These elite make the decisions. ALL the decisions. Do we still have
to wonder at their response to the problems affecting Gulf Shore
communities?YES! President Obama!TAKE their money! Don’t ask for it.TAKE IT!.
Give it to the Podunks.
But there’s nothing in The Constitution that allows that, Fishgrease!
Fuck you! These assholes have destroyed the Gulf of Mexico and are
in the process of destroying hundreds of communities, large and small
along the Gulf Shore. You want to tell me we can’t make them pay for
it? I won’t listen. The citizens of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and
Florida won’t listen. Republicans, Democrats and Independents won’t
listen. This is by far, the largest human and ecological disaster
brought upon the United States of America by a single corporation and
it is a corporation that just happens to have obscene quarterly
profits. God Damn It they can pay! We can MAKE them pay! We just want
small businesses to be paidbefore they go under. Not after.
We can account later. In the end, nothing will be paid by BP they don’t
owe. Leave it up to BP and it will be too late for most folks. Closing
a business is more expensive than starting one up. Family businesses
that have lasted decades — the domino effect on local economies. Who
has a lot of money in reserve these days? I don’t. Most people don’t.
BP does.
The only problem with class warfare is that we’ve been losing it for so long.
A.
Wish Fishgrease was somewhere else besides Kos; I can’t stand the site’s founder or its commenters.
Right now the top-recommended diary on the site is Bill Maher’s “Fuck your jobs” rant to the oilworkers, and the reaction overall is “Yeah! Green jobs! The buggy whip manufacturers went out of business, too! So sorry, but times change!”
I had enough of the Kos brand of “progressive” after Katrina; I can’t risk an aneurysm by going back there too often, because the same class snobbery and naivete seem to be popping up after this latest disaster. It’s not going to be long before someone writes a “That’s what you get for electing Bobby Jindal” diary, and I’ll have to fly to Berkeley and kick Markos Moulitsas in his undescended testicles.
Huey Long is rolling in his oily grave. He never trusted those oil company bastards.
Kevin, there’s good stuff over there still, but it gets buried under the meta. I left daily journalism because I didn’t want to spend what little time I have on this earth bullshitting about who gave who a verbal blowjob at a cocktail party I wasn’t invited to, so I have very little interest in recreating the experience online. Every single thread, just about, devolves into who’s a real netrooter or whatever the fuck, and it makes me want to lie down.
A.
it’s time to fight back. damned high time.
Athenae, I agree with you – it drives me crazy that they (rightly) castigate the WH Press Corps for being a self-involved little club of cluelessness … and then ape the same behaviors themselves.
Of course, I’m still smarting from the fact that the notion of having Yearly Kos in New Orleans the year after Katrina was considered … and rejected. Seems they didn’t think NOLA had the “infrastructure” they needed, and they traipsed off to that land of sustainability and local businesses, Las Vegas.
Athenae, you haz discovered Fishgrease at last?Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
Kevin: you can read some of the essential Fishgrease via Rachel Maddow’s blog for her show.
If you all haven’t been there yet, Bob Cavnar runs a blog called The Daily Hurricane, where you can find his posts signed eljefebob. He’s not Fishgrease, but he’s not chopped liver on the oil bidness, either. Furthermore, Fishgrease says you should be reading Rockman at The Oil Drum (and you should be reading The Oil Drum anyhow if you’re a progressive).
I don’t personally know Fishgrease, but he was in the same oilfields I was when I was growing up — he left in ’84, I got out to stay gone in ’88 (insofar as it’s possible to get “out” of the oilfield and live in West Texas).
In comments last night I learned that Fishgrease also has a blog, but I haven’t found a link to it yet.
Nationalize BP for the duration of the crisis.
Even if the crisis lasts for decades.
Someone who gives Barack Obama an assload of money needs to sidle up to him and say, “Look, Barry, 2012 is coming and the American people want to know whose side you’re on.”
And what the defeat of Arlen Specter and near-defeat of Blanche Lincoln tell me is that if Barry doesn’t do the right thing by November — and I mean on a LOT of things, not just BP — then somebody needs to primary him for 2012. Lincoln still won, but she got pushed to the left in the process, and some good might actually still come of that.