This Wall Street Journal editorial, "$4 Gasbags," June 12 (thanks to Davsmi) calls for expanding domestic energy supplies, which of course is simple common sense. But this is not the only way we are insane and self-destructive -- a view the WSJ attributes to the Chinese. Here are some of the others:
1. Allowing in immigrants who believe that our society is inherently evil and that our Constitution and laws must be replaced by Sharia;
2. Forbidding our own anti-terror analysts to use the word "jihad" to describe the war that is being waged against us -- thus depriving ourselves of the single analytical tool that our enemies have given us to understand their motives and goals (this one is presented as a strategic choice: if we call jihadists unkind names in Arabic, this will discredit them in the eyes of their fellow Muslims -- an absurd view that relies on the faulty premise that the jihadists are getting their credibility among Muslims from us);
3. Allowing habeas corpus to enemy combatants for the first time in American history;
4. Funding schools that advocate our own subjugation;
...and there are plenty of other ways also. Phyllis Chesler has more here. Make your own lists!
From the Journal:
Anyone wondering why U.S. energy policy is so dysfunctional need only review Congress's recent antics. Members have debated ideas ranging from suing OPEC to the Senate's carbon tax-and-regulation monstrosity, to a windfall profits tax on oil companies, to new punishments for "price gouging" – everything except expanding domestic energy supplies.Amid $135 oil, it ought to be an easy, bipartisan victory to lift the political restrictions on energy exploration and production. Record-high fuel costs are hitting consumers and business like a huge tax increase. Yet the U.S. remains one of the only countries in the world that chooses as a matter of policy to lock up its natural resources. The Chinese think we're insane and self-destructive, while the Saudis laugh all the way to the bank....
Kindly add the many documented self destructive events directed at our own security authorities aka 'sensitivity training' given by the 'un-indicted co-conspirator' in a recent terror related case --- CAIR.
Those comments would be laughable if it were not so serious. these laws apply to most Western countries and we have ruling elites who are out of touch with just common sense. We have become so serious and pc that there is little reasoning left when it comes to actually being critical of the above statements.
But there is hope, even among the EU, Ireland and another European country voted no against the EU. The little guy is fightback. We have a long to to go, but there is hope commonsense returns to the elites.
Any Canadian readers please correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that Canada is about as bad: (1) a 2000-mile natural gas pipeline from the Alaska north slope to central Canada (where it will connect with existing pipelines) had just recently finally been given permission to be built; it was proposed in the late '80's, so it has taken ca. 20 years just for PERMISSION to be built; (2) recent discoveries in Saskatchewan indicate that province has just as much potential oil production from tar sands as Alberta, but the provincial gov't is apparently some New Deal style holdover from the '30's, and is taking steps to prevent its development, saying "we don't want to be another Alberta", even tho Saskatchewan is the poorest of the western provinces, and Alberta the richest.
George Lucas saw it coming. The Army of Mohammedans invading the United States they only obey the commands of Islam and the Koran. The foolish leaders of the west and India are blinded by their own stupidity seeing their values and freedoms being eroded by this evil ideology. The supreme court gives habeas corpus rights to enemy combatants who are not US citizens, how pathetic.
We have an energy policy dictated by the Environmentalists. It is a policy of doing without. The less we have the happier they are. They love to talk about alternatives but are a little light in their ability to point out where Individual communities are jumping on the Wagon to accept them.
The notion of making the fundamental by-product of Human Existence a crime to produce is quite unique in Human history.
I am waiting for the Environmentalists to set the example for the rest of us by indefinitely holding their breath. Please, show us the way, right away.
Sometimes you wonder who is the real foe.. Islam or the liberal left.
We cannot fight both at the same time. and because we are in a time for election, we have to try to elect as many sane representatives as we can.
Here is one I found in Tennessee
http://www.kumarforcongress.com/
Vijay Kumar is the perfect kind of candidate to a congress seat and he should be supported by all republicans and other conservatives.
what about Robert for VP?
5. Allowing China into the WTO.
6. Granting PNTR to China.
7. Allowing American companies to move their operations to China without penalty, destroying the lives of American workers and hollowing out the American economy.
Problem Identified.
Next question:
Solutions? This is a movement in need of political leadership in the US as well as Canada. Which politicians have identified the problem and are worthy of our support? Or what more can be done to get the message out, educate the electorates and THEN have educated politicans who can provide the correct leadership.
