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| President Obama in Kotzebue, Alaska. |
US President Barack Obama on Friday declared portions of the Arctic off-limits for oil exploration for the next five years, dealing a blow to Republican efforts to expand fossil fuel extraction.
The decision means new oil and gas exploration leasing in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea will not be considered until after 2022.
"Given the unique and challenging Arctic environment and industry's declining interest in the area, forgoing lease sales in the Arctic is the right path forward," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement.
The US government made a similar announcement in March, when it removed the Atlantic Ocean from the five-year road map.
Environmental groups hailed Friday's decision as historic and coming at a key moment, as President-elect Donald Trump has promised to expand drilling for oil and to revive the American coal industry.
Apparently the decision pissed off Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski which proves that it is a good one.
However it is also a fact that if Donald Trump decides to do away with his ban it is within his power to do so, though he will receive significant resistance from environmental groups and Democrats.
Even with only weeks remaining of his term President Obama is still doing what he can to protect us, and our planet.
I like that picture of him. What I wouldn't give to be able to read his thoughts as he sat there.
ReplyDeleteAgreed! Outstanding photo of our POTUS in beautiful Alaska.
DeleteHe made it quite clear while here that he fell in love w/our state. He and Michelle are planning on returning again. Can hardly wait!
O/T --- Note that Jeff Sessions, who was 23 in 1969 when he graduated from college, served in the Reserves for sometime in the '70s, but never went to Vietnam. Just like most of the GOP chickenhawks. That, alone, should be brought up when he discusses torture, since he knows so much about the military.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways, I am grateful I am old and not going to be around much longer. Even if that POS Humpty Trumpty isn't in office for a second term, what he will be able to do - with the willing collusion of Congress - to the environment in that time could be deadly for the planet.
ReplyDeleteThe fool is almost as stupid as Hamm!
I'm in the same boat, older than dirt. He will not only wreck this country to enrich himself and his spawn, but the entire planet is at stake, I am ever more glad to not have contributed to the world overpopulation
DeleteI continue to wonder what these planet raping assholes think is going to happen to them and their spawn when the planet is no longer able to support human life.
I'm 62.
DeleteBut I fear I will live long enough to see our planet ruined by the Republicans. Climate change run amok and irreversible without the complete extinction of mankind, mass extinctions of animals, plants, birds, fish, extremes of weather punishing the earth. I will live long enough to see the path of destruction. But thankfully I will not live to see the final end. I will die before the last of the our environment dies to the point it will no longer support life.
Anything President Obama did, says, does will be removed IF America allows a dictatorship. China, Russia, Mike Rogers with 2 weasel hackers committing espionage, the head dude for cyber security elected mr trump, not the American people. America was seriously hacked for over 1yr and half because of traitors and treason within. IF we allow this current election process to continue without immediate legal constitutional challenge? You have just handed over America'a History to a dictator to manipulate and control. I cannot put in words what I believe our forefathers would say about it.
ReplyDeleteThey can try. But remember. The Republicans and especially Trump don't seem to have a working understanding of video or the internet.
DeleteWe have documentation of what Obama did and we'll have documentation of what the Republicans didn't do. They obstructed Obama for 8 years. Then they'll dismantle everything he managed to accomplish. We'll have records of everything they destroy and everything the attempt to take credit for.
If they take the free and uncensored internet from us, we'll publish hard copies. We'll burn PDFs on CDs and mail them or hand them out on the street.
Again, slightly o/t -- David Remnick has a long, excellent piece in the new New Yorker, including several interviews he had with the President before and after the election. Well worth a read. It's on-line.
ReplyDeleteThank you, President Obama for protecting the planet and Alaska!!
ReplyDeleteLisa Murkowski is another one who has never been my representative in Congress for Alaska. I've never voted her and have zero respect for the woman.
She's not bright and follows in line w/McConnell - notice her always physically standing w/him in photos for her 'photo op'. She'd get no where on her own!
I hope President Obama has locked things up to make it extremely difficult for Republicans to get anywhere in ruining Alaska further!
so much respect for our President !!!
