The State Department has recommended that the Keystone XL pipeline application be “determined not to serve the national interest,” and President Obama has agreed — not even because it’s a disaster waiting to happen, but because (just as Dave Roberts predicted!) Republicans just could not sit down and shut up for five minutes. From his written statement:
As the State Department made clear last month, the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipelines impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment. As a result, the Secretary of State has recommended that the application be denied. And after reviewing the State Departments report, I agree.
This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people.
Republicans said a lot of words about the announcement, most of which came before it even officially happened, and basically none of which were true except maybe the occasional “the.” They claimed that the pipeline would have created jobs (nope), that it would have led to energy independence (try again), and that it was inconceivable that the State Department could possibly need more time to reconsider a clearly flawed environmental assessment (dude, they already TOLD you guys to keep your damn shirts on, it’s not their fault you want to open your Christmas presents NOW NOW NOW). Then I got tired of listening to them, because seriously guys? I know you’d face life-threatening cognitive dissonance if you tried giving even the tiniest particle of a crap about reality, but it is boring and also a menace, and also boring.
Then CSPAN had some callers opine about the pipeline, and it was exactly like this:
Look for Dave Roberts to send you his reckons soon. His Twitter stream was extremely entertaining throughout the press conference:
