The Nation Of Change has the article Keystone XL Is Back On the Table–For Now.

Obama said at a press conference this month that “Any effort to try to tie Keystone to the payroll tax cut, I will reject.” That clearly was an empty threat, since he plans to sign this bill on Monday when the House will presumably approve it.

Nevertheless the Republicans forced the following section into the bill that is about to be passed.

Within 60 days, the President, acting through the Secretary of State, is required to grant a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline project application unless he determines the pipeline would not serve the national interest. Any permit issued shall require the reconsideration of routing the pipeline within the State of Nebraska. Any permit granted is deemed to satisfy all the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and any modification required by the Secretary to the construction mitigation and reclamation plan shall not require supplementation of the final environmental impact statement.

Why the mention of the state of Nebraska with respect to this environmentally sound project that will create thousands of jobs?  The Republican Governor of Nebraska “doesn’t want no stinkin’ pipeline running through his state” if he were to use words like those of the bandits in the  movie “Blazing Saddles”.

The Politico story Keystone XL Pipeline vote getting pre-spun, quotes Representatives Waxman and Markey.

Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told POLITICO that even if President Barack Obama signed a law requiring him to make a decision on permitting the 1,700-mile pipeline within 60 days, they think he’d still end up rejecting it.

We expect the president to still reject the commencement of the construction of the pipeline until there is a full completion of an environmental review,” added Markey, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee. “The 60-day deadline should not lead to the White House approving the actual construction to begin.”

Markey also argued that the GOP couldn’t claim a win if Keystone made it in. “What are they getting?” he asked.

Both Democrats also said they were not in the thick of the negotiations, though Waxman, holding his BlackBerry up, joked at one point, “The White House has just sent me an email saying, ‘Don’t worry.’”

The faux naivete displayed by Waxman and Markey does a disservice to them. They may be the only people in the world who pretend to believe that Obama will carry through on his promise.  Even if he does not deliver on his promise to reject the bill, they still hold out hope that the President will deliver sometime down the road.

When you compromise with bribe takers and legislators with conflicts of interest (see Myth That Keystone XL Creates Jobs), you cannot come away with your principles intact.

The Los Angeles Times has the interesting article Autism hidden in plain sight.  I’ll quote one of the cases described in the article.

Karl Wittig, a retired engineer from New York, had always questioned why so few social skills came naturally to him.

A diary his mother kept in the 1950s suggests he was not an ordinary child.

“This last few weeks, he doesn’t pile the blocks anymore,” she wrote when he was 2. “He likes to put one next to the other, making a big row of 48.”

Two years later, he talked nonstop about wires, switches, light bulbs and Thomas Edison.

Wittig went on to earn undergraduate and master’s degrees from Cornell University and New York University in physics, electrical engineering and computer science. In the research laboratories where he worked, he felt he fit in.

“I went into a field full of eccentric people,” Witting recalled. “I was just another eccentric person.”

Wittig said he eventually figured out how to behave in social situations — to refrain from correcting other people’s mistakes, flaunting his math abilities or rambling on about his own interests. He married a former nun 18 years his senior. She died of cancer after two decades together. Wittig described the marriage as happy.

Still, he wanted to understand what made him different. So at age 44, he brought his mother’s diary to a psychiatrist, who evaluated him and concluded he had Asperger’s disorder, a mild form of autism.

“I had been waiting for an explanation for these issues my entire life,” recalled Wittig, now 55, who lives alone in the apartment he once shared with his wife. “Finally, here it was.”

Recognize anybody you know?