"Drill, Baby, Drill": Fox News' Environmental Catastrophe

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Palin and Beck are not the point, the point is the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico. But revisiting their remarks can be instructive.

Flames engulf the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 04/26/10. (photo: AP)

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+7 # Guest 2010-05-02 22:27

I don't think Obama was stupid to support off-shore drilling. I think he figured that the oil companies would decide it was too expensive and then he could always say he met the Republicans halfway.

It's strange all of BP's environmentally friendly TV ads seemed to have disappeared. :-)

+2 # Guest 2010-05-03 23:49

I agree with you there....

Palin did say Obama was JUST STALLING, THEY did not believe him....if $arah agrees with you, you KNOW you are off in the wrong direction!

Anyway he had better do an about face, even ARNOLD did today, saying what happened on the Gulf WILL NEVER HAPPEN IN CALIFORNIA, no drilling. I have to commend him for that.

+7 # Guest 2010-05-02 22:54

Beck: "Anybody with a car and a brain has been screaming about that for a long time." On June 18, 2008, Beck said that "President Bush gave a speech this afternoon urging Congress to pass legislation, lifting the congressional ban on safe, environmentally friendly offshore oil drilling, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anybody with a car and a brain has been screaming about that for a long time." On the June 17, 2008, edition of his show, Beck called the lifting of the ban "so logical the politicians have trouble even understanding it." You were wrong about that, Beck. it's people with microphones and NO BRAINS THAT HAVE BEEN SCREAMING FOR THAT.

-2 # Guest 2010-05-03 03:01

Radical lobbyists will serve to kill the planet, as they continue to adversely affect the majority of human beings who live on it. What a lethal choice of "profession," which appears to require a primary qualification that one be vainly dumb. How they can live with themselves, without suiciding, is a complete mystery to me. Unfortunate, isn't it, that it turns out that Obama is also a candidate to work for Faux News?

+12 # Guest 2010-05-03 05:14

"I read someplace -- and you might even know this.. Glenn Beck is a moron and Fox News lies !!!

+10 # Guest 2010-05-03 05:16

Palin's shrill voice must now seem like the utterings of the monstrous devil for as another deadly catastrophe reshapes our earth Mother Nature must be saying what a stupid "..itch" In recent years Lives lost by Volcano eruptions, Earthquakes, Tidal surges, Icecaps Melting "All" while evil Corporations aided and abetted by "So Called" Conservative governments continue to ravish and exploit our habatit all for the bottom line on a financial statement and for the wealth of so few ass..........
Even pigs if offered will not crap in or on the place where they lay their heads.
God Bless the world ....NO God Help the World and free us from Corporate dominance.

+8 # Guest 2010-05-03 06:04

The ugliest of the all next to Palin was Giuliani at the RNC. Shouting the mantra and then smirking like a Mafia boss.

+15 # Guest 2010-05-03 06:10

This mess will cost at least $1B (yes, $1,000,000,000! !) . For that money 1000 wind turbines could have been erected, and that oil would never have been needed. Instead of 'Drill, baby, drill!, we're in 'Spill, baby, spill', but we should be chanting 'Spin, baby, spin'!!!

+11 # Guest 2010-05-03 09:30

It will cost more than that, Phillip, if the leak is not capped. Consider thousands of jobs lost, dead tourism, dead wildlife, unrecoverable plants, you name it. Clean-up will cost a mere pittance compared to lost jobs. Migration could easily follow, filling small towns with too many people. (The pressure on communities by those fleeing hurricanes should have been a warning of what can happen when folks are uprooted en masse. Towns all through the south ran out of water and a means of waste treatment.

The disaster could be catastrophic and BP and all connected to them should not only have to pay for clean-up but jobs lost.

Natural disasters will bankrupt the U.S. further. Corporations should be fined right out of business.

-9 # paperpushermj 2010-05-03 09:34

Mr Ortiz: My curiosity requires I ask you "how do you fill up your car will electricity"?

+6 # Guest 2010-05-03 10:08

Paperpushermj asked "how do you fill up your car with electricity?" and the answer is: you will when you buy an electric car, or a plug-in hybrid, which will be easily available to you soon. Then we'll be glad if we have lots of wind farms ready to serve you and your car.

-2 # paperpushermj 2010-05-04 10:02

Kathleen: You first. If you find spending $35,000+ on a vehicle that get you 60-100 miles before you need to start looking for a recharge station More power to you. I asked Mr Ortiz how does he (present tense) fill up his tank with electricity and all I got was future tense pie in the sky beam me up Scotty answers.

