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You would think after a series of train wrecks involving tank cars carrying Canadian crude oil, even someone as dense as the president could see the efficacy of building the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition, as Charles Krauthammer points out today we are treating Canada like obama treats all traditional allies of our country – rudely.
Fixated as we Americans are on Canada’s three most attention-getting exports — polar vortexes, Alberta clippers and the antics of Toronto’s addled mayor — we’ve somewhat overlooked a major feature of Canada’s current relations with the United States: extreme annoyance.
Last week, speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s foreign minister calmly but pointedly complained that the United States owes Canada a response on the Keystone XL pipeline. “We can’t continue in this state of limbo,” he sort of complained, in what for a placid, imperturbable Canadian passes for an explosion of volcanic rage.
Canadians may be preternaturally measured and polite, but they simply can’t believe how they’ve been treated by President Obama — left hanging humiliatingly on an issue whose merits were settled years ago.
Canada, the Saudi Arabia of oil sands, is committed to developing this priceless resource. Its natural export partner is the United States. But crossing the border requires State Department approval, which means the president decides yes or no.
After three years of review, the State Department found no significant environmental risk to Keystone. Nonetheless, the original route was changed to assuage concerns regarding the Ogallala Aquifer. Obama withheld approval through the 2012 election. To this day he has issued no decision.
The Canadians are beside themselves. After five years of manufactured delay, they need a decision one way or the other because if denied a pipeline south, they could build a pipeline west to the Pacific. China would buy their oil in a New York minute. …
More on this from Andrew Malcolm.
Barack Obama has achieved acrimony among numerous sectors of Americans now fighting with each other bitterly. His ongoing efforts to screw up relations with America’s closest allies have enjoyed some success during these 1,830 endless days of his reign.
Obama’s undercut the Poles, Czechs, Israelis, angered the Brits, Brazilians, Egyptians and insulted the Germans, Japanese and Indians. And Obama single-handedly made Vladimir Putin look like the Nobel Peace Prize winner over the American’s fictional red line in Syria.
But Obama’s bid to ruin the U.S.-Canadian relationship is doomed to failure. Like Obama’s 2000 challenge of Rep. Bobby Rush back home.
That’s because the depth of ties and centripetal forces between the two former British colonies in culture, business, finance, security, language, family and trade are so deep and so profound that even a wily Alinsky-disciple cannot surmount them. The two countries enjoy the world’s longest undefended border and by far its largest bilateral economic relationship.
They share terrorist data banks, air defense and traffic commands and computer networks. You can’t get much farther apart on this continent than Miami and the Yukon’s DawsonCity. But when local Florida police check a driver’s license on a routine traffic stop, they know immediately the Mounties want that man for murder near the Arctic Circle.
Currently, Obama is trying the polite Canadians’ patience with his laughable, now five-year stall over approving the northern part of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring Alberta tar-sands oil to the world’s best refineries in Texas.
His administration has been “studying” this pipeline now longer than the U.S. was in World War II. …
Back a few days, Pickings noted the Israeli defense minister had committed the faux pas of telling the truth. Caroline Click has more on the administration’s failed Mid-East policies.
… The only parties whose lot is improved by the Obama administration’s Middle East policies are Iran, the PLO and the Muslim Brotherhood. But none of them will praise those policies, because they all hold the US in contempt.
This is why the Palestinian leadership continues to incite against Israel and reject the Jewish state even as the US is acting as their surrogate in talks with Israel.
This is why the Iranians mock the US, even though the White House just cleared the way for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and develop its economy and has allowed it to take over Iraq and Lebanon, and defend its puppet regime in Syria.
This is why the Muslim Brotherhood condemns the US even as the Obama administration upended the US alliance with Egypt in order to support the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Obama administration has responded to these demonstrations of contempt and bad faith with extreme reticence. Either it issues written, general condemnations, or it claims, as in the case of Palestinian incitement, that it doesn’t believe it is productive to publicly criticize the Palestinians.
Given this behavior, the Obama administration’s response to Yediot Aharonot’s publication of Ya’alon’s private statements can be fairly describe as apoplectic. It was also mean-spirited.
