What may have been intended as a signal of support to Green Energy lobbyists in the United States has been received by Canadians as a signal to diversify its energy market away from its traditional American customers. Terence Corcoran writes in the Financial Post:
Through most of 2011, Canadian energy officials in politics and industry watched with bewildered helplessness and some shock as Washington allowed environmentalists to seize control of TransCanada’s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline issue. They stood by aghast as President Barack Obama, a captive of U.S. green activists and Hollywood movie stars, caved in to political pressure and postponed a decision to approve the project, a potential economic bonanza that promised to deliver thousands of jobs to Americans and billions of barrels of Canadian oil sands production to Texas …
It is a cliché in journalism to declare metaphorical wars at the drop of a news release. In this case, it looks like war is exactly what Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver launched Monday in an unprecedented open letter warning that Canada will not allow “environmental and other radical groups” to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”
Joe Oliver’s opening line in the letter gets straight to the point. “Canada is on the edge of a historic choice: to diversify our energy markets away from our traditional trading partner in the United States or to continue with the status quo.” The translation is simple. If Canadian oil isn’t good enough for Barack Obama, then Canada will sell it to China.
Virtually all our energy exports go to the United States. As a country, we must seek new markets for our products and services and the booming Asia-Pacific economies have shown great interest in our oil, gas, metals and minerals. For our government, the choice is clear: we need to diversify our markets in order to create jobs and economic growth for Canadians across this country. We must expand our trade with the fast-growing Asian economies. We know that increasing trade will help ensure the financial security of Canadians and their families.
Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade. Their goal is to stop any major project, no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydroelectric dams.
These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special-interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources. Finally, if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: Sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further. They do this because they know it can work. It works because it helps them to achieve their ultimate objective: delay a project to the point it becomes economically unviable.
The incident illustrates the law of unintended consequences. The unwavering Green campaign to block economic growth reduces their host’s relative clout in the world. What weakens America eventually weakens the very thing they rely on to advance their agenda.
Meanwhile other organisms unburdened by parasites grow apace. Sooner or later things reach the point where the parasite-ridden host it loses its apex role in the ecosystem. And then surprise, surprise: they no longer make way from the former king of the hill. President Obama probably never believed that Canada could take its business elsewhere.
But it happens. Like California, like Detroit — like all the places to which the leeches have attached themselves — a glorious past is no guarantee of an assured future. Sooner or later things get bled dry and even the leeches move elsewhere.
The Canadian reaction is probably just a harbinger of more to come. President Obama’s term as the fourth, third or first best President of the United States will leave it in shambles. A ruin. Like Detroit. Or Chicago. Then he will no doubt think it is unfair, even racist, but by that stage nobody will give a damn what he thinks.
The Oliver letter breaks a taboo of a different, but perhaps more important kind. It marks one of the first times that a major foreign politician has spoken out — called the Green Lobby by its true name: a gang of extortionists. Terence Corcoran writes that Canadians are particularly interested in the names of US Green groups that are meddling in Canadian internal politics.
The foreign-funding issue is clearly a sensitive one for green groups. One of the major recipients of U.S. foundation backing is the Dogwood Intitiative, a leading anti-pipeline group that has received funding from the U.S. Tides foundation and the Hewlett and Packard foundations. They’ve poured more than $50-million into the Dogwood’s Great Bear Rain Forest program, which aims to shut down oil tanker traffic to the B.C. coast, and hence block access to any Gateway pipeline.
Dogwood tried yesterday to downplay its foreign funding. It said in a statement that foreign oil companies invested nearly $20-billion in the oil sands while “the blogger Vivian Krause [said] U.S. charitable foundations have given Canadian environmental groups less than 1.5% of that amount over a 10-year period.” That works out to $250-million dollars from U.S. activists foundations to troublemakers such as Dogwood.
By drawing attention to the foreign-funding issue, Mr. Oliver has taken direct aim at a radical green movement that has succeeded in paralyzing a U.S. president.
One wonders when similar inquiries into the funding of US Green groups will be forthcoming.
However that may be, President Obama has managed to bring discontent out into the open. The transition of a rebellion from life in the shadows to walking abroad in the daylight is a major milestone. For example, one of Saul Alinsky’s instructions to his organizers was to convince their followers to break the major taboos against speaking out against authority figures. By merely getting people to blurt out an objection against a sacred cow, a person takes the step of open defiance. There’s no going back. This produces a quantum shift in consciousness.
