Sen. Udall Pressured State Agency to Change Obamacare Cancellation Numbers

Rather than work to fix Obama's healthcare bill like other Democrats, Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) pressured a state agency to change the way its estimated healthcare cancellations because of Obamacare. Udall wanted the state Department of Insurance to downgrade its estimate of Obamacare-related insurance cancellations from 250,000 to just 73,000, because while the plans they liked were cancelled some Colorado residents were offered replacement plans.

Udall is broad brushing and assuming that because Anthem and Kaiser offered early renewals, the people who received that option after receiving a cellation [sic] notice should not be counted. Commissioner Salazar would like to tell Sen. Udall that 250,000 people were in fact affected by cancellation notices,” insurance department director of external affairs Jo Donlin wrote in November, according the emails.

Emails originally obtained by CompleteColorado.com in January created controversy for the Senator and his vote for President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In one of those emails, Donlin said Udall’s office was trying to “trash” the cancellation numbers as tallied by the DOI. In another email, Donlin complained that she received a “very hostile” call from Udall’s deputy chief of staff after she had informed the Senator’s office that the DOI was unlikely to change or modify their calculation of 250,000 policy cancellations in 2013.

Udall’s office did eventually issue their own press release, which netted them a significant story in the Denver Post. In another email, Donlin sent a link of the online Denver Post story to her colleagues, pointing out that the story quoted “Sen. Udall staff,” which seems to highlight that the story did not name an individual directly. Furthermore, Donlin said the online comments were “interesting.” Many of those online comments were critical of both Udall and the Post‘s story. For example, commenter dwschulze said, “So a Democrat who supported Obamacare says that most of the cancelled policies aren’t really cancelled. And you support that with a statement from another Obamacare supporter. You need to provide some independent verification of Udall’s statement for it to be anything but another dubious statement about Obamacare

Can't really blame Senator Udall, like other Democrats who worked to pass Obamacare, he is desperately trying to to put lipstick on the failed pig of the President's signature program.

WARNING: The Double Dip Recession Has Started

Fans of Seinfeld will remember that at a party, double-dipping is a mortal sin. Americans will soon be reminded that with an economy a double-dip is a prescription for real misery.

A "double-dip" recession, occurs when the economy has a recession, emerges from the recession for a short period of growth, and quickly falls back into recession. The recession of the early 1980s is an example of a W-shaped recession. The economy fell into recession from January 1980 to July 1980, shrinking at an 8 percent annual rate from April to June of 1980. The economy then entered a quick period of growth, and in the first three months of 1981 grew at an 8.4 percent annual rate. As the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker raised interest rates to fight inflation, and economy dipped back into recession from July 1981 to November 1982.

If you enjoyed the double dip of the early 1980's then get excited because it certainly looks as if we are heading into the second half of a new double dip.

The release of durable goods purchase data by the Commerce Department is just one more indication that the country is on the precipice of  part two of a double dip recession.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday durable goods orders dropped 3.6 percent, worse than economists' expectations for a 2.2 percent fall. March's orders were revised up to 4.4 percent from a 4.1 percent increase.

While durable goods orders are extremely volatile, details of the report were the latest in a series to indicate the economy remains trapped in the soft patch.

"It's another modestly disappointing data point in a long series of slightly disappointing data points that we've gotten in the last month," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Its not just durable goods, the housing market continues to wallow in record lows. Also released today was the news that driven by the lack of buyers, the price of new homes continued to deflate.

The economy's sluggish tone was underscored by a separate report showing a decline in home prices in March. The Federal Housing Finance Agency's home price index fell 0.3 percent in March from February. It declined 5.8 percent from a year-ago.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said recovery in the housing market had a long way to go.

"We've got several more years to go. Again just realistically I think it's going to take time still to heal that," Geithner told Politico in a live interview.

And don't forget about unemployment, in February new unemployment claims fell to a three-year-low (but still unacceptable) 375,000. From there began to rise to the point where in April that weekly figure was back up to 475,000, it now sits at 409,000.

The straw that broke the camels back sending the economy back into a downward spiral is the price of oil. The good news is that according to the US government during the past two years the price of  regular grade gas has declined by eleven cents. The bad news is that the new price, $3.89/gallon is still $.165 higher than it was at the beginning of April, $1.06 higher than last year at the same time, and almost two and a half times what it was when Barack Obama took office.

According to Lazard Capital Markets, this spike is reminiscent of the spike we saw in 2008, which contributed to the recession we are still trying to dig out of.

Oil prices likely to go higher but entering demand destruction range; time to get more cautious. In contrast to the 2008 superspike, where oil prices spiked on runaway emerging market demand, the latest spike has been driven by supply issues as Middle East instability worsens. With unrest spreading from Egypt to Libya and Oman (and concern over possible unrest in Saudi Arabia), we believe oil prices could go significantly higher from current levels. Our price elasticity models indicate oil prices could spike to $160+/Bbl if we lost all Libyan production and one half of Saudi production.

That said, we are near levels where the market begins to worry about negative impacts on the economy (~ 5% of global GDP), which we believe warrants a more selective investment stance based on our analysis of the prior oil price spike cycle in 2008.

Since this scenario is somewhat different, being based not on demand but on supply, it is unsure whether or not it will have the same impact. But if you're looking at the oil price just in terms of GDP, we're nearing the point where things could turn ugly.

This particular oil spike may end up being different than the one in 2008, but facts also prove that  every rescission we have had since the mid-1970s has had an accompanying spike in oil prices.

Economist Jeffrey Rubin said in 2008:

Curiously, an over-500% increase in the real price of oil gets virtually ignored as a culprit behind today’s economy, eclipsed by the ongoing crisis in financial markets. Yet the run-up in real oil prices this cycle is over twice the spike in oil prices that occurred during the first or second OPEC oil shock. And those oil shocks produced two of the deepest recessions in the entire post-war period, including the 1980-82 double dip.

The price of oil influences more than how you heat your house or drive your car.  Since most manufacturing uses oil in at least some of their manufacturing process, even if it just to get product to the market. Basic food items are already in an inflationary period,  this oil spike will makes it worse. What may end up being exactly the same as 2008 is that people will have to choice between bank payments and basic staple items whose costs were driven up by their energy costs.

So what is the Obama administration doing to retard the increase in costs? According to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee absolutely nothing.

Earlier this week they issued a scathing report about the nation's energy saying in part that the President has deliberately created policies which would cause energy prices to rise.

"The United States has the largest reserves in the world—resources that can provide good paying American jobs and fuel our economic expansion. But standing between that energy and U.S. consumers is an obstacle course of government red tape, regulation, delays and obfuscations," Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) said. He pointed to statements by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu about intentionally raising energy costs for Americans and how these goals are being implemented throughout the government.

One of the Obama administration's first moves was to cancel contracts to exploit our shale oil reserves:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has canceled leases for energy exploration on 77 parcels of federal land in Utah, confirming that this White House is indeed a Small Oil administration.  