Shortly after Yediot published his private remarks, the administration launched a full-bore public attack on Ya’alon, and by implication, the government. As White House spokesman Jay Carney put it, “The remarks of the Israeli defense minister, if accurate, are offensive and inappropriate, especially in light of everything that the United States is doing to support Israel’s security needs.”
In other words, the Obama administration just accused Israel of ingratitude.
But there is nothing ungrateful about Israel’s treatment of the US.
Americans are getting the same message from allies throughout the Middle East. Under Obama, America’s regional policies are so counterproductive that the US has come to be seen as the foreign policy equivalent of a drunk driver.
As the US’s strongest ally, and also as a country that has depended for decades on US support, Israel is a passenger in the back seat of the car. On the one hand, we are happy for the ride. On the other hand, the administration’s driving is endangering our survival.
It is only because our leaders are grateful to the US for its support that the government is going along with Kerry’s ridiculous peace-processing.
More important, what is gratitude, exactly? Is it shutting up and watching your closest friend drive both of you over a cliff? Of course not. …
Washington Examiner OpEd focuses on the men who are dropping out of economic life.
As a binge-TV watcher, I’ve relished devouring serial dramas in advertising-free gulps. But “Breaking Bad” — the story about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher turned clandestine meth-cooking badass — didn’t appeal.
Then Anthony Hopkins declared it an “epic work” with “the best actors I’ve ever seen.”
Midway through season two, I understand why Walter White is heroic. As men increasingly check out of work, marriage, and fatherhood, it’s hard not to root for a man fiercely determined to secure his family’s future before dying — despite his morally abhorrent methods.
That there are dramatically fewer men willing and able to safeguard family prosperity is perhaps America’s greatest — and most unrecognized — problem.
Consider Sunday’s “Shattering the Glass Ceiling” discussion on ABC’s “This Week.” Lamenting unrealized opportunities and unsolved problems when “women aren’t fully utilized,” businesswoman Carly Fiorina and co-panelists were oblivious about two key facts.
First, two times more men than women aged 25-34 languish in their parents’ basement far below the glass ceiling, according to U.S. Census data. Second, women now outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic and vocational well-being.
Rather than apply Band-Aids to the cancer of chronic unemployment — like unemployment-insurance extensions and minimum-wage hikes — political elites must focus on the real problem:
Millions of males, especially less-educated men, are “unhitched from the engine of growth,” according to a 2011 Brookings Institution report.
Women gained all 74,000 jobs added to payrolls in December, and among the world’s seven biggest economies, America is last in the share of “prime age” males working — just behind Italy.
Why isn’t widespread male workless-ness a priority for policymakers, given the massive economic, fiscal and social costs? …
Mental Floss with background on the threats in Sochi.
As we approach the 2014 Sochi Olympics, law enforcement officials and security experts are concerned about the prospect of so-called “black widow” terrorists, a group of female suicide bombers. But who are they? Where did they come from? How did they get such a terrifying moniker?
First, a bit of geography. Sochi is one of Russia’s southernmost cities. Because of its subtropical climate and vast, beautiful beaches along the Black Sea, the city is a popular destination for Russians on summer vacation. Think of it as their Fort Lauderdale. And wouldn’t the Winter Olympics be fun in Fort Lauderdale?
Sochi is located near the Caucasus Mountains. There’s been war or insurgency in the Caucasus region (which stretches from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea) for nearly three decades now, and the region has seen some of the most shocking terrorist attacks in modern history.
The political, economic, and cultural forces at work in the region are extremely complicated, but here are the broad strokes of the last several years. East of Sochi is Chechnya. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Chechnya declared itself a sovereign nation. This didn’t go over well in Moscow, which had organized a federation of republics and constituent entities. The Russian Federation argued that Chechnya couldn’t just willy-nilly throw together a government and invent a country, and refused to accept any such effort. Meanwhile, the legacy of Soviet control and a general exodus of non-ethnic-Chechens left Chechnya socially and economically crippled. …