Carter’s Pointlessness
Reuters reported the other day that former fool-in-chief Jimmy Carter called Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice a liar, saying the Bush administration did not tell him not to go to the Middle East to negotiate some kind of a peace arrangement with the terrorists of Hamas.
Rice “counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contact with Hamas,” according to a Reuters’ report.
According to a spokesman for the former president, Carter “believes her to be a truthful person” who “inadvertantly” made “a statement that is not true.” He said no one at the State Department or anywhere else in the administration ever asked Carter not to go to the Middle East or “even suggested that he not meet with Syrian President (Bashar) Assad or leaders of Hamas.”
More recently, Breitbart had an item Wednesdays about the pointlessness of Carter’s self-annointed peace initiative.
“Hamas offered nothing to president Carter. They reiterated the same positions. There was no change on the part of Hamas,” Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said.
He was unable to secure a ceasefire or a prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants in 2006, but on Monday Carter said Hamas told him it would recognise Israel’s right to exist such a deal was approved by a Palestinian vote.
Just hours later Meshaal told a press conference in Damascus that Hamas would not recognise the Jewish state and would insist on the right of return for 4.5 million Palestinian refugees.
Heh
Been Busy
I apologize to my three readers for not posting anything for the past several days.
First part of the week I was trying to close the books on my home remodeling business so I could do the partnership tax returns. Then I had to do my own tax returns. And then I had to pay nearly $4,000 in taxes. DAMN!
The next two days I was jackhammering a six-inch thick concrete patio and hauling the concrete away. Back breaking wretched work. Told my son that’s why you go to college. Duh! And, I went to college too. What a dummy.
Anyway, did some painting at the house today in preparation for daughter number two’s bridal shower/weird-party-where-guys-are-expected-to-attend. (Don’t get me started.)
There’s a lot going on in this big old world of ours, so I’ll be posting something tomorrow.
The Ever Clueless Carter
I wish this man would just go away. The worst president of my life time, Jimmy Carter continues on his fool’s errand to the Middle East to talk to terrorists thugs in Hamas.
The man is ever so clueless. Below is a quote from Carter reponding to a U.S. State Department official’s comment that the U.S. government does not negotiate with terrorists.
“I feel quite at ease in doing this,” Carter said. “I think there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process.”
If the Palestinians or Hamas wanted peace with justice they would have stopped killing innocent civilians long ago. For as long as I can remember, U.S. officials have been trying to negotiate peace between Israel and its bellicose neighbors, neighbors who have no intention of living peacefully with Israel, who in fact vow not to stop fighting until the nation ceases to exists.
“I think that it’s very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians, maybe to get them to agree to a cease-fire – things of this kind,” he said.
The absolute breathtaking vanity of Carter. As if he, and he alone, can induce Hamas leaders to express their views. We already know their views. “KILL THE JEWS.” Not to hard to figure that out, Jimmy.
Asked whether it was right to meet a group that has not renounced violence or recognized Israel, he said, “Well, you can’t always get prerequisites adopted by other people before you even talk to them.”
The man is a hopeless dipshit.
More on N.D. Black Gold
I wrote about this a couple weeks ago. Fox News reported today that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there are as much as 4.3 billion barrels of oil recoverable with current technology from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana.
From Fox News:
The Bakken Formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface.
Companies use pressurized fluid and sand to break pores in the rock and prop them open to recover the oil.
Fox quotes a Houston-based oil producer saying he thinks the USGS estimate may be a little high. The company, Murex Petroleum Corp. was the first to begin producing oil from Bakken in North Dakota three years ago. Murex operates 20 wells.
An earlier USGS study said there were 151 million barrels of recoverable oil in the Bakken deposit. The latest estimate is 25 times greater than the earlier one.
Whatever the amount, I hope they start pumping that stuff out and getting it to market quick. I paid $3.29/gallon this morning for gas.
Maybe They’ll Do Us a Favor and Chop Off His Head
Failed former President Jimmy Carter plans to travels to the Mideast later this month to meet with the terrorists thugs of Hamas in Syria, Fox News reported this morning.
Former President Jimmy Carter is reportedly preparing an unprecedented meeting with the leader of Hamas, an organization that the U.S. government considers one of the leading terrorist threats in the world.
Former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Carter was demonstrating “a lack of judgment typical of what he does.”
“To go to Syria to visit Hamas at this point is just an ill-timed, ill-advised decision on his part,” Bolton said in the Fox News report.