The previous administration, which was not beholden to environmental special interests and seemed to understand the importance of energy, had released 130,000 acres of largely uninhabited — and uninhabitable — land for oil and gas exploration.

Some of the parcels are in or near the Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.

As the United States continues to struggle through what is at best a weak, jobless recovery we are approaching the next economic crisis caused by higher oil prices. This crises may have had its start from the fear that the "Arab Spring" will cut off oil supplies but our President continues to put roadblocks in front of the only solution to this and the series of oil crises we have had since 1973--- drilling for the oil we have.

Meet Obama's New Energy Plan, Same as The Old Plan

There seemed to have been a collective sigh of relief across the country. After over two years of waging war on domestic energy production which helped to boost gas prices over four dollars/gallon ($4.58 in my neighborhood), President Obama announced a new energy plan that would allow an increase and acceleration of domestic energy production.

Well...that's until one examines his words. That's when you realize that the POTUS left himself enough "outs" to make his plan worthless.

I am directing the Department of Interior to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, while respecting sensitive areas, and to speed up the evaluation of oil and gas resources in the mid and south Atlantic.  We plan to lease new areas in the Gulf of Mexico as well, and work to create new incentives for industry to develop their unused leases both on and offshore.

Oh great! Finally drilling at ANWR? Not on your life. The National Petroleum Reserve is not ANWR it's next the desired drilling area.  Kind of  like telling a new president that instead of the White House he would have to live at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The President didn't mention drilling in ANWR, he said "respecting sensitive areas," which was a signal to the important environmentalist constituency, that he did not mean ANWR

The map above describes the ANWAR situation. ANWR sits within a 20 million-acre refuge (the size of South Carolina), but thanks to advanced technology like directional drilling, the aggregated drilling footprint (the dot pointed to by the arrow) would be less than 2,000 acres (about one-quarter the size of Dulles Airport). This is like laying a 2-by-3-foot welcome mat on a basketball court. That little oil field has

mean expected 10.4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the government’s own survey. Once up and running, ANWR alone could yield one million barrels of oil per day in production, which would make it the single-largest producing field in North America.

According to environmentalists, a major progressive voting constituency, energy development, especially on that little one-hundredth of one percent of the ANWAR land cannot be compatible with the protection of  wildlife and their habitat. This is not true.

In the case of the Alaskan North Slope drilling,  caribou herds have grown and remained healthy throughout more than three decades of oil development.

His other words in the paragraph above were  speed up the evaluation of oil and gas resources in the mid and south Atlantic. With confidence I can tell Obama will follow these words to the letter.  Surely he will speed up any evaluation of our Oil and Gas resources to determine whether they represent viable spots for drilling.  What he will not do however, is speed up the long "environmental impact" process.

One of Ken Salazar's first acts as Secretary of Interior was canceling 77 Utah oil and gas leases that had gone through seven years of studies, negotiations and land-use planning. In an instant, he eliminated hundreds of jobs, terminated access to vital oil and gas deposits, and deprived taxpayers of millions in lease bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues. In short he was making us more defendant on foreign oil instead of exploiting our reserves which are larger than any other country on this planet.

What Obama's Secretary of Interior did instead was to extend the environmental process. In January 2010, Secretary Salazar announced a new policy expanding environmental reviews before leasing federal lands to the oil and gas industry.


There was no mention of changing this delaying policy in his words yesterday. Dooming any potential new oil reserves to years of federal roadblocks.

There was also no mention by the President of our vast shale oil reserves.The Green River shale formation in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, has an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, which is three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. In the Bakken oil shale formation in the Dakotas, there are an estimated 20 billion barrels of oil.

What seemed as an epiphany  by President Obama yesterday was nothing of the kind, it was simply a collection of empty words, as was his earlier promise to lift his oil moratorium in the Gulf, which resulted only in decreased production and many of his other promises, such as his signature health plan not causing people change providers.

So at least with his words yesterday, President Obama's new energy plan is "same as the old plan."

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

Shale Energy Could Solve America's Energy Problems

In the famous scene from the movie "The Graduate" the character played by Dustin Hoffman is trying to make his way through a party thrown in his honor to celebrate his graduation from college. One of his parent's friends pulls him aside to give him advice for the future, "Ben" he says, "I have one word for you, plastics!"

If the movie was produced today that one word might very well be two words, Shale Energy. Shale gas and could solve this country's energy problems.  And what makes it even more valuable is that there is an ample supply of it in the United States (if our president would let us mine it).

Recent technology breakthroughs have made shale gas extraction cheap, and clean.

It had long been assumed that natural gas could only be extracted when, like oil, it had accumulated in underground reservoirs. But a far greater quantity of gas from organic residues is trapped in the rock itself, and the technology has now been developed to extract it by pumping in water mixed with salt and other chemicals at very high pressure. The advantages are enormous. Not only is it a remarkably cheap source of energy, but since most of the process takes place underground, its “environmental footprint” is minimal – far less than that of oil wells or open-cast coal mines, let alone those useless windfarms.

So miraculous is the potential of shale gas to change the world that several countries, led by the US and China, are already piling in to exploit it on a huge scale. And an admirable introduction to this energy revolution by Matt Ridley has just been published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, available online under the title The Shale Gas Shock, with a delightful foreword by the world-famous physicist (and “climate sceptic”) Freeman Dyson.

Ridley lucidly explains how and why shale gas is transforming the world’s energy prospects, and reviews the various objections which have been raised to it by environmentalists, to whom it is anathema. They hate it to the point of hysteria because it offers the prospect of a cheap and abundant fossil-fuel that could keep industrial civilisation going for hundreds of years, and is also, according to their prejudices, environmentally friendly, because its CO2 emissions are much less than those of coal or oil.

There are also major supplies of shale gas in Europe and in Israel. Yet in both the EU and United States, environmentalists have the upper hand and are preventing shale oil exploration.

One of the first actions the Obama team took when it assumed office in was to direct Secretary of the Interior Salazar to cancel 77 shale oil and gas leases in Utah. The next year they canceled 61 onshore leases in Montana. TheGreen River shale formation in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, has an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, which is three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. Federal law prohibits drilling for most of these resources. In the Bakken oil shale formation in the Dakotas, there are an estimated 20 billion barrels of oil.

In the Marcellus shale formation in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, there
could be as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the largest natural gas field in
the world.

Number three in shale energy holdings is  Israel, they have developed technology to make shale oil drilling even cheaper and cleaner,  this will be used for Israel to extract its vast shale oil resources.


The British-based World Energy Council reported in November 2010 that Israel had oil shale from which it is possible to extract the equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil. Yet these numbers are currently undergoing a major revision internationally.

A new assessment was released late last year by Dr. Yuval Bartov, chief geologist for Israel Energy Initiatives, at the yearly symposium of the prestigious Colorado School of Mines. He presented data that our oil shale reserves are actually the equivalent of 250 billion barrels (that compares with 260 billion barrels in the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia). 

