US awash with oil

This is a note  I sent to Glenn Beck when the issue of oil was being discussed once again:


Thanks for once again (2/22) calling attention to the harm that's being done to our economy by not going after our own vast resources of oil and natural gas. Instead we leave it to foreign hostile nations to provide for our needs and face the consequence of paying the cost of their oil according to their whims or the unstable circumstances these countries find themselves in.

The extortionist pricing imposed on us in 2008 was the #1 cause of bringing down our economy. Everything else was the effect. When the price of a barrel of foreign oil was gradually raised to the peak of $147 a barrel, gasoline prices rose to over $4.00 a gallon, putting a strain on every family budget and every industry - most directly and noticeably the airline and shipping companies. Is it any wonder that some people would fall behind paying their bills and making their mortgage payments, especially the ones laid off because of the pressures imposed on businesspeople.?

This country is awash with oil and natural gas.  Just Google Bakken oil deposit and scroll to "Massive oil deposit could increase US reserves 10x."  In the 1870s John D. Rockefeller was refining 90% of the oil used in the US - his competitors the other ten percent and we were energy independent. (Google John D. Rockefeller in Wikipedia and look for the sub-title "Standard Oil").  The oil fields being harvested by JDR in almost every state in the union in the 19th century did not exactly dry up.

Our economy could soar replacing our dependence on foreign oil through the use of our own, and the capital and revenue it would generate could provide robust investment in research and development of alternative means of energy.  By offering China our oil at a price attractive to them, they wouldn't have to pay with hard cash but could be crediting our almost one trillion dollar account and gradually eliminating our debt to them.

Social Security

A note I sent to Sean Hannity when the subject matter being discussed was Social Security:


There is a solution to bringing about a healthily administered Social Security program. This is something that should be handled like an insurance program the same way we pay for auto insurance, homeowner’s, etc. Most of us pay into insurance programs that we hope we’ll never need.  I’ve driven accident free for 59 years.  I paid insurance all those years and don’t regret not having to avail myself of payment from the companies I dealt with.  Social Security could be handled the same way.  People should be made to understand that they’re paying into a program that they’ll only be able to collect on if they have the misfortune of being in a certain low enough income level to need it when they retire. That level could be determined periodically as the economy changes.  At the present time it surely doesn’t make sense that Social Security should be paid to people making a half-million dollars or more.  Bully for them for having the good fortune that through their industry and good fortune they find themselves in that income category.

I say drill

This is a letter I sent to Greta Van Susteren 11/27/10:

Dear Greta,


The way the guest you were hosting the evening of Thanksgiving day was expressing himself seemed to indicate that he was not only against drilling for oil in ANWAR but everywhere else in the U. S. and that we have the means right now to eschew any need to use oil for our energy needs. The most optimistic forecast I've heard about that day coming about is that it is still decades away.

I wish I could do more than just imagine how well off we'd be if we could get past the radical environmentalists and those that want to placate them.  If we could make use of the rich supply of oil we have in almost all areas of the U. S. and offshore until renewable sources are developed for our energy needs we could not only have what we need instead of being reliant on foreign hostile nations but would be competitors on the world market. For one thing, our debt to China could be paid off by this generation instead of passing it on to our children. By making the price attractive enough to be taking it from us they could be paying for it by crediting it to our debt. The down side to that of course, if it is a down side, is that the price of a barrel of oil would soon be back down to fifteen dollars a barrel instead of the current price of over eighty dollars.  But with the revival of the economy we'd be able to go the rest of the way paying them with hard currency.

A program I was watching not too long ago that might have been a National Geographic production indicated that not only are the caribous increasing in number in the Arctic but they are nesting along the raised pipelines that are bringing oil to the lower 48. They were showing a bear walking the pipeline like it was a more comfortable walkway for where he wanted to go.  I wonder if the most endangered among us are not the caribous and bear but the lifestyle of the U. S. homo sapien.

Mistakes of the Great Depression Repeated

The adage, "Those who do not learn from the mistakes in history are doomed to repeat them," is now being being played out once again. There's an excellent article written by the syndicated columnist, Amity Shlaes, in the Hillsdale College publication Imprimus, September 2010 issue, about all the mistakes that were being made in the depression of the "thirties" that are now being made once again.


