Bad American

Surprisingly this ran in Drudge. Perhaps the knuckleheads who generally congregate there will see the irony.

New York Times Oct. 14, 2001

THEY are the nightmares, the worst confluence of misguided decisions and startling violence, that politicians and oil executives ponder briefly and then shoo away:

That sympathizers of Osama bin Laden sink three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and choke off the narrow, bow-shaped channel that funnels 14 million barrels a day from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. That the United States attacks Iraq, and Israel launches a huge strike against the Palestinians, driving them from their camps and staking out more land — all of which spurs the Persian Gulf states to cut off oil for the West. Or perhaps that a popular uprising, led by sympathizers of Mr. bin Laden, topples the ruling Saud family in Saudi Arabia, by far the world’s largest oil producer.

”If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he’d turn off the tap,” said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ”He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel” — about six times what it sells for now.

So what price did oil hit today?

Breitbart

NEW YORK (AP) - Oil prices shot to new records above $144 a barrel Wednesday as the government reported a bigger-than-expected drop in U.S. supplies and the threat of conflict with Iran weighed on traders’ minds. Light, sweet crude for August delivery rose as high as $144.13 on the New York Mercantile Exchange shortly after the market closed. The contract also notched a new closing record, settling at $143.57—a full $2.60 above the previous high from a day earlier.

Everything this country has done since 9-11 has played directly into the hands of the people we were supposed to be fighting against. They got everything they wanted - sky high oil prices, US forces bogged down in a useless war of attrition in the Middle East, and a US population now living in a increasingly fascist state (go to the airport and see). Hell, just read this. A nation of frightened sheep willing to cede their civil rights for protection from phantom threats while their economy crashes around them.

So Bin Laden won then?

Breitbart/AFP

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, whose nation is the world’s number one oil exporter, called on consumer countries to get used to high prices in comments published on Tuesday. “Consumer countries have to adapt to the prices and the mechanisms of the market,” the king said in an interview published by the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassah.

“We have nothing to do with the current sharp increase in crude prices,” he said reiterating the Saudi position that speculation, rising demand (why not pump more, oh mighty king? Oh, you CAN’T!- ed.) and the taxation of oil products in consumer countries were to blame.

“These countries must reduce their taxes on fuel.. if they want to contribute to easing the burden on ordinary consumers,” he said.

One more time - the Saudis cannot increase their production any further. Period. They are maxed out.

From now on - ALL OIL PRODUCTS continue to climb in price - speculators or no speculators.

Who will call the Saudi’s bluff? No one. No one who doesn’t want their markets to crater overnight. We will continue to be told that we can drill out of this. If you want an excellent example of American cluelessness, check out the comments in the Breitbart story - yes, most of them came from Drudge readers - but they are representative of a large segment of the American public that believes the oil company PSAs.

DRILL DRILL DRILL!!

Sorry gang - too little. Too late. If we we’re going to try to drill ourselves out of this, we would have started 10 years ago - AND IT STILL WOULDN’T HAVE DONE THE JOB.

There simply isn’t enough oil left under the United States to meet our growing energy consumption, let alone the rest of the world. And the cost to extract that oil WILL keep prices high and higher.

So King Abdullah ISN’T lying. He’s telling the absolute truth - get used to high and higher oil prices. But he ISN’T telling you the real reason why.

The world is over peak. And all the oil company PSAs and Republican talking points aren’t going to change that fact one iota. Sorry.

You all best start getting used to the end of our ‘non-negotiable lifestyle.’

From the “he said it” department today - James Kunstler’s Monday column:

All this reality content is beginning to penetrate the collective consciousness in the US, but the result is mostly panic or paralyzed disbelief rather than any set of intelligent responses. For example, I got a call from one of Katie Couric’s producers at CBS news on Friday. Somehow, they had noticed that oil prices were becoming a problem in America. They called me for a comment. The scary part was they were clearly treating the issue as a “lifestyle” story. Did I think more suburbanites would move downtown? And would that be a good thing…? They have no fucking clue how broadly and deeply these dynamics will affect the life of this nation, or even our ability to remain a nation. Also, by the way, this demonstrates how the nightly network news has become the equivalent of the old “women’s pages” of the daily newspapers.

Ouch! Yet. . . I heartily agree.