Independent oil industry analysts have been carefully looking at the shale, and have not refuted these findings. As a consequence of these new estimates, we may emerge as the third largest deposit of oil shale, after the US and China.

Israeli scientists have found a way to produce shale energy, and water in the same process.

Yet new technologies, being developed for Israeli shale, seek to separate the oil from the shale rock 300 meters underground; these techniques actually produce water, rather than use it up.

The technology will be tested in a pilot project followed by a demonstration stage. It will be critical to demonstrate that the underground separation of oil from shale is environmentally sound before going to full-scale production. The present goal is to produce commercial quantities of shale oil by the end of the decade.

If the energy industry was allowed to fully exploit our shale reserves, not only would it bring down the price of Energy, create Jobs, help cut the federal deficit, and eliminate our dependence on foreign reserves. 

Bringing down the price of energy and cutting our dependence on foreign reserves will also help the US in the war on terror as some of the money spent on OPEC oil gets transferred to the hand of terrorists in the Arab world.

Exploiting our shale reserves is a win-win for America, but sadly the President and his progressive friends are determined to turn America way from fossil fuels whether it makes sense or not, and that determination is more important to the progressives than the future well-being of the United States.

Obama Loses Washington Post Support For His Energy Policy

Now he has done it.  President Obama has alienated the Washington Post, the Washington home of the progressive movement. After two years of sabotaging America's efforts to become energy independent by exploiting its own energy resources, the President went to Brazil last week where he promised to help fund it's oil exploration and promising that we would be their best customers. 

By some estimates, the oil you recently discovered off the shores of Brazil could amount to twice the reserves we have in the United States. We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers. At a time when we've been reminded how easily instability in other parts of the world can affect the price of oil, the United States could not be happier with the potential for a new, stable source of energy.

WAPO, Obama's home town paper has accused the POTUS of changing the chant from "Drill Here Drill Now" to "Drill THERE, Drill now:

Brazil is probably a more stable, secure supplier than, say, Libya. Still, the president’s words were ironic. Brazil already produces vast quantities of a fuel — ethanol — that the U.S. government, under a policy long supported by presidents and farm-state members of Congress from both parties, has promoted as a green alternative to gasoline. But the United States, protecting its own heavily subsidized ethanol industry by means of a 2.5 percent tariff and a 54-cent-per-gallon duty, prevents Americans from importing all but trivial amounts of the stuff from Brazil. Therefore, we need more oil — much of it imported. In Brasilia, Mr. Obama spoke of strengthening U.S.-Brazilian technical cooperation on ethanol but did not propose allowing U.S. protectionist measures to lapse after their scheduled expiration on Dec. 31.

As for offshore drilling, Mr. Obama’s enthusiasm for punching holes in the ocean floor off Brazil is hard to reconcile with his decision, announced Dec. 1, to keep the waters off the East and West coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico off-limits to exploration indefinitely. His policy was a reversal of an earlier decision he had made to open some of those areas. We can understand that reversal, after the massive oil spill in the western Gulf last year. And, demonstrating a measure of flexibility even after the disaster, the administration has announced five deep-water drilling permits in the western Gulf since the spill.

Actually only two of those permits were new, the other three were leases that were on hold because of the BP freeze.

Privileged residents of scenic landscapes in America have long cried “NIMBY” — “Not In My Back Yard” — to stave off unwanted but necessary projects, from railway tracks to wind farms to power lines. Now NIMBY-ism, it seems, has become U.S. policy on offshore oil production. But the Nigerias, Angolas and Brazils of the world do not have that luxury. This makes no sense, economically or environmentally, and, sooner or later, a more balanced view must prevail.

 What the Washington post didn't mention is all the anti-drilling moves made since Obama was inaugurated. One of the first actions the Obama team took when it assumed office in was to direct Secretary of the Interior Salazar to cancel 77 oil and gas leases in Utah. The next year they canceled 61 onshore leases in Montana.

President Obama has also repeatedly delayed exploration plans for America’s oil shale resources, which contain more than three times as much oil as there is in Saudi Arabia. At the same time one of our allies Israel, has developed technology to make shale oil drilling cheaper and cleaner,  this will be used for Israel to extract its vast shale oil resources.

One of the Administration's "misstatements" is  US oil production is at its highest point in seven years. That was both incorrect and misleading.  Daily average production of oil last year 5,361,000 barrels/day the best since 2005's 5,419,000/day. The real misleading fact about his statement, is that neither year is even close to levels seen only ten years before when production was 20% higher.

The President mentioned 35 offshore contracts were awarded, hiding the fact that off shore oil production has been way down since 2005, and that production took a big drop as soon as Obama took office (even before BP). Out of those 35 contracts, 33 were existing contracts that were stopped because of BP and allowed to restart.

Source for both charts above the US Energy Information Administration.

The administration grossly underestimates America's oil supply,  saying that we only have 2% of the worlds supply.

That particular number is America's proven reserves where we are already drilling. It does not include the 10 billion barrels available in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It does not include most of the 86 billion barrels available offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf, most of which President Obama has placed under an executive drilling ban. And it does not include the estimated 800 billion barrels of oil we have locked in shale in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. Those shale resources alone are actually three times larger than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, so the claim that the U.S. only has 2% of the world's oil is clearly false.

A 2009 study by the non partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) sheds light on America's energy resources. It shows show the U.S. supply of recoverable oil to be 167 billion barrels of oil, the equivalent of replacing America's current imports from OPEC countries for more than 75 years. And that's just the oil, when you include gas and coal, the U.S.  has energy reserves the equivalent of 1.3 trillion barrels

On top of that there is more Oil to find. For example, in 2008 the US Geological Survey announced that the Arctic holds about 90 BILLION barrels of Oil, more than Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Mexico combined about one third of the reserves are in Alaskan waters.  In the graph below the darker the blue the better the probability of Oil. In the map below the darker the green the more oil. The Dark green area between five and six o'clock is in Alaska territory, which is just under 30 Billion Barrels of Oil. And just like anything else in this world, politics will play a huge part in how soon we can get to it

The administration tries to deflect criticism by saying the oil industry holds leases on tens of millions of acres both offshore and on land where they aren't producing a thing. The President has said he wants to "encourage companies to produce [on] the leases they hold."

If Obama is telling the truth, those oil companies must be run by idiots why else would they pay for leases but they refuse to make money so they leave the product in the ground. Thankfully for those who hold stock in big oil, the companies aren't run by idiots. The fact is   the President thinks the American people are idiots and will believe this particular pack of horse hooey.

A lease is for exploration and production, not just production, and because oil is not equally distributed across the globe, one parcel of leased acreage may not hold any oil. Moreover, due to government red-tape, which has gotten more complected under the Obama administration, it can take years for companies who own a lease to complete their exploration activities. To get to the production phase, it could take as long as ten years. Ironically, President Obama wants to tax companies for not producing on their leases, even if the federal government's refusal to grant permits is the reason why those companies are not drilling.

