Drill Baby Drill

Giving new meaning to the phrase, the corruption at the Denver office of the Federal Mineral Management Service, where the employees are charged with marketing in-kind royalty oil A kind of privatized function according to on account I read.
A story in the Washington Post [and everywhere else] paints a picture of an agency run amok with employees boozing it up, toking it up, teeing it up and snorting it up with representatives from the big oil and energy companies, from which the Minerals Management Service collects billions of dollars in royalties annually.
Mary Ann Akers in the Post
One of the female employees had a business selling sex toys on the side. The same MMS Chick admitted to having intimate relationships with two oil industry employees, including a "one-night stand" with a Shell employee (which she told investigators she didn't consider to be inappropriate because one-night stands, in her opinion, are not personal relationships).
So we wonder when we'll see that lad mag cover blaring: MMS Chicks Bare All... Drill, Baby, Drill! Any bets?
The truly pathetic part is that, despite the reports allegations that the employees left millions of tax-payer dollars on the table in negations with the oil companies, the Justice Department has so far declined to prosecute!!! How can this be?


WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN?
Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.
Jonathan Haid from the edge 9/22/07