Oil is not the only brown stuff flowing in the Gulf

L.A. Times

As the shores of Biloxi, Miss., took their turn being slimed by oil Monday, Mississippi officials including Gov. Haley Barbour slammed the federal government and BP for failing to capture the crude offshore.

He cannot have it both ways. He cannot call for an end to government intrusion in state affairs while blasting them for not intruding enough in his state. He cannot rip the Obama administration for not doing enough, when he himself has failed to call up his own National Guard, cost-free to the government, to work the spill.



He's a bloated hypocrite. Three weeks ago, there were no worries...

Barbour described the oil as “weathered, emulsified, caramel-colored mousse, like the food mousse.” “Once it gets to this stage, it’s not poisonous,” Barbour said. “But if a small animal got coated enough with it, it could smother it. But if you got enough toothpaste on you, you couldn’t breathe.”

Gov. Haley Barbour continued to downplay the oil spill and blame the media, without disclosing that oil and gas companies have given $1.8 million to his gubernatorial campaigns.

On June 28th - YESTERDAY! - he was in D.C. raising money for the GOP. “The most important thing right now is the 2010 elections,” he told reporters.

Cleaning up the legacy of hate to advance a political cause

NYT/Jon Meacham

As the sesquicentennial of Fort Sumter approaches in 2011, the enduring problem for neo-Confederates endures: anyone who seeks an Edenic Southern past in which the war was principally about states’ rights and not slavery is searching in vain, for the Confederacy and slavery are inextricably and forever linked.

That has not, however, stopped Lost Causers who supported Mr. McDonnell’s proclamation from trying to recast the war in more respectable terms. They would like what Lincoln called our “fiery trial” to be seen in a political, not a moral, light. If the slaves are erased from the picture, then what took place between Sumter and Appomattox is not about the fate of human chattel, or a battle between good and evil. It is, instead, more of an ancestral skirmish in the Reagan revolution, a contest between big and small government.

We cannot allow the story of the emancipation of a people and the expiation of America’s original sin to become fodder for conservative politicians playing to their right-wing base. That, to say the very least, is a jump backward we do not need.

Responding to the firestorm that resulted from Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's "Confederate History Month" proclamation that honored the Southern cause in the civil War and left out any mention of slavery, Mississippi gov. (and possible 2012 Presidential candidate) Haley Barbour said:

Politico

When CNN "State of the Union" anchor Candy Crowley asked Barbour, a onetime lobbyist and former head of the RNC, if the slavery omission was a mistake, he said, "I don't think so, my legislature has made an active holiday of Confederate Memorial Day... Anyone who thinks that you have to explain that slavery is a bad thing, it goes without saying... It's sort of feeling that it's a nit, it's not significant, it's trying to make a big deal."

"A nit". Remember this in November, the Republicans consider slavery - America's original sin - "a nit".