1) I don’t know if this is a good sign, or if the rebels in Libya learned how to do PR; but, they were friendly to FoxNews and they showed their faces when talking to the news (they were not all covered up).
2) If we produce all of the oil and gas that we need in the United States, then the price of oil and gas would depend upon the cost of getting it and refining it, and not upon speculators or the Arab oil cartel.
3) We have another war in the Middle East, along with the 2 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; an enhanced Patriot Act, military tribunals, and Gitmo is still open. Insofar as foreign policy goes, this sounds like 4 more years of Bush to me.
4) Mark Steyn, a Rush Limbaugh guest host, made a brilliant observation the other day. Adriana Huffington, who used to be a conservative, and now claims to be a liberal, launched the Huffington Post, a leftist on-line news/opinion website. Many of the contributors worked there for free. Huffington had a lot of money already, but that was never an issue to anyone. It is okay for liberals to be wealthy. But, suddenly, she sells the Huffington Post for $315 million. Who will get that money? Will all these loyal contributors who have been writing for free for the past many years see a dime of this? Will their hard work, insight, and—oh, I’ll just come right out and say—their propaganda skills be rewarded? They have worked for a low salary and no salary, and have built this little online opinion-news site into quite the media empire. So now, will the person whose ideals are their ideals—Adrianna Huffington—share any of this money with them? She could take a small amount from this deal—say, $10 million—and spread this around to all of her contributors, as her way of saying, “Thank you. The Huffington Post would be nothing without you.” Remember, this woman is a liberal now, and she believes in social justice and economic justice—so, will she back up her liberal ideals with real liberal action? And, will any liberal outlet call her on this?
5) From USA Today: “Health and Human Services proposed new regulations Thursday that it hopes will reduce Medicare costs and improve care by focusing funds on prevention and quality.” Yes, because when I want to save money and improve quality, the first place I look to is Washington D.C.
From:
http://kukis.org/blog/ConservativeReview172.htm
A retired math teacher who spends most of his time exegeting the Old Testament and, once a week, puts out an ezeen.
Funny stuff Gary, hypocrisy runs deep in the currents of Liberalism and Socialism: who are we to be so sanctimonious in the cause of justice and fairness to point out the hypocrisies, if Liberal Lemmings and Huffington’s deep breathers are so naive to believe in the just cause of Socialism and the premise that ultra rich Elites are Ultra rich Elites because it is their destiny, we should not rain on their parade. Let them admire Adrianna’s excesses, she has used them as Useful Idiots for the cause, she has earned the title of Elite and the right to live in decadence and extreme wealth, while she laughs at those who were stupid enough to believe in the cause. We can join in the laughter for we have earned that right also, and while we laugh we can feel confident in the treachery and corruptness of the Left and their phony cause that uses people like slaves to promote Elite status for the chosen few. Well done Adriana, in the tradition of Stalin and Mao, you have used people for your own purpose. You chewed them up and spit them out like useless pieces of flotsam and jetsam. Why not do it again? They are standing in line to look like fools and idiots.
Hey Gary! Your article says April 1st which is the wrong day and its not a (reader post) at the bottom of the title. Are you an FA guy now?
@Zac: Woops…I’m messing up a whole lot today. Thanks Zac, guess I elevated Gary for a few hours. Fixed. As far as April 1st, where do you see that?
@Curt: Ether it said April 1st at the top of the screen a couple minutes ago or I’ve gone nuts. Now it says April 3rd.
Hmmmm, I don’t see that. Where at on the screen?
I was talking about the red writing above the title Curt. Its getting better, were now on April 6th. Or maybe I’m seeing things….
Zac, can you take a screenshot and email it to me…not sure what you’re talking about when you say red writing above the title.
Curt I think I was looking at the amount of comments there are and thought that was the day. It said April 1st then April 3 then 6th. Sorry.. My fault. Just because I’m handsome does not mean I’m smart.
Oh, I see what you were looking at. Thought I was going crazy there for a bit also.
Oh yeah Gary,
My good friend, the conspracy victim (never met a conspiracy he didn’t like), insists that we are not drilling for oil because it is running out (PLEASE, address your problems to him) and the bloated oil capatilists want to conserve it for the future when mideast oil runs out so they can jack the price up to whatever they want all over the world.
This sounds pretty dicey to me and I ask ” what would happen if there was a miracle fuel invented that would do away with reliance on oil?” He, of course, has a conspiracy for this with the oil producers suppressing any new fuels through any means necessary. Of course, he then starts on how eartrh’s resources are being diverted to aliens who have had secret underground bases in the New Mexico desert and are taking our resources back to their home planet. Incredulity brings another onslaught about the chinese massing below the Mexican border in secret camps in preparation for their invasion of the US.
I fear for what what will happen so I have been buying cheap 5 gallon gasoline cans and filling as many as I can afford when I get my SS check each month. I have been burying them all around my back yard. I don’t know about you guys but I am not taking any chances.
@Zac:
I know exactly what you mean, Zac.
@Dink Newcomb:
I take it, you’re a nonsmoker?
