Back to Basics

The interminable war on drilling, fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline has taken some bizarre turns. Now it’s getting worse, as opponents grow more desperate, and the moon again grows full.

Deep water drilling, 3-D and 4-D seismic (the ability to visualize 3-D over many years), deep horizon horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and other technological marvels have obliterated environmentalist claims that the United States and world are running out of oil and gas – and therefore we need to switch to subsidized, land-hungry, job-killing wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels.

Thanks to free enterprise innovation on state and public lands – and no thanks to President Obama, who has made nearly the entire federal onshore and offshore estate off limits to leasing and drilling – US oil and natural gas production has hit an all-time record. The world is on the verge of doing so as well.

Long-running geopolitics have been turned upside down, as OPEC, Russia and other oil superpowers wonder what hit them. Plastic and chemical manufacturers, steel makers, bus and fleet vehicle operators, and now long-haul truckers are already cashing in on the natural gas bonanza. So are electric utilities, especially with EPA continuing its war on coal, with more unnecessary heavy-handed air and water rules.

Global warming/climate change hysteria is also floundering on the rocks of reality. Average global temperatures haven’t risen in 16 years, seas aren’t rising any faster than 100 years ago, and storms, floods and droughts are no more frequent or severe than over multi-decade trends during the past century.

Evidence and reality simply are not cooperating with IPCC and Mann-made climate models. “Trust the computer models!” the alarmists plead. “If reality doesn’t comport with our predictions, reality is wrong.”

The U.S. State Department has (yet again) said the Keystone XL pipeline poses few environmental problems and should be approved, to bring Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries – creating thousands of construction and permanent jobs, and billions in economic growth and government revenue.

Unacceptable! …Rants the Environmental Protection Agency. “State underestimated KXL’s potential impact on global warming and needs to do its studies all over again,” says EPA. Never mind that oil sands production would add a minuscule 0.06% to US greenhouse gas emissions and an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to computer-modeled global warming, according to the Congressional Research Service. Do it over, until you get the answers we want, demand EPA and environmentalist ideologues.

Some 70% of Americans and 60% of Canadians support Keystone – and energy security (and jobs) outrank greenhouse gas reduction as a national priority by a 2-1 margin among Americans – says Canadian pollster Nik Nanos.

However, the haters of hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty are not ready to surrender. They’ve launched a blitzkrieg flanking attack. This time they are outraged that some Keystone oil could be refined into diesel and other products and exported! to Europe or Asia – while some frack-based natural gas might be converted to LNG and likewise exported! around the globe.

Well, yes. When US refiners transform crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, asphalt, waxes and petrochemicals, they ship some of these products overseas.

PHOTOS.COM

It appears that aging Hollywood movie star Robert Redford did not see the movie “Argo,” which was awarded Best Picture at the 2013 Academy Awards.

Had Redford seen it, he might have noticed that in 1979 Muslim radicals under Ayatollah Khomeini took Americans hostage. The only country to offer assistance was Canada.

Such history seems lost on Redford, an ultra-rich liberal active environmentalist. (His net worth is estimated at $170 million.) Redford is vehemently against the United States’ importing oil sands from Canada. His criticism reached a crescendo in the wake of the Exxon Mobil Corp. pipeline spill in Mayflower, Ark., on March 29.

It is estimated that 36,000 barrels of crude oil leaked from a pipeline, which forced the evacuation of more than 20 families from their homes.

In the aftermath, Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel is asking Exxon Mobil to pay $4 million to help pay for an investigation as to why the pipeline leaked.

The oil spill is only 1,000 miles from Redford’s mansion in Sundance, Utah. (The good news for the actor is that he also has residences further west.)

A post on ecorazzi.com stated:

Actor and environmentalist Robert Redford has been an outspoken opponent of the Keystone XL Pipeline since the beginning. Now that a pipeline in Arkansas has ruptured leaving a residential community with thousands of gallons of tar sands crude right in their yards, Redford is hoping the government will wake up to the dangers of building any new pipeline.

Blogging for Huffington Post, Redford wrote:

(W)hen it comes to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline… the Pegasus rupture in Arkansas is another red flag. We’ve had a lot of these red flags lately that show us what a raw deal tar sands is and we ignore them at our peril.

