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" I&amp;#039;m intrigued by this piece about former Obama campaign staffers who -- among other things -- are getting themselves tossed into the hoosegow for protesting what they perceive as the administration&amp;#039;s eventually going in the tank for our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel with which a company called TransCanada plans to bisect the United States so as to transport the world&amp;#039;s dirtiest fossil fuel from the desolate ecological moonscape of Alberta to the refineries along the Texas coast, and thence to a waiting world. Fear that the State Department findings will grease the skids for approval is creating a rift between Organizing for Action, the former campaign army now tasked with promoting the president&amp;#039;s agenda, and other activists and donors who are frustrated with the administration&amp;#039;s reticence not only on Keystone but also on a range of climate change actions. Organizing for Action stated clearly last month that it will not support grassroots activism against Keystone right now. &amp;quot;Organizing for Action&amp;#039;s mission is to support President Obama&amp;#039;s agenda,&amp;quot; reads the first in a list of talking points for volunteers. &amp;quot;The Keystone XL pipeline is still under review, and OFA supports and respects the process as it is currently underway.&amp;quot; At which point you can be forgiven if you erupt into a spasm of what afflicts John Belushi during the Delta House disciplinary hearing. There are issues on which the half-a-loaf bargaining is worth it, especially if it keeps the denizens of the monkeyhouse away from the controls. There are issues on which ambivalence is a sensible position to have; in may case, that would be the drone programs, which I recognize may do more harm than good, but which I also recognize has taken more than a few really bad people off the board who might not have been gotten any other way. (On balance, I say no, but I can see the argument on the other side.) But there are some issues on which it does not pay to be too clever by half, on which there is only one dimension in which the chess should be played. One of them is Social Security and Medicare. Another one is this damn pipeline. It is not possible to be serious about climate change and then green-light this project. This is a pipeline, so it will leak, because it always leaks. TransCanada will then lie about the leak because it is an extraction industry and that&amp;#039;s what they do when things leak. The fuel it carries will ludicrously accelerate the pace of global climate change. And, more to the point, every case presented in its favor has turned out to be a lie. The job figures always were science fiction. It will do nothing to the price of gasoline in this country. Why we should put the Oglalla Aquifer at risk with a pipeline that the Canadians don&amp;#039;t want to build in their own country just so that the Chinese can continue to pollute the air escapes me. I think these former campaign staffers are right. I think the bag job on this one is nearly complete. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25619/pipeline-sneaks-up-on-us-100413/>