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.

Nice shilling

Now that BP has almost completely devastated the Gulf Coast (full devastation won't be reached until next week) you begin to see why the oil giant has spent so much money over the years buying off a great number of politicians. Excuse me, I mean "making campaign contributions". Because while to everyone else with a functioning set of eyes and a working moral compass, this looks like a massive environmental disaster. If you've gotten millions of dollars from oil companies, you are struggling to understand why this little snafu has even gotten any media attention.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has gotten $1.8 million from Big Oil and is out there aggressively downplaying the damage even as his state is starting to be covered in oil. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) is out there attempting to bring this kind of environmental devastation to Virginia's shores. And Texas Cockknocker Rick Perry (R) would rather blame God than BP for the oil spill.

Let's add Rep. Don Young (R-AK) to the list of people whose BP check cleared.

Young said: “This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a national phenomena. Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. … We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover.”

Yeah, when I look at these pictures of animals in peril or the ruined coasts and marshes, the first thing I think is "Clearly, this is not an environmental disaster. What is everyone whining about anyway?"

But maybe we should pause and pity these poor politicians. I mean after all, our livelihood as gormless political hacks isn't held in the hand of an oil executive with an open checkbook, or that in order to get elected in Alaska I have to essentially swear a blood oath to the black dinosaur blood that fuels our cars, or the fact that some lobbyist probably has photos of me engaging in that dark ritual with its masks, animal sacrifices and nude dancing. We're allowed to view reality objectively.

So, nicely shilled Don. Tony Hayward will personally pat you on the head and toss you a treat. Word of advice: don't say that to anyone whose livelihood or home has been ruined by the spill. They're likely to beat you to death or drown you in the open oil pit that used to be a body of water.

This is a good idea, I'm sure of it

The President has officially named his National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which is empowered... to look at the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and offshore drilling. It's in the title. Of course this raises one important question: will the commission complete its work before the oil stops flowing into the Gulf? I vote no.

In naming the chairs for the commission, there's one interesting fact about the Republican co-chair. It seems he may be a man constructed entirely of oil.

President Obama today promised a full investigation into the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Obama said the administration will consider whether what has happened amounts to a crime and won't allow new offshore drilling until we know what went wrong.

As Obama spoke, he was flanked by the two co-chairs of the bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The Republican co-chair, William K. Reilly, has spent a career in the industry he'll now probe. A former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Reilly currently serves on the board of directors of: ConocoPhillips; DuPont, which provides technologies for oil and gas extraction; and Energy Future Holdings, a Texas-based electric utility company.

Hey, I know we have to have a Republican co-chair to preserve the bipartisan circle jerk ethos that permeates Washington, but you really couldn't find a guy with a few less ties to oil companies? Sure, you have to select from the ranks of the GOP and finding a Republican free of ties to an oil company would probably need a bipartisan investigative commission of its own, but really, couldn't find a guy with only one extremely personally lucrative tie to a oil and oil related companies? You could only get a guy with three?

Whew, I was worried for a second. I thought a commission might go and put too much blame onto BP, Transocean , and Halliburton. Thanfully the American people will have a guy on there with a deep, personal financial interest in offshore drilling and oil, speaking for the oil companies. Bullet dodged, folks, bullet dodged.

Not the time, David

Yesterday we learned about the poor, poor BP executives, the hardships they're going through, and how Americans are callously withholding their sympathy for shitbags who cause oil spills.

Sure, having a BP CEO tell us we should lay off and stop hating them so much is one thing, but where is one of our elected betters to tell us that same thing and hamper any attempt to make BP liable for this? Surely there must be one asshole who is so completely bought and paid for by an oil company that he cannot help himself and starts pushing to help out BP. Anyone? Anyone? What's that, Louisiana Senator David Vitter? You say you don't want to be Senator anymore? Continue.

What happens when you're a small government, pro-business conservative and your state gets pummeled by one of the worst man made disasters ever – not five years after getting pummeled by one of the worst natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina)? If you're Louisiana Senator David Vitter, you double down on offshore drilling and push for a liability cap for BP.

Doubling down on drilling is not particularly surprising. Much of Louisiana's much-needed revenue comes from off-shore drilling leases. “By the same token, after every plane crash, you and I should both oppose plane travel,” Vitter quipped on Sunday to CNN's Candy Crowley. “I don't think that is rational.”
...
But it's Vitter's early support of a liability cap – he introduced legislation that he promoted in last weekend's weekly GOP radio address – he introduced legislation that he promoted in last weekend's weekly GOP radio address – that's landing the son of a Chevron petroleum engineer in trouble.

Nicely played. For the last month a busted offshore oil rig has been pouring seemingly every drop of oil in the earth into the Gulf and is in the process of ruining large parts of your state, which -if you remember- is Louisiana. So of course now is the proper time to start bitching about people who suddenly don't think offshore drilling is such a great idea, 1) because the safety procedures seems so lax, and 2) because there seems to be know way to stop the oil if one breaks. Don't forget to try to limit the amount the responsible party has to pay out in damages. I mean, why should BP be responsible for all the oil BP spills and all the costs relating to all the oil they spilled? That's madness.

It's a nice "Idiot provides opponents, opposing party, and constituents with gun, fish, an barrel during re-election campaign" story. Usually politicians aren't that stupid, especially when somehow they've been able to survive the whole "Moral crusader gets famously busted for buying hookers"/Bayou whoremaster thing. But I guess BP has given him rather a lot of money over the years and he feels he owes them. Vitter is, of course, getting pilloried by anyone with a microphone in Louisiana.

So here's TB election tip #132b: During this election season, maybe you don't want to go out of your way to publicly call for more offshore drilling and attempt to legally protect corporations from paying for all the damage they've caused. It may be unpopular with people who like coasts and water that's mostly comprised of, uh, water.

Sarah's back

If there's one you can say about Sarah Palin it's that she spends an awful lot of time needlessly barging into situations without ever showing that she knows why she initially felt the need to barge into said situation in the first place.

Take the BP oil spill, for instance. With the Obama Administration taking increasing criticism for letting BP handle the cleanup and spill stoppage ineffectively, the best thing to do would either be to let the pressure mount organically or dip in and deftly lay in a few intelligent shots. Or, you could loudly shout that Obama is in bed with Big Oil, try to claim that all of Obama's oil connections and oil money are clouding his judgment, and then try to build some bizarre case that the Democratic Party is the party of Big Oil. She does realize she's the former governor of Alaska, is in the Republican Party, and essentially pours oil on her pancakes each morning and eats it with a smile, right? Now to some, this all might be seen as "intensely and obviously stupid", but our minds do not work like the well oiled steel trap that is America's Dumb Rural Mom.

So when most of the GOP has started backing away from Rand Paul, mouths agape, marveling over the fact that he found a way to make the Republican Party look worse to black voters, what do you think Sarah Palin decided the smart thing to do was? Accuse the interviewer of prejudice and cloak easy, straightforward questions as the Machiavellian machinations of a malevolent media.

"One thing we can learn in this lesson that I have learned and Rand Paul is learning now is don't assume that you can engage in a hypothetical discussion about constitutional impacts with a reporter or a media personality who has an agenda, who may be prejudiced before they even get into the interview in regards to what your answer may be," Palin said. "You know, they are looking for the gotcha moment. And that evidently appears to be what they did with Rand Paul..."

Hmm, yes. I think when America saw the interview they clearly saw that the agenda and prejudice was coming from the interviewer and was not wafting off the guy who just said he was cool with discrimination. And everyone knows that asking a question about Civil Rights so easy ("Civil Rights Act of 1964: Good thing?") that even the most embittered Klansman would know how to answer it on the TV, is just a cheap gotcha question much in the same vein as "What do you read?" "What is your foreign policy experience?" and "Is there something in your eye? You keep winking."

At least she added in a bunch of comments calling for stricter action on BP by Obama... which I'm sure will not come back to bite her in the ass when Obama takes stricter action on BP and she feels the need to decry the onerous pressure of the government on business. Ah well, at least it gives me one chance in my life to say "I agree with Sarah Palin". So, if any large chunks of the earth fall into the sea or the sky turns blood red, I'm sorry. She just happened to make a valid point, however accidentally, inherently dishonest or nakedly political it may have been. There's a first time for everything.

Quote of the day

So what do you do when you seemingly endorse repealing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, set off a firestorm, and have to walk things back so much that at the end of the day you are not only disavowing any connections you have to yourself, but you're seriously considering claiming you have a big tattoo of Martin Luther King high fiving Sojourner Truth across your back?