…

How many red flags do we need before we realize that the solution is to stop tar sands expansion and say no to tar sands pipelines? I think we’ve seen enough.

Redford wants Americans to contact their Congressmen and demand that they pressure President Barack Obama to pull the plug on the pipeline, a decision the President is expected to make this summer.

Redford and his Green advocates are making a mistake regarding Keystone and oil imported from Canada. This is why:

1. The Keystone project is expected to create 10,000 new U.S. jobs at a time when the Nation is still in a recession.
2. America must import more than 10 million barrels of oil per day (mb/d). Currently, Canada delivers the United States almost one-third of that total. Saudi Arabia sells the United States 1.2 mb/d. Imports from both countries have come down as U.S. domestic crude production has increased. However, America is going to be dependent on vast amounts of imported crude for the next decade and beyond unless newly found domestic reserves are quickly developed and/or renewable energies can begin to play a significant role in providing power.
3. Crude provided from the Mideast, South America and Africa is transported in oil supertankers. In 1980, the Exxon Valdez spilled 750,000 barrels of oil on the shores of Prince William Sound, Alaska, making that spill more than 20 times larger than last month’s pipeline leak in Arkansas. (The U.S.

OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY CHUCK KENNEDY

President Barack Obama touted his energy plan at Argonne National Laboratory.

“The only way to break this cycle of spiking gas prices — the only way to break that cycle for good — is to shift our cars entirely, our cars and trucks, off oil.” — President Barack Obama, speaking at the Argonne National Laboratory on March 15

President Barack Obama has finally brought Congress together with one common goal: to oppose his ruinous energy policies. Perhaps he can unite grass-roots Americans the way no one has since King George III.

On Thursday, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate that would give Congress the sole power to approve TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline project. It is essential to America’s national security in that it channels Canada’s vast oil sands to refineries and ports in Texas.

Senators John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced the measure, which proposes to ensure the construction of the 800,000-barrels-per-day pipeline.

It is no surprise that the President is fighting back. White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters last week that since the pipeline will cross international borders, the decision for its approval belongs with the State Department. This is the latest example of how the President usurps the democratic process and seizes extraordinary powers, all for the good of the environmental movement.

The $5.3 billion Keystone pipeline has become the battleground for Canada’s oil sands. The combatants are the Greens and the realists. The latter understand that for the foreseeable future America needs secure supplies of petroleum and not the fantasy of windmills and electric cars.

The Greens continue to resist and insist the pipeline will expand the oil sands projects in Western Canada, leaving a dangerous carbon footprint upon the world.

The Problem with Pelosi

Not only would the Keystone pipeline greatly decrease America’s dependency on Mideast oil, but it would also create tens of thousands of new jobs at a time when unemployment lingers close to 8 percent.

Not so, said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and environmental activist who continues to argue that the Keystone pipeline will not deliver many jobs.

“It just is amazing to me that they can say [Keystone would create] ‘tens of thousands of jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil,’” said Pelosi at a press briefing on Capitol Hill last week to oppose the bipartisanship in the Senate. “The oil is for export and the jobs are nowhere near that.”

The Keystone pipeline may not employ as many people as Pelosi does for her hairdos, clothes and facelifts; but at least it is a start. Contradictions from Pelosi abound. If she visited Saudi Arabia as opposed to any Western democracy like Canada (America’s most reliable ally and energy source), the women’s rights advocate would have to cover her face with a scarf and she couldn’t drive around in her gas-guzzling Chevy Suburban.*

Pelosi, Obama and green advocates continue to recklessly tie the Nation’s future to Islamic oil producers like Saudi Arabia, home to most of the 9/11 hijackers.

The chart below gives you an indication of Canada’s oil wealth. It doesn’t even include Canada’s oil sands reserves.

Did anyone notice that the estimated 35,000 who showed up for the anti-Keystone XL pipeline rally outside the White House on Sunday, Feb 17, were all bundled up against the cold? The temperature was about 25 degrees Fahrenheit. The Earth has been cooling—naturally—for sixteen years.

The pipeline which will not cost taxpayers a dime would be part of the existing 1,200 pipelines that traverse the same route. It would enable oil extracted from Canadian tar sands to be refined in America. Failing that, the same oil will be exported to China.

