Job creators continue this week to urge President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The Hill reports, “President Obama should green-light the Keystone pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast without delay, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Thursday. ‘There is no legitimate reason, none at all, to subject it to further delay,’ [Tom] Donohue said in his annual address on the state of business and the economy. . . . Donohue said action is needed this year and cannot be stalled by politics. ‘Real leaders understand that Americans can have big differences in philosophy but still find common ground,’ Donohue said. ‘They wouldn’t tell us that solutions have to wait until after the election.’”
Over 100 trade groups have sent a letter to the president, saying, “[We] urge you to approve the Keystone XL pipeline as soon as possible. With your approval, this shovel-ready project will provide 20,000 jobs in construction and manufacturing in the next two years, and add tens of thousands of additional jobs throughout the economy in other sectors including service, retail and distribution. With our nation’s stubbornly high unemployment, it would be irresponsible to let such good-paying jobs slip away.”
Meanwhile, Canada’s Financial Post writes, “TransCanada Corp. has released a detailed job breakdown for the Keystone XL pipeline and said it will create 13,000 construction employment opportunities and 7,000 in manufacturing for Americans. . . . ‘These are new, real U.S. jobs. Thirteen thousand Americans would be put to work constructing our Keystone XL project,’ said Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer in a statement. ‘Seven thousand more jobs would be created in the U.S. manufacturing sector, making the materials needed to build Keystone XL.’”
And according to the AP, “A Canadian company attempting to build a $7 billion pipeline to carry oil from Canada to refineries along the Gulf Coast soon will have a new route that seeks to allay worries of U.S. regulators, a company executive said Wednesday. ‘In a matter of a very few weeks we will have a route that everyone agrees on,’ said Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada Corp.’s president for energy and oil pipelines. . . . Pourbaix said the Calgary-based company has been meeting with U.S. regulators and officials in Nebraska on mapping a new route that will avoid the environmentally sensitive Sandhills area of Nebraska.”
So why is President Obama still waiting to approve this pipeline, which will create jobs, strengthen ties with a valued ally, and reduce reliance on oil from the Middle East?
Continued delay from the White House could be costly. The AP notes, “Pourbaix and Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told North Dakota officials and oil industry representatives that if the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline is not built Canada’s oil-sand developers likely would ship the crude to Asia. ‘It’s going to go to China if we don’t build it here,’ Hoven said.” And USA Today reported on Monday, “While President Obama wants to delay a decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is stepping up efforts to explore an alternative pipeline that would allow Canada to ship their tar sands oil to China. On Tuesday, an independent federal panel in Canada will begin its review of a proposed western pipeline that would carry the oil from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia. From British Columbia, the oil would be shipped on tankers to oil-hungry China. . .
“‘President Obama says we can’t wait for action on jobs,’ House Speaker John Boehner’s office noted in an e-mail to reporters today. ‘Well, Canada isn’t waiting. One way or another, a new energy pipeline will be built. The question the president and Democrats in Washington need to answer is: would Democrats rather American workers get these Keystone jobs? Or China?’”
“And finally, we have sort of a carpetbagger here — (laughter) — I just love her so whenever I have an excuse to see her I’m happy, and she is a fellow Midwesterner, the Senator from Missouri — Claire McCaskill.” (Applause.)
These lavish words of praise by the president were made last night at $36,000 a plate reelection fundraiser in Chicago. And why wouldn’t the president love Claire? She voted for his two signature issues: “stimulus” spending and Obamacare.
Several news reports are noting this week’s tenth anniversary of the opening of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. NPR writes, “There is a certain permanence to Guantanamo that is unexpected, given that President Obama unequivocally promised to close the place. The president is not much closer to closing Guantanamo today than he was on the campaign trail when he made it one of his signature issues.”
According to NPR, “There are still 171 detainees at Guantanamo, and about 80 of them have been identified for release. Another three dozen will likely be tried in the military commissions, and then there is this other group — the group that seemed destined to be held indefinitely. There are 48 detainees who seem to fall into that category. The U.S. has said they don’t have enough evidence to try them, but the men are too dangerous to release.”
This is another hint of the Obama administration’s tacit acknowledgement that Guantanamo is a necessary part of the War on Terror and shows the problem with political pronouncements being made from the White House about closing the facility while still not having a plan to do so.
Indeed, The Washington Post notes that among those the administration has considered releasing is a former Taliban deputy defense minister accused of participating in war crimes: “Last month, it was reported that the administration had seriously considered transferring five Afghan detainees as part of a package of mutual confidence-building with the Taliban. Initially, it was proposed that the five would be held under house arrest in Qatar. But for some activists, the prospect of renewed movement on emptying the detention center was clouded by the inclusion of Mohammad Fazl, a former Taliban deputy defense minister, on the list of those who could take their first steps toward freedom in a villa in Doha. Almost immediately after Fazl’s capture, in late 2001, Human Rights Watch urged the U.S. government to ensure that the former Taliban commander be brought before a tribunal to answer allegations that he had a role in war crimes committed by Taliban forces in central Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.”
In an op-ed for CNN today, former Attorney General Ed Meese summarizes the need for Guantanamo. He writes, “There have been 779 detainees at Guantanamo. Today, there are only 171. But over the past decade, we have not only kept dangerous terrorists at Guantanamo and thus away from the battlefield, we have learned a great deal from them during long-term, lawful interrogations. Without a safe, secure detention and interrogation facility, we would not have gained the tactical and strategic intelligence needed to degrade and ultimately defeat the enemy. . . . All things considered, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has played an invaluable role in the war against terrorists by keeping them off the battlefield and allowing for lawful interrogations. Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations has offered a reasonable and feasible alternative to Guantanamo. Unless and until a safe, reasonable alternative facility is proposed, the United States should continue to use Guantanamo as a detention, interrogation and military commissions’ facility.”
