Talk is cheap but Saudi oil is expensive [Mulshine attacks Hannity!]

Liberals complain that all the popular radio talk-show hosts are conservatives. This is not precisely the case. Often these talk-show hosts sound like conservatives. But in fact most are simply boobs. Their job is to sell stuff to other boobs, and the political talk is just window dressing.

I heard a classic example of this the other day when New York radio talker Sean Hannity was holding forth on the nature of our problems in the Mideast. The way to solve our problems there, Hannity opined, was to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

But this is the same Sean Hannity who regularly touts the virtues of SUVs. He claims to have two of them, and he is on record as stating of SUV opponents, "They tell us that fuel-burning SUVs are bad for America." What sort of mind could utter that sentence? The tiniest econocar is fuel-burning. The question is not whether a vehicle burns fuel but how much.

And on that question, SUVs are indeed bad for America. The so- called "light-truck exemption" in our fuel-economy rules wastes a million barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, highway deaths have risen for the first year since 1990 thanks to the tendency of SUVs to roll over and kill the boobs who bought them.

Hannity is here engaging in a thought process that I would argue is more typical of the liberal than the conservative mind: Faced with two alternatives, he pretends there is no need to make a choice. But there is. We can have huge gas-guzzling vehicles. Or we can start moving to energy independence. But we can't do both.

Nonetheless, I'm sure the great mass of boobs out there believe that there is a way we can all tool around town in Hummers while also eliminating all oil imports. But this is stupidity, not conservatism. A true conservative approach would involve first deducing what the national interest is on this question and then inquiring as to how to serve that interest.

As it happens, former CIA Director James Woolsey has done just that. In a recent issue of Commentary magazine, Woolsey laid out a four-point plan for reducing America's energy dependence. The plan is a bit complicated, but I'll sum it up in a few words: Soldiers should drive Hummers; civilians should drive cars.

There is no way, says Woolsey, that America will ever be able to produce enough oil to fuel our current fleet of gas guzzlers.

"We will not come anywhere near being able to break our dependence by producing more oil domestically," Woolsey writes.

To the boob mind, all we have to do to solve our problems is tap the oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That's a good idea, but it would have a relatively small impact. The United States, Woolsey notes, has a mere 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. Tapping the refuge would bring that up to just 3.3 percent. Meanwhile, we consume 25 percent of the world's annual oil production.

Since we will never have enough oil, it follows logically that we should use the oil we have more efficiently. Woolsey proposes a system of tax incentives and rebates to get the American people to give up their gas-guzzlers in favor of hybrid gas-electric vehicles.

On the foreign front, Woolsey proposes that we could help the Russians increase their export capacity by 50 percent with a minor investment, thus diluting the Saudis' control over the market. The third point of his plan would be an effort to produce more ethanol through the processing of plant materials. The fourth is to greatly increase the strategic petroleum reserve.

The Woolsey plan may have its flaws, but at least it is a plan. Unfortunately, the current administration, like the talk-show hosts, is simply pandering to the boobs. The Bush administration is putting the interests of the domestic auto industry and the international oil industry above the national interest. To fool the boobs, they talk about developing hydrogen-fueled vehicles. These don't exist and probably never will. But we could have safe, 35-mpg hybrids in a few years.

But we can't have 12-mpg SUVs and also wean ourselves off Saudi oil and the terror it finances, says Woolsey, who was an expert on the subject long before 9/11. The Saudi leaders use our oil money to finance the fanatically anti-American Wahhabi sect of Islam. Woolsey writes that "the Wahhabis' reach has spread as far as Malaysia and Indonesia and indeed into a substantial number of organizations, lobbies, mosques and Muslim schools in Europe, Britain and the United States."

He adds that "the world hardly owes anyone a living for being lucky enough to sit on top of so much its oil."

Well, it does if we're stupid enough to buy that oil. And at the moment, we are.

AHHHH. I'm a Mulshine fan and a Hannity fan. The cognitive dissonance is tearing me apart. Ahhhhh!

However, I don't consider myself a boob!

That said, I agree with Mulshine in general regarding SUVs.

Other Mulshine Anti-SUV columns:

SUV drivers go off-road (FR Thread)

The war must be over [Paul Mulshine] (FR Thread)

SUVs: High Rollers, Licensed To Kill (Warning, this links to CommonDreams.Org, an enemy of freedom)

That said, I agree with Mulshine in general regarding SUVs.

I'll give up my SUV's when you can get it out from under my cold, dead right foot!

Oh yea, and when the manufactures start making regular vehicles that 6'6" folks can ride in and drive - comfortably.

Mulshinney is a boob - in my SUV warped opinion.

LVM

Mulshine, along with a lot of other folks who call themselves jounalists these days, is quite ignorant about the whole issue of "oil dependence."

For one thing, the U.S. doesn't "rely" on Saudi Arabia for oil. We get oil from places like Saudi Arabia for the same reason we get electronics from Asia, bananas from South America, and unskilled labor from Mexico -- because these places provide these commodities at the lowest prices.

Mulshine should also do some research and find out how much less "dependent" we have become on Saudi oil over the years. Saudi Arabia is still the single largest foreign supplier of oil to the U.S., but it has now fallen behind the combined Western Hemisphere sources like Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Ironically, the best way to keep the U.S. from buying Saudi oil is to figure out a way to make oil even cheaper. Over the last ten years, oil imports from Saudi Arabia were at their lowest when oil was trading at $12 a barrel. At low prices, the cost of shipping Saudi oil to the U.S. becomes a major factor that makes us a less attractive market to them.

