Obama Drills Deep.

The Obama Administration Took a $10 Billion Dive into Ultra-Deep Ocean Drilling.

Attempting to deflect blame for their feeble response to the Gulf oil disaster, the administration keeps repeating “Bee-Pee, Bee-Pee” so relentlessly that they can’t get through a paragraph without sounding like the frantically peddling Roadrunner of cartoon fame.

While most of the press has slowly gotten around to criticizing the pathetic containment and cleanup aspect of this gusher, no one seems interested in fact that the Obama administration has a multi-billion dollar investment in deep ocean drilling.  Actually, in ultra-deep ocean drilling.

Last August, after a warm personal visit with Brazilian President Lula de Silva, President Obama ordered the US government-controlled Export-Import Bank to extend a $10 billion loan to oil giant Petrobras for the purpose of funding deep water drilling off the coast of Brasil.  While  BP’s big gusher was drilled an astonishing 5,000 feet under water, the US-funded offshore Brazilian field lies under 7,000 to 9,000 feet of water.

So while restricting US deep drilling, shallow-drilling, and terrestrial drilling, Obama put the US taxpayers on the hook to guarantee a $10 billion loan for ultra-deep drilling by Petrobras, which already controls 80% of the world’s deep-water drilling rigs.

And who is Petrobras? The socialist-led government of Brazil owns 50.1% of Petrobras’ voting stock, while the rest is owned by private investors. The biggest of these investors is Democrat sugar-daddy George Soros, who showers all manner of left-wing causes with what some might consider “protection money.”  Petrobras is Soro’s largest single investment, estimated to be somewhere around $811 million.  His other large investments include Hess Petroleum, other oil and mining interests, and an active position in energy hedge funds.

More recently, Soros sold 22 million shares of Petrobras common stock and purchased preferred stock, which has a dividend premium set at 10% per year. This was accomplished just days before President Lula announced the government was undertaking a larger nationalization and sent common shares reeling, with common stock investors losing $7 billion in a single day.

Soros’ oil investments are clustered around imported oil, and consequently, he has a massive interest in restricting US domestic production.  And he funds the anti-drilling lobby in the US generously, all without the slightest curiosity from the astonishingly naïve American press corps.

Sources:

http://www.oilonline.com/News/NewsArticles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/21509/US-government-to-loan-Petrobras-10-billion.aspx

http://preview.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive_en10&sid=aFHPjfeUvtl8

http://www.geoexpro.com/brazil/realityhits/

http://preview.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive_en10&sid=aV._LdPUcaNU

http://preview.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive_en10&sid=a.V5sgGzdsQY

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html

Update: Petrobras announced Friday that they will expand deep drilling to the Black Sea off Turkey in 7,000 feet of water.

Jesus and Me.

Without Jesus, I’d definitely be on the fast track to Blazes.

I’m an incurable skeptic, and only managed to hang on to my childhood faith because God has put so very many of his astonishing and inexplicable saints right in front of me.  There’s so much I don’t understand and can’t explain, but if I take Jesus out of the proposed equations of life, they all collapse.

First, the not so weird stuff.

First, the not such weird stuff:

Having lived in Michigan, New Jersey, Boston and Chicago, I’m now living the semi-retirees’ dream in full panoramic view of the Colorado Rockies.  My original wife hasn’t left me yet, and my 4 kids have so far produced 6 grandkids.  They all have dogs, which is why I have none.

There is a lot of detritus is included about my obscure but strange life, The oddities are all filed under “Weird Stuff About Phil.”.  How I completed my Army service without once picking up a weapon, escaped from prison over 100 times, and married a Moroccan princess.

Politics (right-of-center), International Affairs (an internationalist, but not a globalist,) and Faith (without Jesus, I’m for sure going to hell) are where most of the serious stuff lies.  I also love travel, baseball, and college  football.  And my wife.

The oddities are all filed under “Wierd Stuff About Phil.”

