Fabulous and topical costume...and relatively inexpensive too. I would only offer to add that other than the color tweak, instead of carrying duck decoys a couple of novelty store rubber chickens with appropriate petroleum camo would lend some authenticity. If you want to go for a more literal look, how about a spritz of benzine and hydrocarbons before you head out.



The impromptu diatribe by the European nationalists is interesting. Let's all focus on being more divisive and keep labeling each other while the puppet masters keep taking our money and having their way with the world. Yeah, that's productive.



As for the references to history, well how about this. B.P. was originally founded by the guy who found oil in Iran. The Iranians wanted more money for their natural resources once the staggering wealth that it represented was made evident by the evil entrepreneur that had developed it. Eventually they just took it all. What later became known as B.P. didn't like this so they went to the world court and got bounced.



Like a good Allie Eisenhower did what America has been doing since Monroe's time, kinda modeled after our European forebears, and decided to install a more cooperative government. So the CIA assassinates a sovereign nation's leader and gets a share of the Iranian/BP oil for the corporations that run America. When Europe did it we called it colonialism and empire building. Now we like to call it Imperialist hegemony. Catchy huh?



So the Iranians decided that they were tired of the whole western rule by Shah proxy and kicked every body out. Let us not leave out that B.P. was also controlled by the English government for a while until Maggie started her privatization moves to pay some bills (apparently the socialists ran out of other peoples money to spend). B.P. was/is also a big player in the American oil company consolidation moves that have been taking place since the trust busters created all of the little Standard Oils. We are after all talking about the third or fourth largest company in the world, and they didn't get that big sellin' fish and chips in Lecester Square.



B.P. is a giant corporation that has by extension millions of shareholders. These people (union pension plans, banks and governments) all want something of a ROI, and most don't really care how that is derived as long as it doesn't reveal itself in living color all over the nightly news. People still want there gas as cheap as possible, investors still want their profits and CEO's still want their bonus'.

All of the finger pointing and chop busting aside, the spill was horrific and the true impact won't be known for decades to come. A cursory review of the Prince William Sound spill and aftermath should help to clarify that point. Ranking the size (which BTW is still beyond any real quantification) is quite ridiculous...it was big and it was bad for everyone.



As far as clean-up efforts and the American government's reticence to foreign aid, well don't forget that we do have a huge yet fragile ego, and more importantly, we have labor unions that will not be ignored. Even in this economy, catastrophe cleanup work is still work, and our unions want the representation that they have bought and paid for, so you can hardly fault Mr. Obama for not acting like Chile's President, he's got a shrinking support base that he has to pander to.



Whether momma earth can continue to absorb and compensate for our mistakes and greed remains to be seen, but common sense seems to illustrate that we don't want to make any more of a habit of this sort of thing. Taking a poke with a topical costume such as this should help to remind everyone in our ADD / 15 second video clip world that it happened, and that we all have a little petroleum goo on our hands where blame is concerned.

