After all, why not? It’s Memorial Day!
We’ve passed 40 days and counting of black oil gushing from a blown out well in the Gulf of Mexico polluting and killing everything in its path, including the Louisiana marshland which contributes to shielding the state from deadly hurricanes, leaving an already vulnerable Katrina battered city of New Orleans with nightmares of what may come this year when the hurricane season starts June 1.
It’s also Memorial Day weekend. One might wonder what these two events happening at the same time might have in common. I’ll tell you.
During Memorial Day weekend, who breaks an unusual silence of almost a month, but a member of the Cheney family. Yes, Liz “Mini-Dick” Cheney appeared this morning on FOX (where else?). Now I know you’re probably saying to yourself “wow, she appeared on Memorial Day weekend to honor the troops? Who’d a thunk it?” Yes THAT would have been something.
But she’s a Cheney, and we all know they avoid (defer) things like serving their country or honoring our servicemen unless they’re using them as a shield or some sick form of guilt-ridden blackmail for squeezing more war $$ from Congress. That’s about the only time you ever hear a member of that family uttering the word “troops.”
No, in this case Mini Dick is making her father quite proud no doubt, because she chose of all weekends, Memorial Day weekend to come out swinging at the White House over a scandal that only the looniest wing of the GOP are still crowing about: the job offer to coincidentally, another veteran Joe Sestak, by way of Bill Clinton. (And what’s not to love that it involves Clinton no less? It’s a two-fer!)
She’s joining the other “right-off-the-cliff” wing of the GOP who have displayed great manufactured outrage over this. Everyone from Joe “The FOX Wannabe” Scarborough and his shoe model sidekick Morning Mimic Mika “Lies Are OK When My Friends (Richard Blumenthal) Tell Them” Brzezinski, to, well, everyone on FOX. Nothing about honoring the military over their sacrifice in her father’s manufactured war. Nope. You’ll hear nothing but crickets in THAT department from the Cheney family.
From Media Matters:
After saying Clinton doesn’t have “an impeccable record of integrity,” Cheney argued: “You know, there’s a lot here that just smells funny. If the White House in fact thought that what they were doing was above board, why did they go to Bill Clinton? Why did they need a cut out for whatever they were doing?”
Yes, Mini Dick is SO outraged that she wants an investigation into the Sestak-Clinton “S-c-a-n-d-a-l.” Investigation? Fine! I say let’s give her one!
But rather than wasting time on the one she’s ringing her hands over, let’s investigate the thing that she’s using Sestak and Clinton to distract us all from: the BP by way of Haliburton oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, and the involvement of the Cheney family in it, shall we? If you’re looking for something that “smells funny” this is it. It smells like a toxic mixture of oil, gas and dispersant, for starters.
I would like for the media, just for once to ignore this women every time she pops up and points her finger at others, and instead focus on the cause and effect of Big Dick and his former “VP” George “W-hat Me Worry” Bush’s involvement in that “minimal damage” BP oil gusher in the Gulf.
For starters, let’s back up a few days, and then we’ll back up a few years.
Here’s my wish list:
The other day I came across an interesting connection. It came in the form of a Florida company hired for the oil spill clean-up here by none other than Gov. Charlie Crist, WRS Compass. This company boasts this on its website:
Now more than ever, business and government entities see a need to “go green.”A new wave of environmental stewardship is sweeping across the nation with an emphasis on resource efficiency, clean land, and a higher quality of life. With nearly 25 years of experience, WRScompass is uniquely positioned to “re-green” the lands of our private and public sector customers and to improve their aging infrastructures.
More than 350,000 contaminated sites have been identified by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Throughout the U.S., massive water resource projects like the Everglades restoration have been put on the fast track.
WRScompass, with an experienced, highly skilled technical and professional workforce of more than 600, offers the manpower to tackle such environmental challenges. During our quarter century in the environmental and construction industry, WRScompass has become known for our ability to provide efficient solutions to a wide-ranging number of environmental challenges of our customers. This has led to our reputation for providing outstanding customer service, while also being recognized nationally for maintaining high safety and accident prevention standards.
Backed by a $30 million fleet of company-owned equipment and service centers across the nation, WRScompass is able to quickly respond to customer needs.
WRS Compass has “responded quickly” all right. They’ve literally jumped on the bandwagon to get busy cleaning up the oil that is bound to land on Florida shores in the near future. They are ready and waiting, all they need is oil! And who is leading the charge? That would be WRS Compass CEO Kathleen Shanahan, who has ties not only to, surprise, surprise, Dick Cheney, but former Florida Gov. and Little Brother of Dubya, Jeb Bush as well! Who knew? For the backstory on that you can click here.
