With much respect, and in response to:
Sam on November 24th, 2007 at 9:14 am
commented on
Bush and the writing of HISTORY

even if bush wanted, he can not take the oil from kuwait, since kuwait is an ally of saudi arabia which in turn is an ally of the US (how good or bad is debateable).The fact remains: If Bush would consider the option, he would have the entire world against him. So it’s easier to make it around the backdoot, secure the oil in Iraq, have a permanent puppet regime there and with it a presence and then slowly but surely sack syria, iran, and other potential enemies so Saudi Arabia is surrounded. and then he can put pressure on them.
Further more Iraq is not to underestimate with it’s contribution to the oil market. While its proven oil reserves of 112 billion barrels ranks Iraq second in the work behind Saudi Arabia<- source: US Energy Information Administration (EIA). (unless they are just doing liberal propaganda)

Love ya to death Sam… but gotta clue you in on this…
Because I have heard these arguments for years… WAR FOR OIL, etc., I wanted to respond to this with its own Post.

“he can not take the oil from kuwait”
Do you think if we wanted we could not take Saudi Arabia, too? I’m not trying to be confrontational, but after years of being called imperialist, war mongers – and worse, I find it hard that even the nuts on the left, think Saudi Arabia would be much of a battle.

We FREED KUWAIT.

We are trying to FREE IRAQ…

“he would have the entire world against him”
From all the nuts on the left and the mainstream “Media” … I thought, the entire world IS against us…

“permanent puppet regime”
Might want to tell that to “The millions of Iraqis who came out for the elections were voting their hopes for an end to violence and occupation, and a better life”
“surely sack syria, iran, and other potential enemies”
So, your saying we went to war in iraq for OIL, and that our intention was to also take out Syria and Iran, just so we can pressure Saudi Arabia? Damn… Seems like taking the long way around to get there, if you ask me… Think we could take SA pretty easily, if that is what we actually intended.
< sure to get comments on that last statement… ; ) >

Let me tell you how the Democrats and the American left look at the energy business. The thing that you have to understand is, it ain’t about America. All this talk about alternative energy and hybrids, that’s not about making America better. All this talk and conversation is not about making America cleaner.

The way they think:
Power = votes; getting as many people in their base to vote for them as possible, as many independents.

By keeping the oil that we have, that we could drill and would decrease dependence on foreign oil. By keeping our oil in the ground and untapped, they become heroes to the environmentalists. Then when the shortages, the necessity to import and that suppression of supply is depressed, what happens to price? Look at the price of oil now.
Some of it’s speculation; some of it’s supply and demand. The price is going to continue to go up. And what happens then? When the low supply, the artificially low supply — there needn’t be a low supply given our reserves that are untapped — that low supply drives up the price, they become the heroes of the poor and the freezing.

How do they do that?
Because they then attack Big Oil for gouging. And, of course, everybody hates Big Oil, just like they hate the boss.

So you’ve got people in the Northeast who use home heating oil and the price is going up because we’ve got an artificially depressed supply, thanks to Democrats. Those people have to pay through the roof for their heating oil, and the Democrats become their champions. They don’t solve any problem unless Hugo Chavez comes to the rescue and sells it cheap.

So the very people that are causing rising prices benefit twice from causing it.

A: the environmentalists love them and give them lots of money, and
B: the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the freezing, think the Democrats are the ones standing up for them.

That’s the way they look at it.

They’re not interested in improving America’s lot in the world, particularly not when a Republican is in the White House.

Whether people want to admit it or not, fuel and oil are the — well, oil is the fuel of democracy.

You take oil out of our equation, like fossil fuels out of our equation, out of our economy, and you tell me the number of businesses that are going to survive as they currently are.
You talk about staggering, and yet there are people out there that are attempting to get this done over time, not overnight, but over time, and that’s not the answer to our problems.

And of course all of this business of conservation and hybrid cars, it’s all based on the fact that, “We don’t have much oil left, we’re going to have to do something fast.” It’s just the opposite. There’s all kinds of oil out there so then the environmentalists say, “Well, it’s polluting, it’s dirty, it’s like filthy,” blah, blah, blah, “it’s exploitative,” all of that, and yet…
it is what our society is built on, and the world’s as well.
——————————–
“A Bottomless Beer Mug: Why the World is not Running Out of Oil.”
Just an excerpt, to get ya started…

“Peter O’Dell of Rotterdam’s Erasmus University points out that since 1971, over 1500 billion barrels of oil have been added to our worldwide reserves. Over the same 35-year period, under 800 billion barrels were consumed. One can argue for a world which has been running into oil rather than running out of it. What makes the estimates go up continuously is a combination of economics and innovation.” Let me give you a word for that. It’s called capitalism. “The IEA explains the process this way. Reserves are constantly revised in line with new discoveries, changes in prices, and technological advances. These revisions invariably add to the reserve base. A few decades ago the average oil recovery rate from reservoirs was 20%. Thanks to remarkable advances in technology this has risen to about 35% today.” Let me give you another word for “advances in technology.” It’s called “capitalism.” Capitalism is out there finding all this oil. He also says this under the section called The New Age of Discovery. “But there is a more practical fallacy embedded in the gloomy forecast, too. ‘I challenge the idea that the era of discovery is over in oil,’ says one expert. Thanks to the Cold War and other political constraints on western investment, much of the world has yet to be explored with the aid of the latest technologies. Most of the oil still undiscovered thanks to the Cold War and other political constraints on western investment, called environmentalism. New word for political constraints on western investment, environmentalism. Already, the industry, (the oil industry), is exploring underwater at depths that were unimaginable a decade or two ago. In the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, oil rigs now float atop 3,000 meters, or 10,000 feet of water. These marvels of engineering [capitalism] are stuffed with the latest in robotics, electronic sensors, and satellite equipment using fancy multilateral wells that twist and turn in all directions, they can hit giant underwater oil pockets miles away from the rigs.”