The basic mostly boring data:

Born in Holland Michigan, attended Holland High School, graduated from Hope College, lived a year in the Newark African-American “ghetto,” survived the 3rd Medical Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, worked as a medic for Walpole State (a prison, definitely not a university!), a few other companies, got married to the most honest person I ever met, did a year at Moody Bible Institute, home-schooled 2 of my kids, retired from FedEx (25 years) , spent 4 years driving big rigs in Chicago (you know those torn-up low-clearance  bridges…?..), retired to Colorado, taught advanced math and reading to 5th-graders (yes, as a matter of fact I am smarter than….), and love hiking in the high country as long as I can get in a real bed at night.  My favorite quote on that subject is from Bob Wentz:

“I have never slept in a sleeping bag. ….. Spent many a night in one, but never slept in one.”

The Tea Parties and Washington’s Alien-Nation.

There is the country called the United States….and then there is another country called “Washington, DC.”

DC is a nation with a different culture, economy, ethics and even language from the rest of the United States.   And that’s what the Tea Parties are really all about.

The ruling class does not get it.   And that’s why November is shaping up to be a nasty appointment with reality for those living so comfortably on “Government Island.”

While the country remains mired in economic stress,  a USA today study found that the number of government employees making over $100,000 a year increased from 14% to 19% in an 18-month period(  http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100304/BENEFITS01/3040301/1001 ).

The number of  employees in that 100G-plus category jumped by a whopping 35% in a period of severe difficulty for the taxpayers. The average federal employee earns about $7,000 more than his counterpart in the private sector. And let’s not even begin to talk about the disparity in benefits.  In the end, it is the private sector that pays all the bills for the government.

Yet there is little comment on this gross inequity from the In-the-Bubble press.  The Congress, with support from the President, authorized a 2% Cost-of-Living increase for 2010 at a time when those picking up the tab are experiencing a contraction in personal income. The obvious but unasked question is: “How can there be a cost-of-living increase when there is no increase in the cost of living”? These employees already are getting generous step and grade increases (an increasing rarity in the private sector), and are blessed with job-for-life security, and yet the rest of the country is required to cover this nonesense through their taxes and their childrens’ debt burden.  The result is an increasing Us-versus-Them polarity that we see expressed in the Tea Parties.

Instead of insightful analysis, the Washington World talking heads, in open display of their crude ignorance, exchange befuddled commentary about rumors of racism they can’t quite seem to actually find, or prattle on about undercurrents of violence which were somehow invisible when George Bush and Dick Cheney, depicted with blood dripping from their canines and incisors, regularly were denounced as “Nazis” and lynched in effigy on 1,000 campuses.

Increasingly, there are two classes, two nations, in the United States:  The Ruled Class and the Ruling Class.  And the ruled are getting mighty restless.  This last month I attended my precinct and county caucuses.  People are still  angry, but not so vocal as a year ago.  The noise has been replaced by steely determination.   And November 2nd is just 28 weeks away.

Suiciding the Military.

Suicidal Slop from our Intrepid Reporters.

A spate of recent news stories have chronicled an uptick in the suicide rate among troops serving in the military.  That’s something we should be concerned about.  But the quality of the reports is another example of the anti-military bias of the press corps (or is it the “press corpse?”).

The numbers are indeed higher than would be expected from the general  population.  And that’s where the investigating and questioning ends.  The prejudices have been confirmed: “See? The military is a horrible, corrosive, dehumanizing institution.  Stay away from it.”

Without boring you with tables of data, let’s clear up a few things.  In the general population,  males have suicide rates 4 to 5 times higher than those of females, and the military, especially the Army and the Marine Corps, is very heavily male.  Secondly, young people have a significantly higher rate than the general population, and the military, especially the Army, is young.  Furthermore, young people living away from home are more prone to suicide than their counterparts at or close to home, and all young soldiers end up living away from home.

In other words, crunch the numbers, all the numbers.  Soldiers are no more likely to commit suicide than male college freshmen living in the dorm.

Digging Up Another Obama “Corpse-Man”

I’m an ex-Corpsman from the Army Medical Corps myself,

….. so I got a lot of laughs from Obama’s gaffes….