President Obama, who congratulates himself on being a good Alinksy-style organizer, should pat himself in the back for organizing superlatively — against himself. He has managed to shatter the crystal glass of saintliness than surrounded the Greens. And like an abusive Church in which pedophilia has been discovered, it can make the transition from saintliness to the disreputability in no time at all. The Greens may think themselves on the verge of making more gains, but they may be on the cusp of a period of loss.
Parasites often kill the host. The bad news (for parasites) is that in so doing they lessen their own chances for long term survival. Before the Greens write the final epitaph of America’s tombstone, it will first reduce it to a shadow of its former self. Where it was once admired it will be avoided, then spurned and finally reviled by others. That goes for the Greens too. You may pity the host, but it is everything the parasite deserves.
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Canadians — get Alaska to build the St. Herman bridge to Chuhotka, and link the world’s two largest energy producers, Russia and North America. As Solzhenitsyn said, the future is in the North!
Foreign foundations meddling? Sounds like George Soros in Russia, Georgia and Ukraine.
Canadians — get Alaska to build the St. Herman bridge to Chuhotka, and link the world’s two largest energy producers, Russia and North America. As Solzhenitsyn said, the future is in the North!
For what? Trucks? Why not just transport the oil in tankers? Talk about a bridge to nowhere.
“President Obama probably never believed that Canada could take its business elsewhere.” Excuse me? That was the whole point: to shift energy use and productivity to Asia. Environmentalism is the excuse, not the reason. Find out from Soros what Maurice Strong is doing in China, and you will find out enough.
I have postulated that prosperity fuels environmentalism. Without wealth we do not develop technology and without technology we cannot make progress in clean energy. I grew up in Los Angeles and the air and water was considerably more polluted than it is now. But if the present crop of environmentalists were around at the turn of the last century I have little doubt that they would have protested the internal combustion engine and we would be working through ever more efficient steam engines using the Carnot cycle.
If environmentalists are able to throttle down the economy to their liking, we will be burning tires to roast dog on a spit under the overpass.
Our nation managed to build highways and bridges and railroad tracks from coast to coast and the eminent domain that allowed this to happen would have railroaded any litigants that tried to stop it. If the Führer in Chief wanted to practice despotism as a beneficent tyrant he could apply it to something that 99% of the US would benefit by decreeing a new space race of energy independence with an imminent domain of sorts. Instead he is in league with the 1% enviro-whores to defraud the rest of us because it is progressive.
Fascinating. I see Canada as having become a social democracy (“westerncanadian” is welcome to concur with or dispute that), so I take special delight in seeing a Canadian official light into the environmental movement, political correctness be damned. I hope that whatever infected Minister Oliver will catch on with this side of the border.
Without any input from the TP, he naturally sympathizes with both colors of the watermelon.
Like other socialists, he opposes both capitalism and the government which permits it.
Like other children, he has no awareness of the source of the wealth which supports his culture and thus has no regrets about its prospective demise.
Killing the host is a feature not a (bug.)
If the Führer in Chief wanted to practice despotism as a beneficent tyrant he could apply it to something that 99% of the US would benefit by decreeing a new space race of energy independence with an imminent domain of sorts. Instead he is in league with the 1% enviro-whores to defraud the rest of us because it is progressive.
I’ve made similar points in previous threads. I pointed out that Brazil and Norway fund their Obama-like social programs by not being bashful about energy development. With his propensity for breathtaking dissembling it shouldn’t be that difficult for our Orwellian-in-Chief to make unleashing America’s hydrocarbon resources seem like a great progressive act.
I don’t think that Obama had the agenda of having Canada ship its oil to China, to benefit Maurice Strong. That hypothesis is without evidence or even logic.
Obama has submitted to the leftist environmentalists for one reason only. Votes. This is an election year; Obama as we know, does nothing else but campaign. His failures in the economic realm have lost him support among the independents and he must therefore hold onto his leftist supporters. That, and that reason only, is why Obama is delaying the pipeline. For votes. For his hold on power. Not for the well-being of America.
Canada has no interest in its economic activities being held hostage by a politician focused only on maintaining his own power.
The delay is also about injecting as much money into the Obama 2012 campaign as humanly possible. By delaying the pipeline, Obama panders to the greens who oppose it and the unions that support, ensuring the money flows from both. Any decision to proceed or kill will diminish one stream of money.
Follow the money. Always follow the money. Cheers -
Also note that one of the big enviro-funders is the Hewlett-Packard foundation.
The Long Gramscian March Through the Institutions has triumphed.
