Keystone around his neck

It only makes sense if you are actively trying to kill an American economic resurgence or you plan on approving it after the 2012 election should you win. I refer to President Obama's insane decision to stop the proposed pipeline from Canada to America's oil refineries in the south.

I am not using the word insane in a vacuum. Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post - no bastion of opposition conservative thought - blasts the President in his Jan 19th editorial.

FTA
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. Now consider how Obama’s decision hurts the United States. For starters, it insults and antagonizes a strong ally; getting future Canadian cooperation on other issues will be harder. Next, it threatens a large source of relatively secure oil that, combined with new discoveries in the United States, could reduce (though not eliminate) our dependence on insecure foreign oil.

Finally, Obama’s decision forgoes all the project’s jobs.

Canada throughout the 2000's has acted soberly and with reasoned self interest for it's economic future. The Canadians will build a pipeline to move their abundant oil to market. The question is will it be North American markets or Asian? I think we all know what Obama has decided.

Obama is so stuck on some green utopian vision of the world he is wantonly ignoring reason and facts. At this time in humanity's technological/economic development the pipe dream of sustainable and adequate energy from "green" sources is not ready yet. Almost no one denies that renewable clean energy is ideal, but we didn't replace the horse and buggy until automobiles were economically and reliably sufficient.

FTA
By law, Obama’s decision was supposed to reflect “the national interest.” His standard was his political interest. The State Department had spent three years evaluating Keystone and appeared ready to approve the project by year-end 2011. Then the administration, citing opposition to the pipeline’s route in Nebraska, reversed course and postponed a decision to 2013 — after the election.

Now, reacting to a congressional deadline to decide, Obama rejected the proposal. But he also suggested that a new application with a modified Nebraska route — already being negotiated — might be approved, after the election. So the sop tossed to the environmentalists could be temporary. The cynicism is breathtaking.

With this decision Obama is also dissing his union friends who have expressed complete dismay. One has to believe that this will be approved if he is reelected - that is unless the commenter on Lucianne.com is correct: The Left wants a crippled, weak, post-prosperity America, it's as simple as that. Everything Obama has done, is doing, will do is modus operandi to that end. No mystery about any of it, really. 

 It could go either way in my mind. President Obama is either a cynical opportunist playing one side of his constituency against the other or he is a destroyer of nations.  


CW