== Here's oil in your eye = By Mark Morford

[madokie]

Bush lifts drilling ban, oil execs leer, nation cringes, Obama sighs

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/07/18/notes071808.DTL&nl=fix

I admit to bafflement. I admit to a bit of total confusion mixed with a certain level of stupefied awe and teeth-rattling frustration as to why anyone with the mental acuity of more than a housefly would think that stabbing more holes into Alaska and the eastern seaboard in the search for a few remaining precious drops of oil is a good idea, would solve anything at all, is anything more than the equivalent of hurling matches at the devil.

Perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps there's some dark, secret genius behind President Bush's otherwise absolutely imbecilic and dangerous corporate-whore move to lift the federal ban on offshore drilling, a ban placed there by his own father, as Dubya actually stood there with a straight face and tried to imply that this insidious move was meant to impart something good and helpful for a gas-stunned nation, that he was "doing all he could" to help with prices at the pump, when you could actually see the oil dripping from his shivery bones and the giant hand of Exxon shoved up his weak little spine, making his mouth move.

Oh, I fully understand the corporate arguments, even the political ones. Asking why the oil companies are eager as rabbits on meth to gouge further into the planet is a bit like asking a surgeon why she wants to operate, or a lawyer why he wants to sue, or a snake why he wants to sink his fangs into a nice juicy rat and swallow it whole and smile for a week. It is, quite simply, what they do.

And politicos, well, they're of course generally terrified of their own shadows, merely following what the people scream, and enough misinformed people scream about high gas prices and demand some sort of relief and, well, politicos from both sides of the aisle will say just about anything to mollify and deflect and pretend to care, even if it means lying, even if it means feigning total ignorance and blaming the oil speculators, even (or rather, especially) if it means an utter and complete shunning of the facts at hand. ...