US Needs to Increase Oil Drilling

It's horrible what happened in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th, but we can not let the BP oil rig explosion and oil spill be an excuse to stop future drilling off our own shores. Are the waters and shorelines around the United States anymore precious than waters around other countries' shorelines? If this happened in another part of the world would the people there consider closing off their waters to future drilling. Of course not! The US government, our radical green groups and their pandering politician friends are the only ones who would entertain such selfish thoughts. (This reminds The Skirt of our government's narrow-minded law to use people food and the world's precious farmland to grow fuel to power American cars, but I digress.) The United States still needs oil and gas and we need it to flow in from sources other than those in the Middle East. We must continue to place our land and our citizens at risk to obtain it. An opinion writer with USA Today is simpatico.

Update 5/27/10 : Read Uphttp://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/environmentalists_with_oil_on.html

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/27/obama-federal-government-charge-oil-spill-response/

Update 6/14/10: Here's the truth http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/obama_and_oil_greasing_america.html

Cancel Light Bulb Socialism

Can we please cancel the absurd phase-out programs

of the incandescent light bulb?

Costco Makes a Poor Connection

All of us here at Rod Builders are huge Costco fans. The skirt reads every issue of The Costco Connection from front to back, but I had to force myself to pull it out of the mailbox this month. Yuk, Al Gore. Bob had a more sophisticated response and he sent the following letter to Costco. What do you guys think? Are you buying what Al Gore is selling?

Dear Costco Connection:

About 50% of your customers think that man-caused global warming is the biggest scam pulled on the American public in our generation. I'm a highly educated and discriminating person, thus my love for Costco. Given that, I am repulsed by the credibility your feature in "Connection" gives this fraud. You have been pretty good at being politically neutral up to this point, but Al Gore stirs a negative emotion in some that is visceral and founded. I know that the publishing office for The Connection tends to the progressive direction, but please remember that half of your customers are conservative and intelligent. Avoid polarizing individuals like this in the future.

Bob Bissonette

Revised 11/24/09:

What do you have to say about this Mr. Gore?

Americans Speak With Their Wallets

I knew it!!!!

This pleases The Skirt.

Engine Cover for 1957 T-bird

Dustin finished the engine cover on the T-bird. Everything is nice and tidy the way the customer wanted it.

Here's a picture of the dash, I promised to post last week. The picture is not as I would like, but the lighting stinks in the shop right now. We are in the process of putting up "energy saving lights." The Skirt is not convinced they will provide better lighting than the ones we have in there now. The guys are thinking they may have to install more of the "energy saving lights." (Exactly what you can expect with "energy savings" devices.) The console was done at another shop some time ago.

Almost done with this project. It's headed to CG Customs for paint.

Whose Side is President Obama On Anyway?

Did you hear about this? Here we go again. President Obama must not be totally against offshore drilling, just offshore drilling for the United States. What the H-E double-toothpick is going on?

Here's one of the things our president is promoting to get the U.S. off imported oil.

Corny Issues

We've been thinking about the commodity corn industry more these days and a customer drops off a copy of "King Corn." Strange how that happens. Maybe he reads this blog? Naw. "King Corn" is an entertaining, funny and very informative documentary about the hybrid (feed) corn industry in America. It gets you thinking about the whole tangled web of cheap food, farm subsidies, corn syrup, and feed lots.

Could Be Lights Out For America

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emerites

President Obama approved plans to share our how-to information on building nuclear power plants with United Arab Emirates. US companies are gearing up to make some money and put people to work building these plants for them to satisfy their rapidly growing energy needs.

Here's what the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House want us to power our energy requirements with.

What's going on??????????????????

Using Corn Blows

What do you think about the gov'ment forcing us to run cars on corn fuel? We think corn ethanol is an all around bad idea and pure politics.

Feed the corn to the animals and use it to make the occasional pan of corn bread.

Love, love, love corn bread!

Southeastern Washington Wind Farms

On the return leg of a weekend road trip to Portland for our niece's wedding we took the scenic route through Southeast Washington and were fascinated by the number of wind farms dotting the ridge tops along the Columbia River Gorge and Walla Walla Country. Wind power seems the perfect fit for this region as steady winds rip through this desolate landscape pretty much continuously. We snapped this photo at a rest stop outside of Boardman, OR of a semi hauling a tower.

Startled us to see these humungous turbines north of Walla Walla in the wheat fields of the Palouse. Seems Washington power companies did all this without the help of T. Boone Pickens and the federal government subsidies he's lobbying for.

Congratulations Sean & Danielle!

Sarah Palin, McCain's VP Pick

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a pro-life, hunter with a passion for domestic energy development. WOW!

She Challenges Stupidity

We knew we had heard the name Sarah Palin in the news before.

Meanwhile In China

"I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet"

Meanwhile in China.

Natural Seepages

When Speaker Pelosi said yesterday that lifting the executive ban on offshore oil drilling is "reckless and "risky" The Skirt wondered what could she be referring to. Was she concerned about an increase chance of oil spills? We decided to do some surfing. Over 47%, maybe more of the oil found in the ocean seeps through cracks in the ocean floor. At the time they wrote the report in 2002 they speculated that it was probably much higher. Today they have even more sophisticated ways of measuring these natural seepages, so it's a good bet that it is a far higher percentage of the total amount. The report also stated that over time all oil in the oceans is broken down by natural organisms and chemical processes called - natural bio remediation. Modern oil drilling and transport have improved to the point where accidental spillage is minimal. And if it does happen they know how to clean it up. We think The Speaker and her constituents want to believe that nearly all the oil in the ocean comes from human hands. WE ARE IN A CRISIS, SPEAKER! What is "risky" is doing nothing to increase our domestic energy production. The Skirt agrees with the the President, "Politics is choking good sense." We need more domestic energy production now including offshore drilling. If crude is going to bubble up anyway we might as well capture it for our use. Congress better wise up, fast. May those who don't agree suffer from anal seepage.

Why leave it in the ground - ANWR

Everyday more and more Americans are coming to the conclusion that domestic drilling should be part of our country's energy strategy. A friend sent us some pictures of ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The picture below is of the proposed drilling area in the summertime. They call it the ANWR Coastal Plain. As you can see, the exact area they want to drill is a barren wasteland.

It does not look like this:It does not even on it's best day look like this.First, ANWR is nearly 20 million acres. Proposed drilling is for 2000 acres. In other words, at worst, one out of every 10,000 acres would be affected.

Those who opposed drilling here say they are concerned about the effect it will have on the local wildlife. Here is a picture of how things look today around Prudhoe Bay oil field.

Caribou, bear and wolf populations have soared since development of this oil field. Caribou have their calves next to the warmth of the pipeline and thus their critical post birth survival rate is substantially increased. The real environmental uproar will occur when the oil companies leave.

Bears find the pipeline as a convenient means of getting from point A to point B. Maybe a mass transit system in ANWR will get the Eco freaks on board.

Smile, Washington Has the Highest State Gas Tax In The Country

Effective yesterday out of the over $4.00 and something per gallon we Washingtonians pay for gas, 37.5 cents of it goes to the State. This final 1.5 cent increase is the last of the 9.5 cent tax increase initiated in 2005. This now makes Washington the state with the highest state gas taxes in the nation. It's hard to find a newspaper that will spell it out that way though. Who cares anyway, right? It's just a measly 1.5 cents. Have a nice day.