Money or Authority. There IS a difference.

Obama: Money or Authority? He wants money???
Take back the authority ASAP, puh-lease, Mr. President!

One thing for sure, this situation in the Gulf of Mexico-Caribbean Ocean Basin is FIRSTLY a life-and-death issue and time is of the essence. Already, the equivalent of ten or so EXXON-VALDEZes have gushed out 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana's Mississippi Delta, and more is gushing all the time -- another equivalent of an Exxon-Valdez every four days, some figure. If priorities are set correctly, being concerned with Money First will be seen as totally off-base, and possibly a deadly 'strategy' in the long run.

To put money first is like telling a person who comes to the Emergency Room with a life-threatening injury that they have to pay before they can get treated. It's immoral. And counter-productive.

Letting BP manage and pay at this stage of the emergency is also impractical. Because BP will always put its bottom line first while in charge of this problem. ONLY a government should manage this situation and take on the authority to step in during an emergency and get things under control and deal with the costs secondarily. (In this case, if the government were in control instead of BP, Obama would not be so beholding to BP, allowing BP to snub local and state agencies, allowing BP to conduct a lock-out of the press and photographers, and even allow BP to stand in the way of governmental fact-finding agencies from operating freely to gather independent data on air quality, on the nature of the oil's spread, and on the quantity of gushed oil).

Indeed, if the government is responsible to pay (as is the reality anyway since our government SUBSIDIZES the Oil Industry in numerous ways), then the government will have that much greater impetus down the line to pursue restitution from BP and tighten royalties and regulations on all mining/drilling, as well as cut costs on the other gluttons of tax-dollars like the Pentagon (whose oil consumption overshadows other U.S. needs).

Unfortunately, like BP, Obama too puts money first -- to the point of allowing Atty. Gen. Holder to announce loudly to the media a criminal investigation, thereby making BP clam up completely, and we see this as BP fails to cooperate with the Congressional investigatory hearings. Looks like Money trumped sensible legal strategy right there.

If Obama had handled the emergency as the life-and-death situation it is, all this money talk and responsibility talk would have been on the back burner, secondary to the needed ACTION of sucking up that oil so that we could MINIMIZE its impacts throughout the Gulf, throughout the Caribbean and work to keep it out of the Gulfstream. Two months of this murderous, uncontrolled geyser of oil and we are no better off than if NOTHING had been done -- because that drop-in-the-bucket $20 billion will NEVER be enough to make things right. And branding every money-grubbing BP fool a criminal in the first two months of this disaster will never bring back the destabilized eco-system, the destroyed flora, fauna, and coastal economies. In an EMERGENCY, time IS of the essence, and Obama seems to fail to understand that.

So many folks want to address this situation as a purely political dilemma to be finessed. I think they just don't get it: In an EMERGENCY of this huge proportion, everything -- politics, the next election, white racial bigotry, partisanship, budgetary concerns -- ALL these MUST be set aside (even clearly defined in the terms of being obstructionist in an emergency situation), and laser-like attention and concentration put on the important effort of saving as many lives and saving as much coastal area as possible.

We have lost so much ground against this disaster precisely because of BP foot-dragging, cheapskate approach, time-gobbling corporate bureaucracy, and secrecy, including their attempt to hide the oil with dispersants -- causing the sinking oil to go right under boom onto beaches and up river estuaries, making oil irretrievable by suction or burning -- all because Obama and his cabinet's Executive Branch agencies did not take charge as soon as possible, hang the cost.

I do not want my government beholding to BP. And that is all I see right now, despite this political-p.r. effort to make it appear that a few phony BP apologies and this (measly) BP fund means the President has the upper hand.

Obama will need to treat BP with kidgloves from now on if he wants this $20 billion to materialize. Does that mean Obama will cut BP even more slack eventually on those DOJ criminal investigations? (Shucks, we won't even have any testimony to go on from the Congressional hearings either now, will we?)

BP CEO Tony Hayward went to the Isle of Wight's yacht races this weekend. BP's big people obviously are not in a sweat about this disaster, thanks to buying their way out with Obama's blessings.

NOT good enough, Mr.President.

Indeed, quite shoddy. [Say this last sentence with a clipped British accent.]