McCain Moves Venezuela to the Middle East

First John McCain moves Spain to Latin America and now he is moving Venezuela to the Middle East. Pssssst Senator McCain, they are not like furniture in your many houses that you can move around on a whim. These countries you keep rearranging are on different continents! Venezuela is in South America but I’ll keep this between you and I John. Mum is the word on your vast foreign relations experience.

Over at America Blog they have this interesting article about Venezuela…

Video Link




The next thing you know he is going to want to move New Mexico to Mexico, Rhode Island to the Bahamas, New England to Great Britain. And for all of you folks in Arizona, Senator McCain is moving the state to Florida to consolidate all them pesky Social Security whiners. Cindy wants to put in a new pool.

I am a little concerned about how he feels about California though. Latest reports had him down at Home Depot buying up the entire stock of pry bars and asking which way to the (Expletive) San Andres Fault?

Note to self: Do not let John McCain book our next vacation plans to ANYWHERE!

Papamoka

American Ingenuity on Oil’s Replacement

I’ve said it before on many posts on this site. The end of the strangle hold on America’s energy needs is nearing the end of the beginning. All of those back yard inventors of a better mouse trap when it comes to our fuel needs are coming out of the woodwork and the ones serious enough to believe in it will be successful.

One of the things I find interesting is that many of these backyard chemist, biologist, and guys that know how to work a mean wrench have on thing in common, not one of them thinks they will replace the Exxon’s of this world but they sure as hell will put a dent in their billion dollar profits year by year. And as these combined technologies all grow over time then the likes of Exxon will be the mega giant corporations that dared to think it was irreplaceable. Read more on this great article from Popular Science and Amanda Schaffer in the latest issue…

I’m watching this image on a computer screen at Amyris Biotechnologies in Emeryville, California, where one of the founders, biologist Jack Newman, is giving me a tour. The genetically manipulated E. coli before me are highly crafted units of industrial production, which Amyris is using to turn sugar into novel versions of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel—in other words, the fuels on which the world already runs. Amyris is one of a handful of young biofuel companies putting a brilliant and weird twist on the future of green. It’s betting that, with the help of bacteria, the long-term answer to our gasoline woes will actually be . . . gasoline.

Because as it stands, the main alternative to petroleum, ethanol (a type of alcohol), is fraught with problems. It can’t be pumped through current infrastructure because it tends to corrode pipelines. And according to University of Minnesota economist Jason Hill, even if all the corn grown in the U.S. were converted to ethanol, it would replace only some 12 percent of the 146 billion gallons of gasoline we use every year. Cellulosic ethanol—fuel produced from the cellulosic matter contained in plant stalks and stems rather than from seeds—would solve that problem, but the technology to produce it on a large scale is still a way off. Plus, ethanol simply isn’t as energy dense as petroleum-based fuels. - Popular Science

One of the things I find very warming to the spirit is that this research isn’t coming from the United States Government or sponsored by XYZ oil company. It’s coming from American’s with an attitude, American’s with a spirit and sense of what is right and what is wrong. It’s coming from a displaced sense of the American way of life. For the last eight years we as a people have been jerked around by circumstances beyond our control and if you know anything about Americans, we hate being told that the price of our greatest energy resource is beyond our control. That’s a tough pill to swallow and we American’s tend to hate having anything shoved down our throats. Even when it comes from within our own nation with the people we allow a free market to dictate prices.

This is an Energy Revolution and it is starting in garages, chemistry labs, brain storming sessions, and with individuals sick and tired of having the money they earned spent on fuels to run our vehicles or buying a gallon of milk for their families. That is an argument that will never be won when it comes to the hundreds of thousands of brilliant minds working today all across America to pretty much chuck the Middle East and all OPEC nations the bird.

This countries energy needs will pretty much be self reliant in twenty to thirty years. It’s not going to be easy and it isn’t something that can happen overnight or from any one technology. It will happen with one advancement at a time. Think of it as a slow strangling end to imported oil much like the horse and buggy day.