The truth is, ever since Barack Obama took office the President has been making it more difficult to exploit our own energy resources and now it seems as if President Obama's energy policy consists of making America more dependent on foreign oil. If today's Washington Post is indication, the left may be waking up.

Interior Secretary Salazar Gets Visit From The Stupid Fairy

If you were in Washington DC last week, you may have seen an extra twinkling object in the night sky over the building that houses the Department of Interior. Some claimed that it was a UFO, but that is a false claim  That twinkle was just the Fairy of Stupidity spreading his stupid dust over the office of Interior Secretary Salazar...And that fairy dust is working very well on the Secretary, maybe too well.

On Friday, Salazar was asked why  the Obama administration opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) given the rising cost of gasoline, the Interior Secretary answered that the “drill, baby, drill program” is not going to lead the United States to energy independence.

“We don’t believe that you need to drill everywhere and we don’t believe that the 'drill, baby, drill' program is the way that’s going to get us to the energy independence that we need for America or that will power our economy and that’s why the President has been so clear from day one and we in the Department of Interior have been so clear that what we need to do is need to have a robust energy program that includes a number of different sources of energy and while yes, we are pushing forward with oil and gas development both offshore and onshore which was the subject of much of the hearing today, we’re also moving forward with renewable energy,” he told CNSNews.com after testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee about his Department’s FY2012 budget.

“The President has said we are supporting nuclear, we’re support other clean air energy forms and at the end of the day, this is a place where there is hope that perhaps some of the Republicans in the House would come together and say that we can move forward with energy legislation that moves us into this new energy future.”

Instead of using facts, the Interior Secretary is using spin and hyperbole. Here are some of  the facts about Anwr.

• The Coastal Plain of ANWR is America's best bet for the discovery of another giant "Prudhoe Bay-sized" ail and gas field in North America. Many economic benefits would result:
• The Coastal Plain could produce up to 1.5 million barrels per day for at least 25 years - nearly 25% of current daily U.S. production.
• The U.S. would save $14 billion per year in oil imports.
• Between 250,000 and 735,000 jobs are estimated to be created by development of the Coastal Plain.
• Federal revenues would be enhanced by billions of dollars from bonus bids, lease rentals, royalties, and taxes.

More than 75 percent of the citizens of Alaska, the Alaska legislature, the governor, the congressional delegation, and the residents of the North Slope Borough ( including those who live in the only village in the refuge ), support Coastal Plain oil and gas development All necessary government resource evaluations have been completed. It is time far Congress to authorize this exploration and development.

Will Anwr totally solve our energy problems? No, but it will certainly help a heck of a lot. As Interior Secretary, Salazar should know that...unless he was sprinkled with stupid dust.

“What I say is what the White House would say and that is that we are moving forward with an effort to stand up oil and gas drilling in the deep oceans of the gulf and are doing it in a safe and orderly way and that’s reflected in the budget request that we were defending for the President today,” he said.

Lets talk about off shore, while its true the Dept.of Interior awarded its first off-shore contract since the BP disaster, but at the same time they are going to court to delay the awarding of other leases.

Two days after the White House said it would comply with a federal judge's ruling forcing the administration to act on offshore drilling permits, the Obama administration announced tonight that it will now appeal that ruling.

On Wednesday of this week, Deputy Secretary of Interior David Hayes told Congress: "We will comply with the court order and make the decision, up or down, on the pending permits."

That statement came 48 hours after Interior announced it was granting its first deep water drilling permit in nine months, an event that Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, hailed as a "significant milestone." Bromwich also said he expected "further deepwater permits to be approved in coming weeks."

Late this evening, however, President Obama's Department of Interior -- led by Ken Salazar -- announced it had decided to appeal the court's decision, a reversal of opinion that will only further delay the timely and responsible processing of permits for American energy production.

 As Oil prices continue to spike up, our government is doing whatever it can to stop the US from becoming energy independent. The real question is are they doing it on purpose, or are they just suffering from a sprinkling of dust from the stupid fairy?

Don't Look Now, But Here Comes Another Recession Or Worse

Ladies and Gentleman, here we go again.  The violence in Libya continues, and as the battle wages on the price of oil continues to spike up.  According to Lazard Capital Markets, that spike is very reminiscent of the spike we saw in 2008, which contributed to the recession we are still trying to dig out of.

Oil prices likely to go higher but entering demand destruction range; time to get more cautious. In contrast to the 2008 superspike, where oil prices spiked on runaway emerging market demand, the latest spike has been driven by supply issues as Middle East instability worsens. With unrest spreading from Egypt to Libya and Oman (and concern over possible unrest in Saudi Arabia), we believe oil prices could go significantly higher from current levels. Our price elasticity models indicate oil prices could spike to $160+/Bbl if we lost all Libyan production and one half of Saudi production.

That said, we are near levels where the market begins to worry about negative impacts on the economy (~ 5% of global GDP), which we believe warrants a more selective investment stance based on our analysis of the prior oil price spike cycle in 2008.

Since this scenario is somewhat different, being based not on demand but on supply, it is unsure whether or not it will have the same impact. But if you're looking at the oil price just in terms of GDP, we're nearing the point where things could turn ugly.

It is true that this particular oil spike may be different than the one in 2008, but don't forget that  every rescission we have had since the mid-1970s has shown an accompanying spike in oil prices.

Economist Jeffrey Rubin said in 2008:

Curiously, an over-500% increase in the real price of oil gets virtually ignored as a culprit behind today’s economy, eclipsed by the ongoing crisis in financial markets. Yet the run-up in real oil prices this cycle is over twice the spike in oil prices that occurred during the first or second OPEC oil shock. And those oil shocks produced two of the deepest recessions in the entire post-war period, including the 1980-82 double dip.

 The price of oil influences more than just how you heat your house or drive your car.  Since most manufacturing uses oil in at least some of their manufacturing process, even if it just to get product to the market. Basic food items are already in an inflationary period, should it last this oil spike will make it worse. What may end up being similar to 2008 is that people will have to choice between bank payments and basic staple items whose costs were driven up by their energy costs.

So what is the Obama administration doing to retard the increase in costs?  Tapping the strategic oil reserves. The supply of oil the country keeps in the event of a real emergency.

President Obama will consider tapping the rarely used Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease gasoline prices, which are rapidly increasing due to Mideast turmoil, a top White House aide said yesterday.

"We are looking at the options. The issue of the reserves is one we are considering," Obama's chief of staff, Bill Daley, said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Taking oil out of our "rainy day" supply will have a temporary downward effect, but it wont keep prices down.
. 

The only way to help is to start drilling for oil today! Yes it is true that it will take years to reap the oil new wells, but remember what happened in 2008 when President Bush lifted the presidential embargo. Crude Oil prices peaked during the summer of 2008 as it hit $145 in July 2008. Prices began to fall immediately after President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore oil drilling on July 14th. By the end of December 2008,  crude oil spot price fell to $30.28 a barrel. Its interesting that just the threat of new drilling drove down costs.

