Showing posts with label OIL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OIL. Show all posts

FW: FW: Good ones!!!

 






Fwd: FW: CANADA's TOP 10 - SAD

Subject: CANADA's TOP 10 - SAD







This 
is so sad; from a proud, strong country to the laughing stock of the 
world.

Canadians' 
Version of David Letterman's Top 10. Just makes you want to shake your 
head in disbelief, and, just maybe choke someone in 
charge.


This 
is Canada 's Top Ten List of America 's Stupidity.


# 
10 Only in America ... could politicians talk about the greed of the rich 
at a $35,000.00 per plate Obama campaign fund-raising event.

# 09 
Only in America... could people claim that the government still 
discriminates against black Americans when they have a black President, a 
black Attorney General and roughly 20% of the federal workforce is black 
while only 14% of the population is black, 40+% of all federal 
entitlements goes to black Americans - 3X the rate that go to whites, 5X 
the rate that go to Hispanic

# 08 Only in America... could they 
have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy 
Geithner (the head of the Treasury Department) and Charles Rangel (who 
once ran the Ways and Means Committee), BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who 
are in favor of higher taxes.

# 07 Only in America... can they have 
terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily 
react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.

# 
06 Only in America... would they make people who want to legally become 
American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of 
thousands of dollars for the privilege, while they discuss letting anyone 
who sneaks into the country illegally just 'magically' become American 
citizens. (probably should be number one)

# 05 Only in America ... 
could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the 
country's Constitution be called EXTREMISTS

# 04 Only in America 
... could you need to present a driver's license to cash a check or buy 
alcohol, but not to vote.

# 03 Only in America ... could people 
demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the 
public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested 
in a major U.S. Oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company 
making tennis shoes (Nike).

# 02 Only in America... could you 
collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded 
history, still spend a Trillion dollars more than it has per year - for 
total spending of $7 Million PER MINUTE, and complain that it doesn't have 
nearly enough money.

# 01 Only in America.... could the rich people 
- who pay 86% of all income taxes - be accused of not paying their "fair 
share" by people who don't pay any income taxes at all.

Bonus: " 
Only in America do you have to pass a drug test to get a pay check, yet 
any crack head can get their welfare check no questions asked."


PLEASE DON'T KEEP THIS - SEND IT OUT TO YOUR ENTIRE 
LIST.


FW: Help Me Colorado

Sent: Sun, Aug 17, 2014 7:51 PM EDT
Subject: Help Me Colorado


For all the tree huggers, who want to keep sending our $ to some of the
worst folks in the world, here's an add from CO.


Help me Colorado <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4pnlWJT6FI>

Fw: Fwd: FW: Just Kidding.....

Subject: Fw: Fwd: FW: Just Kidding.....



Fw: Fwd: FW: Fwd: Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad

Subject: Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad

We knew there was money behind this deal but we didn't know who until
now.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad owns all of  the rail lines in the
US connecting to western Canada and they haul 80%+ of the  crude from
Canada to the mid west and Texas or charge other Short Line railroads a
fee to use their tracks.  BNSF charges $30 per barrel to haul the oil
where the Keystone would cost $10 by the State Departments own
estimates. BNSF largest shareholder is Berkshire Hathaway whose
chairman is Warren Buffet.   In the last 2 election cycles  Buffet gave
extensively to Democrat causes and candidates including $40K+ to Obama
in 2012.   He also bundled and hosted numerous fundraisers for Obama.

Buffet could stand to lose $2B+ a year if the pipeline goes in and he
makes the same amount every year it's delayed.   This is crony
capitalism at it's finest and what is making people mad at our corrupt
federal government.

Fwd: Gulf oil spill video


Subject: Fwd: Gulf oil spill video

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 8:48 AM
Subject: Gulf oil spill video
To:


The subject of this video is a little old but the message is relevant today!      WATCH!!!!!!!!



EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO VIEW THIS VIDEO. 
View this and see our president in action! (Or.......INaction).
You have to watch this -- click on "GULF"  And then please vote in November....
Really pathetic! 
Liberal or Conservative, this is the very definitions of incompetence, ineptness, and apathy!
Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, and James Carville no less..
IF YOU DON'T DO ANYTHING ELSE TODAY,,,,,,,,,, VIEW THIS VIDEO !!
Click onto this brilliant video regarding the oil spill.  You will want to send it on.
Click here:          gulf

Fw: OIL SHORTAGE

GARFIELD ON THE OIL CRISIS
YOU GOTTA LOVE GARFIELD 'S EXPLANATION -- 

















A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.
~~~
Well, there's a very simple answer.
~~~
Nobody bothered to check the oil.
~~~
We just didn't know we were getting low.
~~~
The reason for that is purely geographical.
~~~
Our OIL is located in:
~~~
ALASKA
~~~
California
~~~
Coastal Florida
~~~
Coastal Louisiana
~~~
Coastal Alabama
~~~~
Coastal Mississippi
~~~~
Coastal Texas
~~~
North Dakota
~~~
Wyoming
~~~
Colorado
~~~
Kansas
~~~
Oklahoma
~~~
Pennsylvania
~~~
And
Texas
~~~
Our dipsticks are located in DC
~~~
Any Questions?
NO? Didn't think So.

Fw: Fw: Priceless



----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 10:59 AM
Subject: Fw: Fw: Priceless
 
 
Keystone Pipeline Clogged by Massive Turd!

Fwd: FW: Fwd: VALERO Oil memo

Subject: Fwd: FW: Fwd: VALERO Oil memo
 



VALERO Oil memo to employees re. Keystone Pipeline
For those of you unfamiliar with Valero, it is an independent oil company based in San Antonio , TX . It owns 2 refineries, but no oil fields – it buys all the oil it refines and processes via contract or on the open market.

Its origin was as a public utility providing natural gas to the city of San Antonio , but it has grown to be a significant gasoline retailer in a good portion of the southeast and southwest, as well as a purveyor of natural gas.

It is a significant economic force in Texas , even in light of the other majors (Shell, Exxon Mobil, etc.) based in the state. This memo to employees is a realistic insight into the economic importance of the proposed XL pipeline.

Date: January 24, 2012

To: Valero Employees

From: Bill Klesse

Subject: Keystone XL Pipeline Statement

As you know, the Obama administration decided last week to deny TransCanada’s application to ship crude oil via the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast . Valero has planned to be a shipper and purchaser of that oil since 2008, and obviously we were disappointed in the decision. We issued a statement in response to questions from the media, and I wanted to share it with you in case you get questions from friends or business partners, and so that you would know why Valero supports the Keystone XL pipeline. This is the statement:

Despite the uncertainty and political fighting over the Keystone XL pipeline, Valero has continued to invest in its U.S. refining operation. In 2011 we spent nearly $3 billion on projects, and for 2012 our capital expenditure budget is over $3 billion. These expenditures are keeping our employees on the job and putting additional people to work. To reference two of our refineries, at Port Arthur , Texas , we have 1,600 contractors working on an expansion project, and at St. Charles Parish, Louisiana , we have another 1,000 contractors working on a separate project. We need this kind of economic activity to accelerate to help all Americans.

This illustrates why President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline is so absurd. There are pipelines in every neighborhood all across America . The administration’s decision was not about pipelines, it was about the misguided beliefs that Canadian oil sands development should be stopped and that fossil fuel prices should increase to make alternative energy more attractive. Instead, we should be impressed with how well the oil sands engineering and recovery technology has advanced, and the economic benefits this development brings. Having more oil available in the marketplace has the potential to lower prices for consumers. As an independent refiner, Valero buys all of the oil we process. Due to the administrations misguided policies, refiners like Valero will have to buy more oil from other sources outside the U.S. and Canada . Consumers will bear the additional shipping cost, not to  mention the additional greenhouse gas emissions and political risks.

With all the issues facing our country, it is absolutely unbelievable our federal government says no to a company like TransCanada that is willing to spend over $7 billion and put Americans to work on a pipeline. The administration’s decision throws dirt into the face of our closest ally and largest trading partner.

The point above is that it is not about pipelines as many pipelines cross the Ogallala Aquifer, in the Great Plains region, and, in fact, there is already significant oil and gas production in the area covered by the aquifer. This is politics at its worst.

FW: Mass Exodus US Oil Refinerys

Subject: FW: Mass Exodus US Oil Refinerys
 





.




Get ready and buy a scooter!



The Closure Of The U.S. Oil Refinery Industry In The Past 2 Years

In 2010, there were 149 operable U.S. refineries with a combined capacity of 17.6 million barrels (2,800,000 m3) per day. Something odd started happening in late 2010-early 2011. The US oil refinery industry quielty announced the closure of numerous US oil refineries. Many are completely unaware the US ships oil overseas to be processed. We do so as we do not have enough refineries to process the vast amounts here, and we are barred from building anymore refineries. All refineries perform three basic steps: separationconversion, and treatment. Pretty simple.
Several reasons include technical and economic factors as to why we ship it overseas to be processed.
1. The crude petroleum is sold to the highest bidder, NOT the nearest bidder

2. There are different kinds of crude oil, such as sweet/light and dark/heavy. They have different applications and uses.

3. Different kinds of refining processes are needed to make different products from the crude oil. Petroleum is processed to make lots of products other than gasoline, like plastics and asphalt.

4. Politics, unions and the "enviornmentalists"

