Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Just Sayin' It Sounds a Little Weird to Me.


America's new ambassador to Canada is Kelly Knight Craft. It looks like we got a winner this time.



Her remark that there is good science on both sides of the climate change debate made me wonder just who Ambassador Knight Craft is and what she's all about.

It turns out she has quite an interest in Canadian affairs in the form of about $750,000 USD invested in US pipeline giant, Kinder Morgan.



I suppose that means she'll get along just fine with prime minister Trudeau.

But there's something more, something a bit quirky, that came out of her Wiki page. Ambassador Kelly was born in 62 as Kelly Guilfoil, the daughter of veterinarian, Bobby Guilfoil.

Kelly Knight Craft has been married three times, divorced twice. Her spouses, in chronological order, are/were David Moross, Judson Knight and the current title holder, Joe Craft. It seems she took her hubby's last name - in fact two of them, Knight and Craft. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. If she and Joe are happy to keep Judson along for the ride, well so be it.

Then there's this, from Vice.

The Crafts certainly seem aligned with Trump when it comes to his commitment to coal. Trump is said to be preparing an executive order to lift a federal coal moratorium, and to repeal green initiatives.

Joseph Craft, who was on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans for a time, has used his sway to bring about pro-coal laws and to defend the notoriously dirty electricity source.

The Lexington Herald-Leader wrote that the coal magnate “may be Kentucky’s most powerful non-elected individual.” The paper suggested that his political contributions might be more about benefits for his coal business, and reported that he remains a climate change skeptic.

That seems to back up with what Craft’s company argued in corporate filings submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, where Alliance Resource Partners lamented that initiatives to limit carbon emissions could hurt the coal business, adding that measures from governments in America and abroad aimed at tackling the “perceived threat from climate change attributed to greenhouse gas emissions” could raise costs and “reduce demand for coal.”


Sounds like we've got ourselves a winner, folks.

4 comments:

  1. Meh, I'd be surprised if any Trump appointee wasn't totally unsuited, have a huge conflict of interest, or both. It could have been worse. At least we're not getting one of the Koch brothers!

    Cap

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  2. Has anyone ever asked her if she's met Putin - or, worse, Roger Stone?

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  3. I watched that clip a bunch of times and still find it hard to believe. What "both sides" is she babbling about? The only reasonable two sides that I can see are (i) we have toasted the planet but we can mitigate some of the damage to be incurred in the future vs (ii) we are well and truly hooped and the fall-out is going to be beyond reckoning in any sort of currency.

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  4. I am becoming nostalgic for the GW Bush days when he put evangelicals in high places!!

    TB

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