By the way, make sure you catch Kunstler every Monday.

AP writers: Everything Seemingly is Spinning Out of Control

Wow, even the mainstream is noticing:

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet’s weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?

It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.

Residents of the nation’s capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.

And it ends with this ominous note:

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.

Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.

Now back in the late 1960s there was a similar unraveling going on. People displayed little signs - “plan ahead” with the e-a-d part falling off the line downward.

A lot of it had to do with a more slipshod attitude toward things with American car manufacturers leading the way. There was also problems with teething troubles in new computer technology.

But we didn’t have the problems with the basic supply of oil and food that we have now. And although we had the first signposts of environmental degradation, we didn’t do enough to ensure that we wouldn’t run into the problems we are running into today. Capitalism uber alles and now the generations that followed the 60s are now having to deal with the mess.

Yes we had the air pollution problem - and we went to unleaded fuel and put scrubbers on some smokestacks. But it wasn’t enough.

Yes we were warned about overpopulation, food and the Malthusian mathematics - but the cheap price of oil made it seem like we could cheat nature and science.

We were warned about the fragility of the environment and the animal species of the world - and we had Earth Day and greenwashed the whole movement so Corporate America could make money.

M. King Hubbert warned us about oil depletion. And we laughed at him.

Now we pay. And pay dearly.

But when you’re lying to right wing Americans you can get away with it. They’ll believe anything.

Media Matters

On the June 17 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that “drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.” In fact, according to Energy Department researchers, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is opened for drilling for oil in 2008, the estimated peak production would yield, at most, 1.45 million barrels a day in 2028.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s May 2008 Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

In all three ANWR resource cases, ANWR crude oil production begins in 2018 and grows during most of the projection period before production begins to decline. In the mean oil resource case, ANWR oil production peaks at 780,000 barrels per day in 2027. The low- resource-case production peaks at 510,000 barrels per day in 2028, while the high- resource-case production peaks at 1,450,000 barrels per day in 2028. Cumulative oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR from 2018 through 2030 amounts to 2.6 billion barrels in the mean resource case, 1.9 billion barrels in the low resource case, and 4.3 billion barrels in the high resource case.

From the June 17 edition of CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck:

BECK: Like I told you yesterday, gas is up 35 percent. Electricity is up 30 percent. Natural gas, which most Americans use to heat their home, will hit a record high next month, up 43 percent from last year. Oh, boy. What happens when we hit November and December?

Even with all of that, domestic drilling is still stalled by Congress. It’s like these people don’t even — they don’t even live on the same planet. And this is really too bad, since drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.

OK kiddies let’s do the math about how ANWR will save us.

Currently, the United States uses 20.6 million barrels of oil every day.

Which comes out to about 7,519,000,000 barrels of oil every year. That’s 7.5 billion barrels. And the total best case scenario from ANWR gets us 4.3 billion barrels TOTAL and then it’s ALL GONE.

So.

That means ALL of the oil in ANWR in the best case scenario can meet ALL of our oil needs in the USA for approximately 7 1/2 MONTHS. That’s all folks. And that doesn’t take into account how our consumption might continue to increase by the time that oil comes online. It may only give us the equivalent of 4 months of US consumption.

Now think of what we get for that oil. The quite possible destruction of ANWR.

So go ahead idiot Americans and let the oil companies take their last orgy of profits by drilling ANWR, drilling off shore - go ahead DRILL THE WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY and you STILL won’t get enough oil to make this country “energy self-sufficient.” EVER.

But that’s OK. Flail about in our usual fashion. Beats changing our “non-negotiable lifestyle.” Beats conservation, collective action and serious investment in alternative forms of energy, public transportation, etc. etc.

In the end, we’ll get exactly what we deserve. History and science have a way of making sure of that.

In the meantime just listen to lying jackasses like Glenn Beck. America is full of them.

London Daily Mail

Sometimes my frustrations spill out into family matters. I have tried, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, to inform people I care about of how perilous our grasp on civilization is in light of possible disruptions of fuel, food and electricity.

Last night I played the little played trump card with two family members who continued to pooh pooh everything I say (and it’s generally women who do this, sorry). I said, “imagine a world where people are killing their neighbors for what’s in their kitchen.”

