The Wall Street Journal blog had an interesting article yesterday by Mary Lu Carnevale on the coming budget discussions.  Senator Bill Nelson (Democrat-Florida) was interviewed on Fox News Channel yesterday morning about the Obama Budget proposal.

Senator Nelson feels that in light of the latest Congressional Budget Office projections, the budget will definitely have to be reworked.  When asked for specifics on how to raise the amounts of money for the budget, Senator Nelson said:

“Well, you’re going to have to redo health care so that some of its upfront costs are less, so that you bring down the cost over the 10-year period. Likewise, you’re going to have to speed up the revenues coming in from such things as possibly a cigarette tax, possibly — as the cap-and-trade — going into climate control.”

Cap and trade is a tax plan that impacts everyone.  The average family in American will see their energy costs skyrocket if cap and trade is enacted.  It is simply a plan that allows the government to profit when you heat your house, cook, or wash clothes.  The government already makes more money on a pack of cigarettes than the tobacco companies (the people who actually do the work).  Why should the government make money on energy that they are not involved in the production or distribution of?  If the government really wanted to make money on energy, they would lift the restrictions on off-shore drilling and collect the income taxes on the jobs created and the corporate taxes on the profits.  That would be the free market answer to our economic problems.

Bloomberg.com posted an article yesterday about the fact that the U.S. Senate last month passed a measure limiting “luxury” spending for corporate travel by recipients of federal bailout funds.  Two weeks later members of both parties left for political meetings at posh hotels on the Florida coast.  Leaders of the hotel industry are asking the administration to tone down its condemnation of business travel and conferences at hotels because it is hurting their business.

Even though the restrictions only apply to companies that have received bailout money, other companies are cancelling conferences to avoid any controversy.   Las Vegas has been hit especially hard, losing more than $131 million in non-gambling revenue in recent months. Companies have moved their conferences to city locations, which look less luxiurious, but can cost more.

The article states:

“Hotel executives said their business began to suffer after Obama, 47, warned Feb. 9 during a town-hall meeting in Elkhart, Indiana, that companies receiving bailout money “can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.”

Soon after, Northern Trust Corp. was criticized for organizing a conference and golf tournament in Beverly Hills, California. The Chicago-based bank received $1.6 billion in federal bailout money.”

I guess Congress thinks it’s ok for them to spend a lot of money on a luxurious retreat, but it’s not ok for the rest of us.  Meanwhile, they are negatively impacting an industry for no apparent reason!

George will has an editorial in today’s Washington Post called “The Toxic Assets We Elected”.   George Will points out that the latest plan to deal with toxic assets comes almost six months after Congress voted $700 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and has spent $325 billion of that money without buying any toxic assets.  The TARP funds have, however, been spent on automobile companies and their parts suppliers.

Congress is also making decisions that are clearly not in keeping with the US Constitution or basic common sense.  After telling Mexico that the secret ballot is necessary in giving workers the freedom to decide whether or not to unionize, Congress is considering ‘card check’ which takes the secret ballot away from American workers in union votes.

Congress has also passed laws that are in contradiction with an existing treaty–NAFTA.  In the recent omnibus spending bill, Congress has abolished a program to allow Mexican long-haul trucks on U.S. roads. The program, testing the safety of Mexican trucking, became an embarrassment because it found Mexican trucking at least as safe as U.S. trucking. Mexico has resorted to protectionism — tariffs on many U.S. goods — in retaliation for Democrats’ protection of the Teamsters union.

Congress has also taken up the cause of giving Washington, D. C., congressional representation.  It is clearly stated in the US Constitution that Washington, D. C., should not be considered a state, but a seat of government to be managed by Congress.  Congress has done a really rotten job of managing Washington, D. C., but putting their representatives in Congress will not help solve that problem.

George Will points out in the editorial:

“Jefferson warned that “great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.” But Democrats, who trace their party’s pedigree to Jefferson, are contemplating using “reconciliation” — a legislative maneuver abused by both parties to severely truncate debate and limit the minority’s right to resist — to impose vast and controversial changes on the 17 percent of the economy that is health care. When the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president’s budget underestimates by $2.3 trillion the likely deficits over the next decade, his budget director, Peter Orszag, said: All long-range budget forecasts are notoriously unreliable — so rely on ours.”

