Also: Well, that's one spill by the British the Americans aren't complaining about.

+1 aum!

I'd give you another +1 if you explain your use of "spill" in ur second joke; in the dictionary it apears as verb, isn't it?

spill is a noun too...

Two very good jokes there chaps, thanks. Bloody Yanks!

"Spill" can be a noun too e.g. "an oil spill" like the one off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico right now that occurred on a BP(British Petroleum) oil rig.

lmao aum.

that was brilliant

May I robe you the first joke, to put it in my facebook aum?

It is likely to end up on TV it is really hot for today in particular...

The tea bag joke is pretty old & reused. The spill one is good.

@aum: e.g. "an oil spill" like the one off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico right now that occurred on an oil rig built by an American company, owned by an American company, operated by American company and leased by BP.

@diplomat61 Fine, fine I don't want to get into the political blame game of that disaster. It is however BP that has been named by the U.S. federal government as the entity responsible for the spill and the one that will pay for the damage. That doesn't preclude other companies from being liable of course.

This next one is has some heft to it so let me first say that Robert Green has my sympathies for such a painful error. It's also good for having a Liverpool man and current England captain in it.

Steven Gerrard has said, "The whole team is behind Rob Green." In hindsight, that's a good place to stand.

@aum. Sorry to dig at you but I am horrified by the way this seems to be taking on an anti-British witchhunt air. A combination of slack reporting and Obama playing to the gallery.

@dip... El Presidente is setting himself up for a very awkward problem here. He cannot deliver on a lot of what he is talking about: the rule of law still exists in the US and BP will, as will any other company found to have broken the law, be liable up to the limit of said law and at the discretion of the courts. He cannot demand any particular level of punishment as it is being called and he cannot enact retro-active laws. Some of what is being said is plain silly.

BP has, to its credit, stated categorically that it will fulfill its legal requirements, so what is all the shouting about?

Obama is unpopular, and thinks the best way around that is to make BP even less popular than him. It doesn't reflect well on him at all.

BP also stated that the spill was a lot less that it was.
BP also stated that oil drilling was safe.
BP has not payed all oil spill cleanup people.
Just because BP "stated categorically" that it will fulfill its legal requirements doesn't mean those will be enough.
And of course the government CAN enact retro-active laws, usually in terms of sentences that are regulatory and not punitive
Some examples of ex post factoish type laws:
taxes, sex offender registration, domestic violence gun ban, administrative law
In terms of BP, the punishment will be in terms of taxes and administrative law. If Congress passes a statute that explicitly authorizes a Federal Agency to do so, that agency may make "interpratations" of that statute retroactively even if it has not ruled on that subject beforehand.

ps. @ flashman ^^

@flashman

Could you please send that little spiel to everyone else in America so some of them can consider waking up from the hope/change dream?

@LordV:

Your first three points are not quite as clear as you seem to suggest. Call them a, b & c:

a) represents an under-estimate. Unless it is proven to have been a deliberate attempt to mislead, it is not a criminal action;

b) they were given permission to drill on the basis that it was considered safe by the US itself, so any action there would be somewhat interesting. Again, they would need to be shown to have been falsifying/witholding information for anything to stick;

c) BP is not yet responsible for the total cost of oil-spill clean up. There are likely to be other companies that get drawn into any legal actions. BP will have to shoulder its portion of the blame and responsibility but it will not be 100%.

Furthermore, payments would only be authorised - even by the US Govt, to companies, organisations, individuals who are officially appointed for clean up operations. At this stage, it would be somewhat improper for BP to start handing out cash left right and centre.

Obviously, the US could make life very difficult for BP in the future but writing laws to specifically make BP liable for actions that were not illegal at the time they occurred would be a very very difficult course to follow and is not something the President can honestly claim to be able to deliver.

You even admit that retroactive laws that are punitive are not likely to get passed... Well, that is exactly the type of law the President is shouting about. And that is exactly why I said he is likely to get himself into a rather tricky corner as this develops.

And this is supposed to be a World Cup joke thread!

A worrying point is that if Obama follows through with his somewhat reckless tough guy talk then every oil company, and other forms of energy company like nuclear for that matter, is going to look at the US and seriously question whether the potential profits are worth the risk to their business. Obama's message to the world "The US is bad for business. Here be dragons!"

I also think we should stop making Robert Green jokes. The man made one mistake and was obviously emotionally devestated by it. At the end of the game he put his head in his hands... and missed

@Octavious

Isn't that what Obama's spent his whole presidency so far doing, making it clear privately-owned businesses aren't welcome in the USA? Oh, wait, no...he's spent about half of it blaming everything on Bush (like the fact his appointee to the federal department that oversees oil regulation turned out to be a dud...totally Bush's fault).

Haha, nice one, Octavious!

Yes, great joke. Back on track here at last...

I think we're starting to cross the line with these jokes now...

HAR HAR HAR!!!

"Isn't that what Obama's spent his whole presidency so far doing, making it clear privately-owned businesses aren't welcome in the USA? Oh, wait, no...he's spent about half of it blaming everything on Bush (like the fact his appointee to the federal department that oversees oil regulation turned out to be a dud...totally Bush's fault)."

Are you high? Seriously, have you been paying attention at all? Has there been one Bush-era policy that Obama hasn't more or less completely adopted as his own? The failure of Obama is not that he's too socialist or any other Fox News meme, it's that he is just yet another Oil and Wall Street whore.

That was not funny at all Bob, you'll have to try harder than that to keep up with the early pace setters here...

My bad. So, what's the difference between Jacques Cousteau and Cristiano Ronaldo? Cousteau dives in the ocean.

Much better...