StopLouBarletta.com

One of the reasons I love writing a blog about Mayor Lou Barletta, or “America’s Mayor” as his PR people like to say, is that I never run out of stuff to write about.  I can always count on Mayor Barletta to come along and say and/or do something stupid and provide me with enough material to fill several blog posts.  This past week was no exception.  Once again, “America’s Mayor” has figured out how to continue to embarrass both himself and the Republican Party that he represents.  On June 17th, Barletta posted an article on his website that basically demanded that the US Government leave poor old BP alone and just trust them to fix the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.  Seriously, people, I can’t make this stuff up.  Lou Barletta is now sticking up for BP.

I understand that Lou Barletta is having trouble raising cash for his faltering Congressional campaign.  He has amassed a mountain of debt and his fund raising efforts are on life support, at best.  So I guess it should be no surprise that, apparently, Lou Barletta is now trying to make nice with the oil industry.  Because, hey, who has more money that Big Oil, right?  Barletta’s little rant, which blasts the Federal Government and calls for them to end their criminal investigation probe of BP, sounds as if it were really a BP press release.  But don’t take my word for it, allow me to quote directly from Mayor Barletta’s op-ed…

“This oil spill has exposed serious flaws in our government, just as Hurricane Katrina did in August 2006.

In this case, private industries clearly made serious mistakes. But our government has failed us – and continues to fail us in this area on a daily basis.

It pains me to say that the president failed to lead during this crisis. His response and that of his administration has been too slow, too disorganized, and too scattered. The Obama administration is so concerned about playing the Washington Blame Game that plugging the leaking well seems to be a secondary concern.

BP and other private firms should be held accountable for whatever damages they caused.

But the federal government’s first priority should be stopping the leak and cleaning up the damage. Next, it should determine what went wrong and make sure a similar tragedy never happens again.

There will be time for criminal investigations and federal probes. For now, the Obama administration should keep political scheming at the water’s edge.”

Get that?  Essentially, Lou Barletta is saying that yeah, maybe BP made a little mistake, but it’s really the Federal Government’s response that we should be pissed about.  And, really, why should we even be conducting criminal investigations into the oil leak?  These mean people from the government should just get the hell out of BP’s way and let them do what they’re good at.  Fixing massive oil leaks.  God bless America, and God bless BP!

Or something like that.  Honestly, I’m not even sure what the point of Barletta’s article really is.  At one point he says that there’s too much government involvement in the Gulf, a few lines later he says that the Federal Government’s first priority should be plugging the leak, then he ends by adding that the government should halt it’s criminal investigation into BP.  He also, at the very beginning, quotes Ronald Reagan because that’s what all good Republicans do.  At no point in this article, however, does Lou Barletta express outrage at BP or the role that they’ve played in this entire disaster.  In fact, reading this article, you’d think that the Federal Government caused the oil leak and that BP was just an innocent victim.

Lou Barletta just recently released a YouTube video proclaiming that he “Stands with You!”  Supposedly, Lou Barletta wants to go to Congress to look out for all of us.  However, it would seem, from content posted to Barletta’s own website, that he really wants to go to Congress to stand up for BP.  If he had his way, Barletta would halt all government intervention, keeping oversight at “water’s edge”, and allow BP to do whatever the hell it wants to do in the Gulf.  Because, as we all know, BP does amazing things when left to their own devices.  Oh.  Wait…

So, in closing, let’s take a moment to reflect on who Lou Barletta is really standing up for.  He just wrote this little article defending BP and decrying the government’s involvement in the crisis.  He has accepted thousands of dollars and multiple donations from The Eagle Forum, a group of political crazies who wants to keep women shackled in their homes and make it okay for men to rape their wives.  He has, in the past, accepted money from convicted drug dealers and publicly defended these gentlemen as decent and hard working people.  And, he has also been endorsed for Congress by David Duke, a self-proclaimed white supremacist and former member of the Ku Klux Klan’s senior leadership.  So, yeah, how do we get this guy elected to Congress?  He’s a regular Captain America.

The truth of the matter is that, as I’ve pointed out on this blog for over two years now, Lou Barletta is political scum.  If you look at who Lou Barletta supports, and who supports him, it becomes clear that Mayor Barletta is not on our side.  Because, if he was, he wouldn’t be spending his time writing articles that defend BP.  He wouldn’t be accepting money from The Eagle Forum.  And he wouldn’t accept endorsements from members of the KKK.  Lou Barletta should not be elected to the United States Congress.

See also: “False Statements” About Lou Barletta Really Aren’t False and Barletta Disrespects US Military

-Dan Cheek
www.StopLouBarletta.com
StopLouBarletta@gmail.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 10:56 am and is filed under Lou Barletta and BP, The 2010 Election . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.