The Associated Press reports a White House apology for burning Korans in Afghanistan. The books in question were apparently “removed from a library at a nearby detention center because they contained extremist messages” taken to a garbage pile and burned. “Press secretary Jay Carney says it’s a ‘deeply unfortunate incident’ and doesn’t reflect the respect the U.S. military has for the religious practices of the Afghan people.”
Readers will recall that a year into the President’s term, CNN reported Bibles had also been burned — intentionally and as part of policy. “Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.”
The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.
AdvertisementSuch religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said.
“The decision was made that it was a ‘force protection’ measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims,” Wright told CNN on Tuesday.
Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.
And that’s where the Bibles belonged. In the trash, by policy. Recently Newt Gingrich raised the question of whether these types of decisions are really religious questions or one of intellectual honesty. The former speaker of the house argued before an audience that the real problem in Washington was the dismaying tendency to make policy on the basis of fantasy. First you lied, then the lie became official, and finally the lie was funded by billions as if it were the truth.
Of course the problem goes beyond Obama. Even though the President’s administration may be the most egregious exponent of logical inversion, Republicans can be pretty good at lying too. One could argue about the matter of degree, but the principle remains. Official truth is not the same as real truth.
For example, in many prisons throughout the United States, an inmate about to be executed is forbidden from smoking a cigarette or drinking alcohol with his Last Meal on the grounds that Death Rows should be “smoke free zones”. It probably makes no health difference to the condemned man, but appearances must be preserved.
Maybe Newt should have added in his remarks, that things are now at the point where appearances must be invented. Nothing even has to look like it makes sense. Take for example the Keystone pipeline, which President Obama rejected. In the words of Jay Carney, the Republicans “forced” Obama to reject the pipeline.
“In terms of Keystone, as you all know, the history here is pretty clear. And the fact is because Republicans decided to play political with Keystone, their action essentially forced the administration to deny the permit process because they insisted on a time frame in which it was impossible to completely approve the pipeline,” Carney said when asked about the pipeline by ABC News’ Jake Tapper.
Later in the briefing, Carney says it is the Republicans’ fault.
Jake Tapper: “How can you say that you have an all the above on approach if the President turned down the Keystone pipeline? And you blame the Republicans for making it political.”
Carney: “But the President didn’t turn down the Keystone pipeline. There was a process in place, with long precedent, run out of the State Department because of the issue of the pipeline crossing an international boundary, that required an amount of time for proper for review after an alternate route was deemed necessary through Nebraska at the request of the Republican Governor of Nebraska and other stakeholders in Nebraska and the region that needed to play out, to be done appropriately. You can’t review and approve a pipeline, the route for which doesn’t even exist.
“The Republicans were the ones who unfortunately decided because they were looking for scalps, I guess, or wins in a situation where they somehow found themselves on the wrong side of cutting taxes for 160 million Americans last December. They decided to play politics with this decision and attack the payroll tax cut extension. Even though it was made clear by the State Department that doing so would make it impossible for them to conduct the review responsibly, they did it anyway knowing what the result would be.”
From there it is but a small step to burning Bibles because they are provocative and preserving Korans scrawled with extremist messages in order to show respect for all religions. Once the process of making up the lie, stamping it official and funding the resulting falsehood is in place, why, anything is possible.
Thus, Newt’s rant, properly understood, isn’t that Washington lies. It has been doing that for ages. The difference is that things have progressed to the point where it is lying to itself about lying to itself. It’s in a moral white-out. No landmarks are left in that city of monuments. This is probably a good place to insert a Band of Brothers reference about things we do for in a moment and remember forever.
Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment.
chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie.
Which means in French that things you do in a moment of infatuation tend to have consequences that hang around a whole lot longer than we would have thought. (For the rest of this tune, we have to rely on the Seekers.)
In the Band of Brothers scene, the men are in a church, toting up their losses, measuring themselves against the reality of the German Army and time. It’s a reminder of what purpose truth serves, in the end it gives us is a connection to reality and to each other. The lie by contrast, severs the bond between men and the world. Whatever we imagine we possess when we lie, we don’t. After enough lying what remains in the end is only the lie. And even that isn’t there.
The real poverty of Washington begins in its mind. It can impoverish even the Presidency. For what speaks when President Obama delivers his soaring speeches? The President? Or is he just a performer lip-syncing the lie? Who is the man who leaves enters the door of the Oval Office each day? Does he even know? Or has that last little kernel of the truth been mislaid?
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Leftists have been lying to themselves for years. How often they will say, with the evidence of the failures of socialism staring them in the face, “well, that wasn’t true socialism, true socialism hasn’t been tried yet”. Now we are at the end of another failed socialist experiment as the US social-welfare state heads into bankruptcy. But they just won’t admit it. They just continue to double-down on their socialist policies, foolishly believing that they are the ones who will finally make socialism work.
I admire the failed socialists of the past in the early American communal experiments like the Owenites or the Shakers — at least they built their own socialist utopias voluntarily unstead of trying to force all the rest of us into the abyss with them.
I think this is the reason so many of us have our reservations about Romney, is that to date he has been unwilling / incapable of articulating what we are feeling…we’ve all been through a couple of rough years, and in such an important election we feel it is important to forthrightly face the big problems facing the US and the world…although we have big gripes with Obama, the biggest disappointment has been the total lack of leadership. We don’t need another Senator with no experience; but rather, need someone with the leadership skills to articulate what has allowed the US to be so successful, and one that is experienced enough to seek out the Pat Moynihan’s across the aisle in order to solve our very real problems today…where are all the real Public Servants?
As I have said before, one of the worst things about working in DC is that you have to lie.
You mainly have to lie because people are lying about you and you have to explain why they are wrong. Maybe they are confused. Maybe they are lying. Or maybe they are just hostile. Regardless It’s the same thing in its effects. So they say to cut some funding for some project and you have 2 hours to respond. So you say that the funding cut will cancel an entire program. Will it? Well, you don’t really know and there is no time to find out and there certainly is not enough time to figure out how to do the program without the funding. But there is more truth in your lie than in theirs.
You have to lie because there is no way the people you are explaining things to will ever understand the truth.
You have to lie because there is no way the people you are explaining things to will ever be able to handle the truth.
You have to lie because of real, actual national security issues.
rwe @ 3: As I have said before, one of the worst things about working in DC is that you have to lie.
Not that I’d disagree with that, but putting it in a more positive light, you have to communicate, boil down very big issues into a few quick and memorable phrases. It’s an art form. As I’ve explained to people preparing resumes that it’s the wrong place for modesty, in political talk it’s not exactly that you are forced to lie, but it is seldom that you get a chance to tell the whole truth.
On the right, we (!?) can always fall back on biblical talk as at least metaphorical. This irritates the hell out of the left. In turn, they make up far-fetched readings of events, like today’s denial by Jay Carney that Obambus killed the XL pipeline, it was those wascally Wepublicans who didn’t give the process time, and then get all giddy over their cleverness at narratives and deconstruction and the way the right sputters over this nonsense, remember the kerfuffle over George Lakoff a few years back?
What gripes, mystifies, and concerns me is that at the highest executive levels, you just don’t have time for the truth, you have to deal with very thin abstracts and trust the hierarchy that feeds it to you. And the art of dealing with these abstractions is almost never the same skill you would use in dealing with issues in detail. As the world gets more complex and the depth and breadth of our control trees grows out of control, it’s hard to imagine any results better than chance out of such a system.
