A: A hatred of the “speculators” and the “Wall Street fat cats” and the country club politicians in bed with “Big Oil,” all of whom are out to “harm the folks” with their unbridled speculating and fat catting and casual spooning with Oil Profiteers. Half credit, though, if you answered frequent plastic surgery and/or a love of the loofah.
First, Pelosi, via press release (with links added by yours truly in order that we may have a perfect storm of propaganda and deconstruction of such in a neat little one stop package. You’re welcome):
Independent reports confirm that speculators are driving up the cost of oil, hurting consumers and potentially damaging the economic recovery. Wall Street profiteering, not oil shortages, is the cause of the price spike. In fact, U.S. oil production is at its highest level since 2003, and millions of acres have been cleared for additional development.
We need to take strong action to protect consumers from this speculation. Unfortunately, Republicans have chosen to protect the interests of Wall Street speculators and oil companies instead of the interests of working Americans by obstructing the agencies with the responsibility of enforcing consumer protection laws. They have also repeatedly opposed our efforts to end billions of dollars in outdated taxpayer subsidies for oil companies enjoying record profits.
We support efforts by the Obama Administration to expand domestic energy resources, including natural gas and renewable sources like wind and solar that create jobs in America and will end our dangerous dependence on foreign energy supplies. This can be achieved because today, the United States currently has more oil and gas rigs at work than the rest of the world combined, and imports of foreign oil have decreased.
We call on the Republican leadership to act on behalf of American consumers and join our efforts to crack down on speculators who care more about their profits than the price at the pump even if these spikes harm the American consumer and our economy.
Now, O’Reilly — always angling for his next “get” with the President. And if that means pouring on the faux populism and lunch-pail demagoguery, then hells yes, Bill is down with some scapegoating and class warfare.
Or maybe I’m just giving him too much credit, suggesting a cynicism where only stupidity is necessary by way of explanation. You decide!
Now. Pass this post along. I think it might be useful to those who are inclined to believe the propaganda mill of the Left — or at the very least, will provide “the folks” ways to answer the demagoguery of the Democrats and useful idiots like O’Reilly who parrot anti-capitalit the propaganda in an effort to buy some cheap grace.
Spit.
(h/t Mark Levin)
They decided to go with The Big Lies
These speculators are like super villians or something. Every time the price of gas or oil spikes, the pols start screaming price gouging —release the investigators!
Yet somehow, no one ever seems to get caught.
Meanwhile, the rest of us rearrange the deck chairs while the captains of the Political Industry (let’s call it what it is) steer us onto the rocks and commandeer the lifeboats.
NO ONE EXPECTS THE OIL SPECULATOR INQUISITION!
The oil industry has a very low return on investment, and a low profit margin. They are demonized because they make a good punching bag. The government, on the other hand, is full of weasels who really need to be put out of our misery.
Then we have O’Reilly, who is all about O’Reilly. In that sense, he and Obama have a lot in common.
Here’s a thought: all profits above %2 should be confiscated by the Federal Government. That should really kick our nation into high hear!
Or gear, even.
How to solve this, the left edition.
Solution #1
Solution #2
It’s not what it sounds like, but then it never is from him.
I was going to say “a love of loofah,” but yeah what you said too.
Stupidity works. He is still feeling sorry about himself never making it on the radio. Guys like Rush and Levin make him feel small.
Yes. Do not underestimate the stupidity. There’s also the arrogant laziness to consider.
little miss debbie
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/212243-dnc-head-wasserman-schultz-slams-gop-on-energy-ahead-of-obama-speech
There was a time when it was possible to think of politics, to act within politics even, without thinking of economics. Politics, to say this another way, had not yet captured — or had intentionally eschewed the capture of — economics. ‘Tain’t so anymore, is it gang?
Anyhow, once economics had been captured, it necessarily meant that lack of the knowledge of economics became a fruitful source of error, and in error, power acquisition.
Well, if Debbie says the oil in North Dakota and Wyoming and Alaska is foreign, that settles it.
I wouldn’t like to be Bill O’Reilly– it would take all the mystery out of life.
But now I see The Hill has deleted “foreign” from its quote. Hmmm…
Wait — no it hasn’t. WTF?
Gas prices will necessarily skyrocket
Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket
Q: What do Bill O’Reilly and Nancy Pelosi have in common?
A: Wrinkled, sagging breasts.
but don’t stop buying chevy volts – baracky
So GOP drilling proponents are economically out of touch while Debbie’s plans to put unicorn farts in your tank is plugged right in to the mainstream. Is that about it?
Obama Insists Inflating Tires Better Than Oil Drilling
…, then the Catholics, then the insurance companies, now the oil speculators, and also the non-buyers of the VolksVolt. Tomorrow ? – anyone who accurately discusses Obama’s pro-infanticide position?
