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Could it be former Whitehouse spokesmodel Scotty McMessage McClellan is growing a conscience? Have a gander:

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were “not involved” in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

“There was one problem. It was not true,” McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. “I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president’s chief of staff and the president himself.”

Illegal immigration is a real problem in this nation and no matter how much all of the candidates try to bob and weave away from it, it is still the 400 pound gorilla in your part of America. There are those out there that believe we should buy the Great Wall of China and move it piece by piece to the border with Mexico. There are also those amongst us that believe that the only crime many of these illegal immigrants have committed was not coming here legally. Once here they melt into society and fade in to being just another part of America. Huge crime there.

With neither political party willing to admit that our nations immigration policy is busted they are backing off of the topic because it is the easiest route for their campaign. That sounds similar to what the latest votes on immigration reform were in the house recently. Their changes in position is not about illegal immigrants or the broken policies of the past twenty plus years, it’s about votes. Voters have an opinion and neither side has the guts to stand firmly when it comes to fixing our immigration problem.

With our nation having an illegal immigration problem the candidates are backing up to the safe zone that does not offend illegal immigrants or those that might think the current laws are a joke. Does that not in fact point out that this issue, according to the pull back by the candidates, really is not important to legal immigrants and citizens born in the good old USA?

Candidates Walk a Tightrope on Immigration By MICHAEL LUO
Published: November 18, 2007

THE Republican presidential candidates talk about illegal immigration as if they were in an arms race on toughness. The Democratic candidates have begun to tread more warily on the issue, as their debate last week in Las Vegas showed, but they still favor the language of accommodation over alarm.

Each approach, political strategists and officials warn, could have costs next November. Pollsters on both sides agree there is widespread anxiety, even anger, about the impact of illegal immigration. But an increasingly influential Hispanic electorate could be turned off by a hard line from the party they turned to in increasing numbers in the last two presidential elections.

Much will depend, strategists say, on how the candidates balance their statements.  “A Republican who only talks border control or a Democrat who only talks about benefits and services for illegal immigrants are going to find themselves in a lot of trouble next fall,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist who worked on Senator John McCain’s presidential bid in 2000.

Looking at the Republicans at this point, it is often hard to find much difference among most of the leading contenders. They sound just as tough as the candidate who has been the angriest on immigration, Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, whose shoestring campaign recently began to run a television commercial in Iowa declaring that Islamic terrorists roam free in the United States because of an unsecured border. - New York Times

Maybe we should just all face the facts, while Mitt is down in Miami insulting legal immigrants in their native tongue, and Hillary is off car pooling with her latest potential voter base, the rest of us will be wondering where the 200,000 plus buses are to deport the current illegal’s. Somebody check the bus schedule but I don’t see it on the listing I have.

While many folks would be tempted to vote for the first person to come up with a plan to have our military (What’s left of it anyway) take full possession of Laidlaw, Greyhound, City of New York, Chicago, Houston, LA, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, Boston Transit systems, and Durham bus companies to expedite the exit strategy for all illegal immigrants that is not the answer. We need a mad man’s plan to fix illegal immigration once and for all and I have just the plan…

While Rudi and John McCain are ready to build the next wall of China on our southern border I propose seizing Home Depot, Lowes and Ace Hardware to get the job done, I might want to add Toy’s R Us, Best Buy and Circuit City for all the high tech electronics needed to maintain the second greatest wall for surveillance and entertainment purposes. We could sell the rights to the news networks or comedy shows. I’m guessing we will need about one million plus people to just watch the southern border based on three shifts round the clock with seventy or so holidays a year and six weeks vacation time each. We are going to need a payroll system to pay them all.

Bank of America should be seized by our government because they have that pesky America thing in their name. They should be honored that my plan chooses to invade them to save America. We will have to change all the signs out front to Border Under Revolutionary Patrol Institution for No Gringo’s or BURPING for short. Most of their customers are used to that happening every six or seven weeks anyway so the transition should be smooth. It should not take more than six or seven divisions to make them do the job for us. Losses to our six division of IRS workers will be high but that is the risk we will just have to take to save America from the plague of illegal immigrants. Then we seize all of the banks along the southern border and turn all of the branches into military outposts with gun barrels facing every direction. We won’t make the same mistake the Germans or French or whoever the hell it was with the marginal line… This is a two-fur because bank robberies will be drastically reduced at all BURPING branches.

