In a rare concession to a rather conservative point of view, from deep in the heart of bloody-blue Obamaland, today’s Detroit News editorial calls President Walking Eagle to task on his latest, Orchid Office-based exercise in teleprompter reading, correctly citing it being “short on solutions for containing and cleaning up this mess and long on plans to exploit the crisis for political gain.”
But most strangely of all, it makes a point that not only His Transparency, but all the latest crop of Ivy League progressive liberals never fail to miss: demonizing a business from which you wish to extort money severely lessens the chances of you collecting that money from the business itself. To date, BP has been paid out $53 million to 20,000 claimants, and has been working through another 22,000 claims, which is admittedly a whole lot more activity than has been seen from the current administration. Now consider this:
Obama’s incessant bashing of BP also isn’t helping get the oil out of the Gulf. The company’s stock has plummeted, its bond rating has been downgraded and there are whispers on Wall Street of a hostile takeover or break-up.
If a hostile takeover were to happen, there goes the money, period, as any obligations would go with the takeover. In fact, if it was a hostile country taking over BP they could walk away from both funding that $20 billion slush fund AND walk away from any further effort and expense to plug the leak in the Gulf of Mexico, too. And then what? Exactly what kind of “victory” will our Nancy-boy in Chief claim by essentially cutting off America’s nose to spite her face? Exactly what words of comfort for the people in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida will scroll across the teleprompters then?
Cap and trade?