I'd also like to see someone in Mulshine's position find out how much oil is actually used to produce gasoline in the U.S. I may be wrong about this, but I was under the impression that the quantity of oil used to produce gasoline is dwarfed by the oil used to produce things like aviation fuel, lubricants, etc.

Source: http://www.ott.doe.gov/facts/archives/fotw214.shtml

What Is Made from a Barrel of Oil?

Crude oil can be refined into a number of petroleum products. The amount of each product differs significantly between countries. In Europe, where diesel fuel use is prevalent, 36% of the refinery yield is diesel and only 20% is gasoline. In North America, only 23% of the refinery yield is diesel and 41% is gasoline. The OECD Pacific countries have a higher yield of kerosene than the other OECD regions.

Refinery Yield by OECD Region, 2001

Source: International Energy Agency, Monthly Oil Survey, January 2002.

Note:
Gasoline includes motor gasoline, jet gasoline, and aviation gasoline.
Kerosene includes jet kerosene and other kerosene.
OECD North America includes the Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
OECD Europe includes Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
OECD Pacific includes Australia, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand.

The US is the Saudi Arabia of coal so I hear.

I presume the pollution from burning coal is the main culprit for it's shunning as a fuel.

Plus, the low sulfur coal that is best used for old power plants is located in Utah in a location that Clinton declared a National Monument. Where's the other source of low sulfur coal, Indonesia!

Click the link below:

The Utah Coal Lockup: A trillion dollar Lippo payoff?

We can have huge gas-guzzling vehicles. Or we can start moving to energy independence. But we can't do both.

Why can't we do both? Drill in ANWR, and keep the SUV's and we've "start[ed] moving to energy independence" and kept the SUV's.

Boob.

By the way, I'm amazed at the freepers who want to eliminate SUV's, which would have to be done via government "encuragement" at the very least. So much for freedom, even in this forum.

There's an interesting article in the current "Science" (I think it was) that describes a process that can turn virtually anything with carbon in it to oil for a resonable cost. They've just opened a plant that turns turkey guts from a packing house into high grade oil at $18/bbl. The process will work with shale oil, coal, plastics, garbage, even human $hit. The cost varies depending on what you start with. They think they can get the cost down somewhere around $9-$12

The secret to the process is they don't attempt to "dry" the input substance first, but pressure cook it which recombines molecules befor they feed it into a standard oil cracking system.

Here's more information from Louisiana. It breaks out jet fuel. "Distillate" is home heating oil.

Source:

Louisiana Mid-Continent
Oil and Gas Association

Refinery Output and Final Products

Refinery Yield Per Barrel of Oil		Final Products Made From Crude Oil
Gasoline	45.8 Percent	Ink	Cosmetics
Jet Fuel	10.7	Heart Valves	Sneakers
Liquefied Gases	3.6	Crayons	Bubble Gum
Kerosene	0.3	Parachutes	Car Bodies
Distillate	20.9	Telephones	Tires
Residual Fuel Oil	6.8	Brassieres	House Paint
Feedstocks	2.9	Tape	Ammonia
Special Napthas	0.4	Antiseptics	Eyeglasses
Lubricants	1.2	Purses	Life Jackets
Waxes	0.1	Deodorant	Fertilizers
Coke	3.9	Panty Hose	Movie Film
Asphalt	3.2	Shoes	Loudspeakers
Still Gas	4.8	Volleyballs	Basketballs
Miscellaneous	0.5	Tape	Combs
*Shortage (gain)**	-4.9	Floor Wax	Gasoline
*The final total product of a refined barrel of crude oil may exceed 1 barrel, since some of the lighter liquids are in a near gaseous state and accordingly take up more volume.		This list is only a sampling of the products made from crude oil. It is not intended to be all-inclusive. Rather it is meant to show in just how many areas products made from crude oil are found and used.

Mr. Mulshine, I guess I am one of the "BOOBS" that you are talking about. I own a Ford Explorer that gets about 20 mpg. I will never give it up. I don't care how much we can save riding bicycles. I can afford to put gas in it and will continue to do so. It is obvious to me that if we use more oil than we can produce we will be "dependent" on someone else for our oil needs until we find a new resource to use.

Anyone who attempts to drive a high center of gravity vehicle at high speed is going to eventually have a "rollover". They aren't made to be sports cars. They are made to go through 3' of snow and haul 2000# of cargo. Try that in a Yugo that gets 40 mpg. It doesn't matter how much gas it uses, a Abrams tank gets gpm not mpg but we have them and use them for the application that it is needed for. A tractor trailer gets 5 mpg but if we replace it with 100 Yugo's getting 40 mpg it still won't get the goods to market as efficiently as 1 Kenworth. We will never have energy independence unless we come up with new technology.

Every American has the ability to determine what vehicle is right for them. If they can pay the price what makes it any of your business? Some people have 10,000 SQ. FT. homes that cost more to heat and cool than my 1700 SQ. FT. home, maybe "we" should outlaw them! What self serving bullshit. Go ride your bicycle down the road in the middle of winter in western PA and I will laugh at your obituary and say what a dumb bastard you were. Personally, fossil fuels will eventually rise in price to a point that other fuels will be equal in price. That is how the "free market" works. Rather that than your dictatorial methods of making everyone follow your asinine suggestions. You would make a great Saddam Mini Me. Crawl back under whatever rock you slithered out from under. This is the land of the free not the land that doesn't cost anything.

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