Not getting it

Rand Paul isn't in the news a lot lately. Mainly because he decided to go hide in a ditch, only pop his head out for softball interviews on Fox, and has relied on the moribund and dying Kentucky newspaper business to help repeat all of that "The Civil Rights Act is for homos" thing he was caught up in.

But because Rand is a man who never wants to pass up a good "government and media are oppressing the average rich white man" jag, he decided that the perfect opportunity to insert himself back in the national debate was the whole Joe Barton apologizes to BP situation. Naturally.

Emerging from relative silence since his rocky general election roll-out, Paul stressed that BP "should be responsible for cleaning up" the mess it created. He did not explicitly address the role that government had to play in compelling the oil giant to do that.

"Lets not convict them before we give them a chance to figure out where the problem came from," Paul said.

Asked specifically if Barton should resign, Paul confessed to having no opinion, save to offer his sympathies once more.

"I'm not really in a position to know about what they should do to him personally. I do know what it is like to be piled on," he said.

No, no Randy my dear boy, you both know what it's like to be justifiably piled on. Everyone going "Can you believe this asshole doesn't like the Civil Rights Act?" was completely justified. Everyone going "Can you believe that asshole apologized personally to BP and BP's CEO during a government hearing on the massive catastrophe they caused?" was totally justified. You weren't being persecuted, you weren't being picked on, the nation and the media just looked at two idiots going virulently against common sense and decency and decided "Hey, let's give these assholes an easy brickbat beating. They deserve it."

As to your other point: we really need to wait for the verdict to come in on this whole BP situation? Really? What do you think an investigation is going to find? An elite strike team of Greenpeace ninja hippies scubaed down to the well and placed some C4 charges and granola at the base of the thing? Some group of rogue whales decided to declare war on the land people and their floating sea fortresses? Ghost possession? Alien conspiracy? Government squelching of the freedoms creating a psychic shockwave that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon? Nah, kid, nah. I think we can close the book on this investigation.

So Rand, next time you feel the need to stand up for the rights of idiots to not get criticized for moronic things they say or mean things the President says about a company comprised of shitbags, pause, take a breath, and step outside the deluded little Ayn Rand/libertarian bubble you live in. It'll save you a lot of piling on.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.17

For those of you wondering how exactly it was that famed Baroque painter Caravaggio died or where he was buried are in luck. Italian archaeologists are 85% certain that he was buried in a Tuscany crypt... and that he died of sunstroke while in a weakened condition from the syphilis he had. Odd, that's exactly how Sean is going to die. And he thought he didn't have anything in common with the great painters.

If any of our readers have enjoyed a Gulf oyster in the last few months, I hope you enjoyed the everliving shit out of it because you might not have another one ever. In a thoroughly depressing article, Mary Tutwiler catalogues the state of the oyster industry, oyster farmers, and the oysters. Shockingly the picture isn't pretty. On the other hand, if you hate oysters, this all worked out nicely for you. Congratulations.

Over the past few decades in American society, knowing how to do something like clean a pelican was left to pelican experts, zookeepers, and the perverse coterie of freaks on Pelicanfetish.com. But now with a large percentage of them covered in oil, it's something that we all need to know. Thankfully Buzzfeed has provided us with a step by step guide to cleaning up an oily pelican; whether it's from the Gulf or just a pet pelican that got into that barrel of oil you keep out back. On the other hand this might be a setback to BP's plan to soak up all that valuable oil with all those worthless pelicans.

The one constant so far in this year's World Cup, besides people getting outraged at plastic horns, has been shockingly bad goalie gaffes. Who is at fault? The goalies? The team defense? The head coaches who put them in? No, clearly the party at fault is the girlfriends of said goalies. The UK has already taken to blaming Robert Green's ex-girlfriend for his bungled effort against the Colonies, owing to their pre-Cup breakup. Spain decided to take that extra misogynistic step forward, blaming Goaltender Iker Casillas' sideline reporter girlfriend for not only distracting him during their 1-0 loss to Switzerland, but distracting the entire team. See what happens when you let women near sports? If there's a bear attack during a game, we'll have to completely ban women from girling up serious sporting events.

Have a dog? Might you like that dog to have everlasting life? Then I give you IMMORTAL DOG!!!!!

