Keystone Pipeline is Shovel Ready, but Obama Blocks it Anyway

U.S. energy independence is both an economic and a national security issue. Canadian pundit Ezra Levant of the Sun News Network raises a basic question in this video: Why does the Obama administration prefer to buy oil from dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela rather than from our friend and ally Canada via the "shovel ready" Keystone XL Pipeline?

Does blocking the pipeline project make sense to anyone outside of radical environmentalists and other ideologues and cronies whose agenda supersedes the best interests of our country.

Levant: "Obama treats enemies like friends and friends like enemies."

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper does eventually go ahead and sell the oil to China instead, where does that leave us?

 

Writing at Forbes.com, Warren Meyer contends that that environmental impact concerns were exaggerated by those advocating "Medieval Socialism" and that "the Obama Administration could easily have approved the line with conditions or route modifications." Moreover...

The Keystone XL pipeline would have single-handedly carried more energy to the United States than the sum of all the green energy projects funded by the Obama Administration. And it would have done so entirely with private  funds rather than the [Administration's] increasingly ill-fated and ham-handed attempts at venture capitalism with taxpayer funds. The fact of the matter is that, for the foreseeable future, opposing fossil fuels is equivalent to opposing energy use.

Let's stop politicizing science.

Was the Hoover Dam a Shovel-Ready Project?

President Obama's campaign headquarters, otherwise known as the ratings-challenged MSNBC network, is running a lame "lean forward" (whatever that means) promotional campaign with the Hoover Dam as a backdrop, as Jonah Golberg writes at National Review Online, featuring MSNBC host Rachel Maddow (and others) "waxing poetic on the glories of government and liberalism."

But as Goldberg in effect explains, Hoover--we have a problem:

The reason the ad is so funny is that nobody thinks liberals such as Maddow would support anything like the Hoover Dam today. The Hoover Dam is a marvel. But by today’s green standards, it is a crime against nature. If you tried to build it, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace would be in court tomorrow blocking it, with Ms. Maddow cheering them on.

Indeed, look at all the activists attacking the proposed construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to the Texas coast. It would create thousands of construction jobs and yet liberals oppose it for the usual petrophobic reasons. Ironically, liberals love building highways and bridges, but loathe making it affordable to drive on them. This is just a small example of the Catch-22 liberalism has found itself in.

We're currently reading Goldberg's informative and well-researched book Liberal Fascism which is highly recommended.

Is The Democrat Party Turning Into Its Own Death Panel?

Say what you will about the alternatively misanthropic and entertaining Michael Savage, but he made a very perceptive point the other night. Politicians have always been corrupt, he said, but they occupied a parallel universe and pretty much left the rest of us alone--until now. With their sick (no pun intended) obsession with socialized medicine among other things, the Democrats now want to intrude in every aspect of our life. But Americans value personal freedom above all else.

As Shikha Dalmia writes at Forbes.com:

The only comic relief in the otherwise grim, yearlong ObamaCare saga has been the spectacle of progressive pundits scratching their heads to explain the bill's nose-diving popularity...

In fact, the real reason why ObamaCare is so unpopular is that it is proposing a giant expansion of the entitlement state precisely when this state everywhere is coming apart: here and abroad; at the federal level and the state; in the public sector and the private. Suggesting a giant government takeover of a sixth of the economy can't be a popular selling point in a country whose DNA has a programmed hostility to Big Government.

Even before President Obama rammed through his trillion-dollar-plus stimulus/bailout packages last year, there was a growing sentiment that the country's top priority ought to be tackling the entitlement programs whose liabilities are like a swelling aneurysm in the brain of the body politic waiting to rupture...

But why don't progressives get that this is terrible economic timing? Because this is the moment they have been waiting for since Lyndon Johnson enacted Medicare...There is no tactic too low to deploy--and no cause too sacred to abandon. If Americans are unenthused about universal coverage, screw 'em. If it is necessary to use reconciliation--meant strictly for budgetary matters--to ram the bill through Congress on a strictly partisan vote, then so be it. If filibuster rules that Democrats themselves restored in 1975 are now coming in the way, get rid of them....