Here is an excerpt from the article:

Regarding monetary policy, it is clear that there wasn't enough money in the early 1930s. So Roosevelt was not wrong in trying to reflate. But, though his general idea was right, the discretionary aspect of his policy was terrifying. As Henry Morgenthau reports in his diaries, prices were set by the president personally. FDR took the U. S. off the gold standard in April 1933 and by summer he was setting the gold price every morning from his bed. Morgenthau reports that at one point the president ordered the gold price up 21 cents. Why 21, Morgenthau asked. Roosevelt replied, because it's 3 x 7, and three is a lucky number. "If anyone knew how we set the gold price," Morgenthau wrote in his diary, "they would be frightened."

Discretionary policies aimed at cleaning up Wall Street were destructive as well. The New Dealers attacked the wealthy as "money changers" and "Princes of Property." In 1937, after his re-election, Roosevelt delivered an inaugural address in which he described government as an instrument of "unimagined power which should be used to "fashion a higher order of things." This caused business to freeze in its tracks. Companies went on what Roosevelt himself resentfully termed a "capital strike."

.....Consider the case of Alfred Lee Loomis, who had the kind of mind that could contribute significantly to Gross Domestic Product and job creation. During the First World War, he had improved the design of firearms for the U. S. Army. In the 1920s he became wealthy through his work in investment banking. He moved in a crowd that was developing a new form of utility company that might finally be able to marshal the capital to bring electricity to the American South. But when Loomis saw that the Roosevelt administration was hauling utilities executives down to Washington for hearings, he shut down his business, retreated to his Tudor house, and ran a kind of private think tank for his own benefit.

The link to the entire article:

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=09

Airport scanners

On Wednesday 11/17/10 a guest on the Glenn Beck program said that George Soros owns 11,000 shares of the stock in the company that manufactures the scanners that are now being used at the airports. Interesting - another example of how great it is to have friends in high places.

Lawyers???

An electronic letter I received:


From: theur4@netzero.com
Sent: 10/24/2010 7:51:28 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: FW: Attorney Obama?

Your obedient servant
Pvt. A.C. Theurer

In GOD we trust &
One Nation under GOD
GOD bless America


---------- Forwarded Message ----------

Here's some interesting stuff. Check out the accuracy for yourself....

THE LAWYER OBAMA, WHAT A JOKE

[Ed. note on the Ed. note: this is from a former Chicago lawyer now practicing law in Tyler, TX]

[Ed. note: This is legit. I checked it out myself at https://www.iardc.org Stands for Illinois Attorney Registration And Disciplinary Committee. It�s the official arm of lawyer discipline in Illinois; and they are very strict and mean as hell. (Talk about irony!) Even I, at the advanced age of almost 65, maintain (at the cost of approximately $600/year) my law license that I worked so hard and long to earn.]


Big surprise !!!

Former Constitutional Law Lecturer and US President Makes Up Constitutional Quotes During State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.

Consider this:

1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a �lawyer�. He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application.

A �Voluntary Surrender� is not something where you decide �Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?� and forget to renew your license. No, a �Voluntary Surrender� is something you do when you�ve been accused of something, and you �voluntarily surrender� your license five seconds before the state suspends you.

2. Michelle Obama �voluntarily surrendered� her law license in 1993.

3. So, we have the first black President and First Lady � who don�t actually have licenses to practice law. Facts.

Source: http://jdlong.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/pres-barack-obama-editor-of-the-Harvard-law-review-has-no-law-license/

4. A senior lecturer is one thing... A fully ranked law professor is another. Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago .

5. The University of Chicago released a statement in March, 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) �served as a professor� in the law school�but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.

6. �He did not hold the title of professor of law,� said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law .

Source: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_obama_did_hold_the_title.html ;

7. The former Constitutional senior lecturer cited the US Constitution the other night during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence � not the Constitution.

8. The B-Cast posted the video: http://www.breitbart.tv/did-obama-confuse-the-constitution-with-the-declaration-of-independence/

9. Free Republic: In the State of the Union Address, President Obama said: �We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal�.

10. Um, wrong citing, wrong founding document there Champ, I mean Mr. President. By the way, the promises are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights. The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

11. And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech???

When you are a phoney it's hard to keep facts straight.

Another excerpt

Another excerpt in this link entitled, "God, Guts and Sarah Palin:"

http://barbaricthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/08/alaskan-fisherman.html

For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. This summer, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.