They refused, of course, to consider such a possibility.

Well. no less a media outlet than the Daily Mail has done so using Lord Cameron’s expression “nine meals from anarchy,” that is, three days without fuel and, therefore, food deliveries.

Long before many others, Cameron saw the potential of a real food crisis striking not just the poor of the Third World, but us, here in Britain, in the 21st Century.

The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies; a sudden collapse in the petrol that streams steadily through the pumps and so into the engines of the lorries which deliver our food around the country, stocking up the supermarket shelves as soon as any item runs out.

If the trucks stopped moving, we’d start to worry and we’d head out to the shops, cking up our larders. By the end of Day One, if there was still no petrol, the shelves would be looking pretty thin. Imagine, then, Day Two: your fourth, fifth and sixth meal. We’d be in a panic. Day three: still no petrol.

What then? With hunger pangs kicking in, and no notion of how long it might take for the supermarkets to restock, how long before those who hadn’t stocked up began stealing from their neighbours? Or looting what they could get their hands on?

There might be 11 million gardeners in Britain, but your delicious summer peas won’t go far when your kids are hungry and the baked beans have run out.

It was Lord Cameron’s estimation that it would take just nine meals - three full days without food on supermarket shelves - before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos.

So ask yourself, in a nation as well-armed as America, how long would such a breakdown of law and order happen here under similar circumstances?

This scenario is actually possible if the asshole in the White House attacks Iran. Regardless of how effective the Iranians may be in closing the Straits of Hormuz, all they have to do is try and Lloyd’s of London and other insurers will pull the insurance from all the tankers.

And then the ‘fun’ begins. That’s when American find out what the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is really for - not your gas tanks but for the forces of martial law that would be needed to control a desperate population in the event of an emergency.

So we’re the breadbasket of the world? Yes so the farmers will eat. But how will we service a city the size of Chicago if we don’t have the fuel to get the grains from the silos to the processors and then to the market? And at a cost that people in the city can afford?

More good news - Lowest Food Supplies in 50-100 Years

Look, you can say I’m crazy, I no longer care. One has to put this in front of the people for their consideration somehow. Again, if the British media have the guts to talk about this, why shouldn’t we?

My greatest worry about Americans is that if and when this sort of emergency occurs, the vast majority of people will be completely unprepared for it - not just physically but just as important, psychologically.

Right now coal and oil industries are running wall to wall propaganda PSAs on news channels to get Americans to turn the rest of Alaska and West Virginia into giant coal and oilfield so we don’t, in the words of one of the most egregious PSA’a “say goodbye to the American lifestyle that we all know and love.”

What they don’t tell you is where the so-called facts and figures come from and that the cost of that extraction will make every barrel of oil, ton of coal, and cubic yard of natural gas an eventual energy loser. But those industries will make a small fortune riding into the twilight of our ‘non-negotiable way of life.’

But there are naive and foolish Americans who believe that if we drill the entire Alaska National Wildlife Refuge we’ll be ‘energy self-sufficient.’ It’s nonsense to any geologist that has studied the issue. But that won’t stop an increasingly desperate, cold and hungry population from demanding that their government ‘do something.’

Right now, the overture is turning into the first act of the play as, on this Sunday morning, the average price of gas now goes above $4 a gallon. And, as a corollary, the price of everything that uses oil to get to market (which is pretty much everything) goes up as well. The ripple effect of all the other things made or derived from oil - mass agriculture, plastics, computer parts, etc., also rises.

From the Daily Mail article:

At its most basic, the reasons for this food inflation are twofold: increasing demand (particularly in the emerging economies of India and China) and spiralling production costs.

The former had been predicted for years, but the latter is more unexpected.

Conventional wisdom had it that in an age of mechanisation, the cost of producing the food that we eat would decrease as technology found new ways of improving yields and minimising labour costs. But there was a problem that hadn’t been factored in. Production methods are now such that 95 per cent of all the food we eat in the world today is oil-dependent.

The ‘black gold’ is embedded in our complex global food systems, in its fertilisers, the mechanisation necessary for its production, its transportation and its packaging.

For example, to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires the equivalent of six barrels of oil - enough to drive a car from New York to LA.

