In the Pipeline: 8/24/12

This is the beat of the drum that we are marching to.

Look, we get that Alex Flint is working Harry Reid’s side of the street.  But Mitt Romney is a Mormon, too.  Maybe Alex should throw him a bone occasionally. Politico (8/23/12) reports: Many of Romney’s other energy ideas also come with catches. If approved in its entirety, the Keystone pipeline that’s been central to the GOP political agenda would give Canada access to world markets with its tar sands oils — not the direct line into American gas tanks that Republicans often suggest. The Canadians, Hakes said, “want it so they can export to other places.”

In what is otherwise an excellent document, this an unfortunate blemish.  I feel the presence of the dark side; or, as we prefer to call him, Jim Connaughton.  Seriously, the Romney crew needs to cut loose some of the dead wood from the previous, failed, unlamented Administration.  Politico (8/23/12) reports: Mitt Romney is again lending his weight behind an EPA renewable fuels mandate that has been under increasing criticism from both the left and right amid widespread droughts and spiking corn prices.

Tough to see how this turns out well for Dr. Mann.  But it will be fun watching Lowry and Steyn take the wrecking ball to him. National Review (8/22/12) reports: Mann is upset — very, very upset — with this Mark Steyn Corner post, which had the temerity to call Mann’s hockey stick “fraudulent.” The Steyn post was mild compared with other things that have been said about the notorious hockey stick, and, in fact, it fell considerably short of an item about Mann published elsewhere that Steyn quoted in his post.

This ran yesterday, but we wanted to make sure you saw it.  We don’t think this looks corrupt at all. AP (7/22/12) reports: A veteran Wall Street executive who performed an independent review that exonerated the Obama administration’s program of loans to energy companies contributed $52,500 to re-elect President Barack Obama in the months since completing his work, according to an Associated Press review of campaign records. The executive defended the integrity of his conclusions and said he decided to donate to Obama after his work was finished.

Does George Clooney know about this? Care2 (7/9/12) reports: Dead bats are turning up beneath wind turbines all over the world. Bat fatalities have now been documented at nearly every wind facility in North America where adequate surveys for bats have been conducted, and several of these sites are estimated to cause the deaths of thousands of bats per year.