The Washington Post reported this morning that Minority Leader John Boehner has spent the first week of the congressional recess doing a series of golf outings while a small band of House Republicans remain in Washington to call for "drill only" legislation that does nothing to bring immediate relief to Americans paying high gas prices.
* Big Oil tax breaks and subsidies supported by Republicans ... $14 Billion
* Political contributions made to Republicans by Big Oil this cycle ... $13.5 Million
* Profit earned by the top five Big Oil Companies last quarter ... $44 Billion
* Cost of John Boehner's green fees while a small band of House Republicans' express faux outrage about gas prices * ... $240
* The Grand Oil Party's hypocrisy about the cost of gas ... Priceless
"Minority Leader Boehner's golf outings this week expose the Grand Oil Party's continued hypocrisy on gas prices," said Jennifer Crider, DCCC Communications director. "Despite a small band of House Republicans' theatrical ‘outrage' about gas prices this week, House Republicans don't get mulligans - or do overs - when it comes to their pro-Big Oil record."
"Republicans are protecting $14 billion worth of tax breaks and subsidies for Big Oil companies earning billions of dollars in profits while middle class Americans struggle to fill up the family minivan. While Republicans whiff on high gas prices, Democrats will continue to fight for commonsense, bipartisan solutions to lower gas prices."
Go to the original for the "financial proof" links. Hyperlinks, that is.
Boehner explained, "Well, there's energy in a swing, and look at the grass, you could not get that without agrichemicals. Then the ball, that's all polymers, we call them that, regular people say plastics, but then - without those polymers, and they come from petroleum, we'd be hitting wood croquet balls or something. And the dimples, they are put on the ball and it takes energy, opening and closing a mold and heat to do that, and without the dimples, my slice would worsen - not my slice of the contributions, my golf slice, but the contributions slice from big oil gets my energy up. And hey, I drove here. I walk around on this agrichem-special-treated grass, but the links are not as close as Norm's basement digs are to the jobsite, I don't walk, I drive. Now, excuse me, I am teed up, and it's time to drive." We wish the man a fluid, well-oiled swing, par for the course.__________UPDATE________
Of course, Boehner did not really say that. It's a concocted script. Satire. You know, the Franken stuff, satire.
Again, the WAPO link on Boehner on the links, is here, and worth reading. I would have thought the GOP learned from the 2006 dog and pony show - Flag Burning and Gay Marriage - that dog and pony shows don't work. It appears that with the last cycle's lesson clear, the devastating losses the GOP encountered, that GOP strategists would have a non-flat learning curve and not do Yogi Berra's "Deja vu, all over again."
Not so. Yes, the script has been rewritten. Now it is huffing and puffing, to blow the drilling constrictions over, but same wolf and same little piggie show; same huffing and puffing instead of anything even remotely resembling statesmanship.
Mark Dayton on capping it at a single Senate term reportedly characterized Washington as "a cesspool" and along with the miasma and such, cesspools are not the seat of statesmanship and sound behavior.
The GOP goes on, this time saying we should worry over pump price and divest ourselves of sound protective policies in so doing, whereas last cycle America and Apple Pie was at risk of flag burners and gay folks wanting to formalize long-term commitments to one another.
At least the GOP fools' show should show some ingenuity, by this time demonizing gay flag burners who waste energy while infatuated with the solitude and purity of our Alaskan wilderness. Gay flag-burning tree-hugging unAmerican socialists not liking Big Oil profitability and cartel management by wanting the firms to open and exploit the leases they presently hold, now THAT'S what's wrong with our nation.
Vote GOP, and end it.
Perhaps it is just me, but the sideshow redux does not resonate, does not convince, and there is still the same awkward war, the same flawed policies, the same ongoing tax breaks for Big Oil and the rich, the same inadequate health care system, the same threat to the future of social security, and other real problems, atop a mortgage meltdown and slumping economy while GOP deficit financing of the war has tanked the value of the dollar but with wages stagnated and jobs moved across the border or overseas (or when the job itself is not portable, the labor pool's been boosted via lax immigration policing - with only the occasional midwest packing plant raid conducted as a formality for press coverage).
Given all that on the GOP front, there's as much sense I guess in their trying to distract attention from true issues. Culprits I see - its some of the Dems who a cynic might say would rather keep the real issues unfixed to trot them out and pose them every two years, for votes, rather than to fix them and then have to invent dog and pony shows of their own.