We will need to feed these folks protecting our border so everyone in California will need to either get out or be enlisted in the Workers Environmental Nutritional Defense of Your Safety, yup WENDYS for short. We are going to need to level Los Angeles and San Francisco and Sacramento and most of the state to grow buns and pickles and ketchup trees. We may need to save Orange County because we hear that Sesame Seeds roam wild there and only the good ranchers of the area know how to round them up to milk them. Then again, we need someone to administer all the workers at WENDYS too.

We can not overlook healthcare for all of these border guarding protectors of America. For that we move Walter Reed to the border as an example of what kind of care you will get if you dare to cross our borders or guard it. What is good enough for our troops is good enough for the ones lucky enough to make it through the entire state of Texas that will be land mined. This may pose a problem for commuters in many of the larger cities but our border is more important. My apologies to the memory of Lady Bird Johnson and all her flowers but I think they actually were drawing the immigrants to our border.

I’m having a problem with Florida, should we just sink it and make all of the Snow Birds move back to where they came from or just sell the damn state to South America. That might offset some of the costs of a real system or plan that might actually rebuild Louisiana. I here they need some kind of a drainage system or levee or something down there but that is just a rumor.

I’ve got work to do on this plan. If my plan to invade all of them bus companies fail I have to have a counter plan and Kansas is just the right shape for a mega prison for anyone daring to object to my plan to solve the illegal immigration problem. Any Republican candidate for President can feel free to steal my notes here.

Holy crapola, while I have a plan to save the southern border from being over run, the northern border is at risk. I need to get Rush and Billy O on the phone. Together we can save America from future Americans!

OR

We could fix the immigration laws and enforce them! The current law(s) do not work, they are not enforced and it is a joke. Is amnesty the way to go? Ronald Reagan thought so! Is a plan that makes the unknown resident known workable? Yes, it is! How that actually happens is in the fine print that is scary to all of the candidates in fear of pissing off whom? Hispanics? What about the Irish, Polish, Armenians, English, French, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Germans, Lithuanians, Swedes, Canadians, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Africans, and this list goes on for all nations of the world, are we not all Americans too?

Stop blaming the majority of illegal immigrants for your lot in life’s problems because the politicians tell you that they are to blame. It’s so easy to sling mud and eventually it sticks if you believe the sound bite. There is a big difference in telling you who to blame and the people that are entrusted with your vote that are supposed to protect you as an American that will still do nothing to solve the issue of illegal immigration.

Show me a candidate that tells you the truth that our nation needs a constant flow of immigrants both legal and illegal and that is the candidate that knows that America will constantly need a source of cheap labor with a goal that their children will have a better life than themselves. Parent’s sacrifice for their children. Funny thing is, my parents wanted that for me and they were born in America.

This is the land of opportunity after all. We all came from somewhere and that was the goal of our forefathers. My full apology to native American Indians of course. That is another post for another day though…

Papamoka

Originally posted at Papamoka Straight Talk…

Greed is a very strong emotion. People want money, because they equate money with security. If you don’t feel safe, then you can use your money to buy protection. If you have enough money to buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood, then you will have a strong police force to protect you. How do I know? All of the people in this nice neighborhood pay high taxes to have the strong police force to protect their assets. Money is security.

Why can’t we spend our tax dollars to have a nice city, instead of a nice neighborhood? Obviously we don’t have enough money to protect the entire city, that is why we choose to protect the wealthy areas of town and let the rest of the city fend for itself. At least that’s the philosophy in most of the country.

For more than forty years the Republicans have told you that they wanted smaller government. They told you that they wanted you to keep your money and spend it as you please. They told you that free markets and free enterprise would solve all of our problems. This language translates into: If you are wealthy and live in a wealthy neighborhood, then you should spend your money on your neighborhood. You should build the best schools, have the best parks, control crime with the majority of police force, and encourage only the wealthiest of citizens to live in your neighborhood. High home prices yield high taxes and discourage the “dregs” of society from living in your town. Wealthy communities draw the wealthy and powerful to live there and result in a disproportionate amount of power in the higher ranks of state and federal government. Forcing you to spend money on surrounding poor neighborhoods only encourages those who don’t have capital to be lazy and stay in their cesspool neighborhoods. And, for forty years those who were well off believed this line of thinking.

