Let’s just look at a few drastic examples as to what has happened during the past year:
1. Do we all remember when gasoline prices at the pumps throughout the country jumped to over $4.00 per gallon, based on oil prices of up to $147.00/barrel this past summer during June and July? The ‘experts’ forecasted that these prices would be with us for a while and might even go up to over $5.00/gallon or $200.00/barrel. This was immediately responded to by calls for more domestic oil drilling and building of nuclear power plants among other such proposals. Energy independence was a major campaign element propagated by both Presidential candidates and many others as well. Bumper stickers called for “Drill, Baby, Drill” and the only recognizable action taken during this time was the lifting of an Executive Order by President Bush to allow Offshore Drilling for oil. Well, five months have passed since then and what do we have? We have seen oil being sold for about $40.00/barrel and a gallon of gasoline has sunk to about $1.75. And guess what: There is no more talk about offshore oil drilling or building of power plants. The topic ‘High Energy Costs’ cannot even be found anywhere in newspapers and magazines let alone being discussed on television. It simply has gone away and is no longer a priority in peoples minds.
2. The war in Iraq was a major element during this year’s election cycle and every candidate had a plan as to how to end the war in Iraq. Some even had specific timetables. Then-Senator Barack Obama committed to a complete troop withdrawal in sixteen months should he be elected President. He told everybody that the ‘surge’ had failed and that he had been against the war from the beginning, newspapers listed daily casualty figures, the Iraqi government was non-functional and on and on. And where are we now? The surge has obviously worked, as a country, Iraq is stabilizing and becomes more and more self-sustaining, American troops are being withdrawn out of cities and there is a total withdrawal agreement in place ending in 2011. Things have gone so well in Iraq, that while nobody wants to call it a victory for the United States military yet, the topic is no longer an issue of daily articles or debates on television. This all has happened in a matter of several months during this passing year, it’s almost as if the war was over.
3. The other hot topic in times past was “Global Warming” and the Presidential candidates all lined up in favor of tackling the problems caused by this man-made and world-destroying ‘fact’. Now then, where has this high priority monster gone? Statisticians and record keepers are slowly coming out with facts stating that increases in global warming have not occurred in the past several years and the number of scientists no longer fanatically endorsing this phenomenon is growing by hundreds. In fact, some even recognize that the sun has become less active in terms of flares and that we might be in for a period of ‘global cooling’. We do not believe that it will be difficult to convince residents in Houston and New Orleans when they experience snowfalls in their towns in December that global warming is not really taken place at this time. This does, of course, not mean that this issue has gone away, absolutely not. The climate change enthusiasts are attending currently a major international conference in Poland where they debate and discuss proposals how to fight global warming and climate changes in the near future. These junkets are just too important for these climate doomsayers to postpone them. We wonder if these people feel deep inside a sense of irrationality when they discuss these topics while the outside temperatures are at or below freezing in Poland. But as a daily ‘doomsday prognostication’, global warming is pretty well gone away as a high priority for the worlds population. Unfortunately, the only people who still firmly believe that they have to take drastic action against global warming and climate change are politicians, better known as our elected officials. They are undeterred by realities and facts and they keep on pushing to pass more laws restricting lifestyle freedoms of their constituents.
Now then, what has caused all this, the changes in priorities? It is called economics also known as a downturn in the well-being of people in general. Even though, there were signs of economic troubles on the horizon for many months, in fact, almost since last year in the housing market, it was not until mid September – a mere three months ago – that the problems suddenly surfaced when the credit markets dried up and the Federal government asked Congress for a 700 billion dollar emergency fund to free up the credit by providing funds for banks and similar institutions. This was followed by additional funding requests for insurance giant AIG and also Citibank as well as the three major American auto makers in Detroit. Companies across the labor spectrum announced major cuts in employment driving the national unemployment rate steeply upward with no end in sight. Banks have failed in great numbers and in all, the economy is currently topic Number One! Nothing else matters right now and will not even get honorable mention in the media in the near future with the sole exception of the Obama Presidency, starting on January 20, 2009. Now then, is there a message in all this? We think there is and it is called the pocketbook of the American people. People have their priority and it is the well-being of their immediate family! We do not proclaim to know what lies in the future for this country but we would hope that individuals would learn at least one lesson and it is called “Putting money away for a rainy day”. In other words, get off the credit lifestyle and cut back some, get away from the instant gratification of purchasing whatever is desired and instead earn the money before you buy. It could be a great New Years resolution, we think.
Changing Priorities – Real or Political? is a post from: Common Sense University
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]]>The Ayatollah Khomeini installed a regime in Iran which is best described as Islamofascist. It has followed, in every major detail, the model laid down by Hitler and Mussolini in the 1920s and ’30s. It is a single party regime, and a dictator makes all the key decisions. There are today endless articles in the press about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current president of Iran, but Iranian presidents come and go. The successor to the Ayatollah Khomeini, Ali Khamenei, has the title of Supreme Leader. He is the only person who really matters in Iran. He makes all the crucial decisions. The Revolutionary Guard Corps reports directly to him. Furthermore, if you watch Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous 1935 film Triumph of the Will, about a National Socialist Party day in Nuremberg, full of “Sieg Heils” and programmed events, you’ll see the similarity to rallies today in Tehran where they gather tens of thousands of people to chant “Death to America.” And like the Nazis, the Iranians mean it.
My favorite response to people who say, “Why don’t we just sit down and talk with the Iranians?” is to remind them of the movie Goldfinger. There’s a wonderful scene in the middle of the movie when Sean Connery as James Bond is spread-eagled on a sheet of gold, a laser beam is cutting through the gold sheet and about to slice him in half, and Gert Fröbe as Goldfinger is standing up on a balcony looking down at him. Bond looks up and asks, “What is this Goldfinger? Do you expect me to talk?” And Goldfinger replies, “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” That’s exactly the Iranian attitude.