THE SHIFTING WHISPERING SANDS
Jim Reeves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgAvHo6vpe4
The environmentalist movement is determined to reduce the United States to desert, and that desert will not consist solely of Canadian tar sands. The sands of time are running out on those of us who want to maintain the country in its historic form. It was said of the Romans that they created a desert and called it peace. President Obama and the radical Greens intend to create a desert and call it paradise.
Where once the farm and factory stood
Where once flowed stream beside the wood
Where once the cattle quiet grazed
Where once the young in sunshine lazed
Where once the farmer tilled the field
Where once the hawk and eagle wheeled
Will soon become both sere and mean
In thrall to Satan’s Lefty Green
westerncanadian has retired for the second (and final) time from his Professional Association. He is now Steve Smith, a retired Professional Forester.
Love the title of wretchard’s post. The Ichneumon wasp lays her eggs inside the target host, such as a caterpillar. Upon hatching, the larval Ichneumon eats the host from the inside out, eventually killing it. Sounds like the Greens to me.
The Keystone non-decision echoes the theme of “The Three Conjectures”. Punting from behind on Keystone didn’t bring peace, love and prosperity. All it did was make the Canadian Federal Government determined to take the gloves off and explicitly oppose Green schemes to damage the Canadian economy. By deciding not to act in hopes of avoiding one conflict, Obama directly caused a bigger fight in Canada. The fight may be in Canada but it has consequences for America; oh wait – Obama cleverly lost his status as a player in getting more Canadian oil. If the Canadian pipeline to Kitimat is built, then America will lose part of a secure oil supply to China and lose its position as a monopsony buyer of Canadian oil. That change will remove the discount on the price of Canadian oil (recently about $10 per barrel) that America currently enjoys.
Another consequence was to put Green organizations and their funding under a microscope. During the Keystone saga the U.S. Environmental Groups sung their song about Canadian Oil producers being “foreign spoilers” of Nebraska and other places. Now the Canadians are singing the same song but this time it is the U.S. Environmental Groups who are cast in the role of “foreign spoilers” and it’s the Canadian Federal Government singing the song. This will be a long battle, and who knows whether the Greens or Canada will win it.
By the Keystone non-decision President Obama spurned a no-brainer economic opportunity and showed Canada that it needs to get out from under the monopsony relationship. By stirring up unnecessary friction between Canada and the U.S. and giving up his place at the Canadian oil table he scored another “smart” diplomatic triumph.
Is anyone counting how much has Obama cost so far? I mean just in dollars, let alone in social damage.
This is not one case, this is rampant in our economy and is probably the biggest reason for the loss of industries and jobs for the last 20 years.
This is at least a three’fer. 1. The Keystone pipeline was suppose to move North Dakota oil; 2. as well as the heavy Canadian crude & 3. which the southern refineries were set up to refine into diesel for export.
I wonder which currency will be used to trade the crude with China?
It looks like Obama is f**king America’s friends again.
As we say in the car business, “If you can’t f**k over your friends and family, who can you f**k over?”
#2 Teresita — If you build the bridge, you can sling a pipeline underneath it. Power lines and comm lines, too, if you like. And maybe a railroad, as well …
OT, but in the interests of a few laughs …
Have you seen the Downfall parody, “Hitler reacts to Tim Tebow beating the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC playoffs in OT”?
Hilarious. Can’t get enough of those.
Back to your regularly scheduled disputations ….
It’s been a little over a year since the 10/10 organization tipped their moral and ideological hand by releasing the “No Pressure” video. It remains astonishing to me that anyone still takes the Green movement in-good-faith.
Joe Oliver mentioned the Green tactic of “stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects”. I’m wondering if the only way to beat these parasites is to stack those puplic hearings with an equal number of people ready to shout the Greens down.
12. stevesmith
Hi Steve Smith! Looking forward to posts under your new, real blog-de-plume!
Dustoffrider has the truth of it. This is the largest but certainly not the only part of the hyperregulatory cancer that is driving away productivity, both overseas and into oblivion.
As far as angering the friends goes, we were alerted to this in the runup to Obama’s inauguration with Robert Reich’s words about not giving government funded opportunities to white males. White, bad, not white, good. Male, bad, not male, good. Etc. Taken to it’s logical conclusion his sentiment applies to nations as well. U.K. (returning Churchill’s bust), Israel (!), and Canada with this latest pipeline fiasco. The more non-white, non-judeochristian a thing is, the less favor it will receive. Conversely, the more “ethnic” and secular a thing might be (think money to drill in Braziil or funding of Gaia worship through vehicles like Solyndra or Evergreen Solar) the more highly favored an entity will be.