To the benefit of the Republican Party this line of thinking trickled down to the middle class in America. The middle class heard the selected bits from this reasoning. They heard lower taxes. They didn’t realize that lower federal and state taxes should be offset by higher local taxes in order to provide services that most people enjoy, like nice schools, parks and police. No, they believed that lower taxes meant more money in their own pocket to buy a new video game or a deep fried cheese sandwich. The middle class don’t have a ton of money, so tax cuts sound like a great idea in the times of inflation when everything seems to be just out of reach. And, when Republicans cut taxes then the federal funding in poorer parts of the country began to dry up. The net effect was to direct more money into wealthy neighborhoods and away from poor and middle class neighborhoods.

In the current conservative Republican mind the only reason for federal taxes is to fund national security. There was a time in our country when conservatives were motivated to build infrastructure in our country. That infrastructure helped business accomplished the difficult task of getting products to customers. It was in the government’s interest to aid airlines, railroads and trucking companies to smooth out all the wrinkles. Today, many believe that the infrastructure is built and it will last forever. Or, if it doesn’t then people can figure out how to maintain these things without the coordination of the government. If the companies that use this infrastructure need it maintained, then they will find a way to pay for it. FedEx and UPS should be out there fixing the airports, filling the potholes and dredging the channels. After all, what are we paying these guys for?

Instead our tax dollars are meant to be spent on our national security. For example, we should be sending our government employees around the Middle East fixing their problems. After all, that is what we are doing in Iraq. After we so quickly destroyed Iraq in creative ways like shorting out all of their electrical generation plants, blowing up bridges and dropping bombs on restaurants we are now trying to fix all of those problems. Our government is using your tax dollars to repair the infrastructure in Iraq. They can’t spend your hard earned money fixing our schools, but the supporters of the war in Iraq complain that the media doesn’t spend enough time glorifying the schools that your tax dollars built in Iraq. Isn’t their something ironic about this picture?

Our government knows that the burning of fossil fuels is changing our environment. They know that the old dirty power plants that are providing us with power could be made cleaner and more efficient with a little government help. But, we are spending our tax dollars rebuilding the power plants in Iraq instead.
In fact, we are spending billions of dollars on our effort in Iraq, but the president vetoes bills of a few million dollars and claims that he does this because of expense. Are we not the richest nation in the world? Well, actually I think Monaco is, but we are probably ranked higher than Iraq. Shouldn’t we be spending our money in our own country before we go around the world “nation building?” Even George W Bush said this in the collection of lies that he spouted while he was campaigning to be our president in 2000. But, George W Bush never was a man of his word. He has always said as little as possible to get elected and then remain vague on the actions that he really meant to take.

As this election cycle approaches we need to keep these lessons in mind. Candidates from which ever party will tell you the minimum information necessary to win your vote. No one will vote for the candidate who will tell us the whole truth. It is just too painful to realize that so many of our previous candidates lied to us and stole our money to pay for the previous generation. Ronald Reagan borrowed money to pay for his tax cuts. We are paying interest on some of those loans today. George W Bush borrowed more money to pay for his expansion of government. Arnold Schwarzenagger borrowed money to pay for the money that Enron stole from California. What do all of these leaders have in common? They are all Republicans that told us that they were going to cut our taxes. They may have cut taxes for the current generation, but they mortgaged those tax cuts on our children. And, who is winning in this capitalist business transaction? Why, that would be the Chinese government that bought a large portion of those government bonds. The Chinese government is now collecting interest on those bonds. In the long run we are paying the Chinese a government handout, when we have people in our country that really need a helping hand.

Some of our children don’t get proper health care, because their parents can’t afford the regular check ups, or the health insurance. When a child gets sick, these parents don’t have the money to take their kids to the doctor. Only when the illness becomes so extreme that an emergency room visit is the only thing that will save their life does a parent take their child for help. And, since they can’t afford the ER expense the visit is paid for with our tax dollars. Doesn’t it make a bit more sense to pay the lower cost of preventative care instead of waiting for a child to get so ill that they need the ER in order to survive? But, this is how we currently spend your tax dollars.

