Now how much do you want to drill, baby?

Since Sarah Palin first uttered that ridiculous battle cry, "drill baby drill", Americans have ignored those little things called facts and rallied to put an oil drill off every coast in the country. These ignorant demands had become so loud that even Obama caved and blew off his campaign promises for increased environmental protection and opened waters off the north coast of Alaska, the southeastern Atlantic, and the Gulf. While this move made me see red, the red-state Republicans were begrudgingly saying Obama had come to his senses. All was right in this hypocritical, instant-satisfaction society of ours.....until this past week.

Now, as we all know, millions of gallons of oil are pouring out of the blown up oil well heading swiftly to the Gulf coast. Only now after 11 men are dead and we have an environmental catastrophe with no solution in sight are folks starting to see that 'drill baby drill' might not be our saving grace after all.

Sadly, I am not hopeful for change. Obama is still allowing all of the new offshore drilling and once the memory of this tragedy has faded, the rally cry will begin again. The nonsense of all of this pains me. Even as early as 2004 it was well known that domestic off-shore drilling would do little more than take a few cents off at the gas pump. "But even the additional domestic production would not be enough to overcome increased demand, meaning continued heavy reliance on imports, the EIA said. " Associated Press, March 16, 2004.

Republicans are always focused on the bottom line, so I can't understand how once they consider the cost-benefit analysis of off shore drilling that they are still so adamant for it. The cost: risk of similar explosions (they still don't know what caused this one) with an unknown number of deaths, certain environmental destruction, and huge government cost when things do go wrong. The benefit: a very very tiny percentage of the oil we use every day, not likely to reduce gas cost since the oil companies set those prices and keep making record profits.

And if the human and environmental loss and tragedy of this spill don't touch a nerve, just think about the millions of dollars the government is spending on the clean up. All those Coast Guard planes, boats, helicopters, personnel surprisingly are not free. And BP has yet been asked to foot the bill.