"7. Allowing American companies to move their operations to China without penalty, destroying the lives of American workers and hollowing out the American economy."
The working life of US engineers and IT workers has been significantly reduced by allowing more foreign workers in than is needed. This increases competition and significantly reduces wages.
The Government relies on industry representatives and companies to tell them if there are enough skilled workers in these areas. The company reps have said there is a significant shortage and the Government lets in more workers than is needed.
A countries own citizens should come first.
Until we get rid of 535 money-grubbing bastards in Washington, nothing is going to change. We desperately need term limits and an absolute ban on all political contributions over $100.00 including "bundling" of contributions. The only thing our current politicians are good at is covering their own asses, and those of their fellow thieves. Throw them ALL out!
9. Bombing a pro-western Christian country (Serbia) "into the stone age" to protect a classical Islamic landgrab in Kosovo.
10. Propping up, with massive foreign aid and military assistance, all the provinces in the Islamic fascist empire, including such sterling Islamic paradises as Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Jordan, so as to insure the continued festering and spread of Islamic fascism in the world for generations to come.
11. Providing thousands of soldiers and weapons and more foreign aid to "maintain stability" in Iraq without sending them a bill for services, payable in oil credits, when all the while the Iraqis are swimming in oil that is selling for $140 a barrel.
12. Backing plans to insert an open-border Islamic trojan horse to spearhead the conquest of Europe--Turkey--into the EU.
13. Routinely condemning, rebuking, or otherwise restraining the only liberal democracy in the Middle East--Israel--while permitting their genocidal Islamic neighbors to just as routinely refer to Israelis as vicious Nazis, or as wretched apes and pigs, and standing by as those Muslim neighbors make plans and indoctrinate and train a fanatical Islamic army designed to implement the next Holocaust--all of this using Western funds and right under Western noses.
I underwent a paradigm shift after oil soared above $130 a barrel. Previously disagreeing with Hugh Fitzgerald's views on how oil should be taxed, and how the taxes levied should go toward the funding of a latter-day Manhattan Project to develop viable alternatives to oil so that we may never again be in thrall to the malevolent Saudis and their cohorts, who fund jihad with the trillions they receive in petrodollars, I now see that Hugh is absolutely correct. We must strive to find a way for the world to jettison its need for oil, even if we here in the USA have generations worth of untapped oil in Alaska, the northern plains states, and offshore. It doesn't matter. The Saudis, the Iraqis, the Libyans, the Iranians, etc. must be rendered economically destitute and toothless - the oil weapon taken away, so that they can no longer wage jihad against the infidel world. But our government is utterly clueless.
Big Luke June 15, 2008 11:36 AM
Have you seen this video? (from 2007)
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/06/h1-b-video-ange.html
"In the video, Lawrence Lebowitz of Cohen & Grigsby, breaks down a technique that lets U.S. companies hire foreign workers under the government's Program Electronic Review Management process. PERM covers requirements for companies placing help wanted ads in an attempt to get more U.S. workers hired, not less. An employer has to show that no qualified Americans are available, and Lebowitz and other lawyers in the video detail ways for companies to legally reject American applicants."
=[Sigh]=
Hugh Fitzgerald long ago observed that the Saudis have learned that if the price of oil is too high, consumption will not only be reduced (and, therefore, oil revenues), but there will be a rekindled effort on the part of oil-consuming nations to find alternatives to crude. The Saudis learned this in the late 1970s or slightly thereafter, when excessively high prices led to a sharp reduction in consumption and a depressed oil market. For years, the benchmark price of crude dropped from $30 a barrel to $8, and was even lower than that for a time. The Saudis, no fools they, learned to regulate production so that prices would be relatively bearable for the oil consumers, so that attempts to fund and develop new fuel sources would be discouraged. The Saudis have succeeded all too well in this endeavor. And the petrodollars continue to flow into Saudi (and Iranian, and Libyan, and Kuwaiti, and Omani..I need not go on) coffers; trillions of dollars worth of revenues, of jizya, jizya used for the funding of the global jihad, which continues apace.
From an AP release, appearing in many newspapers today:
"Saudi Arabia's oil minister Sunday will address reports that the world's largest oil-producing country is set to raise production by about 500,000 barrels per day, his advisor said.
