Corruption and arrogance are nothing new among the extreme right. However, the GOP Senate candidate in Kentucky, Ayn Rand Paul, is taking sleaze to a level that amazes even someone as jaded as myself. Paul, speaking on Good Morning America 5/21/10:

What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business," he said. "I've heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it's part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.

This is so sick and wrong on so many levels. The only legitimate criticism of the Obama Administration's approach to British Petroleum's actions is that it has been far too lenient. As Rick at Ten Percent points out, BP may be criminally liable for the specifics of this particular oil spill. However, there is a more general area of potential criminality involving any offshore drilling. Offshore drilling is an incredibly reckless and negligent practice, no matter how many precautions are put in place. Any Big Oil executive that engages in the practice is knowingly deciding to kill employees in the name of profits.



Second, what is truly unpatriotic is sucking up to Big Oil. Big Oil has shown its utter contempt for our country and its democratic institutions by showering campaign cash on politicians in order to get massive government subsidies (including the Iraq War) and exemptions from environmental regulation. Big Oil, with help from its fundamentalist Christian enablers, has gotten us into an illegal war in Iraq that has killed more Americans than were killed in the 911 attacks. The Iraqi dead number over 1.3 million.

This rightist jackass doesn't just suck up to Big Oil. Paul ups the ante of his unpatriotic nonsense by sucking up to British Petroleum, a foreign oil company that is trashing our natural resources and our fishing and tourism industries. Big Oil companies like British Petroleum are literally terrorist enemies of America and the world. Pandering to Big Oil is about as unpatriotic as is humanly possible.

The "accidents happen" bullshit, is particularly galling. As I have pointed out before, huge oil spills are a common and easily predictable consequence of the negligent practice of offshore drilling. A common consequence of irresponsible behavior hardly qualifies as an "accident."

It's no secret why Rand Paul is gleefully throwing his legs in the air in order to be violated by the ideological equivalent of a chainsaw. Rand Paul is for sale to the highest bidder, and Big Oil owns a big piece of him. We need publicly financed campaigns to fight this rank corruption in our political system. Corporate media hacks pretend that this kind of sleaze is limited to DC. It's not. It's quite common in sleazebags like Rand Paul who want to join the pigs at the corporate trough at our nation's capital.

We already knew that Ayn Rand Paul was a bigoted piglet. Now, we know that he has zero loyalty to this country.

Photos: Rand Paul for U.S. Senate 2010 (released under the Creative Commons license)

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