Here’s a good post on Little Green Footballs on America’s worst president.
This is the same Jimmy Carter who is largely responsible for the current Middle East hell hole where we’ve lost 4,000 American soldiers to a war that is the long-term result of Carter’s failed foreign policy.
It was Carter who allowed Iran to fall into the hands of the Islamic dirt bags who took control after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979. It was Carter who sat on this thumbs for 444 days while those same thugs held 52 U.S. diplomats hostage. It was and still is Carter who has not found a murderous Islamic dirt bag he couldn’t cuddle up to in the years since, including Yasser Arafat and countless others.
Carter’s foreign policy has been and is a total complete failure. It has not achieved peace. It has not achieved justice. It has not achieved anything but total chaos, murder and war. Every suicide bomber, beheaded hostage, car bomb, kidnapped foreigner and dead U.S. soldier is a direct result of Carter’s diplomatic efforts.
Jimmy Carter is I believe the first and only former U.S. president to criticize publically and loudly the foreign policy actions of a sitting president, beginning with Ronald Reagan and following with George H.W. Bush and the current President George W. Bush.
I have many friends who say Jimmy Carter is a “good man.” Certainly folks on the Christian left, such as the Sojourners Magazine and “peace and justice” crowd, who can support terrorists and abortionists at the same time, hail Carter as a “sincere Christian peacemaker.”
Jimmy Carter is a fool. There is nothing good or noble about a man who refuses to see or acknowledge the consequences of his actions. He is not a young man, so the folly of youth cannot be blamed for his repeated attempts to make nice with dictators and thugs, who hate not just the U.S. but the Christ Carter claims as his Savior.
Why doesn’t Carter meet with Christians in the Middle East who live under the threat of death and oppression every day? Why not meet with the pastors and elders of underground churches? Why not meet with formerly Islamic converts to Christianity?
Carter is a pacifist and the clearest example of why pacifism is a total failure. It is not the “Christian” response to aggression, nor is it moral. Because of Carter’s pacifism, aggressive and evil thugs have taken over large portions of the Middle East and have murdered or driven out the followers of Christ. Because of Carter’s pacifism murderers daily try to enter Israeli cities to blow up bombs and kill innocent civilians. Because of Carter’s pacifism terrorists can launch rockets from people’s houses in the Palestinian territories into peaceful Israeli neighborhoods.
And Carter’s pacifism, to the extent that it manifests itself in the current “kindler and gentler” war against terrorism in Iraq has prolonged a conflict that should have been ended years ago. The very fact that Iranian, Syrian and other “insurgents” can still enter the country and wage war at all is because our military has been hamstrung by the need to play nice.
We are engaged in ridiculous effort to bring democracy to a part of the world that has neither the philosophical nor theological underpinning needed to make free societies possible. Instead of trying to negotiate with our enemies in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon, we should be waging a total war of annihilation.
The purpose of war is to break the will of the enemy, not just its government and soldiers but its people. As long as we fight a half-hearted war, the idiots outside of Israel will feel free to park rocket launchers in their garages for an occasionally volley of missiles into Israel. I have argued all along that rather than trying to preserve the infrastructure of Bagdad, we should have reduced the city to rubble. We should not stop destroying their country until they are on their knees begging us to stop. Unconditional surrender should be the only condition for a cessation of hostilities.
And one more thing, if ever an Islamist terrorist nuke goes off in an American city, the U.S. response must be to totally destroy Mecca. I don’t care if it is the “holy city” of their retched religion.
Until we get serious about our response to the evil cancer of Islamic terror around the world and even in our country, they will continue to fight us. We are in a global war whether idjits like Carter or the morons in the Senate currently grilling General Petraeus realize it or not. We should not stop this fight until we win totally and completely.
Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Job?
The U.S. recession that Democrats bewail and Republicans dismiss hit home for me yesterday as I turned my washroom key and building pass over to a human resources troll.
Until Monday, I worked for the Washington, D.C. office of a Canadian firm. The company’s investors decided to cut costs by closing our office and laying us all off. We received a decent severance and six months of paid health insurance, which helps ease the sting of joblessness, but all the same, we’re still out of a job.
Which sucks.
My job, before Monday, was reporting on economic data coming out of government agencies in Washington. We tracked jobs numbers, GDP growth, housing starts, building permits, consumer confidence, credit card balances, mortgage foreclosures and all the other indicators of U.S. macro economic health.
