House of Eratosthenes

John Hawkins takes the ninety-first award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL). This nugget distills the entire argument down to its bare essentials, and you can disagree with it only by avoiding the essence of it.

[T]his is not a statement that should have ever come out of the mouth of an American President.

I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required…

The President and His followers have been working pretty hard this week to convince voters that the opposing party is in the pocket of big oil, and this business with Congressman Barton apologizing to BP has predictably helped that along. It’s the first significant event that’s been politically beneficial to the goals of the democrats since…well, a very long time. Obama’s inauguration, maybe. They’re bound to make the most of it and you can’t really blame them. Them’s politics. Politics occasionally becomes separated from the genuine state of things, and although that’s unhealthy, it’s always tremendously satisfying for about half of us.

As the wax strip of politics is peeled away from the pelvic area of reality, though, eventually you get to a point where enough is enough. I know lots of Republicans, and lots of folks who consider them to be conservatives. My informal polling indicates a clean split. A slight majority says Congressman Barton was completely out of line and may be bat-shit crazy. A bare minority is on the side of myself and Hawkins — we agree BP needs to belly up to the bar and own this problem, but the President is way out of line in ordering them to do so.

Even the wise people who agree with me, like Hawkins, concede it was over the top for Bargon to offer an apology that was not his to give. From reading his apology for the apology, as well as the original comments delivered just hours previous, I would even go so far as to count Congressman Barton in that.

I don’t know of anybody on the conservative side, in a position of leadership or simply voting, who thinks we need to go apologizing to oil companies that screw up.

But I do see a lot of liberals, in positions of power as well as simply voting that way, who seem to live in a sort of Bizarro-world of ecnomics. They seem to think if we “stick it” to the oil companies artfully enough, all sorts of wonderful things will happen. It’s got something to do with dirt-cheap gasoline, affordable in abundance even for those among us who barely scrape by, delivered into our waiting hands without any of that drilling for icky crude oil — anywhere. Not in the USA, not overseas, not offshore, nowhere. It’ll just be conjured up out of thin air and sold to us for 63 cents a gallon, if only we pull off a sufficiently vigorous job of telling the oil companies what filthy bastards they are.

If I could find a Republican who truly thinks we need to go apologizing to oil companies for getting in the oil companies’ way, I would find that position, by comparison, eminently reasonable.

But I cannot.

This is utter bullcrap, bypassing the rule of law using thuggery, but it is the Chicago way.

If BP doesn’t pony up and honor claims and do everything it can to rectify that which it is responsible for, then it should be sued. As in, in court, where people decide what laws were broken and what the liability is.

The government has no business decreeing how much will be set aside for … the government … to administer. This is not a Monarchy or a Dictatorship.
- philmon | 06/18/2010 @ 19:30
Congressional hearing are nothing but theatre and give our elected representatives a chance to bloviate and show boat. On those rare occasions when the truth is spoken that person is condemned and called on the carpet for daring to shine some light on the utter folly of what is transpiring in the Halls of Congress. Most of what congressman Barton say rang true and sadly those on the left were joined by the voices on the right in Congress and his condemnation was almost universal from that band of fools.

Nice looking blog and great post. I believe this was my first visit, but not sure. Came your way via a link at ARRA News Service, been going to Bill’s site for quite a while.
- RonRussell | 06/19/2010 @ 22:44
Welcome. Glad you found your way. Take off your coat, pull up a chair & stay awhile.
- mkfreeberg | 06/20/2010 @ 08:00
Or sometimes the truth is unintentionally spoken by, say, a congresswoman from California who … well …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYj0Zcw75s0

I hope she isn’t re-elected.
- philmon | 06/20/2010 @ 11:55

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