How many of you are aware Sunoco, ConocoPhillips and The HESS Corp are all closing US oil refineries? Not many, as the media refuses to give this HUGE story coverage. My guess is that if Americans understood the complete truth to how we are being sold out, and enslaved there just might be the much needed revolution to turn this country around.

Last September, both Sunoco & CP announced plant closing, effecting thousands of workers. Sunoco announced they are completely getting out of the oil industry. Closing up shop. They are done with the US oil industry.

Sunoco is closing it's 2 oil refineries in July 2012 in Philadelphia and Marcus Hook, Pa. Those 2 facilities alone process over 500,000 barrels a day.


Also announced last year, ConocoPhillips announcd 2 plant closing for sure in Trainer, PA and Bayway, NJ., the other 3 plnts are undecided as of today.


Conoco also announced they were closing their Alaskan refining facility:


Valero also announced in late 2011 the closure of US oil refining facilites, costing numerous jobs, and the loss of 210,000 barrels of oil per day:


Just a week ago, the US 3rd largest oil refinery owned and operated by The HESS Corp just announced it's permanent closure. Costing over 2,000 jobs, and effecting 950 contractors:


Refineries on the East Coast of the US supply 40% of the gasoline sales and 60% of the diesel and other fuel oils.

Of that, HALF that comes from the Sunoco & ConocoPhillps plant closures.
When ConocoPhillips announced that it was closing the Trainer refinery, Willie Chiang, then ConocoPhillips' Senior Vice President of Refining, Marketing, Transportation and Commercial, noted that their decision to sell, like Sunoco's, was based on unfavorable economics caused by a competitive and difficult market environment characterized by "...product imports, weakness in motor fuel demand, and costly regulatory requirements."

They are ALL closing up shop due to gov regulations, union demands and excessive operating costs brought on by the Gov regulations.
Then you have the unions, led by Barry's buddy Leo Gerard saying they will clsoe ALL US oil refineries starting from the east coast to west coast today.


The unions are shutting down ports, rail and air across the pond right now......the SAME EXACT thing they plan on doing here. When the ships stop importing, the rails & air stop delivering....how much is everything you consume gonna cost? Remember...we are a CONSUMING country, no longer a producing one.


The excessive and costly gov regulations on the US oil refinery market has forced companies to re-evaluate the cost of doing business in the US.
Why have operations in the US where you bleed money via regulations & demands, when you can have refineries built in ColumbiaMexico or Brazil for pennies on the dollar, and less regulations?
It's all business America...nothing personal.
Besides.....your gov is giving BILLIONS to Columbia and Brazil to build refineries to process all that oil the US is losing.
We are building up every country on earth, while destroying our own....all in the name of redistribution of wealth.
I covered some of these "deals" Barry inked in my previous note:


You do the math. When the US oil refineries finally close up shop, who will process all that oil....and how much do YOU think that oil will cost when it's ALL processed over seas?
Think gas and energy costs are high right now.......wait 6 months. You haven't seen anything yet.
How can anyone expect any company to do business with an anti-American, hostile gov out of control?  You can't. That is why we are seeing a mass exodus, across the board in every industry in the US LEAVING.

FWD: Oil Blockage & New Years Resolution


Subject: Oil Blockage & New Years Resolution



My Bucket List for 2012
HERE IS ALL I WANT
Obama: Gone!
Borders: Closed!
Congress: Obey it's own laws
Language: English only
Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!
Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare
NO freebies to: Non-Citizens!
We the people are coming!
Please send it on if only to one person.

FW: Gas Prices... Huh??

Subject: FW: Gas Prices... Huh??
 





Subject: Fw: Gas Prices... Huh??

Watch this report...it is such an incredible example of the hypocrisy of the liberal national media and the democratic party.
~
Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2011, 10:37 AM
The highest level of hypocrisy!!!(){:>) +


This is so good it really warms my heart. What a crock this administration, and its apologists are. I particularly like the thoughts of the lady from Time Magazine, such deep thinking and analysis. I hope this gets big exposure and is passed around the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKdScVerrBU 

Fw: Fwd: Fleming: Obama Admin. Deliberately Ignoring High Gas Prices

Click here to view this email in your browser.
U.S. Congressman John Fleming
May 18, 2011
Visit my Website | Forward to a Friend | Share on:
Fleming: Obama Admin. Deliberately Ignoring High Gas Prices



Please follow me on twitter by clicking the icon below:




Washington D.C. – Congressman John Fleming, M.D. released the following statement this week after Interior Secretary Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich announced plans to make renewable energy development easier on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf – making no mention of eliminating the numerous roadblocks put in place by the Obama administration that stand in the way of expanding our offshore oil exploration and development.

"It’s nice that the Obama administration is making it easier to expand offshore renewable energy development while deliberately ignoring offshore drilling permits. This administration puts in place a 'slowatorium' when it comes to issuing more offshore drilling permits but when it comes to offshore wind and solar development the Obama administration STREAMLINES the process. This is unacceptable." Said Congressman Fleming. 

Congressman Fleming added, "I support an 'all of the above' approach to energy policy which includes expanding and developing offshore oil energy resources. The Obama administration's contempt for fossil fuel exploration is driven by a liberal ideology rather than the facts. The United States has the largest energy reserves in the world. With gas prices hovering at $4.00 per gallon and unemployment at 9%,  let's develop these resources and stop the Obama administration's destructive energy policy." 

