At some point I would hope that people would get sick of there crooks, until then we will be here to point them out. On somewhere in the 324 page doc is a windfall for the "connected", and by that we do not mean plan Jane Americans.

From CNN

Buried in the huge budget-reconciliation bill, on which House and Senate conferees are putting the final touches right now, are a few paragraphs that accomplish an extraordinary feat. They roll back the price of a barrel of crude oil to what it sold for two years ago. They create this pretend price for the benefit of a small group of the politically well connected. You still won’t be able to buy gasoline for $1.73 per gal. as you did then, instead of today’s $2.28. You still won’t be able to buy home heating oil for $1.60 per gal., in place of today’s $2.39. But a select group of investors and companies will walk away with billions of dollars in tax subsidies, not from oil but from the marketing of a dubious concoction of synthetic fuel produced from coal and dependent on government tax credits tied to the price of oil.

Documented evidence number 99,341 that Republicans hate Americans, especially poor Americans (Forget what the bible says about helping the poor).

Republican Representative Joe “Screw the Poor” Barton from my birth state of Texas (shocker) is mad as hell because a private oil company has stepped up and done what this pathetic Republican congress won’t do, and help those that need it buy heating oil. No, I am not making this up.

From the NY Daily News…

You will be surprised to learn that Barton, one of the top recipients in Congress of campaign donations from the energy industry, is not probing whether ExxonMobil or Chevron or any of the other oil giants engaged in price gouging when gasoline and heating oil costs skyrocketed the past few years.

No, the good congressman has set his sights on the only oil company that actually dared to lower its prices last year - at least for the poorest Americans.

In a Feb. 15 letter to Citgo, the Houston-based company owned by the Venezuelan government, Barton demanded that company officials produce by tomorrow all records, minutes, logs, e-mails and even desk calendars related to Citgo’s novel program of supplying discounted heating oil to low-income communities in the United States.

The Citgo program, which kicked off late last year in Massachusetts and the South Bronx, provides oil at discounts as high as 60% off market price.

Since its inception the program has expanded to low-income communities in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island. Local politicians, desperate for ways to reduce energy costs for their constituents, have welcomed it with open arms.

Here in New York, Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel will soon announce an expansion of the Citgo program into upper Manhattan.

It is funny as hell to watch the oil President run around and tout alternative energy. The man who is against increasing the required mileage cars get, and who is in bed with the Saudi oil industry is now tiring to get you to believe that he is pro-alternative energy. What is more funny is that those people that he went and visited this weekend had all been told that they were being laid off, because there was no money for their research.

From Reuters via Yahoo (Bolds are mine)

The Energy Department said it has come up with $5 million to immediately restore jobs cut at a renewable energy laboratory President George W. Bush will visit on Tuesday, avoiding a potentially embarrassing moment as the president promotes his energy plan.

Bush proposed spending millions more dollars in renewable energy research. However, Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists questioned the administration’s commitment when jobs were being eliminated at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.

Bush will visit the lab on Tuesday to tout his proposal for more renewable energy research funding.

"The role of the government, at this point, is to continue to spend research dollars to help push (renewable energy) technologies forward … to get these technologies to be even more competitive in the marketplace," Bush said Monday during a tour of a solar panel plant in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

The ensure the Colorado laboratory will have the people to carry out that research, the Energy Department transferred $5 million over the weekend to the Midwest Research Institute, the contractor that operates the renewable energy lab, to restore all the jobs cut earlier this month due to budget shortfalls.

If any of this comes to being near true you will see a riot in the United States and Europe.

From FORTUNE via CNN Money… (Bolds are mine)

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

That’s the message from two of the world’s most successful investors on the topic of high oil prices. One of them, Hermitage Capital’s Bill Browder, has outlined six scenarios that could take oil up to a downright terrifying $262 a barrel.

The other, billionaire investor George Soros, wouldn’t make any specific predictions about prices. But as a legendary commodities player, it’s worth paying heed to the words of the man who once took on the Bank of England — and won. "I’m very worried about the supply-demand balance, which is very tight," Soros says.

"U.S. power and influence has declined precipitously because of Iraq and the war on terror and that creates an incentive for anyone who wants to make trouble to go ahead and make it." As an example, Soros pointed to the regime in Iran, which is heading towards a confrontation with the West over its nuclear power program and doesn’t show any signs of compromising. "Iran is on a collision course and I have a difficulty seeing how such a collision can be avoided," he says.

This is what you get when you vote the fox in to run the hen house.

Ah remember the days when we had a real president, and not a shill for the oil industry.

Today Exxon reported the largest profits ever made by a company. Now at the same time we are told that the reason for higher gas prices is this and that, but the fact of the matter is, if ALL of those factors were true, then oil companies would not be making almost 11 BILLION in a single quarter. Face it, the oil companies are using the “crisis” to make money hand over fist, and our failure of a president is doing nothing. While families choose to eat or fill the car up with gas, Bush sits there… How sad, and how pathetic that his supporters just do not care.

Here is a news story on Exxon making more money then any company has EVER made.

