Sarah Palin Blames Oil Leak on Environmentalists

It's not hard to understand the phenomenon of Sarah Palin once you fully accept that at least 25 percent of Americans are stupid. A little less than a quarter of Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth. Only 53 percent know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. A shocking 41 percent of Americans think humans and dinosaurs lived together at the same time (you can blame the Flintstones for that one).

So in that context, it's not surprising that Sarah Palin's latest note on Facebook, a bizarro-world screed blaming environmentalists opposed to ANWR drilling for pushing drilling offshore, has gathered 8,042 likes and 1,438 comments.

Palin opens with:

This is a message to extreme “environmentalists” who hypocritically protest domestic energy production offshore and onshore. There is nothing “clean and green” about your efforts. Look, here’s the deal: when you lock up our land, you outsource jobs and opportunity away from America and into foreign countries that are making us beholden to them. Some of these countries don’t like America. Some of these countries don’t care for planet earth like we do – as evidenced by our stricter environmental standards. With your nonsensical efforts to lock up safer drilling areas, all you’re doing is outsourcing energy development, which makes us more controlled by foreign countries, less safe, and less prosperous on a dirtier planet. Your hypocrisy is showing. You’re not preventing environmental hazards; you’re outsourcing them and making drilling more dangerous.
Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it.

This is dumb on so many levels.

The oil companies aren't drilling in deep waters because they've been locked out of drilling ANWR, they're drilling there because there is oil there and because they make a lot of money selling oil. Oil companies exist to suck oil out of the ground and turn it into cash selling it to us. Opening up ANWR to oil companies would just mean they'd be able to make more money for longer. Opening up ANWR also wouldn't have any effect on deep water offshore drilling.

Most of the world's easy oil has already been tapped, and the small blip of oil sitting under ANWR isn't going to slow down the efforts of big oil to ensure they have supply — without regulation, you can bet that oil companies will drill anywhere their engineers tell them there's oil to be found. Without regulation (and seriously harsh penalties, company-breaking even), oil companies will continue to cut corners and drill without common sense safety measures like pre-drilled relief wells (mandated in Canada). If it's cheaper to pay for a cleanup every X years than to pay for safer operating over those same years, then oil companies are going to keep cutting corners. It's the brutal accounting of the oil business.

Predictably, Sarah Palin is using this tragic event to rail against foreigners. In her world, the big bad British "Keystone Kop"-ped their way into this mess, something that would never have happened had it been run by good, hard-workin' Americans.

Except that I'd guess that most of the people directly involved with the accident were American. BP is a multinational corporation with extensive U.S. offices run by Americans. Sure, the company is headquartered in the U.K. and is run by a Brit, but those were American hands pulling the levers on that drilling rig that day.

And let's not forget that Sarah Palin's husband, Todd, was an employee of BP for 18 years.

Once again: Sarah Palin's husband worked for British Petroleum for nearly two decades.

Her Wednesday Facebook Note was a follow-up to a Tweet she made on Monday:

Extreme Greenies: see now why we push"drill,baby,drill"of known reserves&promising; finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?

Sarah Palin either doesn't know anything about how the oil markets work, or more likely (considering she WAS the governor of Alaska and is married to a former BP employee) is dissembling to rile up her base and to polish her Big Oil bona fides. I mean, can she really be THAT ignorant as to how global oil markets really work!?

Here are some of the geniuses chiming in on Palin's Facebook note in support of it. Remember, 25 percent of the country thinks the Sun revolves around us.

Stephan Kirsch
The last thing oil companies want is an oil glut or a gasoline glut, because that drives down prices. So, Mr. Hooker, if we opened up ANWR, where it would be cheaper and safer to drill, I think most oil companies would move away from off-shore drilling.
Dale Clark old stupid harry reed made a comment several months ago, saying ( Oil makes us sick and coal makes us sick ) apparently he don't understand that without Oil and coal most of us would be DEAD within two years. What an Idiot! right along with most extreme inviromentalist.
Leslie Vande Berg Rosson If we had drilled in shallower waters, say a mile out vs 5 miles out, we could have easily gotten divers down there to fix this current catastrophe
Mark Adams Excellent post, Gov.Palin!

Joel Luther Obama and the democrats need to close they mouth, BECAUSE THEY BREATH STINKS!!.............. Let me make my record clear, i am not a racist, im not racist againsed blacks,, i grew up with a who bunch of black friends in San Bernardino California.. And i also grew up with indian friends. But the only change that the people really got, was the first ... See Moreblack man in office, the first black president. And when he says "change", he means, you will only have some loose change in your pocket after he is done taxing us to death, and stealing our money!!.. Obama, i knew that was the change you meant, and that's why i didn't vote for you!! I voted for Sarah Palin, and i will vote for Sarah is she runs for President.. I love Sarah because she comes from ourside of the corrupt policical circle, and she ha's different solutions and ideas to offer us, than do any other politicians have offered us.. Obama is not a commander and chief.. OBAMA IS A LIAR AND THIEF!!......
Lee Nichols Not only are they stalling prgress, they are impairing the clean up in the Gulf. There I said it. Any Environmental Nazis care to take me on????????????????

The ignorance... it burns...