(Here's that 'meanwhile' from the previous post) The Washington Post reports:
The Obama administration will announce this afternoon it is rejecting a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate a massive oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border, according to sources who have been briefed on the matter.
However the administration will allow TransCanada to reapply after it develops an alternate route through the sensitive habitat of Nebraska’s Sandhills.
Fox News adds, "The State Department has decided to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, suggesting that the department will say 60 days is inadequate time to do the required environmental impact assessment on the path of the coveted pipeline."
Ed Morrissey of HotAir points out, "Looks like the recommendations of Obama’s own jobs council got as much attention from Obama as the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission, huh? “Drill, drill, drill” just got changed to “delay, delay, delay.” Leadership!" What leadership, indeed.
So basically, what we gather from this post and the previous, is that America can't be allowed under an Obama Democrat-controlled regime to take advantage of our neighboring resources, much less our own, in order to begin the long road towards energy independence, thus creating more American jobs; but instead, we must strictly adhere to the ruler's path by continuing to remain dependent on foreign entities and sink (or more appropriately, waste) more taxpayer money into bogus government ventures that don't produce, that never could and that never will. Do I have that about right? And that's rational? That's efficiency in government? That's the will of the people? 'NO' on all of the above...that's a statist ruler advocating for the few and protecting his own vested interests over that of the many.
"So here we have election-year politics."
ADDENDUM: A couple of observations, via Weasel Zippers, to note. First, Obama says Republicans are to blame for his decision to reject the Keystone Pipeline. Do huh?!
"The rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment. I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my Administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil."
What a load of horsesh...Secondly, his Carney barker cites "the effect on the water that our children breathe — rather, the water our children drink and the air that they breathe," among the reasons Obama stopped what he deemed the "purlely political" Keystone Pipeline. I thought it was all the Republicans' fault? Huh. Well, Carney should have stuck with 'the water our children breathe' while they're making stuff up! Unreal.
UPDATES: Across the spectrum of political thought, it's clear that Obama's decision on the Keystone pipeline was 'stunningly stupid'. Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post had some choice words of his own for Obama's decision:
President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn’t often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his reelection that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.
Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won’t get much. Stopping the pipeline won’t halt the development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global-warming emissions. Indeed, Obama’s decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.
Rick Moran of American Thinker, referencing Samuelson's editorial, added:
This is the Obama we have come to know and love; piously proclaiming his priority being job creation while taking actions that directly contradict that priority. He says he wants business to thrive -- and then throws up roadblock regulations to prevent it. He says he wants the economy to grow -- and then advocates policies that stifle growth.
And then he blames his failures on others.
Energy independence, jobs, growth in the economy -- all of these would have been affected positively by building the pipeline. Instead, the president decided to pander to his far left base of Luddites.
And Kathyrn Marshall of Troy Media duly reminded us:
When U.S. President Barack Obama was running for president of the United States, he made a bold promise. “If I’m president, I’m immediately going to direct the full resources of the federal government, and the full energy of the private sector, to a single overarching goal,” he said. “In 10 years time, we are going to eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela.”
Obama has had four years to make good on that promise. He’s not even close. And his decision Wednesday to deny permission for a new pipeline that would replace oil from those OPEC countries with Canadian oil, indicates that he didn’t actually mean what he said. As the famed American energy investor T. Boone Pickens put it after the White House announced its veto on the Keystone XL pipeline, “We can kiss another chance at energy security goodbye. We must really like OPEC oil.”
So it appears, according to ABC News, that "As House Republicans launched an assault on President Obama this morning for nixing a popular energy pipeline from Canada to Texas, the party renewed its pledge to move ahead with the project even if the president won’t get on board."
Republicans are considering an array of alternatives that would put the Keystone XL Pipeline back on track.
“As much as the president might want this issue to go away and come back maybe after the election, we’re going to do everything we can to keep it on the front burner, and keep this in front of the American people and do what we can to get this mission accomplished,” [House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan] said.