In fact, we have been talking to the Iranians, almost non-stop, for 30 years. There isn’t an American president from Jimmy Carter to the present who has not authorized negotiations with Iran. The classic case occurred during the Clinton administration. We ended all kinds of sanctions against Iran, let all kinds of Iranians into the U.S. for the first time since the 1970s, had sporting matches with the Iranians, hosted Iranian cultural events, and unfroze Iranian bank accounts. Then President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright started publicly apologizing to Iran for this and that. But when all was said and done, Ali Khamenei reminded everyone that Iran is in a state of war with the U.S., and that was the end of negotiations. This is what has happened every single time we have tried talking to or appeasing Iran.
Einstein’s definition of a madman is somebody who keeps doing the same thing over and over while hoping for different results. Only a madman can believe that negotiating with the Iranians will produce some result different from what we’ve had now for 30 years, including very recently under the current administration. But many continue to believe it.
There is a striking tendency among people in modern Western governments not to recognize the existence of evil in the world. My professional career has largely been spent studying evil. My Ph.D. is in Modern European History, and I studied fascism. Before that I was research assistant for a historian named George Mosse, who wrote books on National Socialism. People from my generation studied these things because we were trying desperately to understand how men like Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin came to power, and why nobody saw it coming and understood what was at stake. Why was there the humiliation of Munich and then the Nazi invasion of Poland before an appeasement government in Britain fell and Winston Churchill came to power? Why did it require Pearl Harbor for the U.S. to enter World War II? Could we get to the point where we understood these evil regimes so well that when the next one came along we would see it coming and stop it in its tracks? But over the past 30 years we have seen the same situation play out with Iran, and still we dream of negotiation.
In Natan Sharansky’s useful formulation, if you want to know how a country will behave internationally, look at the way it treats its own people. The Iranian regime treats its people with total contempt. Consider its treatment of women. Although you will never hear the American women’s rights movement complain about it, women in Iran are officially worth half a man. It is in Iran’s Constitution. If a woman who is pregnant with a male fetus gets killed in an automobile accident, Sharia law requires the guilty party in the other car to pay a full fine for the fetus and only half that fine for the woman. This carries through every aspect of Iranian society. Women can’t own or dispose of property. If a woman’s husband dies, the family of the husband disposes of his estate. That’s the contempt that awaits us if the Iranians have their way. In fact, they view the entire non-Muslim world as worth even less than Muslim women.
An Implacable Foe
The U.S. has much to learn about operating in the Middle East. Consider our history with Iraq. We went to war in 1991 to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Nobody in the Middle East thought that we had assembled a coalition of 500,000 soldiers just for that reason. They took it for granted that we were going to destroy Saddam Hussein, remove his regime, and replace it with something more civilized. That was true even of the Saudis. People who were at the highest levels of the first Bush administration have told me that Saudi Arabia was begging us to go to Baghdad even though publicly they were saying that we should stop at the borders of Kuwait. Yet stop we did. Even worse, President Bush the elder said how wonderful it would be if the Shiites and the Kurds would rise up against Saddam and liberate the country themselves. The Kurds and Shiites took this as an open invitation and a promise of American support if they did that. So they rose up, we didn’t lift a finger for them, and they were massacred. In light of this, it was less than smart for American policy makers to believe in 2003, when we went into Iraq for the second time, that most Iraqis would trust us.
Look also at recent American policy toward Iran. Since 2001, Iran has been identified as part of the “axis of evil” and branded as the world’s greatest sponsor of international terrorism. The Soviets always used to say, “If you say A, you have to do B.” That is, if you accept certain kinds of information, that drives you to act. But we have not acted against the Iranian regime, even though, as luck would have it, Iran is tailor-made for the same political strategy that toppled the Soviet empire. If you stop to consider that we brought down that empire with the active support of maybe five or ten percent of its people, how could we possibly fail to bring down the regime in Iran-a country where we know from the regime’s own polls that upwards of 70 percent of the people want an end to their government? But the Iranians, too, have been living in that part of the world and have seen American promises come to nothing. The Iranian people are waiting to see some kind of real action by the U.S. to support them against Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, because they know that the same thing will happen to them that happened to the Iraqi Kurds and Shiites if we are not there actively supporting them. Nor do I mean with ground troops. We should support democratic revolution in Iran.
The bottom line is that Iran is our principal enemy in the Middle East, and perhaps in the entire world. It is also a terribly vulnerable regime, and it knows that-which is why it makes up stories about airplanes and missiles that it doesn’t have. As for the question of nuclear weapons, it seems hard to imagine that Iran does not already have them. Iranians are not stupid, and they have been at this for a minimum of 20 years in a world where almost every major component needed for a nuclear weapon-not to mention old nuclear weapons-are for sale. A lot of these components are for sale nearby in Pakistan. And if the Iranians do have a weapon, it is impossible to imagine that, at a moment of crisis, they will not use it. The point is, we have an implacable enemy which has no intention of negotiating a settlement with us. They want us dead or dominated, just as our enemies did in the 1930s and ’40s. You can’t make deals with a regime like that.
Our choices with regard to Iran are to challenge them directly and win this war now, to do so only after they kill a lot more of us in some kind of attack, or to surrender. There is no painless way out, and the longer we wait, the greater the pain is going to be.
Understanding Iran, Part 2 of 2 is a post from: Common Sense University
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]]>The following first part is adapted from a speech delivered by Michael Ledeen.