If you look at how your money is being spent today, I believe that most of us would agree that we are wasting a lot of money. And, the situation got this way by politicians pandering to the public and not telling us the whole truth. But, since no politician who told the whole truth could ever be elected we are left with the only possible option. That is, we must learn the truth despite what the politicians tell us. And the only way to learn the truth this way is to be skeptical, cynical and assume the worst about every politician on both sides of the aisle. Then the politicians will be forced to tell you more and more until the truth finally wins out. Doubt demands clarity. Skeptics are not easily fooled, because they expect to be fooled. Cynics are the toughest vote to win, but that only means that truth will win out.

On the other hand, if we continue to be the society that believes everything they hear, read or see without questioning, then we will meet the same downfall of every other “great” democracy. Those hungry for power will tell the people what they want to hear and do what ever they please without a single major challenge. And, democracy will fall to tyranny again.

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Don’t forget what Stephen Colbert said, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Donald Rumsfeld is the cockroach of the Bush administration. Despite the fact that even hardcore righties were calling for his head by the time he left, he keeps popping up because some people still hang on his every word.

You can identify them by the Kool Aid stains around their mouths.

The Claremont Institute apparently has a giant-size glass of the stuff. They gave him their 2007 statesmanship award at a dinner honoring Winston Churchill (and hosted by Pat Sajak - those statesmen are party animals aren’t they?). I can see where they might confuse the two men. Rummy is Winston’s identical twin, except for the lack of a bowler hat, big stogie, and a pocket watch stretching across an ample belly. Oh yeah, and Rummy is so brainless he wouldn’t know statesmanship if it reached up and bit him on his flinty, angular, ass.

Rummy used the opportunity to hold forth on how he’s right and the other 6.5 billion people on the planet are wrong. According to him, the War of Error is like the Cold War, not the month-long jaunt in the quiet Mesopotamian countryside he originally promised. In some respects, he’s right. At the rate it’s going, it’ll last longer than the Cold War, never really end, and have just as hazy and impermanent effect on world peace. But it’s not like the Cold War in it’s most important respect - it’s a Hot War. Hot like blowing things up, shooting people, and torturing your enemies kind of hot. Hot in being far more likely to explode into a bigger mess than two superpowers engaging in a mutually agreeable standoff ever was.

But you can’t say he doesn’t learn from his mistakes. Once he was the champion of a “nuke ‘em till they glow” statecraft that emphasized disdain for “old Europe” and the UN and support for good old American Go-It-Aloneism. Today? Well today, he’s calling for old Europe (NATO) to come bail our Coalition of the Inept out the global crapper. “A global alliance of free and responsible nations could better focus collective action against the growing threats to the nation-state system,” he now says.

Rummy was that a known known, an unknown known, a known unknown, or a cow? I can never keep it straight.

These days, Rummy’s all about bringing together journalists and political leaders from the Third World, Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and America. He wants to fund fellowships in foreign policy and seek his rightful place in history. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the crazy old coot so odious that George “I Never Met a Man I Couldn’t Stomach” Bush fired him. He wants to go down in history as something far more important in his mind - the most annoying cockroach ever.

I think he has a lock on it.

Higher fuel costs are increasing the cost of food. The push towards corn-based biofuels has increased the cost of food too. And a stagnant economy has tightened the budgets of Americans everywhere. Economic numbers put forth by the government never account for food and fuel costs when determining the “state of the economy,” allowing them to pretend that financial times are fine for most folks, but the soaring fuel and food costs are really starting to hurt average Americans, especially single-parent families and those at the lower rungs of the payscale. As families are forced between paying the bills and feeding themselves, more and more are turning to the nation’s food pantries for help. Sadly, many of them may find that those cupboards are bare too.

Across the country, food pantries are running out of stock. Donations are dwindling, in part because families can’t afford to donate as much or as often, but also because manufacturers have focused on better, cost-cutting production methods, leaving less overstock for donations. And the third factor at play is the federal government, whose practice of buying food from farmers (read subsidies here) to stabilize prices has decreased over the last few years as farm prices have stayed stable. Less government buying means less goverment donations. USDA donations to food pantries has declined 70% over the last three years.

