Per usual, attack dogs from the right zeroed in on the President after his speech about the BP Oil Spill last Tuesday night. Former Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis, who publicly clamored for the national party job eventually awarded to Michael Steele, was all over Twitter. Saul spent the evening Tweeting and re-Tweeting lies, outlandish “solutions” and the same old tired talking points that failed to gain traction when Sarah “I will complete ¼ of my term” Palin spouted them.
A brief survey of Saul’s Twitter feed:
RT @GlenSpicer: Obama: “I won’t stand for inaction.” I guess he considers denying foreign help, playing golf and campaigning for fellow Dems action.
Fiction, meet fact. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/06/13/AR2010061304232.html)
“In late May, the administration accepted Mexico’s offer of two skimmers and 13,779 feet of boom; a Dutch offer of three sets of Koseq sweeping arms, which attach to the sides of ships and gather oil; and eight skimming systems offered by Norway,” The Washington Post reported Monday.
I guess Saul doesn’t consider Mexicans to be foreign. That’s a radical departure from the immigration stance he and his fellow extreme conservatives generally take (see: Arizona’s anti-anyone-who-looks-brown law.)
Moving on, then.
RT RoyBlunt: I was stunned to hear the president use the BP oil spill disaster as an opportunity to push for his job-killing national energy tax plan.
Job killing, indeed. In fact, 109,000 Michiganders are employed in Michigan’s clean energy job sector, a number that continues to rise. Additional investments in energy efficiency will create 22,000 jobs, hardly a job killer. But what is a job killer? An oil spill. (http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-06-09-gulfbiz09_ST_N.htm)
A month ago, the financial firm BBVA Compass estimated the direct economic toll from the worst oil spill in U.S. history at $4.3 billion. Now, BBVA economist Nathaniel Karp says, “We are looking at somewhere close to $11.5 billion.”
Small businesses in the fishing and tourism sectors are hardest hit, losing tens of thousands of dollars immediately with more to follow. They aren’t losing money because Americans want cleaner, safer energy. They’re losing it all because companies like BP continue to resist anything but the dangerous, slick status quo.
Finally, a little regurgitated Palin for your palate.
RT @ClosetC: We’re NOT out of US oil. Environmentalists forced mile-deep unsafe drilling. ANWAR is ripe for safe oil providing jobs to help economy.
Deep breath.
Clearly, we aren’t out of US oil. At last estimate, 1.47 to 2.52 million gallons of oil are leaking into the Gulf each day. That oil could certainly continue to feed this country’s oil addiction, but at what cost? Eleven lives? The economy of every state along the Gulf coast?
The kicker, though, is the wrong-headed assertion that drilling in ANWAR (a Palin favorite) is the answer. Saul and his right-wing compatriots support drill, baby, drill – still, baby, still.
Next, they’ll come after the Great Lakes because, obviously, drilling is safe. I, for one, won’t leave the future of Michigan and our Great Lakes in the hands of Saul and his friends. It’s time we protected the Great Lakes from Big Oil, and from Big Oil Enablers like Saul and his political allies who would open the floodgates. You can take action to do just that at www.progressmichigan.org