I still need to find the exact quote, but it’s something like the true dharma is not denied, but is lost (indistinguishable) amongst the false dharma.
–
o @ 2: where are all the real Public Servants?
I think Nancy Pelosi eats one every morning for breakfast, washing it down with a nice chianti.
The Roman Governor washed his hands, exclaiming ‘What is truth?’
Full knowing that the truth was but a game
For truth can be an evanescent veil that covers both
Illusion and reality the same
The child who claims he sees a monster hiding ‘neath his bed
Has told the truth for monsters he has seen
The politician who proclaims that he alone knows best
Lies not though truth lies somewhere in between
The problem comes when politics claims what is false is true
And then proceeds to say that black is white
And then the media repeats the lie as given fact
Until too many nod and say that’s right
In this time of great troubles and problems, we must have a President who can tell the truth. Honestly defining a problem is the first and most important step in solving any problem. We will never solve any of our most vexing problems unless we successful define them, because the chances of stumbling upon a successful solution to any of these without defining it is close to nil.
Romney and Santorum are bought and paid for stooges of the Criminal Crony Elite. Certain problems will never be honestly discussed by either of them , because their masters will not allow it. Same goes for Obama and almost all of the Democrats. If we are stuck with either Romney, Santorum or Buraq the next four years, there will no real solutions to our most serious problems, only make believe charade – solutions trotted out to mollify the masses like the recent MERS Bank Settlement or the Greek Debt deal.
The problem with lies is cascading exposure. Once you start pulling on a thread the whole tissue of deception starts to unravel. For example, the Supreme Court is rehearing the question of whether race should be used as a factor in school admissions.
Well so what?
The problem of course, is that higher education affirmative action is part of a larger system of payoffs and penalties whose goal is not racial equality — no, no, the bitter truth is that nobody in the political system really cares about the fate of the blacks — but about delivering votes. The real deal is certain ethnic groups are paid off in the now debased coinage of credentialism in exchange for allegiance at the ballot box. If a court decision pulls down this arch it creates an instability, a void that has to be filled. So the whole question now becomes how to find a substitute payoff.
Back in the day that would have been easy. Just slice another piece off the Design Margin. Throw some surplus chump to the dogs. But in these hard times even chumps are getting scarce.
What is driving the instability is greater resource competition. People are now fighting harder for positions because they are hurting. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more voluntary bowing to the altar of White Guilt. The whites need food on the table too. In opposition to the official “truth” that the economy is recovering is the probable reality that things are in bad shape. Hence, the “affirmative action” that flew a decade ago won’t fly any further.
Lies are fragile in that way, as anyone who has dealt with a swindler will know. Once the crack in the facade appears it uncontrollably spreads. The entire edifice of falsehood may seem secure, but it is really fragile and gimcrack.
And because times are tough it is getting harder and harder to fob people off with fictions. The rubes will want delivery or their money back.
#6 Unsk……
C’mon, you can do better than this….
“Romney and Santorum are bought and paid for stooges of the Criminal Crony Elite.”
But this is just the wages of having an aristocracy. An Aristocrat has his place because of either words or force instead of deeds. Both words and force perpetuate lies. Words because it’s easier to claim something than to do it, and force because the small minority of the nobility would quickly be slaughtered by the masses unless they lied about their invicibility or popularity.
But it does seem to be entering a terminal phase. The biggest lie of course is that you can’t question the assumptions that underly the entire circus.
In terms of self-preservation the worst thing a con-man can do is to start believing the lies he tells to the rubes. And when it becomes fashionable to do so among the confederacy of false prophets and wise men doom rises up like the clouds of a hurricane in the distance.
The storm approaches.
OK, Charlie let’s get specific:
Romney was for the bailouts, the unconstitutional GM/Chrysler settlement, Romney care and governed from the Left as governor. He was a long time fighter against tax cuts and was running against Reagan into the 90′s. His economic plan won’t cut taxes or regulations, but he wants a VAT to grow taxes. He is against anything that would hurt his TBTF cronies. And today he came out against spending cuts :irstread.msnbc.msn.com/_…/10469786-romney-spending-cuts-slow- economic-growth – Similar
In short, he is against anything that would curtail the power of the ruling elite.
Santorum has a long history of supporting the unions, big government and big government spending. He favors top down centralized government solutions. He thinks like a big city political machine conservative pro-life democrat. He has come out against the Tea Partiers. While he has had a recent conversion to me-too conservatism for the primaries, there is nothing in his history that would indicate he would rock the boat on economic issues and take on the Crony establishment except for his favorite subject: morals.
While not as bad as Romney, he has been in tight with the Cronies for a long time.
wretchard 7,
“Just slice another piece off the Design Margin.”
After you feed GM and Chrysler and the entire financial industry starting with mortgages for Fourth Ward Chicago slums courtesy of Obama Rezco Franks and Dodd to your favored underachievers there isn’t much Design Margin left.
If we wrap the Korans in the American flag is it then OK to burn them? How about a Plan B? If you shoot at an American then we burn a Koran. If you bomb an American then we find your hometown and destroy a mosque. If Iran deploys a nuclear weapon then we will send a bucket of sunshine down the Hidden Imam’s well. If you treat us with respect then we will move heaven and earth to help you. Actions have consequences. Welcome to Planet Earth.
The BC comments sections have become relentlessly depressing and despairing.
Perhaps this may be the time for some to remember what Ash Wednesday and Lent are all about; and to remember also the reason why “despair is not only a sin but also the origin of other sins.”
Prognostications of looming catastrophes and approaching storms may or may not be correct. But no one can know for sure and, that being the case, it might be more correct, if that is the word, to temper those prognostications with optimism and hope.
“Whatcha got ain’t nothin new. This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”
Josh #4:
“…you have to communicate, boil down very big issues into a few quick and memorable phrases. It’s an art form.”
Yep, you have to do that. Real example: Explain why the House should not cut out two GPS satellites, kill the funding for a new radar at Cape Canaveral, reduce funding for Delta boosters, and have the Air Force hand $250M to a contractor who screwed up big time and thinks its not fair it will reduce his profit. You have one paragraph to do all of this. We rewrote that one over and over until we finally ended up with it exactly the way I wrote it at first.
But that’s not the same thing as a lie that is in response to someone either not understanding or not caring what some funding is for. E.g., the satellite is getting longer. So we need to modify the crane in the processing facility. Can we do it without modifying the crane? We don’t know but you have 2 hours, tops, to figure it out. So you respond by saying that we can’t launch any more weather satellites without the crane mod. Maybe that’s true or maybe it is not, but it’s closer to the truth than the “throw a dart at the board” approach they used when they decided to cut the funding. They did not even know what the friggin’ crane was for and had never even been in the payload processing facility I used to run.
The crisis is beyond logical argument. The dynamics will be driven by need, just as they are in Europe. The fate of Greece somehow suggests to me that despite all the lip service that is being paid to “minorities”, they too will be thrown to the dogs the instant their usefulness passes. Maybe it is already happening. In the last analysis, the morality of the Left is the morality of the Mafia.
The guys who went along for the ride, (see plaisir d’amour) who thought they’d booked passage, are going to find they’ve been shortchanged. It just takes a spin around the harbor and goes back to the dock. See youse guys later. Who said anything about a cruise to the Caribbean?
The reason for the double-cross is simple, there’s not enough to go around any more. Everybody is going to be shortchanged. Now either they show some respect for the system (we are talking about the system that purported to love them) and shut up or they might do with less.
