Obama quoted at his best:

This is just too funny. The guy is a moron portrayed as a hero.  People are calling these gaffes.  I call them outright lies:

  • “I now have been to 57 states so far. I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go.” (there are 57 islamic states, not US States) – BHO
  • “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.” – BHO
  •  Marking the anniversary of the March 1965 “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Ala., Obama, speaking at a church, said his parents got together “because of what happened in Selma.” Obama was born in 1961.
  • “I had an uncle who was … part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps,” Senator Obama said.  Unless his uncle was part of the red army, he could not have liberated Aushchwitz.   After that was pointed out,  he backed off and said that it was Buchenwald.
  • Obama, in his memoir, Dreams of My Father, writes of a story in Life magazine that influenced him — about a black man trying to bleach his skin white. No such article could be found in Life or Ebony.
  • “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”  Well, I’m not sure why people are so shocked to get a statement like this from the most liberal member of the senate.
  • “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.” BHO on Afghanistan

From Willisms.com:

  • When asked how we would respond to another major al-Qaeda attack on the U.S., he talked about disaster response instead of military action.
  • Last May, in the wake of the deadly Kansas tornado, Obama said “Ten thousand people died – an entire town destroyed”. The death toll was actually 12 people.
  • Obama stated that he would meet with enemy dictators – without any preconditions.
  • Not long after, he said “if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharaf will not act, we will.” With allies like Obama, who needs enemies?
  • He then declared that the use of nuclear weapons against al-Qaeda were “not on the table.”
  • Obama just last week referred to the ‘president’ of Canada. Canada has a prime minister, not a president.

From Michelle Malkin:

  • Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, Obama again botched basic geography: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.” On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?
  • Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by honing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.
  • Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us”–cluelessly arguing that “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm– and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, “I’ve made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.”

Good luck finding this on CNN, ABC, CBS, or NBC (the official network of the Obama campaign)…

So, we know the guy is not an idiot.  We also know that his stump speeches have nothing to do when the way he has voted in the past.  I think that when he gets tired, the truth comes out.  The lies are easier to catch.   I think that the true Obama is a very partisan, very socialist, and is using his charm to hide his warts.

I do know that the Democratic Party of the USA is associated with Socialist International (SI) thru the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA.

If you don’t know who SI is, they you don’t know much about how communism spread thru the world.

Sounds to me like the day for action for the Democrats is here.


May 2008

More on media bias: The Maxine Waters Socialist Remark

We all know that the news media is becoming more aggressive at advancing its socialist/progressive/leftist agenda.  However, there are sometimes that the bias becomes so ridiculous that it must be talked about.

Most Americans do not know that Maxine Waters, the leftist / progressive / liberal / socialist congresswoman from the fine state of California, threatened Shell Oil Company’s president with “Socializing” oil.  The exchange can be seen here in this youtube clip.

What is amazing is that this has not been widely reported.  Just 10 years ago, this would have been big news.  But now, it seems like the newsmedia is desperately trying to help the leftmost elements in the new democratic party take over.

I did a search on  “Maxine Waters Socialize Oil Industry” on google news, and I only got three items back.  One from Rush, and two blogs.  No news media.  Then I went to Yahoo (web search, not news search) with the same result.  And then I went to abcnews.go.com and nbc news online and NO mention.

10 years ago this would have been MAJOR!!!

Maybe there is something to Bill Clinton’s comments last week about the cover up…

Some call it a Freudian slip.   I call it honesty.  We are heading against a socialist wall, we are going at 100 mph, and the drivers (the news media) are too busy looking at the passenger.  This is going to hurt folks!!!


May 2008

If they weren’t whining or lying, they would have nothing to say…

For the last couple of weeks, the left in congress blocked the opening of oil supplies while castigating the President for his trip to the middle east.  Immediately after, they blamed the President for continuing the oil crisis.   It’s sad and pathetic that Saudi government did more to help us thru the current crisis than our own congress.

