The One Will Heal the Great Lakes by Taxing Big Oil

This is pretty absurd, but there are some who believe that if only the American people would elect The One, the Great Lakes would begin healing immediately! It's true!!!

My favorite part...and I know y'all just can't wait for me to reveal it...is this bit:

You're forgiven if you think this sounds like a lot of other Great Lakes restoration plans, all announced to fanfare over the years. The difference, say supporters of Obama, including Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, is that this plan would get funded. President Bush has made similar proposals but has never followed up with actual dollars, the lawmakers said. Bush even proposed a budget last year that would have cut Great Lakes funding by 16 percent, Stabenow said in a conference call with reporters this morning.

How would Obama pay?

By cutting subsidies to oil and gas companies.

Emphasis added.

I'm also not real sure about that 16% figure either, but I'm too lazy to go track that down...

At any rate, Big Oil will be funding EVERYTHING if The One gets elected; a fact that didn't go unnoticed by at least one unnamed -- yet very brave -- member of the 527 media:

A reporter noted that if those subsidies are in fact cut, the money already seems over-subscribed.

Obama supporters on the call did not address that directly. But Stabenow said, "Even though we have proposed using what have been huge subsidies to oil and gas companies for years ... our Republican colleagues have not supported doing that, the president certainly has not supported doing that. So for us to be able to really aggressively move those incentives to the right place for the future, it's going to take President Obama and Democrats in the House and the Senate to make that happen. I believe we're going to be able to do that, to use those funds and be able to make that happen."

Didja see what she did there? She didn't answer the actual question and just proceeded with the smear. Well played!

Right about now, the regulars are thinking: "Come on, Matt, get to the meat of this thing..." Okay, sports fans, here we go... Hold on tight and don't say that I didn't warn you.

As we all know George Voinovich has been on the front lines of this war since the beginning. Nobody will take second seat to Voinovich in the Second Battle of the Great Lakes Against the Real Terrorists: the Zebra Mussles and the Asian Carp. In fact, as we all know, if you slap a fake beard on an Asian Carp you could never tell the difference between it and Bin Laden. They’re both terrorists. One just happens to be an aquatic terrorist.

Anyway...

Here's my plan: go ahead and do the clean up. The federal government can pay for it by using the royalties it would receive from opening up the Great Lakes to drilling for oil and natural gas.

INSTANT UPDATE: Forgot to mention that when I aksed a Voinovich source about the story, my source says that Team Voinovich thinks that McCain/Palin would actually be good for the Great Lakes noting that while Team Obama has apparently hit McCain on the Farm Bill (which supposedly would have been good for the Great Lakes), Voinovich likewise voted against that bloated and wasteful bill and nobody is saying the George Voinovich isn't good for the Great Lakes.

UPDATE 2: Oh, just so we're clear...I think subsidies are corporate welfare and the government ought not be in that business at all. I don't like farm subsidies either... And bailouts suck too... I think the Dept. of Education could disappear and nobody would really miss it... Basically, the government ought to stop spending money on stuff that they aren't responsbile for in the Constitution.