Obama HAS Held Back the Oceans!

I don't recall Obama promising in 2008 that he would hold back the oceans.  Was Romney lying about this too in his acceptance speech?

If so, the joke is on Romney.  Obama has actually held back the seas, as I'll explain shortly.

But first let's recall the GOP 2012 conventioneers laughing along with Romney at the idea.  It's hard to know if they were scoffing at the alleged chutzpah of Obama or the notion that the waters are rising. After all, they are staunch deniers of climate change and its resulting rising sea levels.

In short, they are ignorant and proud of it.  Stubbornly proud of it.

Indeed, the American GOP has seemed to be the world leader in denial of climate change.  But now one of my grandsons has found an Australian blog site which urges Aussies to dive into the ocean and attack the coral reefs. Smash them! Kill them!

Why?  Because the reefs are the focus of strong environmental concern.  And they are not doing well.  Warming of the oceans and acidification from CO2 are taking a serious toll.  We must reduce fossil fuel use or lose the great coral reefs, which are vital to the chain of life in the oceans.  We should cherish the reefs for their own sake  -  as does grandson Ted  -  but, for the more crass among us, the reefs are what help sustain fisheries, a serious component of our food supply.

The Aussie blog is clearly the ridiculous work of a nut job who fears environmentalism  But the GOP ridicule of climate change is more serious stuff.  If it triumphs it will likely kill us all. It's fed in part by the fundamentalists' insistence on an anti-science interpretation of the Bible, as if their God couldn't come up with some really clever things like physics, math, evolution, cause and effect, etc.

The real driving force in the denial of climate change, however, is the fossil fuel industry, i.e. the oil, gas and coal bunch.  Why do you think the Koch brothers are funding millions against Obama?  Those millions come from oil.

And that brings us to how Obama has actually held back the oceans. He did it by using the executive power to order that gasoline mileage must double and emissions must be reduced.  This will be an enormous cut in the CO2 that is frying the planet.  It won't stop climate change entirely (it's already here) but it's a giant step forward for the environment.

It's also a big break for consumers, reducing the cost of running our automobiles.  And it helps lift us out of oil bondage to the Middle East, vastly improves our balance of payments, and reduces the likelihood of oil spills and other horrors.

Obama not only did one of the greatest pro-environment moves in history but he did it with such cool.  When the auto makers were plummeting into bankruptcy, he knew he had them right over a barrel, a barrel of oil.  He didn't have to insist on an environmental quid pro quo, but he did:  "I'll bail you out, but you accept my regs."  This tough bargain did him no good politically.  The environmentalists have decided he's no good.  (They too can be very stubborn; I know because my environmental activism goes back to the 1950s.)  Like almost all Americans and the media, they have chosen to ignore his great achievement.

But the oil baron Koch brothers and the GOP haven't failed to notice what Obama did.  They want him OUT of power so that the new auto regulations can be repealed by Romney.  When Romney & Co. talk about "ending regulation" so as to "unleash business", it's not about some little nit-picky regs!  IT'S ABOUT OIL!  TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF OIL!  Obama's big, big auto regs mean far less money for oil-producers.

And the Koch brothers and the GOP will lie and deceive and spend perhaps a billion dollars to get rid of Obama and the new auto regulations.  They might even get nastier than that.  With so much money at stake and -  as the GOP convention made clear  -  their great love of money,  they may literally stop at nothing.  This is why Romney & Co. have never try to squelch the loose-cannon, racist crazies in their ranks.  Quite likely they would not weep if one of those loose cannons literally turned the firepower on our president.  It's happened before. He's getting more threats of violence than any prior president ever.  And someone put a bullet in the White House wall.

So the Aussie nutcase may be urging that people kill the coral reefs, but the nutcases here are being nudged toward killing too.  I hope like anything that I'm just a paranoid old gal, but I remember JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobbie, Medgar Edwards, the attempt to shoot Truman, the shots at FDR that killed the mayor of Chicago.  And we all remember Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and the little girl who died next to her.

Our only weapon against the lies, hatred, and potential violence is our vote.  And the votes of our brothers and sisters.  We must do all we can to get out the vote.  Our only weapon against the hundreds of millions of oil-soaked money coming at Obama is our $50 and $100.  Okay, even our $5 and our $10.

Help Obama hold back the oceans.  For God's sake, save yourselves!

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Hey, Romney, had any income from Big Oil? Like your pal Paul Ryan?  Let's see those tax returns!