MICHAEL LEDEEN is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributing editor at National Review Online. Previously, he served in the White House as a national security advisor and in the Departments of Defense and State. He is author of more than 20 books, including The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are As Timely and Important Today As Five Centuries Ago, Tocqueville on American Character: Why Tocqueville’s Brilliant Exploration of the American Spirit Is As Vital and Important Today As It Was Nearly Two Hundred Years Ago, Debacle: Carter and the Fall of the Shah, and Universal Fascism. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the American Spectator, International Economy, Commentary, and the Washington Times.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at sea on August 4, 2008, aboard the Regent Seven Seas Mariner, during the Hillsdale College “North to Alaska” cruise.
Understanding Iran
IF YOU READ the news carefully, you will find a notable story about Iran every morning. Nine times out of ten it is hilarious. Today’s Iran story is that the head of its armed forces announced that it has a new missile with a range of 300 kilometers or more, manufactured with technology that has never been used before in the history of the world. There is neither a picture of the missile nor any information about the nature of the missile, and, in fact, you can be quite sure that there is no such missile at all.
Just within the last month Iran released a photograph of a missile launch that initially caused great consternation in the West. It showed four missiles being launched, more or less simultaneously, with wonderful contrails behind them. This was supposedly a new intermediate range missile that could hit almost any target in the Middle East, including U.S. military bases. Upon examination, that photograph turned out to be a double phony. First, there was only one missile, and the Iranians replicated it to make it seem as if there were four. Second, the missile was two years old and was not an intermediate range missile at all. A few days later, the Iranians announced that they had a fighter airplane and produced a photo of it. Upon examination, this airplane turned out to be a plastic toy made by Mattel with Iranian markings drawn on it.
So the first thing to understand about Iran is that it is a country where lies and deception are a way of life.
Another important thing to know has to do with the seriousness of Iran as a potential military enemy. In that regard, consider a story that originally appeared in U.S. News & World Report about two years ago. It concerned a joint Special Forces team of five or six Iraqis and five or six Americans that was patrolling the Iran-Iraq border because the Iranians had been smuggling improvised explosive devices and Iran-trained terrorists into Iraq. Off in the distance, this team spotted an Iranian military officer in uniform on Iraqi soil. They went after him and he quickly hopped back onto the Iranian side. As the team continued along the border, they spotted either the same person or another Iranian officer in uniform and again they went after him. This time he didn’t move, and when the Americans started talking to him, the Iraqis with them disappeared and the Americans realized they had been surrounded by 15 or 20 armed Iranian soldiers. The Iranian officer told them to lay down their weapons or they would be shot. In response, the young captain leading the Americans told his men to open fire. Eleven of the Iranians were killed, no American was injured, and the remaining Iranians fled across the border.
This tells us, first, that the Iranians are tricky. They had arranged with the Iraqi Special Forces to turn the Americans over to be held as hostages, and then lured the Americans into an ambush. But it also tells us that they are not really prepared to fight-which is, in fact, what our forces have found in Iraq. We have captured and killed an enormous number of Iranian intelligence and military officers, and very rarely have they ever offered any serious resistance.
The Terror Connection
The simple facts regarding Iran are easy to understand. We are dealing with a regime that came to power in 1979, when the Iranian revolution overthrew the Shah. Immediately thereafter, Iran declared war against the United States, branding us “The Great Satan.” The Iranians have been at war against us for 30 years, and prior to 9/11 the Iranian regime was directly or indirectly responsible for the murder of more Americans than any other country or organization in the world. It also may well be that the Iranian regime was involved in 9/11. In this regard, I call your attention to one of the most forgotten documents in contemporary American history. In the fall of 1998, the American government indicted Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. There is a paragraph in the indictment that reads as follows:
Al Qaeda forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group, Hezbollah, for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.
When you read the newspapers nowadays you find every now and then someone saying that there is no real evidence that Iran is supporting Al Qaeda. More often than not, this person immediately goes on to say that Iran would not ever support Al Qaeda because Iran is Shiite and Al Qaeda is Sunni. This is nonsense.
The current chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives was once asked the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, and he didn’t know the answer. The difference boils down to a historical disagreement about the proper line of succession to the prophet Mohammed. Sunnis and Shiites have been arguing about this since the Middle Ages, and it has played itself out into a very interesting disagreement over the relationship between mosque and state.
In short, Sunnis have long believed that it is legitimate for religious leaders to function in government since Mohammed’s successor is known and is with us, whereas Shiites have traditionally believed that the rightful successor to Mohammed is yet to come, and that therefore no religious leader is entitled to sit in a position of secular power. This is why the Ayatollah Sistani, who is the highest ranking and the most esteemed Shiite figure in Iraq, does not go to Parliament. He and other Iraqi Shiite clergy express their opinions about religious, political, and moral issues, but they don’t sit in positions of political power.
This Shiite view on religion and politics broke down in Iran with the revolution of 1979. When the Ayatollah Khomeini took over in that revolution, he said that not only was it allowable for religious leaders to govern civil society, but indeed it was now mandatory. Khomeini’s most revealing line, spoken on the airplane from France to Iran when he was about to seize power, came in answer to a question about what his rule would mean for Iran. Khomeini said, in effect, that he didn’t give a damn about Iran. He was leading all of Islam, not Iran, he said, and he would happily sacrifice everyone in Iran if he could accomplish the global triumph of Islam.
