With so many other priorities – the budget deficit, gun control, immigration – why did the President spend so much of his inaugural speech on an issue the Alberta and Canadian governments figured had disappeared from his radar screen. Maybe he was just playing to history, in which case the sentences will disappear into the political ether. Or maybe he actually believes what he said.

There is no “maybe” about it. You are dealing with The One’s core beliefs here, and that is one of the few situations where he will actually tell the truth. When he says “No Keystone pipeline”, he means it.

As for the rest of his (actually the Democratic Party’s) agenda, it’s a classic political strategy of “social reformers” to launch broad-front offensives against all their pet bete’ noirs as soon as they gain power. The objective being to overwhelm “the enemy” and force surrender. Or at least keep the opposition running around trying to stop them, thus diluting their strength in any one area.

Unfortunately for sanity, most of their opposition (what Codevila refers to as the “country class”) have actual lives, and actual jobs. So they can’t spend all their time stopping the “activists”, who tend to congregate in groups that pay them to be… activists. Or at least allow them to bask in the mutual admiration of like-minded fanatics.

The progressives are convinced they will win because everyone else has other things to do while they are “focusing like a laser beam” on making the world over to their own liking. And also because when they have power, they are not afraid to use it to impose their will on everyone else.

Or just hurt and/or kill them for the sheer hell of it.

clear ether

eon

We don’t need any thinking Canadian oil, we take the bus.”

clippermiami on February 12, 2013 at 7:03 AM

We don’t need any thinking canadian oil, we takes the bus to collect ours welfares checks, pix up our obamaphones, gets our free maternal and pediatric healthcare, goes to stores to use our food stamps and free lunches, gets our free childcare and gets our ripple and cigs after a tough day on the porch.

Some minor corrections.

Would the Obama administration really reject the Keystone XL pipeline?

When are we going to start to believe that he means what he says? He said he will bankrupt coal companies, he’s doing it.

He wants green energy to be more cost-effective than eeeevil oil, so he will do whatever it takes to increase the cost of oil until green energy is cheaper.

He does not care about hurting working people. I think he secretly relishes and takes joy in it, because he knows we don’t like him.

Those rusty sections of disused pipe laying around. Those potential pipeline workers lined up for their foodstamps. Then, they wake up with sticky sheets.

We need a divorce.

Mirimichi on February 11, 2013 at 10:45 PM

They won’t grant a divorce because they know full well they can’t afford the house and car payment without us. And if we just leave, well they will stalk us, vandalize our property, and make our lives miserable.

What we actually need is a wall between them and us.

Would the Obama administration really reject the Keystone XL pipeline?

Yes, he will. How often do you have to get kicked in the head over 4 years before you figure it out?

Horseface loves the Warren Buffett and his choo-choo trains. Btw, energy prices need to necessarily skyrocket…MOAR QQ, not high enough yet. This is a backpocket thing, we’ll see what happens in April with the ‘debt ceiling/open air stadium’. Nothing before then.

Push stuff, then yell they’re taking your s#!t away. Delay everything else till your enemies relent.

The output of Toshiba’s new small reactor will be 10,000 kilowatts to 50,000 kilowatts, about 1 percent-5 percent that of a regular nuclear reactor, according to the sources.

Steam generated in the reactor will be sent to strata located at a depth of about 300 meters, where oil sands are found, to turn the sand into slurry. The slurry will then be extracted from the strata using a separate pipe.

To ensure the reactor’s safety, Toshiba reportedly plans to construct a nuclear reactor building underground, while the building itself will be equipped with an earthquake-absorbing structure.

The firm has completed a basic design for the reactor and has already started approval procedures for construction in the United States. After getting the official go-ahead from the U.S. government, Toshiba will then undergo safety checks in Canada.

Currently, oil sands are mined using boiler-generated steam. However, as this method requires natural gas to fuel the boilers, it is necessary to transport the gas as needed. Also, carbon dioxide emissions from burning natural gas is seen to be a problem.

By contrast, the planned small reactor would not require refueling for up to 30 years after construction or release any carbon dioxide. Furthermore, nuclear reactors would also be cheaper should the general price of natural gas increase.

This entire time, I thought that there was hardly a real chance that the Obama administration would ultimately reject the Keystone XL pipeline when it really came down to it.

well, sadly your premise is wrong. I used to think, years and years ago, that all this global warming would go away once NYC had a foot of snow on the ground (like say in March/April).

You see the wrongness of the premise? The climate agitprop groups were much more agile and quicker and cynical that i thought. So they came up with, most recently, Extreme Climate. Now, utterly anything fits into their model.

Deeply depraved and non-scientific of course, but that is how they destroyed my premise.

These people have different goals than normal people do. So even if it is not CAGW it is still Dirty, Polluting junk…and no doubt at some point a small rare sub-arctic lesser ant will be found which will throw out the whole thing

Kerry said Canada and the U.S. will continue to cooperate “to meet the needs of a secure clean-energy future on this shared continent.”

…what goes on south of our border…who cares?

But they stressed that the U.S. and Canada agree on a host of economic and environmental causes — including climate change, the same issue that has motivated many of Keystone’s green opponents to try to kill the project.

Think again:

“They publicly announce their commitment to dealing with climate change and acknowledge that it is a serious issue, but then they go ahead and do the exact opposite,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate modeler at the University of Victoria and a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“They’ve closed virtually every funding avenue for climate and atmospheric science. They are deceiving the Canadian public.”

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20121114/climate-change-scientists-global-warming-stephen-harper-canada-skeptics-oil-sands-budget-cuts-muzzling-protests

*I think that’s what he said. It’s what I hear when he talks anyway.
Axe on February 11, 2013 at 10:24 PM

Spot on interpretation.

Secretary of State John Kerry

… I had to stop there.

MT on February 11, 2013 at 10:16 PM

I’ll help. :)

Kerry said Canada and the U.S. will continue to cooperate “to meet the needs of a secure clean-energy future on this shared continent.”

. . . a continent never invaded by jen-jis khan; a continent of abundant opportunities and opportunistic opportunists, a shared continent of incontinent continental unicorns and pink-pony farts more than capable of providing abundant energy — a continent too many times falling beneath its own values, but often enough able to grope its way, melee, hey-hey, up its own buttocks and back into greatness.

(– to music)

Lib Playbook 101. If he is going to play Change My Climate, oil is not in the rotation.

All this pondering on whether Dog Eater will do something economically sensible went out the window one week after his first inauguration. The man couldn’t run a lemonade stand without spilling half the liquid, giving wrong change for a quarter, and somehow managing to burn down the stand itself.