I told you guys – in the other thread- NPR says this is going to boost the auto industry, and thus the economy, because everyone’s going to run out and buy a fuel efficient car! HAPPY DAYS WILL BE HERE AGAIN.
So why didn’t we get happy days back in 2008 when gas hit $4/gal?
Oh yeah, housing bubble went *pop*
and Bush.
HAPPY DAYS WILL BE HERE AGAIN.
Until everyone owns an electric car and they are all plugged in at the same time and crash the power grids.
Debbie W-S isn’t just any “dim bulb”. She is a bulb of negative wattage. If you lit a Debbie W-S-Watt bulb outside, the sky would get noticably darker.
I used to work in a shop where the radio only picked up one station, they had two hours of O’Reilly I used to listen to every day.
After awhile I just turned it off those two hours. The dude is really, really fucking stupid.
I mean, he is disingenuous, craven and acutely narcissistic too, but it is all subsumed by the profound stupidity.
hey but bill’s looking out for you
If you want to talk about speculators, start with Tim Geithner at Treasury, Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve, or maybe the ECB and IMF. Is there any bigger speculative risk than even more quanititative easing or loaning more money to Greece which will magically become solvent because, um, I’ve having trouble with this part…
Gasoline supply has remained fairly constant, but the supply of dollars is growing by leaps and bounds!
I think I’ve become a fan of the gold standard since they can’t print gold. Sure, someone can dig more of it out of the ground, but that takes actual work and resources. All the gold mined since history began would fit in a cube less than 67 feet on each side. Real hard to pretend you can just double that by fiat.
btw
gas station within couple miles of my home was $4.09/gal for regular on Monday … Yesterday it was $4.23
mr. soros as a speculator never gets much notice
we be on the oil standard
Europe, going where we are headed with the nudging of Obama.
according to DW-S, Standard Oil be on us
Our idiot president is on tv talking up electric cars again. Fuel Economy for tractor trailer rigs, yo! Natural gas is going to get us out of this debacle and segue-ing into an anecdote about his college days and how Green he was even then.
I don’t think he knows what he just said there.
Oh yes he does leigh. And that’s not the issue anyways. Not the real one.
The real issue is, does the prototypical, marginally informed voter know what he just said?
Electric semi’s !!!! Transportation costs, and delivery time be damned.
“The real issue is, does the prototypical, marginally informed voter know what he just said?”
Anymore, I wonder whether Al Simpson can figure out what he said, which, odds on? He can’t.
Great timing for that.
http://jalopnik.com/5887265/tesla-motors-devastating-design-problem
The “design problem” is common to all electric cars, by the way.
What will power all those electric cars, given the EPA’s war on coal?
I meant about his saying he was green. I was thinking of it as a wet behind the ears thing.
I agree that he does know where he’s driving that train, so to speak, about destroying our energy policy from within. I got into a rather heated debate with some of my Lefty online acquaintances about energy markets a few months ago. Most of them are so ill-informed it is scary and so alternately trusting of the D’s and midtrusting of the R’s that it’s a crying shame that they are allowed to vote.
They don’t run on coal, they run on batteries!
Geez.
It’s brilliant, isn’t it B. Moe? You just plug it in!
solyndra !!11!! oh wait
Tag-team-work.
Geoffb – he should burst into flames from all of those lies.
You know what else we hear every year? That even if we drilled now, we wouldn’t see any significant drop in prices for about a decade.
And then we never drill. And then a decade later we hear the same arguments.
Satan laughing spreads his wings
The only people who will remain unaffected by this are the Amish. Who’s laughing now, Amos?
amish dodged obamacare too. time for a hex sign.
We have one out on the barn. It’s best to stay one step ahead.
I’ve watched Cavuto shrug his shoulders in the face of O’Rielly’s ridiculousness.
.
“In fact, Brazil made a political decision back in the 1970s that it did not wish to be vulnerable to the price shocks that the various Middle Eastern crises delivered to its economy, as it was much more dependent on foreign oil back then than the U.S. In 1980, Brazil imported 77 percent of its oil. Today, Brazil imports 0.0 percent of its oil needs.
Has it replaced oil with something else? Hardly. As Figure 1 shows, Brazilian oil production has increased 876 percent since 1980, and oil consumption has increased 119 percent. Brazil is now self-sufficient in oil on account of its aggressive exploration and development policies. Brazil has gone from supplying only 23 percent of its oil needs to having a slight production surplus in 2009. With more large offshore discoveries, Brazil is now well positioned to become an oil-exporting nation. Heck, they might even join OPEC, and really stick it to us.”
chart at link
Green talk is how today’s hip down-for-the-struggle urbane sophisticate communicates to the idiocracys that he has morals and values too.
