Obama's Keystone XL Visit A Potemkin Village Photo-Op

Obama's Keystone XL Visit A Potemkin Village Photo-Op.(Investors).The president stages a photo-op in Oklahoma to take credit for the portion of the Keystone XL pipeline that doesn't need his approval and for oil production on private and state lands beyond his jurisdiction.
If one of his aides some morning remarked on a particularly lovely sunrise, it wouldn't surprise us if President Obama responded with a "thank you," so gifted is he in taking credit for successes that he has nothing to do with and that occur despite, not because, of his policies.
So it will be Thursday, when Obama is scheduled to appear in Cushing, Okla., known as the pipeline capital of the world, to take credit for the southern half of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project announced weeks ago by TransCanada, the Keystone builder.
It's the section that doesn't need presidential or State Department approval since it does not cross an international boundary.The president will say he is "expediting" the permit process for the southern portion of Keystone XL, the emptiest of gestures. We already have some 55,000 miles of safely operating pipelines, most of which required state and local permits, not presidential hot air, to proceed.
If the president wants to expedite permits, how about doing that in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil rigs are leaving and businesses are going bankrupt due to a glacial permitting process that is a de facto moratorium by over-regulation? He could free up Gulf production tomorrow.When combined, our recoverable endowment of oil, natural gas and coal is the largest on earth. When all U.S. resources (even without abundant shale oil) are aggregated, we see the U.S. has more fossil fuel reserves than any other country in the world (see chart).And President Obama is the only leader in the world keeping them under lock and key.Hmmmm.....If he really wanted to destroy America as a superpower would he do anything different?Read the full story here.