If you're Rand Paul, you criticize the President and stick up for BP in the midst of a massive ecological nightmare. Of course you do.

On Good Morning America today, Paul also steered the conversation toward something more recent, President Obama's criticism of BP following the oil spill. Paul said: "This sort of, you know 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

Paul continued: The President's reaction is "part of this sort of blame game society" where "it's always someone's fault." Paul added: "Maybe sometimes accidents happen."

"Accidents happen." That's one way of putting it. I'm no political expert, but maybe the best pivot point off of "Businesses should be allowed to discriminate. A pox on the Civil Rights Act" isn't "How dare the President criticize a corporation just because it's extreme negligence is causing an unprecedented environmental disaster." At least Rand took out time to also intensely whine about the criticism he received yesterday.

But, maybe we're being too harsh on Raaaaaaaaandy. As Orrin Hatch explained

“If I were you guys I’d give him a little leeway,” Hatch told reporters. “He just got elected. It’s a tough thing for him to get in the middle of this cauldron.”

Yeah, it's his first day on the job. How's he supposed to know criticizing one of the landmark bills in US history and openly endorsing the right to discriminate would make him look like an ass? C'mon, lay off.

I don't know, Rand, what's on tap for tomorrow? Feel a need to praise the Pope's handling of the whole child molestation thing? Opine on the sporting excellence of the Pittsburgh Pirates? Start an intensive discussion on all the good policy ideas Hitler had? Talk about the chilling effects the Emancipation Proclamation had on business; especially the cotton industry? Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll do it in your trademark smug, entitled style. Never pausing to actually think about how what you're saying sounds. Keep it up, Rand. We need a new punching bag now that Palin and Bachmann have seemingly learned to shut up.

Quote of the day

Look, it's clear that people are overreacting to this unprecedented oil spill thingy dingy in the Gulf. I mean BP CEO Tony Hayward spelled it out for us last week when he explained that the spill was "relatively tiny" when compared to the overall size of the ocean and it's total water volume.

I mean, yeah, when you think about it, covering the entire Gulf of Mexico in oil isn't that big a deal when you consider the earth is over 70% water. Plus it's only the top of the water that's covered in oil. What about all the water underneath that's still perfectly good? What about the depth of the ocean? That's a lot of water, BP could have only massively polluted a small fraction of it. When you think about it, taken against the entirety of human achievement and failure, this is only a small failure on Heyward's part.

Proving that no one in BP's PR Department was brave enough to smack him in the back of the head and ask Heyward what the fuck he was doing, Tony went right back out there to keep hitting that line of defense.

I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward. We’re going to do that with some of the science institutions in the U.S. But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest.

Yes... modest. Very, very modest.

Plus, it's not like this is the only Gulf. If people want to see a Gulf they can go to the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Gulf of Tonkin, or the Gulf of Riga. Everyone loves Latvia, right? So when you think about how many Gulf's there are and how much ocean water there is by area and volume, it's like this didn't even happen. You hear me? THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN!

All better now

You may have heard that the Gulf oil spill was an awful environmental disaster, an ecological nightmare, the equivalent of two Exxon Valdezes a week, is 10 times worse than the original 5 time worse than estimate of the original catastrophic spill estimate, is worse than even pessimistic government estimates, and entered the Gulf Loop current and was threatening reefs and the Florida Keys.

But that was before BP CEO Tony Hayward said the spill was "relatively tiny" compared to the "very big ocean" and that they had finally got some kind of partial stopgap measure on the leak to stop it from dumping all that oil into the water. So... all better now. Which is why our elected betters can finally start dealing with the important matters: like making sure the oil industry doesn't have to pay for cleaning up all that oil they spilled.

Even in a Washington as dominated by corporate money as today's, it's not often that you see a lawmaker side with financial backers over the public interest as brazenly as Alaska's senior senator did yesterday.

In the wake of last month's catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is "not where we need to be right now" she said.

Murkowski's move came just hours after Washington's top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap.

Ah yes, the old "It'll hurt small business" gambit. I think every law that had to do with any kind of business anywhere in the last hundred years has been attacked as "hurting small business." What a coincidence.

