President Obama said NO! to the Oil Barons...
By skepticalscott
The State Department officially rejected the Keystone XL pipeline – that would have transported highly toxic Canadian tar sands 1,600 miles across America, on top of the nation’s largest aquifer, down to Texas where transnational oil corporations could ship it off to Asia, South America, and Europe. Canada says it will now look into sending the tar sands to China.
I say Canada should leave all that dangerous carbon in the ground. Despite enormous pressure – including tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and advertising – and even an explicit threat made against the President by the largest oil special interest group – the American Petroleum Institute – the oil barons lost. The environmental movement – and 1,200 patriots who were willing to get arrested in front of the White House last year to protest the pipeline won…at least for now.
Let’s keep up the pressure on our lawmakers – and really begin to heal our planet.
Comments
#2
Wow...that's about 24 million ppl that are misinformed !
#3
Just heard that Rick Perry (Dopey) has stepped down and that Newt Grinch's former wife said he was pressing her for an "open marriage". Newt Grinch in the White House would make Bill Clinton look like a saint. I'd suspect that he would have many more Monicas visiting him in the Oval OhhFist.
And Mitt Rummy would stake the country's future on his spooky ritual of staring into a dark top hat he places over his face; or, perhaps rubbing his "magic underwear" while uttering strange and guttural noises. What's that? Do the noises sound something like "Oh, Monica!"? There is a stark difference, of course, between "real" and "imagined". But I guess one good thing is that imagined won't give you aids...might make you go a little crazy over time...or blind. But if some ostensibly prurient politicians have their way and trash the internet we will all have little to assist us in "tweaking" our imaginations. Back to the dark ages. What was that story that Julia Sweeney told us in one of her monologues (I think it was "Letting Go of God")? Where in her sexually repressed Catholic school she would "get off" on that picture of that handsome Jesus? Yup, I guess it is back to the Sears and Roebucks catalog.
#4
Which reminds me of when I lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for a few years....where the Saudi censors even
took magazines and catalogs and used magic markers to black out those revealing body parts of women...like
legs and breasts...even though the breasts were fully clothed...and the dresses were not quite long enough
to hide the ankles. Often, they would just rip out the pages. Then they could sell the magazines...but not
until the censors did their jobs. Allah Akbar! Huh?
But then they use a lustful device of telling the young men that if they are good little jihadis and die for Allah they will be able to release all of their pent up lustful imaginings for "real" in heaven where they will be able to ravage a whole flock of young virgins.
The Christians (the "Christ is money" or "Jesus was a capitalist" crowds anyway..you know..the Republicans
and their lot) try to entice you into giving up all your worldly goods (give it all to them) for the prospect of "streets paved with gold" and "pearly gates" and angelic haloed and winged creatures wearing white robes...with impeccably stacked bodies and to-die-for facial features...something they may not have been able to attain in the real world of the living (except for pla$tic $urgery and lipo$uction...maybe).
#5
But I guess the next four years will again be occupied by the Devil...you know the one who pretends to be your friend and then stabs you in the back...XL pipelines not withstanding. As we all imagined..we'll now be safer at the lack of pollution this thing was said to have caused but many of us will not be around to care one way or the other because the greatly corrupted Obama Health Care bill, that will force us all to deplete our savings in a forced payment plan to the HealthScare monger insurance companies...and we'll starve to death.
But even if after complying with the government enforced mandate of participating in the corrupt insurance companies, and shelling out your money, despite the touted advantage of insurance companies not being able to prevent you from getting insurance because of a pre-existing condition...they can still greatly raise their rates so you cannot afford their insurance anyway. This was a give-a-way to the insurance companies and is really unconstitutional.
So, Obama helped defeat the XL pipeline, got Obama Care, Pulled out of Iraq (sort of...but we're still everywhere else), and murdered Osama bin Laden (maybe--how do we really know--they dumped the evidence in the ocean--how convenient for them--and Osama bin Laden was not the mastermind of 911 anyway..being an inside job).
These are all very incidental, or even not important, in our survival in this wicked and selfish country. I am not very good at drawing cartoons or illustrations but I have pictured in my mind: a big masked criminal labeled "healthScare insurance companies" holding a gun labeled "US Government" to the little people's heads...and the caption is: "Your money or your life!!"
And when you think about it...it is the whole medical and pharmaceutical racket that keeps us from getting the medicines we know we need for things like high blood pressure or asthma unless we pay the exorbitant prices of the doctors, insurance companies, and drug companies.
