Another Recession Keyed By High Oil Prices?

Another Recession Keyed By High Oil Prices?
America Afloat On An Ocean Of Domestic Oil!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet


If you are old enough, and wise enough, to remember the Jimmy Carter years then you remember the fiasco that was his administration. But mostly, you will remember the so-called gas shortage or oil crisis with vehicles lined up for blocks waiting to buy gas. Remember the days when you could buy gas and the days you could not buy gas?

Back in those days, I was a credentialed broadcast news reporter. And something did not “smell” right. After a few weeks of snooping, nobody was able to convince me the gas shortage was real.

I spoke to a propane gas dealer who told me, off the record, (when I asked about the shortage) that all his storage tanks were filled to capacity and he had rail cars sitting on the local tracks filled with propane and he had just been notified that more was on the way.

Around 5 AM, one morning, I, personally, pumped gasoline from a gas pump with a hand-lettered sign on it stating the station was “out of gas.” I knew the owner and had obtained the keys the evening before.

I heard of oil dealers renting storage space from farmers, in the tanks that would normally store the farmer’s fuel for his farm equipment. I was not able to verify that story, but I knew a number of dealers and I did not doubt it then -- and I do not doubt it today.

I also heard, and saw, tankers pumping gasoline into abandoned underground tanks at old, rural, (closed) filling stations in order to store their overflow of gasoline.

An area TV station filmed tanker ships lying low in the water and anchored just over the horizon from the near-by port. It was reported they were ordered to do so while the companies waited for gasoline prices to increase… then they would sail into port and off-load their precious cargo.

I was convinced then, and I am convinced today, that THAT gas shortage – THAT oil crisis – was manufactured. We were drowning in oil and gasoline. I saw too much, I heard too much, and I experienced too much to believe otherwise.

I have come to believe it was the first attempt, by the government, to force Americans to cut back on oil consumption -- to learn to do with less. See, America’s President was the DEMOCRAT, Jimmy Carter -- you know, another one who believes we must all learn to suffer equally, just like the current democrat in the White House, Obama.

The price of gasoline and other oil products is skyrocketing -- even as I write. The American consumer is being taken to the cleaners.

I don’t blame the oil companies for our current oil crisis.

Look. America is awash in oil. We’ve got more oil than the Arabs! But – our government won’t let us get to it -- and use it -- and flip the bird to the Middle Eastern Oil princes.

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. To our knowledge -- none has been extracted. With this mother load of oil why are we still fighting over offshore drilling?

Now. Consider this: The U. S. Geological Service issued a revised report in April of 2008 (It hadn't been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in the area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana. Take a look for yourself. http://bakkenshale.net/bakkenshalemap.html

“The Bakken,” as it is referred to, is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay, and it has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates the Bakken deposit at 503 billion barrels. This is light, sweet, oil that would be far, far, less costly to Americans than the oil we are importing today.

We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. We are talking more than 2 TRILLION barrels of untapped oil. Here are the official estimates: - 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia - 18-times as much oil as Iraq - 21-times as much oil as Kuwait - 22-times as much oil as Iran - 500-times as much oil as Yemen - and it's all right here in America -- in the Western United States.

Estimates tell us that that oil could satisfy America’s need for fuel for up to for 2,041 years!

You can read about this, yourself, at the US Geological Survey website HERE.

So what the deuce is going on? I mean, why the heck are we Americans sitting on our hands and not DEMANDING that our government “cut the cr*p” and allow the oil companies to dig, and drill, for all this oil? WHY is the US continuing to ship our treasure and our blood to the Middle East -- and to our unfriendly southern neighbors -- for oil?

We are on the cusp of back-to-back recessions with the second dip looming today. The cost to Americans for oil is threatening to push us over that brink and into a recession that will, most likely, become a depression even worse than the one or parents and grandparents experienced in the 1930’s.

Who’s to blame? First we blame the environmentalists and others (including the US government) who have blocked all efforts to aid America in becoming independent of foreign oil! And second: If we are truthful, we must blame ourselves, as well, for allowing those people so much power and influence in the first place!

I must ask: Why are we allowing a small group of people to dictate our lives and our economy, indeed, our future as a viable nation?

It is past time to fight back America. Demand that the US Congress defund the Environmental protection Agency right off the bat. Get rid of it.

Just as important is the necessity to elect a President with the cajones to override the environmentalist and open up America to drilling and digging for our own vast reserves of oil sloshing beneath our feet and just offshore and under the tundra.

Understand this: The fantasy of wind turbines and solar panels is just that – a fantasy. The hard truth is – America needs OIL, and lots of it, to sustain our economy -- and us.

The time is exceedingly short. America is facing ruin in a depression, which lies just over the horizon. We have to act now just to insure our survival as a viable nation. Even now, we may have waited too long.

