Posted on 05/03/2010 6:18:33 AM PDT by Josh Painter
Dan Calabrese, writing in The North Star National, sees the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and the resulting oil spill as a good test of spine stiffness for the GOP. One Republican, he says, has passed the test, and it’s Sarah Palin, as usual, but Calabrese is not encouraged by the signs he's seeing from others in the Shy Elephant Party:
A day after pundit Charles Krauthammer declared “drill, baby, drill” to be history in light of the spill, and two days after the Obama Administration halted all domestic drilling (gee, what a surprise), Palin came out and invoked her moral authority as an Alaskan who lived through the Exxon Valdez spill.Many Americans get that we need to drill domestically but in the midst of the current hysteria over the spreading oil slick, Calabrese says it takes courage to say so. While most Republicans run and hide, Gov. Palin stands her ground and speaks truth to hysteria. This, he concludes, is another reason why Sarah Palin is so admired by so many.Yes, Palin says, the spill is horrible, as was the Exxon Valdez, which was why she took steps as a regulator in Alaska to put tighter controls on the oil companies. But she still comes to the same conclusion she’s touted before: We need domestic drilling.
No matter how horrible the British Petroleum spill proves to be, it won’t change the economic reality. We are putting our economy and our national security at risk when we rely on the likes of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to get the oil we need. And it is insane to do this when we can and should drill for oil on our own lands and in waters we control.
This drilling can be done safely and cleanly. It obviously wasn’t in the case of the BP explosion, but it can and it should.
[...]
We need more domestic drilling, including off-shore, but when the GOP was in charge, they didn’t make it happen. We needed market-oriented health care reform, but it was easier for the GOP to do little or nothing on the issue, so they left the door open for Democrats to create a socialist behemoth the first chance they got. We need to get federal spending and entitlements under control, but that’s too hard because the media and the Democrats will say you hate Grandma. So the GOP did nothing.
Real leadership is what you do when it’s right but it’s also hard. McConnell, Boehner and company have never been known for this, and now we have the latest example as to why.
The left has already started trying to pin the whole Deepwater Horizon blowup on Sarah Palin, but as we noted late last night, and Dan Riehl was one of the first to point out, the drilling plan was submitted to and approved by Minerals Management Services (MMS) on Obama's watch.
But though MMS signed off the project, it never had a plan to answer the question, What could possibly go wrong? The Portland Press Herald reported:
Hammond Eve, who did environmental impact studies of offshore drilling for the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS), said the federal agency never planned for response to an oil spill of this size. "We never imagined that it would happen because the safety measures were supposed to work and prevent it from happening," he said.Perhaps that will serve to explain why the Obama administration dithered for eight days following the offshore explosion. To try to divert attention away from such facts about the unfolding tragedy on and off the coast of Louisiana , the left is trying to characterize the oil-contaminated area as "Lake Palin." That flies in the face of the facts. If anything, it should be called The Gulf of Obama.
This is Obama's Katrina, and it's not Bush's fault or Sarah Palin's. BP deserves its share of the blame, but there comes a point in time when the Obama administration will have to take responsibility for its decisions and actions or lack of same. But don't bet on it doing so. With the Obamunists, it's always someone else that is to blame.
- JP
The oil has to come from somewhere. Even strictly from an environmental standpoint, who are we going to trust to do it safer and more environmentally responsibly than ourselves...Chavez? The Saudis? Russia? Hardly...
(((((Palin Ping)))))
Sounds a lot like
These levies weren't designed to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane.
As governor and 20 years after the Exxon Valdez she directed the state attorney general to join in a suit for damages. She won.
We would have never went to the moon or won WWII with this attitude.
No matter how horrible the British Petroleum spill proves to be, it won’t change the economic reality. We are putting our economy and our national security at risk when we rely on the likes of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to get the oil we need.
Although I supported "Drill Baby Drill", I never believed the Oil Industry hype that the global supply of oil was infinite and would remain "cheap" as long as we just kept looking for it.
And it was bad enough when the Oil Lobby supported subsidized ethanol production, which competed against the food industy, driving up corn and cattle prices.
Now BP has severely damaged our gulf seafood industry, and it'll be 15~20 years to recover, no matter how much they spend on "feel good" propaganda projects to make it look like they're cleaning up...
We can't rely on "Drill Baby drill" anymore,
We HAVE to build more nuclear power plants...
AND electrically powered passenger rail and maglev systems.
As Palin has repeatedly said.
What part of “all of the above” do you not understand?
It is not “one or the other,” it is “all of the above.”
It is both oil AND nuclear.
And natural gas.
And shale oil.
And geothermal.
And hydro.
And solar.
And wind.
Capiche?
copied from http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1367.htm
copiedMay 1, 2010
US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig
Shouldn't people like you be crying for more and more use of oil so that we could run out and the problem of "pollution" from oil(which is BS because the oil seeps out of the ocean floor all the time on its own)will be gone forever?
I’m holding out for the personal jetpack I was promised in the ‘50’s.
Hardly any oil is used to make electricity. Our oil use is in other power uses and cannot be replaced by nukes.
Oil is used for transportation.
Hardly any transportation uses electricity.
That's why we need BOTH nuclear power plants AND electrically powered passenger rail.
Then we won't need as much oil for transportation.
Long live the internal combustion engine and individual freedom.
Oil isn't going to run out,
"Drill baby drill" is dead.
It's BP's fault.
BP thought they had planned for the worst case. But the problem is we don’t know what the worst case is. Off-shore drilling involves tremendous risks, sort of like the kind that a soldier takes when he goes to war. ____t happens. The real question is: why drill? The answer being, because that is where the oil is. Lots of it.
Look at China. They aren’t talking like that. Rather they are ramping up car production BIG TIME!
Well, it doesn’t have to be. “The Nation” types talk about alternatives/ There ARE no alternatives, not ones that can supply energy at the rates who demand. And Thirty years ago, they hysterically shut down atomic energy by scaring the public half to death. They really can’t do this in the case of oil without making us as dependent on foreign oil as Japan and Germany are.
Charles Krauthammer is getting pretty consistent about coming down on the wrong side of issues and history.
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