At President Bush’s request, the Saudi’s increase output by 300,000 barrels per day.  At the same time, the senate effectively extended the crisis by blocking growth in the exploration and exploitation of oil shale in Colorado.  So, you need to ask your Democrat friends if they are serious about helping the country or if they are only interested in winning elections.

There is an estimated 1 Trillion Barrels of Oil Equivalent (BOE) in Colorado today.   Oil Shale differs from oil in that it has to be further processes to extract oil-like gels that can then be converted into something that will burn.  The process to do this is to “wash” the shale.  The industry has proven that the water used to wash the shale is returned in a completely clean.  However, the left used that and the need of further studies, as they always do, and blocked further investments into our future.

That just turns my stomach.  They rather destroy our economy and commit hundreds of thousands of people to the unemployment rolls than to do something that might help now before the election.  Un-freaking-believable….


May 2008

Houston Dynamo players Stuart Holden and Craig Waibel as examples – Listen up Roger!

Please read Richard Justice’s article on two Houston Dynamo soccer players.  It’s a really sad but heart warming story that is very well told by Richard justice in the article.  I can guarantee that it will tug your heart strings.

My immediate reaction was WOW.  These guys get it.  Too bad for you Roger, Michael, Canseco, and all of those other idiots that abused their fame.

Keep it up Mrs. Holden and Waibel.  You deserved that cup!


May 2008

Solving the immediate gas/diesel price crisis

As the politicians run for cover and try to behave like “the people’s candidate” in resolving the current gas and diesel price mess, it seems to me like we are going after the wrong bunch of people.

I have heard both Barrack Hussein Obama (BHO) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) that they plan on taxing the Big Bad Oil Companies (BBOCs) to ensure that they don’t extraordinarily profit from the current crisis.  HRC says that she supports McCain’s idea of a “Tax Holiday”, but that she would pay for it by giving the BBOCs an additional “windfall profits tax”.  If you have heard that term before, its because its very similar to the tax imposed by the worst president of the 20th century, Jimmy Carter, that so crippled the industry, it lost over 500,000 jobs.

The BBOCs pay a significant amout of money in taxes.  For example, ExxonMobil payed 42 cents on the dollar in taxes last year.  That is a lot of money.  And to make it worse, their profit is not out of line with other industries.  Why would you punish an entire industry because of a price issue being sourced by traders and profitiers?  That, my friends, is not only beyond me, but its business as usual in the democratic party.  Those people just can’t get their heads out of their you-know-whats long enough to get enough oxygen to their brains.

Realizing that I will get a zillion hate mail entries from democrats, I just need to let you know right now.  I don’t care what you think.

But back to the original problem.  The issue at hand is the price of oil and diesel.

