The Senate voted today to drill for oil in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge - 52-47. Fucking pricks.
Suprisingly Coleman voted against it, despite intense pressure from the Bush administration. Coleman, handpicked by the administration, followed by Wellstone's fatal biplane "accident", had said in his campaign that he'd vote against arctic oil drilling. (Though he's voted for plenty of other intensely fascist things like Real ID.)
What pisses me off more than anything is the Federal Government controverting decades of its own precedent going back to Teddy Roosevelt setting aside National Parks and Refuges. Apparently all it takes is a scum sucking company like Exxon (who already cost taxpayers 4.5 BILLION dollars in cleanup after their drunk tanker ship captain capsized the Valdez off the coast of Alaska) to make suggestions, and it's a done deal. The oil contingent has been aggressively trying to take over government since the Eisenhower administration. Even Nixon turned them down. But bitchwad Bush and his crony criminals are open for big business deals. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or not, if you don't think that the United States government is a discount store for multinational corporations, or an overpaying subsidizer of the military industrial complex to drain the treasury in order to blame anyone left in government that believes in investing in the country istelf - then don't vote for Neo-Con Airhead Republicans. Duh.
And here's the supposed benefit: TEN YEARS from now, with the amount that's drilled there, gas prices will reduce ONE CENT PER GALLON. This is worth it? It helps to have Vice Resident Darth Cheney and a Secretary of State who literally have Exxon tankers NAMED after them. What's next, Disney taking over Jellystone Park?
UPDATE: "The spending battle now heads to the House, where Republicans are divided over whether to cut more deeply across a broader range of social programs. Also, House GOP leaders may remove a provision that allows drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge....It appears increasingly likely that protests from moderates will force House GOP leaders to drop the oil drilling plan and revisit it in final compromise talks with the Senate."