Dr. John Fleming is Chairman of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs and is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He is a physician and small business owner and represents the 4th Congressional District of Louisiana.
For real-time updates please follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/RepFleming

For the most up to date article regarding drilling check out The Times-Picayune.

Sincerely,


JOHN FLEMING, M.D.
Member of Congress



Fw: GARFIELD ON OIL CRISIS [:)



A  lot of  folks can't understand how we  came   to   have an oil shortage here in our   country. 
~~~
Well,  there's a very simple   answer. 
~~~
Nobody  bothered to check the oil. 
~~~
We   just didn't know we were getting  low. 
~~~
The  reason for that  is purely  geographical. 
~~~
Our  OIL is located  in: 
~~~
ALASKA
~~~
California
~~~
Coastal    Florida
~~~
Coastal  Louisiana 
~~~ 
Coastal  Alabama 
~~~~ 
Coastal  Mississippi 
~~~~ 
Coastal  Texas 
~~~
North   Dakota
~~~
Wyoming
~~~
Colorado
~~~
Kansas
~~~
Oklahoma
~~~
Pennsylvania
~~~ 
And
~~~ 
Texas
~~~
Our  dipsticks are located  in  DC
~~~
Any  Questions?  NO? Didn't think  So
=============

Fwd: Fw: How Obama Thinks


Sent: 9/14/2010 9:28:46 P.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: Fwd: Fw: How Obama Thinks


 
Subject:How Obama Thinks
 

Forbes.com
On The Cover/Top Stories
How Obama Thinks
Dinesh D'Souza, 09.27.10, 12:00 AM ET
Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in
American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up
taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the
federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health
care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as
omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.
The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and
supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the
Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that
correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling
off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank
offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company
Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so
the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil
can stay in Brazil.
More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil
spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans
"consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's
resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil
fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity
have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world's
resources?
The oddities go on and on. Obama's Administration has declared that even banks
that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only
after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it
eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury
Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.
The President continues to push for stimulus even though hundreds of billions of
dollars in such funds seem to have done little. The unemployment rate when Obama
took office in January 2009 was 7.7%; now it is 9.5%. Yet he wants to spend even
more and is determined to foist the entire bill on Americans making $250,000 a
year or more. The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." This by
itself seems odd given that the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of all federal
income taxes; the next 9% of income earners pay another 30%. So the top 10% pays
70% of the taxes; the bottom 40% pays close to nothing. This does indeed seem
unfair--to the rich.
Obama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque
scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam
brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to
religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of
why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.
Recently the LondonTimes reported that the Obama Administration supported the
conditional release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber convicted in
connection with the deaths of 270 people, mostly Americans. This was an
eye-opener because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home
to Libya in August 2009, the Obama Administration publicly and appropriately
complained. The Times, however, obtained a letter the Obama Administration sent
to Scotland a week before the event in which it said that releasing Megrahi on
"compassionate grounds" was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland and
would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya. Scottish officials
interpreted this to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi's release were
"half-hearted." They released him to his home country, where he lives today as a
free man.
One more anomaly: A few months ago nasa Chief Charles Bolden announced that from
now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve
relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word
directly from the President. "He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the
Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them
feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and
engineering." Bolden added that the International Space Station was a model for
nasa's future, since it was not just a U.S. operation but included the Russians
and the Chinese. Obama's redirection of the agency caused consternation among
former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and even among the
President's supporters: Most people think of nasa's job as one of landing on the
moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Sure, we are for Islamic
self-esteem, but what on earth was Obama up to here?
Theories abound to explain the President's goals and actions. Critics in the
business community--including some Obama voters who now have buyer's
remorse--tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Obama is clueless
about business. The second is that Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out
Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a penchant for
leveling and government redistribution.

________________________________

These theories aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could
account for Obama's domestic policy, they cannot explain his foreign policy. The
real problem with Obama is worse--much worse. But we have been blinded to his
real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into
some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history.
Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off
the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple
subsequent journeys to Africa.
A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is
his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or
something else?
It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They
believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis
de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind."
This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press
conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he
suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other
country.
Perhaps, then, Obama shares Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society.
The President has benefited from that dream; he campaigned as a nonracial
candidate, and many Americans voted for him because he represents the
color-blind ideal. Even so, King's dream is not Obama's: The President never
champions the idea of color-blindness or race-neutrality. This inaction is not
merely tactical; the race issue simply isn't what drives Obama.
What then is Obama's dream? We don't have to speculate because the President
tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to
Obama, his dream is his father's dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of
My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his
father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.
So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and
studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his
lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has
accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who
got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be
amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and
drove into a tree, killing himself.
An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder
Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Obama
Sr. grew up during Africa's struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one
of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape
his country's future.
I know a great deal about anticolonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai,
India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country's
independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third
World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most
Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.
Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by
invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South
America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon,
wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have
been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and
the yellow races."

________________________________

Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence
they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is
called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah
(1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah,
Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but
they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and
plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World
people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to
resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of
Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives
in India.
Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the
East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a
doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a
necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away
from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama
Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this
country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth
in this country?"
As he put it, "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built
through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control
a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed
that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In
fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the
government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from
the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."
Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never
mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually
no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama
is doing in the White House.
While the senior Obama called for Africa to free itself from the neocolonial
influence of Europe and specifically Britain, he knew when he came to America in
1959 that the global balance of power was shifting. Even then, he recognized
what has become a new tenet of anticolonialist ideology: Today's neocolonial
leader is not Europe but America. As the late Palestinian scholar Edward
Said--who was one of Obama's teachers at Columbia University--wrote in Culture
and Imperialism, "The United States has replaced the earlier great empires and
is the dominant outside force."
From the anticolonial perspective, American imperialism is on a rampage. For a
while, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union, but since the end of the Cold
War, America has been the sole superpower. Moreover, 9/11 provided the occasion
for America to invade and occupy two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and also
to seek political and economic domination in the same way the French and the
British empires once did. So in the anticolonial view, America is now the rogue
elephant that subjugates and tramples the people of the world.
It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama
Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I
am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned
to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view
America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his
father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic
plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of
neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how
effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the
world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how
ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.
For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism
out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of
Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only
