Middle east oil versus oil from Canada.

From the Wall Street Journal:

In sum, it costs under $5 per barrel to pump oil out from under the sand in Iraq, and about $15 to melt it out of the sand in Alberta. So why don't we just learn to love hockey and shop Canadian? Conventional Canadian wells already supply us with more oil than Saudi Arabia, and the Canadian tar is now delivering, too. The $5 billion (U.S.) Athabasca Oil Sands Project that Shell and ChevronTexaco opened in Alberta last year is now pumping 155,000 barrels per day. And to our south, Venezuela's Orinoco Belt yields 500,000 barrels daily.

But here's the catch: By simply opening up its spigots for a few years, Saudi Arabia could, in short order, force a complete write-off of the huge capital investments in Athabasca and Orinoco. Investing billions in tar-sand refineries is risky not because getting oil out of Alberta is especially difficult or expensive, but because getting oil out of Arabia is so easy and cheap. Oil prices gyrate and occasionally spike -- both up and down -- not because oil is scarce, but because it's so abundant in places where good government is scarce. Investing $5 billion dollars over five years to build a new tar-sand refinery in Alberta is indeed risky when a second cousin of Osama bin Laden can knock $20 off the price of oil with an idle wave of his hand on any given day in Riyadh.

That, in a nutshell, is why we buy oil from the middle east.

The war among the Democrats.

File this under rumorville:

According to knowledgeable DNC sources, Dean about ten days ago was shown opposition research documents generated by the Republican National Committee more than three years ago, which laid out facts regarding Reid and his family's lobbying and ethical conflicts.

Dean, according to the sources, was fascinated by the details, and asked that his staff research and independently confirm everything on the documents. "Basically he oppo'd a member of his own party," says a DNC source loyal to Dean.

...

According to Democrat Party watchers and DNC staff, Dean has grown increasingly frustrated at how he is treated by the likes of Reid, Sen. Dick Durbin, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who leads the House Democrat candidate recruitment effort. "They treat him like a lackey, not as an equal," says another DNC employee. "Just last week, they were all badmouthing his fundraising activities, when clearly he's done a good job. What this comes down to a fight for the soul of our party, and if the chairman has to draw a long knife on a few of his colleagues, he's more than willing to do so."

This comes from a hard core Republican web site so I'm not quite willing at this point to say it is 100% accurate. However, if it is true, then Dean is going to sink the very issue that the Dems want to run on. That being Republican lobbying scandals. It would not surprise me that the Dems have problems here too. The whole town crawls with sleazy lobbyists looking for pols to buy. But firing a torpedo like this at his own party? That is going to get ugly. Especially in light of the Alito filibuster debacle which has the fringe left up in arms. I have yet to check out the unhinged left's reaction to confirmation vote which was 58-42. You'll notice that 42 number would have been enough to sustain a filibuster yet Alito was sworn in today. I'll wager an ice cold lager that the Kosbots are hopping mad at that one.

Bastiat the Great.

A short biography by Henry Hazlitt.

Rumorville heads for the Dems.

The Drudge Report:

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are privately bristling over Howard Dean’s management of the Democratic National Committee and have made those sentiments clear after new fundraising numbers showed he has spent nearly all the committee’s cash and has little left to support their efforts to gain seats this cycle, ROLL CALL reports.

Could it possibly be that Dean's reactionary leftism just doesn't sit well with your average Democrat contributer? Or could it be that the party is just out of gas?

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And then there is this from Rasmussen Reports:

Monday January 30, 2006--Fifty percent (50%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.

The President earns approval from 82% of Republicans, 25% of Democrats, and 41% of those not affiliated with either major political party.

I'm not much of a poll follower but the Dems are and this has got to be giving them heartburn. The president is giving the State of the Union speech tomorrow and he'll probably get an additional bump out of this. Pile that on top of the Alito nomination and January looks down right horrific for the Dems.

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72-25 on the cloture vote. Not even close. Alito should be confirmed tomorrow.
I'll wager an ice cold lager that the fringe left is going into conniptions right about now.

UPDATE: I just surfed over to the DailyKos and it is too vile to repeat.

Exxon Mobil record profits.

Reuters reports:

Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest publicly traded oil company, on Monday reported a quarterly profit of $10.7 billion, capping a year of record earnings dominated by surging oil and gas prices.

The results pushed up Exxon's profit for the year to a staggering $36.13 billion -- bigger than the economies of 125 of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank. Profit rose 42 percent from 2004.

I have three words about this:

Good
For
Them

And now my cynical side must ask, "I wonder how long it will take for the wealth redistributors to get their claws into that one?"