At the beginning of the year, I’d say it was a tossup whether we were heading into recession and most analysts were saying as much too. Now, few doubt economic growth has slowed to a stop or even gone negative. The question is not whether we’re in a recession, but how deep it will be and how long it will last.
I heard Rush Limbaugh going on today about out great and dynamic the U.S. economy is right now. And, I’ve read all kinds of conservative writers who are equally enthusiastic about how well our nation is doing. You got folks like Michelle Malkin making fun of people who’ve gotten snared in the subprime mortgage debacle.
Sure, some of those folks were speculators flipping houses hoping to get rich fast and got caught with their pants down when the bottom fell out of the mortgage market. Many, many others were low- to moderate-income people who, offered the chance to own a home, took it.
Maybe they’re stupid for believing the crap their real estate agents, mortgage brokers and others told them about rising home values and the ability to refinance before their adjustable-rate mortgages exploded into usurious interest rates. A lot of them, like me, bought a bad deal with a prepayment penalty making it too expensive to refinance until it was too late to do so. Yea, I’m an idjit.
Still, it’s one thing to be stuck with a crappy mortgage you can’t refinance, unless of course you want to come up with 20% down, when you’re employed. Quite another when there’s no paycheck on the way. It’s one thing to pay $3.25/gallon for gas when you’re employed, and quite another when you’re not.
The other day I paid more than $350 for a cart full of groceries that a year ago cost less than $300. We’re not buying more, pretty much the same stuff we always get, but milk now is more than $4/gallon. Government data crunchers say “core inflation” is contained, and it’s only prices for volatile things like energy and food that have gone up. Well, hell. Too bad we all can’t get along without all thoseat pesky energy and food items that drain our wallets.
No, I’m not part of the “ain’t the economy great” cheering section. I missed my sip from the Kool-Aid pitcher when they passed it around, so I’m not quite as starry eyed as other conservative commentators. This economy sucks.
‘And the Beat Goes On…’
Rockstar, former husband of Cher, one-time mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., and Republican Representative from California’s 44th District, Sonny Bonomay not have died in a tragic skiing accident after all.
A former G-man alleges the rockstar-turned-politician was clubbed to death organized crime. From ContactMusic.com:
An investigator who has been researching Bono’s 1998 fatal skiing accident for the past decade claims top officials linked to an international drug and weapons ring feared the singer-turned-politician was about to expose their criminal acts – and so they had him killed on the slopes.
Former FBI agent Ted Gunderson says Bono, who was an experienced skier, was attacked on the slopes by hitmen, who beat him and then staged the death to look like an accident.
“It’s nonsense for anyone to now try to suggest that Bono died after crashing into a tree. There’s zero evidence in this autopsy report… to show such an accident happened. Instead, there’s powerful proof he (Bono) was assassinated. This was an evil plot that was carried out to almost perfection by ruthless assassins,” Gunderson said.
The investigator claims “top officials linked to an international drug and weapons ring” had Bono killed because they were afraid he was about to rat them out.
That’s just plain weird, but who knows?
‘We Keep You Alive to Serve this Ship…’
“So row well and live.” – Judah Ben Hur
That’s one of my favorite movie lines of all time, said by Charlton Heston’s character Judah Ben Hur to Roman Admiral Quintus Arrius, after Ben Hur saved the admiral’s life. I’ve always wanted to make a sign or poster with the phrase on it to post in my office. I think it’s a great motivational slogan, right along with “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Charlton Heston died today at the age of 84.
He was one of my favorite actors. As a fan of cheesy sci-fi movies, I loved his roles in the Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and Omega Man. As a matter of fact, we’re having a Charlton Heston movie fest in his honor today. Watching those three movies back to back. One of these weekends, we’ll have an Adrienne Barbeau film night too, watching Swamg Thing, Escape from New York, The Fog and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. I’ve never seen that last one, but it’s got to be great.
Anyway, back to Charlton Heston. Omega Man, which hit the big screen in 1971, and Soylent Green, which came out in 1973, are two of my favorite sci-fi flicks. Omega Man is the second film based on William Matheson’s short novel “I Am Legend.” The first version featured Vincent Price and was called The Last Man on Earth. Will Smith appears in the 2007 remake bearing the original’s story’s title “I Am Legend.”
Heston was a great actor. His roles in Ben Hur and Moses were outstanding. He always seemed to over act and was a larger-than-life actor in an age of larger-than-life stars.
At Least This Time They Didn’t Set the Place on Fire
From Breitbart via AP today: Nearly 200 Taken from Texas Compount.
