Roger Kimball On The Democratic Death Wish

Watching The Democrats Commit Suicide

 

 

 

 

 

” So the Senate Democrats just defeated the $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline by 1 vote. Sitting duck Mary Landrieu — the soon-to-be former senator from Louisiana — begged her Democratic colleagues to vote for the energy-and-job-creating project but, no, the Fauxcahontas Elizabeth Warren “Green” wing of the party chose leftist sanctimoniousness over practicality.

  Here’s the thing about energy: we need as much of it as we can get as cheaply as possible. Are you worried about “the environment,” “peak oil,” etc.? Then you should be an aivd supporter of fracking, the Keystone pipeline, and any other means of extracting fossil fuels from the bounty of the Earth. Why? Because what the United States needs is cheap, abundant energy, period (as the president might say). The reason is that if you want to help the downtrodden, save the environment, preserve the wetlands, and make the world safe for unbearable gasbags like Elizabeth Warren, then you need money. And to get money you need energy, lots and lots of energy.  Let’s say you are interested in developing viable alternatives to carbon-based fuels: how would you do it?  By basic research and an accumulation of engineering experiments.

  What is the indispensable prerequisite for undertaking those tasks wholeheartedly? Money, wealth, prosperity. Without those golden keys, there is no research to speak of and little in the way of experimentation. The liberal (i.e., the wacko) wing of the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to understand that.

  Or maybe it does understand it but chooses to ignore it. After all, a lack of resources does not hamper Elizabeth Warren’s movements. It merely hurts the people she pretends to serve. Air Force records show that Barack Obama charged the taxpayers $1,539,402.10 for his Labor Day travels for “fundraising, personal business, and politicking.” As Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton put it, “This Labor Day back-and-forth shows President Obama seems to confuse Air Force One with Uber.” “

 

Read it all

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—

Head East Oilman: Canadian Oil Companies Propose End-Run Around Obama’s Keystone XL Opposition

Keystone Be Darned: Canada Finds Oil Route Around Obama

 

 

 

 

 

” So you’re the Canadian oil industry and you do what you think is a great thing by developing a mother lode of heavy crude beneath the forests and muskeg of northern Alberta. The plan is to send it clear to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast via a pipeline called Keystone XL. Just a few years back, America desperately wanted that oil.

  Then one day the politics get sticky. In Nebraska, farmers don’t want the pipeline running through their fields or over their water source. U.S. environmentalists invoke global warming in protesting the project. President Barack Obama keeps siding with them, delaying and delaying approval. From the Canadian perspective, Keystone has become a tractor mired in an interminably muddy field.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

” In this period of national gloom comes an idea — a crazy-sounding notion, or maybe, actually, an epiphany. How about an all-Canadian route to liberate that oil sands crude from Alberta’s isolation and America’s fickleness? Canada’s own environmental and aboriginal politics are holding up a shorter and cheaper pipeline to the Pacific that would supply a shipping portal to oil-thirsty Asia.

  Instead, go east, all the way to the Atlantic.

  Thus was born Energy East, an improbable pipeline that its backers say has a high probability of being built. It will cost C$12 billion ($10.7 billion) and could be up and running by 2018. Its 4,600-kilometer (2,858-mile) path, taking advantage of a vast length of existing and underused natural gas pipeline, would wend through six provinces and four time zones. It would be Keystone on steroids, more than twice as long and carrying a third more crude.

  Its end point, a refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, operated by a reclusive Canadian billionaire family, would give Canada’s oil-sands crude supertanker access to the same Louisiana and Texas refineries Keystone was meant to supply.”

 

Read more at Bloomberg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—

Why Is $200 Million Worth Of Pipe Sitting In A North Dakota Field?

Why? Because Of Obama , That’s Why

 

 

 

” Her trip took her to Gascoyne in the southwest corner of the state where she saw 218 miles of pipe sitting quietly among wildflowers in an 83-acre field.

“There’s millions worth of pipe sitting on the ground when it should be in the ground,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) told Harder. $200 million of pipe to be exact.

That pipe should be part of the Keystone XL pipeline moving Canadian heavy crude from oil sands and Bakken crude from hydraulic fracturing to refineries on the Gulf Coast. But President Obama refuses to approve Keystone XL even though it’ll create thousands of jobs, help state and local economies, and improve energy security while having minimal environmental impact.”

 

See Also : My Week in Oil Boom Country

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

 

 

Global Warmists Still Losing Hearts And Minds

On The Environment, The Alarmists Are Still Losing

 

 

” All that money. All that effort. All the sermonizing and bloodcurdling imagery and still, Americans don’t seem to be evolving quickly enough on the environment.

A new poll by Pew Research Center, for instance, finds that a wide majority of Americans support building the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport Canadian oil to refineries in Texas. Sixty-six percent of Americans favor finishing the pipeline, with only 23 percent in opposition. Strong support cuts through every political distinction — other than “liberal” Democrats.

Among those who see the irrefutable scientific evidence of global temperatures rising, only 42 percent believe that most of it should be attributed to human activity. In fact, when you break it down, 23 percent of Americans believe that natural patterns in the earth’s environment are heating the earth, and another 27 percent don’t believe there is any solid evidence of warming at all. The more appropriate question would be: Do you believe in man-made global warming? The answer: Less than half of Americans would say yes. That, even after the unrelenting cultural, educational and political bombardment we’ve all had to endure on the topic.

And though 33 percent of Americans believe that global warming is a “very serious” problem, that number has declined by 6 points since October 2012.”

Related articles

• Keystone XL Pipeline Draws Broad Support (earthfirstnews.wordpress.com)
• Keystone XL pipeline project: Who actually supports it? (smartplanet.com)
• Americans still want cheap oil (and they’re not too worried about global warming, either) (humanevents.com)
• Americans still want cheap oil (conservativeread.com)
• Pew Research: 66% favor Keystone XL Pipeline (bluegrasspundit.com)

—