– Why Ask Me? Thanks to Tony Hayward’s appearance before Congress, we now know the qualifications for a CEO of British Petroleum apparently are to be completely uninformed about your business and the details of the greatest man-made oil disaster in US history that your company caused. For maintaining this extraordinary level of blissful ignorance, Hayward was paid $4.7 million in salary last year. Note to BP: Seems like you could find someone just as empty above the neck for considerably less – I know several people looking for a job who know nothing about the oil business and would gladly accept $50K per annum to stay just as dumb as Tony.
– Speaking of Tony’s eye-rolling Congressional performance, crackpot Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton, coincidentally the recipient of at least $27,000 in campaign cash from Big Oil, took the occasion to dump on Obama for making sure BP paid for its disaster with a $20 billion escrow fund (which Joe hilariously called a ‘shakedown’) and then apologized to BP for any inconvenience the people of the US might have caused the oil giant by holding them responsible for destroying the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 Americans and ruining the lives of millions of others. President Obama may not have had his finest moment in his speech last Tuesday, but with the opposition spearheaded by half-baked corporate cheerleaders like Barton; Mississippi Gov. Haley “You Sure These Here Tar Balls Are From BP?” Barbour; Louisiana Gov. Bobby “I’m Against All Federal Bail-Outs Except When My State Needs One” Jindal; Alabama Gov. Bob “The Oil Will Never Reach Our Beaches” Riley and other GOP space cadets echoing the same forehead-slapping “Let’s not be so hard on BP” line, Obama looks like FDR in high-gear in comparison. The delusional, pop-eyed, tongue-lolling crazy GOP is committing suicide in the Gulf States; seems like the political opposition could take advantage of that by running ads simply showing what the various Republican pols have said in defense of the hated BP, especially Barton. (Just imagine the spittle-flecked furor on the right if a Democrat apologized to BP.) But, then, these are today’s Democrats who have made ‘bipartisanship’ with the lunatic Republicans their religion. FDR would not have approved. (Incidentally, GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner forced Barton to apologize for his BP apology; even the Ohio SunTanMan knew what a stench of electoral defeat Strokin’ Joe’s words left in their wake.)
– Speaking of losers, I think it’s a cinch that dipsy-doodle Republican wingnut Michele Bachmann will lose her bid for reelection in Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District. Given a strong Democratic challenger (for a change) and the embarrassment she’s caused to her constituents by her public bouts of delusional babbling, paranoid hysteria, and defense of BP’s unethical and destructive practices, she may very well be retired to a Fox News berth, or a sinecure as a lobbyist for the Focus on the Family’s Anti-Woman League.
– Gold Rush and Bust: For those who think buying gold will be a hedge against disaster if the economy melts down even further, keep in mind it is just a tradable commodity like corn, and actually worse than corn because at least corn is edible. Gold is a soft metal not good for much except jewelry and spacecraft and the price is high only because, for now, there are more buyers than sellers. However, if in the future the number of sellers exceeds the number of buyers, the price will plunge, which is exactly what I think will happen as things worsen. Although most economists think there’s no chance the price of gold will drop precipitously, these are some of the same seers who thought real estate values would perpetually increase. Unless you can find a way to eat it or wear it for warmth, investing in gold is just another junk bond scheme where the little guy will end up holding the bag. (Gold purveyors are now Glenn Beck’s primary sponsors – what does that tell you?) As John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “In economics, the majority is always wrong,” and Galbraith has been proven right, again and again.
BTW, those who favor a return to the gold standard for US currency don’t seem to realize that the price of gold is unstable and fluctuates daily and, therefore, so would the value of the dollar. Besides, the US doesn’t own enough gold to make this a viable notion.
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
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Oil eating bacteria destroys journalism
This week Fox News had people (and the Mamas and Papas in song) asking about where has all the oil gone? When will they ever learn that Houdini didn’t really make the elephant disappear? It had to go somewhere. In all the time that Americans have been fighting, dying, and losing assorted limbs to bring Democracy to Iraq, the oil industry there may have lugged along in second gear, but it has never shut down completely; so where the hell did all that oil go? Somebody had to be paying for it; so where did all that money go? Was BP earning up the financial reserves to pay for unexpected, unforeseen future expenses such as the ones cause by the Gulf oil spill? For nine years, the Iraq oil fields have been coughing up “Texas tea,” so inquiring minds want to know: “Where did all that oil go?”
Could America be doing all that fighting in Iraq just so that BP could pump out oil to be sold in China?
Has America vaulted past existentialist thinking and begun the epoch of post-absurdism?
