KXL Fix Is In: Selling Out On The Cheap

[Triana]

Out in Nebraska, where my friends Randy Thompson and Jane Kleeb have been fighting a ferocious rear-guard action against the Keystone XL pipeline, the gigantic death funnel and Republican fetish object, they have taken on TransCanada’s attempt to buy their state legislature, steal their property, and (ultimately, and sadly, inevitably) poison their land and water with the dirtiest fossil fuel ever discovered. But now, they have run into an enemy too mighty even for Randy and Jane and their supporters to outwork.

The essential cowardice and abject stupidity of the national Democratic party.

While no decisions have been made to go forward with the plan, the strategy would see a vote on the controversial pipeline before the Republican majority is sworn-in, and would allow Landrieu, and other moderate Democrats, to vote in support of approving it. Republicans, who have supported approval of the pipeline since its inception, have said a vote on its approval would be one of their first priorities in the 114th Congress.

Sorry about the Ogallala Aquifer, kids. We have to protect Mary Fking Landrieu, that legislative giant. Sorry, too, that your back 40 now looks like the garage area at Talladega, and that all the birds now peck once at the ground and keel over dead, and that it’s very hard to grow anything through three feet of oil sludge, but there’s a useless senator from the chemistry set once known as Louisiana whom we have to protect. Besides, bottled water isn’t that expensive.

As policy, this is moronic. As the president said the other day, there is a process ongoing right now. Hell, there isn’t even an approved route through Nebraska until that state’s supreme court says there is. There is no reason to rush this through on the lame duck session. Why in god’s name are senators who already have lost, and senators who survived and now have six more years before they have to run again, still maintaining a strategy of distancing themselves from the president? I will tell you why. They are desperate to curry favor with two groups — their new masters in the upcoming Republican senatorial majority, and the extraction industries who fund political campaigns ( i.e. The Koch brothers and Big Oil). Because of this, and because Joe Manchin (D-ALEC) wants to be invited to the Scarborough manse for the holiday party, the people who live, and who try to make a living, along the proposed pipeline route have to grin and bear it and hope that the damned thing doesn’t turn the Great Plains into a blasted moonscape like the one that already exists in northern Alberta.

THE UNNERVING REST:

http://respriv.org/kxl-fix/

[newfie11]

1. What the hell has happened to the Democratic party

They apparently are almost all bought by the highest bidder! So much for the country or future!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. 1) If Landrieu isn't reelected will it be worth losing our environmental street cred?

2) If approving the pipeline does help hold seats why wait until after the general election?