  • Step 1: At least $1.00 of the cost per gallon right now is the price that we are paying because speculators (traders who speculate on possible outcomes) are buying up futures and putting billions into what used to be a free flowing market balanced by supply and demand.  So, HRC, if you plan on taxing anyone, why don’t you tax the profit of those speculators.  Just tax the crap out of any middleman who is there to profit from bringing the prices up.  I’m a free market guy, but if HRC wants a way to cozy up to the left, that would be the solution.   With something like $40 billion of hedge fund “hot money” pumping up the price of oil, it may be time for oil and prices to be taken out of the hands of speculators.  If not, taxing their trades (and profits from trades), it might discourage the current practice.  Some say that as much as 40% of the current price is due to these traders.
  • Step 2: Stop adding oil to the strategic petroleum reserve for now.  Back when the price of oil as very inexpensive ($14 per barrel), a Louisiana congressman and I were chatting about what to do about the dying oil industry.  What I proposed to him back then would have been a life saver now.  I had proposed adding $5 to every barrel of oil to invest in a series of giant salt domes that would be filled with oil purchased with that money.  That oil would be released when oil hit a certain price, like say $40 per barrel.  That would have kept about 200,000 jobs in the industry, kept American companies from being swallowed by foreign oil companies (Arco, Amoco, etc), and it would have provided a buffer.  But that’s too late now.  We have enough reserves in storage for about 80 days if there was no more production in the entire world.  So, I say let’s stop storing until price gets below $70.
  • Step 3:  Cancel the $5 tariff on ethanol.  That will enable us to buy ethanol from Brazil, and cut the cost of E85.
  • Step 4:  Open up exploration areas that are currently close.  Open up ANWR, the coast of California, and the coast of Florida.  Maintain a safety (or even beauty) zone but open them up.  That could add about 30 Billion in reserves almost immediately.
  • Step 5: Provide an asset investment tax incentive to pump up the development of additional refining capacity.  Instead of using tax breaks, provide an accelerated depreciation incentive that declines over time.  So for example, if an oil company invests on a refinery, we could allow them to depreciate that asset twice as fast for the remainder of 2008 and 2009 and 1.5 times faster in 2010.  This would ensure a capacity boom.
  • Step 6: Provide temporary incentives for the import of refined diesel fuels.  Using the money that we would no longer be investing in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we could import diesel stock to lower its cost for our truckers.  Diesel stock prices are the reason all other prices are going up, as our trucks and trains run on the stuff.  Artificially reducing the cost of diesel by 20 cents would be a huge step forward for the economy.

There are many other ideas to be used for longer term conservation and production, but I won’t go into those right now.


May 2008

Twinkle Twinkle Fading Star

The grand Obaminator will have to apologize to the American public again.  Not only is Mr. Lapel Pin refused to wear the pin and place his hand over his heart, but apparently his buddy Bill Ayers, the 60s terrorist, is talking again.

The photo below, taken in ‘01 shows Bill Ayers stomping on the American flag. The photo was taken in 2001, the same time Barack Obama served on the Woods Fund Board with Ayers. This was also the same time that Ayers donated to Obama’s campaign.

Wow.  Obama has more skeletons in his closet than anyone previously thought.

I took the picture from another blog:


May 2008

The myth of the Big Bad Oil Company (BBOC) and the reality of speculative oil pricing.

So, we all know that the price of oil has gone up significantly.  Everyone in politics is blaming the BBOC’s (Big Bad Oil Companies).  But are they to blame?

 

They are partly to blame.  I would pinpoint the failures on the focus by the BBOCs to please wall street instead of focusing on their oil business.   They did a horrible job identifying major threats to their business, such as:

  • Rise in demand for fuels based on a growing economy.  They also failed to take into effect what happens when you have a large number of refineries hit by weather events.  The net result of this is that refinery capacity is hitting white space.  Although all of the major oil refiners in the US (except one) are increasing capacity by adding to their existing refineries, there is only one new refinery being built in the US today.  By the way, that one refiner not investing heavily is Citgo, a whole owned subsidiary of PDVSA, the Venezuelan national oil company controlled by the devil himself, Hugo Chavez.
  • They failed to take into account the huge population growth we are experiencing due to illegal immigration.
  • They failed to see the competition for reserves and leases in foreign lands from the NOOCs (Nationally Owned Oil Companies).  During the last 15 or so years, we saw foreign government owned oil companies invest heavily to successfully compete with the BBOCs in areas outside of their countries.

 

Having said that, the effects of their lack of correct planning is not $100 USD oil.  The effect of that should only be felt at the pump, and to that end, in secondary fuels like heating oil and diesel.

 

So why do we have $112 per barrel oil?  Well, there are several reasons.  The biggest has nothing to do with the oil industry.  But before we go there, lets talk about consumption and reserves replenishment.

 

When you get oil out of the ground, you get it from formations underneath the ground that contain the oil.  There are different types of oil.  The best oils are know as “sweet” oils that require very little cleanup and refining.  There are wells in Louisiana for example that the oil comes up so clean, you could pump it into a pre-1972 vehicle and have it work.  The US has that type of oil in Louisiana and Texas.  Sour crude oil is more difficult to clean and refine, and therefore it costs less money per barrel and more to refine.  The Arab OPEC countries and Columbia and Mexico have this type of oil

 

That oil in the ground sits in geological formations that keep it from escaping.  The amount of oil that is in those formations are called reserves.  Reserves are categorized as Proved and Unproved.  Unproved can be further categorized as possible or probable.