The left elite make a guilt and philosophical and style statement by smashing what they do and supporting what they do. They have their cherished bogeymen, whose existence must be always held for the bogeyman defines the basis of their whole worldview.
“Is anyone counting how much has Obama cost so far? I mean just in dollars, let alone in social damage.”
Argh, too painful to contemplate.
Nothing like alienating the best friend and neighbor any nation could have, or hope to have.
For that matter, nothing like alienating probably a majority of the American electorate.
Oops. That should be nom-de-blog. Me not parle French much.
18. cellec
I’m wondering if the only way to beat these parasites is to stack those puplic hearings with an equal number of people ready to shout the Greens down.
I think a big mob of coal miners, tanker sailors, truckers, or oil platform roughnecks should do the trick. Another recruiting source is unemployed men of modest education who would profit mightily from an energy boom. Unemployed men of modest education tend to not be limp-noodled metrosexuals like the envirowenies. Oh yes, many of the aforementioned options are often unionized. Pitting union guys against a crowd of nancypantses would be a real treat. Two Obama pillars trying to topple each other over.
Should read “more white more judeochristian”.
5. Don Rodrigo
“Fascinating. I see Canada as having become a social democracy.”
Yes, Canada is more socialist than America used to be. From 1968, the Canadian Obama, Pierre Trudeau and successive Liberal governments tried to make Canada into their Progressive Lefty image. For foreign consumption they painted and sold their vision of Canada as some nice inoffensive guy with a goofy smile, except for his knee jerk idiotic anti-Americanism. Yet in the first and second world wars, Canadian troops were chosen as shock troops because of their ferocity. The actual Canada is different from the wishful liberal vision and the regions are very different.
Canada is a loose Federation of Provinces who have far more constitutional rights than do the U.S. States. To oversimplify: Quebec is flat out Socialist; Ontario is milque-toast Nannyland; Western Canada is almost like a separate country. Most of the Canadian population lives in Quebec and Ontario. The Atlantic Provinces largely survive on welfare payments from the rest of the country with the recent exception of Newfoundland which has newly developed offshore oilfields. The prairies used to be more socialist oriented but are now more conservative minded. British Columbia has always been eccentric, most often right of centre but sometimes left of centre. Within every region there are two big camps of progressives and conservatives.
Right now economic and political power is drifting to the more conservative West from the more socialist East. Both lefty and righty Canadians are rougher and cruder and way more interesting than our international image. Our history is rough and ready too and is one of self reliance and independent individuals. Our political history both Federally and Provincial is full of variety, change, unique political movements and really weird politicians. Canadian history is sometimes way more than Hollywood could digest. Much of our history is unknown to Canadians themselves (thank you high schools). As with the SCANS, the cold climate also seems to foster cooperation between individuals so we may be more collectively minded in a cold climate way. I have had the privilege of working with many unregulated Canadians who are bonafide North Country hillbillies, except that they fly airplanes and run businesses.
At the moment Canada seems to be moving right while the U.S. is moving left. I think that Americans have been sold a bill of goods regarding information about Canada. But of course, my personal take on the country will be different from other Canadians so you can’t take my opinion as being authoritative.
“What may have been intended as a signal of support to Green Energy lobbyists in the United States has been received by Canadians as a signal to diversify its energy market away from its traditional American customers. “
WWHHURP? (What would have happened under Ron Paul). NNFGB. (Nothing, not the federal government’s business). Smear it with laissez-faire. I guess most of the old timers here would reply “moonbattery”.
Any expat could tell you that the federal government has been making life for them unbearable for years. They would tell you that no non-expat US citizen ever gave a hoot, that US citizens always say “well if you don’t like it, give up your citizenship”. Well the expats are leaving, the drill platforms are leaving, the pipelines are leaving. And now the conservatives care, when in affects the price of a gallon of gas in their SUV’s. But when it came to the principle of liberty, they shrugged their shoulders years ago. Well now the bill is finally coming due.
Canadian troops were chosen as shock troops because of their ferocity. The actual Canada is different from the wishful liberal vision and the regions are very different.
Yes, I remember the old “Go Canada!” war posters. I think also that in Legends of the Fall, the Montanan protagonist joined the Canadian cavalry in the Great War, and scalped himself some Huns.
Canadian troops in Afghanistan actually fought and fought well, much to the chagrin of Canadian lefties, because this resulted in casualties.