Just not yours.
Somebody said something about a false theology, which of course sent the usual suspects into the usual delerium tremens, that’s apropos.
Not all battery types fail if they are fully discharged. Lead-acid batteries will, certainly.
Another storage method that doesn’t fail when fully discharged might solve the problem, such as a bunch of capacitors (which, the last time I saw, is in the development stage). Nothing is market-ready at this point.
Whatever the source of electricity, though, our grid could not handle it right now if a significant number of people started using electric cars. The fact that the EPA is shutting down some coal plants isn’t helping either.
I welcome the arrival of the Sweet Meteor of Death.
Well geez cranky, all those coal plants do is poison the atmosphere.
I mean, it’s not like they produce anything!
He’s such a fucking asshole.
1) Allow more drilling in the gulf
2) allow the pipeline
3) Alaskan oilfields.
How ’bout you do those three things, jackhole, and let’s see what happens?
You know what I’m gonna do with that extra $40? NOTHING. I just went poof in my gas tank.
Honestly, though, this bit really had me seeing red
HELLO? Isn’t this what liberals did the entirety of the Bush administration? The invented shit. Remember how unemployment may have been low, but taht was because all the jobs were bad? And the Iraq military death count?
Pathetic.
Meanwhile Post Office to eliminate 35,000 jobs.
Carin – when was the last time you saw their faux getting the vapors over the daily death count?
Bill O’Reilly is an old time carnival barker. Whatever will entice “the folks out there” to open their wallets, that’s what he’ll bark.
He’s not stupid, he’s an intellectual whore.
As for our energy problems, it occurs to me our number one problem is refining capacity, or the lack thereof, and the impossible hurdles our philosopher kings have set in the way of building up that capacity.
I suspect that is the real problem with the Keystone project, it would require refining capabilities almost impossible to achieve under our self limiting EPA regulations.
We are talking about Obama’s reluctance to drill, but I wonder if the real problem is that building oil refineries(along with nuke reactors) is totally off the table. Not even discussed.
Incidentally, one thing I think the feds should do that the aren’t, and I think a valid use of the 10th amendment, is have a national standard for gasoline formulation. As is, there are(I’ve heard) 35 different formulations of gas to meet the specifications of various states. California for example, needs it’s very special “clean” gas, and usually has the highest gas prices in the nation. I think a federal standard would make refining way more efficient, and bring prices down.
A big problem with refineries and platforms, is finding workers who can pass the drug tests. Nuclear power plants have the same problem with their maintenance workers. It would seem our worker bees are not of a sober stripe.
That had me screaming too, Carin.
The media said it, you fuckwit. Your media. Which ain’t supposed to be politics.
Lee, O’Reilly is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. But it’s working for him.
the problem today is the federals stds for gasoline
http://www.willisms.com/archives/boutiquefuels.jpg
I’m of the opinion there shouldn’t be drug tests for employment.
Also, I wouldn’t hire someone who was fired for being impaired on the job.
I also don’t have a problem with the state requiring medicals for a pilot or professional trucker licenses.
They should just let me run things…
““Gasoline prices are on the rise, and Republicans are licking their chops.”
here is the article from politico
compare to
In a perfect world we wouldn’t need drug test for employment in dangerous jobs that have the potential for extreme disaster if someone who is impaired is doing that job, since they should have enough sense to know not to put others in peril. But they don’t, so they have to be tested for employment and then randomly tested while on the job, too. It’s a major problem and one that can’t seem to be solved by asking people to use their heads.
Of course, plenty of places “require” drug testing and then never ask for the tests to be done. And there are stupid regulations for high school athletes and cheerleaders who can be randomly drug tested just because they are involved in sports. Never mind the dopers back behind the gym. Those lettermen and cheerleaders may have had a beer or two on the weekend.
I would think they are looking for steroids.
They are, but they’ll also take whatever they can get.
The drug testing thing fails because of the simple facts. You can catch all sorts of people who smoked a couple of joints over the weekend but come to work completely straight. You won’t catch the guy who dropped acid or smoked an 8-ball on the job 3 days ago.
Eh, I think the screening should come at hire. Not pee though, I mean screening for qualifications and job history.
I mean, if the good doctor is doing his job and healing the sick, who cares if he pops Vicodin like candy, right?
It just seems to me that looking for a problem before there is a problem is asking for problems.
Vicodin popping doctors are generally in charge of your anesthetic when getting your ticker repaired or anything else that requires a general anesthetic. Anesthesiologists and Dentists are the most likely to be impaired professionals. Pharmacists are a close third.
They’re only brilliant and prickly on House, not in real life.
So, I’m watching Beck interviewing Santorum and after a discussion about how reelecting Obama will fundamentally change America forever, there’s this exchange:
Beck: “So what is America about?”