This is what a system in crisis looks like.
it seems to me, that as real wages have stagnated, the masses have learned that we’re only worth however hard we are willing to work in order to maintain…and it irks us no end what we see happening before our eyes (especially that the rules don’t apply equally to all). It’s like I told my gay friend in the Air Force when he asked: “don’t you think things are getting better now under Obama?” – the only thing that’s grown under Obama is cronyism
The Left will certainly throw people to the dogs. But Americans for the most part won’t. The intrinsic goodness of Americans will win through no matter what. Like it did in the Great Depression, like it always has in other times of crisis. That’s my prognostication. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong about that. But until I am, I’ll remain hopeful.
The reason for the double-cross is simple, there’s not enough to go around any more.
Yep indeed. When there are fifteen members of a mutual admiration society aboard a crashing airplane and there are only three parachutes things often do get ugly.
The great question is: which presently favored interest groups get thrown under the bus and in which order? And will it devolve into the political equivalent of the Donner Party? And who will be left alive in the aftermath?
“13. Roughcoat ”
Thanks – that was right on the money and just what I needed to Read on Ash-Wednesday
“17. Roughcoat
Americans for the most part won’t. The intrinsic goodness of Americans will win through no matter what.
”
Very true strong communities will survive / win in the end
It’s unfortunate that Bibles had to be burned in Afghanistan, but the policy against proselytizing exists because Christian proselytizing will get people killed. Evangelicals considered it a restriction of their religious freedom, an enforcement of atheism on the troops, a sign of the demonic possession of the CIC, etc. There’s no point in arguing, because they’re always more right than you are, and they won’t understand risking harm to a whole unit on behalf of one guy’s religious beliefs is bad, because by definition proselytizing is always good. So yeah, burn them – we’re not likely to encounter homicidal mobs over it, here or there, and we can make more Bibles.
Also, there is no alternate Keystone XL route yet settled for Nebraska, not for months, and I was watching members of Congress at that time kind of congratulating themselves for forcing a 60-day deadline on Obama to approve the pipeline, wondering what on Earth they were doing, forcing a rejection?
Why yes. Forcing a rejection was the plan, blaming the other guy for it was the goal, messing around with critical legislation to score points was no problem at all. This is why people hate Congress.
There is definitely a lot of hope. In Greece for example, the far left stands to win because they were the only ones who kept at arm’s length from the system. But in the US that role has been played by the Tea Party type groups. Thus, while the left inherits the collapse in one place, reason inherits it in the other.
As I’ve often argued on these comment threads the real importance of creating opposition groups lies in simply planting your stakes outside the system. In other places the “outs” ranged against the system consist of even weirder people than the ins.
What is encouraging about America — and to a certain extent the UK, with its UKIP — is that opposition has not been left to the maniacs. Without the UKIP, groups like the BNP would be the natural heirs of a system discredit. But because the mantle was not left to them they shall not have it.
That is why even if groups like the Tea Party never actually gain political power as a Party, that is not their role. Their role is to be right when it was unfashionable to be correct. Their task is to create the space in which the rebuilding will come. Because it will come.
I’ve often remarked that revolutions are as much about preserving things as they are about changing stuff. Thus, one of the attractions of the current TP-type memes is the proposition that a lot is good and right about America. That many of its overgrown foundation stones are priceless granite, solid as ever. Therefore it will be as much about remembering as cleaning house.
The Left on the other hand has no regard for any tradition besides their own nihilism. They are in many ways the rootless men, the Stavrogins of history. They don’t know how to build because they can acknowledge nothing that came before them nor anything that will come after.
So yes, there is a great prospect before us because the ordinary people are not nihilists. They want the sacredness of life and earth under God.
But that should not blind anyone to the dangers. Nothing in history is automatic. You can’t wait for the fruit to fall into your lap. You have to act as if everything were uncertain; nothing was guaranteed. Someone once wrote to me saying he would take up every inch of space in the Constitution to ensure that change took place within American tradition. He was right.
The real source of Hope in America is not in Washington but in the surprising persistence of the idea of America. That nation, as it lives in men’s minds, is not yet dead; nor by the grace of God will it be anytime soon.
hot from the meme machine:
OMG
Obama Must Go
You can Google it, go for the merchandise, like these t-shirts:
http://www.zazzle.com/omg+obama+must+go+tshirts
Its really hard to read and understand the bible in any kind of depth on your own. The best way to do is to join with a couple of guys and form a bible study. Even then you need structure. The best bible study program I’ve seen is from CBS Ministries. Its non denominational. It can be found here.
http://www.communitybiblestudy.org/classes_and_courses.aspx
Its work getting through the lessons. Usually it takes +-2 hours a week to do the study at the rate of one lesson a week. Its best to get a study bible because the footnotes and annotations at the bottom of the page often have the answers to difficult questions that can’t be gleaned word for word from the passages themselves. (I use the ESV English Standard Version 2008)
While the study involves work–the payoff is just profound and satisfying.
What is the truth?
The humor of the exchange between Pontius Pilot and Jesus is that the truth is standing right in front of Pilot. Jesus is the truth — as well as the way and the light.
A false thing that people sometimes believe is that they can change themselves. Like a statue perhaps can carve itself. It doesn’t work that way. A statue cannot carve itself. Neither can we change ourselves–in any significant way.
The best we can do is bring ourselves into the presence of God and let him change us. What does that mean? When you read to comprehend the bible you are bringing yourself into the presence of God as revealed by his Word. His Word is the truth. (Wait a minute. Didn’t I just say that Jesus is the truth? Yes. Jesus is the Word made flesh. He answers to the epistemological question…how do you know what you know.)
How does this work exactly?
The truth of the bible is like a flaming mirror in which we can see ourselves accurately. What happens is that the God’s Word is taking a picture of us as we read and comprehend His Word. That is, each person can accurately see his own life in the presence of God’s word. Just as people change as a result of being in front of photographers–so also they change as a result of sitting in front of God’s Word as presented by the bible.
There is hope. There is always hope. But being attentive to reality sometimes means you can’t be optimistic. Hope and optimism are not the same thing.
I personally remain very hopeful and even a little bit optimistic. Why? There are many reasons, as many as the number of great Americans I’ve met across our blessed land. But a good friend put it best:
“I’ve read the book. I know how it ends.”
L3
20 @Tee
It’s funny that the POTUS who has successfully sidestepped Congress on virtually every one of his agenda items which will weaken the United States all of the sudden was strong-armed by those meanies in 1/2 of Congress. Did that talking point come straight from Jay Carney or what? I mean, he only had 3 years to approve it, what else could he do when his hand was forced by the GOP? And forget that he has gone on the record multiple times insisting that our energy costs must skyrocket, by green necessity.
Not that I get any joy in defending the worthless Stupid Party, but let’s get real about who’s the driving force behind this.
21 @w
Uh…damn…that’s a bit spooky. Anyone who’s name we would recognize?
This would not have been possible without the dishonest fiat dollar. Nor would all these wars. They have simply been counterfeiting money to finance these lies for a century. It started in 1913 when the Wall Street banks and Wilson sold the country out to form the Fed. And which candidate has been fighting the Fed for decades and is being deliberately sabotaged by the banks and the system that propagates all these lies?
I said it before, Washington is Mordor. Anybody who believes that any wars started by these sycophants in that cesspool represent the best interests of the American people need to put down that crack pipe. Now.
OT: President Obama sings Sweet Home Chicago with Blues legend B.B. King at an event called “Red, White and Blues” at the White House.
