Obama, investigate thyself for BP ties.
Here’s a hoot, the U.S. Justice Department announced it will begin a fishing expedition to see if there was any criminal activity in the British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response,” Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in New Orleans after viewing spill damage, which he described as “heartbreaking to see.”
Hmmm. A good place to begin investigation might be President Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu. While at the Energy Biosciences Institute Mr. Chu received, according to a rare honest piece of reporting at the New York Times, “the bulk of a $500 million grant from the British oil giant BP to develop alternative energy sources.”
But who would dare insinuate that the Obama energy secretary was a little too cozy with BP and the oil industry? That’s crazy talk!
Dr. Koonin, who followed Dr. Chu to the Energy Department and now serves as under secretary of energy for science, is recused from all matters relating to the disaster because of his past ties to BP, said Stephanie Mueller, an Energy Department spokeswoman.
Dr. Chu, she said, “has never had a financial interest in BP.” [except $500 million...]
Ms. Mueller added, “No one in their right mind would suggest that Dr. Chu is beholden to oil companies, especially since he’s spent the past decade working to cut America’s dependence on oil and move us toward a clean-energy economy.” [thanks to a payment from BP for... 500 million dollars!]
Well I can think of 500 million reasons why someone might be in a right mind to suggest that Mr. Chu is beholden to oil companies. After all, has the brilliant Ms. Mueller not stopped to consider that the oil companies just might be the very same companies who one day also own the “alternative” energies? Or has that possibility not crossed her brilliant Beltway intellect?
Did you know that the Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service the Summer before the Deepwater accident gave the rig an award for safety, or that BP was “one of three finalists for a federal award honoring offshore oil companies for “outstanding safety and pollution prevention.”"
Better yet, perhaps Eric Holder could investigate President Obama, since the prez himself is the #1 recipient of money from BP’s political contributions in 20 years! Wait, wait, I thought oil was evil. I thought corporations were evil. Isn’t that what the Left always tells us? But they’ll take their money like the rest of us, eh?
Now I write all this tongue in cheek, of course, although the ties between our energy secretary and BP are quite interesting, aren’t they?
But the hypocrisy here is staggering, truly embarrassing, absolutely extreme. That is, almost as bad as the hypocrisy of say the lack of coverage of Iranian police bashing in the skulls of students during a pro-democracy march to, say, I don’t know, the overblown and totally slanted coverage of Israeli soldiers defending themselves during an attempt to search a ship of militant, crowbar- and knife-wielding “peace activists” who clearly had a single goal of provoking a violent response.
Were we to replace the words Obama and Chu with Bush or Cheney and BP with Haliburton or, heck, just keep the word BP, and you can bet dollars to navy beans that the press would be screaming about how our government is beholden to oil and corporations, and how secretive this all was, and how evil Cheney was, and how the Justice Department investigation would be like the fox guarding the hen house, and Bush was playing golf while Rome burned, and what a sham it was that the federal government had been passing out safety awards to BP, etc., ad nauseum.
One last word. As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, why not investigate why BP needs to drill 5,000 feet under water. Isn’t that the first question? Why do we feel it necessary? What have these lawsuit-happy environmentalists and legislators bought us by blocking oil drilling on shore, or gee, at least closer to shore. In most ways, as we’re now learning, drilling 100 miles off shore is far more environmentally dangerous than drilling 5 miles off shore. Got a leak 5 miles off (and a couple hundred feet down)? No problem. Divers can fix that. Got a leak 5,000 feet down? You’re screwed. Much harder to fix. Did I mention that the current leak is 5-G.D.-thousand feet down? Thanks envirowackos!
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