British Petroleum certainly isn't Beyond Profiteering.

We have seen how British Petroleum's irresponsible and greedy behavior already has devastated a major portion of the Gulf of Mexico. Well, British Petroleum's evil behavior is global. Iraq is a country where this heinous oil corporation has made an enormous amount of blood money and is likely to continue to do so. (From the Telegraph 6/30/09):

A BP-led consortium on Tuesday won a deal to develop Iraq's largest oilfield – the only successful foreign bid in a historic televised auction.

International oil companies were put off by the Iraqi oil ministry's demands that they cut the fee they collect on every barrel extracted over 20-year contracts.

The BP-Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) deal was only secured when the consortium agreed to cut its fee per barrel from £3.99 to $2.

That's right. Those poor babies will spend very little of their own money to extract the oil (and none to find the oil), and they are guaranteed hefty profits, but not as hefty as they thought they would get.

Of course, this isn't the only way that British Petroleum has made money off of an illegal and genocidal war in Iraq and the endless quagmire in Afghanistan. (Asia Times 6/19/10)

The Pentagon's foreign wars have left it particularly heavily dependent on oil services, energy and petroleum companies. An analysis published at Foreign Policy in Focus found that, in 2005, 145 such companies had contracts with the Pentagon. That year, the DoD paid out more than $1.5 billion to BP alone and a total of $8 billion taxpayer dollars, in total, to energy-related firms on what is a far-from-complete list of companies.

That's right. British Petroleum has been making over $1 billion in fuels sales, the vast majority of which would be completely unnecessary if not for those two wars.

British Petroleum doesn't just have oil on its hands. They also have blood on their hands. The pressured both the British and US governments, along with other Big Oil corporations, to get us into the Iraq War in the first place. Now, you can see why.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's involvement has been particularly interesting. For the especially gullible, he claimed that his decision to get involved in the war on Iraq was based on fears of WMDs, knowing full well that Iraq didn't have WMDs. He let other people think that he was Bush's poodle, going to extremes to preserve the "special relationship" between the US and Britain that almost always benefits the elites at the expense of the general populations of both countries.

Knowledge and perspective is often clearer with time and larger bodies of information. Now, we know that Tony Blair was a poodle, but the owner of that groveling dog was British Petroleum.

 

Push polling is a common, though dirty political tactic. Generally, callers will pretend to be running an opinion poll, but the questions will be slanted as to try to shape the opinions and voting behavior of the people receiving the phone calls, not to gather data.

I just received something that is a new wrinkle (at least to me) on this tactic: a push poll via USPS mail. It had the amusing title of “Republican Party Census Document.”

The start of the accompanying letter was a hoot.

Dear Fellow Republican,

You are among a select group of Republicans who have been chosen to take part in the official 2007 CENSUS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Enclosed is your new 2007 GOP CENSUS DOCUMENT, which was assigned and prepared especially for you as a representative of all Republicans in your voting district.

Of course, I am not a Republican and have given them no reason to think I am or to have my address. Even more hilarious is that they are calling the mailing a “census document,” an apparent attempt to intimidate the gullible into filling out the survey.

The questions being used inspired some chuckles as well. Here are some examples of the loaded questions the Republican National Committee was using.

Should we do everything we can do stop Democrats from repealing critical border and port security legislation?

This is especially cute, given that Republicans have fought against port security legislation with absolute fanaticism. More examples follow:

Should President [sic] Bush's successful income and capital gains tax cuts be made permanent?

Should Republicans in Congress oppose the new wasteful government spending programs proposed by the Democrats and their leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid?

Should we continue working for serious tort reform to protect individuals and small businesses from predatory lawsuits?

Do you support President [sic] Bush's initiative to allow private religious and charitable groups to do more to help those in need?

These kind of questions just make the GOP look idiotic to well-informed people, but they could significantly influence people who do not follow the news or who get fake news from Faux News, Rush Limbaugh, the New York Post, etc.

However, there was one sincere part of the mailing, the part where they were begging for money.

Militant Christian fundamentalists have come up with another way to try to harass women who need abortions and add more red tape for their doctors. The "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act" (H.R. 6099) would make it legally required for doctors performing abortions to make scientifically dubious claims to women who are about to have abortions, trying to scam them into getting unnecessary fetal anesthesia, even though there is no credible medical evidence to support the procedure.

If women are bamboozled into doing this, it will raise the cost of abortions. The Christian jihadists are hoping to make abortions more costly to punish women who exercise their fundamental human right to choose on abortion.

NOW has an Action Alert to get people to contact their representatives before the House votes on this latest misogynist nonsense by the lame-duck Republican leadership.