There’s more oil being discovered out there. It’s just a question of profitability and getting it, and eliminating the political constraints of western investment, i.e., environmentalism. Because that’s what’s holding us back.

There’s so much oil out there that we have enough that we could go get on our own, that we wouldn’t need to be nearly as dependent on the Saudis and other foreign sources as we are.

But, it is my contention, that the people on the left in this country who are bemoaning our dependence on foreign oil actually wish to encourage it.

They want us held hostage, particularly when a Republican is in the White House.

Thanks for contributing SAM, welcome anytime…
Warmest Regards,
PL

TRUTH about THANKSGIVING; what they don’t teach anymore.

The True Story of Thanksgiving.

The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century. The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs.

A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences.

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.

Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from?

From the Bible.

The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.

The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford’s detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves.

And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford’s own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!

This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end.

Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.

Here is the part that has been omitted:

The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it.

Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.

That’s right.

Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism.

And what happened? It didn’t work! Surprise, surprise, huh?

What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation!

But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently.

What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.

“The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,” Bradford wrote. “For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.”

Why should you work for other people when you can’t work for yourself? What’s the point?

The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.

Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?

This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”

Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s?

Yes.

Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph’s suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the “seven years of plenty” and the “Earth brought forth in heaps.” (Gen. 41:47)

In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.

So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the “Great Puritan Migration.”

Now, you probably haven’t read this — and if not, why not? I mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience than this?

Thanksgiving, in other words, is not thanks to the Indians, and it’s not thanks to William Bradford. It’s not thanks to the merchants of London. Thanksgiving is thanks to God, pure and simple.

Go read the first Thanksgiving proclamation from George Washington and you’ll get the point.

Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789

The word “God” is mentioned in that first Thanksgiving proclamation more times… If you read it aloud to an ACLU member, you’ll get thrown in jail, but that’s what the first Thanksgiving was all about.

 Something to be THANKFUL for; GOD BLESS AMERICA.

“Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor — and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be — That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks — for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation — for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility [sic], union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed — for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted — for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions — to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually — to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed — to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn [sic] kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord — To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease [sic] of science among them and us — and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York
the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

George Washington

You want me to count the number of references to God?

How about just the first line?

“Whereas, it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and to humbly implore His protection and favor.”

Let’s see. One, two, three, four references in just that first clause. What a fanatic, George Washington!

That’s the first Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789. The real story of Thanksgiving — and by the way, the thanks was given to God, not the Indians.

When Venezuela’s dictator, Hugo Chavez, moved his country away from market-based capitalism to socialism, it was only a matter of time before Venezuela’s economy would tank.

Reuters story:

Food shortages are now a part of life [for Hugo’s subjects]. Workers leave jobs for hours at a time searching for milk, cooking oil — even beef. The shortages come despite the fact that Venezuela’s economy is “overheating” and the country is awash in record oil revenues.

(The revenues are being confiscated, by the way, and redistributed.) — Sound familiar Democrats?

Government minions assign blame elsewhere. They say food shortages are the result of evil businessmen hoarding food supplies. (And George Bush!)

They also blame poor people for rising demand. (And George Bush!)

And it’s not that bad — they claim that the media is just exaggerating. (Except about George Bush.)

But despite price controls setting the price of powdered milk at 6 bucks a can, the stuff sells for twice that. The black market’s growing, supplying consumers with scarce goods — even as Hugo’s government subsidizes supermarkets. Some stores are rationing food as in Cuba and the old Soviet Union. The government’s seizing food from businesses that they say are hoarding supplies.

This is just the beginning. Things are going to get a lot worse.

But that won’t stop American liberals running to Venezuela to kiss Hugo‘s ring. Or, sadly, from demanding that we embrace the same economic model — tax, confiscate, redistribute, and blame (Bush) — that causes massive human misery every time it’s tried.

By the way… Hugo — Have you seen him lately?

He is not starving!

Reference:
Reuters: Venezuelans Scramble for Food Amid Oil Opulence

It’s pretty much agreed now: The American military is winning the war in Iraq — they’ve all but driven Al-Qaeda out of Baghdad and some other provinces.

The troop surge that Democrat leaders gleefully predicted would fail — worked.

It’s worked so well — without much coverage — some of our troops are beginning to return home.

As a consequence, the nuts on the left has descended further into madness.

Case in point: a demonstration at the Port of Olympia in Washington State.

Police had to use pepper spray to contain a crowd of about 150 anti-war nuts who were trying to block shipments of our returning troops’ equipment! This is equipment coming back from Iraq! The nuts tried to block truck convoys, poured cement over railroad tracks at the port; they threw rocks at cops! Forty-three of these nuts were arrested and released. Local prosecutors debate if they’ll face any charges at all.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi held a vote open long enough to arm-twist sufficient Democrats to support their latest anti-war measure. This one would hold up funds for our troops still fighting in Iraq — unless President Bush orders them “to surrender to Al-Qaeda”, stop winning, admit defeat, and retreat home.

I’m not kidding about this.

Anti-war liberals — elected and otherwise — have descended into utter madness!

Now, this is paramount to mental derangement — insanity. If our security weren’t at stake, it would almost be… laughable.