Cut Out The Foolishness With Oil Spill Blame Game

Perhaps if President Obama could turn into Aquaman, and swim to the ocean floor, he could simply plug the hole himself and take away the whining of right wingers still smarting with an emotional wedgie over the blame President Bush took for Hurricane Katrina.

More and more right wingers are attempting to blame the president for the oil leak (including a few misguided liberals). It's interesting that small-government conservatives are now whining about why President Obama (the government) is not doing more to help them. Since President Obama is all powerful - as conservatives now make him out to be - perhaps he could convert himself into Aquaman and swim into the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps, like Aquaman, he could communicate with sea animals to enlist their help and warn them of the danger in the area of the oil spill.

Seriously, people, this is not a fault thing. If anyone can stop this oil leak it would have been done by now. BP wants to stop this as bad as anyone, and has been ineffective.

If BP can't stop it then I doubt President Obama or anyone else is going to be able to stop it.

This is an accident that has gotten out of control. Obviously, if we had Aquaman, it would be better for us. Unfortunately, however, Aquaman is a fictional character (cool as he seems to a lot of us) who can't help in this instance.

My humor is not directed at those who suffer due to BP's oil spill. Rather, this humor is directed at the morons who act as though there is a simple solution and President Obama just has not done it.

There is no simple solution to the latest issue right wingers are calling "Obama's Katrina." And, sadly enough, this disastrous leak could go on longer than any of us want to imagine.

More Irrational Reaction From President Obama’s State Of The Union

President Obama’s State of the Union address really stirred something in those on the far right.

Here is another example from the blog Booker Rising:

Paige Perkins, a conservative Republican, writes on Facebook: “Obama’s SoTU Checklist: Blame Republicans, Blame Republicans, Blame Bush, Encourage bi-partisanship, Declare it’s not my fault, Pat myself on the back, Deliver bad news, Repeat as necessary.”

This is an anger point for many conservatives.

Paige missed the part where President Obama talked about what his administration has added to the deficit. Pointing out the facts (about the state of the economy when President Obama took office) is not blaming.

In baseball, just because a relief pitcher comes in does not mean he assumes responsibility for the runners on base. The starting pitcher bears some responsibility.

Rick Santorum’s Comments Are Misguided And One Dimensional

Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, was on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show doing what conservatives do: defending Sarah Palin and whining about the mainstream media. Santorum scoffed at the idea that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was roughed up the way so many conservatives feel that Palin has been roughed up. Rick, this is big-time Washington politics. If she can’t fight through it as governor of Alaska then how is she going to fight through it as president of the United States? Clinton fought through all of the attacks against her and her family and, arguably, endured much worse than Palin has had to deal with and she is still a pillar of strength to this day.

Santorum claimed that people rough up women and blacks who are conservatives and cited U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas as an example. The objection to Thomas is less about being a black conservative and more about his policies which many consider to be anti-black (policies that some people feel he benefited from and now wants to pull the ladder up with him since he has made it to the top). That is why some considered (and still consider) Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom.” As one counter example, many blacks still appreciated Gen. Colin Powell even as he voted for Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush (something many Republicans don’t talk about when they try to ridiculously portray him as a closet liberal who only supported Barack Obama for the presidency because he was black).

There are many women conservatives who have not been beat up as conservatives claim Sarah Palin is being beaten up.

Here is a list from the National Federation of Republican Women.

I see only two women who get negative media attention (as Santorum and other conservatives might see it): Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann. Palin and Bachmann have provided (all well documented … especially Bachmann, who is the gift that keeps giving) their opponents with all kinds of ammunition. Hey, as off the wall as Bachmann can be, she somehow managed to get herself reelected in Minnesota. In other words, their criticism is self-created criticism.

Huffington Post Question Story Being Blown Out Of Proportion

Many reporters on the left, and some reporters from the so-called mainstream media, are throwing a it about a question that the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney was allowed to ask President Obama during a White House press conference. This is another one of those manufactured controversies from individuals on the right wing and from individuals from the mainstream media overcome by a powerful sense of jealousy.

Here is the exchange during the press conference:

OBAMA: Since we’re on Iran, I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

OBAMA: Nico, I know that you and all across the Internet, we’ve been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?

QUESTION: Yes, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions on tonight from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online. And one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of — of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

OBAMA: Well, look, we didn’t have international observers on the ground. We can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country.

What we know is that a sizable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It’s not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so, ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States.

And that’s why I’ve been very clear, ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

What we can do is to say, unequivocally, that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with the peaceful dissent, that — that spans cultures, spans borders.

And what we’ve been seeing over the Internet and what we’ve been seeing in news reports violates those norms and violates those principles.

I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that — that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.

The White House apparently was following that Nico Pitney was communicating with individuals inside of Iran as that country’s turmoil was all over the media. White House spokesman Bill Burton came out with a response: “We did reach out to (Nico) prior to press conference to tell him that we had been paying attention to what he had been doing on Iran and there was a chance that he’d be called on.”

This is a totally overblown story spun out of very little. There is no evidence that the president knew what the question was going to be (even if he had an idea what the subject matter might be). I could care less if he wanted to take a question about the situation in Iran from a reporter that the White House felt was in contact with people on the ground in Iran.

Pitney asked a question that was a hell of a lot better than others I’ve heard asked at presidential news conferences.

Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/23/nicos-question/

POLITICO:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0609/Obama_calls_on_HuffPost_for_Iran_question.html?showall

Republican Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons Is Whining

Republican Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (Fox News does not identify him as as a Republican in their story as of the time I read it) is whining about President Barack Obama visiting Nevada.

First, here is how Fox News lays out the controversy:

Gibbons had demanded a sit-down meeting following Obama’s controversial statement that companies shouldn’t book trips to Las Vegas if they have received federal bailouts and claims statements he made that were critical to Nevada and have caused economic damage to convention business and tourism business in the Silver State.

Total crybaby stuff that makes you wonder how much of it is politically motivated. Las Vegas probably only came up because it is a popular tourist destination. This is the kind of whining that leaves people disgusted with politics and politicians. Quite frankly, I’m not sure that Gibbons is in a position to make demands of the president.

“I am disappointed at the hypocrisy shown by this Administration,” Gibbons said. “President Obama is coming to Las Vegas later this month for a political fundraiser, but he will not help the struggling families in Las Vegas and Nevada who are out of work because of his reckless comments. President Obama is coming to Las Vegas to raise campaign cash for Senator Harry Reid, apparently our money is good enough for the President, but our tourism, jobs, and economic future are not. This is politics, pure and simple, President Obama stood for change, but all he has done is brought negative economic change to Nevada.”

Gibbons needs to quit crying and get to work.

One would expect Fox News to take another anti-President Obama story and give it major billing on its homepage. One also would expect Fox News to do some basic research to add the fact that he is a Republican (just to be fair and to perhaps put Gibbons’ nontroversy into context).

Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/05/19/nevada-governer-slams-obamas-refusal-meet/

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gibbons_(United_States_politician)