oil spill, a sever blow to both parties

Palin has apparently forgotten that she and John McCain took nearly three times more money from the oil and gas industry than Obama and even coined the phrase "drill baby, drill" as part of the 2008 election cycle. In fact, 75 percent of the $238.7 million in political donations from the oil and gas industry have gone to Republican candidates. It seems that the woman who didn't know that Africa is a continent also doesn't know who pays the bills in her own party.

But the bigger issue for President Obama is that the oil and gas industry owns everyone, including the Democrats. While the industry gave $2.4 million to John McCain and Sarah Palin, it also gave nearly $900,000 to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Exxon, BP's big brother, earned more than $40 billion in profits last year, the highest amount of money earned by any company in the history of the world (BP earned a "tiny" $16 billion itself). BP, the company that is turning the Gulf of Mexico into a can of WD-40, spent $16 million on lobbying last year and $3.5 million in the first quarter of 2010.

This lobbying effort has allowed the industry to cap its liability for spills at a measly $75 million, less than a day's profits for Exxon. In other words, they can pay off our entire government with their lunch money, and there's nothing we can do about it. The giant hole at the bottom of the gulf is not just leaking oil, it is leaking the loudest secret in all of American politics: BP can destroy our shores, kill the wildlife, cost people their livelihoods and destroy the entire regional eco-system, and even Barack Obama is relatively powerless to stop it.

The only question being pondered by the American people as a result of this crisis is whether they should cast more blame on Obama or BP. The answer is that they are going to blame them both. All the average American knows is that one big entity (corporate America) made a huge mess, and the entity being asked to protect American citizens (the federal government) has been virtually impotent in its response. It doesn't matter who points the finger at whom, since this doesn't bring back the dead birds on the shoreline or the huge economic losses in the region. Obama is going to be the whipping boy of this oil spill, and the pain is going to last all summer