Tote That Barge, Lift That Bale …
Push That Poll.
The Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy [CARE] is a front group for Big Oil.
Tonight they called for a three question survey:
1. Are you unhappy with gas prices above $3/gallon?
2. Are worried about the Iranian ship sailing towards the US, and the Iranian threat to cut off Mideast oil?
3. Will you allow us to use your answers to pressure President Obama to approved the Keystone XL pipeline which will provide 40,000 jobs, reduce the cost of gas, and make us independent of Mideast oil?
Those aren’t direct quotes, but pretty close, and I answered all three questions – No.
If you want to reduce the price of oil, convince the government to stop listening to the Likud and Neo-Cons, and lift the sanctions against Iran. The oil market will work a bit more competitively if a major producer isn’t under heavy restrictions. If you stop talking about attacking Iran, Iran will stop talking about what it will do to retaliate.
The KXL might produce a dozen new jobs in the US, but it will increase the price of gas in the US Midwestern states. The pipeline will be filled with Canadian, not US oil, and the refined products are already planned to be shipped to Asia, so it will do nothing for US energy independence, nor reduce the average price of gas in the US.
“Citizens Alliance” for almost anything will invariably turn out to be a corporate astroturf scam.
18 comments
I didn’t get the call, but my friend Bob did. He called me at the office and when he told me that they’d asked about Iranian ships sailing to U.S. waters to cut off Mideast oil shipments, I burst out laughing.
They must have been looking for low-information voters for their poll, because it progressed from half-truths to fairy dust in three questions. The Iranian ship was a real ‘tell’ on the purpose of the poll.
Oh, they really shouldn’t have been calling people who were impacted by BP’s Gulf Gusher about oil drilling issues – we know about oil company promises 😉
The United States doesn’t even get any Mideast oil. Our imported oil is from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela. Sheesh.
My gas all comes from Venezuela because I buy it at a Citgo/Tom Thumb.
We are exporting US gas to ensure the price stays high, but low information people, like Zero, don’t seem to notice. 😈
I think we should invade Iran, just to be safe.
Yeah, the same way we are ‘safe’ since invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why Iran? I know of an evil socialist nation that’s much closer. They have that evil socialist medicine thing going *and* they have oil, *lots* of oil. And best of all, their military is a joke, a troop of Boy Scouts would likely cause them to throw down their guns and surrender.
Yes, it’s far past time for us to invade Canada. 😈
It’s safer to do it in the summer, Badtux, or we might encounter them on ice and feel the wrath of hockey sticks and curling stones 😉
Iran manages to send two rust buckets, one a not a fighting ship but a tender to supply the destroyer and that is a threat to the nation? Please, I’ve heard more serious threats coming from the Bother’s Grimm.
That XL pipeline won’t help the job market as most all of this is automated, with the exception of the temporary jobs constructing the line will be. I’m not sure people really understand what is going on with this tar oil or even have a clue. This tar sand oil has a high sand content. Know what sand under pressure does? It’s like an abrasive, give it enough time it will eat holes in things, just like a sand blaster. Now normally when they build something like this they’ll construct sand targets into the line. Basically that’s a filled solid section where the main force will hit in a turn in the pipe, or where they may construct a pig catcher or launcher. The purpose of the sand target is to take the force instead of eating out the interior of the line. Over time, it wears out and will need replaced. If it isn’t regularly checked, you take your pick of what wears into the line first. Corrosion or sandblasting.
On the prices, we’ve all heard that this fracking business was turning the US into a major oil exporter again. Funny how it’s getting exported but the prices domestically isn’t coming down isn’t it?
What’s in those tar sands pipelines is ‘diluted bitumen’. In addition to the tar sand their are solvents to make it a thinner fluid that is easier to pump through the pipe. As toxic as the tar sand is, the solvents are even worse. Yes, the pipeline will be continuously scoured by the mixture, which will thin the walls and erode the valves, guaranteeing eventual failure, and valves that won’t work. This has already happened in other pipelines, so it will happen in this one.
The US derives no benefit from this project, so it is insane to accept any risk at all, or to force people to surrender their property to its construction.
Big oil has no intention of having the price of gasoline drop, so there is no point in talking about it.
Hiya dizzy, Good to see you made it. 🙂
You’ll like it here, they are all sane (well, mostly sane anyhow, myself included). 😉 😀
Bryan, I met dizzy elsewhere and invited him. He’s similar age group and annoyed about things as we are. And has other similarities. Plus just got adopted by a cat! He’ll learn who owns whom! 😉 😀
And yeah, and whenever big oil (or any of the *biggies* like the MIC etc.) are involved, prices never go down!
At the moment the prices are lower in the US Midwest because of a glut of crude oil. One of the things that the Keystone XL pipeline is designed to do is reduce that glut, which will raise prices in the Midwest to the national level.
Big oil is exporting to maintain that price, and there isn’t one damn thing the US government is willing to do about it. Hell, the US gives oil companies subsidies to help them ‘survive’ in the style to which we would all like to be accustomed to.
Dizzy, please note that there is no requirement that you agree with me, as I have a very high tolerance for dissenting views.
I’m sure we’ll have our days when we don’t see eye to eye.
You can’t run a decent blog without differences of opinion unless you are seeking one of those sugary sweet sites oozing with teenage cuteness (how ever endangered those might be today).
So far what I see is a lot of common sense.
