Iraq Oil

                American’s dependency on foreign oil is astounding. While researching I found it hard to trust many dot gov websites because I wasn’t sure whether their true allegiances would be biased or not. I am afraid that any institutions set up by the government will be subject to lobbying and even possibly have their content restricted. However, a common theme I have come upon is that the US uses a massive amount of oil, most of which is foreign and most of that foreign oil comes from countries that are considered hostile.  
               According to AmericanProgress.org in 2008 the US imported from 10 hostile countries. This is a big problem. Not many people know where their money is going at the pump. I am a proponent of the idea that there should be a marker on the pump that tells where the oil was purchased. Who knows if our money is going to support terrorism?
         I have a vested interest in NOT supporting terrorism as my husband is deployed to Iraq. In 2008 the US bought $23 billion dollars worth of oil from Iraq according to Rebecca Lefton, Daniel J. Weiss of AmericanProgress.org.  
          The EIA website lists Iraq as one of the 15 top oil import countries for the US. at 470 thousand barrels per day. The current price of a barrel of Iraqi oil 2010 budget for 2011 was about $73.  That is $34,310,000 a day or $12,523,150,000 for the year. As gas prices are expected to rise so will the money we send over to this nation we are occupying militarily. 
        The cost per barrel has proven to go well beyond this projected budgeting and is actually around $117 per gallon (for OPSEC oil according to forex.negocio) and projected to get higher, though these prices vary day by day. We have more than surpassed the projected $73 per barrel. And this money costs us by making the US dependent on foreign nations that are hostile toward us.


http://www.iraq-businessnews.com/2011/01/27/iraq-oil-exports-2010-volume-down-revenue-up/

http://forex.negocio-internacional.net/tag/oil-rates-per-barrel-today-april-20-2011/

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

Foreign Oil Expense to Economy.

Our country is too dependent on foreign oil. Does this mean we should start increasing off shore drilling and plundering our nation’s natural beauty? No, going green would actually boost our economy and help our environment.

Going green versus continuing the US’ dependency on foreign oil will improve our economy because, as it is, we are currently sending out $1 billion dollars a day to other countries, many of which are hostile nations. The big oil companies import nearly half of their petroleum from hostile nations including companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil and about 25% from ConocoPhillips. These oil moguls receive astounding profits from their sales and seem to be benefiting off of the unstable conditions of these countries to bump up the prices of each barrel of oil during bidding. Their personal interests in big business and acquiring more money has serious impacts on our economy as a whole.

There is the problem of costs in our country and the rising upper class and widening lower class. It is silly to say that a person who makes $70,000 a year would be middle-middle class where a person who makes $30,000 is now lower middle class and an income of $150,000 is upper middle class. Really no one wants to admit their destitution and no one wants to admit they’re well off. But when considering the change from fuel driven cars to electric or even hydrogen powered the switch just isn’t affordable for many Americans. Which is why a large subsidy should be implemented to make these alternate energy vehicles more consumer friendly.

If the citizens can just pull away from gas powered cars our economy would drastically benefit. Those who appose legislation in favor of less gas, like API’s Energy Citizens, are actually funded by the major oil companies, conflict of interest? As the price rises at the pump individuals such as Congressman Jeff Landry see the opportunity to spur the development of domestic oil drilling in the Gulf Coast and ANWR. In a press release this March 11 Landry urged the people to support H.R 49 which would result in the drilling of ANWR and off shore areas, he says would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

More recently, and ironically, Landry scorned President Obama for his lack of appearance at the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon travesty. Not only this but Landry receives interest group and industry specific monetary campaign contributions from oil companies and/or affiliates.

While off shore drilling and drilling in the Arctic National Reserve may offer hundreds of thousands of jobs, so too would going green. Only if we went green we wouldn’t have to worry about the corruption of our environment or the possible devastation involved in the dangers of harvesting petroleum.

Sources.

http://www.thestatecolumn.com/state_politics/louisiana/rep-jeff-landry-attacks-obama-for-ignoring-oil-spill/

http://www.opencongress.org/people/money/412433_Jeff_Landry

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/oil_savings_agenda.html

P90X - hooah?

            Approximately two years ago my husband left for army basic training. At the time I was surprised the army let him in because we were both pretty overweight. Now I find that the army will pretty much let any riffraff into the ranks as long as they can whip them into shape during basic. If they can’t be morphed in your regimental soldier in 3 months time… Well, they’ll just get held back until they assimilate.

            During the first few weeks of basic there was no contact, it was a tremulous time in our relationship and we had just gotten married. I was worried, needless to say. And finally I got a letter. The letter was short and briefly told me about all the working out they had to do. They had physical training, marching and at the whim of any of the drill instructors they could be ‘smoked.’

            Smoking is an adequate term, it describe the after affects of this activity, which is used as punishment and pastime. Smoking is where your drill instructor details a series of exercises and has you do them along with him or her, and then alone – in synchronization with the other soldiers. And then again, and then again. Until you have reached the point that you can no longer physically push yourself up to do another push-up/iron mike/terminator. Smoked: to workout so much and so hard that you can no longer physically move.

            This was an everyday occurrence for him, sometimes several times a day depending on the mood of the drill instructor or the insubordination of the privates. At this time I was about 50 lbs. overweight and immediately began to fear that my husband would come back all Burt Reynolds and I’d still be Rosie O’Donnell. So I began to run, and run.

            Everyday I would run. I started out only being able to run a half of a mile. I added on two workouts a day, morning and evening. I added pushups and sits ups. When he’d have 12-mile marches I’d go out and walk for 12 miles. And then I worked my way up to 3 miles in 22 minutes by the time his graduation came around. I had lost 40 lbs in 3 months by the time I went to South Carolina for his graduation.