The increase would bring Saudi Arabia's oil production to 10 million barrels a day, the country's highest ever....
...The Saudis are concerned that sustained high oil prices will eventually slacken the world's appetite for oil, affecting them in the long run."
Hugh is right. While we do need to develop our own oil reserves and increase supply in the short term, we also need to tax this oil so as to fund research to allow us to abandon it entirely, if possible. Let the malevolent Saudis and their cohorts return to the seventh century, irrelevant and impotent. Let them go the way of Ozymandias.
What peak oil says is that the world has hit a supply ceiling and that you are not going to extract more oil than 87 billion barrels a year and however you try drilling on the continental shelf or wherever, and however much you bring on line, it is not going to go over 87 billion barrels. This is because other source of supply will be drying up at the same rate as you are bring new resources on stream. A few oil men have already realized this, Boone T Pickens what ever he is called is now investing massively in windmill, not jousting at them.
The only solution will be alternative sources of energy, and energy saving Take your choice there are plenty out there. Oil as a source of energy is Dieing and all the King's horses and all the King's men wont put it together again. Congress needs to get real, not that it will for a couple of years, the exorbitant profits of the oil companies will see the trough that Congress feed at will be brimming over.
America could have solved the problem 30 years ago and you reacted rapidly to the crisis but memories are short and you were soon back to your profligate ways, when prices fell. America could have reacted like Denmark and put an energy plan into action for diversification of your energy sources and stuck at it like the Danes. The Danes are energy independent, have you ever wondered why the Danes weathered the Motoon Crisis, because the Arabs had no leverage. 5,000,000 Danes raised a middle finger and the Muslims couldn't do anything except rant and rage, while the rest of the western world cowered.
If any of you want a place to go too that will survive when production starts to fall from 87 Billion barrels and prices really start to go through the roof try Samsoe a Danish island. It is totally energy independent apart from some petrol to run some of the transport, not that it will make much difference for the Island, as it is small enough to push bike anywhere. The farmers grow rape seed to fuel there tractors wood chips are used in co-generation plants, to supply electricity and heat to the villages, arrays of Photo voltaic cells, subsidies to the residents to insulate there houses, and of cause wind mills.
The Danes have done this in a little over 30 years because they had an energy plan. The oil shock for Denmark in the 70s was a real shock and they swore that it would never happen again.
Denmark and I hope any Danish readers of this Blogg will forgive me when I say that Denmark is nothing more than the tops of Norwegian mountains brought down in last ice age. The land surprisingly is not very very fertile and they have no raw materials so to speak of. The only thing they had in there favor was a stiff breeze, a purpose, and a lot of ingenuity.
America could have been more like this, but you chose a different tack. Hopefully when Congress finally gets it's head out of it anal Orifice, instead of flailing about as described in this article, you will be able to get moving, and like the Danes raise a large middle finger in the direction of Mecca.
What ever happens the transition is going to be expensive a very painful, far more expensive than it needed to be because you didn't have a plan. Most Americans thought they had a plan when the D.O.E. ( Dept. of Energy) was founded after the 70s oil crisis, sorry to disillusion you, it was formed to funnel subsidies too the entrenched energy cartel.
The only planning the Americans seem to have done for this crisis is by FEMA they have built 2,500,000 places in internment camps mostly in Alaska, I wonder why?
I hope that any American reading this will not view this as Anti-American, it is certainly not meant that way, as a Brit and a student of history I am very much PRO-American. I know that when a world power stumbles and falls, the result is usually chaos with the vultures quickly descending on the corpse. The way you took over the baton from us in 1945 or to be more correct 1947, and however much it offends my pride was done reasonably painlessly and saved the world from a lot of pain.
Going cap in hand or threatening the Saudis with a law suit is nothing but bluster, and the Saudi's know it. The have the whip hand and they know it, and until America weans itself off imported oil the price of which is controlled by Opec they will have there hands on your economic testicles and you will jump when they squeeze. So please America get a move on for all our sakes, and don't rely on the market, relying on the market, is what has got you into this bloody mess in the first place. When American oil peaked in the 70s you relied on cheap imports instead of bitting the bullet, instead of raising taxes on imported oil and finding a local substitute form of energy, remember energy independence gives you political independence, even though it might cost you more. Would it really have mattered much if you had paid an extra 50 cent per gallon at the pumps in the 70s and 80s to subsidies the coal industry to produce oil from coal or oil shale to make up the shortfall between demand and your diminishing oil production. The money would have been spent locally encouraging American industry instead of being exported to support the whoring of some Saudi prince and the building of mosques.
