The other morning (Tuesday, November 18, 2014) a Republican representative from Congress came on television and stated, with a straight face mind you, that shale oil from Canada flowing through the Keystone XL pipeline will “relieve the United States of dependence on oil imported from people who don’t like us”. Yes, he said that as though the US had not already achieved energy independence on its own, and as though Americans don’t know that every drop of that oil is going, not to the US for consumption but to the world market. Not to mention the risk of catastrophic environmental damage when Keystone springs a leak, as all pipelines do, especially since it will be carrying a particularly toxic type of petroleum at very high pressure. Do Republicans really believe that Americans are so uninformed that they will accept any baloney served to them by some politician?