This is my preview and prediction of what, we the American people can expect from our “leader” in tomorrow’s State of the Union…

• He will do his best to stoke the fires of fear, face it, most right-wingers are cowards and are scared of the new boogie-man.
• He needs us all good and scared as it because more clear that he broke the law, and the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution. He will lay down the new Republican agenda, that is an agenda that is anti-Americans, anti-middle class, anti-elderly, and anti-troops.
• Mr. Bush will try to get you to buy into the war in Iraq, it is going great they have had elections. Elections are great, I mean look at Palestine, they just elected a known terrorist group.
• Bush will throw you a bone about fuel costs, knowing that everything he says is just a smoke in your ass, like most other things he asks for, it will go unfunded or just die after the news cycle is done with it. He will have in the box next to Laura a soldier, a soldiers mother, or some foreigner that he will use to prop up his failed policy.

In short, word on the street is that he is just going to do his best to prop up the Republican Party, given that is it riddled in scandal, and has shown a clear Anti-Americans agenda.

Well it looks like sanity has prevailed in the protection of the Alaska National wildlife refuge from the Republicans. Not able to pass it on its own, they have attached it to the bill to the Defense Department, a clear violation of Senate rules by the way.

Here is what the Republicans tried to do, when a bill is voted on in the house or Senate, and they are not exactly the same, they have to go to conference, which hammers out the differences in the bills, this is where the Republicans tried to jam this, thinking that by doing so, it would just slide in. Well they were caught.

Here is something from the AP. My Comments

A quarter-century long fight over the nation’s most divisive environmental issue rages on after the Senate on Wednesday rejected opening an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling - even though that provision was included in a must-pass bill that funds U.S. troops overseas and hurricane victims.

It was a stinging defeat for Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, one of the Senate’s most powerful members, who had hoped to garner more votes by forcing senators to choose between supporting the drilling measure, or risking the political fallout from voting against money for the troops and hurricane victims. See the Republicans hate the troops so much that they are willing to attach PET PROJECTS to the bill that funds them, how sad

Instead, Stevens found himself a few votes shy of getting his wish.

Republican leaders could not break a Democratic filibuster threat over the drilling issue, falling three votes short of the 60 votes need to advance the defense spending bill to a final vote. Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., left the bill in limbo as he, Stevens and other GOP leaders gauged their next move.

Teachers in the United States get paid about as much as a trash man, this is not speculation, this is fact. Well one school system has asked them to start paying the utilities as well, to help offset the ungodly increase in energy prices.

With the money we are spending in 2 weeks in Iraq, we could help just about every school in America (3 Billion for 2 weeks). For the 3 months in Iraq, we could probably solve our energy issues for damn near ever. But no, we have a president who is in love with the Saudi

The US House of Representative has dealt a blow to the Bush Administration. Lets face it the Republicans are not really in any position to fight much. Americans have lost faith in them, Americans have been made clear by their actions that the Republicans do not care about them, and Americans have seen that the Republican Agenda is very pro-

Tell me why we just gave these guys billions in tax cuts? See Also this post. We are being screwed by the oil companies, and Bush is OLAY with it.

From the AP.

Exxon Mobil Corp. had a quarter for the record books. The world’s largest publicly traded oil company said Thursday high oil and natural-gas prices helped its third-quarter profit surge almost 75 percent to $9.92 billion, the largest quarterly profit for a U.S. company ever, and it was the first to ring up more than $100 billion in quarterly sales.

Net income ballooned to $9.92 billion, or $1.58 per share, from $5.68 billion, or 88 cents per share, a year ago.

Excluding certain items, earnings were $8.3 billion, or $1.32 per share, versus $6.23 billion, or 96 cents per share, in the 2004 quarter.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial, on average, predicted earnings excluding items of $1.38 per share.

Revenue grew to $100.72 billion from $76.38 billion in the prior-year period.

Howard Silverblatt, equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s, said both the net income and sales figures are all-time records for publicly traded U.S. companies.

The hurricanes slashed Exxon Mobil’s U.S. production volumes by 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, down nearly 5 percent year-over-year, costing the company $45 million before taxes. The company said total daily production slipped to 2.45 million barrels of oil equivalent from 2.51 million barrels.

I find it odd that we were told by our failure of a President that the high oil prices are because of the storms and supply, that we should find ways to conserve. We have also been told by Republican hacks have told us that there is no reason to investigate price gouging because, in true Republican style, there is nothing to see here even if there is something here.

So we get this today from the AP. ConocoPhillips 3Q Profit Soars 89 Percent.

ConocoPhillips, the nation’s third-largest integrated oil and gas company, said Wednesday its third-quarter profit surged 89 percent, reflecting strong prices for crude oil and natural gas.

Earnings for the quarter ended Sept. 30 rose to $3.8 billion, or $2.68 per share, topping the average Wall Street estimate of $2.57 per share, according to a Thomson Financial survey of analysts. A year ago, the company earned $2 billion, or $1.43 per share.

Quarterly revenue rose 43 percent to $49.66 billion from $34.74 billion

“During the quarter, our U.S. Gulf Coast operations were significantly impacted by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Dennis,” said Jim Mulva, chairman and chief executive. “Despite these impacts, our overall operating performance for the quarter was good, and we continued to benefit from the strong commodity price environment.”

The Houston-based company produced 1.79 million barrels of oil equivalent, or BOE, per day, including 1.52 million BOE per day from the exploration and production segment and an estimated 270,000 BOE per day from its Lukoil Investment segment.

During the quarter, ConocoPhillips generated $6.1 billion in cash from operations, spent $3.6 billion in capital projects and investments and reduced debt by $516 million.

Thank to Bush