Set List
1. “Let the Good Times Roll” (Ensemble)
2. “The Thrill Is Gone” (B.B King)
3. “St. James Infirmary” (Trombone Shorty)
4. “Let Me Love You Baby” (Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck)
5. “Brush With The Blues” instrumental (Jeff Beck)
6. “I Can’t Turn You Loose” (Mick Jagger)
7. “Commit A Crime” (Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck)
8. “Miss You” (Mick Jagger, Shemekia Copeland, and Susan Tedeschi,)
9. “Beat Up Guitar” (Shemekia Copeland, Gary Clark, Jr.)
10. “Catfish Blues” (Gary Clark, Jr.)
11. “In The Evening (When The Sun Goes Down)” (Gary Clark, Jr.)
12. “Henry” ( Keb’ Mo’)
13. “I’d Rather Go Blind” (Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes)
14. “Five Long years” (Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, Gary Clark, Mick Jagger)
15. “Sweet Home Chicago” (Ensemble)
Wow. Jagger, Buddy Guy, sure wish I could have been there. Whose paying for this anyway?
The problem on planet Washington DC is that Carney is not lying. Politicians have created a system of political payoffs in the form of government regulation. People go to jail for giving someone an envelope stuffed with cash and have the FBI tape it. What has been created over the past 40 years in the America is the passage of thousands of laws that need to be lorded over by thousands of government agencies and are administered by millions of civil servants whose job is to decide how these laws are to be applied.
You see Carney, the democrats and republicans both know that and EPA study must be done for a project like this. That’s that payoff to thousands of employees that the government must employ. It doesn’t matter that 600 new jobs (the minimum estimate) were being created, all that mattered was that the current Administration had to reject the plan because it would have “helped” the other party. What’s worse is that even if the Administration would have accepted the plan there are lawyers ready to file paperwork in court to stop it anyhow. This is the system we have created. It’s really not about lying or telling the truth anymore. Honestly, anyone that has ever been involved in a court case, divorce, knows that they never really want the truth to come out.
One thing humans are really, really good at is creating bureaucracies to administer laws. Simply because it is the easiest way to gain control. I’m really sick and tired of my “republican” friends going on and on about how we need change. We need a conservative/tea-party/republican to bring us back to blah, blah, blah… The merry-go-round is going to stop. We Americans will have to get off. The question is who will be waiting to take our places, are there any other rides to go to in the park and what will be the cost for getting on them.
21. wretchard
23. Charles
24. Leo Linbeck III
Yes to all three. Great posts. Charles and Leo made me realize that hope and optimism, like faith, do not happen automatically. You’ve got to work on them, cultivate them–not unlike that statue that doesn’t carve itself. You have to fight against despair. And not by blinding yourself to reality or denying it, either. The American idea won’t die as long as I’m alive; I’ll keep it and guard it, the flame imperishable. And I know I’m not alone, not by a long, long shot. There are millions upon millions of Americans who keep that idea. And the more our adversaries try snuff it out, the hotter and brighter it burns.
The failure in this war has been the inability to associate the enemy with the enemy’s ideology.
How might WWII have ended if we had taken such pains to ensure that the enemy knew we had nothing but respect for the ideals of naziism?
25. Dworkin Barimen – Not that I get any joy in defending the worthless Stupid Party, but let’s get real about who’s the driving force behind this.
We’re at the point of multi-year impact studies for any project, and automatic delays and challenges by people who really believe that we should limit ourselves to solar power and wind farms. Obama’s an obstacle, but the “driving force”…no. The driving force predated him and will be around long after he’s gone.
Just another column exhorting why Obama will win and Mitt, Santorum, Ron P. or Newt will lose, the Progressive lie is a lie in a lie and there is no way to puncture the inner most lie because all the MSM has been repeating those lie’s for so long that they are Felt and Thought to be the Truth, the Republican alternatives do not even speak the truth but a whiter lie than Obama. Only the abrupt and full collapse will the Truth ever be seen again!
“Force Protection” more like “Face Protection”
BAH HUMBUG! http://tinyurl.com/7dwxbo5
Keystone jobs:
The oil company’s 20,000 job estimate is inconsistent with government and academic studies. The State Department, the lead federal agency on the pipeline project, estimates that the project would bring 5,000 to 6,000 temporary construction jobs. An independent assessment by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute found that the Keystone XL would create between 2,500-4,650 temporary positions for two years, with only about 50 new permanent pipeline jobs in the United States.
We’ll take our pipeline elsewhere:
The false threat to export the oil-sands elsewhere is a red herring, because actually the pipeline to Canada’s west coast was planned to be built BEFORE Keystone XL anyway, and would be required for the Keystone XL pipeline to even function. The Alberta-to-BC pipeline will be a twin run, with the westbound pipe carrying diluted oil-sands, and the eastbound pipe carrying water to dilute the oil-sands, making the sludge pumpable. Part of that water was also going to dilute the Keystone XL’s oil-sands, so not building Keystone XL will just mean they don’t have to pump as much water east. [ref comments]
The truth behind the 20,000 jobs estimate? Two Pinocchios
After fumbling this badly right out of the gate, I don’t see how this thing can be built without an independent peer review. The worry is that if TransCanada (and Washington) “misrepresent” the impacts, what will they do with the design? The biggest loser has been Good Faith which is nowhere on the horizon. Nice way to ‘strategically communicate.’
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said that falsehood is always followed by violence. I suppose that’s true. Once the facade falls away and the elites have neither the mantle of superior knowledge nor the claim of moral authority to hold on to their goodies – what else is there but the IRS and the meddling bureaucrat backed by the power of the police?
Obama’s slap in the face of the Catholic Bishops was enough to wake them up, and hopefully also enough to force them to actually stand up for the universal principles at the bedrock of the organization. Their track record for the last 100 years or so has not been encouraging but as they say, the past is no guarantee of future performance.
No other organiztion is better situated to operate effectively outside what will surely be a hostile media blanket. No other organization has the authority and the ability to shock the status of those warring against it. Nancy Pelosi is no Catholic as far as I can see but I’d be willing to bet that she would not celebrate an excommunication.
God, Family, Work, Community. Those are American values that the Left cannot rub away even after 40 million abortions of the “less useful”. Get the conversation going in the Public Square about why those values matter to civil society and human happiness and watch what happens.
“First you lied, then the lie became official, and finally the lie was funded by billions as if it were the truth.”
I thought for sure that Newt would be referencing AGW.
Hah. Surprise!
Of course, Samuel C was right:
“A lie can travel halfway around the world
while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
–Mark Twain
tom
Incrementalism in the defense of Syria’s children is tyranny! And it is the kind of policy advocated by USEFUL IDIOTS!
You know who you are!!!!
http://tinyurl.com/6o8smco
SEAD – Right after the Iranians have wasted all their AAA & SAM ammo with their “fireworks” show!!!! Let’s waste some more Commie capital investment in military equipment “sold” on credit to tin pot dictators.
KICK ASS BOYS!!!!!!!!!!
REMEMBER THE “HIGHWAY OF DEATH”!
Tee and Greek:
The Keystone pipeline had cleared environmental reviews for three years running. Any additional “review” was a stalling tactic, and completely unecessary. Also, the Ogalala Aquifer is huge, and parts of it are criss-crossed by pipelines already, some of which have been in place for 50 years with no ill effect.
