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Sarah Palin's still pushing hard on her "drill baby drill" mantra hard, especially in terms of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, which she can barely wait to open up for drilling and a new pipeline. She went on Greta Van Susteren's show on Thanksgiving Day to criticize "the extreme politicians over on the left who want to buy into those extreme environmentalists who claim that there's no way you can responsibly develop a plot of land that was set aside for oil and gas development" -- particularly President Obama:

SARAH PALIN: Well, Obama needs to get up here. If he has as much time as he has on his hands to take all these vacations, maybe he should vacation in ANWR. At least fly over it, Mr. President, or play -- you know, play golf or do what he does. This is a national security need. This is -- there's that inherent link between security and our own domestic development. I think it's inexcusable that our president won't come up here and look at it.

Does anyone know what Palin's talking about here? Earlier this summer, Republicans tried attacking Obama for taking a vacation, until the WaPo pointed out that Obama at that point had taken far fewer days of vacation than his predecessor, the inimitable proprietor of the Lazy W Ranch in Crawford:

Obama has embarked on nine "vacations" since taking office, bringing his total days off to 48. Some of those trips lasted a day and some, like his Christmas holiday in Hawaii, more than a week.

By comparison, Bush had visited his ranch in Crawford, Tex., 14 times at this point in his administration and spent 115 days there.

Indeed, FactCheck found that Obama also took less vacation time than the revered Saint Ronnie, too -- though more than those lazy liberal Democrats, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Maybe Palin has in mind Obama's trip to Asia, since her pal Michele Bachmann had gone on national TV and lied about its magnitude and cost -- even though its utter falsity was quickly established.

Indeed, the wingnuts of the wingnutosphere have insisted on referring to it as Obama's "vacation" in India. They were helped along in this by Glenn Beck, who described the trip as "$2 billion for ten days so [Obama] can go see the festival of lights."

BECK: All on the heels of his wife's lavish trip to Spain, now our president is planning another lavish trip. And our dollar is losing value and the Chinese are warning us. The media again is missing it. The bickering today back and forth about how many hundreds or maybe -- maybe billions of dollars this is going to cost to insure the president's security but no one is asking, "Wait a minute, it could cost up to $2 billion to make sure he's safe? Then why is he -- has he seen the Grand Canyon?"

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Naomi Klein has a great new article up on her website called Look Out, that is worth a read. Her book, The Shock Doctrine has just been released in paperback so grab your copy here...She explains how the Shock Doctrine is being applied in the usual Milton Friedman way in the pursuit of pushing through the last remaining remnants of Bush's policies. As usual they prey upon the fears of Americans living in a time when gas and food prices are creating household insecurity like we haven't seen in a long time. What better time for the Republcians to pounce, right

Iraq isn't the only country in the midst of an oil-related stickup. The Bush Administration is busily using a related crisis--the soaring price of fuel--to revive its dream of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). And of drilling offshore. And in the rock-solid shale of the Green River Basin. "Congress must face a hard reality," said George W. Bush on June 18. "Unless members are willing to accept gas prices at today's painful levels--or even higher--our nation must produce more oil."

This is the President as Extortionist in Chief, with gas nozzle pointed to the head of his hostage--which happens to be the entire country. Give me ANWR, or everyone has to spend their summer vacations in the backyard. A final stickup from the cowboy President.

Despite the Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less bumper stickers, drilling in ANWR would have little discernible impact on actual global oil supplies, as its advocates well know. The argument that it could nonetheless bring down oil prices is based not on hard economics but on market psychoanalysis: drilling would "send a message" to the oil traders that more oil is on the way, which would cause them to start betting down the price.

Two points follow from this approach. First, trying to psych out hyperactive commodity traders is what passes for governing in the Bush era, even in the midst of a national emergency. Second, it will never work. If there is one thing we can predict from the oil market's recent behavior, it is that the price is going to keep going up regardless of what new supplies are announced...read on

She appeared with Tavis Smiley in the above video and got into this discussion a bit more and really explains the exploitation that occurs when some sort of disasters hit and BushCo is there just waiting...Her book was the best one I've read in a long, long time. Naomi will be joining C&L for a live chat next Wednesday, July 16 at 2:00 PM EST. I'll keep you posted...

This week, high-profile Republicans, many of whom had opposed coastal drilling, enthusiastically reversed course and began demanding that coastal drilling begin immediately. This was especially jarring in Florida, where Gov. Charlie Crist and Sen. Mel Martinez — both Republicans who had opposed offshore drilling as recently as last week — came out in support of the Bush/McCain policy.

It appears that the GOP is just following the political winds. Drilling, all of a sudden, is enjoying broader public support.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey — conducted before McCain announced his intentions on the issue — finds that 67% of voters believe that drilling should be allowed off the coasts of California, Florida and other states. Only 18% disagree and 15% are undecided. Conservative and moderate voters strongly support this approach, while liberals are more evenly divided (46% of liberals favor drilling, 37% oppose).

Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters believe it is at least somewhat likely that gas prices will go down if offshore oil drilling is allowed, although 27% don’t believe it. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of conservatives say offshore drilling is at least somewhat likely to drive prices down. That view is shared by 57% of moderates and 50% of liberal voters.

The Rasmussen poll comes around the same time as a Gallup poll that found a similar result: “Fifty-seven percent of Americans favor allowing oil drilling in coastal and wilderness areas that are currently off-limits. Forty-one percent of Americans oppose allowing drilling in those areas, and 2 percent have no opinion.”

So, is this a political problem for opponents of coastal and ANWR drilling? Perhaps, but it seems easy enough to move the needle in the other direction.

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During his nonsensical press conference today, President Bush argued that the best way to help the struggling economy and the staggering price of gas was to either start drilling immediately in ANWR or to get him a magic wand.

Download | play Download | play (h/t David)

Somehow if you mention ANWR it means you don't care about the environment. Well, I'm hoping now people, when they say "ANWR," means you don't care about the gasoline prices that people are paying.

[...]

I think that if there was a magic wand, and say, okay, drop price, I'd do that.

The sad reality is that this President has done nothing over the past 8 years to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, leaving us beholden to the skyrocketing prices -- which are due in large part to the instability we have created in the Middle East. It's a truly vicious circle.

Imagine if we had invested a fraction of what we spent in Iraq on sustainable energy. Gasoline could be well on it's way to being a relic of the past instead of one of the primary causes of the current recession. Considering both Bush and Cheney's extensive ties to the oil industry, I guess this shouldn't come as a big surprise.

Full transcript below the fold:

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