There are already 170,000 miles of pipeline in America, moving oil and natural gas to fuel our cars and trucks, warm our homes and apartments, and, in the case of oil, to be turned in the zillion uses of plastic and other products such as asphalt to pave our streets and highways.

The people who showed up and shivered through the rally lack sufficient brain cells to make the connection between the warmth to which they retreated and the energy that provided that warmth or the electricity that provided the light by which to read their anti-energy manifestos.

For an hour or two they listened as the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council spokesmen regaled them with an anti-energy, anti-jobs, and anti-wealth message that ignored the 20,000 jobs the Keystone XL pipeline is expected to generate, plus all the other jobs dependent on this source of energy. Not surprisingly, the AFL-CIO’s building and construction trade division has endorsed the pipeline.

In testimony before a House committee, delivery on Feb 13, Daniel Simmons, the Director of Regulatory and State Affairs for the Institute of Energy Research, addressed a hearing on “The Effects of Rising Energy Costs on American Families and Employers.” As far as I can tell there was zero media coverage, but here are a few of the facts he presented.

“The federal estate contains vast energy resources, but the federal government allows energy production on a very small percentage of taxpayer-owned federal lands. The Interior Department has leased just two percent of federal offshore areas and less than six percent of federal onshore lands for oil and gas development.”

“It takes 307 days for the federal government to process a permit to drill, but only 27 days for Colorado and ten days in North Dakota.” Both states are reaping the benefit in terms of jobs and revenue generated while “energy production on federal lands is stagnating.”

In a nation that is $16 trillion in debt with trillion dollar annual deficits this runs counter to anything that makes any sense at all.

Just how much wealth is represented in the energy reserves the Obama administration to which has and will continue to deny access?

“These technically recoverable resources,” Simmons told the committee, “total 1,194 billion barrels of oil and 2,150 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that is owned by the federal taxpayer…the value of the estimated oil resources is $119.4 trillion and the value of the estimated natural gas resources is $8.6 trillion for a grand total of $128 trillion.”

If you wondering why the U.S.

America finds itself “over a barrel” (perhaps literally), and at the precipice of financial Armageddon due to the coming collapse of the U.S. dollar.  It is most important for people to understand that our financial destruction has been orchestrated for a generation or more, and has been intentionally accelerated over the last two decades to complete a specific agenda. In order to survive what is coming, it is imperative to understand that agenda, who and what is behind it, and the motive. The bigger picture will connect some very important dots.

All is well in the land of Oz

America is in serious financial trouble, and events on the immediate horizon will forever change our lifestyle. However, if you are like me, trying to convince your friends at work, your neighbors, or perhaps even your spouse that this is true is a formidable (if not impossible) task.  They might counter your warnings by pointing to the people walking out of retail stores with big ticket items, or if they are trying to appear more astute, cite the positive gains in the stock market while snickering at you for buying silver at nearly $50 per ounce, while it now hovers at $30 per ounce. You might have even been called a doomsayer or conspiracy nut for buying storable food or extra items for your pantry. However (if their ego permits it), these will be the same people who will turn to you for answers and practical advice when the financial house of cards falls to the floor.

What people are seeing is not reality, but their perception of reality as a result of the conditioning and brainwashing by our elected leaders and the complicit corporate media. The American public has been conditioned and brainwashed en masse into believing a lie.

It is an accepted mantra that the bigger the lie, the more readily people will believe it. That is the case in which we find ourselves today. The entire world (especially Americans and the West) is in for a “crude awakening.” In our current state, perception is not reality. We are being subjected to lie upon lie that feeds our normalcy bias. “Things will never get as bad as you say, at least not here in America,” is a common statement that you might be hearing. Others will argue that intervention by our government will prevent any significant financial disaster. They don’t understand that it is the elements within our own government (or elements working in conjunction with our elected leaders) who are actually responsible for the financial crisis that we will soon face.

What is the truth?

The truth is that America is a “captured operation.” It has been captured from within. The Democrat-Republican, right-left paradigm is nothing more than an erroneous perception that permits the illusion of dueling agendas, when, in fact, there is only one. For example, how else would one explain the continuity of agenda between George W. Bush and Barack Obama?

