Pipe Dreams - By Mark Steyn - The Corner - National Review Online

Only six months ago the Canadians were planning to ship nearly all of this newly developed oil to Texas via the Keystone Pipeline. Environmentalists, however, swore the pipeline would be built over their dead bodies and President Obama, not wanting to be left with no natural constituencies except single mothers and minorities, decided to appease environmentalists and block the pipeline.
The Canadians were shocked. They had long planned to sell this oil south of the border. Canada is already our largest supplier of foreign oil and it was inconceivable that we wouldn’t want to take more it instead of relying on Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela, and other unpredictable sources.

America had been offered first refusal, and had refused it. So, after they got over being shocked, Canada looked elsewhere for business partners. Last week, the Chinese announced they were buying a Canadian company with major interests in those oil sands that Obama & Co have no interest in. Whatever one’s feelings about this Sino-Canuck deal, it does not appear to fall under the jurisdiction of a New York senator and a Massachusetts congressman. Nevertheless:

I am speaking, of course, of Senator Charles Schumer of New York and Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, both of whom have decided we are in a position to tell a Chinese company that it cannot acquire a Canadian company because… well, because we’re Americans and the world has to pay attention to what we say.

My weekend column concludes with a tweet from Huffington Post/MSNC honcho Howard Fineman on what Washington can learn from the London Olympics:

“Brits long ago lost their empire,” he tweeted, “but overall show us how to lose global power gracefully.”

Fineman and other lefties who commend this line might want to ponder on the likelihood of America declining “gracefully” as opposed to imploding through a pitiful Schumeresque combination of hollow bullying and self-destructive buffoonery: The Brokest Nation in History thinks it can dictate to its principal energy supplier and its principal loan shark what business deals it will permit them to do. Good luck with that.

Sunday, August 5, 2012