Orange Julius Says Drill Baby Drill

Well, with Sarah Palin and El Rushbo coming out for more drilling despite a possible environmental catastrophe that could end up costing us hundreds of billions of dollars, the GOP leadership has no choice but to look like a bunch of insensate morons and follow suit.  Orange Julius is just the man for the job!  True Slant's Sahil Kapur:

Even Roll Call couldn’t help but smirk at this one. “At least they get points for consistency,” quipped Jennifer Bendery.

House Republican leaders are once again sounding the drumbeat for passage of their sidelined pro-drilling energy reform package, even as state and federal officials scramble to stem a massive Gulf oil spill.

“This tragedy should remind us that America needs a real, comprehensive energy plan, like Republicans’ ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Monday in a statement.

The tragedy, if anything, “reminds us” that drilling is dangerous. There’s nothing about (what’s likely to be) the most catastrophic oil spill in history that “reminds us” we need to create the circumstances that make events like this more likely in the future.

One could imagine Republicans remaining silent while the BP disaster occupies the headlines and sticking by their guns — nobody could have realistically expected them to change their stance over this. But to use this is justification for more drilling is one of the more brazen leaps of logic that this increasingly brazen Republican Party has made as of late.

It’s like saying the massive Blue Cross insurance premium hike earlier this year “reminds us” that we need to leave private insurers to their own devices. Well, hardly. Forget it, I’m not going to try and find an analogy that encapsulates the absurdity of this one.

Oh don't worry, I'll handle that one.  Just because fishing, tourism, and wildlife are all going to be dead on the east coast in a couple of months doesn't mean we shouldn't try harder!  As Tom Hanks famously said, "There's no crying in baseball!"  Gotta get out there and feed our energy addiction.  Gotta get out there and wreck the fishing and tourism industry for a decade or so, because it's your God-given right to drive your Escalade to the store and leave it running idle in the parking lot.  It's like being sold a leaky battleship.  It can only sink once, right?

The GOP certainly doesn't give a damn.  After all, the industries in question have already been sentenced to a slow, painful death over the next 90 days or so.  Can't get much worse, so let's drill ten, a hundred times more!  What are we going to do, wreck the oysters?  Can only really do that once, right?

Great guys, those GOP.  When life hands you lemons, exploit lemon future speculation relentlessly.