Any country that conveniently forgets about the dispersants and embraces nonsense about oil eating bacteria causing the oil spill to disappear deserves to be swindled into believing that Houdini used elephant eating bacteria or that when (not “if”) Jeb Bush gets inaugurated in January of 2013, it will have been the result of a legitimate win in the 2012 Presidential election.
When a news story about billions of missing dollars is reported, the reaction is: “That only proves that the Bush tax cuts for the super wealthy need to be extended!”
Isn’t it ironic that Americans shrug off the conspiracy theory lunatics’ idea that George W. Bush committed war crimes but they bristle at any hint that the Republicans would sanction anything that would compromise the sacredness of free elections in the U. S. A.
Americans, who take complacency to heights of achievement undreamed of by the Third Reich, accept the fact that President Obama has continued the war crimes policies of the Bush Administration but they react furiously to the possibility that the Republicans, if they are “given” a majority in the House and Senate via the 2010 midterm elections, will start impeachment proceedings against President Obama by producing a foreign student loan application that swears the applicant was not a native born American.
That idea might make some liberals gag, but eventually with repeated haranguing from Fox News, the Americans will (like Monica Lewinsky?) swallow it and get used to breathless impeachment updates around the clock in lieu of actually doing what the House and Senate is supposed to be doing. Has any pundit ever speculated on the possibility that Monica was deliberately sent (Mata Hari style) to sabotage Bill Clinton’s presidency?
Americans might assume that if such a hypothetical news development about a possible student loan perjury existed, Andrew Breitbart would already know about it and would not hesitate to rush the allegation onto the Internet and not wait until it’s just about time for the new Congressional representatives to be sworn in next January. Is it a conspiracy theory to think that he must wait for the Minister of Propaganda to give (like a maestro for a symphony orchestra) the signal to push the “post” button for this (hypothetical) example of citizen journalism in action?
With major elements of the so-called pro-Liberal mainstream media, like trained seals performing on cue, making the case for the oil eating bacteria, the Conservatives will consider any attempts by online pundits to point out that the dispersants caused the oil to dissipate with the same level of amused distain as would be assigned to a cough during a performance of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Where is Arturo Toscanini when Fox News truly needs him?
Have you noticed that now that Bush isn’t President the Conservatives don’t need Ann Coulter to act like the rodeo clown to switch the media’s attention away from a possible chance to debate war crimes?
Isn’t it a bit inconsistent for Republicans to say that the unemployed don’t need an extension of benefits but that the Rich must have an extension of the tax cuts? In the one case adding to the cash flow coming into the U. S. treasury would be a bad thing, but stopping money from coming into the bank accounts of the unemployed would be a good thing. How can cutting off the flow of money (into the U. S. Treasury) be bad and shutting off a weekly check into families’ bank accounts be a good thing?
The silver tongued devils have convinced America that having the rich’s tax dollars go elsewhere (like into their bank accounts) would have a positive effect on the economy but that putting a few bucks into the hands of folks waiting for the next unemployment check to arrive would not help stimulate the economy. The apparent paradox is ignored by “journalists” who do not try to explain the difference.
The allure of being a Republican member of Congress in 2011 and 2012 is something that the World’s Laziest Journalist can readily appreciate. The fact that Republican politicians will be well paid just to make sure that no work gets done, makes this columnist green with envy.
Speaking of the Beach Combers’ Hall of Fame, this week this columnist was unable to ascertain if Garland Roark, author of the novel which was the source material for the John Wayne film “Wake of the Red Witch,” ever actually traveled to the South Pacific or if he did his research in the Nacogdoches Public Library. Say, isn’t that the town where this columnist’s newest hero, Joe R. Lansdale, lives? Speaking of Texas, whatever happened to Kinky Friedman? Did he go back to writing mysteries?
Which, of course, brings us to this nagging question: Will the new James Bond Cars Museum have taped guided tours and will those tapes feature the voice of Sean Connery? If not; why not?
Writing columns for the post-absurdism era won’t be much of a challenge for this writer.
In the introduction to his own book, “The Hoax,” Clifford Irving wrote: “I believe that the past is fiction, the future is fantasy and present for the most part is an ongoing hoax.”
Now the disk jockey will try to embarrass the columnist by playing Peter, Paul, and Mary’s version of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” and then throwing The Beverly Hillbillies theme song, and the soundtrack album from “Giant” on the turntable. It’s time to go and take Buzz’s “chickie run” dare. (Isn’t a “chickie run” when fraternity brothers are sent on an emergency mission to find more young ladies to populate a Saturday night party?) Have a “Match me, Sidney!” type week and remember that if Jesus and Fox News can forgive BP’s sins, so can you.