Nancy Pelosi calls out the Republican Party.
Nancy Pelosi is utterly right when she states that Joe Barton's comments - where he apologised to BP for Obama's "shakedown" - are actually pretty near to the official Republican position.
Q: Do you think Mr. Barton should step aside as Ranking Member on the Energy and Commerce Committee? And do you think his sudden firestorm that's blown up around his comments represents kind of a turning point for the Republicans, and this attitude you describe of favoring big business?The Republicans are always in the pockets of big business, the joke is that Barton has been made to apologise for speaking that Republican truth at a time when BP are facing a huge public backlash.
Speaker Pelosi. A turning point for them supporting Big Business? They've always been on that track.
Q: Is this comment too far?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, let me just say that — that was one comment. I think it's important to note that it was not inconsistent with comments made the chairman of the Republican Study Committee — a part of the Republican leadership, Representative Tom Price. He said: "BP's reported willingness to go along with the White House new fund suggests that the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style 'shakedown' politics."
So I think that Mr. Barton's comments fit comfortably among the leadership of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. It's up to them to decide who's in the leadership of their committees. But he is not alone in his association with sympathy for the oil companies.
As I said before, people in the Gulf are suffering from BP's negligence and recklessness. Republicans in Congress are apologizing to BP.
UPDATE:
Republican commentators are certainly nailing their colours to BP's mast:
Limbaugh: BP hearings are a "show trial. ... This is what happened in Stalinist Russia." On the June 17 broadcast of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said that "what Waxman and these other Democrats want" out of the BP hearings "is for [BP CEO Tony] Hayward and any other BP exec to say things under oath that they can't possible know one way or another. This is a show trial. If we were back in the era of Stalin -- this is what happened in Stalinist Russia. This is exactly how show trials work. If you translated this into Russian, folks, this is exactly what would be going on in the old Russia, the old pre-Soviet Union days." He added that the hearings are "purely and simply a fraud."
Krauthammer compared the BP hearings to "Inca ritual slaughter." During the June 17 edition of Fox News' Special Report, Krauthammer said that "these hearings are always just political theatre," but that he "kind of welcome[s] these rituals. We haven't had a good Inca ritual slaughter since the Goldman Sachs hearings." Krauthammer added that unlike with an "Incan ritual slaughter," "we have a scarcity of virgins," and so "we send up a CEO instead. They whack him around for a whole day and everybody goes home happy. The only difference is that our procedure has less blood, but a lot more talking. I'm not sure which is preferable."
Kristol is "open-minded to the notion that BP is being persecuted." During the same edition of Special Report, Bill Kristol stated that he was "open-minded to the notion that BP is being persecuted by a demagogic congressional committee chairman, Henry Waxman -- which they are being."
Savage: "The Democrats have held a Stalinist show trial against BP. ... They're very, very clever devils indeed." During the June 17 edition of his show, Michael Savage stated: "All these Congress vermin do is threaten people and sue people. Secondly, while these hearings have been very informative, I would now like to see an equal set of hearings with the government put on the stand." Savage added: "What they've done here is very clever indeed. The Democrats have held a Stalinist show trial against BP. Perhaps rightly so in part, but what they've really done here is pass the buck. They're very, very clever devils indeed. What they've done is put the entire blame -- that is 100 percent of the blame -- on BP rather than on the Obama administration."
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