As to the number of jobs the pipeline would create? Why do people in this case completely ignore the cascading effect? It isn’t just the “5-6000″ construction jobs, but the follow-on maintenance jobs, the expanded employment at exisitng refineries benefiting from the pipeline, and the expanded local economies around those refineries and other related facilities. By the same token, expanding hydrocarbon extraction will not only add several hundred thousand energy jobs, but also undergird an economic recovery that will create several million more, including many jobs not at all related to the energy sector. Please stop the linear thinking and think “cascading,” you’re smarter than that. Thank you.
Any company that is built on an edifice of lies will certainly fail. Technology is trending towards better reporting… the kind that can’t be white washed over. Take Enterprise Resource management Planning like SAP, et al. The numbers can be fudged for a quarter but it sets up a fail for the following quarter. Borrowing from the future if you will. Boy I have seen my fair share of this in the past. At any rate, the government when confronted with inconvenient facts changes the rules in which the facts are reported. Lies, if you will cause their own inflationary spirals that can only be managed with violence. The Soviet Union did this well until it could to it no more. Government must therefore be held in check. Laisse Faire with business because business must deal with the truth to survive.
The only thing a lie begats, is another lie. It is the nature of lies.
I think the most present example of the dysfunction was obama’s appearance at the Boeing plant he tried to shut down. He was taking credit for being unsuccessful at not being able to shut it down under the rule of law. This is a success to this fool in his little pea brain.
I guess this kind of crap makes perfect sense in the control freak collective brain of the left.
…White House apology for burning Korans in Afghanistan. The books in question were apparently “removed from a library at a nearby detention center because they contained extremist messages”…
Not clear if the inmates added their own personal extremist messages, of if the korans were removed because of the extremist messages that are in every koran…
50 years with no ill effect
Don’t put stuff like that out there unless you’re prepared to ‘get into the weeds’ which I am. Reference size, length, material (crude, refined, liquid, gas), age, all superimposed over the aquifer depth profile. And then get back to me with a 50-yr spill history. Make it 25.
Please stop…
Dynamic analysis in economics is art not science. The so-called ‘multiplier effect’ is a kitchen sink of ideology, religion, and wishful thinking, and whatever the last graduate student used.
…
You know, I originally had no opinion on this project other than, oh, big engineering design-build construction job. Good. Bring in “some” jobs. Get things moving. Juice up the animal spirits. Go for it.
I “thought” the TransCanada people had done this before. From what I have learned, they cannot be allowed the luxury of being rank amateurs. They are arrogant liars. And if they are willing to lie in the front-end impact assessment stage, one might be excused for looking more closely into stories that the designers applied for a permit to use thinner material to “value engineer” the pipe design.
All of which could have been avoided by not siting the project in the one location (and the least expensive) where the aquifer is at ground level (I remind everybody that the “3 years” happened because the TransCanada land people were moving right along until they ran smack dab into that “hippy Nebraska farmer” who said no to the aquifer threat.) The stupidity is matched only by the hubris.
If I were the decision-maker I’d be making them bend over and say please sir may I have another.
“Lies are fragile in that way…”
Lies have to be managed in a way that truth does not require. Lies represent a bifurcation of reality. The reality as it happened and the reality as it is being represented. Necessarily, the lie changed to appeal to the individual or group receiving the lie therefore,the lie told to party X must be kept separate from pary Y. When speaking to a composite of groups XY then the message must be carefully split down between the two leaving each group to fill in the blanks based on their own selfish desires.
18. Tcobb
The Donner party only ate the dead.
Greek @ 41
Do you mean “value engineer” in accordance with this? http://tinyurl.com/bddmw
CFR Title 49 Part 192
What’s the matter, don’t you trust the federal government?
Yes, Greek you can have another and another repitan…..
Of course it would be possible to build in a larger safety margin, IF ANYONE WOULD EVER LET YOU BUILD EVEN MORE PIPELINES!
From a 1967 paper by Hannah Arendt “Truth and Politics”.
Lies transform the past from a rock into a bog upon which anything built will need constant attention to keep it above water. When the past becomes as contingent, as potential, as the future then it is no longer possible to make any predictions and so uncertainty rules all.
RE: design issues
Seminal article here: Keystone XL pipeline is not safe:
As an inspector, my job was to monitor the construction of the first Keystone pipeline. I oversaw construction at the pump stations that have been such a problem on that line, which has already spilled more than a dozen times. I am coming forward because my kids encouraged me to tell the truth about what was done and covered up.
When I last raised concerns about corners being cut, I lost my job — but people along the Keystone XL pathway have a lot more to lose if this project moves forward with the same shoddy work.
What did I see? Cheap foreign steel that cracked when workers tried to weld it, foundations for pump stations that you would never consider using in your own home, fudged safety tests, Bechtel staffers explaining away leaks during pressure tests as “not too bad,” shortcuts on the steel and rebar that are essential for safe pipeline operation and siting of facilities on completely inappropriate spots like wetlands.
More from this guy:
Bechtel will probably be the company to build the XL upgrade. The company is held by the [Bechtel] family with Riley Bechtel (50th richest ultra in the US) as CEO. The company has been controversial since early in its life (Wikipedia‘s coverage is interesting reading). The official plan is to use below-normal wall thicknesses, above-normal line pressures for efficiency. Expect the same sub-quality steel used in the original Keystone line (read Klink’s article). Without quality underpinning the work ethic, XL will prove to be a disaster.
Any other government lawyers out there? I am your worst nightmare, John Houseman of “The Paper Chase” re-incarnated!
I am going to make you do the multiplication tables up through 16 (Hey it’s The Digital Age and you need to know your hexadecimal too) until you can do them perfectly from memory!!!!!!! No wussy calculators for you lot!
Did you buy all the nonsense put out by the crew of the Deepwater Horizon? Some of it is true, some of it is false, some of it is wishful thinking, some of it is a quest for a role on a reality TV show.
Do you think whistleblowers are exempt from the principal of ‘misprision of a felony’? Where are the formal complaints to the FBI? What did the FBI investigation reveal?
SHOW ME THE PROOF!
BTW – Did you happen to notice that I provided the idea for what became known as “raising the plume” for dealing with “The Hellfires of Kuwait” and that Bechtel was the General Contractor. Killed over 750 sabotaged oil wells in about 8 months, ahead of time and under budget!
Greek:
Thanks for the feedback. I concede I have no answer at this time regarding the pipeline engineering issues, except for one: the Panama Canal suffered from a major “inferior steel” scandal, and got built anyway. The Deepwater BP blowout was a scandal too, and the Gulf is back to normal. I like loking at the really big picture: an expanded economy to revive a flagging America. I have spoken to many a down-and-out working class American trying to manage on a patchwork of part-time and odd jobs who love to be working fulltime in the enrgy sector, because they have the inherent skills for the most basic jobs in that field and itsd spinoffs, even if it meant driving trucks. I value them first.
As to this:
Dynamic analysis in economics is art not science.
I concede nothing. The “cascading effect” I cited doesn’t have to be “science,” because it’s based on history and historic precedent. Merely claiming 5-6000 jobs to be the final employment result for building this pipeline is being divorced from reality. I believe in including full cause-and-effect in considering such matters.
Riley Bechtel, current CEO Bechtel Corp, and member in good standing of the all-male Bohemian Club, now known to have close ties with the Skull & Bones Society.
In October 1999, hundreds of hours of Oval Office taped conversations from the Nixon era were de-classified. In one discussion Nixon tells his advisors, “But it’s not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time . . . It is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine with that San Francisco crowd. I can’t shake hands with anybody from San Francisco.”
