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" I was watching Liberal MSNBC this afternoon when anchor Alex Wagner was chatting with congressional correspondent (and obvious merit hire) Luke Russert about one of this blog&amp;#039;s minor obsessions, the XL pipeline. First, my gob nearly was permanently smacked to hear Wagner call Russert &amp;quot;the sage of Capitol Hill.&amp;quot; Yes, Alex, and I am the Tsar of all the Russias. But then, they started talking about the XL pipeline, and its current role as a bargaining chip in Republican tomfoolery over the payroll tax-cut. (&amp;quot;Want to give thousands of middle class families a tax break? Okay, first you gotta let us build a pipeline from Alberta to Texas.&amp;quot; This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.) So the Sage of Capitol Hill warns that, if the White House fails to submit to this clownish attempt at blackmail, it risked &amp;quot;campaign commercials in 2012 saying, &amp;#039;President Obama turned down 20,000 new jobs.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  Turns out there was still more smacking room in the old gob than I thought there was. Dammit, that 20,000 jobs figure is... a... lie. (I am speaking slowly, and in italics, in case any Sages of Capitol Hill are reading this.) Even TransCanada, which is trying to build the damn thing, walked the number of jobs back to 13,000 and that... was... a... year... ago. Further, in the paperwork that it sent to the State Department, TransCanada estimated the jobs created by the pipeline to be somewhere south of 2000. The 20,000 job figure comes from a private report, and it includes (largely imaginary) jobs in business that spring up along the pipeline over the next 10 years. (And I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s possible to build that many saloons and brothels in that time.) People who report the news should know this. If you&amp;#039;re speculating about possible campaign commercials using this figure, you&amp;#039;re sort of obligated to note that any commercial that mentions 20,000 jobs is obviously bullshit. It&amp;#039;s one thing to hear Fox News fembots spewing this nonsense, but I expected better from the Sage of Capitol Hill. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a11999/xl-pipeline-jobs-6615580/>