            My pinnacle of performance was when we had gotten to our first duty station in Oklahoma. I was able to run 10 miles non-stop and was down to 125 lbs. And one month later I was blessed to discover that my husband and I would be bringing a baby into this world. I was not mad at all that my newfound fitness had taken a back seat to my greater purpose.

            However, my son is 8 months old now. I have been running off and on but getting sick and returning to school has put various dampers on my performance and workout schedule. I want to get back on the horse.

            That’s when I was seriously considering P90X. So I went a looked up a bit of it on YouTube and didn’t really like what I saw. The exercises seemed great but I am certainly not the type of person who likes to stand there and wait for a group of people of the TV screen to pick up there weights and get going already!! I am more independent. I suppose of you need the fundamental directions a workout tape would be great for you. But otherwise you can find all the same workouts for p90x right on YouTube and write them down. And that is what I have done.

            Basically I am going to begin, this Monday, my own regimen of p90x mixed with various other workouts – but mainly focusing on cardio. Running is my workout calling. And I want to be healthy for my son and my family. But mostly I want to be healthy for when my husband gets back from Iraq on leave this August. It is my son’s first birthday and we are going to Key West!!!!

Goals

1)      Lose 15 pounds

2)      Bloomsday baby.

3)      Look great in my bathingsuit

4)      Maintain a Stringent diet

Do all this while finishing school and being the bestest Mommy!!

Oil Information Crisis

     I knew that this would be a daunting task when I first set my mind to it. I knew it would involve many hours of scrutinizing federal legislature and articles written by trustworthy publications. When I began this project I realized that I would run into roadblocks and that I would possibly be beating my head against a brick wall because if the government doesn’t want something know, they will restrict information.

            I don’t want to come off all magic bullet on you. I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don’t spend my evenings locked in a dank basement with Doritos and ‘Battle Star Galactica” DVDs. But what the frak? After scanning through just a couple of articles of legislative proceedings through USA.gov I was already feeling this creeping tingling sense of urgency. No, I don’t need Detrol.

            Although I think I may pee myself through sheer frustration by the time my class in through. It is obvious and clear that the legislative process seems to be a venue for corporate and bias interests being overlaid with a guise of American patriotism and pride. What I am trying to find is some solid information concerning our country’s foreign diplomacy regulations with hostile countries when purchasing oil. I want to know how much we are getting, where are we getting it from, are we occupying this nation, are they considered hostile with us or even other countries and are these other countries our allies?

            In this new information age, I think, many of us have this misconception that all of the information is out there somewhere. All you have to do is create the right combination of keystrokes and you’ve got it! However the second site I visited seemed like a breath of relief- until I began to read the details.

            I wasn’t as surprised to see such biases in the government proceedings, as I am to find how hard it is to find the information I want. And when I think I find something great, it turns out to be twisted and garbled, what kind of strange planet did these people go to so that they could learn how to be so misleading as to sound hopelessly stupid. I have a new out look on former president Bush.

            The U.S Energy and Information Administration (eia) is the second site I visited which I was linked to via the USA.gov site. I heaved a sigh of relief when it seemed I had found exactly what I was looking for, only to be sorely disappointed.

            What I thought I had found was a chart of our nations daily imports of crude oil. These charts were prefaced by two paragraphs explaining the charts. Naturally I skimmed right over the paragraphs to look at the charts. Who needs to read something that explains what you can plainly see? Anyone who want to comprehend crazy government admin logic, that’s who.

            When looking at the chart titled “Crude Oil Imports (Top 15 Countries) -
(Thousand Barrels per Day)” I saw a list of different countries followed by numbers. Canada headed that list for January 2011. The chart’s construction caused me to believe that the number following it’s corresponding country was the amount of crude oil that country had imported. So I was very annoyed, thinking I had found a list that detailed other countries imports of crude oil from us. However, once I read the paragraphs above I discovered what I was looking at was, in fact, our country’s top oil imports- just in a ‘from where-this much’ format.

            The information is also split into two charts without explanation. The only difference is that the subsequent chart says “Petroleum” where “Crude Oil” was in the first. This confused me as well because petroleum is crude oil and crude oil is petroleum (as evidenced from EIA’s own Energy Kid’s site). Basically the last chart, the most likely to be left unobserved, was the chart that had the complete totals. And the chart was present in thousand barrel’s a day format. This is misleading as well because the top imports were from countries who’s numbers were already in the thousands in this format. It would have been much more favorable to place the statistics in a millions of barrels format to have numbers such as 2.14 for Canada.

            This makes me seriously wonder about EIA’s affiliates and true ultimate agenda. They say “Independent Statistics and Analysis” on their site header. I know I shouldn’t make assumptions based off of one piece of evidence. That kind of behavior is actually horrible for a reporter. Which is why I am delving deeper into EIA and it’s affiliates and the Administrator Richard Newell before I will use EIA as a trusted reference. So I will fully and openly site my sources and tell you whether I believe them to be credible/iffy/or nut cases.

            This could imply some inherent biases on my part, but I hope to have the mental faculties to cipher out the crazies and partisan and stick to the facts. And in course of finding said facts I will remain honest and open about where I find my information.

            I was hoping to have a topic that I could delve right into and bite into the meaty bits for a second and move on to the secondary, complimentary dishes. It doesn’t look to be very probable. I think I’ll be spending most of my time fact/source checking.

Sources – exact websites

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa80291.000/hfa80291_0.htm

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=oil_home-basics