Just as the lack of water in the southwest is a harbinger of tough times ahead, so too is the decrease in available food for the needy at a time when the number of needy is on the rise. In years past, my family has always participated in food drives from the post office. We’ve donated money to local food banks around the holidays. We’ve tried to do our small part. This year though, we’re going to have to cut back on our giving. We’ll still be giving, but not as much and not as often. We’re not going hungry, but we need to tighten our belts like everyone else. And I suspect that this scenario is being repeated in millions of homes across the country. People who used to give a lot are cutting back. People who used to give a little aren’t giving at all. People who couldn’t afford to give before may now be the people standing in line.

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, remember to actually be thankful if you have enough to eat. Fact is, most American families are just one major medical problem away from standing in line at the food pantry. Fact is that many American families are now cutting food budgets to pay for gas so they can get to and from work, and the grocery store. As fuel and food prices continue to increase, many more may join the line.

And yet in Bizarroland, aka Bush’s America, the president today praised the economy as he pardoned two turkeys in the Rose garden. Here are a few of his comments:

“This Thanksgiving, we are grateful for a harvest big enough to feed us all — and millions more.”

“We’re grateful for working Americans who have given us the longest period of uninterrupted job creation on record and a prosperity that lifts our citizens. “

These comments, sprinkled into a speech about pardoning turkeys, show America just how out of touch their president really is. Bush may have spared the lives of two turkeys today, but he obviously doesn’t have a clue about the lives of actual people, and I don’t think he really cares.

(cross posted at Common Sense)

Local laws requiring residents to keep and bear arms!

Greenleaf is following in the footsteps of Kennesaw, Ga., which in 1982 passed a mandatory gun ownership law in response to a handgun ban passed in Morton Grove, Ill. Kennesaw’s crime dropped sharply, while Morton Grove’s did not.

“Basically, that’s a potential death sentence, and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?”

-senior diplomat Jack Croddy, on the State Department decision to force Foreign Service officers to take assignments in Iraq or risk losing their jobs

Uh, hello…how can anyone in this administration actually say things like this and not catch the irony? Fortunately for Mr. Croddy, who I can only presume did NOT volunteer for duty in Iraq, enough of his co-workers did and the threat of forced foreign service has diminished for now. Too bad that our troops don’t have the same choice on whether or not to go die in Bush’s hellhole.

Rightwing columnist Cal Thomas apparently has a TV set with a mind of its own. He alludes to it in this column.

I’m not up on all the latest electronic gizmos, but it seems Thomas’ television turns itself on and off at will, selects the channel and controls the volume. With every TV I’ve ever seen, you have to manually push a button to turn the TV on, and then push other buttons to select the channel. Where have I been?

Having this kind of TV set might be sort of fun for awhile, but it would get old really fast. With my luck, it would probably turn itself on at 3 a.m., tune in to some crazed televangelist and crank the volume up to 200 decibels.

In Thomas’ column he’s talking about the lame quality of most TV programming and says the writers’ strike is a chance for people to turn off the TV and get a life. No argument there. The only must-see program for me is The Shield during its annual 3-month season. This coming season is supposed to be its last, and then I’ll be free.

Other than that I sometimes watch Law & Order SVU, the Daily Show, Seinfeld or Frasier reruns or a movie. But none of them are musts. And most of the time, to paraphrase Springsteen — 600 channels and there’s nothing on.

Like most ultraconservatives, Cal Thomas is appalled at the “bad language” and “F-bombs” on most TV shows, and the fact that most news anchors look like porn stars. (Yup, he really said that.)

Here’s where he talks about his magic TV set:

“Television was once viewed as a welcome guest in the home. Programmers were to behave as any guest, not soiling the carpet or breaking furniture, controlling their children and demonstrating sensibilities that would not offend their hosts. No more. Today’s television programs behave like uninvited guests who stay too long, eat all the food, drink too much and throw up on the new rug.”

I’m sure glad I have one of those old-fashioned TV sets. I get to select the channel myself, and if I can’t find anything I like I can just turn it off. That pooor Cal Thomas. I wouldn’t want one of those infernal devices in my house.

Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” has found.

Okay, so sometimes something that looks scientifically dependable can later be found to be less so. I can understand that but when such science is used to convict defendants, those defendants so convicted must be allowed to challenge their conviction. Nobody likes to see bad guys set free. They’re unlikely to just decide to just be good after being set free. On the other hand, justice demands that we not incarcerate people for crimes which they didn’t commit, no matter how good the intentions of prosecutors and government investigators. When I read things like these article, I get mightily angry. The time available for many people who were convicted with the help of this evidence to challenge their conviction has passed already and time is rapidly slipping by for others. I’m pissed but what to do?

