Keeping a Flip-Flop on the Throat of BP

July 29, 2010
Posted by Omnipotent Poobah

JACKBOOTS OR FLIP FLOPS? - The government's vow to "keep a boot" on BP's neck enraged the Conservosphere and turned out to be more like "a flip flop" on BPs neck anyway. Now neither side wants to talk about it.

Back when the Gulf Oil Disaster was only an oily sheen in the public’s eye, White House flak Robert Gibbs pledged the Obamites would, “keep a boot on the throat” of BP to ensure they did what they repeatedly have pledged – “do the right thing”.

At the time, the Conservasphere went ballistic at the White House employing such, “over heated rhetoric, half-truths, and down right distortions” to hold BP accountable. I experienced some of the same vitriol from free marketeers for my post, “The Gulf of Gelatinous Goo and the Tarball Etouffee” and I saw several other similar posts and comment threads too. The fact that Obama’s jackboot to the throat turned out to be more like a stomp administered by a 6-year old using her Hello Kitty flip flops doesn’t seem to have mattered much.

BP Overcome By a Huge Run of Bad Luck
The long and short of the free market cum Teabagger rhetoric revolved around the curious opinion that BP – apparently like every other corporation on the planet – was merely a good corporate citizen overcome by a huge run of bad luck, over-regulation, and the public’s unreasonable desire to dismantle the American economic system oil barrel by oil barrel. In other words, BP was getting a raw deal and if only left alone, would use a firm, earnest handshake and the power of the marketplace to correct and fully atone for what it had wrought.

So how’s that working out for you guys now?

Let’s forget for the moment that Tony “I Want My Life Back” Hayward more than rivalled Gibbs’ words in their dumbness and sometimes faux harshness. Let’s forget that BP wouldn’t know a promise from an oily pelican. Let’s even forget that the sheer grandiosity of BP’s ineptitude makes Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan war performances look like the 30-day cake walks that was promised.

But, BP isn’t alone in its ineptitude. Almost every day we’re treated to a story about how the administration has colluded with the British Pissants to make the hook from which they should be hung as small and painless as possible. Or even better, not even force the skeevy bastards to look at it for fear of hurting their delicate sensibilities.

America Doesn’t Torture
Remember, America doesn’t torture, especially when you’re a big campaign contributor.

There is a lesson here, as expensive, horrible, and demoralizing it may be. Never put all of your faith in the much vaunted private sector to correct anything beyond the underpayment of the CEO’s last quarterly bonus. They will rob you blind and then make you apologize for the robbery…for a fee.

There’s another lesson too. Never put all your faith in government. It’s a publicly held sausage maker using cast-off oil corporate chitlins for ingredients and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of We the People (Very) LLP, but entirely financed by its board of private-sector directors.

Of course, there are sops to those gullible enough to believe that mere words would mean jack-shit in the scheme of things. We still get daily news briefings designed to suck the truly naive and daft into the market uber alles mentality. And yes, our iron-willed-willed Congress is looking for truth, justice, and the American way, but I’d lay a bet that the only malfeasance they’ll find is why a kangaroo “BP Squad” was empaneled to begin with.

As a nation, we’d better have some healthy mistrust for our chosen BFFs – government and private – and look at things realistically.

What better way than to lace up the truly independent jackboots and do some ass kickin’?

White House turns up heat on BP with flurry of new demands (independent.co.uk)
Robert Gibbs Criticizes BP, Won’t Answer If White House Trusts The Company (huffingtonpost.com)
Obama to meet oil rig relatives (news.bbc.co.uk)
“Gump” Gibbs: Boot on Throat of BP -AP video (chicagoraysrants.com)
Coast Guard: BP cap collects 15,000 barrels a day (marketwatch.com)
Robert Gibbs, Along With Everyone Else, Is Not Feeling ‘Overly Sorry’ For BP CEO Tony Hayward (mediaite.com)
DAVID BRODER | A Warning on Loose Lips (kitsapsun.com)
BP well responsibilities ‘must come first’ (bbc.co.uk)
“People are Dying!” but Don’t Ask Questions (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)
Robert Gibbs Answers Gulf Coast Oil Spill Questions on YouTube (mediabistro.com)
Latest developments on the Gulf oil disaster (cnn.com)
White House warns BP on possible CEO change (alternet.org)
Tony Schwartz: Tony Hayward is the Identified Patient (huffingtonpost.com)
SNP and BP = SNBP? A Libya and UK masterstroke? (politics.ie)
BP’s Tony Hayward gets exiled to Siberia (salon.com)

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Randomness: Craptasic Commercialism Style

July 24, 2010
Posted by Omnipotent Poobah

UDDER DELIGHT - Cleanliness is next to milkiness. Click photo for more >>

Craptasic Commercialism

The Nabobs of Nihon

TEABAGGER'S TEABAG - Tea drinking is now down with the kids with the ‘teabagging bag’. Click photo for more >>

OOPS! Everyone Makes a Mistake Now and Then

God Works in Mysterious Comical Ways

Sexual Healing

Robotic Robots Rally for Robbie the Robot

Just Plain Weird

More Randomness (omnipotentpoobah.com)
WTF? Moscow Installs Caviar Vending Machines! (perezhilton.com)
Old Cigarette Vending Machines become mini bookstore (greendiary.com)
Waffle on a stick is perfect for carnies (slashgear.com)
High-Tech Friendly Vending Machine is Interactive (techeblog.com)

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Mr. Prez, It is Time to Lace Up the Jackboots

July 2, 2010
Posted by Omnipotent Poobah

A TSUNAMI OF INCOMPETENCE - You can’t swing a dead pelican without hitting gross incompetence and malfeasance in the Gulf these days. It's time for Obama to lace up the jackboots to stop it.