The government is the enforcer of the criminal enterprise that lets these criminals get away with "your money or your life". If people know what medicines they need, taking them on a regular basis, why do they need to keep getting their "prescriptions" filled after having paid the exorbitant prices to all of the above?
In Mexico, you can just walk into a drug store and, without a prescription, buy the drugs you need at a very cheap price. The US gov and their puppet masters, try to get you to believe that those drugs may be tainted or will not work...but, in fact, many of the drugs we get in the US drug stores are made overseas as well. It is just propaganda scare tactics to keep your money going into their pockets.
#6
Fracking, no not Phracking, Fracking is more dangerous to our immediate environment than any XL pipeline would have been. It has been going on for some years now and many people can even set flame to their drinking water. And it is nearly everywhere. The Oil and Gas companies are poisoning us.
#7
YES there will be a pipe line. Why? just because! its all about the money, MAN! Its all about the "gotta have it now attitude" we have brought to festeration in our society! Forget the notion that while building the thing it would put a bunch of people to work, "temporarily" instead of ,say, taking the money and fixing the rail ways or upgrading the high way and just putting a bunch rail workers and truckers to work premanantly! oh yeah! thats right. they'll screw the land owners to buy the right of way and move thier liquid gold much faster and more efficiently and in the long run it won't really cost a dime? hmmmm, more potential jobs gone, poof, up in smoke. think about it. we have become a society of automation. I go to the market now and half the cashiers that for 20 years i've seen are gone! poof! the replacement? Self check out? Yup! my wife says lets use the self check out. I say lets keep someone employed. she looks at me like I'm a nut. But maybe she'd get it if she happened to be one of those cashiers that l;ost thier job to..."auto-frikin-mation!!!! MEANWHILE....THE RICH ARE STILL GETTING RICHER AND RICHER AND RICHER AND RICHER. Boy i wish i had been a little more like some of my past employers!
#8
Keystone XL pipeline= Candan gets the jobs, Chinese get the oil and Americans get the shaft- in the fom of toxic clean-up bills!
#9
Good for the President. The XL Pipeline is a diaster waiting to happen and one that could cause untold harm to our environment. Tar sands are many times more abrasive than sandpaper. I imagine that a project of this magnitude could be seen from the International Space Station and even Mars. Why not build refineries closer to the source of supply rather than risk polluting a huge swath of our country? That's a rhetorical question in case you haven't guessed. We know that the Texas oil monopoly has it greasy, dirty hands on the refinery business. It's one of the ways they practice their price controls. I think the government should build refineries if the monopoly hogs won't.
#10
I'm not sure about that. When some college, known as Rairly Ridiculus in the 60's, noted that Fox viewers were the lowest of all in information, Thom used their findings as a talking point. It was, that Fox viewers, didn't think the Arab spring brought democracy to Egypt with the down fall of Murbarak. Of course, Fox viewers were more aware of the power of the Egyptian military throughout their recent history. Infact, Fox viewers didn't think Murbarak was in his position without military support. Suddenly, the Fox viewers looked pretty good, with the recent military action in Egypt.
#11
Democrats are the ones pushing web censorship
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/democrats-are-the-ones-pushing-we...
#12
Ewww! And now they are trying to scare us with what we say on the internet....although some people should be more careful and try not to make anything that could be interpreted as a threat to anyone. The current news propaganda is that Google is now under court order to have ip addresses checked for who ever made a blog against that Sheriff down in Arizona. Of course, none of us have ever made such expressions on blog sites but even if you never have..doesn't it still tend to make you want to watch very carefully what you say in a blog?
#13
From a May 4, 2011 interview of Dr. Pieczenik:
"Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job."
"He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT."
http://www.prisonplanet.com/top-us-government-insider-bin-laden-died-in-...
#14
Of course Canada and the US will have a pipeline. We need to get off middle eastern oil and become energy independent. Read any President's National Security Strategy since Ford, including President Obama's, and they all make the same case. After the oil pipeline, natural gas is next. Like it or not America, natural gas and coal are our energy deposits -- pretending something different doesn't change the truth. Vote against the future and go bankrupt (oh wait, we already are). Or embrace the pipeline, embrace energy independence, embrace capitalism because they are the right answer. In the end, after our vast debt and social programs bankrupt us, we'll have to get our energy wherever we can. Vote No to energy solutions and we will surely owe our future survival to those who vote Yes.