I was thinking more along the lines of mouth breathers, Skook. 😉
Speaking of liberal hypocrisy – California school dsitrict tried to demand parents prove who they are with a valid ID. Why this dirty trick? 61% of the parents of McKinley wanted to take the school out of the control of the school district. Can’t understand why, school only ranked 22d out 24 schools in the district.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/pulling-trigger_556151.html?page=1
Hard Right: some notes
I work for an elderly former Republican congressman and he refered to the people who become so emotional over Liberal and environmental causes as deep breathers; mainly because of their feigned emotional indignation and self-righteousness during normal debate. (typical Lib strategy) However, when you become winded doing matial arts and start breathing through your mouth, you are close to the end of your reserves. I like that also. I figure you mean people who are uncouth and breathe through their mouth all the time, that is also pretty good.
@Gary Kukis:
Just some sarcasm, of course, to relieve my frustration without reloading and screaming obsceneties.
My Daddy died lingeringly of Alzheimer’s and in the mid stages he actually did something similar for who knows what reason. For years I had visions of a conflagration caused by an unfamiliar, careless smoker.
@Skookum 2 #15 :
In an attempt to balance whatever opinions I have, I also vist Huff post (among other lib sites) to see if there is any chance of anyone there not hyperventilating with indignity over people who believe that self preservation begins with self interest.
This experience has led me to an alternative to both of your polite characterizations: butt breathers, since they are most certainly talking out of their butts when off on a tear, passionately spouting the liberal catechism.
That’s not true now. Never has been true. Never will be true. The price of oil and gasoline in the US does not depend on the cost of getting it (refining costs are the same, no matter where it’s gotten from), the price of oil and gasoline depends on what the world price of oil is, as US domestic oil is always priced and sold at the world market levels.
Germany, which produces NO oil, has the same price of gasoline at the pump (before taxes) as we have here in the USA.
The only way to have US domestic oil sell for less than world levels is with price controls or with nationalizing the oil industry.
So you want price controls? You want nationalization of our oil industry?
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@Anna Puma #14:
Yeah Anna, I followed the link and read the article. What you didn’t mention is that the school is in Compton, one of the epicenters of gangs in the US. I think that those people getting tired of living in a cesspool and trying to change is wonderful. And to buttress your mention of liberal hypocrisy, let me quote from the link:
@openid.aol.com/runnswim #18:
But Larry, they’ve had nationalized oil in Mexico since 1938 and look how well it works there and has made their economy flourish!
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Of course I am right and you are wrong. How much do they pay for gas in Libya? Was it 47 cents? When you produce all the gas and oil that your country needs, then you have control over your own market.
And I would never suggest that Maxine Waters run the oil business. That would be as silly as suggesting that the government is able to run the health care business.
@Gary
Libyan gasoline is cheap because the Libyans control the price of oil. Here in the USA, we don’t have price controls and the oil industry is not nationalized. We in the USA pay the same price for oil drilled in Texas, California, or Alaska (grade for grade) as we pay for oil imported from the Middle East or Mexico or Canada (price of transportation for oil by tanker adding about 4 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline). Germans pay the same price for oil they import from Russia as we pay for oil imported from Canada or drilled out of the ground in Texas or the Gulf of Mexico. That’s why the Germans (who have no domestic oil industry) pay the same price for gasoline (pre-taxes) as we pay for gasoline.
We have less than 5% of the world’s oil reserves (and it doesn’t matter if it’s 2%, which is the official figure or my overly generous 5%, to satisfy those who claim the US reserves are vastly greater than official figures, the principle is the same). We produce 9% of the world’s oil. If we increase our production by 25%, this will increase the world’s oil supply by 2.25%, which will have a trivial effect on the world price of oil (which determines what we pay at the pump, as we are a capitalist nation, with no price controls on oil and our domestic producers are allowed to sell the oil at world market prices, which is how domestically produced oil is always priced).
And any moderating effect that increased domestic production would have on world oil prices would not provide the USA with any special benefit. The Chinese and the rest of the world (which consumes 4 times as much oil as we here in the USA consume) would just say “thank you very much for the heroic efforts to exhaust your own reserves to keep down the costs to China and to the rest of the world” (do the math, if we have — generously speaking — 5% of the world’s reserves and we increase our drilling from 9% of the world’s output to 11.25% of the world’s output, through increasing our output by 25%; we are obviously rushing to exhaust our reserves at twice the rate of the rest of the world).
Benefits of increased domestic drilling are improved balance of payments, increased oil royalties to the citizens of the State of Alaska, increased jobs in the oil industry, increased profits to Chevron and Exxon Mobil and Haliburtan, and increased taxes to the Federal government. But those benefits do NOT include a significant reduction or moderation in the price of gasoline, diesel, heating oil, or jet fuel.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Larry, perhaps you remember a few decades agp when the OPEC countries would meet and set the price of oil. Back then the Propaganda outlets considered that important enough to be part of prime time news. i also remember when the other OPEC countries wanted to raise the price of crude too much, Saudia Arabia would threaten and increase their production to keep the prices from increasing dramaticaly. Do you remember those days Larry?
