Posted on 06/14/2010 1:34:23 PM PDT by presidio9
'Drill, baby, drill" is not a dying bird in the Gulf of Mexico, but it should be. Those three words have become the albatross audibly hanging around the neck of the Republican Party. It should stay there until the party faces the fact that it has to become more than an unquestioning shill for big business, particularly big oil. Those words should be an epitaph for the old way of doing business, or always saying what the masters of profit tell a politician to say.
Only a fast moving case of heavy Alzheimer's could make us forget all of those elephants chanting the albatross at the national convention last year. There is also ample footage of Sarah Palin (above), the shrewd, cynical and demented cheerleader bringing audiences into the happy state of froth in which those three words gushed out over and over.
Palin and her partner in a goo of intellectual slime, Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, have joined Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News in the entertainment business of leading the public to believe that there is not now and has never been anything wrong with American business dealings, domestic or otherwise.
This is always good for the country because it can clarify where our "leaders" are coming from - and remake the public's political perspectives in significant ways. It is far too hard for most ordinary Republicans to stand in public and say, as Republican Congressman Don Young did a few days ago, that what is happening in the Gulf is "not an environmental disaster." No fault, no blame. Right.
Other shills waiting to be recast as Dr. Strangelove blame it all on regulations and government chasing big oil out where it is deemed safe to drill. All of the easily proven corruption, lying and distortion by British Petroleum is not to be mentioned.
Republicans need very badly to find some sort of a middle ground in which they can address environmental concerns and become part of a bipartisan effort that has nothing to do with selling out to what some might think is no more than the urging of old time hippies, high on marijuana and dressed in green dreams.
After all, once upon a time there was a Republican named Theodore Roosevelt, who basically invented modern governmental concern for nature and took on what was yet to be what big oil has since become. Fully informed about the differences between religion and science, knowledgeable of the details of how and why things are wrong in so many areas of business that endanger human beings, nature and birds, mammals and marine life, there is a great need for a new T.R. suited to our time of incompetence, corruption and disregard for anything that might limit profit.
As I have said and will continue to say as long as I write, American capitalism is not opposed to profit - it simply demands that the profit motive fuse with morality and ethics. Yes, you can have people work for you, but you cannot own them. Yes, you can sell food, but it cannot be knowingly tainted. And so on. That is the American way and it is also the enemy of those too greedy to avoid playing dirty pool if it will turn a buck.
If the Republican Party comes to understand that, our destiny in this century will be far different than where we are now. If we simply listen to the elephants, we will just stand still as shills for big business and watch the Chinese win the race for economic dominance by adapting their version of totalitarian capitalism to meet an inevitably green future.
One conquers the world today by taking over international markets, not with troops and weaponry. That is the new form of world war. The Chinese intend to count their winnings with green thumbs - and so should we.
Perhaps the Republicans can wake up to that reality and stop allowing wingnuts to drown out a voice of doom chanting, "Drill, baby, drill."
crouch.stanley@gmail.com
The modern GOP needs
a new T.R.
NYDN? How much is that rag losing now?
Drill baby, drill is the only way to stem the BP Booboo in the GoM.
Drill, baby, drill...esp. in ANWR.
Hogwash.
I thought it was Bush’s fault, now Palin?
It was the corrupt DNC and Obama Administration,
led by Koonin and BP that instituted this oily mess.
This would never have happened in shallow-water drilling.
You forgot the BARF allert
if they were able to drill in the shallows not a mile deep as the greenies insisted to ‘protect’ the environment we would not have this problem.
and if we did had the spill and Bush/Cheney or even Sarah Palin were President....it would have been plugged weeks ago.
Really?????????
Ask the people in the Gulf states about that!
“Drill baby drill” sure sounds a lot better than the Democrats “Starve freeze and die” mantra.
why don’t they condemn Barack Obama’s pal George Soros for drilling near Brazil using our money?
The green elephant in the room is Obama. Obama = Epic fail.
I’ve got me a congressional candidate who supports slant drilling under the great lakes too.
Too bad for the NY Daily Ooze polls show strong majorities still support offshore drilling. Love the leftists in the media trying to turn this mess onto the head of the GOP. They look like the clowns they are.
Yep, Palin and the rest of the Republican party are thrilled that the BP rig broke and that hundreds of millions of gallons of oil are spreading through the Caribbean and beyond.
I guess nobody should mention that under Obama this very rig was cited for good stewardship.
Other nations will drill in the gulf. We should be a part of it. The industry should be watched, and held to account. Other than that, life goes on.
We need to develop our own resources, and kick the Middle-East habit.
Import, baby, import
The laws of unintended consequences, it catches up with you eventually. It's a feature of BIG GOVERNMENT, and cannot be removed.
Yet another piece of crap from an NYC a$$hat that lives off of transportation subsidies and does not MAKE anything. Let his butt see if scribbling Swahili on parchment in Somalia is better as he wants to lead a green low energy life style.
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