Santorum: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Another nuclear pp worker .
Not safe for work .
Does Beck put up transcripts of his show, Pablo? I live in the hinterlands and don’t have unlimited bandwidth.
about that beck – santorum interview: there are alot of a@@hole opinions of him on team r.
here’s a story
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/thomas-paine-vs-george-washington-santorum-and-glenn-part-ways-on-libertarianism/
Beck or Santorum?
I believe transcripts of the radio show go up. I haven’t seen transcripts of GBTV.
In other news, here’s the article Obama was using to demagogue Republicans by extrapolating its conclusion on them. You’ll be utterly stunned to know that it’s Politico.
santorum
both
“what is America about?”
Santorum: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
EXTREMIST!!!
True Stories:
1. When I was at the NY Post, the producers from O’Reilly called me to feel me out for going on the show. The topic was the spike in gas prices ca. 2005-2006. I explained that A) Speculators like Soros were not really behind more than 5% or so of the increase and that B) Oil companies, while not necessarily wonderful sorts, were also not gouging. They thought I was retarded or, alternately, that they were mishearing me. I patiently explained that in Business 101, oil companies have fixed production costs of $X per barrel and that once prices increased above that level, it was pretty much all operating profit from then on in. They never had me on.
2. When I was at Fortune, Geithner came up one day for an edit staff meeting. I asked him why, since the NY Fed had perfect visibility into most everyone’s true cash and liability positions, it had done nothing at all to pop the housing bubble.
He looked me in the eye and said, “It wasn’t my job to pop bubbles.”
A prince among us, no?
Thanks for the link to the Santorum/Beck interview, newrouter.
It’s worth remembering that Paine was a professional revolutionary who got out of France two steps ahead of the Jacobins.
I’m suprised ‘router hasn’t already posted a link to this vid of lil’ debbie bitchin’ bout Bush and $3 gas.
Ah, the good ol’ days, when you could fill your tank for less than $50.
via Glenn Reynolds
A couple of articles on the refinery problem. Short version is that older ones can only refine the more expensive “sweet” crude and with low demand they are losing money so they are being closed.
A good question is why don’t we have more and more adaptable refineries? I’d bet the answer has three parts, EPA, Trial lawyers, and the Greenies.
“A Simple Matter Of Slopes”
Swap them and our debt problem starts on the road to solution.
Oh, and and I denounce myself before someone sticks a knife through the chink in my armor.
baracky’s transformational change cont.
“The U.S. refining industry is being split in two. On one hand are the older refineries, mostly on the East and Gulf Coasts, that are set up to handle only the higher quality Brent “sweet” crude—the stuff that comes from the Middle East and the North Sea. ”
gee what would the keystone pipeline handle
http://www.bakkenoil.org/
its good that mittens gets to attack the sweater vest’s cong. record(medicare d, nclb, spector, et al) without ever mentioning gwb.and karltherover and the bushies will gleefully pile on. this is a case where it really was gwb’s fault.
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/02/23/making-ends-meet/#more-20684
video
Rick Santorum and family on GBTV
Keystone is a seperate project from ND’s Bakken fields. Keystone is supposed to bring oil from the Canadian tar sands down to the gulf refineries.
The companies developing Bakken are currently planning their own pipeline across ND to tie into the existing pipeline network somewhere around Fargo, ND/Morehead MN.
Also, Hyperion’s Elk Point, SD refinery project, the first completely new, built from the ground up oil refinery in 35+ years is still working it’s way through permitting hell.
link
link
No State Department involvement, but I’m sure the Sierra Club will find a reason why It Can’t Be Allowed to Happen!
Lee, O’Reilly is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
Neither is his audience.
working link to the Hyperion Energy story.
O’Reilly is a blithering idiot about economics and most other topics. Where he gets the idea that it’s okay for the Government to tell us what size car we can drive (see his irrational hatred of SUVs) is beyond me. That and his unshakable conviction that Big Oil is making money hand over fist, Speculators are destroying the free market and a couple of other things he rails about make him sound like a liberal.
SNL should do a version of their classic “Dueling Brandos”, but using O’Reilly and Chris Matthews yelling and interupting each other.
O’Reilly mystifies me. I’ve never heard of a man who stands 6’4″ having a Napoleonic “little dictator” complex.
Holy Moses, I have been removed !
[…] Goldstein has done us all a service, at great risk to his sanity. He delved into a Nancy Pelosi press release, wherein she blamed high gas prices on eeeeeeeee-vil speculators, Wall Street, Republicans, the […]
[…] Goldstein has done us all a service, at great risk to his sanity. He delved into a Nancy Pelosi press release, wherein she blamed high gas prices on eeeeeeeee-vil speculators, Wall Street, Republicans, the […]