It is referencing the comically eponymous Keystone Kops game of Russian roulette, played with our environment instead of with someone's little balls or bullets.
"Ploy" is a good word to employ when attaching a description to this congress's method of operating.
I have to admit that I understand very little of this whole scheme to make money and, purportedly, make jobs by piping stuff from one country through our country to another country to be sold to still another country. It sounds like a lot of rigamarole and maybe Occam's razor can apply here in that the simplest answer is usually the right one. In this instance: greed.
Maybe you can read Brian Beutler's story - Why the Pipeline Ploy May End up Killing Keystone - http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/the-gops-costly-keystone-conundrum.php - and keep your eyes from crossing. I couldn't. It is a report that appears to recount in exquisite detail the inanities of governmental bureaucracy.
Beyond being an obvious trap set to snare President Obama, it is the nightmarishly convoluted stuff bureaucrats live for. I have come to the conclusion that most legislation is written to hornswoggle the electorate into believing only people with "Representative" or "Senator" in front of their names can sort out this crap.
Hell....why not? They've created it.
But I am also of the opinion that Andrew Sullivan is right in determining that the Republicans may be dumber than even they know.Successful and unsuccessful attempts to back President Obama into corners may be the end of their game since their tactics are starting to look like they were designed by Wily Coyote.
I'm no expert on economics, and I have only the slightest concept of the mechanics of actual governing, but I do have a fair amount of common sense. And this sense tells me that building a pipeline to transport tons of filthy, oily, black shale across 1,700 miles of the United States, using as much uninhabited land as possible, is a recipe for disasters of so many descriptions as to defy imagination.
I suspect the terrorists have already started to map possible routes and are noting a variety of vantage points from which they could puncture the damned thing. And, of course, you can't ignore Murphy's Law.
This is a scheme conceived in the backrooms of hell and I hope the Republicans' heavy hands have aborted it. A nice kind of symmetry.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment