Thursday, January 19, 2012

Obama Supporter Gives Up On Green President

Okay, Obama haters, you win.
You were right, I was wrong.
Barack Obama is a lousy president who is way out of his depth, more committed to his left-leaning environmental policies than what's in the best interest of the country. 
On Wednesday, the Obama administration drove a deep coffin nail into the nation's shaky international security, let the air out of the country's economic tires, and managed to offend one of the very few true allies the United States has been able to count on.
And the top dog signed off on this catastrophe.
All of this happened when Obama decided to say "no" to permits for a proposed oil pipeline that would have brought 700,000 barrels a day of precious oil from Alberta, Canada to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast.  [Click here for story.]
There have been protests against the project, mostly from the limousine liberals in Hollywood who claim the pipeline would have been environmentally unsafe.  Yes, there's an Alaskan pipeline that's been serving this nation well since the 1970's with very little environmental impact, but that doesn't matter to the monied Henny Pennys and Ducky Luckys flying on private jets to attend their protest rallies while working Americans continue to watch savings and money for clothes, food, and other essentials go up in smoke every day as they pay $3.50 a gallon for the gas they need to get to their jobs.
I just don't understand a president who pretends to care about middle and lower class Americans, then condemns their future by ensuring that gas prices will now go up instead of down.
Believe me, I hate anything that puts one extra dime in the coffers of Big Oil, and this would certainly provide another huge windfall for those soulless bastards.  But oil is an essential commodity, whether we like it or not.  Instead of cutting off this opportunity for more fuel, an influx which might drive down the price of gas on some other planet where "supply and demand" economics actually works, Big Oil can now continue their ruse of artificial shortages as the excuse for raping us at the gas pumps.
Even worse, Obama has squandered an opportunity for America to get off the Middle Eastern oil tit.  The oil from Canada, our northern neighbor who has been there for us nearly every time the U.S. has called for help in one of our meddling foreign shore skirmishes, would have reduced the amount of oil we would need to continue buying from nations that absolutely hate us.  It would have resulted in fewer American dollars going into the pockets of people that consistently wind up using our cash to eventually purchase the weapons they will use to kill our children in uniform.  (See Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and a wealthy Saudi Arabian family with the surname bin Laden.)
Worst of all, this snub of our best ally has resulted in Canada's prime minister informing Obama that the Maple Leaf government will now build a pipeline to their own coast, and will instead sell that oil to China, India, and other Asian nations.
At a time when we're losing every industrial and economic edge to those countries, our own president has goaded our best friends into selling energy to our biggest international competitors.  Great move, Obie!
Once again, a leader has come down with a case of inconvenient amnesia.  Obama has forgotten that voters didn't elect him four years ago because of his promises to protect the spotted owl or the desert tortoise, or any other idiotic environmental issue.  As the political pundits continue to sing, "it was the economy, stupid!"  We elected him because the previous regime, led by a Texas oil man, had run this country's financial future off the rails.  We expected our economy to improve during his four years.  Not only has he failed miserably on that front, now he has ensured that our future will be just as bleak thanks to gasoline prices that will now head for the $4 a gallon mark.
Four years ago, I gladly voted for a man who promised "change and hope."  I didn't care about his color, and the fact that I had helped elect a black president.
I was wrong.  I made a mistake.
In 2012, I can tell you I won't help elect a green president.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