Elected Texas idiot Joe Barton finally had to come out and apologize for his apology to BP when even the leaders of his caucus took notice on how unpopular what he said was. But he's not done apologizing, so he set up the site Joe Barton Would Like To Apologize To in order to list the various aggrieved entities like BP who deserve our sympathy.

Tragedy

As Michele Bachmann explained to us yesterday, we are in the midst of a crisis. A large corporation is being held to account for the things it has done. The scandal! The shame of it all. But lest we dismiss her fevered rantings as some outlier in the GOP, the rest of her cohorts took to the streets to drum up support for BP and the horribly onerous conditions that they've been put in.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas ('natch) took time out of a public hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to apologize directly to the executives at BP. How sweet of the man.

BARTON:I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown
...
I apologize, I do not want to live in a country where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again in my words amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.

Yes, how dare they be forced to set aside funds to pay for cleanup and to help offset the possible irreparable harm they've caused to the marine economy of the Gulf Coast. What an outrage.

Not able to leave Bachmann and Barton out on their offshore shilling rig, Alabama Governor Haley Barbour took time out of his busy schedule of taking oil money and denying that oil spills were a problem or that the oil was even hitting his shores to dance for oil nickels.

BARBOUR:I do worry that this idea of making them make a huge escrow fund is going to make it less likely that they’ll pay for everything. They need their capital to drill wells. They need their capital to produce income.

That's right, BP setting aside $20 billion to pay for damages will somehow make it less likely that they'll pay for the damage. Actually, I'm fairly sure that it means they'll be paying $20 billion at a minimum. But no worries, the greater risk is that by setting aside this money to help everyone whose lives they've ruined, that this will make it harder for them to open more rigs and make more money. Christ, I'm tearing up here. poor BP. Why haven't we thought about their ability to make a profit curing this crisis? We're monsters!

Oh, they are making rather large profits even given the costs of the cleanup? Well... they could be making more.

In fact Barbour, Barton, and Bachmann are all just reading off a common script that has arisen in the right wing media over the past few days: namely that this is unconscionable that BP is being held responsible, it is unconscionable that they're being demonized and blamed for actions they caused, and that somehow our Muslim President Hussein Obama X is going to use this independent fund as a "slush fund" to... something something socialism ooga booga liberals. Somehow paying out claims becomes bribery and that's if the black President doesn't steal the money and stash it away with Fannie Mae and ACORN to... I don't know... build a time machine and go back and make white people the slaves, abolish freedom, and rape Ben Franklin.

Why defend a widely loathed corporate entity in the most tin earned manner possible? Because after decades of conservatives fighting for the rights of corporations to do whatever whenever with no repercussions, BP has done the unforgivable: admitted responsibility for a mistake and made some attempt to make it right. We went through an entire economic collapse without the responsible parties even so much as saying "Whoops". If this continues, other corporations might have to issues apologies, *gasp* pay to fix problems they created, and the unfettered right of business to be allowed to do anything to make a buck might be challenged. So thus the attempt at restitution and the government has to be made to seem worse than BP the giant Gulf of Oil they've created.

Funny how it always seems to work out like that.

Business as usual

So you've gone and dumped the entire oil/dinosaur blood contents of the earth into the Gulf of Mexico. One million billion trillion gallons of oil so far and the flow doesn't look to be stopping any time during this calendar year. It's beginning to look like you caused the death of all sea life, ruined the coastal economy of the Gulf states, and have made our elected betters spend in excess of five whole minutes considering that maybe we should make a serious push into renewable sources of energy. What do you do? I mean besides attempt to stop media access to the area and make anyone with a boat sign a confidentiality agreement. You start gearing up to buy Congressmen.

Halliburton’s campaign donations have spiked as it tries to curry favor with key members of Congress investigating the disaster. The company donated $17,000 in May, making it “the busiest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008,” Politico reports. Thirteen of the 14 contributions from May went to Republicans, while seven went to members of Congress who are “on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath”:

About one week before executive Timothy Probert appeared before the House Energy and Commerce’s investigative subcommittee, Halliburton donated $1,500 to Ranking Republican Joe Barton’s reelection effort. It was Halliburton’s second-largest donation of the month — topped only by $2,500 to former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is running for the Senate.

In the Senate, Idaho Republican Mike Crapo, who serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, who serves on the Commerce Committee and North Carolina Republican Richard Burr (N.C.), who serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, all got $1,000. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also got $1,000.