 We have given too much power to people who either do not understand or do not respect our constitution.  We need to unelect these ‘toxic assets’ in 2010!

Little Green Footballs has posted some information that the mainstream media seems to have somehow missed.  Chris Dodd’s wife is a former director of an AIG-controlled company.  According to the post:

“From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an “outside” director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR. In 2001, in addition to a public offering of 15 million shares of stock that raised $380 million, IPC raised more than $109 million through a simultaneous private placement sale of 5.6 million shares of stock to AIG – giving AIG a 20% stake in IPC. (AIG sold its 13.397 million shares in IPC in August, 2006.)”

Chris Dodd has been one of the major recipients of campaign contributions from AIG, and now we find out that his wife also had connections to the company.  How can we expect him to make any kind of objective decisions in matters that impact the company?

Earlier this month, the Heartland Institute sponsored the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York.  This Conference is a scientific conference that does not get involved in politics or seek publicity (which is good, since the mainstream media was not too interested in covering it).  Power Line Blog has posted a lot of the information from the Conference on its website in understandable form.  All of the information from the conference can be found at The Heartland Institute‘s website.  The chart below is taken from Power Line and shows us how the climate has changed over the last 12,000 years.  The chart gives us some historical perspective on how climate normally fluctuates..

The Power Line website also has charts of the scientific predictions concerning global warming contrasted with the political predictions concerning global warming.  If you are interested in reading more about the manipulation of numbers in the global warming hype, there is a website called wattsupwiththat that tracks the location of monitoring stations and how the data can be adjusted to achieve the ‘correct’ result.

The Power Line article futher states:

“Due to the efforts of Heartland and others, the public is beginning to catch on to the cosmic scam that Al Gore, James Hansen and others–mostly not scientists–have been perpetrating. Meanwhile, the Obama administration, seemingly determined to inflict the maximum possible damage on the economy in the shortest time, is trying to ram a cap-and-trade carbon tax through Congress before opposition can be mobilized. It’s easier to do that, of course, when you know that Congressmen won’t read the statute before they vote on it. So our only hope is an informed citizenry.”

Cap and trade would tax all Americans for every bit of energy they use, from heating and cooling, to driving, to washing clothes and dishes.  I would be a serious drag on an economy that is already struggling.  It needs to be strongly opposed. 

As the AIG bonuses do their time as the outrage of the week, there are a few things that we might want to keep in mind.  As we listen to the cries of ‘Wall Street Greed’ and tax the bonuses at 90 percent, let’s look at what is being stirred up.  According to the reports I have read, these were retention bonuses (these people were being paid to stay on and clean up the mess–instead of looking for new jobs because this area of the company was being shut down).  The bonuses were a very small percentage of the money actually given to the company.  A very large amount of the money given to AIG went to European banks–why are we not complaining about bailing them out?  Anyway, when we accuse the AIG and Wall Street people of being greedy, are we not just being envious?  The bonus structure in the financial sector may need to be reexamined, but in the way we as a county are reacting, we look like the villagers coming after Frankenstein with the torches–it’s not a very pretty picture!  Next time you are ready to get angry about AIG bonuses, ask yourself where your indignation is coming from.  Is envy being stirred up in us so that we won’t notice where the money is actually going?

Michael Barone posted an article at Townhall.com yesterday about the effect ‘card check’ will have on our economy and on our political system.  Card check is the bill currently in the Senate which would take away the secret ballot in union elections in companies and force mandatory government arbitration if the union and the company did not reach a new contract agreement in a specified time period (I’ve heard it stated as ninety days, but I am not sure).

What would be the consequences of passing the bill?  It would probably stem the decline of union membership, which has gone from 30 percent in the 1950’s to about 8 percent today.  Michael Barone points out that one of the reasons for the decline is the increase in legal protection for the American worker.  There are many more agencies that control worker safety, fight discrimination, and enforce minimum wages.  The government was less intrusive in 1950.  Obviously, if union membership increased, the amount of union dues collected would increase.  Since the major part of the union’s political contributions go the the Democrat party, that would mean more campaign cash for Democrats.  The danger with passage of the bill is that American industry would begin to look like the American auto industry–union contracts creating legacy costs that would make goods more expensive and less competitive with foreign goods.