All this is happening while the United States sits on a major supply of oil. A 2009 study by the non partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) sheds light on America's energy resources. It shows show the U.S. supply of recoverable oil to be 167 billion barrels of oil, the equivalent of replacing America's current imports from OPEC countries for more than 75 years. 

Sadly, the progressives in Congress and the White House, refuse to open up our reserves to drilling--in fact we have gone backwards. One of the Obama administration's first moves was to cancel contracts to exploit our shale oil reserves:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has canceled leases for energy exploration on 77 parcels of federal land in Utah, confirming that this White House is indeed a Small Oil administration.

The previous administration, which was not beholden to environmental special interests and seemed to understand the importance of energy, had released 130,000 acres of largely uninhabited — and uninhabitable — land for oil and gas exploration.

Some of the parcels are in or near the Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.

The over reaction to the BP oil spill, a hiatus of all offshore drilling, and the follow-up rules changes represents another retreat from exploiting our own natural resources. Only one oil contract has been awarded since the President lifted the hiatus that resulted from the BP disaster.

As the United States continues to struggle through a weak, jobless recovery we are approaching the next economic crisis caused by higher oil prices, a crises whose start date has been moved forward due to the unrest in many of the Arab Middle East countries. Our President continues to put roadblocks in front of the only solution to our on going oil crises, drilling for the oil we have.

How The Wave of Middle East Revolts Will Drive US into Deep Economic Crises

While many people are cheering the revolts going on throughout the Middle East and shudder at the horrible violence few people are discussing the possible effect that these revolts will have on the world/US Economy.  Should these revolts continue to spike up the cost of oil, the world will be thrown into an economic crisis worse than the recession that began in 2007.

Certainly the crash of the sub-prime housing boom, which was caused by the progressive belief that owning a home was a right, is the primary reason behind the financial crisis and what was to become known as the  "great recession."  The part that most people forget is that the "pin" that pricked the housing bubble, and led us down the economic abyss was oil prices.  In fact every rescission we have had since the mid-1970s has shown an accompanying spike in oil prices. It is not a coincidence that the worst recession in that period has been accompanied by the largest oil  price spike.

Economist Jeffrey Rubin said in 2008:

Curiously, an over-500% increase in the real price of oil gets virtually ignored as a culprit behind today’s economy, eclipsed by the ongoing crisis in financial markets. Yet the run-up in real oil prices this cycle is over twice the spike in oil prices that occurred during the first or second OPEC oil shock. And those oil shocks produced two of the deepest recessions in the entire post-war period, including the 1980-82 double dip.

 The price of oil influences more than just how you heat your house or drive your car.  Since most manufacturing uses oil in at least some of their manufacturing process, even if it just to get product to the market, when the oil began to spike in 2006, people who could barely afford their mortgages began to have to choice between their bank payments or basic staple items whose costs were driven up by their energy costs. A few months later, when the price increases led to interest hikes in existing mortgages, the house of cards holding up the housing market collapsed.

Crude Oil prices peaked during the summer of 2008 as it hit $145 in July 2008. Prices began to fall immediately after President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore oil drilling on July 14th. By the end of December 2008,  crude oil spot price fell to $30.28 a barrel. Its interesting that just the threat of new drilling drove down costs.

During the past two years prices has slowly risen to the middle $80s per barrel, but with the beginning of the protests in Egypt the cost rose more sharply and yesterday with the violence in Libya, produces 2% of the world's oil supply (and has the most significant reserves in Africa) prices spike up 9% in one day.

Benchmark crude for March delivery was up $4.80 a barrel, or 5.6 percent, at $92.55 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier, it had it had been even higher above $94 a barrel.

Before the Middle East protests began, Jeffrey Rubin was already warning about the increase in oil prices:

Oil prices caused the last recession, and oil prices will cause the next one as well. Energy inflation is already on the march. In fact, this time around oil prices are rising much earlier and much more rapidly than they did last cycle. Inflation is already running at nearly a five per cent rate in China; as oil prices go on to set new record highs, it's only a matter of time of before we see those inflation rates in North America and in the rest of the OECD.

 If the price spiked to $94/a barrel from Libya just imagine what will happen when the wave of protests reach Saudi Arabia (there are already calls on Facebook for protests against the Saudi Government the third week of  March). Should that occur that $145/barrel will be a fond memory.

The oil spike in 2007/8 took down what was then a strong US economy. Should a similar or worse spike happen now, while the economy is barely keeping its head above water the United States may face and economic disaster worse than what was caused by the crash  of the housing bubble.

All this is happening while the United States sits on a major oil reserve. A 2009 study by the non partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) sheds light on America's energy resources. It shows show the U.S. supply of recoverable oil to be 167 billion barrels of oil, the equivalent of replacing America's current imports from OPEC countries for more than 75 years. 

Sadly, the progressives in Congress and the White House, refuse to open up our reserves to drilling--in fact we have gone backwards. One of the Obama administration's first moves was to cancel contracts to exploit our shale oil reserves:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has canceled leases for energy exploration on 77 parcels of federal land in Utah, confirming that this White House is indeed a Small Oil administration.

The previous administration, which was not beholden to environmental special interests and seemed to understand the importance of energy, had released 130,000 acres of largely uninhabited — and uninhabitable — land for oil and gas exploration.

Some of the parcels are in or near the Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.

 The over reaction to the BP oil spill, a hiatus of all offshore drilling, and the follow-up rules changes represents another retreat from exploiting our own natural resources.

As the United States continues to struggle through a weak, jobless recovery we are approaching the next economic crisis caused by higher oil prices, a crises whose start date has been moved forward due to the unrest in many of the Arab Middle East countries. 

Sadly, even if we survive the coming economic collapse, we are doomed to confront them over and over, until we begin to search for and exploit our own energy reserves.

Obama Scoffs at Court Decison Issues Harsher Drilling Ban

The Interior Department first issued a broad drilling ban in May, which was challenged by several Gulf coast companies that service the drilling industry, and was struck down in June by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who said it was not justified. Last week a Federal Appeals court upheld Judge Feldman's decision striking down the President’s ban.

Rather than continuing the appeals process to challenge the ruling through the judiciary as called for by the constitution, the president directed the Secretary of the Interior to re-impose the ban with different language as a way of getting around the judge’s order.

This time Salazar will allow some rigs to resume drilling, providing the drilling rig had adequate plans in place to quickly shut down an out-of-control well, that the blowout preventers atop the wells it drills have passed rigorous new tests, and that sufficient cleanup resources are on hand in case of a spill.

According to Industry officials  it would be difficult to meet those conditions quickly, especially since the specifics of the new rule would not be issued for over a month. Therefore thousands of jobs could be lost, and as drilling rigs are moved to other countries chances are those jobs will be lost for a much longer than the 6 months of the ban.