#15
I don't understand the sense of piping the oil to the Gulf, only to have to take it through the Panama Canal to Asia and on to Europe around Florida and up the East coast and across the Atlantic--to South America might make sense--it seems like a long way and the chance for too many things to go wrong. Why doesn't it go through Canada to the east and west? It doesn't seem that the US will benefit--except maybe the oil barrons--but will take much of the environmental risk. Jobs will be created here only in the building process--it will take few to monitor--many more could monitor, but we wouldn't want to cut into profits for the robber barrons.
I say, let China have those dirty tar sands. They don't seem to care about their people, the planet, or the children who will inherit the dirty legacy of their comun-capitalisim all that much.
But as Thom says, the best solution is to leave these tar sands in the Earth.
#16
Prime Minister Harper is from Alberta. Home of big oil and he is their friend. They are doing a remarkable job of redirecting people away from the topic to a sovereignty issue. It is now about "radical environmentalists" from outside Canada. Here is a quote from Peter Foster of the National Post today. "Promoters of oil and gas development are in the business of creating jobs; radical environmentalists are in the business of destroying them."
The last thing we want is a pipe line through B.C. As a native indian it is going right through Native land. Then we are going to pump it into oil tankers that don't sink. Please. Canada put a moritorium on oil tanker off our BC coast in 1972 because of Exxon Valdez. This is a nightmare waiting to happen. By the way. The tar sands oil into the Keystone pipeline was destined to go to China, not the USofA as the right claims. This shit is toxic and should be shut down. The only people is benefits are Oil guys and the Alberta bank account.
#17
The answer is renawable energy. I live in SW Ontario. We have the most progressive solar and wind energy legislation in North America. Take a drive from Detroit to Toronto and you will pass 600 wind turbines and a hundreds of large solar collectors. On the Eastern end of the Province we have close to 1000 turbines. Each turbine powers 600 homes. Guess what, the raw material is free. This is the future for us all. We are at the crux of a new age. Just as it was when whale oil become obsolete, so it goes for fuels from hell. We need fules from heavan. My toughts but we are going to run out of the shit in the ground. By the way, the tar sands oil is toxic beyond belief and very expensive to produce and sucks up precious water and leaves moon scape.
#18
Bad decision by Obama. We need to make this decision right now. This is how George Bush would have done it and look how well that worked for him (Iraq War).
#19
Hi guy,s my name is Stephen mills from not so sunny Scotland in the UK ,i am a huge Thom Hartmann reader.The last hours of ancient sunlight should be required reading for every secondary school pupil on our planet.
Thom is so spot on the problem facing our planet today is our cultural story,s,the culture of which we emerge is causing the demise of our culture,we have to at this stage in our evolution re-write a new cultural story.
There is a consciousness raising conversation going on at The global Conversation .com and is based upon the new book the storm before the calm by Neale Donald Walsch.Nothing can stop a movement who,s time has come.
On the oil story everything that can be made from petroleum can be made by the living soil and plants ..hemp for one could replace everything that, s not sustainable on our planet.Have you ever wondered why there has been a war with cannabis since the 1930,s ,Du-pont,William Hearst,big oil cotton industry the list goes on and on WAKE UP PEOPLE YOU HAVE ALL BEEN HOODWINKED BY THE 1% ,its time to free humanity from dependance which is truly our Achilles heal,freedom is the essence of life and we are life,occupy the planet take back the future and lets make decisions based upon the 7th generation to continue our future as a species not just for profit survival mentality and a few sociopaths but for the highest good of all.
Economics is stifling reason and evolution of humanity,the first thing that we need to do is separate the economy from politics and understand that politics is our spirituality demonstrated.
This is my first post here Thom you are a a gift for humanity one of the cognoscenti(THOSE THAT KNOW) i have read the Prophets way and understand what we have to do.
We are all one ours is not a better way ours is another way!
Go easy with me folks its my first post.
namaste
#20
Breaking from Newsmax.com Got this e-mail today. Interesting.
Obama, Tea Party Duel in Ads on Energy Record
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is releasing its first 2012 broadcast advertisement as his team seeks to counter attacks and get a jump on Republicans while they battle over selecting their nominee to challenge him.
The ad, called “Unprecedented,” highlights Obama’s record on clean energy and responds to what it says are “secretive oil billionaires” making inaccurate charges against him. It began running Thursday in Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to a campaign official.