The passage of card check would probably be very good for the Democrat party, but there are some real questions as to whether or not it would be good for America.

Another weekend, another tea party.  This picture is from a tea party in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Somehow, I didn’t see this on the news.  They were too busy reporting on the mob anger they stirred up toward the AIG executives.  This picture comes from Instapundit.  There are a number of pictures there of rallies around the country.  There are over a hundred pictures of the rally in Orlando at Pereiraville.com.  Instapundit also has pictures of a rallies in Lexington, Kentucky, and Raleigh, North Carolina,  

There is an article in yesterday’s Washington Examiner by Douglas MacKinnon asking why the media is so reluctant to actually investigate the cause of our present financial meltdown.  Mr. MacKinnon points out that all of the major media–print and television–have refused to have their reporters look into what role Democrats like Representative Barney Frank,  and former White House economics policy makers Larry Summers and  Robert Rubin, and others played in the economic meltdown.  It is true that this meltdown is a rather complex thing, but I have seen it clearly explained in one place–in a video called “Burning Down The House” on You Tube.  Is that where we will have to get our news in the future?

The job of the media in a Democracy (or Representative Republic) is to publish the truth and keep the politicians honest.  Currently, our major media is doing neither.  If that does not change, it will be the death of the major media.

According to the Financial Times, the rapidly-passed House of Representatives bill to punish the people at AIG who received bonuses will have world-wide consquences.  According to the article:

“Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.”…

“Bankers at Deutsche Bank said it could benefit from the proposed legislation by poaching its US rivals’ most talented employees.”

We live (and compete) in a global economy.  Punishing achievement or government meddling in the internal decisions of a company does not help us compete.  The bonuses at AIG are a manufactured crisis which will result in some really bad laws and decisions.  (Chapter 11 would have avoided this whole contraversy)  Don’t talk about ‘greed’–look at the envy that is being stirred up.  We will lose some of our most talented people in finance, media, and technology if they begin to feel that the government is limiting their income.  Where are the complaints about the income or bonuses of professional athletes or entertainers?  Are they next?

I posted an article today about a bank in Massachusetts.  I did not give the name of the bank because I wasn’t sure how public the information was.  I had some of it wrong, I thought the bank was in a different city.  Anyway, Fox News has come out with the story.  So here is the missing information.

The bank is East Bridgewater Savings Bank which has no delinquent loans or foreclosures on its books.  The bank didn’t even need to set aside in money in 2008 for anticipated loan losses.   From late 2003 through mid-2008, East Bridgewater Savings made an average of 28 cents in loans for every dollar in deposit — a sharp contrast to the 90 percent average loan-to-deposit ratio among similar banks.

The FDIC recently criticized this bank for not lending enough, slapping it with a “needs to improve” rating under the Community Reinvestment Act, the Boston Business Journal reported.

According to the article:

“East Bridgewater Savings ended 2008 with $135 million in assets, deposits of $84 million, $87,000 in profit, and a Tier 1 risk-based capital ratio of 31.6 percent — more than three times higher than many community banks in Massachusetts, the Journal reported.”

It seems to me that this sort of behavior on the part of the bank should be praised–not criticized.  It used to be good business to lend money only to people who were likely to pay it back!

In today’s Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer has a brilliant article entitled “Bonfire of the Trivialities”.  I usually make up my own headlines for articles, but in this case his was so fantastic, I had to use it.  Charles Krauthammer points out:

“…$165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone. If Bill Gates were to pay these AIG bonuses every year for the next 100 years, he’d still be left with more than half his personal fortune.”

What we need here is a little perspective–not a lynch mob.  Charles Krauthammer points out that the way to break a contract is through Chapter 11.  The bonus contracts were legal and binding and other than Chapter 11, could not be broken.  Are we willing to let Congress cancel contracts because mob anger has been stirred up.  Are you currently looking for your pitchfork and torch?  If you are, don’t aim either at AIG–aim at the CRA (Community Redevelopment Act) passed under Jimmy Carter which required the banks to make risky loans.  Aim it at congressional Democrats who blocked seven attempts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Aim it at the spaghetti-spined Republicans who voted for the stimulus bill.

