Your appearance on CNBC this morning was outrageous.
You claim that we "can't drill off Florida" because it might endanger our tourism industry, and that we're being "snookered" by Charlie Crist's endorsement of drilling.
Ms. Sink, BITE ME.
I live here in Florida. In fact, I live on Choctahatchee Bay, right near Destin, and right where one of the most promising places to drill happens to be.
I want the rigs here, and I want them here NOW.
Screw the fatcats with their $5 million condo penthouses who don't want to see lights at night from their 40th floor enclaves. That is who you are "protecting".
The rest of us, including people with ordinary waterfront property like me, have a different view.
We see a huge decline in tourism right here and now. Traffic levels this summer are way down. I can drive on US-98 at 5:00 PM, which for the last eight years has been impossible during the summer months. I can walk into a restaurant at 6:00 PM and get seated immediately - last year there was an hour wait. I see the boards going up on business windows, and its not due to an approaching hurricane. I see the "available" signs all over the commercial property landscape. And I see the short sale and foreclosure signs all over our residential real estate.
You cannot have tourism here without reasonable energy prices. Period!
Whether you like to admit it or not, Ms. Greenie-who-needs-a-public-spanking, the people who come here to spend money all must burn dead dinosaurs to do it in some form or fashion.
Your position - that we should drill somewhere else, like out West, is the same sort of NIMBY crap that Demoncrats have run for the last 30 years and it is time for you and your rhetoric to leave the goddamn stage!
Further, it is an absolute lie that tourism doesn't have a balance on this. Rigs are excellent fish habitat. I like to fish. So do a lot of people who come here on vacation and spend a lot of money doing so. Rigs in Florida waters will increase our fishing opportunities and thus those who do that for a living (I'm not one of them; I fish for fun) will both cut their fuel bills and increase tourist interest in spending money on fishing.
The claim of "environmental harm" is horsecrap. During Katrina hundreds of rigs in the Gulf off Lousiana were severely damaged or destroyed.
Not one drop of oil spilled from a deepwater rig.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. We are an oil-based economy, like it or not. You can look back through Musings for my plans to fix this problem in the intermediate (20-30 years) term, but for right now stabilizing the energy markets and reducing our dependence on unstable foreign supplies means drilling here and now.
We have $4/gallon gasoline in no small part due directly to the failed policies of obstruction over the last thirty years that Democrats - people just like you - have run all whining about development of our own home-grown energy resources in America.
The results of these policies are now on display and we, the people, most certainly "get it." You're prepared to sacrifice our economy on both a state and national basis to "protect" the right of fat cats to not see a few lights off on the horizon at night from their 40th floor Penthouses while the rest of us can't afford to fill up our cars!
The claims of "conservation now!" ring hollow with people like me while Kerry and Gore jet around in their private aircraft and cruise in their yachts, burning 60, 100 or more gallons per hour.
They don't care what it costs but we, the ordinary people of this country, do!
Yes, you were elected by Florida residents (although I didn't vote for 'ya.)
Guess what? As the tourism industry (along with the rest of our economy) crashes you are very likely to be shown the door.
Hopefully, sooner rather than later.
