Here’s another infuriating article from the Times this morning. Pretty soon BP will have the longest horizontally-drilled oil well. And they have plans to drill vertically. So, then, they will be drilling up, down, and sideways. I guess if we’re going to take it up the ass without a fight, we might as well let them have it anyway they want.
If you missed any of the BP hearings today, it consisted of Tony Hayward not answering any questions (not surprising) and this (extremely surprising) apology by Republican Rep. Joe Barton. Tune in if you’d like to watch a Republican slowly hang himself politically. Although, he is from Texas, so his seat could be safe for another three decades.
I have returned from Mexico having met a few Compadres in a region there I will not reveal in the likelihood I need to flea the States at some point during my revolutionary reign. I come back with a heightened immune system from drinking the tap and toilet water for a week. When the pipe burst here in Boston, I admitted to boiling my water because I am opposed to drinking water that’s filled with feces that’s not my own. However, I am unopposed to drinking the shit that doesn’t drop from the assholes of those in the United States of America. As I find Mexican feces to be made from a much fresher stock (because at least you know what you’re getting). And that is the extent to which I will reveal the undertakings of my mission to Mexico.
What I’d really like to talk about is the George W. Bushian United States that I found myself returning to this week (as it seems Obama is hell bent on performing the best W. impression of his presidential career). As it is, I have returned to the U.S. Senate passage of an extremely unsatisfactory financial reform bill (as I had predicted) and an oil catastrophe that will dwarf Katrina in its environmental destruction. And, still, no one has any fucking definite answers (we can only hope this latest attempt at a butt plug will work). Thank fucking Christ I built up my immune system while I was away because, at this rate, the oil will seep into our drinking water in a matter of a couple of months when this fucking leak still hasn’t been ceiled.
The one good thing about this spill, though, is that it provides for a nice metaphor for the current course of the Obama administration. Because one way or a-fucking-nother, they are going to have to stop their political hemorrhaging. After a strong showing that lead up to healthcare reform, May has proved to be the worst month of Obama’s presidency. And it follows a period when the Dems appeared to be gaining political clout as well as approval ratings. But this moment proved to be as fleeting as a Laura Bush fart in the Texas wind and the Dems are in a lot of political trouble again. Thusly, the oil spill serves as such a fitting backdrop to this month of May and a perfect partner in crime with the timid and gutless financial reform bill that passed the Senate in the face of so many political analyst’s deep criticism. How did this happen? How do the Dems again find themselves in such a tragic position of having to stop another political gusher? And how did we, or, better yet, how could he have brought us back here? Well, at risk of being too politically philosophical, here is my analysis of the problem:
It seems to me that we currently live in an America where there is no way to quantify or qualify who should gets the fucking breaks in this country. Who is bailed out? Who is allowed to fail? Who receives the thickest cushion? Who falls the hardest? Who is kept on a short leash? Who is left to wander at their leisure? If the White House does not start clearly presenting their answers to these questions or offer a fresh perspective on a solution to them, they are absolutely fucked. If there is to be a defining moment in the Obama administration, it will need to be soon because the president is, again, coming across to the American people as unfocused as he was during the darkest days of healthcare reform. It is, right now, an administration that continues to anger its base while (no surprise here) butting heads with its Republican counterparts. Surely, the inefficiency of our current Congressional system has something to do with this struggle. But, I also believe it has to do with the administration’s ineptitude in distancing themselves from the Big Elite America they set out to change—the big banks (that are still big), the corporate conglomerates (that receive gentle slaps on their wrists), and the corrupt regulatory agencies (that remain unpunished). If there’s one consistent criticism of the president from both the left and the right (excluding the TeaBagging nation of morons that live in their fog of socialist-hollering delirium) it has been his lack of consistent leadership. And, perhaps, as much as I hate the formulaic bullshit of the mainstream media, there is a truth to their criticism here. I remain baffled about how the candidate Barack Obama, whose Achilles’ heel on the campaign trail was whole-heartedly his lack of foreign policy experience, has kept such a clear-minded and pragmatic head abroad while struggling so deeply with his domestic policy. We are living in a bizarro world as this month of May comes to a close—in a strange land where our leader who still speaks of change returns to his back office with advisers to discuss political maneuvering and corporate pandering. It was once a laughed about Youtube clip of Barack Obama being asked the question whether he considered himself black enough to represent the African American race, but I want you to revisit this linked clip here with my blog in mind within these remaining days of May because I proclaim to you that maybe this facetious liberal-minded, banter-inducing question has turned into a political reality and that we have, indeed, elected the first black president who, right now, is simply not acting black enough. So, fuck Wall Street and fuck BP. And let’s ask the most important question: where have all our Huey P. Newton’s gone?
Well, there still remains one left here.
Convincingly Yours,
FreeB. Barrington
Listening to the Senate hearing today with those companies responsible for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico felt like a molestation of catholic priest proportions. I’m telling you after only ten minutes of it, I felt like I had to give myself a head to toe Ped Egg scrub down followed by a cold, bloody shower. Because, clearly, Big Business has once again stuck their fingers straight up our asses when we weren’t looking while keeping a firm grip on our balls. I mean — you thought Goldman Sachs executives didn’t answer any questions. Holy fucking shit! BP, that group of Big-fucking-Pussies, certainly takes the cake on this month’s congressional hearings.
My favorite moment was when an executive was asked to give an estimate on how much money was dedicated to researching preventative measures on a possible oil spill and the executive could not give us even the slightest approximation. This is one fuck of a joke this fucking oil slick. And it’s going to be these same slick dicks that get off easy once again.
It’s the same fucking song as financial reform and it will continue to be the same fucking song until we hold our government officials to a higher standard when it comes to keeping big business in check. Much of this, of course, was set up by the Bush administration’s failure to implement the proper safety standards on companies carrying out offshore drilling. But the Obama administration can take its own blame for exempting BP from further environmental checks on its Deepwater Horizon drilling station. As such, there is plenty of blame to go around most of which we won’t even be aware of for months or years down the line.
In the end, though, the blame will only be put on ourselves if we don’t recognize that the primary villain in this gushing catastrophe is the greed of big business. You can preach all the laissez faire, hands-off-my-money bullshit politics you want, but all it’s going to do is distance yourself from the real problem, not make it go away. Because this shit will eventually bubble up into your fucking corn flakes with an attitude like that and, by then, it’ll be too late.
- Mr. Freemont Barrington / PI on BB BS
