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Permalink Reply by Frank Walker on November 18, 2014 at 12:48pm

This is a great victory for Obama, for whom it now will not be necessary to veto legislation handed him by a Democrat-run Senate.

Course this does place poor Mary in a world of hurt . . . and she was not doing all that well prior to the vote.

Anyone who thinks a mere election, a mere expression of the people's will, is going to bring Obama to the center is smoking something bought in Colorado!  President Clinton, by way of contrast, was a pragmatist willing at times to bend.  Obama is a rigid, doctrinaire socialist radical of the first order, much like his parents.

Looking forward, consider today Mary was able to bring along a bunch of Democrats, just not enough to reach 60.  After the new year, and assuming Mary loses her runoff, only five Democrat votes will be needed to reach cloture.  I wonder if the Republicans will be able to find those five votes.  Stay tuned, this could get interesting!

Just off the top of my head, I think they will get Manchin, McCaskill, that new gal from Dakota, and . . . . . . . I dunno.

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Permalink Reply by Dexter Green on November 18, 2014 at 6:46pm

Republicans won't need any Democrats because cloture may very well not be necessary.  The Presiding Officer of the Senate can override the cloture rule with a simple majority, thus eliminating the need for any Democrats to vote for the bill.

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Permalink Reply by Frank Walker on November 19, 2014 at 1:15am

It's a good point.  But there is a political price to be paid for doing things that way.  That's the Democrat way, and it stinks.

Better, in my view, to try hard for the cloture votes.

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Permalink Reply by Elnathan Cory on November 18, 2014 at 3:58pm

This is a great victory for our region. This will stop imported oil or at least slow it down literally. We the property owners of the gas rich shales in this area do not need competition from any foreign country. Now if only we could stop the flow from the middle east. The pipeline is bad for our region, period. Now let's get our own gas pipelines flowing with gas not the BS of the pro-keystone pipeline!

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Permalink Reply by Jim Litwinowicz on November 18, 2014 at 4:56pm

Gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. No doubt the Rs will pass this through the House in Jan.  Then the Senate will vote with the new Rs.  They will need just 5-6 Ds to pass it.  So how may of the 14 Ds that voted for it today not vote for it then?  (A few of them lost and won't be back so I think it will be around 10 of the current Ds) If they change their vote, how will they justify voting for it in Nov but not Jan? And if they vote for it twice, will the tree huggers go crazy and target them in the next round of elections.

Then Pres Zero will have to either sign it or veto it.  That will be fun in its own right. Either way, he is gonna piss off some serious D supporters. Unions that want it, huggers that hate it.

And this pipeline won't hurt our area at all and would probably help it.  Canadian tar sand oil is very thick and heavy. It will go to Gulf Coast refineries that are designed to refine heavy crudes like those from Mexico and Venezuela, reducing imports from those countries. It is so heavy that it does not flow easily and needs to be thinned with lighter liquids.  A lot of people think that light liquids from Oh and Pa will be shipped to Canada where it will be blended with the tar sands oil to dilute it, thus being a major market to sell our light liquids.

Stay tuned, this will be a long battle.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Tarr on November 18, 2014 at 8:49pm

Also those tar sands take heating to get that "thick oil" out. Guess where those BTU's come from. It's not a wood boiler!

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