by Davis Fleetwood (video, book, website)

Allowing BP to handle the Oil Leak disaster makes about as much sense as awarding the building contract to rebuild the Twin Towers to Al Qaeda.

So, we just over a month now into the largest environmental disaster in history, and the criminally negligent corporate structure that earned BP $7.7 Billion in first quarter profits in part because laws on the books that limit their liability for environmental disasters such as this to a paltry $75 Million is still in charge of their own crime scene.

Why?

Because the White House knows that this is a no win situation, kind of like being Andy Dick’s AA sponsor, and if they roll their sleeves up and take charge the news cycle during the 2010 midterm election will be populated with variations of the headline OBAMA’S KATRINA.

So, we are now over a month into the largest environmental disaster in history and we have no idea how to plug the leak. It will continue to gush through August (plus or minus 12 months) and never was there a meeting; not in Obama’s White House, and all of the agencies staffed with Nobel laureates in the worlds most powerful country; not in a BP corporate culture that knew, from their own interior sources, that a catastrophe like this was not an if, but a when; never did any of the kings horses nor any of the kinds men sit down and have a brainstorm session the end result of which produced anything like a contingency plan for this eventuality. And what do we, the American public do?

Listen: Shrugging your shoulders and rolling over to go to sleep, while an understandable response if you had the exhausting task of serving as Andy Dicks AA sponsor, when you get that phone call- again- that Andy is passed out in a hotel room under a pile of empty Meister Brau cans and a gaggle of barely legal employees of rent boy dot com, is not an acceptable response coming from a nation addicted to the that oil that is quite literally killing us when confronted with such a powerful reminder of the destructiveness of said addiction.
So, we are now just over a month into the largest environmental disaster in history as it unfolds in slow motion before our eyes; the geyser spewing anywhere between 5 and 110 millions gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico (depending on what estimates you believe) and we, as only Americans can, care less and less and less as time drips on like a an ancient form of Chinese torture, just another chapter in our Christian Nation’s favorite book: The End of Fucken Days. Because in America if you don’t believe somewhere in your heart of hearts that the Jesus is going to come down on a white horse and whisk you away to a “better place” you can count yourself in a minority, and if you are not a Jesus freak odds are you’ve got a Mayan calendar hanging on your bathroom wall in your trailer home somewhere so who cares about the effects of BP chemical dispersants on sub sea level ecosystems and the long term environmental impacts that might have, or a whole generation of people who make their living in the fishing industry from the area that accounts for 20% of the nations commercial seafood production Cuz the planet earth, like those unsuspecting crash test dummies in those old school Volvo commercials, is on a crash course with the immovable force called the END, so why bother getting in a tizzy about BP when we have our own private Andy Dick-weeds to tend and the metaphysical implications of the series finale of LOST to talk about?

by Davis Fleetwood

Pop quiz: Elana Kagan will be the next Supreme Court Justice because:

A) Clinton & Obama like and trust her, and most liberals like and trust Clinton & Obama.
B) Republicans will not put up a fight during confirmation hearings because they know Kagan will move the court to the right.
C) She has no judicial experience
D) She stands for nothing

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The White House announced today that that President Obama has nominated good friend and White House solicitor general Elana Kagan to replace Justice John Paul Stevens. Her nomination process appears to be without a significant obstacle. Which brings us back to today’s pop quiz.

Why will Kagan be the next Supreme Court Justice? Is it

A) because Clinton & Obama like and trust her, and most liberals like and trust Clinton & Obama?

That could be it. Progressives were asked to sell their souls- if you like religious metaphors- prior to the 2008 election. The mantra was “get Obama elected firsts, and then hold his feet to the fire in pursuit of a progressive agenda.” Remember? Even Progressive champions like Noam Chomsky and Naomi Wolfe converted many progressives through their preaching so that Obama could then preach to the converted. Now that Obama is in the White House, part two of the master plan (pursue a progressive agenda) has taken a back seat to “shut the fuck up you crazy hippie pie in the sky faggot basterd communists this is the real world and there is no room for you here.”

The left has moved center, taking many self described liberals with it and left the progressive agenda dangling by its fingernails at the high end of an unevenly weighted seesaw.

Is it:
B) Republicans will not put up a fight during confirmation hearings because they know Kagan will move the court to the right?

While we know very little about Kagan, we do know one key difference between regressives and progressives: Regressives, sometime referred to as conservatives in polite company, actually have a voice in the Republican Party. And, when given the opportunity to appoint a judge onto the Supreme Court, the regressives have no problem nominating right wing lunatic activists judges like Sam Alito & John Roberts with a long paper trial.

Progressives, conversely, have no voice inside the Democratic Party. And Democrats are so terrified of rocking the boat that hey end up standing for nothing.

So, while Republicans may try to float some lesbian rumors, it is only to get under Obama’s skin. But make no mistake, they are laughing inside, knowing full well that they have won the battle already: forcing a democratic president with a democratic majority in congress to pass over qualified justices with a clearly articulated progressive legal stance in favor of a ghost who stands for nothing.

Or is it
C) Kagan has no legal experience? Counterintuitive, yes, to appoint someone to the highest court in the land who has never been a judge. Hasn’t happened in recent memory. But that is why we voted for Obama. Change. Shake it up! Good grief Charlie Brown, should we allow fighter pilots trained only on video games? Health Care reform to be decided by for profit corporations? White house appointed Wall Street regulators who are Wall Street insiders?

But I digress.

Kagan’s lack of judicial experience means that she has navigated her career and managed to take a legal stance on exactly nothing (D).

Again, intuition would fail you if you deemed this a deficit because in the cowardly stance of the Democrats a primary criteria in selecting a nominee is the ease with which one could navigate the selection process and the conventional wisdom in politics has drifted a long way from any Mr. Smith goes to Washington idealism and has firmly cemented itself in the reality of please everyone by standing for nothing.

So, scholars to correct answer to today’s pop quiz is actually “E”: All of the above. Elana Kagan will be the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States, move the court to the right because she stands for nothing, she has never been a judge, and Democrats like her and Republicans will get their way.

Fret not. Owing to her relative youth and the fact that SCOTUS nominations are lifetime appointments, if we F&CK this one up, it will only be 30 or 40 years before we have to replace her.