Ideas?

UPDATE: Two umbrella groups for criminal defense lawyers, working with a nation-wide FBI investigation, will independently review cases where defendants had been convicted using this sort of evidence to pick out those cases where they believe injustice might have been done. It’s not a cure-all, judges must still grant at least an appeal on all of those cases, whether the time for filing for an appeal had passed or not but it’s a start.

There is not one person that knows the oil business better than the folks in Saudi Arabia when it comes to supply and demand on the world oil market. Even Saudi Arabia is wondering how the world of oil market speculation has the price of a barrel of oil tempting at the hundred dollar mark. With that thought in mind the nation of Saudi Arabia is exploring for new oil fields with all of the new technology available to ramp up production thus saying to oil market speculators in the market, Screw YOU!

Wall Street can play the game and pocket the cash but I’m thinking that the producers of oil in the world are looking at the bigger picture and alternative energy sources are more than attractive with oil at one hundred dollars a barrel. That is and will be a direct effect to the bottom line of all oil producing exporting countries, aka OPEC. Oil has only been the main source of heating and vehicle power because it was cheap and affordable to the masses. That is no longer the case.

Then again, I have to give the nation of Saudi Arabia credit for bumping up the supply to offset the non stop rumor mills on Wall Street that speculate that the oil supply to the world is limited thus driving the price up into Never Never land. Peter Pan and Tinker Bell have nothing to worry about as long as Wall Street believes in Fairies and an oil market with a supply problem. Over at the Washington Post they have this amazing post on this very subject…

Saudi Arabia Works the Vast Desert To Pump Out More High-Quality OilBy Steven MufsonWashington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 17, 2007; Page D01
SHAYBAH, Saudi Arabia — For a decade, Hussain al-Obaid has been working in the soft red dunes that stretch across the vast desert known as Rub al-Khali, or the Empty Quarter. In summer, temperatures climb as high as 130 degrees and sandstorm winds gust up to 80 mph, though on a mild fall evening the stars shine and the air is mild.A graduate of the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa, Obaid is the engineering superintendent of a project that pumps half a million barrels of crude oil a day from beneath the sand and delivers it through a 400-mile pipeline. The oil is some of the world’s purest, highest-quality crude, easily refined into gasoline.

To complete the project, construction crews built a road across the desert and moved 100 million cubic feet of sand to make way for an airplane runway.

Next year, Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, plans to boost production by 250,000 barrels a day, one step in an effort to expand the kingdom’s oil-production capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day from the 11.3 million barrels. The new production is part of a strategy that could ease market tension and is designed to preserve Saudi Arabia’s ability to produce 1.5 million to 2 million barrels a day more than its actual output in the face of rising world oil demand, said a senior Saudi Oil Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Tell me of any other country that’s made commitments this broad on its own,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the deputy minister of petroleum and natural resources, said during preparations for this weekend’s summit of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. “We are the only country with a policy of maintaining excess capacity.”

Snip-sa-doozey

… it costs Saudi Arabia about $2 to produce a barrel of oil. Developing new fields is also cheap, he said, running about a quarter or less of exploration and development costs elsewhere. - Washington Post

Unless the Washington Post is making things up… Did that say $2 cost to produce a barrel of oil? Where else in the world can you get a cost to market price mark up like that? This sort of thing only happens when the market is let loose to run wild and around the corner is the market crash. That is where the end of the line is because the bottom of this feeding frenzy is the consumer all around the world and when they can no longer afford the product they will not buy it.

Thus is the major investment in renewable energy like wind power, solar power and of course Ethanol or bio fuels. That is why Saudi Arabia is ramping up production. It is in fact to the better interest of the Kingdom for the price of their product to be affordable. Where President Bush sees a free market the Saudi’s see a market out of control that will eventually threaten the bottom line of their nation.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the oil market is raping the market. What it takes to offset the overblown cost of oil is chemists and creative minds to invent alternatives to oil that will make that profit driven market as much as yesterdays news as whale oil is for lighting your home at night. That process has already begun.

Papamoka

Originally posted on Papamoka Straight Talk