ReplyDeleteOT the orange menace on the other hand I have no respect for
Trump poised to violate Constitution his first day in office, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer says
The Constitution doesn’t allow presidents to seek gifts from foreign agents.
"Friday evening, the Washington Post reported that about 100 foreign diplomats gathered at President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC to “to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.” The tour included a look at the hotel’s $20,000 a night “town house” suite. The Post also quoted some of the diplomats saying they intended to stay at the hotel in order to ingratiate themselves to the incoming president.
“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’” said one diplomat from an Asian nation. “Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’”
The incoming president, in other words, is actively soliciting business from agents of foreign governments. Many of these agents, in turn, said that they will accept the president-elect’s offer to do business because they want to win favor with the new leader of the United States.
In an exclusive exchange with ThinkProgress, Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who previously served as chief ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, says that Trump’s efforts to do business with these diplomats is at odds with a provision of the Constitution intended to prevent foreign states from effectively buying influence with federal officials.
The Constitution’s “Emoluments Clause,” provides that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under” the United States “shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
The diplomats’ efforts in seek Trump’s favor by staying in his hotel “looks like a gift,” Painter told ThinkProgress in an email, and thus is the very kind of favor the Constitution seeks to prevent.
There is, however, at least one remedy under the Constitution for such a violation of the public trust by the president: impeachment."
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-poised-to-violate-constitution-his-first-day-in-office-george-w-bushs-ethics-lawyer-says-73e14789a935#.ncb7zicko
And that is *exactly* the danger that should have been avoided. Instead Trump is defying both tradition and law and using the office of President to make money.
DeleteBoy, he must have really been in a black hole of debt for both the Russians and Chinese to help him become president. They help him to pay off debts he probably owes to them and in turn, they help him get elected and probably get government secrets and have influence.
We are totally screwed.
This is all coming out in time for the electoral college to fix it. Will they? Hell no! Partisanship is too deeply ingrained in this country.
Thank you, Mr. Obama. This was so necessary.
ReplyDeleteAnything Obama has been able to do on a positive note ( and there are many) will be destroyed as soon as the orange piece of shit takes office.
ReplyDeleteA tragedy for the country and for the world.
I want to see every single Democrat in lock step voting against this piece of shit on every single piece of legislation. Just like the Republicans did for 8 years.
DeleteWill they?
HELL NO.
Because Democrats are "nice." Democrats are polite and courteous. They'll cave in in the name of bipartisanship. They'll cross over.
If they stood together in a block they *might* be able to get a few Republicans with integrity to cross and join them to block the more egregious violations of decency but no. They've never worked as a smoothly running team and they won't now.
We'll all be fucked and it will be the fault of the Democrats.
I still see Trump being assassinated or impeached - whichever comes first. He will be a dictator/ruler type of government and enrich himself and his deplorable family up until he is gone.
ReplyDeleteAmericans were idiots that voted for him and they'll wish they'd never done so by the time the Republicans (majority/all three levels of government) massacre the poor and middle class throughout our country.
Medicare and Medicaid are going away and a LOT of Americans will not be able to afford the premiums that will be charged by the various insurance companies and they will find their deductibles higher and more restrictive as to the care (recommended by their doctors) they hope to receive (especially the older folks).
Many will die sooner than they and their family members will expect! It will be a downward spiral to experience as well as witness.
Be prepared folks as we are in for massive trouble ahead. I'm just glad I'm older! But, I do worry for my children and grandchildren.
There is nothing I can do to stop this fiasco we are watching called Donald Trump!
Most especially as we watch and review each of his appointments to his administration - every one is extremely questionable and provides nothing in their pasts that favors ALL Americans in our country!
What about the Pacific?
ReplyDeleteThey've had their eye on the West Coast for some time and periodically make a push for drilling.
California has a moratorium. But I doubt any Republican State's Rights lipservice would stop them from doing a 180 and drilling all up and down the coast.
And five years? Unless the Democrats can take back the Senate and the White House by 2020, that isn't going to do much good.
(BTW Alaskans, how is Pebble Mine going? Is that project dead yet?)
Can you imagine DJT sitting his flabby ass on that stone with sistah sarry pointing out how he can see Russia? Not as poetic.
ReplyDelete