10. Don Rodrigo:”Also note that one of the big enviro-funders is the Hewlett-Packard foundation.”
That is why I no longer buy HP products. Can’t have it both ways HP, you have chosen, poorly.
Steve Smith
Happy to see you are now not only out of the closet but out of the woods. I’m on your side except when the Canucks play the Flyers.
Walt
“Obama has submitted to the leftist environmentalists for one reason only. Votes. ” That hypothesis is without evidence or even logic. How many radical environmentalists’ votes are there compared to everyday fuel consumers’ votes? I wasn’t clear. This doesn’t benefit Maurice Strong, it benefits a goal both he and Obama share: A weak U.S. Progress takes energy. Deny the U.S. energy but give it to the Chinese.
am @ 4: I have postulated that prosperity fuels environmentalism.
It is a basic evolutionary phenomenon that prosperity increases diversity, that most of the mutations are neutral in the current environment, or even negative but affordable, and of course some are negative and fatal.
Cordwainer Smith (sf author) has in “Golden the ship was, oh oh oh!”, the idea that in times of peace the leaders of mankind are corrupt rogues, but when a crisis comes they have to step up.
Unfortunately (?!) we are very rich these days, and a lot of *questionable* behaviors are evident, and it should be no surprise that many are downright goofy. Though, none of this is much of an excuse for putting the worst of the worst at the head of your government. Though, I suppose that too appears to be the natural cycle of human government as well.
We naked apes do OK, but we could do better.
stevesmith,
Welcome to reality. One day I may get there.
They use funding from foreign special-interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest.
Doesn’t the RCMP function as the Canadian branch of the UK’s MI5 and Special Branch, or like the one stop US FBI? The boys in red tunics are not known for being shy about knocking on or down doors.
Remember that in 2008 Obama raised a significant amount of money from Hamas sanctioned phone banks in Gaza and that his campaign acted affirmatively to disable the software controls that would have protected against the anonymous or illegal use of credit cards. These same tax exempt foundations that are acting against the interests of Canada and the US regarding the pipeline, and in the apparent interests of China Russia and Middle Eastern or other oil despots, are closely tied to the financing of the US Democratic Party and the career of Barack Obama.
These are the same tactics that have been used to cripple the US nuclear industry. Recently Angela Merkel was stampeded into killing the nuclear power industry in Germany. Who benefits from that act? Surprise surpreeze Gazprom employs Gerhard Schroeder and Joschke Fischer, as well as a former Finnish PM and many other Western former eaters at the public trough not otherwise retired on the Saudi dime. Are any Canadian politicians enjoying an overseas augmented pension?
Americans are foolish enough to fund our own enemies, as well as the enemies of our allies, but some ostensibly non-partisan tax exempt foundations are conduits for foreign money, others possibly ship US wealth overseas to benefit other powers. They can do this either directly or by influencing public policy. We have talked before about the abuse of charitable foundations (Heinz, HP, Rockefeller, Ford) despite the intentions of their founders. Others such as Tides are designed from their beginnings as partisan Leftist operations. In other countries the corrupt have to look to overseas financing.
22. roughcoat
This is where I claim that Chicago was discovered by Canadians. If I remember correctly, there is a beach with a French name somewhere around where the river enters the big lake. I have also heard that the name “Chicago” is the French rendering of the Miami-Illinois name shikaakwa.
29. walt
At least Chris Pronger, the pride of Dryden Ontario is the Philadelphia Captain. They can’t be all bad.
Yet another instance of the parasite killing the host. Do you expect many future Hewletts or Packards (or Henry Fords) will create such foundations after seeing those created by their forerunners captured and perverted?
Sure, leftist billionares may continue to do so, but even they are likely to notice that while the foundations might be pursuing goals the leftist billionaires approve of, they aren’t doing what their founders intended. Then again, the more cynical may just be content with keeping their names in the news years after their death.
Stevesmith/12
To continue the parasite metaphor, that’s another problem when the parasite gets too greedy and sucks too much life out of the host. At least when the host is intelligent. At low levels of infestation, the host doesn’t really notice the parasites and goes on about it’s business. But when the infestation gets worse, the host goes to the doctor and gets some blood tests.
DOC: Well Mr. Canuk, looks like you’ve got a greenworm problem.
CANUK: A what?
DOC: Greenworms. They’re caused by watching nature documentaries instead of actually spending time outdoors.
CANUK: Are they dangerous?
