6/17/2010
Welcome to Thursday night ladies and gentlemen. It is 138 days until election day and we are now in day 59 of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak crisis. Quite frankly I'm getting a bit tired of talking about it but it is still out there and it needs our attention. It's amazing that since I began this blog that there have been two main stories that have garnered the majority of my time. The oil leak and the Arizona immigration battle. Tonight I have news on both of them as well as some astonishing news from an Air Force Base in Texas. First let's jump into the oil spill...
Hayward on the Hill
BP CEO Tony Hayward was on Capitol Hill today under oath taking a grilling from lawmakers. While his testimony in front of the committee was important and drew many headlines it was the sideshows during the grilling that garnered much of the attention. Shortly after the questioning began a protester stood up and was covered in a substance that was supposed to be oil. The protester shouted at Hayward and said that he should be charged criminally and placed in jail. Later during the meeting Representative Joseph Barton of Texas apologized to Hayward for the way he was treated at the White House yesterday and equated what was done to BP as a "shakedown" by the Obama administration. This is the question that I want to look at tonight. Did some arm twisting or a "shakedown" occur at the White House yesterday? Is this on the lunatic fringe? Representative Barton recieved harsh criticism from both parties after his comments and later issued an apology for his remarks. Barton who is Republican had GOP leaders performing damage control this afternoon while the White House took advantage of his remarks to criticize the GOP leadership and the Tea Party. Let's look at his allegations and analyze this a little bit closer.
BP executives went into the White House yesterday afternoon and met with the Obama administration for the first time. After the meeting the announcement was made that BP will set aside 20 billion dollars in a fund that will be managed by a third party. While I agree that BP should be responsible for any and all restitution that is to be made the fact remains that federal law only requires them to pay out a maximum 75 million dollars. So how did the Obama administration convince BP to agree to this 20 billion dollar figure. As much as I'd like to believe that BP agreed to it out of the goodness of their heart I highly doubt that was the case. So here is my theory. Either the administration strongarmed BP into agreeing to this figure or the administration agreed to give BP something in return. Either way something sounds fishy here. Major corporations don't just hand over money for free. BP's attorneys would know that they are only legally liable for the 75 million dollars as mandated by federal law. My feeling is that Obama either offered BP exclusive rights to drill in the Gulf. The flip side of the coin is that BP was told that they must do this or they will not drill in America ever again. If either one of those theories is right then it means that Representative Barton was right and this either amounted to a "shakedown" or a bribe. Of course this is all speculation at this time and quite frankly at the moment it does not matter. The priority right now is to stop the leak and clean up the oil. The rest of this mess will end up in litigation for decades to come. Once again I want to restate my position that BP SHOULD be responsible for the entire amount of restitution and cleanup for this mess. It's their baby. The question is can they LEGALLY be held responsible for it? If anything improper was done during the negotiations I'm sure it will come out in the wash at some point in time.
Arizona Under The Gun
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced tonight that the Department of Justice will be filing a lawsuit against the State of Arizona for their new immigration enforcement law SB 1070. Obviously this is very unfortunate because the main reason that Arizona passed SB 1070 is because the federal government has not and continues not to do their job and that is to protect our borders. During her statement today Secretary Clinton even said that the reason that Arizona's bill is being contested was because it wasn't Arizona's job to enforce immigration but instead it was the federal governments. Since Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's meeting with President Obama two weeks ago there has been no contact between the feds and the state. Governor Brewer is not happy about the situation. This situation is going to get much more uglier before it gets better. Here's some advice for the feds...Get some troops down to the border, do your job and protect our national security, withdraw the lawsuit and then maybe Arizona will look into eliminating SB 1070. Just a thought...Stay tuned because this will get interesting over the next few days and weeks.
Afghans Run Amuck...Here In The US
A group of 17 Afghanistan soldiers that were at a Texas Air Force Base for training have gone AWOL and apparently no one knows where they are. These soldiers were given security clearance to multiple facilities and currently there is a nationwide be on the lookout (BOLO) for these guys. When I first heard this story the first question that came to my mind was...Why are these guys here in America training? Don't we have tons of our soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan? Couldn't these soldiers have been trained in their home country? Let's hope that these guys just wanted to have a nice evening out on the town and that they haven't decided to switch sides. Stay tuned...I will update this as I have more information...
RNC Takes A Shot At Obama
The Republican National Convention has put out an ad about President Obama's lack of action on the oil spill. It's going to hurt the Dems and the left but as it's always said...The truth sometimes hurts. Check out the video below.
In other news from the oil spill...OUTRAGE on the front lines.
The Coast Guard stopped sixteen barges that were working along the Louisiana coast today against the wishes of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Why were they stopped? Because the Coast Guard couldn't verify whether there was enough life jackets and fire extinguishers onboard! WHERE HAS COMMON SENSE GONE. An entire operation that was being effective in removing oil was stopped due to a couple of minor safety issues. GEEZ, have someone run down to Wal Mart and buy some life jackets and keep this stuff going. No wonder people think the feds are incompetent.
Until tomorrow,
Stay Educated, Stay Informed, Stay Alert, Stay Safe
Sonny "Bandit" Darlington
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