Vox Sentences: Will Obama veto Keystone?

1. Keystone Green-Light

Sen. John Hoeven (2nd R) points to a chart while speaking at a press conference with (L-R) Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) at the U.S. Capitol September 18, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

• The House voted 252-161, with 31 Democrats voting yes, to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

  [NYT / Coral Davenport]

• 9 questions you were embarrassed to ask about Keystone.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Short version: Keystone would let Canadian oil ship at lower cost than rail, which possibly means more of it gets burned and the climate situation worsens.

• President Obama has sounded skeptical of the project recently, arguing at a press conference that it won't affect gas prices.

  [ABC News / Jim Avila, Mary Bruce, and Chris Good]

• The environmental impact of approving Keystone is a matter of considerable debate, but one estimate holds that not approving it could leave 1 billion barrels of Canadian tar sands oil in the ground by 2030.

  [Maximilian Auffhammer]

• 59 Senators are committed to backing the pipeline, one short of the number needed to break a filibuster.

  [The Hill / Laura Barron-Lopez]

2. Equality of blood

A woman gets prepared to donate blood at the blood donation service Hamburg on June 8, 2011 in Harburg, Germany. (Joern Pollex/Getty Images)

• Gay and bi men are currently barred from donating blood — but a Department of Health and Human Services panel recommended lifting the ban.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• But the proposed change — letting men donate after a year without sex with men — still excludes most gay or bi men, especially those in relationships.

  [Time / Alexandra Sifferlin]

• LGBT health advocates argue that the existence of accurate HIV blood tests "renders the lifetime MSM blood ban scientifically obsolete and unnecessary."

  [Gay Men's Health Crisis]

• The ban isn't uncommon internationally. France, Germany, and Denmark all have lifetime bans; the UK and Japan have one-year deferrals, and Canada a five-year deferral.

  [NBC News / Mike Darling]

• The Australian Red Cross saw no noticeable increase in HIV infections after dropping their ban, and a big increase in donations.

  [See et al, 2010]

• Another option, backed by Harvard law professor Glenn Cohen, would be to do what Italy does and bar people based on their actual sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation.

  [CBS News / Dennis Thompson]

3. Misc.

• AI researchers are creating bots that can generate ideas for stories.

  [Guardian / Tom Meltzer]

• How to end tobacco smoking in America: higher taxes/smoking bans, cracking down on smokeless tobacco, and cutting nicotine down to non-addictive levels.

  [The Atlantic / Kenneth Warner and Harold Pollack]

• Are the "two most productive hours" of the day the ones right after waking up?

  [Mother Jones / Kevin Drum]

• The fight over reclassification is a distraction from the actual substance of net neutrality regulations.

  [Vox / Tim Lee]

• The problem with promising to "restore" America is that for most of the country, there's nothing to restore.

  [The Atlantic / Peter Beinart]

4. Verbatim

• "I had high hopes for this one, because how would one succeed in business without really trying? The answer, of course, is murder."

  [The Toast / Kathryn Funkhouser]

• "The belief that middle school children can consent to sexual activity is something one would expect to hear from pedophile advocates, not the second-largest school district in the US."

  [John Manly to LA Times / Teresa Watanabe]

• "Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big — big money, big businesses selling weed — after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed."

  [Michelle Alexander via National Journal / Lucia Graves]

• "Is George W. Bush the first president to ever call another president a brother from another mother?"

  [Washington Post / Jaime Fuller]

• "It's one of the very most important numbers for understanding the economy, and it's not even totally clear that it exists at all."

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• "I’ve seen mujahideen with braces."

  [ISIS militant Abu Fariss via The Atlantic / Joanna Paraszczuk]

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