DOC: Potentially fatal. They work their way towards the heart and brain. But you can control them with lifestyle and diet, if you’re willing to stick with it. We have some Sunshine pills that can help too…
Anyway, a rivadurchie westerncanadian and welcoe stevesmith.
Oh, and ah, keep your stick on the ice.
President Obama is the apex parasite.
Aren’t actions taken that damage one’s own country to the benefit of another meet the legal definition of treason? Anymore? Astounding that such actions that meet such a definition is met with shrugs, as if to say “…what can you do about it? I wonder if treason will ever be restored to a “we the people” issue again and if the constitutional remedy for it will once again be perceived as representative of the people served, and congruent with the oath of office?
stevesmith: Remind me to tell you—–someday or other—–about my Ft Bragg encounter with Sergeant Jerry Vida and Corporal Winston Churchill Hurry of the (unfortunately late) Airborne Regimenmt at the Ft Bragg NCO Club.
Eventually I outlasted them. They had to ride a C130 back to Canada while I
managed to get back to my barracks for some well-earned sleep-it-off time.
steve smith (12), welcome out into the sunlight, brother! I’m sure sorry as heck (and more so) for the nasty twist Obama has put into the relations between our countries.
“*As for Me and My House We Will Serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15″
…-
“Official: I Just Bet My House on the Outcome of Science Trial of the Century”
“No truer headline will you read. Yesterday this author literally wagered his home, life savings, and all his possessions on the outcome of a crucial global warming lawsuit currently ongoing in Canada.
“So what is it that drove me to such apparent recklessness endangering not only my own well-being but that of my family? Well, to me this pivotal lawsuit encapsulates the archetypal ‘good versus evil’ battle no conscientious parent can ignore. Facing each other is Plaintiff, Dr. Michael Mann (he of ‘hockey stick’ graph infamy) representing so-called UN ‘consensus’ climate science. Mann claims his work proves humans are dangerously warming the planet. Defendant, retired Canadian climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball believes Mann was a key player in the Climategate scandal and has hidden his dodgy tree-ring data for over 13 years to cover up fakery in the numbers. Mann and his ilk are not only responsible for scaring the bejesus out of our kids but are being used as part of a bigger plot involving population control and wealth re-distribution; none of which is good for your family or mine.
Dr. Mann, Director of Earth System Science at Penn. State, the university currently embroiled in the Jerry Sandusky child sex cover up scandal, has enjoyed a lucrative career on the back of his fantastic claims. Dr. Ball famously declared that his adversary belongs “in the state pen, not Penn State.” For that Ball was summarily hit with a libel suit and Ball’s legal fees could exceed $300,000. But defiantly, the septuagenarian says, “if you think education is expensive – try ignorance.”
I recently drew attention to the remarkable similarities in the cover-up processes performed for the benefit of Mann and Sandusky at Penn. State. At their root, both cases share the same stench of self-serving financial sleaze.
So persuasive is the evidence to me that last night I signed a contract in favor of Dr. Ball to forsake my worldly goods in the event the B.C. court ruled in favor of his adversary, Dr. Michael Mann .”
http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/42475.html
Talk about environmentalists working at cross purposes, if the oil does not go via the Keystone pipeline, one of the paths will be via existing pipeline to Vancouver and then via tanker though the Puget Sound on the Washington State, BC border. I would imagine this has many times the possibility of environmental disaster than the Keystone. It’s mine blowing the stupidity.
There’s more information here about the enviros and their foreign backers:
http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/2012/01/northern-gateway-pipeline-hearings-old-and-tired-hijack-new-hotness-mob/
… and also includes signing up people as ‘intervenors’ in the public hearings who didn’t actually sign up to speak:
http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/2012/01/northern-gateway-pipeline-hearings-sabotaged-by-chicago-style-politics/
Yup Obama is supporting his terrorist allies in Saudi Arabia by doing this. Good job Obama! The thing we conservatives in Canada keep trying to drill into liberal heads here is that Democrats are the enemy of our country. They all love Obama even today. They just don’t understand.
The unintended consequences for the average US citizen on this issue are going to be significant. It is going to cost you $10/barrel more for all Alberta and Sask. oil. Given that Alberta supplies more foreign oil to the USA than Saudi Arabia, the hit is going to be big. Right now the US refineries pay $10/barrel less for Alberta oil than they pay for international oil. That will no longer be the case once the Northern Gateway pipeline is in operation. Expect to pay a lot more for gasoline and diesel in the US. The other unintended consequence is the advances that CNRail is making in moving oil by rail. They have been buying up small raillines all over western Canada, and have claimed they can move up to 4M barrels of oil per day to any point in North America at $15/barrel less than by pipeline. No enviromental reviews needed no payoffs to Indian Bands etc. The thing is Canada will not turn back now no matter what the US wants. And this is just the beginning, once Canadians get the feel for doing business with Asia we will expand the trade. Think Potash, and many other strategic minerals. Sask. has 25% of the world’s potash etc.