Thankfully Murkowski was there to tell us that this wasn't the time to be talking about an issue like raising liability caps on offshore drilling. No, we need not discuss liability for giant offshore drilling accidents right in the middle of a giant offshore drilling accident. That just doesn't make sense.

So, dear readers, in case you were wondering if there was a limit to which fat stacks of corporate cash and subservience to your corporate masters could ever be overridden by common sense, large scale disasters, or a basic sense of shame; no there isn't. Not even during the height of a crisis, knowing that media attention will be on you. Can you blame her? How else is she going to earn that high paying lobbying job for the API two seconds after she retires? Not by employing any shred of integrity during a Senate career, that's for sure.

Cheap Blogging Crutch - 5.11.10

If you're wondering about the picture above, I've got nothing for you. An image with that much Awesome packed into it requires no explanation whatsoever. To the links!

Last month a Seattle police officer detained an innocent Latino man and allegedly threatened to “beat the [expletive] Mexican piss out” of him. As much as I hope that justice is served and the cop is tossed in jail, where I'm sure he'll be very popular, I have to ask: why "Mexican piss"? Brevity suggests the universal shorthand "Corona" would be more appropriate.

While we're on the subject of criminal behavior on the part of the authorities, the Chicago Police Department will not press charges against a CVS employee who chased down and strangled to death a man who had shoplifted a tube of toothpaste. While an officer was on the scene, no less. One can only presume the predictably black suspect would have escaped with his life had he opted for the Extra Whitening.

Not content with war profiteering and murder abroad, Satan's cock wart defense contractor Blackwater/Xe has launched SnapScouts, a mobile phone application that enables America's youth to spy on on neighbors. I applaud this, as kids need to learn about mercenary armies and lawless international behavior as soon as possible. Actually, it turns out that this is fake, but you have to admire the satire, especially when it involves so many 1984 references.

The lovely and intrepid Daniela Perdomo points out that in the three weeks since Deepwater Horizon asploded, the American government hasn't exactly taken up the mantle of disciplinarian. In fact, while pistol-whipping the petroleum industry in the press and at pointless congressional finger-pointing sessions hearings, the Interior Department has quietly approved 27 new permits for offshore drilling. In similar news, Glenn Beck is PETA's new spokesperson.

We end, as always, with The Funny, today taking the form of the most epic Hipster text message break-up of all time. Ladies, when are you going to learn that you can't text message breakup?

Conspiracy~!

You might have thought that in all this hullabaloo about drilling rig explosions, oil replacing water as the main liquid in the Gulf, environmental disaster this, decades to clean up that, poor sea turtles the other, that this all somehow presented a comprehensive case against offshore drilling. It hasn't.

I mean sure, if this disaster was the result of years of lobbying against safer practices and regulation, poor oil company safety standards, and lax safety standards, you might have a point. But it wasn't. Hold on to the tops of your skulls, because I might just blow your mind. IT WAS ALL THE RESULT OF A LIBERAL CONSPIRACY!! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN! And if you don't believe me, surely you'll believe the leading lights of the conservative movement.

Limbaugh added: "[W]hat better way to head off more oil drilling and nuclear plants then by blowing up a rig? I'm just, I'm just noting the timing here."

Dana Perino said of the spill: "I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate? You have to wonder...if there was sabotage involved."

Fox Business Network host Eric Bolling falsely claimed it was "nine days before" the leak "was even addressed" and asked, "Did they let this thing leak? ... if they're going to try and pull drilling, that may be the way they do it."

Heckuva Job Brownie: "And I would not be surprised if the White House said, you know what, we might be able to, guess what, do what? Use this crisis to our advantage. Let this crisis get really bad, and then we will step in. We will be able to shut down offshore drilling."

SEE! It's all so clear now. Clearly this isn't an offshore drilling/oil company/safety/regulation problem, this is a liberal terrorist/sabotage/government conspiracy problem. I haven't done enough research, but the Sasquatch and the mole people may be involved. We may have drilled into their underground lair or something.

Sure, liberals/reverse vampires set charges on the rig and then Obama, who secretly hates offshore drilling despite all those statements and plans to support it, waited 8 days, no, 9 days, no, 12 days, no, 7 years, before lifting a finger in order to discredit offshore drilling! Obama's Katrina! Conspiracy! Spy satellites are watching us!