Now let’s step back a little further. As I mentioned, and as you’ve probably noticed, the very vocal Dick Cheney has been curiously quiet and MIA from the airwaves since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up and began filling the entire Gulf with oil and gas, turning it into what is fast becoming the “Gulf Of Cheney.” So you might, as I have, be thinking “hey, I wonder what Big Dick has been up to lately?” Then I saw this:
Foreign Policy‘s David Kenner pointed out Monday that former vice president and ex-Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney just went on a junket to meet with Saudi Arabian leaders, a quiet pow-wow that’s been discussed in the Saudi media but not so much over here. Cheney—who’s been busy defending torture and complaining that Barack Obama lets world leaders “think they’re dealing with a weak president“—weakened the president by visiting a leading torture regime and its caliph, King Abdullah.
So, what was the ex-veep doing in Riyadh?
What indeed? This was in early May. Of this year. A couple of weeks ago. Could be lot’s of reasons I suppose. The article goes on to point out a few:
The obvious answer would be: something financially advantageous. Cheney, who oversaw the Saudi staging of Gulf War I, has always maintained good relations with the kingdom and its elites—relations that certainly came in handy after the war, when his oil-services and all-around shady operation, Halliburton, won lots of US and Saudi contracts to help extract the kingdom’s petroleum wealth—and buttress its national defenses.
But those sorts of financial entanglements—and high-level contacts—can quickly deteriorate into policy interference. Which wouldn’t be new territory for Cheney, who as CEO helped Halliburton skirt international and US terror sanctions on trade with Iran in order to make a quick buck.
Yup, that’s the Dick all right. It’s when he’s quiet that you start to worry what he’s doing, and there you go. But back to those contracts and things. Let’s look into more of those here while we’re investigating, going all the way back to 2000 before the election, like cashing in on contracts that he helped initiate:
In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney’s direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services$3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies — like itself — could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. BRS specializes in such work; from 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company worked in the former South Vietnam building roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.
Sure, old news. But you throw in Haliburton, and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, and so on. (Speaking of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, who do you suppose lists an award of a $30 million contract for levee construction and additional work in New Orleans for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and other work in Louisiana for Hurricane Storm Damage Risk Reduction Systems? Why that would be WRS Compass. They were also worked in New Orleans on emergency response to Hurricane Katrina.)
Now, how about this old story from back in 2003. In fact, just for fun, let’s see if you can answer this: What do you get when you add:
Dick Cheney+Antonin Scalia+ducks+Louisiana+Kenneth Lay+The Sierra Club+Judicial Watch+oil+gas+coal+nuclear industry+lobbyists= ____?
Answer? = Secret energy task force! Oh, and I left out part of the equation. This guy: Wallace Carline. From the same CBS News item above:
….the pair arrived Jan. 5 on Gulfstream jets and were guests of Wallace Carline, the owner of Diamond Services Corp., an oil services company in Amelia, La. The Associated Press in Morgan City, La., reported the trip on the day the vice president and his entourage departed.
“They asked us not to bring cameras out there,” said Sheriff David Naquin, who serves St. Mary Parish, about 90 miles southwest of New Orleans, referring to the group’s request for privacy. “The vice president and the justice were there for a relaxing trip, so we backed off.”
While the local police were told about Cheney’s trip shortly before his arrival, they were told to keep it a secret, Naquin said to the Times.
“The justice had been here several times before. I’m kind of sorry Cheney picked that week because it was a poor shooting week,” Naquin said. “There weren’t many ducks here, which is unusual for this time of the year.”
“There weren’t many ducks here, which is kind of unusual for this time of year.” Perhaps the ducks heard that Cheney was coming? OR perhaps there was no duck hunting involved in the first place? After all, Scalia certainly didn’t report getting shot in the face now, did he?
Who is Wallace Carline? He was the owner of Diamond Services Corp., a private company categorized under Oil and Gas Pipeline Construction and located in Morgan City, LA. Wallace Carline also gives campaign contributions to people like David “Diapers” Vitter (R-LA), among others. But that’s beside the point.
Again, this is old news, but it still brings us back to Cheney’s secret energy policy meetings, and involvement with the oil companies, Haliburton, and who knows how many other connections there might be. Like MMS and the Department of Interior. Like the Haliburton role in the oil spill. Like this one. Or this one. How about this one? And this one? Put them together and you may just conclude this one. Click on the interactive “blame game” section on this one and there’s plenty of blame to go around. However you connect the dots, Cheney pops up somewhere. President Obama had nothing to do with the last eight years before he won the White House, nor all the years before that brought us to this “Gulf Of Cheney.”
On this Memorial Day, I can think of no better way to honor the troops than investigating what really led to the war in Iraq and beyond, but we all know by now that’s not going to happen. But still, it was a war over oil.
So let’s DO give Mini Dick her investigation. Let’s investigate the oil spill and who’s really at fault. Because it’s unfolding right now before our eyes. The evidence is right there in plain sight, and it’s adding up every day.
And if you’re one of the “lucky” ones, while you’re watching the oil lap at the shore in Louisiana, or Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida, reach down and collect a little mason jar of oil and raise a toast to the Cheney family.
Cheers.
