Keystone XL pipeline once again voted down in Senate

[Balog]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/18/senate-backers-keystone-pipeline-scramble-for-last-vote/

I wonder if the R's will be able to push this through next session?

[Fitz]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/18/senate-backers-keystone-pipeline-scramble-for-last-vote/

I wonder if the R's will be able to push this through next session?

I think it's more likely they stay spineless

[Boomhauer]

I think it's more likely they stay spineless

Reinstating Boehner* as Speaker does not bode well for even attempting to get a damned thing of importance done.




*Firefox wants to correct it to Boner 

[Ron]

Obama will veto Keystone XL this January or February.

There were 59 votes in the Senate this time around. Next time there will be many more than that in the Senate.

The House has passed a Keystone XL bill something like 6 times already :)

Even still, I agree with Boomhauer, Boehner has a lot of downsides. I'm not real optimistic that very many bills of substance will get passed.  I expect symbolic bs and bills that sell out the base.

[Boomhauer]

Even still, I agree with Boomhauer, Boehner has a lot of downsides. I'm not real optimistic that very many bills of substance will get passed.  I expect symbolic bs and bills that sell out the base

Because we gotta have BIPARTISANSHIP!!!!! Reach across the aisle!

[Sergeant Bob]

Because we gotta have BIPARTISANSHIP!!!!! Reach around the aisle!

Fixed!

[charby]

Keystone Pipeline is going to happen, just a matter of time and the right political alignment.

[Scout26]

Keystone Pipeline is going to happen, just a matter of time and the right political alignment.

Canada may/probably will just say "Screw you guys", and build the EnergyEast pipeline.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East_pipeline

So thanks to the D's all those pipeline jobs, and then the follow on refinery (and refinery expansion) jobs will stay in Canada.  Nice "Laser Focus" on creating jobs there POTUS. 

[RoadKingLarry]

The only upside is it might drive a stake in Landrieu's senate career.

[Viking]

Because we gotta have BIPARTISANSHIP!!!!! Reach across the aisle!

I misread that as "Reich around the aisle".

[lee n. field]

Reinstating Boehner* as Speaker does not bode well for even attempting to get a damned thing of importance done.




*Firefox wants to correct it to Boner 

  That's the way it's pronounced, isn't it?     

Well, that's the way I pronounce it.

[Calumus]

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/harper-oks-potentially-unconstitutional-china-canada-fipa-deal-coming-force-october-1

[makattak]

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/harper-oks-potentially-unconstitutional-china-canada-fipa-deal-coming-force-october-1

Can't blame Canada if they start selling the oil to China. Given how long we our government has been spitting in their faces, I've been more than impressed with their patience.

[Viking]

Can't blame Canada if they start selling the oil to China. Given how long we our government has been spitting in their faces, I've been more than impressed with their patience.

Obama's been doing a good job of spitting in the faces of your long-term allies, hasn't he. That damage can take a long time to repair, if it's even repairable at all. I wonder if there's a hidden purpose to this?

[HankB]

When did it start taking 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate? Is that because any bill with less than 60 is deemed to be "filibustered" without actually having the opponent stand and talk continuously?

[AJ Dual]

Obama's been doing a good job of spitting in the faces of your long-term allies, hasn't he. That damage can take a long time to repair, if it's even repairable at all. I wonder if there's a hidden purpose to this?

Just a general antipathy for Western Civ and America in general. For all their misdeeds, I believe every president we've had before Obama had at least one thing in common, they actually liked their country.

In terms of his broad ideology, he's among the set that feels the U.S. and Western Civ in general is "the problem" and not "the solution". Despite his real father probably being Frank Marshall Davis (look up photo comparisons...) he was strongly influenced by his ersatz father Obama Sr. and his "anti-colonial" ideology, that everything in the world would be sweetness and light if it weren't for England, Europe, and the U.S.

Then add to that as his time as an expat "American" in Indonesia with his mother and step father Barry Sotero, where he lived as a sort of rootless "in-betweener" apart from the other American and British oil company families. That was because Lolo Soetero was Indonesian, which made him lower than the white/Anglo/American petroleum engineers and executives, but still much higher status than the other native Indonesians because he was a petroleum engineer.  Remember, Indonesia wasn't the cosmopolitan place it is now with the enormous skyline etc.

After coasting through college as the "foreign" Barry Soetero where he didn't have to produce much work, pay tuition, and got social promotions to graduation, and then law school, where he did much the same, (The probable real reasons for the irregularities with his birth certificate not the "birther" reasons) he fell in with Chicago's hyper-Left crowd, worked for ACORN, and was palling around with Bill Ayers of the former Weathermen bombers, and "God Damn America" Rev. Wright's black liberation ideology church.

