James Inhofe Has Crystal Balls!

From THINK PROGRESS:

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), right-wing conspiracy theorist and oil-industry apologist, has promised that Republicans are “certainties” to win at least the ten seats necessary to regain control of the U.S. Senate on November 2. In an interview while stumping for Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck on Thursday, Inhofe told the National Review Online that extremist candidates such as Buck, John Raese (WV), Dino Rossi (WA), Pat Toomey (PA), and Carly Fiorina (CA) are guaranteed to win. Inhofe even said that Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell (DE) has a shot:

Little Chrissie may be a witch, but I bet she can’t see the future!

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The Wizards of Oil

From The Washington Post:

Three major oil industry executives agreed on one thing in a pair of Senate hearings Tuesday: Someone else was to blame for the drilling rig accident that triggered the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The senior executives from the oil behemoth BP, the offshore oil drilling company Transocean and the oilfield services contractor Halliburton pointed fingers at each other in seeking to explain what caused the accident that set afire and sank the Deepwater Horizon rig, killing 11 people.

…snip…

BP blamed the failure of Transocean’s blowout preventer and raised a new question about whether Transocean disregarded “anomalous pressure test readings” just hours before the explosion. Transocean blamed decisions made by BP and cited possible flaws in the cementing job done by Halliburton. And Halliburton said that it had faithfully followed BP’s instructions and that Transocean had started replacing a heavy drilling mud with seawater before the well was sealed with a cement plug.

To the tune of If I Only Had a Brain, written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, as performed by the fabulous Ray Bolger:

Lamar McKay:

I sit here, oh so coyly, don’t know why the gulf’s so oily,
But I’m here to proclaim,
That I couldn’t say for certain,
But I think that Halliburton,
Is the company to blame.

“You’re ridiculous!”

From THINK PROGRESS:

Back in September, godfather of global warming deniers Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) announced that he would be going to the U.N.’s climate change summit in Copenhagen this week to present “another view.” “I think somebody has to be there — a one-man truth squad,” he said. His “truth squad” later expanded to three, with Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) joining in.

…snip…

Inhofe did travel to Copenhagen however — with a single staffer and when he got there, all he could muster was an “impromptu” press conference and spent a grand total of two hours in the Danish capital.

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California Scheming

From the Los Angeles Times:

Under President Bush, California Democrats often felt like Rodney Dangerfield.

But with Barack Obama headed to the White House — giving their party control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for the first time in 14 years — lawmakers from one of the nation’s bluest states are looking to gain more than just respect. They expect to wield more political clout as well.

Not only will House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco preside over a bigger Democratic majority with a friendlier president, but Californians will chair four House committees, more than any other state.

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