So Sunnis and Shiites traditionally have this theological disagreement, but it isn’t an unbridgeable chasm, as Khomeini’s example shows. And in the history of the Iranian revolution, Sunnis and Shiites have worked mostly together from the very beginning-indeed, they worked together even before that revolution began.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was created in the early 1970s in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, and was trained by Yasser Arafat’s ¬Al Fatah. Arafat was a super-Sunni who came out of the Muslim Brotherhood. In other words, today’s most hardcore armed Shiite organization was trained by hardcore Sunnis. Sunnis and Shiites worked hand-in-glove to create a terrorist alliance that overthrew the Shah, took power in Iran, and has waged war against the U.S. ever since.
The lesson here is that when you hear somebody say that Sunnis and Shiites can’t work together, you should run, because those people don’t know what they are talking about.
Understanding Iran, Part 1 of 2 is a post from: Common Sense University
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And the Democrats are blaming the Republicans for this mess? It is a simple formula to follow for those of us that are not responsible and believe they aren’t accountable: Initiate the problem in the name of justice and then blame the other side when the bottom falls away. In the mean-time you profit and help as many friends as you can.
Democrats Cover Up Fannie/Freddie is a post from: Common Sense University
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Congresswoman Maxine Waters threatening to socialize oil in a way that few can. The power to usurp is a right of every congresswomen named Maxine, isn’t it?
Maxine Waters and Oil is a post from: Common Sense University
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]]>We have to concede that it sounds somewhat exaggerated but it is true. All you hear and read about these days is how bad oil is for mankind and the only answer is its elimination. Nobody seems concerned about Osama Bin Laden and his fellow terrorists or Al Qaida in general, that is apparently nothing more than a sad memory. But oil is now the element that could cause mankind to go extinct in this century and has therefore to be considered a much greater evil to all of us than a couple of terrorists.
This entire focus on oil has become stronger with the sharp and relatively quick rise in oil prices at the gas pumps, the moment when we had to pay $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline, panic set in and the screams got louder and louder to do something about it and unfortunately, most people are looking for the U.S. government in Washington D.C. to take immediate action and bring the price down.
For us here at Common Sense Politics, the biggest surprise is the fact that there appears to be agreement across the board now that oil is bad. We have known for a long time that environmentalists, first and foremost among them the Global Warming ‘Warner’s’ led by their messiah Al Gore, and their liberal allies in the Democrat party, the vast majority of media members and educators have all espoused their disdain for oil but that esteemed members of industry, the Republican party are also now speaking out in rather negative terms about this commodity is truly surprising. The calls for alternate and renewable energy sources have become louder and louder, nearly bordering on hysteria. These concerns are expressed in many ways, primarily through the use of buzzwords such as “We cannot drill our way out of this situation”, another one is “drilling more in America has no immediate impact on the price of oil at the pump” or “we are sending too much money overseas to buy oil and it ruins our economy” and of course, there is always the blame game “it’s President Bush’s fault”, we also have heard that only an immediate switch to other energy sources is the only answer to our dilemma.
There is a great deal of individual action; for instance, Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is spending millions of his own money to tell us through television ads that we have to develop alternate energy sources and he wants to see the development of wind farms in America’s ‘wind tunnels’, wherever they are. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has for the time being another fantastic and very innovative solution for us here in America: He wants us all to inflate our tires and have regular tune-ups. As he stated, this is the equivalent of additional offshore drilling. This incredibly silly proposal by a Presidential candidate is scary in its stupidity and does not even deserve a rational response! And there are many more of these kinds of proposals, all however, with the underlying theme that we have to rid ourselves of our dependence from oil and drilling for more oil domestically is not the solution.
To this, we say ‘Hello, have you lost all your senses?’ The short answer to our current dilemma is the fact that We in this country (and we say ‘we’ generously because the average citizen has very little say in the grand scheme of things in America) have been sound asleep for quite some time! Let us look at the facts as they exist:
- v When oil was sold on the world market for $20 to $30 a barrel not even ten years ago, there was no need to tap into additional oil reserves domestically, in fact, it was not feasible for the oil industry to do so and it was considered smart to buy oil from other countries;
- v The current usage of oil in America amounts to approximately 21 million barrels a day, an annual total of 7.7 billion barrels;
- v The currently identified and untapped oil reserves on the Outer Continental Shelves (OCS), in Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) and the oil shale deposits in the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are estimated to have nearly 830 billion barrels of oil; these reserve by itself (and not counting our current oil production in other places in the United States) would provide oil for approximately 108 years;
- v Contrary to statements from “oil enemies”, it will not take at least ten years before we would see the oil flowing out of these untapped reserves. The true time frame differs drastically from these negative statements. Oil from rigs on the Outer Continental Shelves can flow after three to four years, Oil from ANWR can flow after about four to five years and only massive production of oil from the shale deposits in the Rockies will take a few years longer;
- v Alternate energy sources such as wind, solar, nuclear power, hydro fuels and the like will not be ready to replace oil for many years if ever;
- v The price of oil as traded on the world market is currently down by about 25 % from its peak in June. And why is that? Could it have possibly something to do with the fact that the oil speculators realize that we are getting serious about additional drilling in America as reflected by the lifting of the Executive branch’s moratorium of OCS drilling by President Bush? We believe it could have been a contributing factor.
Why do we as the citizenry of the United States accept when our ‘leaders’ tell us totally non-sensical stories that are factually inaccurate (to put it mildly) if not outright false when they lie to us for personally ideological or other agenda-driven reasons? We should not! Why are we continuing to believe what is being opinion-reported in the media and other groups when we could just demand to get the facts from experts and people in the know? We should not allow this to continue and let them know about it in no uncertain terms.
If we can make one prediction for the near or even long term future it is that we will not likely see automobiles with solar panels or little windmills on their roofs. Nor will we wipe out oil as a major commodity in our lives no matter how much it is being demonized by its “enemies”. After all, Oil is the one commodity that has been a major contributor to advances in every aspect and corner of America for the past century and will remain as such! Another reality is that America as a country of slightly over 300 million inhabitants will not be able to go from a daily usage of 21 million barrels of oil to something else in the short or long term, it is just not going to happen!
