Party First. America Second.

There is no way an intelligent political blogger can write this out of ignorance, so we can only surmise Steve Benen means to defraud his readers:

BARBOUR: MORATORIUM WORSE THAN SPILL.... As part of the federal response to the BP oil spill disaster, the administration imposed a six-month moratorium on drilling new deepwater wells. The point, of course, was to prevent another crisis -- Deepwater Horizon had undermined confidence in the industry and its practices. Before companies start new drilling, it's reasonable to make sure the industry's doing it right.

Conservatives, and some regional Democrats, are less than pleased about the six-month pause. Yesterday on "Meet the Press," Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) went so far as to argue that the moratorium is actually worse than the oil spill and its effects on the region. Seriously.

Benen's been busy practicing for the White House beer pong team, or is simply a reliable toady. I'm not sure that it matters which. What matters is that he is shoveling pure propaganda.

It is widespread public knowledge that is isn't Republicans that started griping about this, it was the experts that the Administration consulted and then ignored in order to exploit the crisis for Obama's political agenda:

Then there is Obama's decision to impose a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the gulf. This penalizes companies with better safety records than BP's and will result in many advanced drilling rigs being sent to offshore oil fields abroad.

The justification offered was an Interior Department report supposedly "peer reviewed" by "experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." But it turned out the drafts the experts saw didn't include any recommendation for a moratorium. Eight of the cited experts have said they oppose the moratorium as more economically devastating than the oil spill and "counterproductive" to safety.

This was blatant dishonesty by the administration, on an Orwellian scale. In defense of a policy that has all the earmarks of mindless panic, that penalizes firms and individuals guilty of no wrongdoing and that will worsen rather than improve our energy situation. Ineffective thuggery.

President Kick-Ass can't be bothered to be dragged off the golf course long enough to do much other than attend fundraisers, parties or private concerts, but when addressing a major environmental disaster, he issues soundbites and platitudes. He exhibits zero leadership. It turns out he doesn't have any.

Being an ideologue instead of the intellect his allies like to pretend that he is, Obama and his dream team of cloistered stooges instead overrode the considered opinions of experts—and committed fraud to do it—and now purposefully intends to turn the environmental disaster of the Deepwater Horizon spill into an economic and energy disaster as well.

The Obama moratorium was purposefully designed to force rigs to leave the Gulf of Mexico, costing thousands of American jobs and increasing our dependency on foreign oil. The reason? To force Americans into shifting away from oil as a source of energy, purely as an ideological matter.

The unintended side effect? It means that the drilling rigs that remain are older, with fewer safety features. Obama and his whiz kids have created a situation where the likelihood of another environment-wrecking spill is increased because of their political gamesmanship.

Reliable little leaches like Steve Benen can be counted upon to cheer on Obama as he sucks the marrow out of the American economy. For them it is party first, and America a distant second.