+8 # Guest 2010-05-03 10:34

Electric and hydrogen powered vehicles don't require continual petro-investmen t.

All vehicles follow the laws of physics in that one form of energy is converted to another. Petro-vehicles take chemical energy (gasoline is nothing more than "stored sunlight") and convert it to mechanical energy (i.e., movement). Non-petro-vehic les take electrical or chemical energy (also, essentially "stored sunlight") and convert it to mechanical energy. If electricity were plentiful it could be used to produce all kinds of clean (i.e., non-petro) fuels either directly (e.g., hydrogen) or indirectly (e.g., algal biodiesel).

If you haven't yet, read 'Hot, Flat, and Crowded'. Friedman makes abundantly clear why putting gas in your tank is tantamount to putting a gun in the hands of the petrodictators. Renewable energy is not a 'green' cause, it's national security!!

+3 # Guest 2010-05-03 10:34

Simple. The shut-off valve at the well-head did not work. Why not require that the shut-off valve be worked weekly during drilling operations scheduled so that a government employee could witness it. Then, maybe, monthly afterwards. Simple.

+6 # Guest 2010-05-03 10:46

Quoting Phillip Ortiz:

This mess will cost at least $1B (yes, $1,000,000,000!!) . For that money 1000 wind turbines could have been erected, and that oil would never have been needed. Instead of 'Drill, baby, drill!, we're in 'Spill, baby, spill', but we should be chanting 'Spin, baby, spin'!!!

According to David Kotok of Cumberland Advisers, initial estimates of cleanup costs totaling about $12.5 billion are "only a starter."

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-kotok-125-billion-is-just-the-start-of-the-oil-cleanup-costs-and-a-double-dip-is-now-way-more-likely-2010-5

+8 # Guest 2010-05-03 07:08

The problem is that they all knew, of course, that it wasn't safe, environmentally or otherwise. They simply don't care.

+10 # Guest 2010-05-03 07:30

The most important lesson from this is that the ideology and philosophy of smaller government with less oversight and more self regulation by industry is time and time again proven to be a flawed ideology of FAILURE with great costs to the commons and the environment. Nearly 10 years of this republican ideology has brought the nation to near total economic collapse, horrible and tragic industrial death and catastrophic environmental degradation. The conservative / republican / libertarian / tea bagger / "independent " legislative ideology has proved to be such a shameful disgrace that such "believers" are running out of labels for which to call themselves but in the end it all comes out the same. A turd is still a turd by any other name.

+5 # Guest 2010-05-03 07:31

Sums it up

-5 # Guest 2010-05-03 08:01

Even smart people have been taken in. This from the NY Times editorial,
"As nerve-racking and potentially destructive as this spill is, it is not sufficient cause to abandon a broader energy strategy that includes the search for conventional fuels. Some perspective is useful. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/opinion/29thurs3.html

+6 # Guest 2010-05-03 10:27

Use solar and wind for electricity (bdw, what ever happened to the wind-belt device?), use biofuel, natural gas and electric for cars, use oil for plastics and use less of them.

+6 # Guest 2010-05-03 12:31

When the risk benefit analysis is skewed by knowledge that consequences will be externalized this type of disaster will be inevitable. The Supreme Court decision in the Exxon Valdez case and the financial industry bailout are two examples. BP knows its responsibility to pay damages will be trivial.

0 # Guest 2010-05-09 18:08

"BP knows its responsibility to pay damages will be trivial." Billybookworm, I like what you say. I just want to change "knows" to "hopes." You're right, of course, if the past is precedent. I just don't want to let it be. I don't want people to drown quietly in this affair; I want them to fight like hell.

0 # Guest 2010-05-03 19:22

TO PAPERPUSHER MJ

CARS SHOULD RUN ENTIRELY ON HEMP JUST LIKE THEY DO IN SOME SOUTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES NOW, WHICH ARE OBVIOUSLY MORE PROGRESSIVE AND RESPONSIBLE THAN WE ARE ON ENERGY.

0 # Guest 2010-05-09 17:58

If this Gulf thing goes as bad as it seems it might, it's not going to matter that Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, Gingrich, Hannity, Kristol, and BP were as incredibly wrong as events may prove them. We'll have much deeper concerns. But as we sit worrying nervously in the waiting room, one would expect one or the other of them to say: "Damn! how could I have been so stupid?" That this altogether natural reflex does not seem to occur in their case should alert anyone who has ever trusted them to say: "Never again!"

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