Mr. Salazar directed federal regulators to come up with interim rules by the end of August that would clarify the steps needed to resume operations. But he made clear that most rigs would remain barred from drilling in deep water through November.

His department characterized the moratorium issued on Monday as a refinement of the previous one that was rejected by the courts, not a retreat from it.

“Like the deepwater drilling moratorium lifted by the District Court on June 22, the deepwater drilling suspensions ordered today apply to most deepwater drilling activities and could last through Nov. 30,” the Interior Department said in briefing materials on the new ban.

“The suspensions ordered today, however,” the materials said, “are the product of a new decision by the secretary and new evidence regarding safety concerns, blowout containment shortcomings within the industry and spill response capabilities that are strained by the BP oil spill.

Wasn't this the president who keeps on talking about getting off of foreign oil? That was just another Obama ruse.

The main lobby for the oil industry, the American Petroleum Institute, criticized the new order, saying it would worsen the economic hardship already being felt across the Gulf Coast.


“It is unnecessary and shortsighted to shut down a major part of the nation’s energy lifeline while working to enhance offshore safety,” Jack Gerard, the association’s president, said in a statement. “It places the jobs of tens of thousands of workers in serious and immediate jeopardy and promises a substantial reduction in domestic energy production. No certain and expeditious path forward has been established for a resumption of drilling.”

This new ban is just another example of Obama as the Imperial President. Sacrificing an entire industry and people's livelihoods in order to gain what he really wants, a ban on drilling and cap and trade tax.

WSJ Report Says Obama Could Have Prevented Gulf Spill Disaster

The Obama administration blames former president George W. Bush for everything from dandruff and "ring around the collar" to General McChrystal's insubordination and the Gulf Oil Spill.

When it come to the Gulf Oil Spill disaster, the usual Obama charge does not stick. Much of the criticism directed toward the president has surrounded his delay in cleaning up the spill (a delay that continues through today). What has not been widely reported is the fact that the Obama administration could have prevented the spill had it heeded a multitude of warnings. Today the WSJ is reporting that last April, over a year before the Deepwater Horizon blew up, the administration received a loud alarm about the dangers of offshore oil drillig.

The alarm was rung by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which found that the government was unprepared for a major spill at sea, relying on an "irrational" environmental analysis of the risks of offshore drilling.


The April 2009 ruling stunned both the administration and the oil industry, and threatened to delay or cancel dozens of offshore projects in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.


Despite its pro-environment pledges, the Obama administration urged the court to revisit the decision. Politically, it needed to push ahead with conventional oil production while it expanded support for renewable energy.

Energy was not the only reason, there was also money:

Another reason: money. In its arguments to the court, the government said that the loss of royalties on the oil, estimated at almost $10 billion, "may have significant financial consequences for the federal government."

The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed its decision and allowed drilling in the Gulf to proceed—including on BP PLC's now-infamous Macondo well, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Can't blame that one on Bush.

Still, the administration defends its intervention in the court case, and says the ruling made it look more cautiously at whether to open new areas to offshore drilling. It pins blame on the Bush administration for pursuing a policy for deep-offshore drilling "that was driven by one principle: open everything," said White House spokesman Ben LaBolt.

OK maybe they can.

Mr. Obama inherited a slew of energy challenges when he took office in early 2009. The agency within the Interior Department charged with overseeing the oil and gas industry, the Minerals Management Service, was reeling from scandals. An inspector general's report months earlier had described rigged contracts, drug use and sex between MMS employees and industry representatives.

Along with cleaning up the MMS, Interior had to wrestle with a five-year drilling plan the Bush administration had filed just days before leaving office. The plan sought to open the waters in most of the U.S. outer-continental shelf to oil and gas exploration between 2010 and 2015. The push into ever deeper waters in the Gulf, which began in earnest in the mid-1990s, reflected the reality that drilling in shallower waters was largely tapped out.

But at the same time the Obama administration canceled leases that would have allowed drilling on land.

The tensions in the administration's own deliberations were clear from the start. Mr. Obama's Interior secretary, Ken Salazar, quickly picked a fight with the oil industry when he retroactively withdrew 77 oil-and-gas lease sales in Utah that the Bush administration had approved in its final weeks. The move drew applause from environmentalists and criticism from oil companies.

This is not to say that the president was wrong to push off shore drilling, but he was wrong to ignore the warnings of April 2009 and he was wrong to cancel the leases for drilling on land.

To navigate Capitol Hill, the administration needed to strike a balance between the "green energy" projects favored by environmentalists and liberals, and the traditional oil and gas projects favored by Republicans, whose support would be crucial in the Senate. Continuing to promote offshore drilling was part of that bargain.


But the federal appeals court decision, which came just days after Mr. Salazar's tour, threatened to throw a wrench in that process. The case was brought two years earlier by indigenous Alaskans and a coalition of environmental groups. It challenged a Bush-era plan to lease large chunks of offshore Alaska to oil drilling.


The groups argued the strategy didn't adequately account for the whole range of environmental perils raised by oil drilling on the outer shelf.

The appeals court agreed, ruling that the federal program was based on "irrational" analysis. The government's own assessment, the court found, weighed only the impact of oil washing up on shorelines. In a foreshadowing of the post-spill debate, the court noted that the analysis didn't address the impact of a significant spill further out at sea.

At first, Mr. Salazar used the ruling as a way to draw a distinction between his approach and that of the Bush White House. Blasting what he called "the previous administration's failure to apply the law," Mr. Salazar said in a statement that he planned to "fix the problems" the court identified. He would do so not by firing managers or shaking up MMS, but by subjecting offshore drilling to heightened scrutiny. Those fixes, he said, would "put oil and gas leasing decisions back on a firm scientific footing."

All of this happened a year before the Deepwater Horizon disaster and there were warnings from other sources.

On Sept. 21, Jane Lubchenco, Mr. Obama's handpicked head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, filed a lengthy comment on the Bush-era drilling plan still under review. She cited several concerns, including the government's tendency to underestimate the likelihood of oil spills and to downplay their potential environmental impacts. She also noted the government's penchant for cribbing from older, often outdated, environmental analyses.


She cited a Congressional Research Service study from earlier in the year. "The threat of oil spills raises the question," the report said, "of whether U.S. officials have the necessary resources at hand to respond to a major spill."

Is the Gulf Oil Spill the Obama Administration's fault? Not totally, nor is it totally the fault of George "W" Bush or previous presidents. Each of those presidents who prevented drilling on land or the inner continental shelf immediate shoreline deserve to share in the blame. But it is totally disingenuous for our Finger-pointer-in-chief to place the blame toward others when he shared in creating the problem.

Rand Paul The Myth vs. Reality

As you know, Rand is Ron Paul's son and he's also the GOP nominee in Kentucky. Right Wing News did a far ranging interview that covered a large variety of topics including: The BP Oil Spill, his foreign policy views, the North American Union, the Arizona Immigration law, citizenship for the children of illegals, Minimum wage laws, and why the Left hates Rand Paul.