As a last thought, we like to remind you as we agree with columnist Betty Freauf who wrote nearly three years ago in one of her columns on the subject of oil shortages:
“It says a lot of folks cannot understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Well, there is a simply answer. Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just did not know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical. Our OIL is located in Alaska, California, Coastal Floriad, Coastal Louisiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas but our dipsticks are located in Washington, D.C.”
America’s new devil – OIL is a post from: Common Sense University
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]]>At this year’s summit, global warming was one of the major topics of debate and – to state it in brief – they agreed to set targets for reducing by half the emissions of green-house gases, in and of itself a very noble goal. However, the target date is 2050! Yes, 42 years from now. This was reportedly part of a United Nations effort to negotiate a new climate pact at the end of 2009 since the so-called ‘Kyoto Protocol’ expires in a few years. Most of the G-8 summit member countries had signed onto this but not the United States. President Bush has been criticized for this but he stated his opposition quite early that it would not be fair to the U.S. economy to comply with Kyoto while the developing nations would get a free pass on the targeted goals of this agreement.
The summit also invited leaders of many developing countries such as China, India and many others representing more than half the planet’s population. These countries were asked to sign onto this new target date but after some discussions, they declined based on their own economic developments. This should not be a surprise since their priorities are internal and while they will give lip service to global warming and climate change concerns, they seriously do not consider it a major problem for themselves since they are in a developing, economy expanding status.
And so the summit ended with an agreement that is totally useless and definitely meaningless for a number of reasons. First and foremost remains the fact that the current leaders will not be around in 2050, President Bush would be 104 years old and while we wish him a long life, we doubt very much that he will be influential in reaching this lofty goal. The same goes for all the other Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellor. That is why we consider it such a farce for these individuals to meet and sound off on something where they have absolutely no control over any aspect of possibly achieving it.
To prove this point, Common Sense Politics likes to present an example: Let’s say, there is a street with 33 homes and 5 of the families decide to rid the neighborhood of snails with the goal of doing so in the next 20 to 30 years. What chance of success do you believe they have? We think the answer lies between nil, zip, nada and zero. In twenty to thirty years, in all likelihood, half of the neighbors have moved somewhere else, a vast majority of the neighbors will from the beginning never even participate in this snail eradication program and the new neighbors will likely not feel too strong about this since it was agreed upon by some before they even became neighbors. In short, a totally useless undertaking and flawed in concept and content from the beginning.
To us here at Common Sense Politics, the G-8 summit was in and of itself equally useless when it comes to addressing the topic of climate change or global warming. One would think that they had more pressing things to discuss and decide on while they were meeting and feasting on caviar and other culinary delights and specialties. Don’t they feel somewhat silly coming away from their conference and proclaiming victory in their quest to conquer global warming? Apparently not! It reminds us of an often heard and very common comment by participants of large conferences and meetings in a corporate/office environment where nothing of substance was achieved or agreed upon, this comment was “It was a good meeting.” And many of them felt good about it and were proud of themselves.
The totally useless G-8 Summit is a post from: Common Sense University
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]]>In 1988, Mr. Hansen told Congress that Global Warming was fact and that mankind had only twenty years left before irreparable damage would be inflicted on the planet, a point of no return if you will. Well, the twenty years are up, and so, Mr. Hansen was back in Congress on June 23 and warned of even greater and graver consequences if mankind would not take immediate action to thwart Global Warming. And once again, he warned that the planet had only twenty years left before we would reach a point of no return. But to strengthen his message, he also recommended to the Congressional Committee membership that the CEO’s of fossil energy companies “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” A recommendation most likely anchored in Mr. Hansen’s belief that they, the CEO’s of Big Oil, had disagreed with him during the past two decades by supporting opposing viewpoints and actively lobbying against laws to curb global warming.
The arrogance of this man exemplifies the extreme beliefs of the Global Warming Scare Mongers (GWSM), led for many years by their number one spokesman Al Gore, who by the way, has reportedly made more than one hundred million dollars on this fraud. They have claimed for years now that the debate over global warming is over and that it is time to act when in fact, there has never been a debate on that subject. This is like someone coming to your front door and asking you for a thousand dollar donation for an as yet to be determined cause and when questioned will add “that it will make you feel better because it is for a good cause and that they might come back again in a few months.” Let’s face it, folks: This is all about your money and restrictions of your freedoms and lifestyles, nothing more and nothing less!
If these “planet-saving” advocates would be serious, they would lead by example. They would reduce their own carbon footprint to show us all that it is possible to live with less comfort. Are they doing this? Of course not! Their lifestyles (including their travels) have not changed one iota and they tell you that they can continue to live the way they live because they have “bought carbon offsets”. We wonder why no journalist or media person ever bothers to ask the simple follow-up question: “Excuse me, Sir, what exactly does that mean? What are you ‘buying’ to reduce your carbon footprint and how much does it cost you?” We do not get answers to these simple questions because nobody dares asking the questions. It is shameful to say at the least. What is even more shameful is that on May 20, 2008, a list of over 31,000 scientists who refute global warming was released. We all read the lengthy articles on the front pages of our favorite newspapers, right? We all heard this news on the evening broadcasts of all television stations, right? NO, WE DID NOT! Compare that to the coverage the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Pro Climate Change advocates, conference in Bali last December received, the papers were full of it for several days.