Unbelievable? One analysis of the fodder pellets which are fed to the vast majority of beef cows to supplement their grazing found that they were made up of ingredients that had originated in six different countries. Think of the fuel required to transport that lot around the world.

Now factor in the the diesel used by the farm vehicles, the carbon footprint of chemical fertilisers used by most nonorganic beef farms and the energy required to transport a cow to the abattoir and process it. The total oil requirement soon adds up.

Picture an anaconda snake squeezing the American economy. At what point does the system give way? $5 a gallon, $6? At some point, knowing that wages will NOT rise to keep up with the now rapidly rising costs of everything, our society begins to break down. What happens when it takes more for someone to drive to their minimum wage job than what they earn that day?

IF that job is still there, not strangled by the rising costs of goods and raw materials?

Is anyone wondering where all this will lead?

Nine meals from anarchy.

Meanwhile on this Sunday morning, Howie Kurtz on CNN is going on in a serious vein, about the misreporting on Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy.

American life is madness. But the fun hasn’t even started yet.

Let me make a prediction you will see in your lifetime. Perhaps next year.

This prediction is based on THIS story and the following stories:

At some point, a dwindling number of gas stations will be protected by guards armed with submachine pistols. All cars will have to stop at a distance from the station to be searched for weapons. You will pay for whatever gas you want through electronic debit or cash at the checkpoint. Then you will proceed to the pump and pump your own fuel under the watchful eye of guards.

and/or

You will have a gas ration card and sticker on your car not unlike the World War Two “A” cards. Guards at gas stations will carefully log the number of gallons you buy and cross check your card against their database.

Since most Americans read nothing outside of their own controlled media, here’s a well written run down of just what we face that our glorious President, Congress and media haven’t told us about.

London Independent

I won’t except it here - just read it. You NEED to READ this.

And remember, all the bad stuff accelerates at incredible speed if the Warmonger in Chief attacks Iran as many predict will happen by the end of the year or next January. Or some other kind of terrorist attack is launched during the transition.

Now, I have run out of any hope for the future of the world. Notice that most of the Western nations we spit on publicly as effeminate cheese-eating surrender monkeys are doing their best to encourage and require (by law) conservation and conversion measures.

Not so in our land of the “non-negotiable lifestyle.”

And for that, we are well and truly fucked and deservedly so.

And we can spend the time on the downward spiral not leading, but blaming the Chinese and the Indians for being the REAL CAUSE of the end of industrial society. That might make the Rush Limbaughs and Lou Dobbs feel better for a few months but the bottom line is, in the end, we will be left psychologically unprepared and economically undefended against what will hit us.

At that point, I guess the entire Bush Crime Family takes off for their ranch in Paraguay. The rest of us will be contending with a society tearing itself to pieces. There will be blood, oh yes, there will be blood.

Look, nothing is going to happen on the political front. Even the sainted Obama isn’t talking about any of this because he knows that to tell the American people the truth would doom his chances of winning. And the corporate boys are content to ride the economic collapse wave all the way down where they will either flee to their private islands or their armed compounds (like the Walton family has built).

The liars are leading the blind to oblivion.

So my advice to all of you is simply this: go out and blow the ranch on having a good time. Want to take a great dream vacation in your life? Take it now. Right now. Just drop everything, max up the cards and go. Seriously. We’re all going to be poor and scraping by to some degree in the future anyway so you might as well enjoy yourself now. The memories of this last great time may be all you have to keep you warm someday.

Read the article again: the writing is on the wall and there will be not be any movieland deus ex machina to stop it.

OK, if it helps, pretend some doctor told you you have inoperable cancer and have a year to live. The self-help gurus always told you you should live your life like that. Well, now you can! And with good reason.

If you feel like living beyond Armageddon, go ahead and get the basement filled with non-perishables. Buy some gas cans and, right NOW, store a few tankfuls of gas in the garage. Yes, get all the nifty guns and ammo you want now. Charge them - no one a few years ago is going to pay those balances anyway. And no one will be able to collect on them either.

Where we’re going as a nation a sterling credit record is not going to matter. Neither will all that ugly looking fiat currency you’re stuffing in your wallet or purse.

You might, just might, want to look at all the stuff you’re selling on Ebay and think about what you might get for locally in barter. Just saying.