If one accepts the fact that America is a captured operation, then it would be reasonable to ask, “Captured by who or what?” And, “What is the end-game objective of those controlling the puppet strings?

Fox newsman Bill O’Reilly sees himself as a patriot and a culture warrior and thusly, he asks liberals, democrats and a plethora of lefty loons, extremists and wobbly wherewithals’, some unusual questions. They are supposed to be hard questions, which almost no one else will ask.

O’Reilly, like so many Americans today, often does not ask the hard questions at all; for the two most obvious reasons. First, neither he, nor those he questions; know what the questions are.

An evangelist who once preached in the New England area some years ago headlined his meetings with the phrase, “If Jesus is the Answer – Then what are the Questions.” It was a great lead in to his message. It is the question that everyone should consider before they put forth the idea that their particular moral, political or worldview has all the answers for America’s societal woes and failures.

The second reason is that, like Bill O’Reilly, most people are what the Bible refers to as ‘respecters of persons.’ (Acts 10: 34) O’Reilly has repeatedly explained, that in his view, we must quickly adapt to all accepted protocol and show special deference to persons like the president and others in high office – simply because they are in high office.

This modern societal handicap was not shared by the ancient prophets and many of today’s best preachers because they could not be true to God and respect man (false men or the falsehoods of man) at the same time. The proof of their willingness to speak to a man’s character and behaviors regardless of the office the person held, be it king or president, rich or poor, priest or pauper, was constantly evidenced by the fact that they were imprisoned, beaten, and executed for doing so.

After stating several times, days in advance of his interview with Colin Powell, how much he respected him, doubt was already in play as to whether he could actually ask any question that mattered. O’Reilly’s respect for Powell is now on record and so too, is the scathing rebuke Powell leveled at him for his hardest question.

When asked about the faulty information provided by the CIA about WMD’s that led to the Gulf War against Iraq, Powell answered quickly and quite discreetly. But it was Powell’s description of O’Reilly’s question that we will forever hear in our ears.

Powell said “And I don’t have to answer idiotic questions like that one about — whether I’m mad at somebody.”

We may all be asking ‘idiotic questions’ when it comes to the spiritual, moral and political climate in America. If we are to believe Barack Obama’s inaugural speech in which he chose to correct all those dummies that still look to the bible, the constitution and other trusted sources for guidance, for anchoring and for foundational footing, by proclaiming that they must not mistake absolutism for principle. That great inaugural proclamation served to raise an even greater question.

In the absence of absolutisms, is the only alternative to finding the truth a matter of asking Mr. Obama what the truth is?

Are we at last blessed with the answer to the question once asked by Pontius Pilate as he condemned Christ to the death on the cross?

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has approved his state’s portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, explaining that its revised route avoids areas that critics had earlier claimed were environmentally sensitive.

The Alberta-to-Texas pipeline would create more than 5,500 Nebraska jobs during its construction period and support 1,000 permanent jobs through 2030. During the project’s lifetime, KXL would generate $950 million in labor income, $130 million in property, sales and other state and local taxes, and $679 million for the state’s gross domestic product, by bringing Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries.

President Obama’s second term agenda, continued viability of Medicare and Social Security programs, and America’s economy and environment need the pipeline and oil even more than Nebraska does.

The pipeline and Alberta petroleum could mean $45 billion per year by 2035 in increased goods and services, up to 465,000 more jobs in the 2,000 American companies that already support oil sands operations or utilize the hydrocarbons in motor fuel and petrochemical manufacturing – and billions in annual state and federal tax revenues. While all fifty states would realize employment and economic gains, California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio, New York, Montana and Michigan would benefit most (in that order) from this job and economic activity, the Canadian Energy Research Institute calculates.

Canada has an estimated 169 billion barrels of oil sands fuel that can be recovered economically with today’s technology – 20% by mining and 80% via in situ drilling and steam injection. Much of this oil is destined for the United States via the KXL pipeline, to replace similar heavy crude that we now import from Mexico and Venezuela, and oil from other nations that have much lower environmental standards and far worse human rights records than Canada, including Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Russia, Iraq and Algeria.

