Did Obama just sucker punch liberals on Keystone XL?

[KamaAina]

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2015/01/30/did-obama-just-sucker-punch-liberals/

Because then we get this: Mere minutes after announcing the ANWR proposal and not long after promising a veto of Keystone (any second now), Obama flipped right around and announced full White House support for all kinds of new drilling off the Atlantic seaboard. Wait, what?

But that’s nothing. The Obama Administration in recent years has quietly issued all kinds of new permits and leases to Big Energy, including allowing lots more drilling on federal lands, shortening permit-issuing speeds, and re-opening nearly 60 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico (all is forgiven, BP oil spill?) to fresh drilling.

In fact, as Michael Klare so rightly pointed out in Mother Jones, the anti-oil rhetoric of Obama 1.0 is long gone. The president has quietly become, by nearly all measures, an “oil president.”

In one sense, you can argue he’s just making good on a campaign promise to get America off foreign oil. That’s certainly true – it’s just not in the ways any progressive imagined, and certainly not in the way Obama initially promised, which was a far wider, bolder support of alternative energy, increased efficiency standards, less domestic drilling, and so on. Ah, simpler times.

[merrily]

1. I thought a sucker punch was one you did not see coming.

But exactly how is this about liberals? Don't things like oil and the environment affect everyone?

[GummyBearz]

2. There are people out there who still don't see these things coming

sadly enough...

[merrily]

3. Or the headline writer wanted to mock.

[KamaAina]

4. Since it's Morford, yeah

that's probably it.

[winter is coming]

5. Act two will be Keystone XL coming back under some different name,

buried in a bill that's supposed to be about protecting the environment.

[geek tragedy]

6. Obama has done "all of the above" when it comes to energy

How many wind/solar powered cars are on the roads?

He's also done a lot for renewable energy development, but renewable energy isn't enough to replace carbon at this point.

[Scuba]

14. "... renewable energy isn't enough to replace carbon at this point." Yeah, it is ...

http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/06/dna-constructs-antenna-solar-energy

The Earth receives enough solar energy every hour to satisfy our energy needs for an entire year.

The problem isn't that there is insufficient renewable energy, it's that we've not invested in technology to capture that energy. We do, on the other hand, still provide subsidies to big oil, and I can't remember President Obama decrying that to the public. He may have, but not often enough to make a difference.

[geek tragedy]

18. that's what I meant, there isn't the capability to capture enough renewable

to satisfy the needs of everyone.

Subsidies to big oil is a constant theme Obama has spoken out about:

https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+subsidies+to+big+oil&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

but Big Carbon owns a lot of Senators.

[Scuba]

20. So Obama's most recent call to end oil subsidies is almost 3 years ago. Thanks for making my point.

[geek tragedy]

22. Did you read his budget in the past three years?

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/obama-fy15-budget-would-eliminate-oil-tax-breaks-cm332338

[Scuba]

23. I've seen all his SOTU speeches, and many others. Can't recall him mentioning it.

But I'm sure he's stumped for it over and over and over, eh?

[geek tragedy]

24. Thanks for the game of Calvinball. nt

[ChosenUnWisely]

7. Those paying attention knew something like this was coming it is how he

operates.

The real sucker punch, to those who do not pay attention or wear rose colored glasses, will be his chained CPI

[KamaAina]

8. Well, not his so much as the Cat Food Commission's

[ChosenUnWisely]

11. Gee President Obama has been pushing Chained CPI for years and the Cat Food Commission

is long gone.

To many folks Chained CPI is his.

[Fred Sanders]

9. No one believes that outside the RW world, of which DU is NOT are part of, remember?

[ChosenUnWisely]

10. Believe what that he says one thing does another or nothing at all or does something shitty

and sneaky and without public debate on opening up the Atlantic coast to drilling?

[Fred Sanders]

12. You must not then like the announcement protecting Alaska wilderness from Big Oil. Sneaky!

[ChosenUnWisely]

13. ANWAR was fine and past due

Opening the Atlantic was sneaky and shitty almost like it was planned all along

[PAProgressive28]

15. 3D Chess

[quaker bill]

16. Important to remember his impending veto of KXL

is not actually a veto of the project. If you read carefully, it is a veto of the congressional attempt to short circuit the State Department's review process. The pipeline may still be approved. This is an argument over who gets to say so.

It is moot at current oil prices anyway. My best guess is that by the time it is built the costs will mean that oil will come out of it in NOLA at about -$20 or so a barrel. In short, they probably will not build it in this market anyway.

[KamaAina]

19. I think it's supposed to end in Texas

so NOLA doesn't even get the 35 jobs.

[Octafish]

17. President Obama has done great things for nuclear energy, too.

Ties to Obama Aided in Access for Big Utility

By ERIC LIPTON
The New York Times, Published: August 22, 2012

WASHINGTON — Early in the Obama administration, a lobbyist for the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” And it was not just because it delivers power to Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago.

Exelon’s top executives were early and frequent supporters of Mr. Obama as he rose from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. John W. Rogers Jr., a friend of the president’s and one of his top fund-raisers, is an Exelon board member. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political strategist, once worked as an Exelon consultant, and Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, helped create the company through a corporate merger in 2000 while working as an investment banker.

With energy an increasingly pivotal issue for the Obama White House, a review of Exelon’s relationship with the administration shows how familiarity has helped foster access at the upper reaches of government and how, in some cases, the outcome has been favorable for Exelon.

White House records show that Exelon executives were able to secure an unusually large number of meetings with top administration officials at key moments in the consideration of environmental regulations that have been drafted in a way that hurt Exelon’s competitors, but curb the high cost of compliance for Exelon and its industry allies.

In addition, Exelon, which provides power to more than 6.6 million customers in at least 16 states and the District of Columbia, was chosen as one of only six electric utilities nationwide for the maximum $200 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department. And when the Treasury Department granted loans for renewable energy projects, Exelon landed a commitment for up to $646 million allowing it, on extremely generous financial terms, to finance one of the world’s largest photovoltaic solar projects.

Exelon’s seemingly easy access to top administration officials has hardly gone unnoticed among competitors.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/us/politics/ties-to-obama-aided-in-access-for-exelon-corporation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Banksters will Bank.

[LiberalAndProud]

21. I guess he got Gerarded.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2015/01/13/Obama-called-on-to-drop-KXL-veto-threat/3781421157927/


[font size="1" color="gray"]Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute,
calls on the White House to abandon a veto threat issued against bills
in favor of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. UPI/Kevin Dietsch[/font]