Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty February 7, 2014 Enjoy tonight's opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Tonight, someone — perhaps Vladimir Putin's flexible girlfriend! — will light the torch, and I understand the Russian hosts will be using a healthy number of Chechens as kindling. I'm looking forward to all the events — freestyle biathalon, downhill curling, cross-country luge, short-track snowboarding, McDonald's endorsement-winning, French-judge bribing, and a lot of recycled jokes about the Jamaican bobsled team. Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar: Oh, Hey, the Keystone Pipeline Rocks! Look, Obama administration, if you don't want to build the Keystone Pipeline, just come out and say so. Take the political lumps and get it over with. Enough of this perpetual "well, we just need to review it a few more months" limbo. To put the length of time of this review in perspective, when they first sought approval to build the pipeline, the fossils that make up the fossil fuel of the oil were still walking around. And get a load of who's endorsing the project now that he's no longer in a position to help it come to fruition: Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in an interview Thursday his endorsement of construction of the Keystone oil sands pipeline comes after learning new information, including that the pipeline would not greatly increase carbon emissions. Speaking at an energy conference in Texas earlier this week, Salazar said he supported the project. He said he believed construction could "be done in a way that creates a win-win for energy and the environment." This is the first time Salazar, now a lawyer in the private sector, has endorsed the pipeline, which would carry crude from tar sands in Canada to refineries along the Gulf Coast. In 2012, Salazar hewed close to President Barack Obama's position on the issue. "My concerns about the Keystone pipeline are in line with the Obama Administration's position on the issue. I feel that the president acted responsibly in rejecting the initial proposal on the grounds of environmental issues," he said, according to media reports. "Until the guidelines for this project are significantly altered, the pipeline should not be constructed because of the potential risks it poses to the well being of U.S. citizens." Salazar insists that as Interior Secretary, he couldn't influence the State Department's review and approval process. But does he really expect us to believe that his vocal approval to his colleagues within the administration wouldn't have changed anything? This just handed to me from the Keystone supporters: Gee, thanks a heap for going out on that limb, Johnny-Come-Lately. Would you prefer a medal or a monument? I'll let the editorial board of the Washington Post lay out the reasons to build the pipeline: ENVIRONMENTALISTS HAVE drawn a line in the sand on the Keystone XL pipeline. It's the wrong line in the wrong sand, far away from any realistic assessment of the merits — as yet another government analysis has confirmed. It's past time for President Obama to set aside politics and resolve this bizarre distraction of an issue. The State Department's latest study — the product of more than five years of investigation — largely confirms the conclusions of previous assessments and those of many independent energy experts: Allowing the firm TransCanada to build Keystone XL, which would run across the Canadian border to Steele City, Neb., is unlikely to have significant effects on climate-change-causing greenhouse gas emissions. That's because its construction, or its rejection, would not significantly affect the extraction of tar sands bitumen, an oil-like substance, in Alberta. Even if the president rejects Keystone XL and no other pipelines out of Alberta are built, the crude could still travel by rail and barge — with marginally higher greenhouse emissions and a higher likelihood of accident. One hundred eighty thousand barrels of Canadian crude already moves on train cars every day. Here are the reasons to not build the pipeline: - Self-identified environmentalists hate oil companies.
- Self-identified environmentalists really hate oil companies.