Want it? Want it bad? Get it now. Enjoy it now, especially if no one will buy it from you later. Hell, it may even give the US economy one more dead cat bounce and make the boys on Wall Street happy enough until the end of the year.

Everything is simply going to get more expensive in the near and long term future, starting now. And in the case of things like gasoline and heating oil, they may go out of sight instantly, in the event of an attack against Iran.

And, by the way, do you think your employer is going to raise your pay to cover the sharp rising costs of living?

(rolling on the floor laughing)

As as the Independent article points out - most of your durable goods, food and medicines owe their existence to oil. As oil soars, so do all of them.

(As an aside, with so many millions of Americans brain chemistry now totally dependent on SSRI type anti-depressants, what happens when the shit hits the fan and they can’t get their drugs anymore? There won’t be nearly enough police to contain the carnage.)

Survivalism

Now that brings up another issue covered last Saturday by the Associated Press: Survivalism.

Yes, I’ve mentioned food, weapons and all of that. And the people the AP interviewed are serious about what they’re doing and preparing for.

But consider what they believe is going to happen:

“There’s going to be things that happen when people can’t get things that they need for themselves and their families,” said Lynn-Marie, who believes cities could see a rise in violence as early as 2012.

Lynn-Marie asked to be identified by her first name to protect her homestead in rural western Idaho. Many of these survivalists declined to speak to The Associated Press for similar reasons.

snip

Determined to guard themselves from potentially harsh times ahead, Lynn-Marie and her husband have already planted an orchard of about 40 trees and built a greenhouse on their 7 1/2 acres. They have built their own irrigation system. They’ve begun to raise chickens and pigs, and they’ve learned to slaughter them.

The couple have gotten rid of their TV and instead have been reading dusty old books published in their grandparents’ era, books that explain the simpler lifestyle they are trying to revive. Lynn-Marie has been teaching herself how to make soap. Her husband, concerned about one day being unable to get medications, has been training to become an herbalist.

By 2012, they expect to power their property with solar panels, and produce their own meat, milk and vegetables. When things start to fall apart, they expect their children and grandchildren will come back home and help them work the land. She envisions a day when the family may have to decide whether to turn needy people away from their door. (with what, a few kind words or an AK-47? - ed.)

“People will be unprepared,” she said. “And we can imagine marauding hordes.”

So can Peter Laskowski. Living in a woodsy area outside of Montpelier, Vt., the 57-year-old retiree has become the local constable and a deputy sheriff for his county, as well as an emergency medical technician.

“I decided there was nothing like getting the training myself to deal with insurrections, if that’s a possibility,” said the former executive recruiter.

Which brings up the next question: not so much how many American could conceivably live like that but how many would want to? Slaughtering chickens and pigs? Yechhh!!! Tending a garden by hand? No HBO? Why live?

They had a solution for this in Soylent Green.

So look, you’ve got maybe 6-8 months in the event of an attack on Iran to live it up. Without an attack, 2-3 years tops before other things happen I don’t have the time or patience to talk about here.

Now get out there and enjoy life!

Great must read article from David Glenn Cox linked from Democratic Underground

Like any panic, the root causes are always disputed; heroes are vilified and villains deified. Some say the root cause is the ever-expanding, worldwide demand for oil, exacerbated by the emerging economic tigers India and China. Others point to oil traders’ and speculators’ involvement, and even the traders themselves find they are torn by their allegiances. CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera took umbrage at a Congressman for describing oil company profits as obscene. Explaining that most of their viewers are investors and view profits as a deserved expectation, “What then, Congressman, makes profits obscene?” she asked. “What makes profit obscene?”

Pick your poison; let the fuel costs kill you or raise fares until the public stops flying. But the airlines are the canary in the coal mine for the trucking companies, food processors, freight haulers and producers of raw materials. A factory that I used to order from gave us free freight on orders over ten thousand dollars. That deal is now out the window. With freight rates up 40%, the ten thousand-dollar order wouldn’t cover their own freight costs. That, in turn, lowers margins and encourages dealers to order only as needed.

Cox gets to the meat of the issue - when you destroy a nation’s currency, as the Bush administration has done in just one of their its acts of treason, this is what you get - rampant inflation from oil to cheetos.

Wind that up with peak oil and rampant market speculation and you get what we’re seeing now.

