The Obama administration yesterday approved a pipeline to carry oil-sands fuel from Canada into the US, saying its action was designed to send "a positive economic signal in a difficult economic period".
Many environmentalists had expressed hopes that Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, would reject a permit to build the Alberta Clipper, a 1,000-mile pipeline designed to carry up to 800,000 barrels a day of fuel from Canada's vast oil sands. But the State Department said greenhouse-gas emissions are best addressed through each country's domestic policies and a strong international agreement.
Obama sucks, Harper wins, and climate loses
Thu, 2009-08-20 22:02
#1
Frustrated Mess
Obama sucks, Harper wins, and climate loses
Thu, 2009-08-20 22:15
#2
Frustrated Mess
And, you may laugh, there is this:
To reduce costs, Alberta will do less testing for acid rain in the northern oilsands region, Alberta Environment said Monday.
Fri, 2009-08-21 01:39
#3
The Obama administration yesterday approved a pipeline to carry oil-sands fuel from Canada into the US, saying its action was designed to send "a positive economic signal in a difficult economic period".
Many environmentalists had expressed hopes that Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, would reject a permit to build the Alberta Clipper, a 1,000-mile pipeline designed to carry up to 800,000 barrels a day of fuel from Canada's vast oil sands. But the State Department said greenhouse-gas emissions are best addressed through each country's domestic policies and a strong international agreement.
Apparently that's going to be challenged in the courts.
http://unearthed.earthjustice.org/blog/2009-august/suit-will-challenge-d...
Fri, 2009-08-21 07:25
#4
You wouldn't have any Enbridge stock in your portfolio, FM? Despite approval of its $3.3 billion Alberta Clippper pipeline project, its market price at close, yesterday was $40.93, down 39 cents.
Such goings on are indeed a reason not to have kids. My partner and I had to seriously discuss environmental prospects a third of a century back - and decided one would not lead to overpopulation. The liberal mind at work, you know.
But I offer up the market quotation in all seriousness to suggest that the failure does not begin with Obama, who, mysteriously, "sucks" an action I attributed to the SUV owners down there. I'm sure your mutual funds and private investments, together with the CPP and other sources have been thoroughly checked over and not found wanting.
To find the African American guilty of all things, these days, is such a serious insult to one's understanding of the political economy of citizenship in a thoroughgoing capitalist nation(s), and to any basic sense of balanced opinion. Catchphrase stuff, FM.
Fri, 2009-08-21 08:19
#5
Frustrated Mess
I have no portfolio George. I have CPP, and I'm sure that will keep me warm at night in my old age.
Obama does suck George. To be sure, if you review these pages, I had not any faith in his empty platitudes, "change you can believe in", "yes we can", to begin with. But, since being elected, Obama has broken or redefined every promise made to get elected. One of those promises was to fight climate change and promote clean fuels. And now we see this ...
And it is important, George, to parse the Whitehouse statement: "greenhouse-gas emissions are best addressed through each country's domestic policies and a strong international agreement."
So, in Canada we have a government that has actively opposed any domestic action on climate change and has actively opposed, in concert with the US, any international agreement. What international agreement, George? It is not only dishonest it is a spit in the face of all those who helped elect Obama. The more change you can believe in, the more things stay the same.
Fri, 2009-08-21 08:31
#6
From Joe Bageant today, on health care. It would also stand for matters environmental:
Every day I get letters asking me to weigh in on the healthcare fracas. As if a redneck writer armed with a keyboard, a pack of smokes and all the misinformation and vitriol available on the Internet could contribute anything to the crap storm already in progress. Besides that, my unreasoned but noisy take on this issue is often about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. None of which has ever stopped me from making a fool of myself in the past. So here goes.
There ain't any healthcare debate going on, Bubba. What is going on are mob negotiations about insurance, and which mob gets the biggest chunk of the dough, be it our taxpayer dough or the geet that isn't in ole Jim's impoverished purse. The hoo-ha is about the insurance racket, not the delivery of healthcare to human beings. It's simply another form of extorting the people regarding a fundamental need -- health.
Unfortunately, the people have been mesmerized by our theater state's purposefully distracting and dramatic media productions for so long they've been mutated toward helplessness. Consequently, they are incapable of asking themselves a simple question: If insurance corporation profits are one third of the cost of healthcare, and all insurance corporations do is deliver our money to healthcare providers for us (or actually, do everything in their power to keep the money for themselves), why do we need insurance companies at all? Answer: Because Wall Street gets a big piece of the action.
(Lottsa people have equity in insurance and fossil fuels and pipelines, etc. They don't get blamed, as you have pointed out. They should be blamed if they don't support Obama's attempts at reform. And of course, the redneck that Bageant identifies in Deer Hunting is never going to act in his own best interest, because he has no foggy idea what that means.
Trouble is, FM, if we reduce the political debate to good guys and bad, we fall into that reductionist trap, and there's nowthere to go from there...with any issue).
