"Rep. Barton Apologizes To BP For Escrow Fund (For Hit By BP Oil Spill)" from CSPAN (Via The Daily Beast).
Also, check out the Gorillaz video for "Melancholy Hill" here (you're supposed to have to pay for it, so check it out quick before they take it down. The Smoking Section had it for a little while as well.)
If you want you can click here to sign a petition saying you're with President Obama/against Representative Barton's sentiments (petition text below).
No Apologies
Congressman Joe Barton, the top Republican on the committee overseeing the oil spill and its aftermath, delivered a personal apology to BP, saying the $20 billion fund that President Obama directed BP to establish to provide relief to the victims of the oil disaster was a "tragedy in the first proportion."
Other Republicans are echoing his call. Rep. Michele Bachmann said that BP shouldn't agree to be "fleeced." The Republican Study Committee, with its 114 members in the House, called it a "shakedown."
Rep. Barton and Republicans like him don't understand that the real tragedy is what's happening to the people in the Gulf Coast. They're the ones who deserve his apology — not BP.
You don't have to like President Obama - or even agree with holding BP accountable . . . I don't guess - but what I really find exciting about this whole thing is the way that the Internet allows the crazy things that politicians do and say to be so easily disseminated. The age of accountability is here! (Oh and click here to see how it just so happens that Barton's top corporate donor is partnered with BP on the Deepwater Horizon...) And whatchu know about Wikileaks?
Barton Apologizes for Apology to BP
Do they cancel each other out? Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) has apologized for apologizing to BP for what he called President Obama's $20 billion "shakedown." "I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House this morning, and I retract my apology to BP," Barton said in a statement issued by House Minority Leader John Boehner, who presumably came down hard on him. Earlier at the hearing, Barton had said “I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown … I apologize.”
Shamelessly stolen without attribution. ¡Viva la plagiarism!
Some other words that Mark Twain is reputed to have spoken can be found here.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him." - Friedrich Nietzsche
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
