The Darkness Drops Again (blog rant)

[WilliamPitt]

"In a time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey."

- Beck, 'Loser'

So...to recap:

Neocon warlord Paul Wolfowitz will head the World Bank;

The White House illegally puts out fake news reports, and the Justice Department does nothing;

Another $81 billion of your money and mine is to be poured onto the Iraqi sand;

The GOP majority in Congress is preparing to trash 200 years of Senate tradition in order to post a number of certifiably insane people to the bench;

Kevin Martin, a conservative Christian activist for the GOP, will now chair the FCC;

The Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, one of the most ecologically pristine areas remaining to us, will be paved and drilled for its tiny amount of petroleum.

And that was just yesterday.

The list of appalling and abominable and flatly criminal acts perpetrated by this administration is literally becoming too long to manage. I suppose this is what happens when the entire government is owned by one party. I suppose this is what happens when that one party is owned lock, stock and barrel by a cancerous combination of oil companies, weapons manufacturers and Rapture-happy fundamentalist Christians who think God put dinosaur bones in the ground to mess with our heads.

This is what happens when the ‘opposition party’ sells its people down the river.

Let us be clear: The Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve is about to be ravaged for one reason. Three Democratic Senators jumped the fence and voted with the drill bits, undoing a twenty-year-long fight to preserve the land. Senators Landrieu, Akaka and Inouye were the reason this went 51-49 the wrong way.

Advocates for drilling in ANWR have said the issue is nobody’s business but the Alaskan people’s, so there is some irony in the fact that one Senator from Louisiana and two from Hawaii – the three of whom are a combined 20,000 miles away from Alaska - made the difference here. Mary Landrieu’s constituents include a bustling petrochemical industry out there in the Gulf, and I guess Akaka and Inouye somehow think drilling in Alaska will make Hawaii’s expensive gas a little cheaper. Seems worth it, don’t you think?

This isn’t the first time Ms. Landrieu has gone sideways on an important vote. She voted in favor of cloture on the ruinous bankruptcy bill, and then voted for the bill itself. In a statement about her ANWR vote, Landrieu said, "My colleagues and I have been encouraged in recent days that a revenue-sharing measure is forthcoming that will benefit our coastal oil- and gas-producing states. Hopefully, we'll be able to get this done this year, just as we have helped Alaska today."

Yeah. Thanks for the help.

More:

http://forum.truthout.org/blog/story/2005/3/17/94845/3273

[Walt Starr]

1. Some key facts about Landrieu

PAC Donators to her 2002 election campaign include the following:

Energy/Nat Resource $373,021

Finance/Insur/RealEst $301,427

[htuttle]

2. Good piece

I got my boogie shoes on and a blank tape in my camera, all ready to go.

[KaryninMiami]

3. As always, you speak the trutth Will, and it's all pathetically tragic.

What will it take to get people to get out into the streets? Is everyone just sleeping? How many more devastating decisions need to be made by these monsters before people finally WAKE UP and start screaming, shouting, yelling, demanding a stop to this madness?

"Put on your boogie shoes" you say? I say drag out your boots and start marching. Enough is enough.

[jus_the_facts]

4. that traitor DINO whore Landrieu doesn't represent ME or other dems here..

....only the oil barrons of south La....she should change parties ASAP if she intends to *attempt* another Senate run. :nopity: :puke:

[Blue_Roses]

5. I think the real story here

is why do the American people keep missing the real story.

Mary Landieu is living back in the 80's when the oil boom in Louisiana and Texas was good times-that is until it went bust. The oil ran out and now even the big oil companies don't want to waste their time in ANWAR when they know it's not going to be profitable to them. So why the big push by this administration? Could it be a diversion to set up a precendent for future drilling off the California coast where it is more profitable..hmmm...maybe...or maybe George is just plain stupid:eyes: since he can't seem to think of any new innovative ways to push our cars along without oil. Yes, George is an idiot.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21refuge.html?ei=5088&en=011827559528ad9f&ex=1266728400&partner=rssnyt&pagewanted=print&position=

[InternalDialogue]

6. Thanks, Will.

Good piece, and it does me a favor by encapsulating in a few sentences a lot of the frustration from the week. I had been losing sleep trying to juggle it in my mind.

I think we'd all be served by a reminder in about 8 months about how we enjoyed the oil equivalent of what the Senate voted for yesterday. It won't even be winter again, and we'll have used in this country the same amount of oil the ANWR is supposed to produce. "How was your summer driving, Mr. and Mrs. American? We can never restore the untouched nature of the ANWR, but it was worth it, wasn't it? Pack it up, boys! We're tapped out here!"

[VelmaD]

7. *sigh*

:hug:

[jdots]

8. Once again you summed it Will .

The youth of America will have nothing .
It is time to unite and fight this machine.

[gasperc]

9. they log rolled Will, they wanted their HI independence resolution

It's seems obvious to me that Stevens hit upon the idea of getting two Dem senators in his back pocket ie the Akaka/Stevens amendment that apparently puts HI on the path to self-government. quid pro quo plain and simple. For their amendment, they agreed not to vote to strip the ANWR clause from the budget bill. Maybe I'm making unfair accusations but I smell a rat or least a poor choice of trust. HI will never get what Akaka and Inouye are hoping they'll get.

[Junkdrawer]

10. Determined R/W Ideologues opposed by Career Politicians bent on...

keeping their jobs by not pissing off their Big Money backers.

I think that sums it up, eh?

[DancingBear]

11. This is why we scream, Will

This is why I took my long held "moderate" label and buried it, stomped on it, burned it, and threw it away.

I could not even post my feelings yesterday when I read Landrieu's quote.

Please, everyone, look around you. Mary Landrieu is not "the best we can do" simply because she resides in Louisiana. When Akaka in Hawaii sends us into environmental purgatory because Ted Stevens promises him a little quid pro quo (and probably some of the gravy train Stevens latched on to re: this phony "indigenous peoples" crap) we can not say "but, but" and point to other votes.

Those of us who feel as I do will continue to speak, and write, and call, and vent, and who knows what else. The body that was the Democratic party is getting slowly eaten alive, and instead of saying "don't eat my head" you all should damn well look downward and cry out "hey, who ate my foot."

Don't wait until you fall over first.

[WilliamPitt]

12. .

[WilliamPitt]

13. One last