I can hear it now: "But Jim, what about if the oil pipeline leaks? What if it gets in the aquifers?" You know what you do if there's a leak in an oil pipeline? You stop pumping the oil through the pipeline, and you drive out and you fix it. Sure, it's messy, but the leak stays in one place. It's a heck of a lot easier than heading out and putting a new hull on a sinking Exxon Valdez on bobbling waves as all that oil chokes an ecosystem and the little fishies and seagulls. Back to those self-identified environmentalists who really hate oil companies. They fume at the companies for providing a fuel that is absolutely essential to modern life. Vast majorities of those who denounce oil companies the loudest still use cars in one way or another. Even if you're driving a Prius, that thing isn't a hybrid of wind and solar. It still uses gasoline, depending on the circumstances. And even if you walk everywhere, you still go to the store and buy things that were delivered on a truck that uses gasoline. This is one of the reasons those who don't self-identify as environmentalists scoff and mock those who do, even if we like a lot of the same stuff the environmentalists do -- clean water, clean air, clean beaches, open spaces, cute and cuddly endangered species, etc. Most of us grow up and recognize that there are always going to be trade-offs. If you put up a wind turbine, it's going to kill some birds. (The only legal way to kill a bald eagle in the United States is with a wind turbine.) When you see horrific oil spills like the Exxon Valdez or the BP Deepwater Horizon, it's natural and justifiable to get really angry at the oil companies. Unleash the hordes of lawyers. Hold them accountable. But there's no magic wand that makes us no longer need oil, not without fantastic breakthroughs and years and years to transition to newer fuels and sources of energy. This is why the fuming about Keystone looks like such a pose; it's not about what their efforts to prevent the pipeline project actually do, it's about broadcasting to the world how much they care. Toss Another Competitive-Swing-State Senate Race on the Board! Speaking of Colorado… With about nine months until the November midterm elections, U.S. Sen. Mark Udall remains in a near dead heat with Republican Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, according to a Quinnipiac poll released on Thursday. In a head-to-head hypothetical match up, Udall is at 45 percent, while Buck — the party's 2010 nominee — is at 42 percent. The poll surveyed about 1,100 Colorado voters and has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. Based on fundraising and name recognition, Buck is the party's front runner among a wide field of Republicans vying to unseat Udall. Other contenders include state Sens. Randy Baumgardner of Hot Sulphur Springs, Owen Hill of Colorado Springs and state Rep. Amy Stephens of Monument. The primary is June 24. . . . "He may be the front-runner, but he can hear the footsteps of three challengers, all within a few percentage points of him," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, of the incumbent lawmaker. Dennis Hopper's ref in the Nike commercials heard the footsteps, too. Speaking of commercials… 'Pro-Obamacare ads are like seeing a unicorn or the Loch Ness monster' A dog that isn't barking: A Democratic super PAC indirectly plugged the health care law in a December ad, boasting that Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina "forced insurance companies to cover cancer and other preexisting conditions." Before that, campaign ad trackers say the last exclusively positive message on Obamacare aired in August when Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey bragged about helping to write the law. (He lost to Cory Booker in the Democratic Senate primary.)
Even Organizing for Action, the advocacy offshoot of President Obama's campaign, is focusing elsewhere, currently airing ads touting President Obama's support for raising the minimum wage. The last time OFA ran pro-Obamacare ads was last summer.
"Pro-Obamacare ads are like an endangered species, like seeing a unicorn or the Loch Ness monster," said Elizabeth Wilner, Kantar Media senior vice president for political advertising. "Democrats are either not talking about it at all or talking about it needing to be fixed."
In contrast to the gag order on the Democratic side, Republican critics of Obamacare have unleashed an unusually early and massive media blitz. Just one conservative organization, Americans for Prosperity, has already lavished $27 million, mostly on attacks since the health care program's troubled launch in October. This shouldn't be that surprising. Enough people have had enough genuine headaches, stress, frustration, and misery from the Obamacare rollout — either through canceled plans, higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher co-pays, not liking the selection on the exchange, long waits when they call the help line, the website crashing, the website not sending the right information to the insurance company, their company reducing 401(k) benefits to cover the new costs of plans under Obamacare, their insurer talking about either doubling their rates or departing the exchanges, or they're witnessing the end of the era of small group medical practices, they're one of the 22,000 folks who have errors in their records that cannot be changed, they're being denied specialty treatment at the hospital by insurance providers on the state exchange, etc, etc. None of those people want to hear the success stories and happy talk. I'm sure in a nation of 317 million people, you can find somebody who's happy with their deal under Obamacare. But it's a raw deal for millions of Americans, and they're not going to be receptive to an ad that tries to tell them otherwise. If you're a Democrat, better to try to change the subject. ADDENDUM: The best Sochi toilet yet: 
"I told you, never take a Russian 'half-off' deal!"
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