But egged on by the progressive punditocracy, Democrats are behaving as if, once they jam ObamaCare through, nothing else matters. It's like they'll never have to worry about being the minority party in need of constitutional checks and balances.

Similarly, in the pages of the Washington Post, Democrat pollsters Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen tell their party that it needs to snap out of their delusion and wake up to the political reality:

Their blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political march of folly into an electoral rout in November....First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate's reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.

Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan. Yes, most Americans believe, as we do, that real health-care reform is needed. And yes, certain proposals in the plan are supported by the public.

However, a solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan. Four-fifths of those who oppose the plan strongly oppose it, according to Rasmussen polling this week, while only half of those who support the plan do so strongly. Many more Americans believe the legislation will worsen their health care, cost them more personally and add significantly to the national deficit. Never in our experience as pollsters can we recall such self-deluding misconstruction of survey data...

Second, the country is moving away from big government, with distrust growing more generally toward the role of government in our lives...

Voters are hardly enthralled with the GOP, but the Democrats are pursuing policies that are out of step with the way ordinary Americans think and feel about politics and government. Barring some change of approach, they will be punished severely at the polls.

Now, we vigorously opposed Republican efforts in the Bush administration to employ the "nuclear option" in judicial confirmations. We are similarly concerned by Democrats' efforts to manipulate passage of a health-care bill. Doing so in the face of constant majority opposition invites a backlash against the party at every level -- and at a time when it already faces the prospect of losing 30 or more House seats and eight or more Senate seats. For Democrats to begin turning around their political fortunes there has to be a frank acknowledgement that the comprehensive health-care initiative is a failure, regardless of whether it passes. There are enough Republican and Democratic proposals -- such as purchasing insurance across state lines, malpractice reform, incrementally increasing coverage, initiatives to hold down costs, covering preexisting conditions and ensuring portability -- that can win bipartisan support.

And in a new Gallup poll, unemployment and the economy in general (not healthcare) are the primary issues that Americans are worried about. 

Related posts:
Paglia: Limousine Liberals Driving Blind
Trial Lawyers Stonewalling Tort Reform
Culture Critic Does Some Truth Telling 
Something Fishy Going On
Community Organizing Suddenly Falls Out of Favor
Politicians: Healthcare For Me, But Not For Thee
Healthcare Reform: Trouble In Paradise
A Grand Social Experiment...
Socialized Medicine Making People Sick
"Freedom Fighter" Contemplates Life Without Lawyers
Government-Run Healthcare Unconstitutional?
Heathcare "Reform": A "Shovel Ready" Job?

Healthcare "Reform": A "Shovel Ready" Job?

"The whole trial is out of order!" That's what Arthur Kirkland, the firebrand attorney portrayed by Al Pacino in And Justice for All, shouts in the courtroom in the classic scene that concludes the movie.

That's kind of what we felt upon hearing that a Minnesota judge ordered a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma to submit to chemotherapy against his will.

Admittedly, before it happens (and hopefully it never will), no one really knows how he or she would react to a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness, including what treatment to undergo.

And memo to lawmakers of both parties: The U.S. has made incredible advances in medical technology, especially in emergency situations, thanks to the freemarket, but "healthcare" is not merely about pharmaceutical drugs or surgery.

But don't you find it disturbing that a court would force someone to take chemicals into their body? Chemotherapy can destroy the patient's immune system, so it's completely understandable that a similarly situated family would resist this treatment. And perhaps Constitutionally protected religious liberty is also implicated here. Does chemotherapy offer a better ultimate outcome for the boy? An Internet search will come up with alternative, more holistic-oriented therapies for various conditions. Ironically, some physicians and other healers who have had legitimate successes following alternative protocols wind up in the crosshairs of the regulatory authorities.