his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can
adequately account for.
Why support oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America? Obama
believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world's energy
resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized
countries to have more. More broadly, his proposal for carbon taxes has little
to do with whether the planet is getting warmer or colder; it is simply a way to
penalize, and therefore reduce, America's carbon consumption. Both as a U.S.
Senator and in his speech, as President, to the United Nations, Obama has
proposed that the West massively subsidize energy production in the developing
world.

________________________________

Rejecting the socialist formula, Obama has shown no intention to nationalize the
investment banks or the health sector. Rather, he seeks to decolonize these
institutions, and this means bringing them under the government's leash. That's
why Obama retains the right to refuse bailout paybacks--so that he can maintain
his control. For Obama, health insurance companies on their own are oppressive
racketeers, but once they submitted to federal oversight he was happy to do
business with them. He even promised them expanded business as a result of his
law forcing every American to buy health insurance.
If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he
wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall
taxes to pay even more. The anticolonialist believes that since the rich have
prospered at the expense of others, their wealth doesn't really belong to them;
therefore whatever can be extracted from them is automatically just. Recall what
Obama Sr. said in his 1965 paper: There is no tax rate too high, and even a 100%
rate is justified under certain circumstances.
Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that
unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views
some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S.
imperialism. Certainly that is the way the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset
al-Megrahi portrayed himself at his trial. Obama's perception of him as an
anticolonial resister would explain why he gave tacit approval for this murderer
of hundreds of Americans to be released from captivity.
Finally, nasa. No explanation other than anticolonialism makes sense of Obama's
curious mandate to convert a space agency into a Muslim and international
outreach. We can see how well our theory works by recalling the moon landing of
Apollo 11 in 1969. "One small step for man," Neil Armstrong said. "One giant
leap for mankind."
But that's not how the rest of the world saw it. I was 8 years old at the time
and living in my native India. I remember my grandfather telling me about the
great race between America and Russia to put a man on the moon. Clearly America
had won, and this was one giant leap not for mankind but for the U.S. If Obama
shares this view, it's no wonder he wants to blunt nasa's space program, to
divert it from a symbol of American greatness into a more modest public
relations program.
Clearly the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain
the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. And we can be doubly
sure about his father's influence because those who know Obama well testify to
it. His "granny" Sarah Obama (not his real grandmother but one of his
grandfather's other wives) told Newsweek, "I look at him and I see all the same
things--he has taken everything from his father. The son is realizing everything
the father wanted. The dreams of the father are still alive in the son."
In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his
beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of
a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that
search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was
into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the
attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually
all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained
untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not
work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black
man!"
The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his
father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes,
"I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized
that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or
obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the
black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the
frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this
small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a
name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."
In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that "I sat at my father's grave and spoke
to him through Africa's red soil." In a sense, through the earth itself, he
communes with his father and receives his father's spirit. Obama takes on his
father's struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He
decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.'s hatred of the
colonial system becomes Obama Jr.'s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world
right defines his son's objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the
family tomb, the father's struggle becomes the son's birthright.

________________________________

Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the
White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as
China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they
are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If
America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough
environment.
But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his
father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the
dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African
socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his
anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the
reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly
admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides
the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is
governed by a ghost.
Dinesh D'Souza, the president of the King's College in New York City, is the
author of the forthcoming bookThe Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery Publishing).


 
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