Off-Topic

Exactly. When the GOP minority does this, they "obstruct" or "block," according to most of the media. But for this apparently the entire Senate has "rejected" the amendment.

Are you guys serious? If this were actually the case, the media would be writing stories daily about "blocked" administration appointees. The republicans have so grossly abused the filibuster above and beyond historic norms that if they spent their time writing about it they wouldn't have time to do anything else.

to get back to the point of the thread.......

Romney is back to uncomfortable comments form today.......I actually feel bad for him. He is not that angry, he is not a southern religious zealot......but he is trying to be both this week.

He's totally lame whenhe tries to "relate." Ironically, that might help him in November b/c while southern conservatives will have no place else to go, upper middle class educated suburbanites wil feel less threatened by him b/c he's so obviously not a crusading yahoo.

I have no doubt his general election campaign is going to be much different. If he were president my liberal ass would not be fearful of him. He would be a fiscally conservative pragmatist, my worry would be if he had the congress with him.

I quote from the official State Department release delaying the pipeline approval on Nov. 10, 2011: "particularly given the concentration of concerns regarding the environmental sensitivities of the current proposed route through the Sand Hills area of Nebraska, the Department has determined it needs to undertake an in-depth assessment of potential alternative routes in Nebraska." The reason they publicly gave was environmental concerns. If you're saying they lied, that also seems concerning to me.

Secondly, Nebraska did not "deny" the pipeline. Some officials and legislators in Nebraska objected to the pipeline's route, but in fact, Nebraska does not have any state law or regulation that requires state approval for a pipeline route. Nebraska is free to create one if they are worried about it. In any case, whatever state approvals are required are separate from the State Department review. I recognize there are other potential hurdles to the pipeline. But those are separate processes, and are not part of the State Department's review. The State Department did its own environmental review, which found no significant impact from the pipeline. If Nebraska disagrees, then it's up to them to do something under state law.

No one is saying he's going to lose "the left" if he approves the pipeline. He will piss off a lot of environmentalists, though. You think all those protesters against the pipeline were just protesting the specific route through Nebraska, and would be just fine if the route is re-drawn? They object to any attempt to facilitate the extraction of more carbon-based resources, especially in this case, as the Alberta oil is particularly "dirty."

Regarding your last point, I'm not sure you're concerned about what China is doing in Canada. Are you Canadian? And I'm also not sure how we're worse off with China owning a big piece of pipeline in our country than if the pipeline simply isn't built at all.

My point with Nebraska was that the State Department environmental review is a separate, independent process, and one which found no significant impacts. States have their own ways to influence the process if they have objections, so the State Department should not be citing objections from Nebraska as a reason to withhold its own approval of the project.

Now, on China and what we get out of this. I've tried to do some research on this, and it's a bit unclear, but this is my understanding of how this would work. A Chinese company owns the oil fields in Canada. Transcanada owns the pipeline. I haven't seen anything suggesting China has ownership of the pipeline, or any significant interest in Transcanada itself, which is a publicly traded Canadian company. Finally, the oil will be transported from Canada down to U.S. refineries in the Gulf. There, the refineries take ownership of the oil, process it into various refined petroleum products, and decide where to sell those products. I think there's a perception out there, and I get this vibe from your posts on the subject, that China controls this process end to end, when it doesn't. Now, will we see "squat" from the pipeline? Let's see, I can think of several things we will see from it - jobs for construction, property taxes, increased spending along the pipeline's route during construction on things like food, lodging, fuel, equipment, etc., lowering costs for U.S. refiners (which will in turn create expansion opportunities for them). Will we "get oil" from it. Technically, yes. As I said above, my understanding is, U.S. refiners take ownership of the oil when it gets to them. What they do with the finished, refined products is up to them. They may ship them overseas, just like they may do so with products derived from oil drilled in the United States. But if they do so, it's a U.S. company making the decision, not China. If it's more profitable for them to sell in the US, they're going to do that.

"According to TransCanada, the proposed Keystone XL pipeline can be used by Canadian oil shippers to add up to $4 billion to U.S. fuel costs. Testimony taken on September 17, 2009 before the NEB indicates that the Canadian companies intend to incur higher pipeline tariff costs using the Keystone XL pipeline to bypass PADD II refineries in the Midwest. This will have the effect of manipulating supply levels allowing prices of oil refined in PADD II to rise and ultimately benefitting the Canadian companies with higher prices."

At least they are going to screw their own citizens along with us.

Will be an interesting item to follow in an election year, that is for sure.

christian sluts

Santorum wins Kansas. Romney won some fucking islands somewhere in the Pacific.

Game changers!

LOL at the pipeline experts in this thread.

Talk about an issue that nobody knows crap about, but just spouts their party's rhetoric...

If Eli came in here with an opinion, I might believe he has the first clue about it. Everyone else trying to argue that this is an IMPORTANT ISSUE and the other side IS JUST BLATANTLY WRONG, lol.

The pipeline is a no brainer.

Don't build it, we have no environmental risk, lower fuel costs for the US, estimate loss of 200 jobs (wow)

Build it: Oil prices go up for the Mid-West & Mid-Land states and Canada and China make out (est gain of 200 jobs)

Decision is also easy to predict:

Consumers = No lobbying power, little Campaign $$$ and no TV Ads.

Pipeline backers & Politicians & Media = Lobbying $$$ and Campaign $$$ and TV Ad $$.

The organized group wins almost every time over the hard to identify losers, especially when the winners stand to individually make huge amounts of $$ while the millions of losers, stand to individually lose small amounts.