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Saturday, May 22, 2010

"Bankrupt Leadership"

Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana -- yes, that Louisiana -- delivering this week's official Republican Party address:
Some in Washington have tried to seize on this real human tragedy in the Gulf to advocate for a radical new energy agenda. That only cheapens the loss of those who've lost loved ones and brushes aside the ongoing, unsolved problem to spring forward with an emotionally-charged political agenda… That's wrong and, frankly, an example of bankrupt leadership.

You gotta love that "frankly," there.

Let's be clear about Vitter's vitriol, shall we? Trying to hold people accountable for fraudulent promises, criminal neglect, ongoing deception is "politicization"? Trying to actually solve problems "cheapens" the losses of those who have actually suffered from the failure to address the problems? Trying to determine the facts of the matter and assign costs and regulate dangerous practices in ways that reflect these facts is emotionalism? Trying to get an energy policy that actually reflects the reality that there isn't enough offshore oil to drill our way to the maintenance of the status quo, that drilling this inadequate oil reserve is profoundly dangerous and likely to cost more than it is worth in terms of damage to wildlife and indispensable ecosystemic services and other crucial industries like tourism, and that actually-available distributed solar rooftop grids and windmill farms and mandated energy-efficient building and mass-transportation policies provide an already viable sustainable and probably enormously profitable alternatives to the destructive dead-weight of greenhouse-gas polluting extractive-industrial petrochemical incumbent practices is dangerously "radical" rather than simply sensible? Trying anything other than endlessly facilitating profit-taking for corporations whatever the costs to human lives and the ecosystems on which we all depend for our survival and flourishing is "wrong" and "bankrupt leadership"?

No need to choose here between the usual alternatives where Republican utterances are concerned, Vitter's statements are clearly BOTH stupid AND evil in roughly equal amounts. And while Establishment Republicans have sent Randroid Paul to the woodshed this weekend for saying out loud what most Republicans really believe in their heart-holes, note the perfect continuity between the sentiments in this officially sanctioned GOP address and Randroid's own admonishment of Democratic criticisms of BP as "un-American."

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