You can read it all here:

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Rand Paul: As far as how the rhetoric comes out of the presidency, I have said that I don't like the statement that Ken Salazar made. We shouldn't have a member of one of the President's cabinet saying he's going to put his boot heel on the throat of BP. I think if we want BP to clean up the mess, which I do, I think it would be better if we don't have a President who by some appearances, tone, and rhetoric seems to be indicating that he's trying to drive BP out of business -- which I don't think is a good idea.
----

Rand Paul: I also think that we need to have the courts review whether or not if you break the law to come into the U.S., whether your child would be a citizen just by being born here. Some point of the 14th amendment say you can't do that. But the 14th amendment actually says that you will be a citizen as long as you are under the jurisdiction of the United States. Many argue that these children that are born to illegal aliens are really still under the jurisdiction of the Mexican government. I think we need to fight that out in the courts. If we lose, then I think we should amend the Constitution because I don't think the 14th amendment was meant to apply to illegal aliens. It was meant to apply to the children of slaves.
----
Rand Paul: If you poll that the idea that the legislature should read the bills before they vote on them, most people tend to agree with that. I'm proposing they wait one day for every 20 pages -- and that usually draws a few chuckles, but at the same time I'm serious. They tell me I need to wait to purchase a gun. I tell them you know what, you need to wait to pass legislation.
----
Rand Paul: So, for example, if tomorrow you said I'm a great humanitarian, I'd love the minimum wage rate to be $20 an hour. Well, you can do that and that will help the few people who keep jobs. But, let's say McDonald's had 20 people at $10 an hour -- now they may have 10 people at $20 an hour. So it really creates unemployment. On the face of it, people will say, "Well, now these people make a better wage." Well, they do, but they don't see the unemployment that was created by doing that.
----
John Hawkins: Now, I've been paying a lot of attention to the left side of the blogosphere and whom they talk about. I've got to tell you, after Sarah Palin, you seem to be the candidate liberals on these blogs are the most terrified of. Why do you think that is? You're public enemy number two I would say right now...

Yes, I know -- I'm bordering on number one some days. I think they do fear a victory for the Tea Party and I'm seen as a victory for the Tea Party. They also want to vilify the Tea Party. They want to make the Tea Party into something that it's not. The Tea Party really is about trying to fix a government that is truly broken and doesn't obey any rules any longer. The things I talk about with the Tea Party, though, when you actually talk about them, you'll find 70 and 80 percent of Democrats actually will agree with the things I'm proposing.

Head over to Right Wing News and learn all about one of the new breed of Conservative candidates.

http://rightwingnews.com/2010/06/the-rand-paul-interview/

George Soros, Obama's Brazilian Oil Man

Last August there was much criticism over the fact that President Obama agreed to give Brazilian Owned Oil Company Petrobras up to $10 Billion Dollars to look for Oil off the Brazil Coast.  At the time it was especially disturbing because the Administration objected to the US Drilling off its own coast, which would have worked toward keeping the price of oil low and help wean us off foreign oil.

Today it is even more disconcerting, Obama's drilling moratorium may have been blocked by a judge today, but Secretary of Interior Salazar intends to announce a new one tomorrow.   And the longer this "moratorium" lasts, the more likely we are to see the Oil Rigs in the gulf move down to Brazil where they are planning to drill for oil in seas twice as deep as the Deepwater Horizon site.

Why would the POTUS pay for a foreign country to drill for oil but object to his own country taking advantage of his own country's resources? And worse why would he fund the oil drilling of another country for it to "steal away" drilling resources from the Gulf sites? Payback.

Last August Ed Morrissey at Hot Air discovered that "coincidentally" just a few days before the announcement of the US Oil Exploration Aid, George Soros the presidential puppet-master, set himself up to make a lot more money from Brazilian Oil Exploration:

His New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.

Soros is taking advantage of the spread between the two types of U.S.-listed Petrobras shares, said Luis Maizel, president of LM Capital Group LLC, which manages about $4 billion. The common shares were 21 percent more expensive than preferred today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. …

Petrobras preferred shares have also a 10 percent additional dividend, said William Landers, a senior portfolio manager for Latin America at Blackrock Inc.

“Given that there will most likely never be a change in control in the company, I see no reason to pay a higher price for the common shares.” Brazil’s government controls Petrobras and has a majority stake of voting shares.

NICE!  Making money on the spread, and putting himself in a position to make more money from higher dividends just before all the big bucks "donation" from President Obama. Soros must be master of the deal or Obama is the master of the quid quo pro.

According to Front Page Magazine, this Petrobras deal was put in place by the President as a nice way to say thank you to Mr Soros.

Now it’s time for Soros to collect on his investment. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Obama administration has committed up to $10 billion to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance oil exploration off of Brazil’s coast.

Yet Obama historically has opposed expanded oil drilling. This was not only a strategic decision, aimed at pleasing the environmental Left, but also a personal choice, since Obama sincerely believes that drilling is deeply destructive to the natural environment. Thus, as a Senator, Obama voted against permitting the U.S. to drill for oil and natural gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the grounds that it would be a crime to despoil such “beautiful real estate.” Similarly, during last year’s presidential campaign, he warned of the “environmental consequences” of oil drilling, and insisted that “we cannot drill our way out of the [energy] problem.”

But apparently George Soros can. The president has elected to help another nation with the same type of drilling that he opposes so vehemently for this country, and the reason seems to be Soros’s $811-millon investment in Petrobras. The company just happens to be the largest holding in Soros’s investment fund. Soros’s connection to the company is no secret; he has been investing in Petrobras since 2007. A profitable venture, Petrobras has estimated recoverable reserves for the so-called Tupi oil field of between 5 and 8 billion barrels. With his billion-dollar loan, Obama has taken patronage politics to striking new level.

The Petrobras loan may be a windfall for Soros and Brazil, but it is a bad deal for the US. The administration is prepared to lend up to $10 billion to a foreign company to drill off its coast, when it could bring in $1.7 trillion in government revenue, as well as create thousands of new jobs, by allowing drilling off the coast of the United States.

....The oil deal stinks for other reasons, as well. For instance, there is the rank hypocrisy of Soros – an enthusiastic proponent of global warming theory and environmental liberalism – investing in the fossil fuels whose use he otherwise condemns – and doing so in part with the aid of taxpayer funds. For years, Soros has urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would punish companies that contribute to global warming. But that didn’t prevent him from plowing money into Petrobras.

The cozy Soros-Obama alliance goes beyond favorable oil deals. It’s also playing a role in the health care debate. Huge demonstrations dedicated to enacting Obama’s universal health care are largely a Soros-financed operation. When tens of thousands of people rallied in the nation’s capital in support of Obama’s health care plan, the demonstrations were organized by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN), a new national grassroots movement of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states encompassing 30 million people dedicated to winning health reform now.

