I don't need to contemplate overmuch Dr. Aaron Rodgers’
return to the Pat McAfee Show to reveal his diagnosis of the
shit-storm he conjured up last week--now sounding "contrite" but his views remaining unchanged, meaning no real self-reflection. Among other things he skirted the question of what medical doctors he had consulted, added another fib by claiming he wasn't "listening" to the "noise" around him when his two appearances on McAfee' showed how thin his skin was, claimed he wanted to "help" those sick by the virus, apparently with conspiracy theories and the snake oil "remedies" he's been told by "experts" actually "work," and he again made this about himself rather than other people he could have infected because of his refusal to abide by COVID protocols. This sounded like a desperate PR stunt; other than the tone, the "message" was largely the same.
Enough of Rodgers; I'm done with him. Right now I am still trying to figure out how to remove Fox News from the Google news feed on my Android phone. Fox News doesn’t even pretend to be “fair and balanced” anymore—just ask Sean Hannity—and only the endangered species like Chris Wallace even try to be.
You can have a “slant,” but if you don’t even try to back-up your blunt perspective with reasoned thought and facts—like they do on MSNBC—all you do is propagandize in the worst possible way. Of course, CNN tries to have it both ways by adding its criticisms of the Biden administration, but given the partisan nature of this country, maybe they’re just hoping to capture the “independent” viewer, which isn’t helping its ratings.
The problem with Fox News (well, there are a lot of problems with Fox News) that is plainly obvious on the Google news feed is that not only does somebody have too much time on their hands dredging up anything that can possibly be termed as negative in regard to the left no matter how ridiculous, but they do not even make the slightest effort to put a news item into context, allowing uncritical readers to accept bias as “fact.” Take Fox’s “top” story on Tuesday when I turned on my phone: no, not about the death threats a Republican congressman has received for voting for the infrastructure bill last week, but “Biden admin considering shutting down Michigan pipeline, drawing criticism and dire warnings as winter nears.”
This story is in regard to the dual pipelines called Line 5 owned by the Canadian company Enbridge. The section of pipeline most concerning was completed 66 years ago, and is submerged anywhere from 100 to 270 feet in the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan with Lake Huron, through which up to 540,000 gallons of oil and liquid propane a day travel from Canada to, well, Canada:
Enbridge sought permission to lay pipeline in the U.S. as a “shortcut.” Like Keystone XL would have been, most of the oil is for international export with limited benefit to U.S. consumers, and certainly has no influence on domestic oil prices.
But we are informed by Fox News that the Biden administration is being “blasted” for its energy policies, and its stand on Line 5 “is just one more example of being divorced from reality.” Further, Biden’s supposed actions paint a “dire picture” for people “unable to get natural gas of electricity” that the line supposedly provides “as the nation heads into winter” with “people freezing in their homes.” The U.S. and other Western countries in their quest for renewable energy seem “unable to grasp the importance of reliable, affordable energy and electricity for everyday citizens” and that only Russia and China seem to “understand” that, and they are willing to hold the world “energy hostage.”
Slanted stories like this is why Biden’s approval rating are underwater, and they are often entirely misleading if not blatantly false. Now for that context that Fox News leaves out, since many people have probably never even heard of this issue with Line 5, and this is what Fox News is feeding them. This saga began years ago when Enbridge was accused of violating for decades the easement agreement that allowed them to lay the pipeline so long as the company properly maintained it. The pipe had originally just sat on the lake bed when it was placed during the Eisenhower administration, but Enbridge was required to lay support structures underneath the pipeline to elevate it off the lake bed every 70 feet to prevent damage to the pipes in case of earth shifting.
Examinations of the pipelines showed that Enbridge either failed to do this, or where they did place the elevations, they were distanced further apart than what was required. Not only that, but as this underwater image showed, sections of pipe have bent to the point that a rupture is very likely to occur at some point in the future unless something is done about it:
Enbridge has a checkered history in Michigan, and the state has sought to shut down Line 5 for years. Line 5 has had 33 known breaks which resulted in the leakage of over one million gallons of oil since 1968, but it was the 2010 Kalamazoo River disaster that involved Enbridge’s Line 6 that was impetus to move to shut down the Straits of Mackinac lines, where a rupture would likely prove to be an even bigger disaster. Enbridge had known of the damage to the pipeline near the river for years, yet had done nothing to repair it before it ruptured; here is an image of the ruptured pipe:
NTSB investigators called the company’s “response” team at its Edmonton headquarters “Keystone Kops” because of their failure to interpret the rupture alarms correctly, and allowed million gallons of “ditbit”—sand oil mixed with liquefied petroleum waste for easier transport—to continue to flow through the pipeline for 18 hours before they discovered that there was an actual rupture in the pipe. The resulting massive spill
shut down 35 miles of the Kalamazoo River and cost $1.2 billion to clean-up. Enbridge eventually agreed to pay $177 million in penalties for its gross negligence. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, citing an 18-month study that showed that Enbridge had for decades violated the easement agreement and ignored trouble spots in the pipeline, ordered the company to shut down Line 5. Enbridge’s proposed replacement pipeline that would be constructed underneath the straits has been received with understandable skepticism from the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA officials. Enbridge has since enlisted the help of the Canadian government to overturn the order, utilizing the provision in a 1977 treaty that called for negotiations between the Canadian and U.S. governments in regard to disagreements about such cross-country business, which is the reason why the Biden administration was forced to become involved at all in this situation.
Opponents of the pipeline have called foul that Line 5 benefits residents of Michigan to the degree claimed, asserting that the numbers provided by Enbridge are grossly exaggerated. Only 5-10 percent of what passes through the pipeline potentially can be used by Michigan residents, with most of the oil ending up in another part of Canada, where it is exported to other countries; whatever Michigan residents are permitted to use for themselves, it can be handled by a few extra trucks or train cars a day.
The Biden administration was examining the environmental impact of Enbridge’s proposed replacement pipeline, but because of media and partisan political pressure, it felt compelled to announce now that it did not have plans to shut down the pipeline, using the 1977 treaty as an excuse; frankly, if Biden looks bad in this, it is because he showed no backbone and did not support Whitmer and others in Michigan who are concerned about an even worse disaster than in 2010. Enbridge is now proposing a “workaround” pipeline to bypass the straits—and it wants some of that infrastructure money passed by Congress to pay for it.
But one must remember that this issue with the pipeline and Enbridge’s malfeasance has been going on for years—for those just learning about it from what Fox News has told them, this didn’t just happen “yesterday.” You wouldn’t have learned any of this “backstory” if Fox News was your principle source of news.
Fox News deliberately twists and contorts stories like this to misinform and cause fear and paranoia in its viewers. Facts and context do not matter; as we see in Tucker Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” series—and if you check out the Fox Nation website, they have plenty of other original “stories” like this as well as “entertainment” like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies to serve as “cultural” propaganda devices—Fox News continues to demonstrate that the dispensing of balanced “news” is not its forte, and never has been. The result is millions of ignorant, ill-informed viewers—some of whom may yet be of a mindset for violent insurrection, this time with Carlson as their standard-bearer.
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