This week, the Sunday political talk shows had one thing in common – the BP oil spill - how it happened and how it’s going to be fixed.  Remember ‘Operation Top Kill’?  No, not the gay snuff film – it was that completely logical thing where they were going to shove mud into the gushing hole to stop it up – which was the equivalent of taking two power hoses at full blast and placing them head to head in the hopes that the mud one would overpower the oil one?  At 5,000 feet below the surface?  With ROBOTS?  Well, uh, that didn’t work.   Ben Dudley, Managing Director of BP, was the featured guest on “Fox News Sunday” and “Meet the Press” where he showed a very complicated diagram of Plan B, where these underwater robots will maneuver pipes and widgets to make a clean cut on the main oil pipe and put a cap on it to contain the oil as opposed to stop it outright and blah, blah, blah.  I’m watching the poor man try to describe this, and he has that haggard “do you really want me to go out there and try to SELL this load of crap?” look on his face as his people are all “you better, or hope for a terrorist attack in the next five minutes.  Don’t forget to mention the ROBOTS.”  And McGruber’s there in the background yelling “Hand me that paper clip, Dudley!”  and he’s all “You got it, McGruber!”   And…

It’s a mess.

The punch line is that 12 to 19 thousand barrels of oil a day will be spilling into the Gulf of Mexico until AUGUST which is the soonest they can drill the relief wells – which is the only solution they have that they know is going to work.  This is already considered the worst environmental disaster in history and it’s going to get THREE TIMES WORSE before they can stop it.  But don’t worry, because in the meantime they are going to skim the oil off the surface and stick chemicals on it to break it up and put those orange bumpers along the coastline and round up all the gays who were parading in New Orleans at the time to hold them accountable.

Speaking of the gays, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ took two huge steps towards repeal this week which prompted Chris Wallace of Fox News to ask Admiral Mullen “what about the TROOPS, for the love of Anita Bryant?!  The God fearing, vagina-loving men who will now be forced to man-scape and moisturize to ensure unit cohesion?  What about THEM?”  And Admiral Mullen was all ‘commission this’, and ‘implementation that’ and basically he just shrugged his shoulders and said the gay mafia took this round, Chris, what the hell can I do?

Of course, neither of these two issues were the top story on Fox News.  The top story on Fox News was that Bill Clinton was asked by the Obama folks to offer Representative Joe Sestak a job to bow out of the Senate Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania so that Arlen “You Won’t Have Me to Kick Around Anymore” Specter would run unopposed.    Well, it MIGHT have been a job.  Or maybe it was just an unpaid appointment on a commission – yeah, that’s it.  Either way, Chris Wallace leveled his steady gaze at Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and asked him point blank how the world could go on with this type of politics being played by our politicians.  Isn’t this WRONG?  “Ah, hell no,” the Governor says, “it’s just like when I told whatchamafuckit from whoseymawhatzit to drop out of the thingamajigger in exchange for this sweet administration post.  I do it all the time, bitch.”  And then Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney foamed at the mouth while Juan Williams guffawed in disbelief back at them, wondering when the hell that pundit job would open up at CNN so he could get away from these people.  And then everyone agreed that Rahm Emmanuel is a big meanie and Bill Clinton should go back to eating BBQ and banging hos. 

Meanwhile, David Gregory over at “Meet the Press” was getting all immigration-ey on our asses.  He invited Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) to debate that Arizona law which makes it OK to pick up any suspicious looking people and ask them for their “papers” - like those terrifying Nazi Germany movie scenes where the woman from the resistance is trying to get food to the Jews hiding beneath the stairs and she gets stopped by the Gestapo and we all hold our collective breaths wondering if she is going to get shipped off to the camps and she barely makes it only to discover they snagged the Jews anyway and…is this really happening in America?  J.D. Hayworth - with his pompous George Allen smile and good natured “I’ll let you say g’bye to your young-uns before I lynch you” look about him - of course wants no part of anything that takes away American freedoms.  We’re only focusing on the brown, un-American ones, OK?  And Luis is doing his damndest to make the argument for a “holistic” approach to immigration reform – which means holding employers responsible for hiring illegals, fining them for entering the country, sticking them at the back of the line and teaching them English - being careful not to say “comprehensive immigration reform” because all those touchy Republicans hear is “amnesty” which means forgiveness, which means those little brown “I don’t care how many goddamned apples they picked last season, GODDAMIT” devils won’t get the hellfire they deserve.

But what really happened this week on the Sunday talk shows was that Obama got his ass handed to him – over and over again.  Is the oil spill his “Katrina” or his “Iranian hostage crisis?”  He took full responsibility for what happened (which instantly turned Bill Kristol into an outraged environmentalist), but does he have any power to actually fix it?  And what does that say about how the country views him? 

And on the Joe Sestak thing: Wasn’t Obama the politician who said he wasn’t like other politicians – even though we know that it’s the politician’s job to say they’re not like other politicians?  Did we really expect more from him, and does it damage his all important “brand?”

Chris Wallace thinks so, and Bill Kristol does too – but they’re not the only ones.  Even the non-wackos are critical.  Regardless of how this plays out in the coming weeks for our beleaguered President, I can only imagine that the healthcare victory must seem like a lifetime ago.