Saturday, April 2, 2011

Lies, Lies, and More Lies About the Obama Recession

It was all Butch on this day at the Cafe as he pulled his notes from his Wranglers:

"When the American people elected Obama President, they also gave him the country's scorecard. Combine Obama as the scorekeeper with a liberal media that worships this President and the hen house is in big trouble. And man, are the feathers flying. Take unemployment as reported to the American public. This is our President's stated number one goal, right? Obama believes if he can keep unemployment below 9% and possibly get it to 8% he can get re-elected and claim a victory for the way he stimulated us.  Today the good news was announced that unemployment was "only" 8.8%.  But,  let's look at the facts. Non farm payroll employment increased by 192,000 in February (remember this number), and the published unemployment rate was little changed at 8.9 percent. The number of unemployed persons was (13.7 million). However when you look at the number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) these numbers also held at the huge number of 8.3 million in February. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

Additionally in February, 2.7 million persons were what they call marginally attached to the labor force, up from 2.5 million a year earlier. Notice how this 200,000 who quit looking is slightly larger than the reported 192,000 who were supposed to have started back to work. Now ain't that convenient. It keeps the unemployment number as 8.9%. These individuals were not counted in the labor force, even though they want jobs, were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had given up and had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

In other words when a worker has taken a part time job because they could not find a full time job and when other workers had given up looking in the last four weeks, these workers were DROPPED from the unemployment figures therefore reducing the reported unemployment rate.

Totaling those that are counted as unemployed (13.7 million), part time because they could not find full time jobs (8.3 million), and those who had stopped looking (2.7 million, the real unemployment number is 16% with a whopping 24.7 million Americans who are unable to find full time employment. For those from Mr. Calm, that is 1 out of every 6 workers. And for the last year the Obama administration has found some single statistic (they call 'em facts) to announce and spin as positive feedback that his $1 Trillion payoff of his Union friends and financial supporters is working. And then you get this BS that 'it could have been a lot worse'. Hell, I'm not even sure Hillary could have been worse. With this kind of math if you give Obama another 4 years all unemployed people will quit looking and the unemployment rate will go to zero.

On the cost of living side even though consumer prices are up 4.6% we are told inflation is under control.  The Federal Reserve has been printing money like a counterfeiter drinking Thunderbird wine, and yet we are told inflation is under control. Why? The government announces inflation numbers 'adjusted' for food and gasoline. This means they don't count what you eat and put in your gas tanks when they give you the phony inflation numbers. Why? They say these are too 'volatile'. That is Obama-speak for 'not conducive to his re-election'. Facts: A gallon of gasoline cost $1.84 when Obama took office. It now averages $3.55 per gallon, an increase of 92% in two years. Yes, I know these have been two really, really long years but still that is a huge increase."

Most of us eat food on a semi-regular basis. A January, 2011 report said 'The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) food price index hit a record high in December, 2010 topping 2008’s previous high when soaring food costs led to food shortages and riots in many parts of the world. The index, which measures the average price of a food commodity basket consisting of cereals, oils, dairy, meat, and sugar, was up for the sixth month in a row in December, to reach a high of 215 points, up from 206 points in November, and the highest since records began in 1990. And hell, with prices like that you should be able to put some ribs and fried chicken in that basket.

Bottom line, Obama has us in a deep hole with slow, slow growth and higher, higher prices.  There is no debate about that.  The only debate is whether he is doing this on purpose or is just incompetent."

In an unusual turn of Cafe events, Sweet Lou actually closed the proceedings on this day, "I guess Obama is saying that if folks don't eat or go anyplace or need a job then they'll be fine. Just stay home and live on stimulation, I reckon."

Think about it,

Jim

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Lies, Lies, Lies, and More Lies About Oil

"Obama has Pinocchio ears. Every time he lies they get bigger. After the last couple of weeks he can barely hold his empty head up," opened Butch in somewhat of a spirited fashion. "His big speech on why we are slaughtering Libya's military never even brushed up against the truth. He says we are there to stop the slaughter of the Libyan people. The truth is Italy, France, Spain, and the Brits have big oil deals with Libya that are threatened by the TRIBAL attempted overthrow of the Libyan government. That's why these NATO countries forced Obama to join them and do the heavy military lifting in the TRIBAL CIVIL WAR. These European countries are using the US, and now Canadian, NATO leadership to attempt to keep their oil supply lines manged by their oil companies from being hurt."