Mr. Krauthammer further states in the article:

“Even worse are the clever schemes being cooked up in Congress to retrieve the money by means of some retroactive confiscatory tax. The common law is pretty clear about the impermissibility of ex post facto legislation and bills of attainder. They also happen to be specifically prohibited by the Constitution. We’re going to overturn that for $165 million?”

It’s time for all the angry people to step back and take a breath.  I’m tired of hearing successful people being described as ‘greedy’.  What about the sin of ‘envy’ that seems to be plaguing a fairly large percentage of our population?  I have one final question.  Is anyone going to be better off if AIG executives are forced to give up their retention bonuses or are taxed 100 per cent on them?

Please read the entire article in the Washington Post.  There are also some notes about a provision snuck into one of the spending bills that will cause a trade war with Mexico.  Please do not look where the ‘magicians’ want you to look–pay attention to the other hand!

I would just like to thank the fantastic children’s clothing designer who came up with the idea for the shirt my two-year-old granddaughter is wearing today.  It says:

Reasons why you might confuse me with a ROCK STAR

1.  I can scream really loud.

2.  When I don’t get my way, I throw a temper tantrum.

3.  I’m up all night.

4.  You can barely understand what I am saying.

5.  No one else could pull off this hairdo.

Thank you for creative people!

I don’t have a link on this because I don’t want to get people in trouble.  This is a true story, but I will leave the specific names out.  This is truly a tale of the upside down world we currently live in.

There is a small local bank in a city in Massachusetts.  It is not a rich city, and the city has the reputation of being a rather ‘rough’ city.  The bank is a small local bank that has probably been in business for twenty or thirty years.  The bank has had no foreclosures on property that it owns this year.  The bank had made a small profit last year.  Almost (if not) all of the mortgages the bank has given out are current.  No property is currently in foreclosure.  This rather quiet little bank is simply doing its job of being a small, local bank as best it can.

Last week the bank got a letter from the federal agency that regulates the bankling industry in this country.  The letter had done its annual review of the bank and was sending the results to the bank.  The letter was highly critical of the bank–the agency felt that the bank had not created enough sub-prime mortgages and that it had not done enough lending to people in lower income brackets with bad credit ratings.  Duh.  That’s why the bank is not in need of bailout money!!

The time has come for a little common sense on the part of the government.

Little Green Footballs has video of a volcanic eruption that took place in the South Pacific near Tonga.  There was an earthquake in the area, a tsunami warning was issued, and the video shows pictures of the volcano erupting in the area.  It’s amazing footage.

According to Yahoo, the House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing a tax rate of 90 per cent on the retention bonuses paid to AIG employees.  The logic behind the 90 per cent rate is that the states and local municipalities will take the other 10 per cent, leaving the recipients with nothing.  This is beyond obscene.  The fact that the House of Reprentatives would waste its time on a tax law that specifically targets a group of individuals would make the founding fathers turn over in their graves.  I don’t care how much public sentiment they have stirred up, it is simply the wrong thing to do.

John Hinderaker states at Power Line that the law is unconstitutional and will probably never actually be enforced.  He makes the point that:

“Pelosi’s tax will never become law; it will die quietly at some point. Its only purpose is as a cheap PR stunt to deflect public anger–mostly misplaced, in my view, to the extent that it focuses on the AIG bonuses rather than the multiple, trillion dollar disasters the Democrats have perpetrated or are planning.”

In a previous Power Line post, John explains why he feels that the people who received the bonuses should be allowed to keep them.  It’s a long entry, but it’s worth reading.  This whole outrage thing is manufactured and harmful to our country.

According to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, the Obama administration has decided not to go forward on its proposal to save government money be making wounded war veterans seek medical coverage through private health insurance.  This was a horrible idea that was truly a slap in the face to any veteran of any war who was wounded in the service of his country.  It would have created employment problems for these veterans, financial problems for private health insurance (that may have been part of an intentional push for nationalizing health care), and financial problems for the veterans.  I’m glad to see this decision reversed.