In a previous post, I wondered aloud how could that which those of us who watched peak oil, be happening this fast? When you factor in what Cox has here, the picture gets clearer.

But as long as we beat the tired drums of free market capitalism and globalism we are dooming ourselves to seeing real starvation, want and seniors dying in frozen homes NEXT WINTER.

I would love seeing someone like Caruso-Cabrera have to live like an ordinary American middle class person next winter. Of course, she won’t. Failing that, a mob storming her studio in the middle of a broadcast might be fitting punishment. Why do you think most TV stations have more security surrounding them than banks?

Truth be told, when we finally get down to the bottom of this mess, there will be a whole host of capitalists who should be consigned to a new form of Devil’s Island. We can start with Bush, who, has done more damage to this country than any enemy of the US could have ever dreamed of. But the whole neocon cabal needs to meet rough justice as well.

If this sounds like strong stuff, again, wait until next winter. This is merely the prologue. You haven’t seen real suffering yet. And when you do, remember who was president the last 8 years. You’ll have plenty of time to remember.

If I were to make any suggestions to people here I would continue to hoard non-perishable foods. If you can, buy gold or silver. Start getting used to walking or biking places when you can. Cut out all unnecessary diversions. If you must see friends and relatives in distant places, do it soon - very soon. It will hurt but by the end of the year traveling more than 50 miles in a car for anything other than life giving essentials may be seen as unthinkable for average people.

And I would start thinking about the unthinkable - your own personal protection. Yes, that means a gun. And for heaven’s sakes learn how to use it.

I have noticed lately a number of people filling multiple gas cans. Probably a good idea as well. But be careful of how you store it. A tankful of gas isn’t worth losing your garage or home in a fire.

Isn’t it amazing we’ve come to this?

Today’s Contemporary Americana!

Associated Press

CNN Money

Yesterday morning, several Congressmen woke up in Never Never Land and went to Capitol Hill and asked very deep and serious questions of the several oil company executives under oath. Here are the real knee slappers:

“Where is the corporate conscience?” (the WHAT?!?!) Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked the top executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies.

“People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told the executives. He said there’s a “disconnect” between legitimate supply issues and the oil and gasoline prices motorists are seeing.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., noting that Exxon’s profits had nearly quadrupled from $11.5 billion in 2002, said he had heard nothing from the oilmen that would explain “why profits have gone up so high when the consumer is suffering so much.”

You have “just a litany of complaints that you’re all just hapless victims of a system,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told the executives. “Yet you rack up record profits … quarter after quarter after quarter.”

“Is there anybody here that has any concerns about what you’re doing to this country with the prices that you’re charging and the profits that you’re taking?” Durbin asked.

“You have to sense what you’re doing to us - we’re on the precipice here, about to fall into recession,” said Durbin. “Does it trouble any one of you - the costs you’re imposing on families, on small businesses, on truckers?”

At that point, I suppose these guys were doing all they could to maintain their composure to not break out in giggles and guffaws:

So what was the response to Durbin?

The titans of America’s oil industry sat quietly for a moment.

“Senator,” replied Exxon’s Simon, “We have a lot of concern about that. And we’re doing all we can to put downward pressure on prices.“

You can bet afterwards these guys retired to some private mens’ club and rolled on the floor retelling the best parts of their testamony:

“Oh, oh, and then Simon (GUFFAW!), sits there with a straight face and says (with phony gravitas) ‘we have a lot of concern about that!! A LOT OF CONCERNS ABOUT THAT!!! HAW HAW HAW! Can you believe that!?”

Peals of laughter all around. “Another round of single malt, gentlemen?”

Now, a show of hands: how many think Senator Durbin actually meant it?

Oh you embarrass me! Put your hands down! How many of you have read this blog for any length of time? OF COURSE HE DIDN’T MEAN IT. Durbin may come across as a slightly befuddled ass of a Boy Scout but he’s not that stupid.

This was American kabuki theater. The questions were asked in the way that they were purely for political posturing from the people asking them. Truthful answers were not seriously sought nor expected. The quotes were generated for those freely franked newsletters back to the constituents that will show them that people like Durbin really truly, madly and deeply care about their pain.

Bullshit.