ELDORADO, Texas (AP) – Child welfare officials say they have removed nearly 200 women and children from a West Texas retreat built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.
Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner says 137 children and 46 women are being housed Saturday and interviewed. That’s including the 52 girls removed the day before.
The investigation began after a 16-year-old living there complained of physical abuse.
A search warrant authorized troopers to look for evidence of a marriage between the girl and a 50-year-old man. The search warrant said the girl had a baby when she was 15.
On February 28 15 years ago, the ATF and a host of state and federal law enforcement began a seige against another group of religious non-conformists, based on child abuse and illegal guns allegations.
After a 51-day standoff, the government started driving bulldozers into the “compound” and pumping tear gas into the structure. Shortly afterward fires started (it’s unclear whether by the people inside the structure or from the flamable tear gas.) The structure quickly becomes engulfed in flames. Fire trucks from the nearby town arrive but are prevented from reaching the fire.
By 3:45 p.m., on April 19, 1993, 76 people, including 21 kids and two pregnant women, burned to death after suffering eight hours of breathing the caustic tear gas.
So I guess this time around we’ve made some progress. The polygamists were merely arrested and detained.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry on the Waco Massacre.
And another perspective.
More stuff here.
A Great Man Died 40 Years Ago Today
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis today in 1968.
I was nine years old. I don’t remember knowing too much about him then. I do remember the riots. The District of Columbia burned. My uncle and I drove into what looked like a war zone to pick up my aunt when she got off work at the Riggs Bank on F and 9th Streets, NW. I don’t remember what day it was, the day King died or days afterward. But, I remember soldiers on the streets with guns ready. I remember sandbags out in front of some businesses. I remember smoke from the fires. Across the Potomac in Virginia you could see the smoke rising in long columns.
After the smoke cleared my uncle and I drove around the burned areas. I didn’t understand then and don’t understand now why black people in D.C. and dozens of other cities set fire to homes and businesses owned by black people.
I do remember the discrimination black people faced, though. I have vague memories of “whites only” signs on restroom doors. I remember my mother asking how many black kids were in my elementary school classes. We were living in Alexandria and in second grade there were maybe two black kids in my second grade class.
My family, like thousands of others, gradually moved west and south of the city to areas with fewer blacks. My mother for a time was a single mother who left her kids with a babysitter every day until she got off work to retrieve them. I suspect she was afraid for us and herself, as more blacks migrated to formerly white neighborhoods. That’s not to say a fair bit of prejudice didn’t also influence her decision.
After she remarried, we moved further out still to the countryside 50 miles from D.C. The funny thing though is we ended up in a county with only one high school. The area was largely agricultural at the time and farm workers were mostly black people. With one high school in the county, we ended up in a school that was majority black, so our “white flight” didn’t really accomplish anything.
How strange it all seems now after 40 years. We currently live in a mixed-race community. My next door neighbors are black and their son spends about as much time at my house as he does at his own. In my son’s school, black and white kids are still segregated, but it’s largely by choice, and mostly by the choice of the black kids, most of whom avoid hanging with their white fellow students. The exception is on the sports teams where black, white, Hispanic and Asian kids, all train and compete together.
Still, nearly all my friends are white. I go to a predominately white church. I work for a predominately white company in a multi-racial city. My church recently started a relationship with a black church in the neighborhood and we’ve held joint services at each others’ facilities during the holidays, most recently Easter. But they mostly prefer to worship with their people and I suppose we prefer to worship with ours.
Is that so bad? I don’t know. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, we are all equal in God’s eyes. And in Christ, we are all one people, sinners needing a Savior. King was a great man, but he was a flawed and imperfect man as well. But then, aren’t we all flawed and imperfect. Still, King’s message carried a nugget of truth that touches the core of what America is all about.
“Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: – ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ ” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
I suppose that’s why it’s dispiriting to hear about churches, whether white or black, where racism is justified, where racial exclusivity is justified, where hating the “other” is justified. Whether we’re talking about white supremacists churches or black identity churches, both are apostates and have no business calling themselves followers of Christ.
One of the sweetest times I’ve ever had in worship was down in Yucatan, Mexico, in a village called X-can (pronounced shhcann). I and bunch of other folks from our church in the D.C. suburbs were down there for 11 days to help a Mayan Presbyterian church put a roof on their new building. On the last night during the worship service, we sang that simple children’s hymn “Fishers of Men.” We sang that song in English. We sang it in Spanish. And, we sang it in Mayan.