Well said, stevesmith @ # 25. I agree with your assessment.
I’m a C/conservative Canadian, who’s delighted with the Harper government’s pushback at the lefty loons who’ve run our country—very badly—for decades. Considering that our MSM—except for a few bright lights, like SUN News and, on occasion, the National Post—treat C/conservatives the way the American MSM treats Republicans and Tea Partiers, it’s no wonder that the perception of our country, even among Canadians, is so skewed. (As Steve notes, it has a lot to do with our “progressive”, propaganda-filled public school systems.)
Our Obama was Pierre Elliot Trudeau, another Marxist—his kids call Castro “Uncle Fidel”—and Canada’s still weighed down by the socialist baggage he left behind. E.g., His “Charter of Rights [sic] and Freedoms [sic]” has removed all kinds of rights and freedoms from traditionalist (often Christian), independent-thinking, law abiding citizens and transferred them to left-wing and other upstarts, e.g., radical feminist/gay activists, environmentalists, immigrants who use our multicultural laws against us, etc.
The Charter has also transferred power to the courts, which have “end runned” our elected Parliaments over and over to confer special rights on preferred groups. Trudeau was last in power in 1984, but his Charter, like a giant octopus, spread its tentacles far and wide into the future—and is still with us. (There is a way to deal with unjust, undemocratic court decisions: it’s embedded in the Charter, Section 33, the “Notwithstanding Clause”, whereby a legislature may negate a Charter court decision. But our duplicitous MSM have blacklisted this section of the Charter and our spineless politicians have fallen in, in lock step. I fervently hope that the Harper Conservatives will use their majority to educate Canadians about Section 33—and then use it when another court overreaches.)
I’m very pleased to see the Conservatives calling Obama’s and the Greenies’ bluff. It only takes one to say, “The Emperor has no clothes” to unleash a wave of truth telling. It’s about time!
Sometime in the early nineties, a friend of mine showed me his PacBell (a California telecom company) credit card. It featured a “Green” financial instrument which alotted a percentage of his purchases to a fund that professed to mitigate Greenhouse Gas effects.
My friend was excited about the card. He was among the first people to sport the fashionable, emerald plastic, and he really believed his participation in its funding scheme would make a difference. I thought otherwise.
As my buddy’s enthusiasm bloomed on his face, I felt a contradictory sinking feeling in my stomach. “This will not end well,” my gut told me. Now, after the liberals’ investments in subprime mortgages has blown up in our faces, the negative return on taxpayers’ investments in places like Egypt and Nigeria has come to the fore, the billions wasted on crony ‘green’ projects in places like Spain, Greece, and Scotland (and soon to be, Arizona) made the frontpages, and last, after the furious efforts expended to prop up artificial currencies and their supposed regional blocs in Europe and Asia have all but failed – it is painfully evident that wherever governmentalists interface with high finance, underwritten by taxpayer guarantees, farce ensues.
Could the simple emetic that will expell the parasite be the abolition of the FDIC? Taking banks back to a system where their deposit volume underwrites their lending, not taxpayers states away, then some rationality may return to the banking system. Maybe a general legislative assault on GSE’s of all kinds will do the trick.
In the movie Doctor Doolittle, we are introduced to the mythical “Push-me-pull-you” creature. Government sponsored enterprises, such as California’s quasi-private civil service agencies, are Push-me-pull-yous. Perpetually tugged in opposed directions – towards statist goals on the one hand, and towards private, for-profit goals on the other, the governors of these organizations are unable to achieve linear progress of any form. They only serve to curdle markets, and, really, they should not exist outside of a zoo.
Walt
I happened to access the Jim Reeves link…”The shifting whispering Sands” and the image that came to mind was not the Canadian Oil Sands but rather the disaster that has befallen the California Central Valley…..all because of an enviro-idiot agenda over a minnow.
The Isreali’s make the desert bloom…the Greenies make the vineyard into a desert. A pox on their houses.
Your whole line of argument is flatly racist and contains many seeming contradictions.