Perhaps engaging in some degree of hyperbole, Mike Adams, the self-described "Health Ranger," opines the following about this case on his Natural News website:

There is not a single cancer patient that has ever been cured by chemotherapy. Zero. They don't exist. Not a single documented case in the history of western medicine.

And why is that? Because conventional medicine operates from the false belief that there is no cure for cancer! Thus, anyone offering a cure (or assisting in the body's own natural reversal of the disease) is immediately dismissed as a quack. Meanwhile, the real quackery is found in the pushing of toxic chemotherapy chemicals that are injected into the bodies of patients and called "treatment" when they should really be called "torture." (Nancy Pelosi, by the way, was never briefed on the fact that chemotherapy is torture...)

What's most disturbing in all of this, of course, is that the state is now forcing parents to poison their own children, requiring they hand over money to Big Pharma and conventional cancer treatment centers. The concept of freedom of choice has been stolen away from parents. The idea of protecting your children from toxic chemicals has been not just nullified, but made illegal!

We have no idea of the family dynamic in this particular instance, or whether the parents have fully looked into legitimate alternatives. And who knows how this situation will eventually play out. We wish the family all the best. But leaving aside this particular controversy, the larger issue is why not explore all alternatives, aside from chemicals, perhaps proceeding on a parallel conventional-holistic track? And doesn't an oncologist have a moral if not ethical duty to explore all modalities beyond chemotherapy and radiation?

On a related subject, it seems every day there is news about pharmaceutical drugs yanked off the market by the FDA because of devastating side effects? Ironically, regardless of which administration holds power, the FDA seems to be obsessed with trying to regulate the nutritional supplement industry. Seems like they should concentrate their resources on the drug regulation.

(In general, while we're in no way, shape or form giving any kind of health advice, some supplements made by reputable companies with quality ingredients can be worthwhile, some with less potent ingredients aren't. And some alternative healing techniques work for some people and not for others. But hasn't it been established that many expensive drugs don’t work for many people?)

Doctors and insurance companies have a lot of explaining to do about skyrocketing medical costs. For a variety of reasons, health insurance costs in particular are out of control, especially for any worker who has been laid off and been forced to pay for expensive COBRA benefits. The so-called stimulus package provides temporary partial reimbursement for COBRA, but that's just a band aid. So health insurance portability must be addressed.

So there needs to be sensible, structural insurance reform, but orchestrated by and in the private sector. (Another issue for another time is whether a healthy citizen should be forced to subsidize the costs of those who have led self-destructive lifestyles, or those who are here illegally.)

Not to get too metaphysical, but there is a strong mind-body connection in staying healthy, and millions of Americans have had good results with alternative approaches. Not every effective protocol shows up in a stuffy, peer-reviewed medical journal.

Again, leaving this particular cancer case aside, if really want to help people stay healthy and prevent disease, why not provide insurance reimbursement for more holistic techniques on the front end, thereby avoiding catastrophic costs on the back end?

Government-run healthcare, a/k/a single payer or socialized medicine, is not the answer. It doesn't make sense. Why would liberals and Democrats and their compliant trained seals in the news media (those that claim to be "pro choice") want to foist a system on this country that has failed in every other country that it has been tried. In fact, many of those systems are on the verge of bankruptcy. In fact, patients from other countries under national healthcare flee their system to be treated in the U.S. The logical extension of single payer is rationing and waiting lists for both routine and non-routine services. Is that an upgrade over the current system with all its faults? As P.J. O'Rourke famously said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

The Oscar-winning movie The Barbarian Invasions gives an unsettling glimpse of the botched nature of the government-run Canadian healthcare system. The excellent film (which somehow slipped past Hollywood's politically correct gatekeepers) centers on a Montreal college professor with terminal cancer who seeks to reconcile with his estranged son, or perhaps vice versa. In one pertinent scene, to get his father out of a chaotic hospital ward, the son must bribe sullen and corrupt union bosses to provide his father with a private room.

Government-run "healthcare"? The state, in the form of judges or other bureaucrats, intervening in family medical decisions? That's not reform we can believe in.

More on nationalized medical care here and here.