For the first time in my life I understood the universality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and got the faintest glimpse of what worship must be like in heaven, as all people, of all races, ethnic backgrounds and creeds, stand before the throne of grace with each heart bursting with joy for the privilege of joining our brothers and sisters in praise the Great King of Heaven.
Hallelujah, what a day that will be.
Top 9 Muslim Complaint About ‘Fitna’
Folks at The Nose on Your Face list the top nine complaints by Muslims against Geert Wilders film “Fitna.”
Enjoy.
9. Live Leak keeps acting all uppity about their “freedom to express different viewpoints” attitude.
8. Portrays Muslims as violent and murderous; but in a negative way.
7. Thought the lead role should have gone to Shatner.
6. Upset with the big push by the producers to get it ready in time for Cannes.
5. Forces Muslim rioters to craft yet another batch of poorly-spelled, though surprising neat, protest signs in English.
4. Very poor lighting during the flag burning sequences.
3. Too one-sided. Never gave non-partisan groups like CAIR, Al Qaeda, or Hezbollah a chance to tell their side of the story.
2. Refuses to show the “kinder, gentler side” of bloodthirsty jihadists.
1.Takes call for “violent, painful death to all Jews and non-believers” out of context.
Virginia Loves Pork
Citizens Against Government Waste yesterday published its “2008 Congressional Pig Book,” which lists the thousands of additional items stuffed into appropriations bills by members of Congress for the benefit of their individual districts.The Pig Book lists 11,610 projects costing $17.2 billion that are squirreled away in 12 appropriations bills before the current Congress. CAGW calls pork “a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures.”
“When Congress adopted earmark reforms last year, there was hope that the number and cost of earmarks would be cut in half. By any measure, that has not occurred,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.
To qualify as pork, “a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.”
The seven criteria are: requested by only one chamber of Congress, not specifically authorized, not competitively awarded, not requested by the President, greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding, not the subject of congressional hearings, or serves only a local or special interest.
The Congressional Pig Book is available on the organization’s website, where you can search through the data by congress member, state, party, appropriations bill and keyword.
For fun, I entered a search for pork designated for the ole’ Commonwealth of Virginia, which I’ve called home for most of my life. In the 2008 appropriations bills there are 255 items bringing $326,488,200 to the state.
Of the Virginia total, $61,100,000 is targeted for defense related items such as the $5 million for an undersea launched missile study for the Navy, $800,000 for the Army Air Warrior procurement, and $1.6 million for the Navy’s Maritime Identification Surveillance Technology.
Also, among defense spending, proposed mostly by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va. 8th District), is $6 million for the curiously named National Media Exploitation Center for “intelligence.” All told there are 33 defense related projects.
Transportation gets $79,502,500 for 45 projects, more than half ($47,295,388) designated for Northern Virginia. However, when you drill down into the NoVa portion you find some curious “transportation” projects such as $49,000 for a park in Annandale, $196,000 for an Arlington low-income housing project, $294,000 for the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington, and $98,000 for sidewalks in Vienna.
While I wonder how the good work of the Boys & Girls Club is transportation related, what really bugs me are the handouts for Annandale and Vienna. According to Wikipedia, using 2000 Census data, Annandale families on average made $80,459 a year. In Vienna, families brought in $93,043 per year.
Why can’t the million plus dollar home neighborhoods of Vienna themselves pay for sidewalks for Pete’s sake. And, how does a park in Annandale, also one of the wealthier areas of the state, even the nation, deserve a congressional appropriation for its little park?
In case you’re wondering, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va. 11th District) slipped the Boys & Girls Club gift, as wells as the pork for Annandale and Vienna into the transportation appropriations bill.
While we’re on the subject of transportation largess, other dubious additions include: $294,000 for the Wayne Theatre Alliance, $245,000 to replace awnings of the “historic market” in downtown Roanoke, and $294,000 for South Hill’s “historic Colonial Theatre.” Other transportation funds would go for museums in Suffolk and Newport News, the Lynchburg Academy of Fine Arts, an Eastern Shore community center, a Suffolk community center and a Halifax County Historical Society exhibit.
If Organized Crime Ran the World…
Great post by Pilgrim on his Say Anything blog comparing Islam to organized crime.
…..there wouldn’t have been the type of news coverage that told us all about the John Gotti trial and his history of extortion and murder. Freedom of the press would be a thing of the past. No gang wants the truth told about them.
