Conservative Pollutants

Palin took to her fancy Tweet Machine recently to give her first statements regarding the oil spill of the coast of Louisiana.

But do you remember what she said about drilling before?



Conservatives are using this disaster to push the message that Obama doesn't have a plan, while attempting to craft their own spin away from blanket advocacy of off-shore drilling. And as I posted yesterday, Limbaugh insists that this is all planned.

As the spill edges closer to land, threatening delicate eco-systems, the clean-up process is slated to take months with no word yet on when the pipe into the ocean floor will be capped of.

To me, this says something of conservativism and how they view the world around them. They don't consider the consequences.

Assumptions

Seems that a lot of liberals/progressives didn't read the whole NY Times piece about the Obama administrations plans to lift a moratorium on off-shore drilling.

Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

The environmentally sensitive Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected and no drilling would be allowed under the plan, officials said. But large tracts in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska — nearly 130 million acres — would be eligible for exploration and drilling after extensive studies.

People are under the assumption that the platforms are going to be built tomorrow and that Obama is caving to conservative demands. This is simply not true.

The only place that is already a definite for a platform to begin operating is off the coast of Virginia. The remainder of the areas are to be explored to see if they are even viable.

While this does create the illusion of a conservative victory, I'm seeing this as just a perfect example of an over-reported topic that ultimately confuses people rather than make any clear point - though the Times piece does include all the relevant information.

To me, this seems more like a carefully calculated chess move on the part of Obama. With the administration's energy bill coming up, this will likely appease some Republicans while others will remain skeptical. I'll like to see how many GOP members vote against this proposed drilling plan.

It's your move conservatives.

What Pundits, Talk Radio Hosts, and Other Conservatives Don't Understand About Drilling For Oil

( original version posted @ DailyKos )


It's the magic solution.

As soon as the first drill-bit hits the ocean floor in the Gulf Of Mexico, as soon as the first oil-company-employee steps foot in ANWR, not five minutes after that next oil-platform goes operational, gas prices are going to start dropping.

That might sound nice, might even sound great, but it's not true.

On Fox"News" and conservative radio - if you even bother listening to people who prefer the sounds of their own voices to the sounds of the voices of reason - you're hearing a lot about ANWR and how it's ALL Bill Clinton's fault that we are seeing such high gas prices.

The real truth lies within the vortex that conservatives have created in spinning their own conventional wisdom.

The ANWR talking point is something that is easily debunked, but conservatives are counting on you holding firm to your ignorance long enough for them to beat this issue to a bloody, unrecognizable pulp. Once you start to catch on, they'll have already moved on to something else.

Sure, there is - according to the U.S. Geological Survey - just over 3 billion barrels of oil in ANWR, but that will take 10 years to reach the 'market' and 50 years to extract it all.

By the time it's all said and done, we'll be dead once ANWR is tapped out and all the American consumer will have to show for it is barely a 6-months supply. There's no accurate way to determine how much damage could potentially be done to that wildlife reserve, but knowing that we would only get 6 months worth of oil from a 50 year drilling project doesn't seem to be as grand a solution as Republicans are making it out to be.

What makes all this 'talk' nothing more than just 'talk' from people who like to pretend they have all the issues, is that they are so against alternatives simply because Democrats are 'for' them. Once again, we see that Republicans are nothing more than the party of "against".

Enter T. Boone Pickens.

You've all seen the ad, I'm sure:



Now, here's a guy that is nothing more than a businessman. An oil-business man at that. He supported Bush's invasion of Iraq for all the reasons that Republicans have been denying we went there for in the first place - for oil.

Even though I'm not entirely certain that I trust Pickens' motives on this ( it's purely a business move on his part ) he does know more than Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, everyone at Redstate.com, the FreeRepublic guys, and certainly more than Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh will ever know about oil

Well, try telling that to Tim Wahlberg:

...you can imagine my frustration when conservative radio host Sean Hannity recently criticized Congressional Republicans for failing to act on energy policy. Mr. Hannity, have you been paying no attention? House Republicans need your help to galvanize the American people behind our legislation to increase American energy production. The American people look at you and Rush Limbaugh, the king of talk radio, as leaders of the conservative movement, and we need you to highlight our efforts.

Last week, Rush said, “Frankly, I'm a little tired of hearing Republicans tell us that they can't win. I'm tired of Republicans telling us how many seats they expect to lose in the Senate, how many they expect to lose in the House of Representatives, that this isn't their year. BS. This year has been served up on a silver platter. People vote with their pocketbooks, and Democrats are wrong on the biggest issue since 9/11.”

Mistake #6744 that Republicans make - actually believig that Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh know what the hell they are talking about.