J. D. Longstreet

America’s Atmosphere of Fear, Guilt, and Restraint

America’s Atmosphere of Fear, Guilt, and Restraint
A commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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I am absolutely convinced that had America had the government we have today back in oh, say, the late seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds we would never have grown into the world power we became and, in fact, were - up until last year.

Never in my nearly 7 decades on this earth, as an American, have I seen the people of America so morose, so depressed, so completely whipped, as I see today. The ‘spirit” has almost gone out of the average American. In biblical terms: our “countenance has fallen.” In other words, our self-esteem has fallen through the floor - and then some.

The average American has watched as his job has fled from him, his home has been foreclosed upon, his car has been repossessed, his president is traveling around the world apologizing for doing all the things that made America great, making the average American look and feel like a fool. Yes, Americans have a right to feel let down.

If I were a young man and had fewer responsibilities, I’d pack-up and move to Australia. I am hearing more and more young American men uttering those words today than I have since the 1960’s, when a number of middle aged Americans took their families and fled to Australia.

But, you see, this is what socialism does to a people. This is what socialism does to a country. It guts it. It eviscerates a country and that country’s people. It smothers their motivation.

America, today, is still reeling from the current recession, which is all but over, and trying desperately to prepare for the next huge recession/depression, which is just around the corner. There is little reason to feel any of that HOPE Obama preached about during his campaign for the presidency. Oh, we got the “change” all right. Yep! Everything changed for the worst. But, there simply is NO HOPE. Even if there was, the average American is without the energy to grasp even the proverbial straw.

Just a few short months ago America had limitless horizons. Today the American horizon lies just in front of the toes of his shoes. Americans find themselves beaten down by a relentless government grown so big it sucks the air out of any project it touches. Once ObamaCare is passed into law, the US government will have, indeed, touched everything in America.

The average American’s nerves are strained so they are virtually vibrating as we are hit with a continuous parade of one crisis after another, many man-made and formulated, in my opinion, in the offices of the West Wing. For the first time in the history of the United States, Americans speak of their government in hushed voices and in guarded tones for fear that someone friendly to the Obama Regime may overhear and report them to whomever one reports such things. There is genuine fear of our government in America these days and, unfortunately, those in power have found they like it when Americans fear them.

Those of us accustomed to speaking out with our honest opinions about our government and what our government is doing have now found that we must weigh our words even more carefully, especially when the words we speak and scribble are not complimentary of the Obama Regime.

Unused to this fearful atmosphere many Americans are confused and disoriented and unable to combat the all out attack of socialism on our democracy. The use of “thugocracy” to defeat democracy in America is an altogether new experience for most Americans, especially those of us who live outside the urban areas where the practice of strong-arm politics has been known for a hundred years.

Here in the hinterlands the aforementioned “atmosphere of fear” will last only so long. There WILL be a backlash. Fear will turn to anger. Americans will demand the return of their birthright of freedom and liberty, and they will not be denied.

Already Americans in the so-called “fly-over” country are well ahead of their brothers and sisters in metropolitan America in making the transition from fear to anger. Unwilling to live under the yoke of slavery lain across their shoulders by the politburo of Obama’s socialist Central Committee, they will not quietly accept the desecration of their constitutional rights.

There are among us many who believe America may not survive. I think she will. But – America will never, I repeat, America will NEVER be the same as she was prior to the Obama Regime. The doubt, the guilt liberals carry around like lead weights on their souls has now been draped onto the shoulders of this country. It will drag us down. Much as an athlete running the hundred-yard dash with weights tied to each leg, America will find she cannot distance herself from the pack as she has in her meteoric past. Now she is a part of the pack and there is no real future for a nation as an “also ran.”

America was a leader. No longer. That distinction has been stripped from us by the political left whose feelings of guilt for being superlative strangles the desire to excel. Limits on America’s potential are imposed by those among us who preach “fairness” in all things. Fairness may provide a warm feeling but it throttles the ability to excel in those whom God has endowed with special abilities exceeding those of their fellow Americans. America was a special place because she dared to be special. Americans today are restrained by their government and by their fellow Americans by laws, the purpose of which, we are told, is to save the earth. Creativity and innovation, formerly the hallmark of American society will be, in fact already are, restraining the country from meeting standards of excellence that come naturally to a free people. And therein lies the key.

In the paragraph above I mentioned “a free people.” People must be free to accomplish the truly marvelous things America has accomplished in her brief history. By voluntarily giving up that freedom, that liberty, (in 2008) America began her meteoric crash into the dustbin of history and relegated herself to the bone yard of once great nations.

J. D. Longstreet

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Socialism+Depression+Guilt+Restraint+Failure