According to Fox News.com, Nancy Pelosi told a group of legal and illegal immigrants that the enforcement of immigration laws as currently practiced is “un-American”.   Is this woman aware that the Congress (where she currently sits) is responsible for making laws and that the Federal Government is responsible for enforcing them?   Congress (where Mrs. Pelosi is the Speaker of the House) has the option of changing the law–it does not have the option of not enforcing it.  At a time when unemployment in this country is approaching 9 and 10 percent (and higher in some places), we need to hire people who are in this country legally and pay them according to the law of the land (withholding, minimum wage, etc.).  I agree with the concept of changing our immigration policies to allow people who want to work and contribute to American society to come here more easily.  I do not want to see more people come here with the intention of not earning a living, but instead collecting welfare from the government and taking advantage of American health care systems without contributing anything to them.  There are many hospitals along the Mexican border who have been forced to close because of the number of illegal aliens frequenting their emergency rooms and never paying for any services.  This needs to stop.  Mrs. Pelosi needs to be aware of her responsibilty for immigration laws and her responsibility to change them if she feels that enforcing them is un-American.

Are you outraged about the AIG bonuses?  Have you thought about why?  Have you thought about what it means to be outraged at someone else’s employment bonus?  Do you understand the concept of a retention bonus?  Do you think it is any of the government’s business what any company pays its managers or employees?  Hopefully, you answered ‘no’ to at least one of these questions.  At any rate, there are a few things going on here that all of us who vote need to be aware of.

My source articles on what I am about to reveal are the New York Post and the website of Glenn Beck.  Please read the New York Post and the Glenn Beck information piece for yourself.  They are both very revealing.

The New York Post article reveals that the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve knew about these bonuses last fall.  Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the same Federal Reserve Bank last fall that supposedly last week told him of the bonuses.  Treasury not only never sought to block them – but, in fact, approved them.   An unnamed AIG official told The New York Times that the company never would’ve paid the bonuses without Treasury and Fed approval.  This whole passion play may be the setup to make Timothy Geithner the fall guy for all the current administration’s problems.   I’m not sure he will be in his current position a month from now.

Now, why is the outrage being manufactured?  Let’s look at some of the other aspects of the AIG bailout and where the money went.  The following information comes from Glenn Beck’s website.

“$58 billion has gone to foreign banks. Now, why isn’t America outraged by that? Because America doesn’t know that fact. America isn’t talking about that fact. If we would have let AIG fail, then these other banks would have had to come to us and said, hey, what are you going to do on these. And we would have then had to have the discussion, do we send money over to France, do we send money over to Germany, do we send money over to England? And that we couldn’t have won. The people in Washington, they would have never gotten that past you.”

“So now they’re making a big deal out of $165 million in contracts that they knew they were going to have to pay, they left that in there, there’s no way out of that unless you allow the government just to make up rules. Contracts are no longer valid, if the congress decides they are not valid.”

Do not buy into the phony anger at AIG by the people who set up the situation.  Chris Dodd is the Senate member who put a clause in the stimulus saying that all bonuses agreed upon before a specific date would have to be paid.  I guess it’s pure coincidence that AIG has one of its larger divisions in Connecticut and that they are a major contributor to his election campaigns.  If you want to be angry, be angry at a Congress that has no respect for the American taxpayer or his money and does not have the courage to tell you the truth about what it is doing.  This whole AIG situation is trumped-up anger to keep you from looking at how much power and how much of your money the government is currently grabbing.

The headline on one of the articles in today’s American Thinker is “You can lease Chris Dodd, but you can’t buy him.”  What are they talking about?  This is amazing.  You need to read the whole article to get the full force of what he did, but he is becoming another living exhibit of why we need term limits.  According to the article:

According to Yahoo.news, President Obama is considering a plan to force private insurance companies to pay for treatment of service-connected disabilities and injuries suffered by our servicemen.  Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion met with President Obama to discuss the plan.  After the meeting, he stated:

“This reimbursement plan would be inconsistent with the mandate ‘ to care for him who shall have borne the battle’ given that the United States government sent members of the armed forces into harm’s way, and not private insurance companies. I say again that The American Legion does not and will not support any plan that seeks to bill a veteran for treatment of a service connected disability at the very agency that was created to treat the unique need of America’s veterans!”