…..last October, that is.   Long before his February repeated  use of the term “corpse-man,” for “corpsman,” Obama made the same mistake in Florida in October of 2009  when addressing Navy personnel deploying to the Middle East:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxORB49KtsE

And, I believe there was yet another such use in 2009, but I haven’t been able to pinpoint* it.  When I heard the comment in October, I thought “for crying out loud, Obama said it again” because I recalled he had used “corpse-man” or “corpse-men” once before.  You’d think there would be somebody on the President’s staff smart enough to correct this repeated silliness.

*I’m not exactly sure when corpse-man‘s first use occurred, but what I DO remember is joking at the time that I missed my calling: As a former military corpse-man,  I was obviously intended to to be an undertaker.

Does Obama Respect the Constitution?

Judging by his actions in Honduras, perhaps not…..

……and that should worry us a lot.

President Obama spent some of his time in Chicago as a part-time “visiting lecturer”  in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.   The only photograph of him teaching shows him diagramming Saul Alinsky’s political strategies on the board.  The President applied for a position as a  part time adjunct instructor, but was refused.  Maybe there’s a reason for that.

Undergirding our entire system is the concept that we are a nation of laws rather than men, and that all men, even presidents, are subject to the constitution under which they serve.   It seems that President Obama does not  subscribe to this view.

The Hondurans have a constitution as well, drafted by a constituent assembly elected in 1980.  No one party won a majority for that assembly, and thus the Honduran Constitution was the product of compromise among competing interests.  To them, as with us, it is sacred and sacrosanct.

They agreed that Honduras had a sad history of one-man rule, leaders conniving to seize all power and appointing themselves “leader-for-life.”  Consequently, they agreed that the Honduran President should be limited to a single  4-year term, and that the President (as in the US) should have no role at all in amending the Constitution.  To safeguard this principle, they added Article 239, in which the President is prevented from proposing or advocating suspension of the term limit, under pain of immediate loss of office. 

In violation of the Constitution, President Zelaya was advocating and printing ballots for a referendum to lift this restriction.  The case was brought before the 15-member Honduran Supreme Court, which ruled his Presidency nullified according to Article 239.  This was backed by a nearly unanimous resolution of the National Assembly, including a heavy majority of Zelaya’s own political party.  He refused to step down.  The Supreme Court then asked the military to arrest Zelaya, which they did.

But President Obama believes that the might of the US and other nations should be brought to bear upon the small country of Honduras to force them to ignore Article 239 of their own Constitution.  

Is this the same Obama that criticized George Bush for “meddling” in other countries’ affairs? 

Honduran-born Miguel Estrada, (whose appointment to the US  Court of Appeals was scotched by Senate Democrats because he is Latino), has an article on the subject  in today’s LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-estrada10-2009jul10,0,1570598.story

Update: Another great article just popped up from Jennifer Rubin.  The foolishness of the Obama Latin America approach is breath-taking.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-is-wrong-wrong-wrong-about-honduras/

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“ARTICULO 239.- El ciudadano que haya desempenado la titularidad del Poder Ejecutivo no podraser Presidente o Vicepresidente de la Republica.”

“El que quebrante esta disposicion o proponga su reforma, asi como aquellos que lo apoyen directa o indirectamente, cesaran de inmediato en el desempeno de sus respectivos cargos y quedaran inhabilitados por diez (10) anos para el ejercicio de toda funcion publica.”

You Can’t Get to the White House from Alaska.

Palin adjusts to the real world while pundits spin elaborate theories.

The cold reality is that the logistics make running for the Presidency by a sitting Alaskan Governor a nightmarish undertaking.   You cannot get to the White House by crossing six time zones four times a week.

Today’s political landscape requires that a candidate start frequent flying to  key primary states, early and often, to say nothing of all the IOU states, and all the hundreds of fund-raisers and scattered local pressers.  President Obama began his campaign after exactly 104 working days in the Senate.

A Governor of Ohio can fly to Iowa for a breakfast meet-and-greet, swoop back to Columbus for 4 hours of state business, zip down to Virgina for an evening fund-raiser, and still sleep at the governor’s mansion that night.