 

As of 2007, Saudi Arabia had more proved reserves than any other country, with 260 billion Barrels of Oil Equivalent (BOE).  At their current production rates, without finding new reserves, they can sustain for 81 years.  Canada, believe it or not, is second, with over 180 billion BOE and sustainability for 182 years at the current production rates.  The United States had 21 as of 2007, with sustainability for 12 years.  This was before the find in North Dakota, which was declared Proved this March, and it contains 4.5 billion BOE and could have as much as 100 billion BOE.  Not counted are reserves in the ANWR (Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge), off the coast of Florida, and off the coast of California.  Additionally, we the US has the largest known deposits of oil shale in the world, with 2500 billion BOE, enough to satisfy our energy needs for 110 years.  However, oil shale is not easy to turn into energy, so its not counted as part of our reserves.

 

Now on to consumption.  The US currently is the #1 user of energy in the world.  We use approximately 21 million BOE/day.   The next big user of energy is China, with just over 6.5 million BOE/day.  If you add all of the world’s reserves and add consumption with adjustments for growth, you will see that we have plenty of supply.

 

Also, if there was a world war where we could not get supplies from the middle east and Venezuela, you could take just the reserves of the US and Canada and  be able to power both countries for 50-70 years without any new additional finds.

 

Of course, there are also politics involved.  OPEC is deadly afraid of Republicans in power.  Most OPEC nations are NOT democracies and are ruled with an iron fist.  Republicans tend to be considerably more confrontational to those nations due to the national security implications.  By cutting supply, they know they can throw the nation into short recessions.  In 1984 they flooded the market, knowing that hundreds of thousands of people in the oil industry would loose their jobs.  They did.  In 1988 prices bottomed again in what was an already shaky economy.  In 1992 prices spiked up, sending the economy into a one quarter recession.  They did the same in 2004 and now in 2008.

 

Huh?  You are probably seeing now that there are a lot of factors at work here.  BUT, the price of oil is actually set by oil traders, not by the BBOCs.  They take into account many factors, including supply, demand, refining capacity, available stocks, geopolitical stability, and futures. That’s wherein the problem lies.

 

Since oil is a commodity, and its traded in the markets, the traders are the ones who actually control the price.  Since supplies are not really dropping, we have not met peak oil, and demand seems a bit steady, the majority of the hike is based on speculation.  Some say that as much as 60-70% of the price of oil today is pure speculation.  Last year, when the price of oil was just $70 (laugh), a senate committee found that as much as $25 of that price was speculation related (http://www.senate.gov/~levin/newsroom/release.cfm?id=257862). 

 

According to that report, speculators are spending tens of billions of dollars in energy markets, increasing prices, destroying the historical price-supply relationship, and impacting prices as a whole.

 

So, why are oil prices so high?  Well, its simple:  BBOCs are a little culpable.  OPEC and politics are a lot culpable.  Speculators are mostly culpable.  So, don’t just blame the BBOCs for the $4 gas you are paying.  Blame OPEC members, specially Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela.  Blame the weak democratic presidencies we had in the past.  And mostly blame the speculators trading energy as a commodity.

 

Fact is peak oil is not here yet.  We do need to find alternatives to hydro-carbons, but that is not just for economic reasons (or hothead Al Gore induced global warming).   We need to find alternatives to diversify, clean our airs, but mostly for national security reasons.  But that is entirely another topic.


May 2008

Thank you!!!

Thanks to those of you who have left those wonderfully supportive messages.  I do appreciate those!!!  I have a policy to not publish replies due to the amount of spam my site receives, but I do see them.  Thanks again!!!


May 2008