And that's only one of the three companies legally culpable for the oil spill. I'm sure BP and Transocean, the oil rig company run for and by transsexuals, are doling out the cash as well. In fact, over the last few years BP has doled out nearly $30 million to influence legislation. In fact they've already won a small victory by getting shallow water drillers to be excluded from offshore drilling bans and moratoriums. Because apprently you aren't as big of a dangerous, negligent shitbag if you do your drilling in knee high water. The NYTimes article was notable for some grade A whining from lobbyist shits, complaining that a little massive environmental disaster might affect the industry that caused it. Who woulda thunk it?

Bruce Vincent, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents both deep-sea and shallow-water drillers, said Wednesday that he was concerned about a “domino effect” sweeping through Washington, with new regulations now under discussion threatening to cut oil production, jobs and industry profits.

“It’s amazing to see the impact that one company can have for all sorts of other people,” he said. “When a plane crashes, you don’t just shut down every airline in the fleet until you find out what happened.”

Good point, although I'm struggling at the moment to ever think of a plane crash that rendered a massive body of water a toxic oil dump. And one oil company impacts all the others, because we've all rightly assumed that BP's practices, regulations shirking, shoddy safety, and numerous violations are the industry standard. You guys don't seem to be big on sacrificing a single nickel to maybe make it a tiny bit less certain that all the oil you're drilling doesn't flood into the ocean in a torrent of Biblical proportions.

So in case you were worrying that a little think like the end of all life in the Gulf and oil replacing water in the Gulf was going to cause sweeping changes or our elected betters choosing what's right over money, rest assured the oil companies are gearing up to make sure that doesn't happen. Whew! I was worried there for a minute.

Your durned science can't control the baby Jesus

Rep. “Smokey Joe” Barton (R-TX), seeing himself lagging behind Michelle Bachmann in the 2009 Dumbest Elected Representative contest, has decided to throw his hat in the ring and opine on global warming. Oh he's not traversing the same old paths of "the scientific consensus isn't in" or "it doesn't exist" or even the highly scientific "It's cold out, so how can the globe be warming? Huh? Tell that to your precious Al Gore and see if it blows his mind." He's decided to blaze a whole new trail.

“I would also point out that CO2, carbon dioxide, is not a pollutant in any normal definition of the term. … I am creating it as I talk to you. It’s in your Coca-Cola, you’re Dr. Pepper, your Perrier water. It is necessary for human life. It is odorless, colorless, tasteless, does not cause cancer, does not cause asthma.”

“And something that the Democrat sponsors do not point out, a lot of the CO2 that is created in the United States is naturally created. You can’t regulate God. Not even the Democratic majority in the US Congress can regulate God.”

CO2 is natural, or do you just hate God so much that you don't realize that? Click the link for his thoughts on "theory vs. fact" and the how smaller and more fuel efficient cars will shank the American Dream and leave its body in a shallow river bed.

Twitter must be stopped

It appears simple blogging is not good enough for our elected betters. No, blogging would mean sentences and paragraphs and writing and possibly feedback. They've found something much more insidious for their monosyllabic use: Twitter. The 140 character behemoth has swept the halls of Congress, infected our leaders with it's brevity and seeming cutting edge communication possibility, and in turn infecting us with their poorly thought out ramblings about nothing.

"One doesn't want to sound snarky, but it is nice not to see Cheney up there," Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) announced as Obama entered the chamber.

"I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsberg," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) broadcast, misspelling the name of the ailing Supreme Court justice. McCaskill could be seen applauding with BlackBerry in one hand.

"Capt Sully is here -- awesome!" announced Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.), spotting the US Airways pilot in the gallery.

Then there was Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), in whose name this text message was sent at about the time the president spoke of the need to pull the country together: "Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren't going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour." A few minutes later, another message came through: "Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer."

They don't have time to run our country competently or pay attention to a speech, but they have time to tap away on their Blackberry's. Unsurprisingly Republicans have convinced themselves this is the future and have trying to meld with Twitter in an attempt for it to be the first technological advancement since radio that didn't leave them behind. Can their genius and ideas be confined to 140 characters? See the oncoming future, we're mere steps away from grunted out, sentence long interviews.

So enjoy your new dialogue with your leaders, America. Fitting they chose the shortest communications advance with the least feedback to get excited about. It's all wasted time anyway, we know Sen. Ellis of Bloody England is the only elected representative worth following on Twitter.