Arianna squared off with Cheney over the Gulf oil disaster, calling out the Bush-Cheney administration for its role in fostering the crisis."The truth is that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney administration wanted: full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies that are supposed to be overseeing the industry," Arianna said. "We are seeing this as the inevitable result of what they wanted."
"It is truly amazing," Cheney responded. "I actually heard that George Bush was responsible for the breakup of Tipper and Al Gore's marriage, too. It's incredible, the extent to which people are now trying to shift blame. ... The left -- you guys have for years been demonizing Bush and Cheney, and I'm sure you’ll be demonizing them for years going forward. But we have a catastrophe on the Gulf coast, a catastrophe that happened on this administration's watch, which this administration is failing to clean up." [Notice the evasion: she did not deny the charge.]
"We have the poster child of Bush-Cheney crony capitalism, Halliburton, involved in this," Arianna said. "They, after all, were responsible for cementing the well. Here's Halliburton, after it defrauded the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars -- "
"I don't know what planet you live on," Cheney shot back. "What you are saying has no relationship to the truth, no relationship to the facts."
"I live on this planet," Arianna said. "Halliburton was involved in this. How can you say there is no relationship?"
But will it matter who says what?
Ralph
The half-empty guy says, No, it won't matter at all. Arianna is absolutely right in assigning blame.
ReplyDeleteBut unfortunately, Obama, who was told in April none of the attempts to close the leak would work, has done a terrible job handling this crisis. And he STILL is letting BP make willfully false claims about how much oil is leaking, and how much they are recovering. He still is not allowing independent scientists to monitor the leak. He still is allowing BP to threaten to fire people on the clean-up crew if they want to wear protective masks.
Instead of eating shrimp in an attempt to pump up the Gulf economy, I would have respected Obama more if he donned a hazmat suit and worked on the beach for a couple of hours. That would show leadership.
richard
Some horrifying details on Huffington Post today about the Federal Government's complicity in helping cover-up for BP by extending no-fly zones so news media can't get photos of oil washed up on islands, and Coast Guard boats intimidating shrimpers with camera crews from going anywhere where they can see the damage.
ReplyDeleteAlso, every BP effort has been designed to collect more oil, not stop the leak. The whole Top Kill, which should never have been approved without knowing exactly how much was leaking, was designed, it seems, to clean out the pipe so the oil could gush faster so BP could collect more of it.
And the dispersants which actually are used to hide BP's fingerprints, kill the microbes that can actually eat and destroy the oil.
Why is Obama allowing this to happen? Why is Obama so compromised on this? His behavior here is just as disgusting as anything Bush did.
I feel I was totally duped by this man. We all were, and it's time to stand up and say this emperor has no clothes.
richard