Not that it matters.
GeoffB #45:
“It has frequently been noticed that the surest long-term result of brainwashing is a peculiar kind of cynicism…”
And that is one of the worst things about the Left. They work full time, 24/7 to further the belief that “everyone does it.” They make a big deal about ridiculous non-issues like Abe Grabe, Valarie Plame, the Fired Federal Prosecutors, etc. because they know damn well they are going to get caught doing far worse. The idea is to build up a drumbeat that makes people conclude that the Right has its own scandals, too, so what’s the difference? But it’s the difference between dropping one of the cookies on Mom’s new carpet and deliberately burning down the cookie factory.
As for the Pipeline – the BEST you can believe is that Obama stood back and let the slowly grinding, often halting, wheels of the Federal bureaucracy turn at ther own pace, never telling anyone that were going to have to do better. After all, that’s what he did in the Stimulus Package. And that is not leadership.
Don Rodrigo @ 49 – Tell them to keep their chins up. The Lord works in mysterious ways. http://tinyurl.com/6odfz4c
Greek @ 50 – So now you’re into gay bashing? Takes one to know one is what the old saw says, and Greeks are noted in legend for what kind of sexual practices?
Gee, that’s two sources so it must be true! Call Julian Assange!!!
DR@49: Subject project is badly conceived, designed and built (so far). I am not deterred, either personally or professionally, from the “life happens” concept. That it does. Over and over. (Not to even get into the subject that all these lines either have slow minor leakage problems and/or catastrophic blowouts that must be monitored and addressed as an integral – and not cheap part of the long-term O&M protocols. The performance history of TransCanada and Bechtel suggests they are competent in neither arena.) What I look for, personally and professionally, is integrity and good faith. Long term sacrifice for short term gain is not progress and this pipeline is not in the same league as the Panama Canal (nor is it a 12-inch gas line from the curb to your house.) What is egregious to me is the fairly clear intent to defraud and take dangerous short cuts. Two words for the Canadians: Go west (or get your act together.)
RWE,
Thus the ubiquitous use of the suffix “gate” to identify any and all scandals by always referring back to the “mother of all political scandals” which of course is well known as one of Evil (Satanic?) Republicans vs the Pearl Pureheart Democrats.
I’m going to assume you are missing an “or” in that at the least.
One principle that seems true always. Whichever way the crowd goeth, it is the wrong direction by 180 degrees.
The opinions en vogue aujourd’hui are misguided, if not downright false.
PC is just a metaphor for this condition. As Josh is want to say, from time-to-time, half of the people are entirely below average in perspicacity.
The difficulty is finding a leader who can communicate the simple truths without causing offense, allow opportunity to those who will listen to correct their course.
Nothing offends human ego (arrogance complex) quite like being proven wrong. This is also true of folks who are not liberal or progressive.
In terms of Bible doctrine, what mankind requires is epistemelogical rehabilitation. Our viewpoint is flawed because we lack divine truth.
In terms of the great ship of state, there exist certain principles that lead to security & prosperity, even blessing from above. Other paths lead away.
For rehabilitation to occur, there must be liberty and justice. Freedom to worship according to one’s own volition. Establish tyranny of the majority and lowest common denominator will prevail.
The leader that we need at least must know we are turned in the wrong direction. Social collectivism leads to decline. We are quite fond of recalling the glory days such as man walking on moon. Wow!
Now look at all the social welfare states that progressives point to as shining examples of collectivism. Wow we’re from Norway! Whoopeee!. No, that is not what you hear. You hear mediocrity. Or silence. (not to pick on Norway which may not even be a good example of welfare statism).
“The company is held by the [Bechtel] family with Riley Bechtel (50th richest ultra in the US) as CEO”
Oh I get it. Bechtel is EEEEVVVVVIIIIIILLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!! This is the same company who designed and engineered all of the piping to countless nuclear power plants? ya know, the ones that keep on exploding all over the place? Well maybe they can get Halliburton or KBR to do it.
@55: Subject pipeline is neither as “big” (in the value-historic sense) as Panama Canal nor as “small” (in the physical sense) as the many regional carrier lines that cross the Ogallala. One of the design points that got chewed up in the public explosion is that the proposed extension *is* big – in capacity and length – and will carry a crude product under pressure. So it’s a high risk project, which requires management and design mitigation as well as long-term monitoring which *always* get short-changed in design projects, explaining the push for maintenance-free (or minimal) projects. I was surprised, shocked actually, that a major design project would be subject to what is really little more than amateurism driven by what is nothing less than arrogance. I’m not sure what your point was but I have written enough on this subject. TransCanada has major grovelling to do.
Speaking of big money and oil, let’s have a look at who was supporting the anti-pipeline forces:
” A Powerpoint presentation obtained by The Daily Caller shows that during a July 2008 meeting, the $789 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund proposed to coordinate and fund a dozen environmental and anti-corporate activist groups’ efforts to scuttle pipelines carrying tar sands oil from Canada to the United States.”
Hotair has more information about that.
And as a Canadian, I would say that I am glad that I visit PJ Media, because it lets me know that we have good allies in America who support our friendship, unlike the criminal sort trying to undermine my country. Ralph Klein had good words for that sort.
Point was only that 12 inch is a rather large size to go from the curb to the house and made the assumption that the “12″ should have been “1 or 2″.
That you couldn’t even see that, and went after me in #58, for things I never said or alluded to, says much to me.
@60: I should have caught that. (I was thinking of the smaller regional lines that are 12-inches and under and added the curb comment for effect without putting the two thoughts together. My mistake.) But the allegation that I have gone “after” anybody is childish. Grow up.
@52: Not I, but this site has a history. The S&B connection is more interesting but Dick was always good for a quote.
Greek @ 50: “Not that it matters.”
Well, at least you got that right, Greek.
Greek, given your comments on pipelines, Bechtel, TransCanada, etc, would you mind taking part in a small unscientific study? What is your assessment of the “Hide the Decline” University of East Anglia Anthropogenic Global Warming scandal (or alleged scandal)? It would be interesting to see if the correlation coefficient holds up.
@62: Climate science has been compromised, which correlates well with my skepticism of dynamic analytics in the (relatively) new science of behavioral economics.
On Riley Bechtel and the Bohemians, I threw that out there primarily to contextualize the hypocrisy of a design-build team for marketing as “good for the little guy” what is essentially a corporate project with a rather remarkably limited “multiplier” effect – quite unlike Hoover or the Panama Canal or the Chunnel. Nobody cares, certainly not I, what the corporate guys take home from this project but don’t use the “little guys” (all 50 of them) as a fig leaf, which is precisely what they did.
A secondary reason was to expose these restricted membership by invite only clubs for what might be called questionable behavior or marginal judgment. I thought that might be obvious to a site that puts so much emphasis on god, family and community. The Bohemian Club has a pretty racy reputation.
I have to admit to being surprised at the suggestion that looking more closely at, and demanding tighter design, construction and monitoring controls for, a large and high risk project is being equated with threatening the sovereignty of our northern neighbor, being anti-oil, messing with Texas, and abusing small animals. People need to get a grip.
The inspector from Indiana is seeking Witness Protection.
And the Rockefellers, if true, overpaid. I would have reviewed the impact documents for much less.
#63 Greek,
There’s a difference between ensuring proper controls and falling for a propaganda campaign.