US Exporting More Fuel Than Importing

Well, so much for the theory of supply and demand.
In the U.S., brain addled A.D.D. Americans took about 15 seconds to forget how our economy ended up in the toilet.
The current popular one-word explanation is "Obama."  That's just stupid, since our economy was augering in when Barry was still just an obscure candidate in a messy field of Democrats trying to win G-Dub's seat.
In fact, most political pundits pointed to the tanking economy as the reason for the new White House occupant bearing a donkey on his p.j.'s.
The brainwashing of America was pretty efficient over the last four years, as people seem to recall that it was the real estate market's implosion that brought down the house of cards.
But if you go back and look at the economic news from 2008-09, you'll see something else was really knocking the pins out from under our prosperity:
Gas prices.
We've become so accustomed to gasoline hovering around the $3.50-per-gallon mark that we've forgotten it was a little more than five short years ago that we were paying around $2.50 per gallon.  By early 2008, it had briefly spiked to more than $4 per gallon before drifting back to the upper threes.
I remember vividly the world coming undone in 2008.  In my little hometown of Mesquite, tourism dried up faster than lizard piss on a desert rock.  People (myself included) quit taking vacations and driving to fun destinations.  Folks began making hard decisions between filling the family car's gas tank and buying groceries.  I wrote stories about otherwise normal, rational people buying scooters as their new means of transportation.  (And the efforts by the government to bar those gas-sipping two-wheelers from public streets.)
When the tourism stopped here, just like in Las Vegas and other resort locations, so did the number of visitors falling in love with the place and buying up new houses.  So of course, the housing market collapsed.
One of the MANY lies laid on us by Big Oil was that our demand was so high in this country for oil that it drove the price up to those lofty heights.  Then they mixed in a few artificial shortages to make that supply-and-demand picture look even more dire, including claims that storms in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to production shutdowns.  Then you had the BP oil spill that made everyone believe that our precious "supply" was currently sloshing around the shores of Mississippi.
What everyone forgets is a tiny expose' that showed the oil companies were actually systematically shutting down their refineries around the country to squeeze the supply.  They also forget that the drilling rig that exploded and sank into the Gulf was never a production well, and was one of the MANY drilling sites that oil companies actually drill then plug.
Now we find out that the "supply and demand" claim is a ruse.
Fuel demand in this country is low.  Way low.  How low?
According to a federal report in December from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. exported 753.4 million barrels of fuel in 2011, while importing just 689.4 million.
Stop and let that sink in.
It's the first time since 1950 that the United States exported more fuel than it imported.
The report claims that the reason for this upside down scenario is the fact that demand is down significantly in this country, while demand is up in other emerging countries.
So where is Big Oil's lie about demand now?
Are you ready?
Iran.
That's right, Big Oil's best friend, that obnoxious little middle eastern collection of blowhards is making threats again.  They've done it before, which made the oil markets quake and gas prices at the pumps skyrocket, despite the fact that the U.S. doesn't get oil from Iran.  (Can't let a little thing like that get in the way of commerce, right?)
But this time the ululaters have a new game.
Iran is threatening to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is a choke point for oil shipping between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
This sounds pretty impressive and scary, until you realize the only major oil-exporting countries to be affected by that would be the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and, um, Iran.  (Saudi Arabia also uses the Persian Gulf, but they have the option of shipping from Red Sea ports on their other coast.) It's like a child saying they're going to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don't get their way.  And they're making this threat because the U.S. has called them out on their nuclear program.
I know, what one thing has to do with the other is the kind of disjointed thinking that can only come out of an Iranian mind.
Of course this is an idle bluff.
For starters, when was the last time you heard of the Iranian Navy doing anything?  About quarter-past never.  It would be like me threatening to blockade the port of Los Angeles because I got a new canoe for Christmas.
However, the Henny Pennys and Ducky Luckys in the oil futures markets are wringing their hands and jacking up the price of oil like they've just heard about a shortage of that rare chemical Sodium Chloride.  (For those a few years distant from Chemistry 101, that's table salt, one of the most plentiful things on earth thanks to the briny oceans covering two-thirds of our planet).
And as anyone who casually follows the oil industry in today's world knows, the price of oil has absolutely nothing to do with production costs, supply, demand, or anything else borne of logic.  The price of oil is all about whim and illusion.
Sadly, this means that one of the things I've been ranting about for nearly a decade has been proven wrong.
I've mistakenly believed that American consumers could bitch slap the oil companies into shape by simply getting together and strategically boycotting their product.
Turns out, the demand has nothing to do with the price of gas, even though the U.S. is allegedly still the biggest consumer market in the world.  The cigar smokers at Exxon, Chevron, and the rest of the boardroom bullies will simply jack up the prices even higher, then sell it to Duhdumastan.
So I surrender.  The fat cats have the game rigged, and there's nothing we can do about it.  We certainly can't expect our government to do anything, so long as campaign contributions from oil companies continue to be the main source of income for our senators and congressmen.
So we just have to pay whatever the honchos say until someone can figure out how to make those goofy looking little scooters sold in 2008 run on Sodium Chloride.