Sunday, August 21, 2011

Pirates in Gulf of Mexico!




Oil is being discovered in unheard-of quantities, 230 miles into the Gulf of Mexico in waters so deep its retrieval would have been impossible even five years ago.

ExxonMobil, and its Norwegian partner Statoil made the biggest discovery of all — a field worth a billion barrels of oil — 7,000 feet below sea level in its "Julia" field in 2007.

Exxon tried to keep its discovery secret to keep marauders away. Sadly, the pirates in this instance are U.S. regulators — and their aim is to stop them.

That's right: Instead of marvel at the continuing treasures of the New World, or hail the human ingenuity that made retrieval of so much oil possible, or simply quantify how this discovery will boost U.S. energy security, Interior Department bureaucrats moved instead to snatch Exxon's permits and shut the whole thing down.

Employing an extreme technicality, these regulators claimed that Exxon's request in 2008 for a short suspension of activity to upgrade and make safer its drilling operation amounted to an abandonment of three of its five permits, simply because Exxon hadn't signed a contract with another partner, Chevron, by the time the suspension was completed.

In the past, such glitches were no problem — after all, it's obvious Exxon, which spent $300 million on exploratory wells, hasn't abandoned the operation.

But in the Obama era, which demonizes oil production in American waters by American companies, the bureaucrats came up with this permit technicality to effectively expropriate the entire operation.

Exxon is now fighting the permit action in a federal court in Lake Charles, La., calling it "arbitrary," "capricious" and "an abuse of law." It's also a textbook case of the anti-business climate fostered by the Obama administration which should be bending over backward to help Exxon create jobs and profits.

So let's look at what the Obama administration is trying to accomplish, and what it's costing you as a result.

The Exxon discovery is the biggest in a decade. If put into operation, its billion barrels will be enough to make a dent in America's oil dependency on foreign tyrants. If that isn't a sufficient national security reason, what is?

Exxon's discovery will also create thousands of jobs — at a time of 9.1% unemployment. Already the oil industry supports 9.2 million jobs and 190,000 more will be added if Gulf drilling is allowed to resume — along with a big multiplier effect. Many of those jobs will be in manufacturing — in places like Youngstown, Ohio, which just opened a new steel plant to make drilling pipes.

Oh yes, and if it can simply start up operations, Exxon's discovery will generate $10 billion in taxes and royalties for the heavily indebted U.S. government.

The fact that the Interior Department is using its permit process to bludgeon signals this is really about politics. This administration wants to punish Exxon for its refusal to kowtow to Obama's green agenda, as well as for its high profits ,which are reviled by the left.

It's a sorry spectacle to see Exxon — which willingly endured the risk, put in vast infusions of investment capital, sent out brave men to watery no-man's land to drill, and invested massive amounts in R&D — lose its entire operation over a petty permit dispute.

Exxon believes it can win its case in court, but the effects of such bureaucratic plunder will spread a message — that anyone who succeeds in striking black gold will become a government target.

White House Gives America Another Friday News Dump




The White house has a habit of quietly releasing news late on Fridays, hoping no one will notice. So while you were enjoying your Friday cold beverage of choice, the White House released this little gem:

The Obama administration granted another 106 waivers last month from part of the healthcare reform law — the first round of three-year waivers the Health and Human Services Department has approved.


Of course the majority of those 1,472 waivers went to Unions and other Obama supporters. Obama is sipping his cold beverage during his $50,000 vacation on Martha's Vinyard. Where'd you spend YOUR last vacation?




NPR Has Solution for Jobs!

What we need right now is more populist rhetoric from the Populist Rhetorician-in-Chief!


So is Nina Totenberg of PBS's "Inside Washington" saying that President Obama's teleprompter is the solution to the country's problems?

Yeah, THAT'S the ticket!



Obama's Solution to Jobs and Immigration

According to a Wall Street Journal report, illegal aliens will be eligible to receive work permits if their deportation is deferred through the Obama Administration's new policy. On Friday, the Administration announced that the Department of Homeland Security will review all deportation cases on a case-by-case basis and only deport illegal aliens who have been convicted of crimes...

...Illegal aliens living in the United States typically don't apply for work permits for fear of deportation, but under the new policy, they could apply for work permits if granted deferred action or parole and compete with 22 million Americans who can't find a full-time job.

Saturday, August 13, 2011




A Reuters/Ipsos poll Wednesday found that 73 percent of Americans believe the country is off on the wrong track.

"Obama started going wrong from the get-go. Far from offering the economic boost that was promised, the stimulus was instead the single largest payoff to the Democratic clientele in political history. Liberals are telling us now that it was not large enough – but conservatives have been saying for two-and-a-half years that pork for Democratic loyalists is a lousy way to jump-start the economy, no matter how expensive it is. Then, Obama followed that up not with a “laser-beam” focus on jobs – but rather cap and trade and Obamacare. These two items dominated the legislative agenda through the rest of 2009 and the first part of 2010. They were not priorities of the public, but rather of the party elite, whose attitude was: We have this enormous majority, so we’d better do something with it."

"It is hard to imagine public optimism being more negative about the economy than it is right now. ... In terms of pubic opinion he has got a huge hill to climb" -- Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

"The debt ceiling fiasco and the downgrade, punctuated by ... stock market gyrations, has made something in me snap. "It's the sound of confidence in Obama's leadership breaking" -- Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

"The president has failed up until now to produce a coherent explanation about where we are and what we need to do that Americans can understand" -- William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

"As he confronts the threat of another recession and turmoil in the financial markets, President Obama is being advised by an economic team that is noticeably short on big-name players — potentially hurting his ability to find solutions and sell them to Wall Street, Congress and the American public.

“When you ask about the economic team, it’s kind of like, ‘What economic team?’” said Edward Mills, a financial policy analyst with FBR Capital Markets. “They are very thin at a very critical time.”

Perhaps more telling, there no longer is a formal economic briefing in the Oval Office every morning, a gathering in which Summers, Romer, Geithner and other key advisors assessed the data and batted around ideas with Obama." -- LA Times

Monday, August 8, 2011

"Handle it!"

A small piece of so much that is wrong in America.




If this were your son, would you consider yourself a successful parent? Consider this young man, and the contrast to the 31 military members (including those of SEAL Team 6) that killed when their chopper was shot down. Further proof that life is not fair.






Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Yes We Can!

Kick this idiot to the curb in 2012!

They Passed It, Now We Know

Private-sector job creation initially recovered from the recession at a normal rate, leading to predictions last year of a “Recovery Summer.” Since April 2010, however, net private-sector job creation has stalled. Within two months of the passage of Obamacare, the job market stopped improving. This suggests that businesses are not exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holding back hiring. The law significantly raises business costs and creates considerable uncertainty about the future. To encourage hiring, Congress should repeal Obamacare.






A recent study by McKinsey & Co. reveals the level of unease felt by employers.

Thirty percent of those polled reported they will definitely or probably stop offering health insurance in the coming years. The study further showed the more aware employers were of the law, the more likely they were to think they would drop coverage for their employees.

Job creators aren’t the only ones left with uncertainty. Also buried in the 2,700-page law is a newly created board of 15 unelected bureaucrats who will have the power to severely limit services available to our nation’s seniors. Unlike many “boards” created in Washington, the Independent Payment Advisory Board’s recommendations to the secretary of health and human services will have the power of law.



RNC at Work

Some good work out of the RNC. I just hope that someone other then die hard Republicans watch them. I encourage everyone to get these out there in the public.