Avoiding The Issue
by digby
Andrea Mitchell was asking an environmentalist about Murkowski's attempt to limit the president's ability to act in the face of environmental disaster and the impossibility of passing an energy bill.
Here's how she put it:
Mitchell: Do you think there's an opportunity here for an energy bill? Up until now the conventional wisdom has been that the oil disaster will actually make it harder to get around any kind of energy bill. The comprehensive energy bill the president introduced on March 31st included off shore drilling and at the time he went along with what he had been told --- that there were no great risks. Now we know there are great risks.
That's a very confused comment but it's because Mitchell is avoiding the real reason why the energy bill is dead: it's because Republicans completely refuse to entertain any kind of energy bill that doesn't include offshore drilling --- despite the known risks and the fact that we are facing an oil spill of such epic proportions that the entire food chain is going to be affected and there's no end in sight.
What she's avoiding is telling the American people the truth about the Republican party (and their oil drenched friends on the other side) --- they are nihilists who don't care how many people and animals die if it means giving in to the reality that they were wrong and that their ideological symbiosis with Big Business is a death sentence for the planet. It's that simple.
The idea that you can't pass some sort of energy bill in this environment is the equivalent of the government throwing up its hands and saying there's no reason to rush to defend ourselves against the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor. It is literally crazy.
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