I don’t have words to describe my reaction to this.  I am the wife of a veteran and the mother of a Marine currently serving.  To me, the idea of the VA not providing care for woulded and returning veterans is just wrong.  The majority of our older veterans were drafted and served willingly; the younger military now serving have served under difficult conditions (the troop reductions during the Clinton administration greatly increased the workload for the remaining troops) and have served valiantly. 

This administration has spent money as if there were no tomorrow.  To try to save money by shortchanging those who were wounded serving their country is unconscionable.

According to Macon.com, eight Democrat Senators and twenty-five Republican Senators have written a letter to the chairman and top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee asking that the ‘cap and trade’ proposals of the Obama Administration not be put into the ‘fast-track’ budget process, but instead be fully studied and given ample time for debate.  According to the article, the Senators were:

“The Democrats who signed the letter, addressed to the chairman and top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, were: Robert Byrd, W.Va.; Blanche Lincoln, Ark.; Mary Landrieu, La.; Carl Levin, Mich.; Evan Bayh, Ind.; Ben Nelson, Neb.; Bob Casey Jr., Pa.; and Mark Pryor, Ark.”

Many of these Senators represent states that will be particularly hit hard by ‘cap and trade.’  Louisiana, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania produce carbon-based energy and Michigan produces cars.  Cap and trade will kill the coal industry, negatively impact the American oil industry and negatively impact Detriot.  It will also indirectly levy large tax increases on all Americans (including all those promised a tax cut!).

According to the article:

“There also has been speculation that the expedited rules could be used to pass a health care overhaul bill, but senior Senate Democrats such as Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., oppose the idea, saying health reform must be enacted on a bipartisan basis.

The White House is open to the idea of using the fast-track rules for both global warming and health care.

“We would prefer not to start there, but we’re not taking anything off the table at this point,” White House budget chief Peter Orszag said last week.”

To fast-track global warming and nationalized health care legislation would be very damaging to the American people and our economy.  Both ideas need to be thoroughly debated in the hope that a few Senators will let common sense rather than party loyalty rule. 

AIG was too big to fail, so the government bailed them out.  Now, according to the Wall Street Journal Online, President Obama has asked Secretary Timothy Geithner to “pursue every legal avenue” to block $165 million in bonuses to AIG executives who were in part responsible for the company’s near collapse.  Well, hold on a minute here.  There are a lot of unanswered questions in that request…

1.  Were these contractual bonuses paid to salesmen (similar to commissions)?

2.  Were these bonuses promised to executives when they were hired?

3.  Were there any restrictions placed on the ‘bailout’ money?

4.  Are restrictions being added after the fact?

5.  What business is it of the government what anyone is paid or not paid?

6.  Does this administration have any respect at all for Contract Law?

If being outraged that people got bonuses makes you feel good, be my guest, but if these bonuses were part of contracts agreed on before the problems started, there is no way that they should be overturned.  Are we reaching a place where people want the government to tell us how much we can earn and how much our neighbor can earn?  I hope not!

According to Yahoo News (UK-Ireland via Reuters), OPEC has agreed to keep oil production at current levels until May (when it will re-evaluate).  They have also said that they will closely monitor the limits they have previously put on production to make sure they are followed.  This is an interesting story for a number of reasons.

First, President Obama called the Saudis last week.  The White House is unwilling to discuss the contents of the phone call.

Second, OPEC is not doing this because they love the western countries that buy their oil–they are doing this because the worldwide recession has seriously cut the demand for oil, and as the price comes down, the demand will gradually go up.  If they cut production further and prices go up, the demand will go down, and they will make even less money than they are currently making.

Third, when oil was at its peak, demand decreased, and America began to talk about offshore drilling and energy independence.  Energy independence without offshore drilling is a distant prospect, but with offshore drilling, it is probably attainable within three years (contrary to what the environmentalists have said).  The idea of an energy independent America is totally frightening to OPEC.

OPEC needs $100 a barrel oil to properly fund terrorism around the world.  It would be nice if that did not happen.

The New York Post is reporting that 62-year old Ron Silver has died after a two-year battle with cancer.  Our prayers go out to his family.  Ron was a good actor and a blunt-spoken political activist, regardless of which side he was on.  He contributed a lot to American culture and to American politics.  He spoke his mind, called things as he saw them, and always allowed his sense of humor to shine through.  He will be missed.