We're Paying for Both Sides of the War

T. Boone Pickens was on CNBC this morn launching his new energy plan. I love this guy. He's spending ten million dollars of his own fortune to publicize the plan and it's certainly worth a look.

T. Boone argues that we should build enough wind to replace the natural gas now being used to generate electricity and then convert cars from gasoline to NG. The goal is American energy independence. The technology already exists for NG vehicles--many buses here in the DC area run on NG. And NG is plentiful here in the US as long as the politicians and tree huggers will let us go get it.

More on all this later, but suffice it to say here that he's dead on when he points out the danger of sending $700 billion overseas every year to pay for oil, much of it to less than friendly folks in crazy parts of the world.

We send troops to fight and to die with the hope of stabilizing and democratizing the Middle East. At the same time we send petro dollars to Iran and Saudi Arabia who use those dollars to support the jackasses who are killing our troops.

It's got to stop.

Fla Tourism v. America

This idiot was on CNBC the other morning looking like a fool. Maybe idiot is too strong a word. At the very least, she's a short sighted, pandering politician. She couldn't have looked more uncomfortable knowing that she held an untenable and increasingly unpopular position. But if you're a Florida Dem I guess you have to kiss up to the lefties to keep those re-election bucks flowing.

Her argument was that drilling off the Florida coast would hurt tourism. To quote her, the Florida tourist industry "is much more important than the problem we're talking about here" which was the high price of oil. The Fla tourism industry more important than the price of oil for the rest of the country? You've got to be kidding.

What's going to hurt Florida tourism is no one being able to afford the gas to drive to Disney. And no one being able to afford the airfare to fly to South Beach. And the airlines canceling all the flights to all the piss ant airports in the Sunshine State bc. they can't make a profit.

Commie in Congress

Communist Maxine Waters, Democrat from L.A., she of the the-Rodney-King-riots-were-"a rebellion"-not-riots fame, wants to nationalize Big Oil if it won't guarantee a decrease in oil prices in exchange for the right to drill.

That's great, just great. Government will do as well with oil as it has with Katrina, the DMV, and the Veterans' Administration. This says it all.

Trust Babies

Descendants of the John D. Rockefeller on Wednesday made a big hullabaloo, chastising Exxon Mobile for going after short term profits from high oil prices and advising XOM to start investing in alternative energy.

How nice to be a limousine liberal trust baby.

The problem, little dears, is that XOM, FYI, is an oil company. Their responsibility is to their shareholders--you and me and everyone else in this country who has a pension plan, has an interest in a college or church endowment, or is invested in a large cap mutual fund. What they're good at--damn good at, in fact--is finding, pumping, and delivering oil.

They're not good at spending money on speculative technologies that aren't proven to be profitable without government subsidies. Nor are they obliged to. Let the venture capitalists and the college professors and the government grant hogs work on that stuff.

If you don't want to make money off of Big Oil, Rockefellers, sell your Exxon shares. Buy some First Solar (FSLR) or Canadian Solar (CSIQ)--both have appreciated at a much better rate than XOM in the past year.

And stop whinin'.

Oil and U.S. involvement

An interesting question came to mind after reading an article entitled "Why Iraq Matters".

If Billary or Obie wins and our policy becomes one of unilateral withdrawal from Iraq, what will happen to the price of oil? My guess is that despite all the America bashing, The Market probably views our presence there now as a stabilizing influence. If we decide to pull out, the uncertainly of an pre-announced withdrawal would lead to a spike in oil prices.

Just my guess. Markets do loath uncertainty.