During a recent tour of the mining and in situ operations, I smelled no hydrocarbons, learned that fresh water use is declining and water recycling has risen to 80-95 percent, and hiked through former mine sites that have been restored to beautiful lakes, creeks, forests … and grasslands where wild buffalo roam. Most oil sands will not be mined, however – but produced by drilling wells hundreds of feet deep, injecting steam to melt the bitumen, and collecting it in other pipes several feet below the steam pipes. Multiple wells are drilled from each widely separated site, and each is also reclaimed when the oil is recovered.

Oil sands production contributes only 0.14% of global greenhouse gases, Environment Canada notes, and would add only 0.00001 degrees C per year to global warming. Production-to-automotive-use CO2/GHG emissions for oil sands crude are on par with crude from Nigeria, America’s third biggest supplier.

All this has prompted oil sands and pipeline opponents to generate press releases and new “scientific reports,” in a desperate attempt to derail KXL permits, by raising scary sounding ecological issues.

* Assorted “experts” persist in trying to blame global warming and climate change for forest fires, droughts, floods, heat waves and even Hurricane Sandy – and say oil sands will somehow worsen these problems.

An oil and natural gas boom is underway in the United States, born of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” It has created tens of thousands of well-paying jobs directly, and hundreds of thousands more in hundreds of businesses that supply and support the industry and its workers.

In North Dakota, the unemployment rate is 2.4 percent, in large part because of a huge increase in natural gas and crude oil production from deep shale rocks that yielded nothing prior to fracking. The new technology is also driving job growth, higher incomes, and increased tax revenues for hard-pressed state and local governments in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas and other states.

Meanwhile, 350 miles north of Edmonton, Alberta, other innovators are producing billions of barrels from oil sands that stretch across an area the size of Utah. Shallow deposits are accessible via surface mining, while deeper lodes are tapped using in situ drilling and steam injection. As work is completed in an area, the land is restored to woodlands, grasslands, lakes and marshes, and the process moves on.

As with fracking, the oil sands create tens of thousands of high-paying jobs and generate millions in revenue, benefitting people from Fort McMurray, Calgary and Vancouver to Ottawa and Halifax, and throughout the United States. Construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline would multiply these benefits.

And yet, despite ample evidence that responsible development of these enormous energy resources could power a national economic, manufacturing and employment renaissance, the Obama Administration’s environmental ideologies and political debts to radical green groups could delay or stymie progress.

The new robber barons in the Executive Branch and Congress are not content only with taxing job creators and saddling our children and great grandchildren with trillion-dollar IOUs. They are using hard-earned tax money to finance wind, solar, biofuel and other schemes that primarily reward crony capitalist campaign contributors. They’re also locking up centuries’ of oil, gas, coal and uranium that could generate an economic revival, millions of jobs, and billions in federal, state and local royalty and tax revenues.

Some say the way these robber barons use, abuse and ignore laws to advance this agenda reminds them of the infamous James Gang, which plundered banks and trains until Northfield, Minnesota citizens ended their lawless ways. Others say a better example is the Chicago-based Al Capone mob.

Still others point to the Capitol Hill “fiscal cliff” negotiations, as providing clues as to what lies ahead. President Obama says he favors a “balanced” approach to avoid fiscal calamity, but insists on raising taxes on high-income citizens – and will not discuss reining in entitlement expenditures that are lead life preservers on taxpayers and our economy. His Treasury Secretary tells us, “There are no options.”

The President’s unique concept of “balance” also defines his “all of the above” energy program. Like Humpty Dumpty, his words mean just what he chooses them to mean – as in all of the above-ground projects, but none of the below-ground resources. Perhaps the real question is, who is to be master … of our lives, natural resources, nation and pursuit of happiness?

PHOTOS.COM

There is no limit to the hypocrisy of the Administration of President Barack Obama. The latest example is the “green” President’s candidate for secretary of state, Susan Rice.

The Democrats have been hypercritical of many Republicans for lining up against a black woman who is Obama’s choice to replace Hilary Clinton to oversee the U.S. Department of State. The race card has once again been tossed into the ring.

Congress’ top-ranking black lawmaker says he suspects Republicans are pillorying Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, because she is black.

Criticism of Rice began after her Sept. 16 comments regarding the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Rice said the attack began as a “spontaneous reaction” to an anti-Islamic video widely watched in the Muslim world that had also set off protests elsewhere.

