The GOP Must Be Crazy

[KamaAina]

Your daily Pierce fix.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_GOP_Must_be_Crazy

Our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death-funnel that would bring the world's dirtiest fossil fuel down through the most arable farmland in the hemisphere and to the refineries along the Gulf Coast, and thence to the world, has revealed in itself an incredible capacity to make people act stupidly. It has moved beyond being a public policy issue among the ascendant Republican party, and within the movement conservatism which is that party's only remaining animating force. It has moved beyond being a financial windfall for the plutocrats whose money has been rendered the lifeblood of our politics, on both sides, but especially among the Republicans, who share a few more of the plutocracy's ultimate goals than do the Democrats. Among the Republicans, and among their most fervent political zealots, the pipeline has become an ideological fetish object, something to which fealty must be paid, a measure of loyalty and devotion to every other part of the political faith, a lasting symbol of triumph over the other side, like the steles erected in Mesopotamia or the pyramids. Its essential utility, its negligible economic impact, the environmental peril presented by the toxic goo it will carry through the fragile breadbasket of the country, the demonstrable bad-faith and neglect of the foreign corporation that will benefit from it, the blatant disregard of all potential (and, I would argue, inevitable) catastrophes inherent in the project -- all of these are beside the point. The Keystone XL pipeline must be built because it is the Keystone XL pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline must be built only so that the people who oppose it are defeated. The Keystone XL pipeline must be built because it is no longer a construction project, it is an article of the conservative faith.

(As to the Democratic supporters of the project, their motives are of a more purely self-centered variety. Mary Landrieu wants to keep her job, or set herself up for a fat new one at some lobbying firm. Heidi Heitkamp is an oil sheikh, and Joe Manchin wants to demonstrate to the entire extraction industry that he's on board and open for business. As for the president, if he really believes that folding on this will buy him goodwill somewhere else, as the story in the New York Times implies he does, he'll just never, ever learn, will he?)

I first heard of the Keystone XL pipeline not long after I opened this shebeen along the docks of Blogistan. I went to cover the incredibly useless Florida Presidential Straw Poll in the autumn of 2011. At that gathering of the faithful, every one of the speakers talked about the necessity of building the pipeline. (It was also at this event that I first became aware of another conservative signifier -- Agenda 21, the secret UN plan to steal all our golfs.) Most of them cited economic benefits that long since have been debunked. But all of them cited the pipeline as a demonstration of our national resolve to defeat tree-hugging hippie environmentalists. All modern conservative politics blow away on the wind without some Other at which to direct their dark energy. But this was something different. This wasn't fervor animating an idea. This was devotion to an actual object -- a sludge-bearing Arc de Triomphe to demonstrate the inalienable right of some Americans to despoil America without serious consequence....

Actually, science says that the stuff that the pipeline will carry is best left in the ground. Journalism says that the State Department report was put together by a firm with close business ties to TransCanada, the Canadian corporation that is the only entity in the world that actually will profit from the project. And, when I first heard about the project, at that 2011 tent revival down in Florida, there was talk of thousands and thousands of good-paying jobs and gas prices down into the double-digits again. Now, thanks to the delay, and to the laudable agitation by the likes of Bill McKibben and the Bold Nebraska crew, even TransCanada admits that it's the permanent jobs that will total in the double digits, and Brooks can only meep about an economic impact that "isn't huge," and that the pipeline is merely a "modest-to-good" idea.

[Savannahmann]

1. Do you know how the oil is being moved now?

Warren Buffett, major contributor to President Obama, who owns Berkshire Hathaway, which owns BNSF railroad. Right now, most of the oil is transported on BNSF railroad cars.

Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.

So we are going to make sure to take care of our major uber wealthy industrialist contributors right?

[KamaAina]

2. Do you know who would benefit from KXL?

The Brothers Koch, that's who.

[Savannahmann]

3. Perhaps you missed the last line of my reply.

So we are going to make sure to take care of our major uber wealthy industrialist contributors right?

Thanks to NAFTA oil produced in Canada is considered domestic for all intents and purposes. My point was and is we aren't talking about not drilling, or refining. The debate is on how the oil is transported. The oil is being transported today and has been for several years by rail. The oil is being refined today and will be tomorrow in American refineries.

We aren't talking about stopping the action of pulling the oil from the ground. Nor are we talking about not refining this mess. We are arguing about who's corporate master gets paid for transporting the oil. That is all. Democrats want Warren Buffett to get paid so he will donate to our campaigns. Republicans want the Koch brothers for the same reasons.

Please tell me you realize this simple truth.

[RiverLover]

6. Sadly, Buffett is in favor of the pipeline. Its the Koch's who will profit billion$

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/liberals-billionaire-warren-buffett-comes-out-for-keystone-xl-pipeline/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/keystone-xl-koch-brothers_n_4136491.html

[Cali_Democrat]

5. LOL...looks like someone probably just had a sad after Keystone was rejected

I don't think you could be any more obvious.

Although I had you pegged for quite some time.

[Savannahmann]

7. Wow could you be any more wrong?

I've been reading a lot about the issue for the last several days. I was utterly ignorant of Warren Buffet's involvement before that. Oversight or stupidity. Either way, I was unaware of it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/03/train-derailments-buffett_n_4889058.html

A few days ago I mocked the move by Senator Landrieu to push the vote.

But whatever. Don't like what I write? Put me on ignore. because I'm about sick of all the allusions that I'm some sort of fucking RW troll. Who was warning about danger to the senate a year ago? I don't remember anything from you but fluff pieces about how awful the republicans were and how democrats stood to win big. Get angry with me because I can read a poll and see the danger. But let me ask this. How stupid would the democrats have to be for that to be my plan? I mean really. It would be as if you asked me how to find a business and I told you exactly how to get there and you intentionally went another direction out of spite.

Seriously. If I was a right wing troll then my plan is to tell the Democratic party how to win elections and gain popular support based upon polling information and public opinion all the while knowing that the democratic party is so immature and idiotic that they would never do it so long as I was the one telling them. Now, are you saying I am a RW troll and the democratic party is that arrogant?

How many posts have I made warning about the potential to lose the senate and referenced polling data to support my warnings? A dozen at least right? For the last year I've written time and time again about the economy and the homeless problem. Now President Obama takes notice after the election when it could have been an issue to sway support to our side. Now all of a sudden their are a million and a half homeless kids going to our schools.

So tell me. Is that the most asinine plan ever? Because the only way it works is if democrats are so astoundingly mind bogglingly stupid that they would never take good common sense advice. Please tell me you don't think we are that stupid.

[RiverLover]

4. K & R! "..national resolve to defeat tree-hugging hippie environmentalists"

Go Tree-huggers!!!!!!!!!!!!