61 First Nations “in” British Columbia (it’s certainly arguable that they “own” BC or “are” BC) signed the Save the Fraser Declaration that you can read at http://savethefraser.ca No treaties have ever been signed, no lands ever ceded, and no jurisdiction to approve anything like Northern Gateway exists in either BC or Canada. The entire “process” is a racist fraud.
Second, the purpose of selling oil to China or other carbon-uncontrolled countries is to start a “race to the bottom” in dirty oil resulting in a failure to agree on any standards. If the US refuses dirty oil, sell it to China. If China refuses, sell it to India. If China and India refuse it, sell it to the USA. If all refuse, sell it to Viet Nam or Africa including via the Gulf of Mexico. Sell the dirty oil whatever the costs of infrastructure, diplomatic isolation, climate and ocean acidification conflict, and etc..
This is why nine Nobel Peace Prize winners signed a petition against Keystone XL. This geopolitical effect, which applies if anything more to Northern Gateway, is the central reason for opposition, and it is certainly a genuine reason for internationally funded opposition.
Also consider the Koch brothers’ lobbying, low royalties on oil, cheap/free access to water and natural gas for “upgrading” Tar Sands filth, Canadian diplomatic resources, and the bully pulpit of Mr. Harper and Mr. Oliver all as subsidies not to cause-based groups but to specific dirty companies (TransCanada, Enbridge) which repeatedly lie and break US laws. Are these not “foreign” subsidies too, to the other side?
A “parasite” is defined as an organism that sucks up resources from a host without healing or protecting any of its life systems. By this definition, the activists opposing Keystone XL and Northern Gateway (protecting watersheds, aquifers, atmosphere and a tolerable level of ocean acidity) are symbiotes, but Tar Sands boosters are all parasites.
That definition I am sure would withstand scrutiny by any number of Nobel Prize winners in science.
The definition of “hijack”, likewise, is to steal something and move it away from where it belongs. That reasonably describes both the regulatory attitudes of Christy Clark and Alison Redford and Joe Oliver and Stephen Harper, and the theft of Tar Sands oil at the cost of elevated cancers on the Athabasca.
Now we’ll see if you support free speech or not.
Damn, I had it all wrong, I thought Obama was trying to start Civil War II, but with Obama killing the Canadian pipeline and trying to pick a war with Iran he is going to start World War III to stay in power.
Craig Hubley, not sure where you are from, I am from Northern Canada, and I know hundreds of Indians some good some bad. So spare me the Hollywood Version of “The Noble Savage”. It never existed and the Noble Savage is now a welfare bum. The Indians of BC do not own BC or anything else in Canada anymore than us White Folk do, consider this, as I have asked many younger Indians here in Canada who have been brain washed into thinking they own everything. What are you going to do with the 33M White Men living on your land?
It’s ironic too because the so called “tar sands” mining operations are very similar in nature to cleanup operations performed at the site of old gas stations where oil has seeped out of the tanks and into the ground. The difference of course is that oil has been naturually formed and is essentially poisoning the land. After an oil sands mining operation is complete the soil that used to be toxic is rendered non-toxic and trees are planted. The net effect is a positive one which is why one of the founders of greenpeace is a supporter of oil sands development.
Don’t be fooled the opposition to the Keystone and the Northern Gateway is a combination of lobying by competing oil producers AND environmentalists who oppose all fosil fuels. The reality of course is that fossil fuels are not going away anytime soon and it makes far more sense to buy it from responsible nations who take environmental protection seriously such as Canada instead of rogue nations like Iran and Venuzuala.
Maybe Obama’s trying to start the War of 2012, Ratt? ;^)
Did zombie Yasser Arafat sign the petition too?
I sent this letter to Obama a month ago:
Dear President Obama,
I am writing today to urge you to authorize the building of the Keystone XL pipeline as quickly as possible. Here’s why:
1. This nation’s economy floats on a sea of energy, most of it produced through the use of fossil fuels.
2. We are going to be using fossil fuels for at least another 50 to 75 years – this provides secure future supplies.
3. The Canadian oil sands will be produced.
4. If we don’t buy the oil, China and other nations will buy it.
5. Building the pipeline will create badly needed jobs and investment in this country.
6. Securing this supply of oil will contribute to our national security.
7. Availability of oil from an ally will help keep oil prices and inflation low.
8. This oil, when refined into usable products, will provide badly needed tax revenue for the government.
9. Based on the foregoing facts, this project is a true necessity for our nation.
Please approve the pipeline as soon as possible.
Now if 50,000 more would send a letter, maybe it would get his attention.