There wouldn’t be the freedom to critisize the way they do things. Threats and intimidation and even murder would be the price you’d pay if you dared speak up.
There would be no compromise. You’d have to follow in rigid lockstep with their dogma or accept a status as a second or third class citizen. If you wouldn’t or couldn’t become a “made man” you’d have to pay the vig, a tax just to live.
Your women would become property. Crime syndicates are notoriously male oriented, often to the point of mysogyny. A woman’s place is to do what she’s told when she’s told to do it. It can pretty rough on her if she doesn’t.
The world wouldn’t put up with any of that if it were the mafia trying to take over, so I’m wondering just how it is that Islam, with its blatant thuggery and downright viciousness, is being allowed to bully its way into the lives of so, so many.
Pilgrim goes on to talk about the Geert Wilders film, Fitna, which was posted on LiveLeak and then taken down because of Islamist death threats against the company’s employees. LiveLeak reposted the film, but it has been again removed due to copyright issues. Pilgrim says the kind of threats that Wilders and other critics of Islam get, if made by some mafioso would draw immediately reaction by all sorts of law enforcement officials. But not so with Islamic threats.
This is an incredible thing we’re watching develop right before our very eyes. Western civilization is being openly threatened by what is basically a murderous cult. They don’t even hide or attempt to hide their intention to destroy our way of life and to use murder, even mass murder, to do it. And. We. Do. Nothing.
As the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz said, “ain’t it the truth.”
‘Up from the Ground Come a Bubbling Crude…’
Oil, that is, black gold, Texas tea.
I paid $3.13/gallon at the pump this morning to fill up my truck. I colleague of mine paid $3.25/gallon the other day. When I learned to drive gas was about 55 cents a gallon.
On the radio some truckers were bellyaching about how much they have to pay for diesel. They want to go on strike until their employers start paying them more to cover the increase.
And in Congress yesterday, oil company executives blamed market forces and the falling dollar for high oil prices, meanwhile demurring that their huge profits are in line with what other corporations are making these days.
What gets me about gas prices is the oil companies say pump prices are determined by global supply and demand. So that when some Middle East dirt bag rattles a saber, prices shoot up. When the price of oil rises, pump prices shoot up. When a refinery in the U.S. goes off line, pump prices shoot up. When refineries switch from the winter to summer fuel mix to comply with EPA regulations, pump prices shoot up. When the phase of the moon passes from waning crescent to waning gibbous, pump prices shoot up.
But when any of the above reverses, gas prices seldom head south. For instance, oil prices jumped to more than $1.10/barrel in late February and early March. They have since dropped back to just under a buck (as of yesterday). For as fast as pump prices rocketed upward last month, they have not similarly plummeted this month. Market forces, mind you.
Somehow I suspect there’s a lot of B.S. going around when it comes to why gas prices keep rising. A friend of mine said, “You should be glad you don’t live in Europe.” Well, I am glad I don’t live in Europe, but not necessarily because they pay more than $5/gallon to fill their autos.
I’m all in favor of profits, free markets, market forces and capitalism, but what I don’t get is why gas prices so fluidly flow upward but remain stubbornly sticky on the downside.
And the other thing that I don’t understand is why the morons in Washington, yea, I mean the White House and Congress, and the losers running for president don’t make energy independence THE issue of our time.
I was encouraged to read that “Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x.”
America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel oil field that could potentially make America energy independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken formation in North Dakota could boost America’s oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.
All the talk about alternative energy is fine. But engines run on oil, and the U.S. economy is run by engines. I like nuclear energy for electricity generation and think we should have a crash program to build as many of those plants as we can. Coal is an abundant and cheap resource and we should encourage its domestic use. But ultimately we should do all we can to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, particularly oil from the Middle East.
From the Next Energy News article:
In the next 30 days the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken oil formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951.
The article goes on to say that back when the oil was discovered, global oil prices made the cost of drilling for Bakken oil too expensive. Now, with oil prices edging over $100/barrel, the $20 to $40/barrel cost of drilling is more feasible.
It was not until 2007, when EOG Resources of Texas started a frenzy when they drilled a single well in Parshal, N.D., that is expected to yield 700,000 barrels of oil that real excitement and money started to flow in North Dakota. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells in what is expected to be one of the greatest booms in oil discovery since oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938.
I say drill away. Get that stuff out of the ground and into my truck, pronto! And while we’re at it, let’s build more nuke plants and more refineries too.
101 Most Useful Websites
From the U.K. Telegraph: 101 Most Useful Websites
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