Obama Layin' Pipe?

One facet of Obama’s administration that I have enjoyed is watching liberal hopes and dreams get dashed time and again. It looks like that’s about to happen on the Keystone Pipeline.

For those who haven’t been keeping score, the Democrats have been masters at appearing to embrace environmental causes without actually doing so. Examples of this abound, including Obama’s big happy Copenhagen promise to think about promising to promise to fix everything to a Democratic Congress that was "somehow" unable to pass anything related to carbon. . . or anything else.

The one issue where it seemed like environmentalists would get their wish was the Keystone pipeline. You probably remember this project, but for those who don’t, this pipeline would pump oil from western Canada to Oklahoma, where the wind and oil comes sweeping down the plains to the refineries. Environmentalists hate the idea of this pipeline because they don’t want the US having more oil... there doesn’t really appear to be any other reason for their objection.

Prior to the election, Obama promised environmentalists that he would kill the pipeline and he promised the public at large that he would allow the pipeline. To make this doublespeak work, he kept saying he was just waiting for the environmental impact assessment which the State Department was preparing. That would tell him what to do, and he wink, wink, nudge, nudge’d both sides to let them know the assessment would turn out in their favor.

Well, the assessment is in, and the State Department has concluded that there is no scientific reason to reject the pipeline. Ooops.

That means Obama has no reason to oppose the pipeline. And given the hike in gas prices and the continuing economic struggles of the country, it looks increasingly likely that Obama will allow the pipeline, and thereby sell out his environmental friends once again.

Environmentalists aren’t happy.

The Sierra Club, for example, said they were “outraged” by the State Department report and they suggested wrongdoing by Obama’s State Department: “We’re mystified. . . whether this failure was willful or accidental, this report is nothing short of malpractice.”

Greenpeace warned that “letting corporations get rich off of environmental devastation will make Obama’s climate rhetoric look like the worst kind of greenwashing.” I can see the ad now, with a smelly hippie shedding a single tear as workers on the Obamapipeline throw litter from a car and kill a spotted babyseal owl. As an aside, do you think this “greenwashing” thing is like the Batphone, the Batmobile, the Batbelt and the Batcrapper? Do you think Greenpeace people label everything “green”? “Hand me the greenpaper, Greenhippie, I need to use the greenthrone.” Hmm, well, probably not... I doubt they use paper.

Should be interesting to see which way Obama goes on this, but given his track record though, I’d bet he’s going to do whatever benefits his corporate donors the most. Greentastic!