Editor's Notes:
Discover the Single Stock Ben Bernanke Bet His Entire Portfolio On
Top Doctors Share Secrets to Surviving Cancer
The move begins a new phase in the campaign cycle and provides another outlet for Obama’s drive to engage Republican candidates and outside groups supporting them with millions of dollars in ads aimed at the president.
This week the independent group Americans for Prosperity, founded by billionaire David Koch, started a $6 million ad campaign in swing states Obama won in 2008 that spotlights the president’s ties to bankrupt solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC. The Obama campaign official declined to disclose the cost of the ad buy.
The ad, which closes with a narrator saying Obama has kept his promise to “strengthen America’s energy economy,” follows by one day the administration’s denial of a permit to build TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline. That announcement, while expected, has drawn criticism from Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He said the decision shows Obama isn’t serious about “achieving energy independence.” The Obama campaign official said the ad’s timing is unrelated.
Even though the ad won’t air in the battleground state of Florida yet, Obama is traveling there to announce a strategy for promoting tourism. The state, where the unemployment rate is 10 percent, will award 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. The Democratic candidate carried the state twice and the Republican twice in the last four elections.
Priorities USA, an independent political action committee founded by former administration officials to support Obama, already has run ads in several states. The super-PAC is banned by law from coordinating its activities with Obama’s re-election campaign.
The group has spent an estimated $660,640 in this cycle, according to data from New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, a company that tracks advertising. Priorities USA has spent the most in Florida: $214,310.
The Tea Party-aligned Americans for Prosperity is spending $5.2 million to place its ad, called “Obama Sacrifices Pawns for Politics,” on network and cable stations, as well as another $1 million through social media forums.
The group’s ad hit the airwaves Wednesday in Charlotte, N.C., where Democrats will hold their national convention in September. Americans for Prosperity also plans to air it in states that include Ohio, Iowa, Virginia, Wisconsin and Michigan, according to Tim Phillips, the group’s president. All are battleground states that Obama won in 2008.
The Obama administration’s $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy in September, has become a focal point for the president’s Republican critics. House Republicans, who are investigating the bankruptcy and the administration’s ties to the company, have said politics influenced the Department of Energy guarantee, which the White House and Solyndra’s backers have denied.
Koch and his brother, Charles, control Koch Industries Inc., a closely held refining and chemicals company.
Obama’s advisers have said spending by independent groups will change the landscape of this election. His chief political strategist, David Axelrod, said that is among his top concerns for the re-election effort this year.
“They’re talking upwards of half a billion in negative ads aimed at the president from interest groups who don’t disclose and who can raise unlimited amounts of money,” he said on Jan. 15 on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The president’s campaign committee and the Democratic National Committee raised a combined $224 million last year, including $68 million in the last three months of 2011.
By comparison, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, reported raising $56 million in 2011, the most among the Republican presidential contenders.
The Republican National Committee, which will support the party’s eventual nominee, had raised almost $77 million through November, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission. Finance reports for the final quarter are due at the end of the month.
The Obama campaign also is considering running ads in media markets for Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada and Pennsylvania, the official said.
© 2012 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.
#21
Thom. Tough for me because wife and I drive a long ways to work .. like your video on this subject.
I also work in transportation ..hard to not LIKE new source of North American Fuel.
IF .. IF IF if .. it get built anyway ..WE..need to demand a North South Railroad be build on the right of way. America has NO N toRr in the West except the Coast.. and Agree why not build a refinery in N Dakota? Eh ; )) then they could power the refinery with Wind
#22
Who cares!!?? What we should be talking about is the new energy source for the world. That energy source is "Space Based Solar Power" and the "Marshall Hydrothermal System." These technologies are not concepts, they are real. We need to force the subject in townhall meetings and calling congress. Millions of jobs will be created. Here are the links os you can read about these technologies for your self.
Space based solar power - http://www.nss.org/news/releases/PressConference-IAA-SSP.html
Marshall Hydrothermal System http://marshallhydrothermal.com/
#23
What about building solar roadways?
solarroadways.com
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
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68% of Republicans pick Fox as their most trusted source
PPP's 3rd annual TV news trust poll (2011 version here, 2010 version here) finds that Fox News tops the list for both the source Americans trust the most and the one they trust the least.
Fox is the most trusted TV news source for 34% of voters, followed by PBS at 17%, CNN at 12%, ABC News at 11%, CBS News at 8%, MSNBC at 5%, and Comedy Central and NBC each at 4%.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/01/3rd-annual-tv-news-trust...