Billy Roy responded, "Spot on, Butch. And then those ears got much larger when he gave his babble on his Energy Plan for the country. His fix, as always, consisted of a two pronged attack on our problem of importing 60% of our nation’s fuel from countries, many of which are imperiled by revolutionary radical Muslims. First he sets meaningless goals. Secondly, he insures failure by setting stupid government standards and regulations."

Butch had the numbers, "Try to top this deceit. His banner headline was to reduce our oil imports by 30% from when he took office to the year 2025. When he took office we were importing 11 million barrels per day. Let me tell you why he picked the 'when he took office' number, and what he didn't say. Because of declining US oil production as the industry has been hounded by the Environmental Protection Agency and because of increasing demand, net US imports of oil increased by 400% from 3.16 million barrels per day in 1970 to 12.04 million barrels per day in 2007. So from 2007 Bush got the number from 12 to 11 million barrels before Obama took office. And since Obama has been in office the Obama RECESSION has reduced our usage, and therefore the import number to 9.7 million barrels. So it has declined by 2.3 million barrels since 2007. Obama wants to take another 14 years to take the number down another 2 million barrels. Of all the Dems, Obama might be the worst of all in using selected half truth numbers to deceive the American people."

Billy Roy came back in, "And listen to this quote from his speech, 'But let’s be honest – it’s not the long-term solution to our energy challenge. America holds only about two percent of the world’s proven oil reserves (big lie). And even if we drilled every drop of oil out of every one of those reserves, it still wouldn’t be enough to meet our long-term needs.  All of this means one thing: the only way for America’s energy supply to be truly secure is by permanently reducing our dependence on oil. We have to find ways to boost our efficiency so that we use less oil. We have to discover and produce cleaner, renewable sources of energy with less of the carbon pollution that threatens our climate. And we have to do it quickly'. Give em the numbers, Butch."

"Got it. Proven oil reserves in the United States are 21 billion barrels which is about 2% of proven reserves in the world.  However, the U.S. Department of the Interior estimates the total volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable prospective resources in all areas of the United States, including the Federal Outer Continental Shelf, the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, and the Bakken Formation, total 134 billion barrels of crude oil. This would increase our reserves by 640%. This excludes oil shale reserves, as there is no significant commercial production of oil from oil shale in the United States and the United States has the largest known deposits of oil shale in the world, according to the Bureau of Land Management and holds an estimated 2.175 trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil.  Obama understates our reserve potential by as much a factor of 100X."

"You nailed it, Butch. When the President talks about American Ingenuity why doesn't he unleash the oil companies and let them tap these resources. Instead he said he was pushing them to explore and produce where they currently have permits and his permission. Just so happens most of the time the government just gives permission to drill where there is little to no oil."

"And to top it all off Obama said, 'Another substitute for oil that holds tremendous promise is renewable biofuels – not just ethanol, but biofuels made from things like switchgrass, wood chips, and biomass'. He doesn't have a clue what the hell these stupid things are.  I would like to stuff wood chips up his biomass.  And then of course he got to his real reason for giving the speech. He started pimping for Algore and crew by pushing clean energy or using the wind and sun to power our future. He urges the government to spend more money to subsidize these experiments, plus even a bigger scam, he wants the government to pass more regulations forcing the use of green products. For example light bulbs with 70% less power that cost 3-4 more per bulb."

Scott Riddle added fuel to the fire, "His henchmen are as bad or even worse. Guys like energy secretary Steven Chu who has been recorded saying that we need to get the price of gasoline to $5 a gallon to make their green plan work. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar testified before the House Natural Resources Committee on the Department of the Interior’s Fiscal Year 2012 Budget proposal. When pressed by Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) about the de facto offshore drilling moratorium the Obama Administration has inflicted on his district, Sec. Salazar responded: 'When you look at the production within the Gulf of Mexico, even in the midst of the national crisis of the Deepwater Horizon, the production has remained at an all-time high.' This is total BS.  According to the Energy Information Administration, the Obama offshore drilling moratorium will cause a 13-percent fall in domestic offshore oil production this year, which translates to a loss of about 220,000 barrels of oil a day. That means lower GDP growth for the nation, higher gas prices for all Americans, lower tax revenues for the federal government, and most importantly, fewer jobs for Americans living in the Gulf region.  These folks can recover from the hurricane easier than this country can recover from Obama's energy plan."

Well all we know in Austin is that if you stacked this administration's lies for just one week on top of each other they would be even longer than this blog posting.

Think about it.  Is our President honestly fulfilling his elected duty to protect our country from economic collapse with his energy plan?

Jim