These are the same Congressmen that have taken bundles of cash from big oil, big medical, big pharma, big trial lawyers, etc. etc, etc. and know that this is just a game, a sham. The oil company guys know it too - they are playing their part as well. They show up, repeat the same lies they used back at the last public show on April 1, and then retire for laughs and drinks. It’s an interesting diversion from their usual duties and they get to be on television.

Anyone who thinks these hearings mean anything more than that need to bone up on their Howard Zinn.

Oh, let’s not forget the media’s critical role in all of this: to show the befuddled American people that ‘the system is still working.’ That is, Congress is ‘doing something’ about oil prices by ‘grilling’ oil company executives and showing that they care.

“Oh yes,” Joe and Jane Sixpack say at home, “look at Durbin’s furrowed brow. He’s pissed. Surely the oil company guys will be shaking in their shoes. Congress will do something soon.”

Yeah. Right.

Folks, if you haven’t figured it out yet, you’re government is a sham - in bed with the people they’re supposed to be regulating. And as far as the effects on gas prices: you’re on your own sucker. After all, Congressmen and their families don’t have to worry about the price of gas - you pay for their fuel costs. They still go on their little lobbyist paid junkets. They’re doing quite well, thank you. You and your family on the other hand, are dogmeat.

But on November 4, you’ll still dutifully tromp to the polls and believe that your vote actually will accomplish anything. Because the people on television told you that it will.

That is, if by November 4 you can afford the gas to get to the polls.

Hmmmm.

I found this interesting:

We Were Warned: Tomorrow’s Oil Crisis

This presentation, originally created in 2006 is running again on CNN, according to what I was seeing on that news channel this morning.

Apparently CNN will continue to dust this “classroom lecture” off again as gas prices continue to rise. Of course, the story hook is a terrorist attack on oil facilities after a hurricane hits Houston. The interesting thing is, those incidents aren’t needed to get where CNN says we might be going:

It is September 2009. A Category 5 hurricane roars through Houston, destroying oil refineries, drilling platforms and pipelines–the complex system that provides a quarter of our nation’s daily fuel supply. Three days later, terrorists attack two key oil installations in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest supplier. In the days and weeks that follow, gasoline prices hit record highs, food prices soar as trucks cannot afford to make deliveries, and Americans begin to realize that their very way of life is in peril.

In We Were Warned: Tomorrow’s Oil Crisis, CNN’s Frank Sesno explores the potential ripple effects of this frightening scenario. The events depicted are hypothetical, but oil experts believe the scenario is entirely plausible. His interviews with energy experts reveal that we are nearing the point at which the world, led by the U.S. and China, will begin to consume more oil than can be pumped from the ground and the oceans. Tracking the global race to find new pools of oil, Sesno also considers the viability of alternative fuels, such as ethanol, which is used as fuel for 40% of cars in Brazil. Throughout his investigation, Sesno tries to find out whether any of these ventures can solve our looming energy crisis or whether we are already too late.

Try this scenario: the asshole in the White House decides to go out with a bang and launch a massive attack on Iran, which attempts, in retaliation, to close the Straits of Hormuz. Successful or not, worldwide insurance firms pull the coverage on oil tankers operating in the Straits and prices go out - of - sight.

But CNN wouldn’t put THAT even MORE plausible scenario on TV, right?

In any case, any time this subject comes up, people need to hear the terms ‘peak’ and ‘oil’ mentioned simultaneously so that it begins to sink into the American consciousness. We need to mentally and physically prepare ourselves for the world that is no longer just ‘coming,’ but now right around the corner.

The next President, no matter who it is, will have to have the balls that George W. Bush doesn’t have and level with the American people - our non-negotiable way of life is ending. We can either pull together and work COLLECTIVELY with SHARED SACRIFICE (oooh, can’t you just hear Limbaugh scream like a stuck at that?) or. . . we can drown in our own blood. Your choice.

And it’s not just the oil either - it’s the whole climate issue.

Personally, I think the powers that be are actually NOT going to do that but are planning on a world wide die off to save themselves from having to do collective shared sacrifice. Greed in the species homo americanus is too strong, I suppose, for people to learn a new way of thinking and living.

In any case, you have a better chance of surviving here than in, say, Africa or Asia. The question is - will India and China, both nuclear armed, go willingly into that good night?