Oh please.  Pantsonfire is just a less articulate seemingly-liberal (or just libertarian-opposed-to-Keystone?) version of Rupert.  Pantsonfire claiming that he “just knows” that Keystone will leak is like Rupert claiming that he knows Obama’s SOTU call for a mixed energy policy is a cynical request for money from a specific person or that Obama’s rejection of the Republican 60-day decision deadline was petulant.  Pantsonfire and Rupert represent opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, their pedantry quite different, but the style of the argument is almost parallel.

The 60-day deadline was arbitrary and in violation of NEPA.  Big projects like this require reasoned analysis, State had a clear conflict of interest and didn’t do a good job on the EIS, there should have been better assessments.  A months-long delay, if the project is to go forward, is not really meaningful in this context.  It will take years to build this thing and get the oil to the Midwest.  It was the Republicans who were being petulant when they put a cynical and obviously not honest deadline into an unrelated bill.  Their goal, as always, was not good policy or doing right by America, but simply to try and make Obama look bad and win a talking point for the election.And, Bob?  Four-word comments that attack someone’s intelligence should probably be spell-checked at least once; perhaps in your case a couple of times.  

The natural gas talk up I think was a sop for more money, in particular from T Boon Pickins. The fracking thing is a bit of a mystery as it tends to discount the argument that Obama is worried about losing the environmentalist vote. There is way more opposition to fracking in the environmental community than there is to Keystone.

What I think Obama is trying to do is look like he is considering environmental concerns in order to retain their vote. That’s the only thing that really makes sense here as I think it would be pretty hard to argue having lots o’ fracking goin on is going to have substantially less environmental impact than doing Keystone.

Any idiot could make the political calculation that you are going to lose way more votes in declining Keystone than you will through retention of environmentalists by the action. Obama is certainly well aware of this and is also aware the environmental community is largely a partisan one and hence have no where else to go.

By talking up natural gas, campaign contributions aside, he shits environmental concerns to fracking rather than pipelines, but will not have to make any major decisions as it is unlikely some major new fracking endeavor with the jobs and economic aspects of Keystone will come his way prior to November. There simply isn’t going to be the “Trans Global Fracking Initiative” put up in that time where environmentalists can mount opposition and Obama will be put in the same position he is by Keystone.

For current fracking operations Obama can express concern and adopt a “we are looking into it” posture that will largely sate the environmental lobby.  

Looks like most of the objections in the study synopsis could be applied equally to any infrastructure job. In other words, if we should accept the complaints expressed in the study, then why should not the same complaints by applied to virtually any “shovel ready” government infrastructure expenditure, such as the stimulus or stim2? Jobs would also be temporary, steel would also be largely imported, workers also largely non local. Seems to me if this is the standard, it is largely an argument that could be applied to a myriad of Keynesian road, bridge, tunnel stimulus type projects.