British subjects are irate over President Barack Obama’s bad mouthing of BP. Their animosity adds more spice to the meeting of the United States versus Britain in today’s World Cup soccer match.To be honest, I’m not a soccer fan at all, it’s an American thing. But, it’s a different issue for the rest of the world who taken the World Cup very seriously to the point of obsessions.
Nothing wrong with that.
And if the Britain beats the United States, I won’t be too upset.
We’re still strong allies and I apologize to the British people for enduring shabby treatment by our president.
We don’t like him much either.
From The New York Post:
It’s the Revolutionary War, Round 2.
While tens of millions settle in to watch England and the United States in their first match of the World Cup today, the leaders of the two testy allies will be butting heads over BP and the Gulf oil spill.
The White House said President Obama would ring new Prime Minister David Cameron in London this morning to discuss a range of issues -- but Topic A is certain to be the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, caused by an explosion at a rig owned by the British energy giant.
Three and a half hours after the Obama-Cameron call, at 2:30 p.m., the underdog American soccer squad takes on England in both teams' opening World Cup game in South Africa.
The two teams have been bitter rivals in the past, but anger over the Gulf mess raises today's game to a new level.
Filmmaker Spike Lee urged the US team members to wear T-shirts that read, "BP Sucks."
The finger-pointing prompted a former British ambassador to Washington, Christopher Meyer, to say relations between the two countries are in "a bit of a crisis."
Obama, under mounting pressure to get tough with BP, said this week that he would have fired the firm's CEO, Tony Hayward, and that he wanted to find out "whose ass to kick."
Fellow Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded that BP suspend its rich stock-dividend payments until it pays for the Gulf cleanup -- and Obama has raised questions about it, too.
The BBC reported yesterday that the United States won the first round and that BP's board will announce it is shelving this quarter's dividend payment after Obama confronts Hayward and board chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg at the White House next Wednesday.
But British newspapers have fired back, with screaming headlines accusing Obama of trying to steal Grandmum's nest egg.
"Obama's boot on the throat of British pensioners," blared Thursday's front page of The Daily Telegraph.
"Obama is killing all our pensions," said The Daily Express.
Full story
Via New York Post
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