What we wish POTUS said about the oil spill Tuesday

4 thoughts on “What we wish POTUS said about the oil spill Tuesday”

1. .
   
   disincline big oil to fund the Democratic Party ?
   
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   1. Big oil gives far more to Republicans than to Democrats.  Not saying Dems don’t benefit, but it’s not even close.

      The idiot who apologized to BP yesterday for expecting the company to actually pay for the damage it has caused (before he lamely retracted his outrageous stunt), Republican Congressman Joe Barton (TX), inhaled $1.5 million from oil companies LAST YEAR ALONE.  

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2. Disclaimer: I like Maddow a lot, but she’s gotten sloppy, or was just playing to her audience, this time — as Chait explained at TNR:

   [Maddow] delivered her fantasy version of the speech President Obama should have given. It was filled with unequivocal liberal rhetoric. I was struck by this portion, explaining how she would pass an energy bill: “… If Senators use the filibuster to stop the bill, we will pass it by reconciliation… If there are elements of the bill that cannot procedurally be passed by reconciliation, if those elements can be instituted by executive order, I will institute them by executive order.”

   In reality, you can’t pass any of the climate bill by reconciliation. Democrats didn’t write reconciliation instructions permitting them to do so, and very little of its could be passed through reconciliation, which only allows budgetary decisions. Maddow’s response is to pass the rest by executive order. But you can’t change those laws through executive order, either….

   If Maddow’s speech had to hew to the reality of Senate rules and the Constitution, she’d be left where Obama is: ineffectually pleading to get whatever she can get out of a Senate that has nowhere near enough votes to pass even a stripped-down cap and trade bill. It may be nice to imagine that all political difficulties could be swept away by a president who just spoke with enough force and determination. It’s a recurrent liberal fantasy – Michael Moore imagined such a speech a few months ago, Michael Douglas delivers such a speech in “The American President.” I would love to eliminate the filibuster…

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   1. If you want to get all technical about it…  🙂

      I was one of the few who actually thought the President earned more like a C+ on the speech instead of a fail. But it would’ve helped him to have some there there.

      Perhaps it made his $20 billion agreement with the BP chairman look like mega-action…

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