Random Observations on the Push to a Vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline

1. Fuck you, Canada. (Or maybe just certain areas of Alberta.)

2. Someone at The Daily Caller (motto: "Twisting news stories like they're bowties under Tucker Carlson's fifth chin"), Michael Bastard or something, must have thought he was oh-so-very-clever for writing this: "Environmentalists argue that Keystone will harm the environment and contribute to global warming. So they bundled up to withstand the frigid blast of Arctic weather and protest against Democrats who have pledged to vote in favor of legislation approving the $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline." Oh, dude, fuckin' burn. You made those protesters and their "science" look totally gay. You were able to ignore that we just finished the hottest October on record and focus in on a single couple of days of admittedly weird-ass weather to fuck some shit up, bro. You can have an evening with the office blow-up doll all to yourself as a reward. Treat her nasty. Who are we kidding? Of course you will.

3. In his continuing effort to show that he can still go to the Cato Institute Christmas Party, New York Times columnist David Brooks says so many demonstrably false, naive, or shitty things in today's "column" (if by "column," you mean, "A deep huff of a bottle containing Reagan's filthy underwear") that it's impossible to know where to start. Is it that he uses the debate over the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline as a way to bash Barack Obama for being too "partisan" while ignoring the incredibly partisan bludgeoning done by Republicans with the pipeline in the election two weeks ago? Or maybe it's this quote: "The economic impact isn’t huge, but at least there’d be a $5.3 billion infrastructure project"? No, it's not a fucking infrastructure project. It's a pipeline for TransCanada's tar sands oil from Alberta. It'll be paid for by the company, not the American taxpayers, so it's not for the public. It'll create a total of 35-50 permanent jobs. It might poison an aquifer. It is most definitely not infrastructure, generally defined as "shit we need," not "shit a big-ass corporation needs to squirt out a few more drops of profit." So, yeah, Brooks can sit on this pipeline and rotate.

4. Everyone doing political calculations on this is wrong. Its passage would not save Mary Landrieu in Louisiana because, symbolic though it might be, it ain't gonna do shit for Louisiana and Landrieu is done. The GOP in Congress wouldn't take Obama's support as a sign of cooperation. They'd just crow how they defeated the President. Oh, and it won't lower gas prices one fucking cent. So what's the point?

5. There is an argument to be made that goes like this: "Oh, fuck it. It's not gonna add much to climate change anyway. Use it as a bargaining chip for something else." An even more cynical version might be: "Oh, fuck it. We're fucked already on the climate. What does it matter?" It's easy to fall into those moral dead zones. Instead, the Rude Pundit thinks, "How about giving a win to the people who are trying to save the fucking earth, huh? How about giving them a boost, a way of saying that we actually do give a happy monkey fuck what happens to the globe?" This ain't just a climate change argument. There's very real and present danger to the water supply that irrigates huge swaths of farmland and provides the drinking water for the Sioux Indians in South Dakota.

6. One more argument for blocking its passage: Fuck the GOP on this. They have made "Keystone XL" some kind of imbecile's shorthand for "Obama hates oil," which Obama quite clearly does not. So fuck them, along with Canada.

7. One twist: What if Obama agreed to the pipeline in a bill that also reduced carbon emissions in an enforceable way? How much does this mean to you, Republican motherfuckers? Yeah, thought so. David Brooks would end up shoving his head so far up his own ass to justify Republican refusal to bargain that he'd be able to eat his own heart.