[Peace-discuss] Any liberals or pwogs saying this?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The proof of the pudding... Will the administration actually charge BP or force 
it to clean up?  Don't count on it. --CGE]

	Palin accuses Obama of being in bed with big oil
	by Andrew Gully – Sun May 23, 4:47 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Right-wing darling Sarah Palin accused US President Barack 
Obama on Sunday of leading a lax response to the Gulf of Mexico spill because he 
is too close to the big oil companies.

The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, who champions 
off-shore drilling, criticized the media for not drawing the link between Obama 
and big oil and said if this spill had happened under former Republican 
president George W. Bush the scrutiny would have been far tougher.

"I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and by others 
if there's any connection with the contributions made to president Obama and his 
administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration," she 
told Fox News Sunday.

More than 3.5 million dollars has been given to candidates by BP over the last 
20 years, with the largest single donation, 77,051 dollars, going to Obama, 
according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Palin suggested this close relationship explained why Obama was, "taking so 
doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the 
potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico."

The BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, 
and sank two days later. Ever since, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil, 
perhaps millions, have been spewing each day into the sea.

The resulting slick, now the size of a small country, threatens to leave 
Louisiana's fishing and coastal tourism industries in tatters, ruin pristine 
nature reserves, and cause decades of harm to the ecology of fragile marshes 
that are a haven for rare wildlife and migratory birds.

The Obama administration has been forced to defend its response to the disaster 
as some Republicans have sought to portray it as their Katrina, an allusion to 
president Bush's mishandling of the response to the 2005 hurricane that 
devastated Louisiana.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs mocked Palin's suggestions that Obama was 
somehow in bed with big oil because of 2008 presidential campaign contributions.

"Sarah Palin was involved in that election, but I don't think, apparently, was 
paying a whole lot of attention," Gibbs said.

"I'm almost sure that the oil companies don't consider the Obama administration 
a huge ally. We proposed a windfall profits tax when they jacked their oil 
prices up to charge for gasoline.

"My suggestion to Sarah Palin would be to get slightly more informed as to 
what's going on in and around oil drilling in this country."

However, Gibbs did make it clear that reforms must be carried out to make sure 
that the incestuous relationship between oil firms and government regulators 
highlighted by the current disaster ended once and for all.

"BP will pay for every bit of this," he said. "We have to figure out and make 
sure that the relationship that is had with government and oil companies is not 
a cozy relationship as the president said.

Gibbs also said there was no comparison with Katrina.

"If you look back at what happened in Katrina, the government wasn't there to 
respond to what was happening. That quite frankly was the problem.

"I think the difference in this case is we were there immediately. We have been 
there ever since."

Palin, who quit the Alaska governorship after serving less than half of one 
term, famously promoted the slogan "Drill, baby, drill!" that rallied supporters 
while dismissing possible environmental impact of off-shore drilling.

Her detractors switched the line to "Spill, baby, spill!"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100523/pl_afp/usoilpollutionenvironmentpalinobama_20100523204803

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