One last quote from the same Popular Science piece…

Before I leave, though, he shows me a painting he keeps in his office. It’s of a little boy leaping from one cliff to another across a chasm. The boy’s arms are stretched out. His head juts forward. “He isn’t even looking at the edge. He’s looking beyond the edge,” Reiling says. “He’s 100 percent committed to that jump. That’s what you’ve got to do when you’re going after something.”

You have my best wishes on success Amyris!

Papamoka

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Oil Speculation

Picture courtesy of NYC Insider

In the middle and lower class homes of many families is the up and coming battle of the winter heating budget. Raise your hands if you live in the north of the nation and still have not set the heat permanently on your single setting thermostat at 68 degrees? Raise your hands if the thickness of blankets on your bed is greater than the measurement of your waste line? Is your favorite phrase’s “We do not turn the heat on till after Thanks Giving” or “Put another sweater on“ ringing any bells?

Well bust my buttons if the cost of the lower class to heat the four walls is not the latest joke for those with funds to live high off the hog to enjoy. When people laugh at the suffering of their fellow man and yet gain from their sorrows from investments then they are over speculating in the market for the sake of dollars and in doing so have lost their own humanity. Stuffing a five dollar bill into the Salvation Army kettle does not absolve you from sin.

Granted that market speculation is needed in a free market but is the market actually free or running away without control. I tend to believe that the market is over speculating futures and that in turn is driving the price up without support. The bubble will only burst when the support for a continued struggle in the middle east involving American Military and Government support end. Till that time comes or a total regime change in Washington happens you had better put on yet another sweater and buckle down for a very expensive cold winter. Billions more can be squeezed out of the cold and poor economy of America, Bush is counting on it for his mega mansion Presidential Library. In Iraq they used to call them Presidential palaces but I digress to this piece in the New York Times…

Oil Price Up Again Ahead of Fed Meeting

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Published: October 29, 2007

Oil prices rose 1.8 percent today, adding to the 3.7 percent increase last week and raising the specter of inflation one day before the Federal Reserve governors meet to consider whether to adjust interest rates.

Crude oil futures rose above the $93 mark in overnight trading and were up to $93.53 a barrel at the close of exchange trading today, up $1.67 from Friday.

The price is a record in actual dollar terms and some analysts said the commodity is on a steady march toward toppling the inflation-adjusted high of $101.70 it set in April 1980.
“It’s an incredible run,” said Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Fimat in New York. “At this stage you’re kind of grappling for the signal that would start a reversal and it’s just not out there in the market.” - New York Times

A very good friend recently reminded me that all President’s take an oath on attaining the office to defend the Constitution. I’m wondering if the power brokers that be had had a higher goal to pledge allegiance too? Oil is not what our nation was built on. Far greater men have served in the office of President, I wonder if the next occupant will have the guts to chuck the bird at Wall Street and fight for the American people first over personal gain down the road. Yes I said PERSONAL GAIN! Check out Mr. Cheney’s net worth before being Vice President and now. No bid contracts have served him very well and he will not be worrying about the temperature setting in his house in Wyoming. Home is now a summer home for him and the Cheney family as long as the stock prices hold up.

Our nation was built on the principal that you could be anything they want to be. Pray and raise your children free from oppression. We raise our children to look for what is best in America and in many cases as a parent we walk them to the airplane or bus that will take them off to serve in our military. God bless them for serving but we need to look back at home once in a while instead of who bloodied who’s nose ten thousand miles from home.

Back to reality, my five girls are bunked down with blankets and comforters and whatever magical stuffed animals that helps them sleep. My thermostat is set at 65 because it is only October. Gas heat is following oil speculation, millions are being made off of that speculation in the markets and Hugo Chavez is waving his flag of cheap oil for northern states. Camelot is dead and it has been replaced by none other than a Wall Street broker calling out for higher prices while the child he passes on the street spent the night in a bed with the air temperature at just above freezing. This is only October.

What ever happened to being an American first over a capitalist? Watching the latest and greatest news does not bide well for the lower classes of America. Then again, heat is a relative thought if you have a home in the warmer climates and come back for the summers in the north. Isn’t that ironic.

Papamoka