You can’t swing a dead pelican without hitting gross incompetence and malfeasance in the Gulf these days. BP is the most aggressively ignorant corporation on the face of the planet and the Feds have their noses so far up Tony Hayward’s poop chute it will require major surgery to remove them. Hence, some people wonder whether this is Barack Obama’s “Katrina moment”.

What a stupid question.

There are only two things that separate Obama’s oily hurricane from Bush’s merely windy kind – the human death toll is smaller and Obama actually made a speech accepting “responsibility” for getting the mess fixed. That’s a refreshing change from the man who could do no wrong, but the results are, sadly, the same.

On one level it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. There may be no way to plug the leak because a way may not exist. That’s what happens when you allow the free marketeers to write their own regulations, hire a bunch of sex-crazed crackheads to monitor them, and allow BP to act as though the rest of us are a bunch of whining pussies afraid of a little aioli crude on their seafood.

That said, there’s still plenty for St. Barry of Change to do. There should be no more of this politely asking BP to produce key data as though the we hate to intrude on their elite garden party. Using the Coast Guard to keep the world from seeing just how poorly the Coasties are guarding the coast should be equally verboten. And, no more of this limp-wristed enforcement that allows BP to do whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want either.

There’s only one thing arrogantly crapulent people like Tony Haward understand – brute force.

Obama’s job is to tell BP to jump and when they ask how high, offer them a size 13 boot liberally applied to their well-padded asses by way of explanation. To hell with the Republicans whimpering about shakedowns and stomping competition under the jackboot of anti-corporate fascism (or Communism, they never seem to know the difference). And, to hell with the deregulationists who got us here in the first place. In fact, if there was ever a case for lacing up the jackboots this is it.

And while you have them down, kick them hard and repeatedly.

Mr. Obama, the buck may stop with you, but you have to have the backbone to spend it.

Obama looks at restoring Gulf Coast over long term (reuters.com)
Marist Poll: Obama’s Handling of Oil Spill (realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com)
Talk Radio Host Urges Followers To File BP Claims: “Be As Vague As You Can” (alan.com)
You: Coast Guard Adjusts After Spill Estimate Rises (nytimes.com)
BP attempts to clean up its image amid reports of corners cut (independent.co.uk)
BP Takes Responsibility For US Spill Clean-Up (news.sky.com)
BP oil spill costs up to $2.65bn (news.bbc.co.uk)
Scott Dodd: VIDEO: Rescuers Try to Save Gulf Pelicans Covered in Oil (huffingtonpost.com)
“BP boss admits job on the line over Gulf oil spill” and related posts (luishipolito.blogspot.com)
BP Villain Gets Outta Dodge With Tight Security (tmz.com)
Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday (dailykos.com)
BP executives to face grillings (ftalphaville.ft.com)
Jackass BP CEO: “The Gulf is a Big Ocean” (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)
Hayward: BP Could Have Done More (online.wsj.com)
BP payout may be $34 billion (americablog.com)
Newt Gingrich Defends Using Nazi Card Against Obama (themoderatevoice.com)
GOP Defending BP: Cutting Off Their Heads To Spite Their Necks (alan.com)
Robert L. Cavnar: BP’s Dudley Implicitly Supports Deepwater Moratorium (huffingtonpost.com)
‘Ass-Kicking’ as an Influence Strategy (businessweek.com)

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BP Gives PR a Whole New Dimension in Ineptitude

June 25, 2010
Posted by Omnipotent Poobah

BEE PEE PEE RRR-They may suck at drilling for oil, but there's an area where they are monumentally worse...getting you to believe they are responsible for anything.

There is, perhaps, only one area in which BP is more incompetent than in drilling for oil…public relations. The old adage may be that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language, but BP’s PR department separates the two countries by speaking in some sort of crazy Esperanto that’s incomprehensible to everyone except rocks and Joe Barton.

Of course they know they suck at it. They even hired The Big Dick’s™ former campaign secretary, Anne Womack-Kolton, as their PR guru…now stop laughing, they were serious.

Since then they’ve banished their original plutonium-tongued orator, CEO Tony “I Want My Life Back” Hayward, in favor of BP exec Darryl Willis – who inexplicably wears an orange prison jumpsuit in his advertisements – to look all contrite and humblish. But as Alabama mayor Tony Kennon points out, making empty promises and lying about it isn’t quite the right formula for winning friends and influencing government.

The public has been Pavlovianly conditioned to expect oil companies to lie. No one except a few Republicans expect such upstanding, forthright corporations to do otherwise. But if your entire PR strategy is to outright lie, you need to learn two things.

First, make an attempt to make the lies sound real. Exponentially misunderestimating spill damage and denying there are oil plumes long after every university and high school science lab has confirmed them is a non-starter. Throw in at least a grain of truth.

OILING FOR DOLLARS - Why the damage escrow account doesn't matter.

Try something like, “Yes, there are hundreds of miles of oil plumes, but in relation to how much of them would fit into a tea cup, they really are negligible.”

The second lesson is don’t appear to be hiding anything. It only makes people dig harder and increases the number of lies.

Somehow, BeePee managed to enlist the help of the Coast Guard and local law enforcement agencies to chase off the media in an attempt to keep…shhhh…the big secret – there’s been an oil spill. WHO KNEW?!!

Any random third-grader with a passing knowledge of that slut Hanna Montana appearing on TMZ knows that if you try to hide something juicy the media will hound you to the ends of the Earth and beyond.

The best thing the Beepsters could do is throw off the blanket of secrecy and let the sun shine in. Embrace their crapulence. Not only should they show clips of the oiled birds in their commercials, they should tout the fact that they are well on their way to creating the largest environmental disaster the world has ever known.

Now that’s some good old-fashioned Cheneyesque PR!