So in the end we have learned, like always, that corporations are never responsible for anything and that things with obvious dangerous environmental hazards aren't dangerous at all. It turns out that everything would have run smoothly if it weren't for those damn meddling kids and their overarching conspiracy to drag down our corporate betters into the mire. Isn't that always the way?

You misheard them

Hey, remember when all those Republican politicians were all like "Drill, Baby, Drill", were openly advocating for offshore drilling as basically being our sole energy policy, held entire rallies, speeches, and interviews advocating for offshore drilling, made offshore drilling the central pillar of their energy policy and environmental negotiations, and were all like "drink a glass of offshore oil with every breakfast"? No? That right, because it never happened. You hear me? IT NEVER HAPPENED!!!!

In the wake of the massive BP oil spill, Senate Republicans are disowning the catchphrase “Drill, Baby, Drill,” claiming that Republicans never endorsed it. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) attempted to distance themselves and their party from the phrase yesterday, pretending not to know who popularized it, and dismissing the slogan

“That was not a Senate Republican phrase,” Kyl said. “I think there was a candidate that used that. I think our phrase was ‘drill here, drill now,’ meaning here in the United States and as quickly as oil and gas leases are going.”

Roberts said Republicans were always uneasy with the catchphrase.

“I don’t know about the slogan. The slogan was what, two, three years ago and basically we had a lot of opposition to it anyway.”

......Right. Who could possibly ever remember the Presidential candidate and the woman VP candidate who would shout it almost as much as they shouted "Maverick" (another phrase which we recently learned had never actually been uttered)? Who could remember the swaths of supporters chanting it or the GOP lawmakers who also adopted the slogan and made the policy behind that slogan a pillar of their ideology?

Oh, I'm sorry, their slogan was "Drill here, drill now". That's completely different than "Drill, baby, drill". I don't even think "Drill here, drill now" even references offshore oil drilling. I think it has something to do with support for Dentistry.

So please, don't try to tie this around the necks of the GOP like a giant albatross. I mean who can remember, in all this confusion, who advocated for drilling where and when? I mean that whole "Drill, baby, drill" thing was so 15 minutes ago. Literally, 15 minutes ago. Who can remember back to mid-morning? What's important to remember is that no one ever heard of or spoke of offshore drilling in any way that could be construed as support before this disaster happened. In fact, what's offshore drilling? What's oil? Where am I? Who are you?

Republicans piss and moan for oil

Republicans aren't going to give up the fight. They're committed to solving high gas prices. They're committed to helping American's get cheaper gas. That commitment only extends to drilling however, and only when they can make political asses out of themselves.

– “Today is the 2008 version of the Boston Tea Party.” [Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), 8/1/08]

– “Without your help we won’t be able to do anything…like the founders of this country we’re going directly to the American people.” [Rep. Tim Price (R-GA), 8/4/08]

– “Tell your congressman- we don’t want you back home. We want you in Washington. This could be America’s greatest hour. Insist that we come back to vote.” [Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL), 8/4/08]

– “As a part of their history-making efforts to continue the fight to lower gas prices, House Republicans held a press conference just a few moments ago to demand that Speaker Pelosi allow a vote on the American Energy Act.” [Blog of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), 8/4/08]

I know what you're saying: "They've decided the best image to conjure up for their political oil masters is when Americans came together to dump something overpriced into the ocean." I know, that's not the image you want to conjure up for offshore oil drilling. Or the self aggrandizing statement about how shilling for your oil daddies is 'America's greatest hour'. This in addition to the fact that offshore drilling will in no way reduce gas prices now or in the future. But you knew that already. Oh yeah, one more thing, Democrats did try to have an up or down vote on this last week......the Republicans blocked it.

What's great is that all the pissing and moaning, breath holding, foot stomping, and tear stained speeches from hacks like John Boehner, the Republicans can't even get Bush to pull a token stunt to make Congress has to stay in session over their break. Let me repeat that: they can't even convince the boy emperor to pull a petty, snide, empty stunt before he jets off to Beijing to be secretly loathed by our athletes. Ouch.

Take it like men Republicans. Go back to your paymasters, tell them you couldn't get them the free money they wanted, get rapped on the knuckles with a ruler, then go into the "Grope Closet" with Rex Tillerson and David O'Reilly until they've gotten their fill of your pasty flesh. You'll never learn otherwise.