Fortunately for America, because of his constant social promotion through school, probable "broken family guilt" on the part of his mother, and grandparents (also figures in the American Communist Party) who raised him in Hawaii, and being a "well spoken" black man who didn't "act black" making him a perfect person for the tokenism of early Affirmative Action in 1970's and 1980's America, he's a lazy incompetent dilettante who's more attracted to the status and creature comforts of high office, than he is the actual furtherance of his ideology.

So in reality, America's been spared. Because a man in his position with drive, motivation, more ambition, and some self-discipline/competence would be a real disaster, instead of what we've got now.

[wmenorr67]

When did it start taking 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate? Is that because any bill with less than 60 is deemed to be "filibustered" without actually having the opponent stand and talk continuously?

I was curious about this also.

Sad thing is as pointed out in other places, without the pipeline a lot of other products aren't moving because trucks and trains are tied up moving oil instead of grain for example.  So another reason food prices and consumer goods prices continue to rise.

[KD5NRH]

Obama will veto Keystone XL this January or February.

Vetoing something like that is a political platinum mine for Republicans; it allows a steady stream of "we did all we could, but the President shut it down, and the other Democrats wouldn't help us overrule him" campaign fodder.  That helps lock in and strengthen the R majorities in Congress next election, and will mean that the next D Presidential candidate must create distance from Obama to have a chance.  (IOW, anybody who has held a post appointed by him loses ground for future elections.  You know who I mean here.)

[Ben]

Can't blame Canada if they start selling the oil to China. Given how long we our government has been spitting in their faces, I've been more than impressed with their patience.

This.

I've caught interviews with their various Ministers over the last year practically begging and pleading the US to do this so they don't have to go somewhere else. They've bent over backwards for us and I don't blame them one bit for throwing in the towel and investigating alternatives.

At this point I predict they'll start shuttling the oil elsewhere and even if Keystone gets passed, it will be bringing in much less oil because Canada will have made other commitments. Of course then the enviros will use that as an opportunity to say, "See, you created all this infrastructure and aren't even getting the amounts of oil you said you would."

in the meantime, I guess Warren Buffett is laughing all the way to the bank with his profits from the Canadian oil that already comes in via less environmentally friendly rail.

[Monkeyleg]

AJ, you should polish up that post a bit and submit it to townhall.com as a mini-column.

[Scout26]

It takes 60 votes in the Senate for Cloture.  To end debate.  SO you don't really have to filibuster, the debating of the bill simply doesn't end, the bill gets tabled to continue debate later.  Although later may never come.

Now 14 D's sided with all the R's.  If you figure that Landrieau is a dead woman walking, that gives the R's 54 votes.    If at least 12 of the D's that voted for it will  be in the new Congress that would give it at least the 66 votes to over a veto in Senate.

It passed 241-175 in the House.  That was with 233 R's.  Right now there are 244 R's with probably of 3 more winning their run-offs/recounts. 

It would need 287 votes in the House to over-ride.  So you'd need 40 D's to abandon Obama.  Not outside the realm of possibility.

[Monkeyleg]

Not outside the realm of possibility, but difficult. Bush had 12 vetoes, with 4 overridden by a Democrat-controlled House and Senate. Clinton had 37 vetoes with 2 overridden.  Bush 41 had 1 out of 44.

Dem's who favor the pipeline will mostly vote to sustain the veto. AJ, Strings, I and others who got an inside look at the veto process in Madison learned the hard way that it's all a game.

[KD5NRH]

Dem's who favor the pipeline will mostly vote to sustain the veto. AJ, Strings, I and others who got an inside look at the veto process in Madison learned the hard way that it's all a game.

Sustaining such an unpopular veto would be political suicide for any but the ones with the most solid blue voter bases.  The way Obama's been losing favor, standing with him on this would pretty much kill any hope of picking up swing voters.

[Monkeyleg]

Sustaining such an unpopular veto would be political suicide for any but the ones with the most solid blue voter bases.  The way Obama's been losing favor, standing with him on this would pretty much kill any hope of picking up swing voters.

You'd think so. We thought that, too, when we had the votes of Democrats from heavily pro-gun districts, in the state with more NRA members per capital than anywhere else. Then we had a Democrat who was a co-sponsor of the bill flip and vote with his governor. Next session we had two Democrats who'd voted to override in the previous session change their minds and stick with the governor. In all three cases, it hurt them politically, but they still won re-election.

I know Madison is not Washington, but I doubt that politics works much differently. I wouldn't be surprised if they've already decided which Democrats can vote to override next year, and which ones will flip.

[Hawkmoon]

So in reality, America's been spared. Because a man in his position with drive, motivation, more ambition, and some self-discipline/competence would be a real disaster, instead of what we've got now.

So what we have now is only an imitation disaster?

Pretty credible imitation if you ask me.