So Many Outrages, So Little Time

The Gulf blowout seems to have brought out the worst in everybody except, of all people, BP and Haley Barbour, the self-proclaimed "fat redneck" governor of Mississippi, and long time Republican operative. Barbour was gracious with the President and patient with BP.

President Obama, on the other hand, was petulant insulting and unpresidential. And when Joe Barton apologized to Tony Hayward for the "shakedown" BP had just undergone at the hands of Obama and his Attorney General, I found myself agreeing with Joe for the first time in my life. After all, BP had accepted responsibility from the first and had agreed to waive the $75 million legal cap on liability. They had set out to compensate residents for financial losses. At first, as I understand it, they were asking those who claimed financial loss to document that loss with tax records. What a novel idea! Document a claim! That apparently didn't sit well with claimants.

Then of all things, Hayward actually said the 'top kill' method to stop the oil flow had a "60 to 70% chance" of success. I groaned inwardly at such foolishness, and sure enough, it didn't work.

That basically set the stage for what was to follow: a series of misstatements and cock-ups in which they were aided and abetted by the feds. And Jindal, governor of Louisiana, covered himself with slime when he according to press reports vehemently opposed a federal disaster declaration which would have made aid instantly available to the Gulf, because he wanted BP to have to pay every cent. Or did he just not want Obama to get any credit? Who knows.

But the outrage to me was the conduct of the press towards the spill, hysterically exaggerating every impact, and hysterically predicting one imminent disaster after another to Florida and the Atlantic. Filling newspaper columns with dreadful reports of poisonous "oil plumes" deep underwater bringing death and destruction, even though oil concentration was at most 500 parts per billion. And never once did they give a background value for the Gulf, with its hundreds of natural oil seeps.

Obama demonizing BP didn't help matters. It's not as though they were a tobacco company, killing 5 million people a year while paying up to $10 billion in dividends annually. So who ispaying for the disaster? So far, BP shareholders, many of whom are retired, middle-class Americans and American and British pension plans.

But if BP goes belly-up, Obama and his minions will rue the day they set out to destroy what was left of the company's reputation.

So much outrage. So little time.