We have to ask at this point: Could there possibly be a hidden agenda in all this? We strongly believe there is, there should be no doubt about it. When the Global Warming alarmists conspire with the media to ignore the International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York this past March, and the signature lists of over thirty thousand scientists, there must be a reason for it, we at this site are convinced of it. And we are asking them:”If you are so very convinced that you are correct about your beliefs, why should you be afraid to debate them with individuals of opposing views and beliefs.” While we here Common Sense Politics are not scientists, we have enough common sense to doubt what we are being told (and sold). Please, we beg you, one more time, you Global Warming advocates: “Dazzle us with your brilliance and respond to your critics!” Do not try to baffle us with B.S., remember it smells.
Finally, we like to suggest for you all to read the speech Mr. John Coleman before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce in early June of this year. Mr. Coleman is an experienced meteorologist with the San Diego television station KUSI. While it is lengthy, it is definitely worth the time it takes to read it. He gives some very specific examples of why he is a global warming skeptic.
Global Warming Novel – continued is a post from: Common Sense University
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]]>As always happens when oil company profits are high, Congress calls the CEO’s of the major oil companies ‘on the carpet’, inviting them to testify under oath before congressional committees to explain their profits and to defend themselves against charges of ‘price fixing’. These kinds of hearings are spectacles in that the representatives attempt to be smarter than the company executives while trying to ask questions they themselves do not even understand and this year, the oil company execs fired back and did not allow themselves to be insulted and cornered as the main culprits behind the high oil and gasoline prices.
And they have to be congratulated for keeping their cool when some questions really bordered on libel. For example, Democrat representative Debbie Wassermann Schultz from Florida asked the CEO of Exxon/Mobil:” I can’t say that there is evidence that you are manipulating the price, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not.” Without going into the carefully crafted response to this statement, we here at www.considercommonsense.com cannot understand the people who vote these types of individuals to represent them in Congress.
We firmly believe that it is time to end this unrealistic ‘reality show’ called Congress and we mean both, the House of Representatives and the Senate, all 535 persons! They are obsessed with finding culprits who they can blame for anything that is or appears wrong in America. They are not interested in the truth or in facts, they talk about solutions that are totally wacky and unrealistic. Let’s take one example of their so called ‘solutions: Windfall profits tax. This means that oil company profits can be taxed again when they, the profits, are allegedly too high. Our previous article showed that the profit of oil companies amounted to 15.7 cents per gallon in 2007. Even when increased to current prices, the prices would rise only to 22.4 cents per gallon. O.k., then take their profits and what does it do to the price of a gallon of gas at the pump currently in California? It brings it down from $4.35 to $4.126, big deal! It still is well over $4.00 per gallon.
Now then, Congress, what do you want to do now? Two presidential candidates, Clinton and McCain proposed to eliminate the federal taxes on a gallon of gas for the summer months and that proposal was dead on arrival. No way, can Congress agree to that. So, what did they do? They voted to authorize the Justice Department to sue OPEC to increase oil production! It is impossible for us common sense thinking individuals to comprehend the mindset of these people, led by the Democrat leadership in Congress. The price for a gallon of gas is over $4.00 and the solution as far as the Congressional leadership is concerned, is suing OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. And how soon will that bring us results? What if these countries say: We will stop selling oil to the USA as long as the lawsuit is going on? Will that bring the price of oil down? Do you realize what utter nonsense this is?
Back to reality: The real culprits are sitting in Congress, all 535 of them! They have been sent to Washington D.C. to represent us people and our interests and well-being, but in fact they are harming our interests and are in fact hurting us. Now you might say that this is not fair to some of them in Congress but we cannot differentiate at this time since those individuals are not speaking up loud enough and are simply voting ‘NO’ and think they did their job. We cannot agree with nor accept that, the least they could do is scream loud enough when nonsense is approved in Congress.
Now then, why are we calling Congress the real culprits? The answer is very simple, they are the ones that have voted against any additional exploration for oil in America. Be it in Alaska or the continental shelves in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans or the extraction of shale oil in those vast deposits of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Congress has been afraid to vote in a plurality in favor of any oil drilling because of the environmentalist movement in our country, nor have there been any new oil refineries built in America for over thirty years. After all, the oil as it comes out of the ground is not refined enough to put into our gas tanks. The only thing that has happened during the past three decades is the expansion of existing oil refineries but that has not been adequate to keep up with the demand. The population in America has grown by 80 million since 1978, an increase of about a third in people and does anybody seriously think that demand does not go up?
Let us demonstrate this with another example: Let us assume that for whatever dumb reason Congress decides that there will be no additional bakeries build in America. This means, the existing ones have to continue to make bread for the general population. While the exiting bakeries can be worked around the clock, there comes a time when bread production is maximized, yet the demand keeps going up and more and more people want to eat bread. Sorry, says Congress, eat something else (can you make the correlation to alternate energy sources?) but we will not allow to increase (refine) more bread production (gasoline). Does this make any sense? Of course not! It is utter nonsense but Congress is the place that got us into this mess, they are the real culprits in this particular crisis and this truth is unfortunately not fully known to the general public. They are the ones that ‘bottle-neck’ this country by forcing us, the electorate, to change our freedoms and lifestyles to what they think it should be. A liberal media has been and is continuing to play along with Congress and shade the facts.
We here at Common Sense Politics think that it will probably take $5 to $6 or even higher prices for a gallon of gas before the general public wakes up and sends stronger messages to Congress. The best one of course would be not re-electing the current representatives and voting for candidates who understand the simple facts of supply and demand and will do things to correct things the way they are right now.
