Mike Papantonio talks to Ed Schultz about British Petroleum's political tactics and the use of their "flying monkeys" as he calls them such as Glenn B
May 5, 2010

Mike Papantonio talks to Ed Schultz about British Petroleum's political tactics and the use of their "flying monkeys" as he calls them such as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and "heck of a job" Brownie to do the fear mongering for them that the right wing extremists of this country and the tea bag crowd respond to. Ed said he'd have Pap on every night if that's what it takes to get something done about this disaster and to continue to draw attention to how the oil industry is handling it.

I think that would be a good thing since Papantonio unlike 99.9% of the guests you're going to see on cable "news" basically broke down their tactics pretty well. Misdirect anger, use corporate shills for your defense, focus on the Obama administration instead of industry, misdirect and basically try to scare the hell out of everyone about getting off of fossil fuels and if that doesn't work, bring god into it.

As Pap noted, BP probably doesn't have enough enough money to throw at this problem to make it go away this time, but that hasn't stopped them from dispatching their lobbyists to converge on the politicians in Washington D.C.

Sadly unlike Ed's show and a few scant others we're not going to hear much about corporate America's influence on the Washington D.C. and how that influence has led us to stay dependent on oil and to give little care for things called oversight and regulation. Businesses need rules of the road. When you take those road signs down, they're always going to abuse them. This BP disaster just looks like another example where we need to get the money out our of politics if we're ever going to reign them in and actually get us off of oil while making this industry act responsibility in the mean time.

I'm not holding my breath. Sadly it's looking like even one of the worst spills in history still isn't enough for the right wingers in the House and the Senate who are still pushing for more drilling offshore.

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