Also, the pipeline is safe, and has passed a number of rigorous reviews. Why not review the documents on TransCanada’s website, or better yet, ask them directly? Why not view the US DoS documents? Why not ask someone who has experience with pipelines and is also a neutral viewer? One angry dissenter with an axe to grind should not sway a reasonable man’s view. Especially when such a dangerous well-funded group of oppositional forces exist to promote it.
One of the major Nebraska anti-pipeline efforts was led by Dick Holland, who coincidentally is a major Berkshire Hathaway investor. Guess how the oilsands oil is moving right now? By rail. Guess whose railroads? Berkshire-Hathaway railroads. Railroads are far more dangerous than a pipeline when it comes to potential damage.
And finally, all that money and ooze being used to slime Canada is threatening to our livelihoods, and you are contributing to it by passing around false or at best half-truth filled articles. As for Witness Protection, that sounds more like a call for publicity than any real danger. Canadians may feel threatened but we aren’t Saudis or Venezuelans (two other groups who have conspired against us).
Canadians, especially Western Canadians are becoming very annoyed at the money being spent to damage our economy. It doesn’t just apply to the Keystone XL pipeline, but also to the Northern Gateway one. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to damage our energy sector. Most of what you have read is deceptive propaganda. It is not true.
Also, your snarky response is unbecoming. Please calm down and converse rationally.
@64: Your rebuttal is full of holes wrapped in a similar attitude. I’ll keep this short and make it my last post on the subject.
It is not “one man’s view” nor were the design issues central to my opposition. They were raised as questionable after the environmental documents were demonstrated to be flawed, which supports my earlier suggestion for an independent peer review, and suggests that your petulant litany of who, what, where and why has already been documented and addressed.
The lace curtain condescension that derides legitimate critique as “slime” and shrill is all too common among those whose factual database has been corroded by “dangerous” Nebraska farmers not excited about exposing their water supply to a high-risk project, and is as breath-taking as the arrogant performance of TransCanada to date.
Had the jobs issue not been abused in such a blatantly self-serving manner, and had the Sand Hills realignment not been opposed, I would have extended the benefit of the doubt. Not any more.
TransCanada’a behavior has been unprofessional and just plain rude, as noted by some of Canada’s own politicians before the curtain went down on the public dialogue. Your final suggestion might be better directed up north.
My rebuttal is full of the reality of the situation. If you choose to ignore what is really going on, that is your fault, not mine.
Legitimate critique- nonsense. Bought and paid for nonsense is not legitimate critique. The project was fine, is fine and had nothing wrong with it. Any issues that would crop up were already planned for. “Flaws” as exposed by those who have interests in calling them flawed. It is just one man’s view, magnified and amplified by massive amounts of money. Why are those large environmental groups not ashamed by how they abuse the trust of the public? There’s your arrogance right there.
Attacks against the Canadian energy industry have been shrill and self-serving, as I’ve noted. Other Canadians have noted this too, along with the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to attack it. We’re fed up, and we aren’t about to mince words. Don’t stand between a man and his next meal.
Some of Canada’s politicians support your position- lemme guess, NDPers. They don’t much like the energy industry, or the more conservative provinces where it is situated. I give them the credence they deserve. They lie and cheat up here, and use the media to cover for them.
Again, you need to calm down and converse rationally, without the scales of propaganda covering your eyes. I hope that in future you will learn the truth of the matter and stop supporting vile propaganda that hurts one of your nation’s surest allies.
Canada’s oil industry is ahead of the world in honesty and integrity, and you know nothing of the industry, having only read innuendo and half-truths.
Concerning the poster Greek,
I’ve read a number of his growing list of posts, seeking some citations, links, or references. Of these there is a distinct poverty.
But the attempt to indict Bechtel on the basis that one “is a member in good standing of the all-male Bohemian Club, now known to have close ties with the Skull & Bones Society…” is intellectual fraud. Sounds like a box of grapefruit… er, a case of sour grapes.
A personal friend invited years ago to join “Bones” was a public school graduate from Washington state who grew up working on his family’s ranch.
Well, actually… I suppose that would tend to confirm the popular mythology that’s sprung up – kid whose family lives on lands “stolen” from the authentic oppressed indegenes, matriculates at a University which grooms the heirs of the captains of finance and industry. That school seduces and co-opts the kid who might otherwise have remained a humble rancher, merely raising cattle to give consumers heart-rotting RED MEAT. Instead he writes a novel as a student, goes to law school, and uses his ill-got JD to become just another wealthy evil hedge fund genius…
Come to think of it, why did I ever doubt Greek’s insights?
greek – You can give your entire argument cred by answering one question.
Q: What process is used to remove the bitumen from the tar sands?
Thanks- Looking forward to your answer.
@67: Of these there is a distinct poverty.
Pound sand. It’s all public record, which is what makes this “dangerous subterfuge” narrative so ludicrous. Wrapping my comments in dripping sarcasm doesn’t change the fact that TransCanada messed up and now someone has to trot out make-nice words to put a bandaid over hurt feelings. Tough guy robber barons.
From Alberta Premier Alison Redford who agrees that TransCanada’s hardball approach was misguided:
“My point is that it’s not only about trade. Even if your objective is to ensure there is greater economic development or greater opportunities … you don’t get there by coming and banging your first on the table and saying, ‘Boy this makes good business sense,’ ” Redford said during the first day of a two-day U.S. mission. “It has got to be a more sophisticated conversation.”
…
Redford’s plan to take a different tact on the oilsands marks a sharp departure from the strategy employed by her predecessor, Ed Stelmach, and — to an extent — the Harper government in Ottawa.
IIRC the Premier had to retract her remarks.
RE: subject of the top thread
Under seven-term Mayor Stephen Reed, who governed from 1982 to 2010, Harrisburg had a long love affair with borrowed money, using it to spur projects of dubious value.
Seems to be a lot of that going around.
@68: That proves nothing. Wiki covers extraction methods, which are commonly known to be water and energy intensive because steam and/or solvents are required to reduce viscosity and increase production rates. The extraction process is nasty and the industry experienced environmental problems in the beginning, requiring a learning curve which is still a touchy subject.
My first question when hearing about the environmental objections to the proposed pipeline extension was why Canada did not elect to build local refineries and pipe refined product as required. The explanation I got was that the fragmentation of the multiple field drillers did not support design-build of a refinery. It seemed to me that some institutional umbrella organization could have been formed to build something for the $7 billion cost of the pipeline (I think it is safe to round it up to $10 billion), even for processing heavy crude, as the American refineries are designed to do (the bitumen has to be prepped first in case someone is taking notes.) My assumption was that somebody somewhere had looked at what is a very classic storage vs conveyance trade-off, with constraints specific to the O&G industry and existing build-out, but now I wonder what level of feasibility analysis was actually performed (ref Alberta to BC pipeline issue @33).
It’s the lying, the hardball easement acquisition tactics and the reluctance to fix problems such as the Sand Hills alignment, that have contaminated the collaboration. I was notably surprised.
(Cost estimate for building refinery between $1000 and $5000 per bpd. I expect there is great regional variability in the cost estimate.)
The information presented by Greek appears to be from this source and this one. It got quite a bit of play on the left back in early January.
ohboy, Allison REDford. You are aware she’s a Red Tory put in place by the teacher’s union gaming the PC leadership election process? Her leftwing views are representative of her leftwing constituency, and with any luck won’t last past the next election.
The oilsands extraction process has been refined considerably, and in many ways is less carbon intensive than Saudi producers. In pretty much all ways it’s environmentally cleaner- because we actually have to obey first world environmental rules.