Later, we learned that simply was not the truth. According to the State Department, the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was not some spontaneous outburst but a well-executed attack organized and launched by a terrorist cell of al-Qaida.

Many right-thinking Americans were outraged by Rice’s characterization of the Libyan attack, including Representative Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., who penned a letter to President Barack Obama saying Rice’s public comments after the Benghazi attack “caused irreparable damage to her credibility both at home and around the world.”

According to the letter, which was signed by 96 other Congressmen, Rice “either willfully or incompetently misled the American public in the Benghazi matter.”

It said replacing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Rice as “the face of U.S. foreign policy” in Obama’s second term “would greatly undermine your desire to improve U.S. relations with the world and continue to build trust with the American people.”

Democrats Play The Race Card

Representative James Clyburn, D-S.C., along with other black Democrats, say upset Republicans continually use variations of the word “incompetent” to describe Rice, a Rhodes Scholar and former senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.

Clyburn, who is the third-ranking House Democrat, told The Washington Post that the Republicans’ choice to be critical of Rice’s remarks is one thing, but calling her incompetent amounts to using racial “code words.”

“We in the South know what that means,” he said. “I take offense when people use those words. I have a problem with them. They are going to disagree with Rice’s politics, but if they do, just say she’s wrong,” Clyburn told The Post. “When you apply the word ‘incompetent,’ that personalizes this thing, it goes beyond politics, because it’s about who and what she is — it’s character assassination.”

If you accept Clyburn’s logic, you can’t say a black person is incompetent. If you do, you are making a racist remark.

And Clyburn isn’t alone in his beliefs. Congressional Black Caucus Chair Marcia Fudge suggested Rice was targeted by the GOP because of her race as well as her sex. (The Democratic Representative from Ohio must have forgotten that the GOP nominated Sarah Palin for Vice President four years ago while a black woman, Condoleezza Rice, was George W.

While President Barack Obama lambastes the so-called “fat cats” who “outsource” their money and jobs to other countries, perhaps the President should look at one of his own minions, Susan Rice, who appears to have turned her government connections into a winning lottery ticket, said a political strategist on Sunday.

According to Mike Baker, a GOP consultant and attorney, a liberal-left grassroots organization this weekend setup an Internet petition slamming Susan Rice, a potential secretary of State nominee, and demanding she divest herself of her stock in the Canadian company seeking approval for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline to the Gulf Coast.

“It’s indefensible that Susan Rice has millions of dollars invested in oil companies and banks that will make huge profits if the State Department gives approval to the XL pipeline,” said officials at Roots Action.

According to Baker, Rice, the current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, owns somewhere between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada Corp. stock, as per her financial disclosure forms.

The pipeline needs the approval of the State Department before construction can begin and Amb. Rice may be the person who can give that approval, thereby enriching her, her friends and fellow party members.

The exposing of Rice’s financial history has led to intense criticism from environmentalists at a time when several Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose her because of her early statements about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

Green groups are pressing the White House to require that any nominee for the position divest themselves of any stock in TransCanada or other oil sands companies.

“The core organizations of the Democratic base have vowed that after the election they will hold Obama’s “feet to the fire” with a Tea Party-style mobilization from the left — forcing votes on progressive proposals, organizing mass rallies and grooming their own candidates for the next congressional elections. They’ve sworn these oaths before, but after each election, they persuade themselves to give the leadership another chance. Soon the next election is upon them, and they line up for their marching orders” states the Roots Action news and views section.

“As a high-ranking administration official — and a potential replacement for Hillary Clinton early next year to run the State Department — Susan Rice shouldn’t have any stake in corporations that are doing all they can to plunder tar sands in Canada and send carbon emissions soaring even faster,” the group states.

The Obama administration has touted Rice’s name as a possible Clinton replacement. In addition, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA) is supported by fellow lawmakers for the Secretary of State post as Hillary Clinton’s successor in President Obama’s second-term.

The GOP senators are the most vocal critics of Amb. Rice’s comments during her appearances on the Sunday morning news shows just five days after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

According to her defenders, Rice had based her presentation on inaccurate or doctored intelligence assessments that the military-style assault on the U.S. Consulate and a nearby CIA facility, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, appeared to be spontaneous, inspired by protests across the Arab world against an anti-Islam video made in the United States.