Fri, 2009-08-21 09:19
#7
Frustrated Mess
It is not a matter of anything so simple as good guys and bad guys George. It is a matter of Obama being a Canadian Liberal in that he campaigns to the left to get elected, and, when elected, he governs from the right and abandons, like appliances tossed from the backs of pick-ups in southern Ontario, every principle and value he claimed to hold while campaigning. Why, George, he denounced the secretive styles and backroom deals of Bush and Vader and promised all dealings in the Obama Whitehouse would be open and transparent. Then he secretly met with big pharma and struck a deal to esnure they continued to get rich off the misery of sick Americans. Back when I was a lad we called that misrepresentation, lying, and fraud.
Fri, 2009-08-21 10:15
#8
His political work from South Chicago showed him you can take action only when the troops are with you. Take a peek at his bio. Unfortunately, the troops with Hillary don't have the stomach for it. And in a climate of ignorance where the Repubs can calim such ridiculous things, you're asking him to commit seppuku in his first year. Just a bit presumptuous, FM. I'm not ready to cast him to the "trash heap of history" just yet. Perhaps the ignorant masses will be impacted directly and have to back action - a 1930s outcome. And, please, he was elected by promising good things, the things honest people wanted. You wanted him down and dirty with the dummies?
Fri, 2009-08-21 10:28
#9
Frustrated Mess
Oh, please George. He won and he could have appointed any number of progressive people to any number of positions. Instead, he appointed the usual suspects to the usual positions. And most of his betrayals where on issues where the opposition were far less voicferous than on health care such as tar sands oil, trade, labour, secret meetings (who opposed transparency?), illegal wiretapping, detention without charge, etc ... (and I could go on).
And you mention the 1930s. It was Obama who appointed Wall Street bandits, from Goldman Sachs, the Godfather of organized financial crime, to his cabinet and then turned over to the bandits trillions in taxpayer money. And then Obama failed to defend a plan to assist mortgage holders. That was his choice. Not Hillary's.
He is the president. As the old saying goes, the buck stops with him. Enough of the excuses for being weak, abandoning promises, expanding war, and screwing over the middle- and woking-classes for corporate America.
Fri, 2009-08-21 10:41
#10
You weren't a West Wing watcher were you.
Sun, 2009-09-06 21:34
#11
Frustrated Mess
Another loss.
The White House environmental adviser under fire for inflammatory statements made before he joined the administration resigned after what he called a "vicious smear campaign against me."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090906/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_adviser_resigns
Who is Van Jones? Read ...
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4649/
Sun, 2009-09-06 22:15
#12
It's the House Select Committee on American activities (the inquisition) working to root out pro-American activities and leftwing sympathizers. The war on democracy continues
Mon, 2009-09-07 09:07
#13
Let's hope they don't set up a House Committee on un-American activities, Fidel. But that would only come with a Palin presidency, eh?
Sun, 2009-09-13 02:23
#14
M. Spector
Another loss.
The White House environmental adviser under fire for inflammatory statements made before he joined the administration resigned after what he called a "vicious smear campaign against me."
The firing of White House "green-jobs" point-person Van Jones is the latest manifestation of the Obama Administration's abiding fear of the Right and distaste for progressives - although it is unclear which is the more powerful reflex.
This weekend's dismissal of the veteran activist, author and powerful motivational speaker turned administration functionary cannot but send a chill through the ranks of those who style themselves "progressives for Obama," in and out of government, who believed they had found a political "home" under the Obama umbrella.
[b]It would be wrong to conclude that Jones was "hounded" out of the White House by Fox News telereactionary Glenn Beck's charges that the 40 year-old Yale-educated lawyer was a supporter of Mumia Abu Jamal, had signed a letter questioning the Bush Administration's version of 9/11, and once referred to Republicans as "assholes"[/b] (quickly adding that he, Jones, "can be an asshole," too.) This is pretty tame stuff, considering that the feigned outrage emanates from a crowd that routinely refers to the president as a socialist, an Arab and a non-citizen - epithets of the worst kind in Beck-Limbaughland. Besides, this is an administration whose Treasury Secretary neglected to pay taxes and whose top economic advisors, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, were key players in setting the stage for the current economic disaster. Walking catastrophes like these men are thought by the administration to need no defense, yet the rising young Black star is cast out of the firmament.
If one assumes that color is no hindrance in the Obama White House, then the conclusion is obvious: Van Jones, co-founder of Oakland, California's Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the internet activist organization Color of Change, was ejected because of his progressive politics. There is more than a subtle difference between being hounded from office and being thrown to the dogs.
[url=http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/van-jones-affair-%E2%80%9Cun... more[/url]
Sun, 2009-09-13 15:30
#15
"Jones was unceremoniously discarded so that Obama might reconcile with modern-day McCarthyites."
That's riotous, thanks.