Once upon a time, the Vice-President of the United States met with over a hundred oil executives. I do not think there was one meeting; but a series of meets. The object of the meets was to come up with a national energy policy.

The meets were made in secret. The names of the executives or most of them were even kept secret.

The policy was kept secret.

The media went a little nuts but Main Stream Media never spent that much time on the story.

This made sense on a number of levels.

First and foremost, we never really had an energy policy as such; just unbridled capitalism.

Second, it is most difficult to get 300 million people to agree on specifics regarding any major policy.

Third, since Halliburton had more than just a hand in energy as profit, the Vice-President knew something about energy.

Fourth, Americans deep deep down hate rich people and hate rich oil companies. This attitude has been with us since the days of Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

I believe the policy included, among other things, the following elements.

1. We're goin into Iraq, find a way.
2. The oil companies would play ball; never turn on the repub party or the administration. Now the companies could hedge their bets a little and contribute some monies to dems but these type of contributions would be kept to a minimum and never made to targeted pols.
3. Fluctuations in pricing would be allowed and there would be a brief period for five dollar a gallon gasoline.
4. Gas taxes would not be significantly increased.
5. All regulatory agencies would be manned by those friendly to the energy companies. There would be very little meaningful regulation.
6. Off shore drilling would be increased and nationally owned areas like those in Alaska would be opened for business.
7. The administration would do everything in its power to sell public lands for pennies on the dollar.
8. The administration would be responsible for all public relations and the companies would never speak out of turn and remain in locked step with the goals of the administration.
9. Besides huge profits and lower taxes, there would be plenty of monies available from the DOD.
10. With regulation at a minimum, overly expensive protective measures could be omitted by the oil companies.

This would be the policy for a decade--at least. Promises of a permanent repub majority were made. And the primary rule would be to never speak badly of the administration or the repub party.

Not that there had not been scores of incidents over that decade of unbridled capitalism. Keith O was reporting 36 incidents during that time period--half of which involved the omission of a safety measure that saved the oil companies fifty million bucks for every off shore platform installed.

A ProPublica report last week chronicles BP's involvement in some of the biggest oil and gas disasters of the past five years due to their negligence. In 2005, an explosion at BP's Texas oil refinery left 15 workers dead and injured 170 others. The cause? BP had ignored its own safety regulations and left a warning system disabled. In 2006, 267,000 gallons of crude oil spread into Alaska' Prudhoe Bay due to a tiny hole in the company's pipeline. The company had been told to check the pipeline in 2002, but ignored the warning. The spill was not even discovered until five days after it occurred, and was the largest in the region's history. The list goes on  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/05/7-secrets-bp-doesnt-want_n_563102.html#s87772

So, there was the accident that was never supposed to occur. And, as in the past the propagandists are disseminating 'floaters'. That is, the capitalist pigs are attempting to find the messages that work.

Huffpo has one of those cute light shows; a series of photos with squibs that are usually only seen at Daily Beast.  This series is fun. And it presents all the floaters currently being disseminated.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/06/gulf-oil-spill-photos-the_n_565016.html#s88301

Rush Limbaugh put forth the idea that the BP disaster was the result of domestic green party terrorists. Domestic terrorists blew up the platform.

Joe Liberman put forth the concept of accident. That is, shite happens. Just because shite happens does not mean that we as a nation must abandon a perfectly good energy policy.

BP tells us that they had nothing to do with the incident at all. After all, BP does not own the oil platform or anything contained thereon. This is based upon the independent contractor theory of life. Otherwise known as, IT'S NOT OUR FAULT!!!

BP keeps showing commercials dealing with wind farms and solar panel farms and...well BP has the sweetest green logo around. WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE, after all!!!

The repubs in general  wish to make this into Obama's Katrina. He did not act quickly enough. Napolitano was negligent and failed to act promptly. Blah blah blah.--see mediamatters.org/

Palin talks gibberish. I really do not understand her position at all except that she seems to be saying that BP is a foreign corporation so....When is America going to understand that all corporations are foreign in that they have absolutely no allegiance to the interests of this country at all.

John Boehner (R-Ohio) saw the disaster as an opportunity to call for expanded offshore drilling: "This tragedy should remind us that America needs a real, comprehensive energy plan, like Republicans' 'all-of-the-above' strategy. This is kind of your normal repub floater. A disaster is an opportunity. I mean disasters do become opportunities...for some. I mean some mobile home manufacturer sure made a lot of money off of the Katrina disaster.

Michael Brown, director of FEMA during the Bush years, told FOX News' Neil Cavuto: "This is exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'I'm gonna shut it down because it's too dangerous. This president has never supported big oil, he's never supported offshore drilling, and now he has an excuse to shut it back down.  This is like the old reverse in football. Even better than boner's really. I mean you get the absolutely worst symbol of repub ineptitude and you....Jesus, I really do not understand what the fuck the repubs are doing with this asshole and I don't know how far that can get. HECK OF A JOB THERE BROWNIE.

Finally, when in doubt, blame it on God: Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) speculated that the spill may have just been God's doing: "From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented."

Again, I really am not a violent man but would it really be that awful to take these people and put them in some back lot and proceed to beat them senseless with a baseball bat?

And before you simply gasp at all this propaganda, thinking it will never work; think again. That is, do not feel too comfortable in the knowledge that the American people are not that stupid.

THIS TYPE OF PROPAGANDA GOT THE MOST INEPT AND CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY REELECTED IN 2004.