August. The oil may be flowing into the Gulf until August. Let’s look one, hopefully last time at that “drill, baby, drill” slogan. Not the DRILL DRILL part. The BABY part. I mentioned taunting in yesterday’s post, and here is a world class example. “Drill, baby, drill” says “we have listened to your concerns about offshore accidents, and we have concluded that not only do the benefits outweigh the risks, but we will run those risks with ENTHUSIASM, because it annoys you!”

And so the oil pours. And drilling opponents are annoyed. Happy now? That’s ONE way to make a point! Here’s another example. Several times I have heard variants of this: after listening to climate change warnings, someone asserts that he is going out and buying an even BIGGER SUV. That will annoy somebody! And when the elderly are dying in an unprecedented heat wave or farmers watch their fields blow away in a dust storm or refugees pack what they can carry and head for a camp somewhere, consider that someone will be successfully annoyed. What fun!

But isn’t that the same as when I say that Sarah Palin is a preposterous fraud? No. Because unlike oil spills and climate change, she IS a fraud, not least for her downplaying both of those risks for cheap applause and expensive speaking gigs.