The “grassroots” organization appears to be more like a gang of interconnected ultra-liberal pressure groups. Among the 21 members of its steering committee are such Soros-funded groups as ACORN, MoveOn.org, and the Center for American Progress (CAP), headed by Clinton former chief of staff John Podesta, who also has been a key adviser to Obama. Soros’s charity, the Open Society Institute, in 2007 gave CAP $1.75 million and approved added grants of $1.25 million.

Obama’s collusion with Soros and his agenda-driven squadrons is an unfortunate turn from an administration that entered office promising unprecedented transparency in the White House. Soros certainly did his share for Obama. Now, with his backing for a billion-dollar oil loan to a Brazilian company, the president has proven more generous to Soros than to the American voters who put him in office.

 There is that Old Saying, Payback's a bitch. Obama's ten billion dollar gift to Petrobras along with the drilling moratorium designed to give the Brazil-based company partially owned by his good friend George Soros, proves that sometimes payback is not a bitch, its a wallet fatten-er.

That Stench of Rotting Bull is Just Obama's Oval Office Speech

Putting aside for a second the fact that this speech was given about 50 days late, tonight's oval office speech proved that the President is not ready to be honest with the American people.  For the first 30 days of this crisis, President Obama was ignoring the fact that the crisis existed, and now when he uses the oval office to give the people confidence that he is on top of the problem  he spends more time trying to sell cap and trade than discussing capping the well. Essentially, he is still ignoring the crisis.

Lets take a look at the key points of the President's speech. He begins by trying to convince America that he has been doing a great job at managing the disaster:

"...  I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge - a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice."

Nobel prizes have not been impressive since  Obama recived one for doing nothing and Al Gore got one for a hoax.  The key is how the ideas from those great minds are implemented. The President's management of the crisis has been horrible.  Even the progressive bible  the NY Times trashed Obama's  management of the crisis:

“The information is not flowing,” Senator Nelson said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.”

In other words,  the leadership and management coming from the executive branch of the government has been a disaster.

"Because of our efforts, millions of gallons of oil have already been removed from the water through burning, skimming, and other collection methods. Over five and a half million feet of boom has been laid across the water to block and absorb the approaching oil. We have approved the construction of new barrier islands in Louisiana to try and stop the oil before it reaches the shore, and we are working with Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida to implement creative approaches to their unique coastlines."

A little truth Mr. President?  Only after Bobby Jindal said he was going to build the barrier islands whether they were approved or not, was the barrier island  plan approved.

The  President might have come clean and told us  why the United States refused to accept skimmers from the Dutch, or help from any other country. Maybe he could have explained  why miles of oil boom remain in a Maine warehouse despite the fact that the administration was informed of the supply the third week of May.

"... Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party."

While most people would agree that  BP should be paying  for the damage it caused, (BP has promised that it will),  there is no place in the constitution saying that the President has the power to demand a company set aside money in an escrow account? Nor is there a place saying  the POTUS can demand that the account be administered by a third party.  To be honest that clause could be hiding  right next to the clause saying  the government can force citizens to purchase health insurance.

The  demand for BP to freeze money in an escrow account shows a lack of understanding of capitalism. Not allowing BP to spend those dollars on growing its business is limiting the company's ability to generate the profits  necessary to pay its obligation to the victims of the disaster.

"... Already, I have issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue."

The drilling freeze is like closing down GM the first time one of its cars is involved in an accident.  Wood Mackenzie Research and Consulting published a report saying the six month moratorium will result in job losses of over 120,000 by 2014. The gulf region is already suffering, as is the American economy, the embargo does nothing but make it worse.

"One place we have already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service. Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility - a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.

When Ken Salazar became my Secretary of the Interior, one of his very first acts was to clean up the worst of the corruption at this agency. But it's now clear that the problems there ran much deeper, and the pace of reform was just too slow."

The problem was much worse than the President described.  The Minerals Management Service scandal  broke in September 2008. This crisis did not happen at the beginning of Obama's administration but  there was a sixteen month window between the inauguration and the oil spill. This was Obama's problem not Bush's.

... a larger lesson is that no matter how much we improve our regulation of the industry, drilling for oil these days entails greater risk. After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserves. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean - because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.

 Mr President you are lying. A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) dated October 2009 proves Obama is lying. The report shows the  amount of  recoverable oil in the U.S. to be 167 billion barrels of oil, not the 21 billion figure pushed by the Democrats.  If exploited that 167 billion barrels could replace America's  imports from OPEC countries for more than 75 years.

That same report shows that America's combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal supply is the largest on Earth.  America's recoverable resources are far larger than those of Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th), and Canada (6th) combined. Those estimates don't include America's  immense oil shale deposits.

"The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude."

That's true. China is investing in clean energy, at the same time they are exploiting every possible opportunity to exploit their own resources.  The United States is funding part of their green job investment with the interest payments from the money that China is loaning us.

If the President and his progressive allies allowed the U.S. to exploit our own resources, there would be no need to  spend that $1 billion on foreign oil.

"...The transition away from fossil fuels will take some time, but over the last year and a half, we have already taken unprecedented action to jumpstart the clean energy industry. As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows, and small businesses are making solar panels. Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient. Scientists and researchers are discovering clean energy technologies that will someday lead to entire new industries."

 Here is the  truth about alternate energy Obama forgets to mention. With the exception of  nuclear energy, no alternate energy has been developed that can run this nation as effectively or efficiently as fossil fuels. Nothing even in the same neighborhood. If the economy is "switched over" before a legitimate alternative is developed, the catastrophically higher prices will collapse the economy.

The President is a recent convert to nuclear power, but not a serious one. He has not allowed the approval process to be streamlined, or a way around the objections of his environmental buddies. So even the one real alternative energy cannot be exploited quickly.

"...Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill - a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America's businesses. 

Now, there are costs associated with this transition. And some believe we can't afford those costs right now. I say we can't afford not to change how we produce and use energy - because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater."

The bill passed by the House represents the largest tax increase in American history. It also uses  government regulation  essentially  take over every industry that uses fossil fuel (wait, every industry uses fossil fuel).

More than Obamacare, cap and trade represents a takeover of the American economy, that will retard economic growth, and push the already bankrupt federal budget over the edge.

 "Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development - and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development."

And some just want to know where the government is going to get the money? It looks like China will get more US interest payments so they can invest in green energy.

"The same thing was said about our ability to harness the science and technology to land a man safely on the surface of the moon."

Holy Cow, what an original thought!. "If we can land a man on the moon, why cant we find green energy?" Maybe I can use that line for a future post. I will  have to remember that one.  As I will remember the President's entire speech.  Who knew that one Obama could fit so much bull into just eighteen minutes. The President may get a slight bump from this, but within a week, the stench of the rotting Presidential bull will drive Americans away from the lies he told tonight.