Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.
But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.
The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.
This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.
KOR - well we still have this morotorium going right? Well, unless your obamas buddy!
Petrobras gets permit for U.S. deep waters
WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Washington has given Petrobras America Inc. permission to start oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a regulator said.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement gave Petrobras approval to use a floating production storage offloading facility at its Cascade-Chinook project in the Gulf of Mexico.
The approval marks the first time FPSO technology will be used in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The oil and gas project is about 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana in 8,200 feet of water. The FPSO has a production capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.
The BOEMRE approved the production safety system permit and a supplemental deep-water operating plan from Petrobras. The regulatory agency said it was satisfied that operations would be safe from hurricanes and other natural disasters.
"These regulatory approvals pave the way for safe, new production of oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Mexico," BOEMRE Director Michael R. Bromwich said in a statement.
Noble Energy in early March was awarded a BOEMRE permit to drill in the Mississippi Canyon block about 70 miles south of the Louisiana coast.
The permit was for what the BOEMRE described as a bypass well meant to drill around a mechanical problem in the original hole.
Deep-water exploration is under scrutiny following the April oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. government lifted a moratorium on deep-water drilling in October, six months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Mexico.
KOR - Well, well, well.... pardon the pun! Deep subject! Just who owns PETROBRAS?BARACK OBAMA, GEORGE SOROS, PETROBRAS, AND THE REAL REASON WHY OBAMA IS TRYING TO HALT AMERICAN OIL PRODUCTION: A CRIME INC. UPDATE
We first reported on the fact that Barack Obama and his boss George Soros teamed up to make billions of dollars in the oil business, the day the $10 billion dollar gift to Brazil was announced almost a year ago. Sadly, outside of the blogs, no one has reported on this major scandal at all, except Glenn Beck, who has recently taken notice.
I mean how hard is this one to put together? You’ve got Nazi sympathizer George Soros, the self proclaimed “owner of the democrat party” purchasing controlling interest in Brazilian oil giant Petrobas, then just a couple of days later, Barack Obama “loans” the country of Brazil $10 billion, which is then given to …. wait for it …. Petrobas. Glenn keeps saying it’s $2 billion, but the commitment is for $10 billion.
You can read our most previous offerings on this incredible corruption here and here.
It’s simply incredible that no one is screaming for Obama and Soros’ arrest here. This is obvious corruption on an industrial scale. This is Obama “never letting a crisis go to waste.”
Now I’m not going to suggest that Obama or Soros, or anyone else had anything to do with the BP oil spill in the Gulf. It was a tragic accident, brought on by massive incompetence from all involved, including the government inspectors. With that said, this plays right into the Obama regime’s hands.
Obama, in an effort to help his boss Soros make billions, was already looking at ways to shut down oil production nationwide. This oil spill just made it easy as pie.
Glenn Beck has done a great job of exposing all of the criminals, radicals, and nerdowells, that make up the Obama regime, and the hangers on who look to make huge profits with Obama’s Crime Inc. On Monday, Glenn did a magnificent job of laying out the case against Obama and Soros: Again, one must ask, why isn’t someone looking to perp walk Obama across the White House lawn on this deal? It’s incredibly obvious what this set up is. Soros is incredibly powerful, and funds hundreds of groups that spend their days trying to undermine the American way, but even so, this is pretty simple to figure out, and you’d think someone would have the guts to go after this bunch, and seek criminal indictments.
Of course, Obama is a multi-tasker, so not only is he using the BP oil spill to help Soros make billions, he’s also using it to try and pass massive “climate change” legislation, that will include a draconian cap and tax scheme, which will, as Obama has often said, make our energy prices “necessarily skyrocket.”
Part of the cap and tax scenario includes a “carbon credit” trading scheme. In essence, folks will be arbitrarily given so many “carbon credits” but if they exceed the imaginary (and arbitrary) limits of allowed “pollution” they will have to either shut their activities down, or purchase “carbon credits” from those who haven’t reached their limits.
This is where Obama and Crime Inc. really look to clean up. (pardon the pun) The Chicago Climate Exchange, where all of these “carbon credits” will be traded, was funded by Obama, during his time on the board of a far left Joyce Foundation. The Chicago Climate Exchange will make money off of each transaction.
