Living the American Green

Suck it, Exxon.  BP just straight up passed you.

Exxon Valdez: #2 in our hearts.

As the battle for who can us the phrase “Top Kill” the most times in a 24 hour news cycle rages on, Exxon has moved to #2 in the all time Oil Spill rankings.  That’s right: no matter what oil metric you are using, Deepwater has passed the Valdez for the worst oil spill in American history.

But with the plug procedure that is seemingly going well right now, our nation is gearing up to start the blame game.  Aw Shucks Jindal and James the Raging Cajun are pretty sure it’s that egghead Barry’s fault, either because he let it happen or because he’s not down there cleaning up oil right now.  Both takes seem fair to us.

On the other hand, the people we shouldn’t be blaming are the Government watchdog group Minerals Management Service.  Do you know how hard they work?  How much they do every day to steward the national mineral wealth this nation holds for our collective common good?  They should be allowed to take a few days off every so often, and blow of some steam, but because of those crazy government rules they end up having to blow off steam at work.    And by “blow off steam”, we mean “watch porn and do meth”, which basically just sounds like an average Wednesday afternoon board meeting to us.

Perhaps more damming then the porn and the drugs (more damning?  Really?  Did we just write that??) is this:

“Her biggest concern is the ease with which minerals agency employees move between industry and government, Kendall said. While no specifics were included in the report, “we discovered that the individuals involved in the fraternizing and gift exchange — both government and industry — have often known one another since childhood,” Kendall said.”

That don’t sound at all like the thing that Obamistan ran on the platform of not allowing at all to happen, does it?

As amazing as all that is this video might be even more amazing.  This is where BP really moves past Exxon in the hearts and minds of the public — in the disturbing and horrifying images that, before this week, the Valdez spill still had on lock.  Well, watch this and then tell us: Who’s Number One now, Bitches?

When it comes to cheaply made, gauze-colored, overpriced furniture, Raymour and Flanigan has got the market cornered.  Their musical ditty, too, is one for the ages, and was first made famous by none other than President Howard Taft: “I can’t get this f***ing jingle out of my head!”  But now the ottoman oligarchy is trying a new selling tactic- I call it the “bouncing ball of flubber” greenwashing attempt.  Check it out:

This is certainly the oddest greenwashing commercial I’ve hit upon yet.  Specifically, I single out this text:

Cardboard becomes something like books or paper products.  Plastic and styrofoam turns into things like toys and every day useful items.  Now that’s truly beautiful.

Whoever wrote this dialogue is not really sure (a) what recycling is for, or (b) how exactly it works.  Apparently, in the R & F recylcing plant:  leftover boxes and plastic tarps have a parade, then start a conga line, and finish by dropping acid and following green balls of flubber into recycling machines.  Instantly, teddy bears and books appear, whirling around in a reefer haze, making the world greener with every bouncy step.  Ah, the magical world of recycling.  I’d like to take a tour of this factory.

Oh GOD! Why is HE here?? Is he BACK?? Who would want to listen to HIM?

Today, that bastion of Liberal NewsSpeak, the New York Times, ran a story about how even the crazy conservationists were saying that, you know, maybe this whole oil spill thing might actually be able totally overblown and hey, maybe we can get this thing cleaned up after all!

The Gulf of Mexico Foundation, basically in the same tree-hugging love fest as GreenPeace, had this to say, as quoted in the NYT:

“The sky is not falling. We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.”

A realistic, but positive take on the whole kerfuffle!

The Times didn’t bother to mention that the group in question was directly connected to the offshore drilling industry, including the people who made the rig that caught on fire and started pouring out oil.  But, since Transocean, the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig (which rents the rigs to BP), is the paragon of virtue, we can only assume that their people are on point and that the Times was right to take them exactly at their word and not disclose anything more about them then that they were a “conservation organization”.  That is what we are assuming.  Settle down, you wild eyed Talking Points Memo hand-wringers.  (more…)