What can we learn from the Obama Administration's decision this week to postpone a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline for a year--until after the 2012 election?
1) Nothing has changed:
Remember during the 08 campaign how we laughed about Obama’s habit of voting "present" in the Illinois Senate? We taunted liberals that he wasn’t going to be able to do that as President.2) He's pandering for votes (and contributions) from his liberal, environmentalist base.
3) He thinks he can afford to "dis" union voters--they favored the pipeline.
4) Forget about all that "jobs bill" rhetoric--this is politics. And re-election is far more important.
5) He's still an arugula-eating snob, says the Wall Street Journal:
The Keystone cop-out couldn't be a clearer expression that this Administration puts its anticarbon obsessions--and Big Green campaign donors--above job creation and blue-collar construction workers. He's President of the 1%.I'd settle for President of fewer than 50 percent on November 6, 2012.
MORE:
Washington Examiner editorial:
President Obama faced a tough political decision this week on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. He could order the State Department to approve it, thus alienating his environmental activist supporters, or he could kill the pipeline, thus angering his union allies.MORE & MORE:
Obama chose to do what he had done 130 times while he was in the Illinois state Senate. He voted present.
The State Department announced Thursday that it would begin developing a second, redundant environmental impact statement for the 1,700-mile pipeline that traverses six states on its route from Alberta, Canada, to Houston, Texas. This buys Obama time well past November 2012. The first environmental assessment, three years in the works, was completed in August. This second assessment will take at least as long the first.
Environmentalists could care less about Nebraskan drinking water, which is the excuse for this delay. There are already almost 21,000 miles of oil and natural gas pipelines crisscrossing Nebraska. Activists want to kill the Keystone XL pipeline because the oil it will be carrying across Nebraska, and five other states, comes from tar sands, which they believe contributes more to global warming than other energy sources.
Unions support the pipeline because it will create jobs immediately. It would be completely privately funded. TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the pipeline, says it will spend $7 billion building the pipeline in the United States. A Canadian Energy Research Institute found that this private infrastructure spending could create as many as 435,000 jobs in the U.S. by 2035.
Canada may ship the oil to China instead.
MORE & MORE:
Charles Krauthammer on "The Great Pipeline Sellout"
4 comments:
With HW it was the pork rinds, what was it with Clinton? W?----
Food is already politicised enough
to make a normal person not want to eat; the food-associated slams are so tiresome. C'mon WSJ : use those expensive educations for more precise articulation, not for smug, easy shots.
( I assume you all eat only Iceberg) Oh, I forgot who owns you....
Is there a coherent notion buried somewhere in there, KW?
OBH,
I think it has something to do with Rupert Murdoch owning a company that grows arugula.
>>> Neither a Uniter Nor A Decider
Ah, but he does play one on TV.
And after all, isn't that enough for a Democrat?
Post a Comment