This is the Greatest Swindle In Human History © and those involved stand to make, not billions, but TENS of TRILLIONS of DOLLARS from this scam. And indeed, it’s nothing but a scam. This, BTW, is WHY your energy bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” All of this carbon trading will add incredible costs to every single product you buy, or activity you engage in, but energy, which is a particularly dirty business, will be hit hard, and have to purchase insane amounts of these credits. They will pass the costs on to the consumer.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you emit carbon dioxide. Plants can’t live without it. In fact, through photosynthesis, plants take CO2 and use it to create oxygen.
This is simply a manufactured crisis that Obama and the likes of Al Gore, Maurice Strong, and others are using in an attempt to become wealthy beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. All of them are owners, along with Goldman Sachs, of the Chicago Climate Exchange. You can read a lot more here and here.
Oh, and it gets better. As Stacy Drake points out here, BP is very much involved with Obama and the entire “climate change” agenda. BP wants to get it’s share of those TRILLIONS of dollars too!
As we point out here, the idea of America getting off of oil within our lifetimes (or our kids, or their kid’s) is highly unlikely, considering that we’ve spent the better part of a century, and untold billions, trying, with few positive results.
In fact, everything you have been told by the left about our energy reserves is a lie. Chad Stafko over at the American Thinker points out that America has over three centuries (300 years) of recoverable oil reserves.
According to a June 2008 article in Kiplinger Magazine, the United States has enough oil reserves to power the nation for upwards of three centuries. That’s three hundred years, Mr. President. We are not running out of oil reserves — it’s just that those oil reserves have been declared off-limits due to decades of environmental lobbying of our politicians, especially those on the Left. This lobbying has driven the likes of BP and others out deep into the Gulf of Mexico to extract the nation’s needed oil.
Note the following statement from the article:
… untapped reserves are estimated at about 2.3 trillion barrels, nearly three times more than the reserves held by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) and sufficient to meet 300 years of demand-at today’s levels-for auto, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil.
You can read more here.
What Obama, Soros, Gore, and the rest of Crime Inc. are up to is not only criminal, it’s immoral. Oil is the lifeblood of any economy. Remember, petroleum is used in more than just motor fuels and lubricants. Petroleum is used to manufacture plastics, medicines, literally thousands of products.
It’s also an issue of national security. We send somewhere between $700 billion and $1 trillion out of the country annually to buy crude oil. A good amount of that money goes to countries that hate us, and use this money to actively work against us. It’s insane.
Sarah Palin wrote about this recently, which we talk about here.
To sum this up, Barack Obama, George Soros, and others look to get incredibly rich off of these two schemes, and as a bonus, they get to completely and totally destroy the United States economy, in hopes of rebuilding America as a communist utopia.
These people are evil, pure and simple. Sadly, nothing will happen until the American people demand it, and demand it vigorously. If you are one of those who just sit on the couch and complain, it’s time to get up and get involved. We must stop all of this, and send these people, all of these people, to prison, where they belong.
KOR - SO WHATS UP WITH BRAZIL?
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/02/world/la-fg-brazil-president-20110102
Former Marxist guerrilla sworn in as president of Brazil
Dilma Rousseff is Brazil's first female president, taking over from the immensely popular Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The new president hopes to keep the country's booming economy on track while advancing her Workers' Party social agenda.
Accepting the green and yellow mantle of power from her immensely popular mentor, former Marxist guerrilla Dilma Rousseff was sworn in Saturday as Brazil's first female president and faced two immediate tasks: keeping the booming economy on track and fleshing out Brazil's developing role on the world stage.
Rousseff succeeded Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who left Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia with an 87% approval rating, the highest in recent history for a departing leader of South America's largest and most populous country. She hopes to maintain the economic momentum that was the key to Lula's power and popularity, while advancing an agenda of reducing poverty, improving education and tightening the state's control of natural resources, particularly newfound oil riches.
Under tight security and heavy rainfall that precluded the traditional open car procession to the swearing in, the 63-year-old divorcee was accompanied by her only daughter, Paula, to the ceremony at the Congress in Brasilia. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was among the leaders and representatives from 130 nations who attended the ceremony.
Rousseff won the presidency — her first elective office — in October on the strength of her close association with Lula, whom she served as chief of staff after 2005. In her inaugural address, Rousseff said her goal would be to "consolidate the transformational work" of Lula, adding that she would also strive to "open doors so that many other women also can, in the future, be president."