Robber Barons adequately describes the highly-paid left wing noise machine we see paying for the yellow journalism that is so adequately displayed here. Rockefeller, Berkshire Hathaway, Tides Foundation, Saudi Arabia- that’s power right there.
Hardball? You haven’t been paying attention to the tactics of the left against the Canadian oil industry (in particular the slimeball tactics used against the oil sands). If the oil industry did even half the hardball tactics used by the left, well, let’s say you’d really have something to squawk about.
Greek, settle down. You’ve got no argument beyond propaganda numbers. There have been years of negotiations conducted in good faith that were thrown away by the bleatings of a nihilistic leftwing environmentalist lobby. I get the feeling you’ve never even met someone involved in the oil industry.
Alison Redford won the 2008 election as a Progressive Conservative (42%) beating out the Liberal (39%) and the Wildrose Alliance, the Independent, the Greens, and the NDP (New Democratic Party) candidates (single digits.)
Who’s slinging it now Nobody? Your name and your willingness to engage at the lowest possible level speak volumes about conversational stability and good faith.
The Canadian issue is resource economics. The Canadians have decided to make major a economic commitment to oil sands development. It is their right and responsibility to guide and build their country as they see fit.
It is not their right to tell USA what to do or how to do it. Development of this energy sector may or may not be consistent with the economic objectives of USA. We are still having that discussion – and it is proving to be long and contentious. Instead of initiating a cross border dialogue that didn’t insult the intelligence of the average USA citizen with the blatant hypocrisy of unemployed truck drivers and poor little children starving in the Appalachia of The North, TransCanada/Bechtel, with some not so subtle assists from the Harper government and Redford’s predecessor, Ed Stelmach, went for the hard sell. It backfired. Tough guys now whining about “dirty tricks.” You’re right. One of us doesn’t know what we’re talking about.
…
Linked to the original Mike Klink article in NE Journal Star @46. The engineer’s allegations were never my concern – that is, until the front-end misrepresentation over environmental and economic impacts were exposed by public documents. The reluctance to consider alternative build-outs was also telling. It should come as no surprise that the public attention moved to a skeptical consideration of critical design issues.
(As a sidenote, and an example of more constructive dialogue, if USA is fine with front-end capital intensive (and arguably energy intensive) heavy industrial build out, then why the opposition to Fischer-Tropsch CTL development? Those would be direct and long-term permanent jobs in-country. Don’t tell me it’s all those nasty dangerous well-funded environmental terrorists because it’s not. It’s the front-end capital. The money guys won’t front it. Why is that? The “markets know” do they not?)
#73 Greek,
In 2008 Ed Stelmach was the leader of the PC party and won the election for the Tories. Redford was just an MLA. She won the leadership of the PC Party in October 2011. Now who’s the person who “doesn’t know what we’re talking about”?
Based on your tiresome attacks, I can easily see that you know nothing about the oil industry. Wikipedia is not the be-all and end-all of knowledge.
As for backfiring, wait until your favorite Obama causes this to backfire in your face. Every little bit counts, and you’re about to see that.
You’ve done nothing but argue in bad faith here using cooked leftwing books, and you have the audacity to claim what you’ve claimed?
Like I said, calm down and face the facts- and the facts are that you are supporting lies produced by a well-funded cabal.
2011 – my mistake.
Demeaning people through the repeated use of ad hominems and appeals to some ill-defined “because I said so” authority is juvenile and ultimately futile, although one can acquire some maneuvering room from short-term gain, as any experienced activist knows, and I’m guessing you know a few.
This goofy pipe line will likely be built and will likely exert little but marginal impact on the regional in-country economy, not nearly as much as a couple healthy CTL plants. And the preening self-importance of Canada, and her concern for the little guy, with the notable exception of Nebraska farmers, will remain intact.
Your argumentation is poor (referencing a “poverty” of citations and links), your attitude is elitist masquerading as populist, your nic is stupid, and your pipeline is of little benefit to this country or its labor force.
Good luck to Premier Redford and her efforts at initiating a more “sophisticated discussion.”
Your entire stay here at the Belmont Club has been one ad-hom after another, so you’ve got nothing there. I’m beginning to suspect that you’re an astroturfer. You certainly have no real understanding of the oil industry, or of Canada, or of how things work in the real world. You’re merely reading a prepared script, and are throwing your toys out of the pram because someone called you on it.
But keep up that whine, it looks good on you.
You want the comfort of high ground, let’s see some validation of value, aside from “we’ve already made our case” and “you don’t know enough to understand just how good this is for you and your country – trust us – we do.”
Explain it to me, with the understanding that “I’m right and you’re not” is not an argument..
#77 Greek,
You’ve had plenty of opportunities in this and all the previous threads, not to mention googling or just plain asking someone in the oil industry. I’m not going around the mulberry bush with you.
Do your own damn homework.
(BTW, at post 65 you said you were done)
Guys, don’t waste your time on Greek the Troll!
If “ahead of time and under budget” @ 48 doesn’t convince him, it will be persuasive to the vast majority of the great unwashed public.
Red Adair testified under oath before Congress that the job would take 4 years, we made him look like an old fool.
So we have a silly little woman in the Alberta government whose qualifications have been impugned for alluding to the benefits of more sophisticated cooperation. I wonder if that qualifies as a “poofter alert”?
Legitimate critique of a major engineering design-build project is marginalized as the comedy of silly women and stupid farmers, bought and paid for by some nefarious subterranean “entity” related no doubt to the New World Order folks. Or is that the Bohemians? I get my nefarious terrorist groups confused.
Your argumentation is pathetic. The “where is this, where is that” petulance of @64 morphs into “don’t expect me to dance around the mulberry bush” @78 in the context of complaints over the “poverty” of substantiating links. Tripping over something, but not the facts.
Then don’t. Continue to play it hard. Real tough guys.
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
Never believe anything that has been officially affirmed (eg, Your safety is our priority.)
Finally, I am left wondering what a CTL is? Is it a Compact Turd Locator?
It is a bad project.
Anyone who questions the project is subjected to the same treatment – public humiliation and demeaning disparagement of technical understanding – from an anonymous blogger to an engineer/inspector to a Nebraska farmer to the Premier of Alberta – we are either hypnotized and reading from some pre-scripted narrative, or simply too stupid to breathe let alone understand anything so complex as pipeline design. The insults and the put-downs are poured on like heavy syrup from the crews of naturally talented at trading quips to the more professionally trained at discrediting public opposition. There used to be people – in decision-making positions – smart enough to see through this kind of thing. Now it’s just a game of who is more clever and witty – a reversion to the Camelot Charisma of JFK. And the bad stuff comes on line – for the “little guy.” It was a lie from the beginning. The Canadians would have been better off to be honest. Somebody decided on a different approach.
Unlike the many intimations above, I have had numerous conversations with engineers of multiple disciplines who work in the industry and they are uniform in their opinion that the infrastructure build-out can be done responsibly. As a technical professional, I happen to agree. I also know it costs more (how much depends on too many factors to quantify.) I also know that the management structure responds to any variety of pressures that have the potential to adjust design decisions. What is possible at the technical design level is not the same product as what is feasible at the management level (let alone the construction phase). The degradation of this discussion brings no beneficial impact to the many public decisions facing western countries. TransCanada, Harper, Stalmach et al took the wrong approach. That should be obvious by now. What is less obvious is the tolerance south of the border for being treated like fools and idiots.