An Alaskan Governor cannot do that.

The going rate for a Gulfstream IV business jet is $5,500 per hour, and it cruises at 530 mph. That means a single 90-minute meet-and-greet plus rubber chicken appearance in Florida would take a day and a half, and set a Palin pre-primary campaign back  more than $100,000 in  transportation costs alone.  And Palin does not have Romney-sized pockets.

Every third day she’d have to be back in Alaska to slosh out the arson fires set by the Democratic operatives in the Legislature, easily the most juvenile political caucus in North America.   They’d be yanking her chain every time her plane reached V-1 speed.  Hollis French* and the Spitball Boys have already perfected the yank-back yo-yo technique over the past 11 months, with the full encouragement of their slavishly obedient Anchorage Daily News and a smirking-in-the-sleeve White House.

Timing is everything in politics, and Sarah is hot.  She’s got more electricity in her trigger finger than the entire US power grid. One lightning bolt from her announcement and the Michael Jackson Woe-B-Unto-Us Fest was jolted clean off the telly for two days.   No one else in politics could do that.  Some love her, some hate her, but everyone in the political universe has their eyes fixed on her.  People want to know:

“Is she done for?”…..”Is she nuts?”…… “Is this some secret strategy?”……”Is Unsubstantiated Scandal Rumor #143 about to spring?”    An expectant nation waits with bated breath.

…..meantime, she walks away and goes fishing for lunkers, big-as-your-leg lunkers, on the icy Bristol River.  She knows exactly how to play the fish, and she’s going to end up with a boatload.

Resigning strengthens her hand.

Palin’s now free to hit the road unleashed from the busybodies of the Alaska Democratic  Party.  Fundraising and IOU-collecting on the 2010 GOP candidates circuit is going to be a thermonuclear experience.

She’s free to write her book, which is a guaranteed #1 blockbuster on the NYT list, free go back to doing a TV show, free to travel, hunt with Merkle (Ich bin eine Jaeger!), visit her son in Iraq, get the Pope to autograph her bible, schmooze with Sarkozy and his Celebri-Babe.  Free to raise a billion dollar war chest.   Free to give us a tour of safe and clean drilling  on the North Slope and off the Jindal Coast, then free to show the preferred Obama Petroleum sources: the slimy waters of Lake Maracaibo, the fish-dead rivers of Angola, the oil slicks of the Persian Gulf …….

And what are the negatives?

That she’s going to be criticized, mocked and scorned?

With Geithner and Obama and their All-Time-Slowest-Stimulus-Ever, we may all end up in the poorhouse, but don’t despair.   Get the big popcorn…..we’ve got some great entertainment coming down the Alaska Highway.

___________

* Hollis French, for those of you who may have forgotten, was the Alaska legislator and Obama campaign activist who, when appointed chair of the “Troopergate” investigation, promised to deliver the Governor’s “head on a platter.”  Owing to years of low educational standards, it is rare to find a Democrat who can discern just what might be askew about that.

It was the investigative committee of Mr. French which wrote in its final report that Palin had “broken laws,” though,  for some strange and unexplained reason, those laws were never named.

Update: Lindell at Alaska Dispatch speaks out: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/palin-watch/1282-palin-is-now-free-to-exercise-her-real-power–

Obama Defines “Generosity”

Item: Until he began running for President, Obama gave 1.1% of his million dollar income to charitable causes, according to his released tax returns.

Item: Over the past 10 years, the most Joe Biden gave to charitable causes in any one year was $389 , according to his released tax returns. 

And now this pair of self-absorbed tightwads want to lecture us on the subject of “Generosity.”  Life is too funny.

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Update:  April 15th, and the Obamas’ have released new charitable-giving numbers.   They almost made it up to the Palins’ level, coming in a whisker under 6%.   Joe and Jill Biden remain far behind, at 1.3%, but cut them some slack, it’s eleven times their previous 10-year high.

Ah….I think I’ll take a Ford.

 

I got my excellent auto company management skills from my experience as a community organizer.