We’re drowning in an ocean of black oil

Yeah! Drill, baby, drill! Let’s suck every last drop of oil from the ocean floor in the waters off the good ol’ U.S. of A., and to heck with the environment and the environmental regulations holding us up from taking what’s ours — oil, beautiful, black oil, the world’s carbon legacy passed down to us by God to power our nation, keep us safe and make us rich.

That about sums up the Republican National Committee’s position on domestic oil drilling.

At the 2008 Republican National Convention, RNC Chairman Michael Steele declared, “Drill, baby, drill! And drill now! Do you want to put your country first? Then let’s make decisions about our security based on what keeps us safe and not on what’s politically correct.”

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stepped onto the national stage at that convention as Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, and she quickly took up the “Drill, baby, drill!” mantra, always being sure to make the proclamation with her telegenic broadcaster’s smile. Palin became the RNC’s biggest proponent of unfettered drilling, in particular offshore drilling.

How naïve and greedy Steele and Palin appear now that an offshore oil rig, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon, has exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11, injuring 17 and spewing an estimated 5,000 to 25,000 barrels of crude oil a day into oceanic waters stretching from Louisiana to Florida and perhaps beyond. This human and environmental disaster is of epic proportions.

It is quickly adding up to a catastrophe far greater in scope than the Exxon-Valdez spill of 1989, which killed untold numbers of wildlife and marred Alaska’s ecologically fragile coastline for years. In all, the Exxon-Valdez released almost 11 million gallons of oil into the environment.

Now, once again, a crude oil spill is destroying precious wetlands, killing birds and turtles, and closing fishing lanes — all in the name of what Palin calls “progress.”