Congressional Culprits Revealed is a post from: Common Sense University
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]]>Oil prices have been discussed for as long as we can remember, but never with the scrutiny that we see today. Not only do we read or hear about it every day, but it is thrust into a negative light in most every case. Common Sense Politics has written several other articles referring to the dynamics of oil that are worth one’s time, but this one will focus on the dynamics of oil pricing between 2000 and 2007.
As oil has eclipsed $120 per barrel, gasoline has eclipsed $4 per gallon, and we are bombarded with the “record profits” of today’s large oil corporations; the conclusion is drawn for us in that media wants us to believe that we are being taken advantage of by these American oil corporations. Investigative hearings in Congress further this conclusion. Unfortunately, very few watch these hearings or read about them so public knowledge of their answers (summary) is hardly known.
The data for this article is from the Department of Energy data sheets. This article will attempt to explain the percentage each component represents of the cost of a barrel of oil between 2000 and 2007. The trends and conclusions one draws from this are quite different from what the media wants us to believe. The data is factual, non-partisan and speaks for itself when analyzed as we have done.
A Barrel of Oil
Yearly One-Gallon Average Gasoline Cost and Component Percentage Breakdown
| Year | Retail Price ($0.01) |
Refining (%) |
Distribution & Marketing (%) |
Taxes (%) |
Crude Oil (%) |
| 2000 | 148.5 | 14.2 | 12.0 | 28.3 | 45.6 |
| 2001 | 142.6 | 17.1 | 14.3 | 30.1 | 38.6 |
| 2002 | 134.0 | 13.4 | 12.5 | 31.6 | 42.5 |
| 2003 | 155.9 | 14.6 | 14.2 | 27.0 | 44.3 |
| 2004 | 184.9 | 17.5 | 11.6 | 22.9 | 47.9 |
| 2005 | 226.8 | 18.1 | 9.0 | 19.7 | 53.0 |
| 2006 | 256.9 | 16.7 | 9.0 | 18.1 | 56.0 |
| 2007 | 279.9 | 17.0 | 10.3 | 14.8 | 57.9 |
Although initial response to this chart is “of course 2007 prices have doubled since 2000″ (nearly tripled when compared to 5/14/2008 prices), a closer look reveals the breakdown of the percentage of the component costs. See a similar chart below that doesn’t show the cost of gasoline.
Yearly One-Gallon Average Gasoline Cost and Component Percentage Breakdown Chart
While the first chart showed that gasoline costs have risen by over 104% between the end of 2000 and the end of 2007, the percentage cost of each processing step has gone down while the cost of the crude oil has dramatically increased. For those of us that deal with numerical values better than charts, here is a summary that would interest you.
Gasoline Percentage Cost and Component Percentage Change
| Year | Retail Price | Refining | Distribution & Marketing | Taxes | Crude Oil |
| 2001 – 2008 | 112.9% | -48.1% | -35.9% | -56.3% | 78.2% |
| 2000 – 2008 | 104.4% | -37.6% | -23.5% | -53.5% | 51.0% |
It is easy to surmise and very logical that the cost to process oil should remain reasonably stable, but as the cost of the gas rises, each represented percentage should go down, and this is seen through both methods above. However, although the cost of the crude oil has risen steeply over this time period (an OPEC thing that is outside the scope of this article, but will surely be discussed in future articles), the percentages kept by the host countries has increased as well. Monies from crude oil kept by host countries have risen 51% since 2000 and, after a brief drop in 2001, have rose 78.2% since the end of 2001. As an extreme, let us examine the difference between the end of 2001 and the end of 2007. This shows the dollar contribution toward each processing step, taxes and amount kept by the host country.
Yearly Average One-Gallon Gasoline Cost and Component Cost Breakdown
| Year | Retail price (cents per gallon) |
Refining Cost (cpg) |
Distribution & Marketing Cost (cpg) |
Taxes (cpg) |
Value to Host Country (cpg) |
| 2000 | 149 | 21 | 17 | 42 | 68 |
| 2001 | 143 | 24 | 19 | 43 | 55 |
| 2002 | 134 | 18 | 19 | 42 | 57 |
| 2003 | 156 | 23 | 26 | 42 | 69 |
| 2004 | 185 | 32 | 26 | 42 | 89 |
| 2005 | 227 | 41 | 23 | 45 | 120 |
| 2006 | 257 | 43 | 25 | 47 | 144 |
| 2007 | 280 | 48 | 31 | 41 | 162 |
Crude Oil Price Trend lines Pockets of Host Countries
Although the percentages were very revealing, the actual cost of each component might be more telling, as it factors in the rising cost of gasoline. Looking at this you will see that, forgetting cost of money differences over the years, the actual cost of refining, distribution & marketing have approximately doubled over seven years, taxes have remained pretty stable, actually slightly lower at the end of 2007 than the end of 2000. The rise in the cost of getting gasoline to the pumps can be explained by seven years of inflation, additional refining requirements, extra cost of transportation, and inflated advertising costs. However, the government short-changed itself by not indexing gasoline taxes to the actual price but rather the quantity. The big surprise is the increase in value to the country that the oil was removed from. For a given gallon of processed gasoline the host country received 68 cents at the end of 2000, while this grew to $1.62 at the end of 2007. Applying current prices of $4 per gallon to this 57.9% kept by the producing nations would mean that over $2.30 of every gallon is kept by the country that the oil was removed from. Wow!
What does this tell us? It says that refining, distribution and marketing costs have risen slightly, but have lowered dramatically as a percentage of a gallon of gas. Taxes have remained absolutely stable, but have also dramatically lowered as a percentage of the cost of gasoline. Both of these are understandable, and explained in preceding paragraphs. The kicker and reason that the price of gasoline is where it is today is that the founding countries demand a much higher percentage of these inflated gasoline prices.