“Because I know this is an issue and I know the people of MIssouri have a right to know, I am releasing the transcripts for all my degrees,” Randles said. “I hold firm to the principle that has become a cornerstone of my political philosophy: sunshine is the best disinfectant. Releasing my transcripts from Havard Law School, Baylor University, and Southwest Baptist University falls in line with that philosophy.”Click here for transcripts.
Perhaps a subtle attempt to get the media interested in the fact that Randles went to law school with Barack Obama?
Missouri Political New Service was the first to report on the governor’s backhanded implementation of Obamacare through executive order.
A Senate committee heard testimony Tuesday on a bill, which would prevent Gov. Nixon’s administration from creating a health exchange without the approval of Missouri voters.
The bill sponsored by Sen. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, prevents the state executive branch from establishing such an exchange as mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as “Obamacare.”
“This bill is needed because the governor has already tried to create a health insurance exchange by executive order … this shouldn’t be allowed to happen. This is the purview of the Legislature, not the governor,” Schaaf said. Read more…
Related:
Charlie Dooley Calls Obamacare Protestors “Nothing But Haters”
Now that our national debt under this president has surpassed the nation’s GDP (the first time ever!), we thought we’d go back in time and see what then candidate Obama had to say about the deficit:
THEN-SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): “Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.”(Sen. Obama, Congressional Record, S.2237-8, 3/16/06)
OBAMA:“The first thing you do when you’re in a hole is what? … you stop digging. So the first thing that we’re going to have to do is to stop adding to our deficit.”OBAMA: “Keep in mind, the first 42 presidents, they amassed $5 trillion worth of debt, the first 42 of them. The first couple of hundred years-plus of American history, we accumulated $5 trillion. Now we’re at $9 trillion. That’s just bad — that’s not being fiscally conservative. And so we’re going to have to change our policies. Now, it’s going to be — let me say this. It’s not going to be completely easy, because we’re in a hole. And the first thing you do when you’re in a hole is what?” (UNKNOWN): “Stop digging.” OBAMA: “Stop digging. Who got that right? There you go. You stop digging. So the first thing that we’re going to have to do is to stop adding to our deficit.” (Sen. Obama, Remarks To Campaign Event, Watertown, SD, 5/16/08)
AFP reports, “The White House insisted Monday that President Barack Obama was determined to close Guantanamo Bay, despite failing to do so by the war on terror camp’s 10th anniversary this week. Obama declared within a few hours of taking office in January 2009 that he would shutter the camp within a year, saying it was used as a recruiting tool for terrorists, and detrimental to US national security. But in the face of deep opposition in Congress to moving inmates to the US mainland and over the idea of holding civil trials for key Al-Qaeda suspects, Obama has failed to live up to his vow. ‘The commitment that the president has to closing Guantanamo Bay is as firm today as it was during the (2008) campaign,’ said White House spokesman Jay Carney.”
But now almost 2 years after the date President Obama pledged Guantanamo would be closed by, the White House still has not presented any detailed plans on where current detainees would go or a coherent strategy to handle with enemy combatants captured on the battlefield.
Speaking on the Senate floor in November, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “[T]he Executive Orders signed by the President in January 2009 were issued with an eye toward fulfilling Candidate Obama’s campaign promises — rather than after conducting a serious review of sound counterterrorism policy. And now, three years after taking office, the President has had enough firsthand experience dealing with terrorism to know that many of the terrorists held at Guantanamo can’t be sent back to places like Yemen, where they’re likely to return to the fight. But the President’s own Executive Orders have denied our military commanders and our intelligence community the certainty they need when they capture, detain, and interrogate terrorist suspects. His early Executive Orders, for instance, ended the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention program and directed the closing of Guantanamo. The order to close Guantanamo makes little sense.”
Despite this, according to AFP, “Carney said that Obama, top national security officials and senior members of the military still believed that closing Guantanamo was in US interests. ‘We will continue to abide by that commitment and work towards its fulfillment,’ he said.”
This excerpt from a press release from the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP further proves that the NAACP is a tired and irrelevant organization offering more tired and irrelevant ideas:
NAACP State Quarterly meeting in Columbia, Mo. – On Saturday January 7, 2011 the NAACP Missouri State Conference supported the call for a Economic Boycott of St. Louis City and St. Louis County in support of the St. Louis NAACP’s concerns about the Metropolitan Sewer District’s (MSD) failure to approve a “Fair Share” resolution for greater minority participation on MSD projects.
The Resolution approved by the State Conference states “The governments of St. Louis City and County have direct supervision over the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD), which will undertake one of the largest economic stimulus projects for the area creating and enormous amount of opportunities for both vendors and the local workforce.” MSD is required to complete roughly $4.7 Billion in sewer to satisfy a Consent Decree.
Brilliant! Propose an economic boycott while we’re in a recession with 9% unemployment! So basically all you poor black folks in north city and county, please travel to Illinois, St. Charles and Jefferson counties to purchase all your necessities of life so a few minority construction companies can get a piece of the white man’s pie!
Related:
Democrat activist Bertha Knox Gilkey speaking out on jobs at Nixon’s St. Louis office.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 54% of Likely U.S. Voters at least somewhat favor repeal of the law, while 39% are at least somewhat opposed. This includes 42% of voters who Strongly Favor repeal versus 29% who Strongly Oppose it. Read more…
In this video flashback, soon to be former Congressman Carnahan calls Obamacare opponents anarchists.