America might have done this if some smart ass in the Government in the 70s had not come up with a cunning plan. I don't know if many Americans know this, or even realize this but after 1971 when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard America was technically bankrupt, you couldn't pay for you imports by printing dollars as you could when the dollar was backed by gold. The oil crisis made this worse when even more unback dollars found there way into the Saudi's coffers. A very sweet deal was arranged between America and the Saudis in the mid 70s. The Americans promised to keep the regime in place in fact the house of Saud on condition that the house of Saud ONLY PRICED THERE OIL IN DOLLARS and the money they received was used to purchase US Government bonds the interest was then supposedly to be used for the modernization of Saudi Arabia. The Dollar was then backed by oil instead of gold and the Americans could continue on there way printing money to pay for there imports, knowing full well that it was back by oil. The problem is that a dollar back by Gold or oil still looks the same, in fact a dollar backed by tobacco which it was for a certain period in American history looks the same, but the consequences can be radically different. As American oil imports rose rapidly as its own reserves diminished and demand increased the servicing of these bonds caused the Americans a certain amount of consternation, to keep the cost down the American economy had to grow, as the dollar was back by oil, print more money was the easy way out. Printing more money and easing credit helped the economy to expand. This also meant that America had to import even more oil and a vicious circle ensued. Unfortunately this sort of growth is exponential, and the American economy has to run even faster to just stay in the same place. To stay in the same place means even more credit to expand the economy. I don't live in America and have never been there but I can imagine that the American people have been bombarded over the last decade with more and more easy credit card deals and and I don't know what.
America has in fact been running a bubble economy for the last ten years just to keep running faster just to pay there debts. If you don't believe me the Dot com bubble and now the collapse of the housing bubble. Sub prime says it all, I gather that 100% mortgages where the norm, mortgages were offered to people who could not pay if the economy took a down turn. The American economy has hit the wall to keep these people in work even more credit has to be generated and as this was the bottom of the barrel no more credit could be generated. The result is that the housing market is collapsing and it is having reverberation over the whole world. Northern Rock in England had to be bailed out by the Government and the price of summer houses in Denmark has also taken a dip.
Under normal circumstances a couple of year for the economy to adjust would have been in order, unfortunately this has come at a time of world peak oil which will mean that oil prices stay high which make its difficult to expand the economy. Unfortunately America's problems are even worse, the Fed can't raise interest rates because if they did it would mean the cost of servicing their foreign debt would cost much more and would stifle what credit could be generated to maintain the American economy to generate the money to pay the debt. This not only means that the Dollar falls in relation to other currencies, because they can't compete on interest rates to attract foreign currency. This also means that the price of oil rises to compensate for the fall in the dollar. This means that America has to pay relatively more for their oil in relation to the rest of the world, because being priced in dollars the other country currencies have risen and it costs less to buy dollars to pay for the oil.
Add to this the fact that the Americans can't withdraw from the middle east as the Saudis might construe this as the Americans abandoning them and they could therefore break their contract and price there oil in Euros and the Dollar having no more backing would go into free fall. The consequences of which I leave the readers to imagine.
In the meantime on Samsoe the Danes are oiling their bicycles and thinking how much they will save in tax now that the car is off the road. While congress runs around in ever diminishing circles torn between accepting the bribes from the ever richer oil companies and biting the bullet and doing what they should have done 30 years ago.
Holger,
Thanks. Very enlightening!
Where in this Merry-Go-Round lunacy of the US Congress can I find the "EMERGENCY STOP" button?
Anyone?
Thanks Holger...
What this means to the average American worker (and others as well), is that you get to work longer, and harder, for less...That's if you get to work at all...
The Chinese are right about us being insane and self-destructive and of course the Saudi's have laughed at us for many years.
This oil is NOT worth more than $70.00 a barrel!
The doubling of the price in one year is mostly speculators and huge mutual fund managers pouring billions into oil stock.
Think Congress cares? Only if we shut down this country and storm congress with lynch ropes demanding they reign in this unregulated speculation.