Do you remember the OPEC countries shutting off our supply of oil and the lines at the pump?
Those will never happen again with our own production. We could become independent of price manipulation by countries that hate us if we became an oil producing nation and put 78,000 rig workers back to work not to mention a similar number of refinery workers. Of course Obama see the invisible advantage for us to loan Bazil and Soros the money to drill and sell us the oil so that their workers get the benefit. That’s the way a citizen of the world views economics. We need a US citizen leading this country who is concerned with US workers and countries aqnd to Hell with Soros and Brazil operating on our money to make billions.
@Skook:
What so many people here (including you) fail to realize is that increasing domestic production wouldn’t do a darn thing to insulate us from OPEC price manipulation. Right now, oil is selling for $113 per barrel and our gasoline costs $4 per gallon. The reason that the price of oil is so high is that oil traders are freaked that Saudi Arabia is going to be the next domino to fall. We produce 9% of world oil. If we upped production by 25% (which would take many years), this just increases world oil supplies by 2.25%, which will have a negligible effect on world oil prices and therefore price at the pump here in the USA. US domestically produced oil is always sold at world oil prices. We get no special price break for oil produced here in the USA. We have 9% of world oil production. The mid-East has 64%. Unrest in the mid-East will ALWAYS cause world oil prices to spike, no matter how much oil we pump domestically.
Plus, we get no special price break from pumping more of our own oil. China benefits from increased US oil production, price-of-oil-wise, to the exact same extent that we here in the USA benefit. We increase our production, and the rest of the world, which consumes 80% of world oil, just says “thank you very much for depleting your own oil reserves at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world, just so that we can all pay a minuscule amount of money less for gasoline, right along with you.”
We get the same advantage, price at the pump-wise, from increased oil pumped by Brazil or Russia or Venezuela as we get from the same amount of increased oil pumped out of Alaska.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Hypothetical scenario: Say the only oil in the world was in the Middle East. They would eventually be able to control even more of the earth’s wealth than they do now. The only counter balance are the oil producing countries in the rest of the world.
If producing oil and refining oil is such a horrible fate, why are we financing Brazil and Soros to get into the oil game big time?
Why are Calgary and Edmonton the two most dynamic cities in North America?
Pumping our own crude and refining our crude will insulate us from the predatory tactics of OPEC and from the disruption of oil supplies from the Middle East: having our own sources of oil will also prove beneficial if Obama gets us into a World War with his buffoonish foreign policies and playing at war.
Albert Speer wrote in, Inside The Third Reich, that the allies wasted armaments bombing all the components of the National Socialist War machine. (He was the one that had the armament factories up and running a few days after we bombed them.) He maintained we could have ended the war a year earlier if we had taken one industry such as refineries or bearings and bombed them repeatedly rather than trying to knock out the entire machine industry. My indirect point is that our war machine will only have a secure source of oil when it is within our borders and or Canada of course.
Oh by the way, Alberta is booming because of the oil industry. Alberta is the California of the second half of the 20th Century.
As a man of technology, you realize that there is a finite period of oil usage until it is replaced with new technologies: you also realize that technology is built upon previous technology and the procedure takes time despite Pelosi’s ridiculous legislation requiring technology that doesn’t exist. Why wait until oil only has value as technical lubricants, to dril for oil of dubious value, Today oil has astronomical value and the US can realize prosperity like Alberta is enjoying.
When you say we have only a percentage of the world’s crude it sounds as if you don’t have faith in the technologies of the future that Obama and Pelosi think will appear if they legislate the technologies. I have been on your pages and know you believe in technology and the future, Oil like gold has value now, should we wait until the value drops and then drill for our vast reserves or bring some of that vast wealth that Alberta is enjoying right now. You will have work no matter what, more common tradesmen are wishing they had the options of Canadians to feed their families.
CURT and Zac, I just loved that brilliant EXCHANGE,
you made me go back and forth to the top, and I never seen any date,
hummmmm, now what time was it when you came here,?
what did you drink on your way here?
@Dink Newcomb: You must be from the south. You answered my comment like a southerner. 🙂
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Spoken like a true Californian. No concept of the free market system. A lot of words with little understanding.
Have you ever read this?
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/09/13/pencils-and-politics.html
GARY KUKIS YOU ARE RIGHT AND AS SKOOKUM MENTIONNED, the more they wait, the later to to stop the dependance on ARAB’S OIL,
HOW COME RUSSIA does not buy CANADIEN OIL, well IT’s obvious that the TRANSPORTATION would have them pay more because IT’s further for their territory,
SO It tell me that our own oil would be cheaper to get at the pump, because of the same reason,WHICH IS CLOSER TO US, and further more AMERICAN WOULD BE SO PROUD TO USE THEIR OWN PRODUCTS:
YES THE PRIDE OF AMERICANS IS STILL ALIVE, AND THEY ARE NOT THE ONES WHO BOWED TO OTHER KINGS AND QUEENS AND DICTATORS OF THE WORLD.
LET IT NOT BE FORGOTTEN.