Matt Wuerker for October 16, 2014

“This contribution in no way will affect my vote!”-Sen. Schmutz

Considering that shale oil is far from “pure” – the only reason it has even become valuable is the rising cost (and decreasing availability) of good oil – the content of what would be the Keystone pipeline would be actively poisonous, toxic guck, and extremely dangerous to carry, let alone to pipe over thousands of miles. And the Koch brothers have in the past had plants that doubled their dumping of toxic waste over the weekend just to avoid inspectors…

“The only reason for the keystone pipeline is to move Canadian oil to the world market to inflate the price. Americans get a few long term maintenance jobs and all of the risk. None of the profits.”Not to mention all of the pollution and toxic byproducts associated with processing the type of oil involved. There’s a reason why they want to move it to the US to refine.

The only thing funny about that is that they didn’t bother to do the math before on how much power they needed. They’d have the same issue if they had brought an under sized gas generator.

Senator Schmutz (or Snort or Jack S. Phogbound) sticks the check in his secret pocket. Then he throws all the other suggestions up at the ceiling, and acts on any one of them that sticks.

Harley, you’re a climate change denier. You have no right to call anyone else an idiot.

A simple rule: You have to dance with them what brung ya.

“Everyone has the right to free speech, but only money talks.” —-Stephen Colbert

Not that this ‘toon has anything to do with the Keystone Pipeline, but as long as we’re debating: I would like to remind posters that Congress has exempted everyone involved from having to clean up (or pay for others to clean up) any spill of shale oil. This pipeline will leak; they all do. And this pipeline is proposed to travel across the larges aquifer in this part of the country. This part of the country provides much of our food supply, and has been experiencing drought conditions over the past several years.

Pollute the water, can’t grow food.

If you can eat money, I’d like to volunteer the Koch brothers to show us how it can be done.

Let’s assume that you are correct, and that the pipeline will be cleaner than the train. We’re still taking a toxic product over an aquifer. Trains derail. Pipelines leak. No provision for cleanup of a spoiled aquifer.

We can quibble over details, but the bottom line is that other people make money, and the average American citizen gains nothing and may lose a large part of our food supply.

I submit that this is a bad idea, regardless of how it is transported.

Happily, the American public has not accepted Democrats’ efforts to villify two wealthy men whose only crime is that they do what wealthy Democratic donors do with their own money (and what Unions do with money drawn from workers without their consent), but do it on behalf of causes with which Democrats disagree.

And who’s the oil executive who’s suing to keep them from fracking near his land? That certainly inspires confidence!

(Waiting now for seventeen incoherent rants about Ted Kennedy.)

Grrr…and the mods allowing fools to fly while the rational are clipped.

“This strip ticks me off. We have clean air legislation. Since 1970’s we have cleaned up our air very well thank you very much! Then the strip says that politicians are just bought and sold and have no thoughts of their own. Like oh my this guy gets more money and will only vote because he gets money and the Kochs are against clean air so the politician is going to vote against clean air. Really? Liberals are such simpletons. I guess they feel politician will only care about clean air if they are paid off. They only think legislation passed right now is going to clean the air and not take into account the rules and regulations that are on the books right now that are working. And the ONLY reason a person gives money is to pay off the other guy., Not because the other guy supports and has views such as yours, like free market and the right not to be shook down by Carbon credits or tax payer money going for scams such as My tax money for your clunker car. I will support a politician who will speak out and not do stupid things such as that!”-Good points as to air quality and of the cartoonist’s apparent failure to understand the other side of the argument. I suppose it is easier for the cartoonist to mischaracterize a position than to argue against a position that reasonable people hold. But it does no favors to his ability to think critically to do so.

My local DEMOCRAT Senate candidate spoke in favor of a natural gas pipeline that will ship that oh so precious product from Wyoming, to CHINA! Okay, we EXPORT our precious natural resources that we need so badly here, and lead the world in production of. The candidates argument, that is only half a glass full, is that shipping our natural gas to China will allow them to switch from coal to natural gas, and reduce carbon emissions.

While there is some rationale in the argument, it still boils down to the fact that it IS the oil companies and their affiliates that run the Congress with “donations”. Interesting that the NRA accomplishes the same thing with far more in contributions than membership fees would begin to cover, to represent a small minority of actual persons. Hmm.

Oh, btw: yes, NIxon signed the Clean Air Act and NEPA, and every Republican administration since has modified or removed regulations, and/or funding, to ENFORCE those regulations they’ve retained in place. Thus, after the cleanup, we’re now allowing more contamination from the privileged few, like, but not exclusive to Koch. BTW it was also the Bush administration that in 2007 changed the MMS regulations so that what led to the BP spill wouldn’t violate regulations, or decrease profit margins… safety be damned.

What not put the University of California, Harvard, Time Warner, George Soros or Citigroup on the check instead of Koch. Who each gave more than $500,000. Mr. Wuerkner’s liberalism, Progressivism and Democratic biases are showing in his cartoon strip.