Friday, May 23, 2008

T.F.O.I.

Project Objective


Terror-Free Oil Initiative is dedicated to encouraging Americans to buy fuel that originated from countries that do not export or finance terrorism.


We promote those companies that acquire their fuel supply from nations outside the Middle East and expose those companies that do not.


We educate the American public about the oil-terrorism connection and press those in power to take the necessary steps to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Again I hear the notion of penalizing gas companies for their 10-15 profit margin that they have always had.....SUPPLY AND DEMAND DAMN IT!

It gets really old hearing people wanting to hit up the Oil companies and steal their profits....supply....demand....I guess nobody has heard of this, or conveniently forgets.

Last I checked Nelson D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil) helped build our country to what it is today by means of capitalism spawning the industrial revolution. Vaulting us to the top of the world economies.

Here are some consumption numbers from 1980-2006...




I don't know about you...but I would be really pissed if I put in thousands of dollars of investments into a company for the government to take away my share profits...HORSESHIT!

FYI...

The laws of supply and demand state that the equilibrium market price and quantity of a commodity is at the intersection of consumer demand and producer supply.

Quantity supplied equals quantity demanded, that is, equilibrium.
Equilibrium implies that price and quantity will remain there if it begins there.

If the price for a good is below equilibrium, consumers demand more of the good than producers are prepared to supply. This defines a shortage of the good. A shortage results in the price being bid up. Producers will increase the price until it reaches equilibrium.

If the price for a good is above equilibrium, there is a surplus of the good. Producers are motivated to eliminate the surplus by lowering the price. The price falls until it reaches equilibrium.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Obama says Bush falsely accuses him of appeasement

My favorite quote from the article is from press secretary Dana Perino. ----- Mark
"I understand when you're running for office you sometimes think the world revolves around you. That is not always true. And it is not true in this case."


WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama accused President Bush on Thursday of launching a "false political attack" with a comment about appeasing terrorists and radicals.

The Illinois senator interpreted the remark as a slam against him but the White House denied that Bush's words were in any way directed at Obama, who has said as president he would be willing to personally meet with Iran's leaders and those of other regimes the United States has deemed rogue.

In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Obama responded with a statement, seizing on Bush's remarks even as it was unclear to whom the president was referring.

"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack," Obama said in the statement his aides distributed. "George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

The White House said Bush's comment wasn't a reference to Obama.

"It is not," press secretary Dana Perino told reporters in Israel. "I would think that all of you who cover these issues and have for a long time have known that there are many who have suggested these types of negotiations with people that the president, President Bush, thinks that we should not talk to. I understand when you're running for office you sometimes think the world revolves around you. That is not always true. And it is not true in this case."

The debate over whether the president should directly negotiate with rogue leaders has been one of the most prominent issue differences in the race for the Democratic nomination. Obama says he would meet with heads of state in places like Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Rival Hillary Rodham Clinton says those meetings could be used for propaganda and her first response will be outreach through other diplomatic channels.

As Obama inches closer to clinching the Democratic nomination, he's spent far more time assailing Republicans and the GOP's nominee-in- waiting, John McCain, than he has going after Clinton. By assailing Bush, Obama sent a signal that he's strong enough to take on the sitting president and the incumbent party—and counter the notion fueled by Clinton that she would be the stronger Democratic general election candidate.

Bush, for his part, mostly refrained from directly injecting himself into the presidential race through the Republican primary. When McCain clinched the nomination in March, however, the two appeared together in the White House Rose Garden. Since then, he has talked up McCain frequently.

When it comes to the Democratic race, the president typically avoids naming names but he has publicly disagreed with the positions of the Democratic front-runners.

He has, for example, strongly disagreed with Obama's expressed willingness to meet the leaders of U.S. adversaries such as Cuba and Iran. And, McCain has criticized Obama directly and repeatedly for saying that he would meet with Cuba's leader, Raul Castro, without preconditions.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Defending Big Oil

With gas prices topping four dollars a gallon in some regions of the country, now may not be the best time to say something positive about "big oil," but here goes anyway.
Where is it written that the cost for a product or service should be frozen in place and in time, never to rise again, or to rise at a pace commensurate with our incomes? People who think this way know little to nothing about supply and demand and less than nothing about the profit motive. That's because at least three generations have been raised on the notion of entitlement, and when one feels entitled to something, one believes someone else should pay.
Senate Democrats last week sought to ingratiate themselves with voters, while doing nothing to produce more energy, with a familiar attack on "big oil." They want to repeal $17 billion in tax breaks for the oil companies over 10 years and on top of that impose a windfall profit tax on companies that don't invest in new energy sources. This is political expediency at its worst.
Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron, told me it's a myth that oil companies are not investing in new energy sources. He says last year alone, Chevron spent $20 billion exploring new sources of energy.
Robertson said President Bush's trip this week to Saudi Arabia is "highly embarrassing" because he is "calling on the Saudis to produce more oil when we are not doing it ourselves." The last refinery built in America was in 1976. Tighter government regulations are the main reason. That's how unserious we are about our energy "crisis."
Robertson said there would be plenty of oil available to the United States if the oil companies were allowed to get it: "Eighty-five percent of offshore oil is off-limits." Responding to objections to offshore drilling by environmentalists and their allies in Congress, Robertson noted that some of the strongest pro-environment nations in Europe - he mentions Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom - lease offshore locations for oil exploration. The technology has become so good, he said, that during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, "one thousand offshore wells were destroyed (in the Gulf of Mexico), but not one leaked." Australia, he said, has allowed offshore drilling for 40 years without any environmental damage.
In addition to the sinking value of the dollar, here is the main problem: According to the Department of Energy, U.S. oil production has fallen approximately 40 percent since 1985, while the consumption of oil has grown by more than 30 percent.
According to government estimates, there is enough oil in areas accessible to America - 112 billion barrels - to power more than 60 million cars for 60 years. The Outer Continental Shelf alone contains an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Had President Clinton not vetoed exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in 1995, when oil was $19 a barrel, America would currently be receiving more than 1 million barrels a day domestically, all of it taken by better technology than existed more than 30 years ago. That was when the Alaskan pipeline was built despite protests from environmentalists who claimed it would destroy the caribou. It didn't, but the environmentalists are back with the same discredited arguments. Because most of the oil remains "off-limits," we are becoming more dependent on foreign oil.
No, we can't "drill our way out" of our addiction to oil, but we can make the transition to other energy sources easier while lessening our dependence on foreign oil and propping up dictators who use our money to subsidize terrorists. A slow transition will also give us time to consider more fuel-efficient cars and greater use of public transportation, even bicycles for short trips. Bikes would help more of us lose weight and get in shape. A friend bikes to work every day, saving gas, car payments, insurance and repair costs.
The specter of a president of the United States going hat-in-hand to Saudi Arabia to plead for more (and more expensive) oil from the dictatorship that underwrites an extreme form of Islam that is out to kill us is obscene. President Bush ought to be rallying Americans, not embracing people who don't allow women to drive cars.