One could then deduce that the large corporations that process, distribute and market this oil are not guilty of the deceit that our media wants us to consider and believe. Although their profits may be large, the data shows that their actual costs have only marginally increased over time. A large reason for their record-setting profits is that the increased cost of gas has increased their revenue, and applying the same rate of return to this larger number would make for an absolute record profit.
Page 44 of Exxon Mobil’s Annual Report shows that they processed 11,260 million barrels of oil. Exxon Mobil’s Annual reports data is summarized below.
Exxon Mobil’s Yearly Financial Summaries
| 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | |
| Total Revenue ($Billion) | 231.8 | 212.8 | 204.5 | 246.7 | 298 | 370.7 | 377.6 | 404.5 |
| Net Income ($Billion) | 17.7 | 15.3 | 11.5 | 25.51 | 25.33 | 36.13 | 39.5 | 40.61 |
| Avg. Gas Cost ($0.01) | 148.5 | 142.6 | 134.0 | 155.9 | 184.9 | 226.8 | 256.9 | 279.9 |
| Inc/Rev (%) | 7.6 | 7.2 | 5.6 | 10.3 | 8.5 | 9.7 | 10.5 | 10.0 |
Making Sense of Big Oil profit nonsense
The above chart tells us that in a year-to-year comparison Exxon Mobil’s income/revenue has grown 3 years and shrunk 4 years, while this ratio grew from 7.6% to 10% over this seven year stretch. Might this inconsistent growth be the reason for our expensive gas prices? We look further.
Corporations are publically held and need to submit their financial results quarterly. They also project what their earnings will be for upcoming quarters. It is quite involved, but the simple version is that forecasted and past performance contributes to the company’s value. This penalizes companies that don’t grow their earnings. Well, to me it looks as if there have been more bad years than good years, but the overall income/revenue ratio has grown nearly 30% over 7 years. This equalizes to just over 4% annual growth every one of the 7 years. Not a windfall, but good enough for the investors, apparently.
Let us ignore the above facts and imagine that the increased profit had contributed to our high gasoline prices. With some assumptions we can estimate how much of a difference the added income would have made when compared to the 7.6% income/revenue ration from 2000. Cutting the 2007 10% income/revenue ratio to 7.6%, 2000′s equivalent is a 24% drop, and assuming that revenue remained the same, the net income would reduce 24%, dropping about $10 billion. Let us now apply these $10 billion to the 11.260 billion barrels of oil that Exxon Mobil produced – page 44 in linked report. Quick searches on the Internet reveal that a barrel of oil is 42 gallons and of that 23 gallons turn into refined gas, the other 19 gallons turn into other oil-based income producing products. So let us multiply 23 gallons by the number of barrels that Exxon Mobil produced to get approximately a259 billion gallons of gas. Applying all the added savings only to this part of each barrel would lower the cost of a gallon of gasoline by $10 billion / 259 billion gallons, or b3.9 cents/gallon.
ExxonMobil’s Revenue, Income and Gasoline Prices
A Dramatically Conservative Oil Pricing Example
We can even get more dramatic and apply all profit by Exxon Mobil toward the gallons of gas that they provided. Sure, this isn’t a proper comparison since Exxon Mobil profits from many other ventures other than gas, but the exaggeration will help make a point. Applying every dollar of profit would make Exxon Mobil very altruistic, but also enrage all the shareholders and likely be a reason that gasoline prices would increase. This would increase demand for other oil companies, and increase in demand is one component that increases prices. Anyway, back to Exxon Mobil’s altruism. Let us divide $40.61 billion by 259 billion gallons of gasoline, resulting in 15.7 cents per gallon. That is right, if Exxon Mobil were to apply every bit of money they made in 2007 to lowering the cost of the gas they produced, prices would lessen by fewer than c16 cents per gallon, hardly the difference the media wants us to think.
Oops. I forgot this until now, but oil companies don’t have anything to do with establishing the price of a barrel of oil, as OPEC sets production quotas and supply/demand establishes prices. This exercise was interesting nonetheless.
Now if the host countries were to lower their take from 57.9% to 44.3%, what it was at the end of 2003, everything else being equal, this would lower prices by nearly d50 cents per gallon at current gas prices, while still providing over $1.10 per gallon to the producing countries in 2007 costs. These end-of-year 2007 numbers are very conservative in today’s terms, as current gas prices are over 30% more now than then.
Although it may be tough to make it through my lengthy analysis, it should be enlightening for those that do spend the time to follow my reasoning. I am not a college professor or someone that has intricate knowledge of the oil industry, but someone that applied common sense to data and forming my own conclusion.
As a very quick ‘what determines the price of oil’ recap:
Gasoline prices are determined by oil prices, which are affected by OPEC and Supply and Demand. The amount that oil companies influence these prices is nearly negligible. The media wants us to believe that large oil companies are the reason for the inflated prices we see at the gasoline pumps. I hope my analysis and this document shed light on this common misconception. The bulk of the money spent on a barrel of oil goes to the host countries, and is increasing as prices rise, opposite from what one understands from reading and listening to the main-stream meida, and THE REAL REASON for our high gasoline prices.
Sources for items discussed above are referenced in hot-links throughout this article.
Additional Information and computations:
What is made from a barrel of oil.
a – 11.26 billion barrels * 23 gallons of gas / barrel = 259 billion gallons of gas
b – $10 billion / 259 billion gallons of gas = $0.039 per gallon
c – $40.61 billion / 259 billion gallons of gas = $0.157 per gallon of gas
d – (57.9% – 44.3%)/44.3% = 30.7% * $1.62 = 49.7 cents per gallon of gasoline
The Great Oil Debate is a post from: Common Sense University
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