He was apologizing for what he called the US government "shakedown" of BP forcing them to open that $20 billion dollar escrow account to help compensate the victims. Really, what could be worse than being held responsible for your own actions? Anyhow it inspired the thought, are the Republicans just astoundingly tone-deaf, genuinely stupid or are they merely whores for oil money? Judge for yourself as the same Joe Barton asks the Secretary of Energy, Nobel award winning scientist Stephen Chu, "How did all that oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic ocean?"



Joe Barton actually went further with his idiocy and called it a "slush fund," a comment with which even Tony Hayward disagreed.

Thursday Blogging Roundup

 

Starting to feel like there's nothing going on in the world except that disaster in the Gulf sometimes, but the crimes are so egregious and the people behind them so shameless.

Tony - I want my life back - Hayward and BP have a new advertising campaign going to try and salvage his/their reputation, because that's what is really important here! That's going tobe tough when you get caught trying to hide evidence of dead marine life in the hopes of the ocean washing them away. Quote: There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don’t want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It’s important to me that people know the truth about what’s going on here,” the contractor said.

Getting clean-up crews to sign waivers prohibiting them from speaking to the media looks suspicious too. Denying credible scientific reports about the massive oil plumes that are underneath the surface of the Gulf waters seems pretty muddleheaded too - especially when there's video evidence of their existence. Oh, the latest attempt at mitigating the spill has suffered a setback, and it turns out BP was unprepared for such a spill even though they had declared that they were ready for one ten times the size.

A reminder, 21 years later Alaska's coast still has not fully recovered from the Exxon Valdez spill. This of course doesn't stop Republicans who are in the pockets of big oil from making ridiculous statements understating the damage being caused to wildlife and delicate eco-systems.

George Bush still thinks torture is awesome: "It's what Jesus would do!"

Another fake Obama scandal gets debunked. Apparently all these ad hominem attacks are having an effect on Obama's disposition - for the better! They (the Republicans) gave us tax cuts that weren’t paid for to millionaires who didn’t need them. They gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight. They shortchanged investments in clean energy and education, in research and technology. And despite all their current moralizing about the need to curb spending, this is the same crowd who took the record $237 billion surplus that President Clinton left them and turned it into a record $1.3 trillion deficit.

Robert Scheer risks being called a self-hating Jew to call the Israeli attack on the Gaza blockade-busting flotilla an act of international terrorism. There can be no valid claims of self-defense on the part of Israeli commandos who attacked a ship of protesters in international waters, killing nine civilians and kidnapping more than 600 others -- including 15 international reporters who were prevented from filing their stories by a nation that claims to be the beacon of democracy in the Mideast. And Israel is not making it easy for anyone to defend their actions, rejecting any international investigation into what happened.