The Irony of Oil

Rather than go away, oil seems to be making a big comeback.

And heaven forbid that the oil prices have come down. All the hand-wringing over gasoline prices starting to approach the “Old Normal”. Gas prices have been so high for so long that nobody seems to remember when they started to skyrocket and think that they are SUPPOSED to be over $4.00 a gallon. NOPE!

There are far too many people in this country who hate to see the consumer win one. They can’t stand it. Somebody somewhere has made a big mistake!

It doesn't matter who you are, whether you’re in the country illegally or work a good job or a not so good job but especially a not so good job; high gas prices hurt everybody’s bottom line. Here in the formally industrialized North East, people drive crazy distances to go to work. Our highways are PACKED bumper to bumper from 6AM to 9:30AM and from 4PM to 7:30PM as a result of the regular commute of the working class. That’s an out-of-pocket expense that until recently had cost many people up to one hundred dollars a week or more.

The political class and their national media enablers are decrying the end of the world economy yet we will see the U.S. economy actually pick up if only from the mere matter of putting money into the beleaguered taxpayers’ pockets where it belonged in the first place. They’re going to spend it, of course.

And our long lost media are already setting up president Obama to take the credit for the upswing when he and his administration have been the biggest obstacle to American progress since the New Deal.

Although Obama is against the Keystone Pipeline for political reasons, I don’t think for a moment that he really believes in the environmentalist religion of Global Warming or the so called dangers of carbon dioxide and all that stupidity like his hardcore supporters do. I do believe that the president saw the movement overall and solar power in particular as an excellent way to pay back his political backers with taxpayer dollars. It seems that was the whole purpose of the government’s solar energy plan.

Russia Pays for its Isolationism

The added bonus in all this for the president is what the drop in oil is doing to Russia.  Without the West to trade with and since it’s in an active battle with what used to be their best trading partner, Ukraine, Russia has dug itself an economic hole. With interest rates quickly closing in on those of the Jimmy Carter administration, without trade and a product to sell, Russia is probably going to have to find itself somebody else to pick a fight with.

And if Russia is hurting, just think of what this is doing to Venezuela! Now there’s a one-product tin can dictatorship that is going from the rock to the hard place because of America’s re-emergence as the world’s number one oil producer. I envision even el "President" Maduro going to the refrigerator in the morning and finding no milk for his cornflakes. It's a Communist Plot! They'll be eating each other by the summer of 2015. 

And the doubling of the U.S. oil production comes despite all the efforts of the current administration and its hardcore environmentalist following to keep the country's oil production down and our dependence on foreign oil up, the Market and the innovations and efficiencies that it provides could not be stopped by the inefficiencies of government control.

These nuts must be apoplectic.

But all the solar and wind power in the world isn't going heat your house or keep your air conditioner going all day, all week.  Oil is still the biggest bang for the buck and the country is now awash in oil. And more will be coming on line world-wide with Iraq once again able to produce and sell oil on the global marketplace and from the position they’re in, they’ll take anything the market will bear for it.

This is why I love hearing these nitwits with more money than brains go on about how they are “saving the planet” by buying an electric automobile.  Like electricity comes out of a can.

With the more electricity they need, some guy in a power generating plant up the road is going to throw another shovel full of coal into the furnace that runs the turbines.

Petroleum products are in everything. They grease the gears in wind turbines, they are what electric cars ride on in the form of rubber tires and what the hoses coolant passes through from the engine to the radiator. Oil is what makes everything go one way or the other and to deny the fact is to merely fool yourself. While it's good to save money and to become more efficient to waste resources on less efficient means of energy production and passing the higher costs onto the consumer weakens the nation.

Now that oil is getting back to a normal price, it's time we examine how we can make better and more efficient use of this abundant resource.

Oil isn’t called the ball bearing of industry for nothing.