I’m not certain that ‘common sense’ is actually very common anymore. The real thread here is that the usual crowd have all been around long enough to know reality when they see, and don’t pretend that it isn’t real just because we don’t like what it tells them.
Amen to that Bryan.
You know that in recent times I’ve taken to calling it “uncommon sense”. Seems far more accurate to me. *shrug*
I don’t much like reality these days. But I’ve seen what happens to fools who believe in fantasy. Reality has a nasty tendency to bite really hard, and often fatally.
One of the men I greatly admire is Dr. Richard Feynman. Because he was one of the most rational and sanest man I’ve ever known.
Hmmm. Been awhile since I posted any quotes Bryan! Can’t have that! 😉 😀
Trouble is, Dr. Feynman has soooo many! Which to choose…
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”
“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.”
“If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.”
“Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it. ”
“Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation.”
“I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”
This one is a longer one, but it is one of my very favorite’s, it reflects how I feel. Especially that far too many people are superficial, they can’t see beneath the surface of things, they judge books by their covers. 🙂 Me, I love knowing what’s within, the content if you like. It makes things far more interesting, and understandable, for me. It’s why I became an Engineer, not to *build* things, but to understand *things*! 🙂
It’s one of the primary reasons I don’t see eye-to-eye with many Religious believers, especially the Fundies. They look at things and have no wonder at all, they don’t care about it other than “God created it.” What ultimately boring and pointless lives they lead.
“I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”
Ahhh well. 🙂 There are hundred’s more, but I’ll save them for another time. Sorry Bryan, usually I only post a few, but I’m feeling somewhat melancholy lately. 😉 😆
RIP Dr. Feynman. You left us far too soon, but perhaps you are the lucky one. I don’t think you would be able to tolerate the level of insanity today. I’m not sure I can for much longer.
Bryan, it’s not just a case of being around long enough. It’s a case of being around long enough and seen enough of actual reality — been enough places, done enough things — to recognize it when we see it. I know far too many people our age who live in a bubble universe of their own, they went to the right school, did the right things when they got out of school, followed the plans set for them by their betters, haven’t seen much, haven’t done much, and they’re blinkered fools who know nothing about the universe that exists outside their little bubble. Something about being on the sharp end of the stick — whether military or otherwise — tends to focus one’s mind on what’s real and what’s not. That gun in the other guy’s hand that could kill you if you don’t focus is what’s real. Bullsh*t on Faux News isn’t.
Too many people are too protected from reality and that’s going to kill us all, if we aren’t careful…
There’s a saying among cops that ‘some people get 20 years worth of experience in a day, and others don’t get a day’s worth of experience in 20 years’. Some people in the military would be stationed overseas and never leave the base. They didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to actually enjoy where they were; they stayed in the fake American environment on base. I couldn’t get my head around that – actually trying not to learn anything.
I guess reality is too scary for a lot of people to deal with, so they don’t. Unfortunately too many of them are in positions of power which affect reality for other people, and rarely, if ever, for the better.
That’s all very true Badtux & Bryan. For me, I can’t say when exactly I understood about *reality*. I know I was quite young, I always had a need to *know*! I was never satisfied with pat answers. I annoyed many teachers in school, and definitely drove the Father who taught Bible Study class, and Sunday school up the wall! Even just his title, *Father*! I remember saying that I couldn’t call him Father, because he wasn’t. If he married my mom, then he’d be my Father-in-Law, but that would be as close as he would get! LOL And I never did call him *Father*, I had a very stubborn streak as a child. 😀 And yes, I got many a strapping or caning, and it just made me even more determined (or willful as they usually put it). In the end, the Mil/Int services saw me as perfect for their needs, and I guess I was. I discovered many things that others before me had failed to find. My team was sent on a few missions that had previously failed to gather good or accurate intelligence. During the extended SERE training, I broke one of my interrogators, it was how I escaped (the last ‘E’ in SERE). Most who go through SERE look for physical opportunities for escape, I was never good at doing the obvious, or taking stupid risks. 🙂 I was very good at my job, and some times, that saddens me, for reasons I can’t yet talk about. *shrug*
When I returned to civilian life, and ended up R&D Manager for a company that designed automated machinery, the first thing I did was hire a dozen people who didn’t know that “things had to be done this was because that was the way it was done”! I wanted people who didn’t know something was impossible, according to the then *current wisdom*. And we succeeded. We won several industry awards over the years, more than any other company of our type, and in a much shorter time than most. 🙂 I was very proud of my team! Just as I was in the Military. And they were *mine*! They worked me me, not the company. As in the Military, when I left all the members of my team left also. 🙂 That REALLY pissed off my Military and Corporate masters more than anything! LOL They figured that by pressuring me out because I was too hard to deal with, they would still have the benefit of those I trained. 😆 Some of the best memories of my life! 😀 😉 That company was eventually taken over by a Chinese company after they became just another mediocre manufacturer. But the Chinese wanted the award-winning assets. *shrug* But they didn’t get much out of them. I made sure of that! My reports never contained *everything*. I understood Intellectual Property rights back then, and I knew what was mine. I’m sure the Chinese were annoyed and frustrated (I know because in the almost 2 decades since, they have achieved little that is ground braking or in any way special). In fact, they pretty much sell the machines my team designed over 2 decades ago, with updates where necessary, but these day’s, they are not so special any longer. 🙂
So yeah, I know with near 100% certainty, and a little doubt, about reality. 😉 😀