"I don't come here to extol my biography, but to glorify the life of each Brazilian woman," Rousseff said. "My supreme commitment is to honor women, protect the weakest and govern for all."
Paulo Sotero, of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said Rousseff will have to demonstrate that she can make the tricky transition from being a "competent technocrat" to a president able to create consensus among Brazil's congressional members and the bureaucracy.
"Now she will have to show she can lead," Sotero said. "The business of governing Brazil is first and foremost about managing a coalition of political parties that span the ideological spectrum, share a voracious appetite for government jobs and public resources, and see in every piece of legislation an opportunity to extract a concession from the executive."
KOR - SO WHATS WRONG WITH THE PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL?
Can you imagine an America led by Bill Ayers?http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2010/07/election_manifesto_wasnt
FOR all the (largely deserved) hype about Brazil’s emergence as a model world power, there is a reminder every so often of how young its democracy remains. Consider the case of the election manifesto that wasn’t. Brazilian law requires presidential candidates to submit a summary of their proposed government programme to the Supreme Electoral Court. These were due on Monday, July 5th. In the morning, the front-running candidate, Dilma Rousseff of the governing Workers’ Party (PT) duly submitted hers. A few hours later, a lawyer from her party withdrew the first version and replaced it with a totally different one.
The offending first draft was something of an eye-opener. It included proposals for extensive media control (“measures to promote the democratisation of the media”); a new tax bracket for the super-rich; changes to farm land laws which would have made it easier for the government to expropriate agricultural land without compensation; and a relaxation of the country’s abortion controls. Abortion is illegal in Brazil except in cases of rape or incest or if the mother’s life is threatened. The manifesto talked about “ensuring women’s autonomy over their bodies”. At least, the draft submitted in the morning did.
The version submitted in the evening contained none of these ideas. The party airily sought to explain away these curious lacunae by saying the manifesto had been based on guidelines drawn up at a party meeting in February. That meeting had approved a number of ideas put forward by the party’s radical wing and these ideas had got into the manifesto mistakenly. The party didn’t really mean them—an account which itself seemed to make little sense because the party’s moderate wing, not the radicals, had been in charge of writing the manifesto. Not surprisingly, the opposition candidate, José Serra, had a field day, calling the whole thing “incredible” and accusing Ms Rousseff of not knowing why she wanted to be president.
The party tried to explain the fiasco away by claiming that Ms Rousseff had initialled the document without reading a single line—as if that were much reassurance. The other signatory was the PT’s president and campaign coordinator, José Eduardo Dutra, who promptly had a heart attack and was rushed to hospital. Such imbroglios do not speak well of the professionalism of Brazil’s institutions, but they surely make its politics unusually entertaining.
KOR - SO OBAMA IS HANGING OUT WITH MARXISTS? NO WAY!!!
A Quiet Lunch
Two Mondays ago, at United Nations headquarters in Geneva, some guests had a quiet lunch together. Apparently encouraged by our ambassador there, Maria Nazareth Farani Azevedo, the luncheon sent a signal to the world. But as these signals go in diplomatic circles, it was a calculated risk to assuage old friends and temper new enemies.
This weekend, President Obama will visit Brazil. As an emerging economic powerhouse, grouped together with China, India, and Russia, Brazil's presence among influence peddlers is increasing. Economically, militarily, and politically. Its strategic importance is being recalculated by governments everywhere. These shifting winds were captured in an editorial a few days ago in one of Brazil's leading newspapers: "The government of President Dilma Rousseff no longer advertises in word alone that it's disassociating itself from Lula's complacency: It is confronting atrocities committed by despotic regimes with which Brazil is aligned in a clumsy attempt to parade its anti-Americanism around the world."
The lunch conversation turned to a new beginning. That the luncheon even occurred was unprecedented. In Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad probably felt sick to his stomach. He probably thought of his friend in Libya. Muammar Gadhafi, were he not so preoccupied with preserving his dictatorship in the current uprising, might have had some advice to give the Iranian president. Perhaps something like "power isn't what it used to be."
Today in Tokyo, being on the precipice of nuclear meltdown is terrifying the people of the world. As a result, in Washington DC politicians are feeling more heat for failed attempts to prevent nuclear proliferation in nations like North Korea. In Jerusalem, the military options are being put through more preparatory exercises to stop Iran from getting the bomb.
I imagine Shirin Ebadi looked in the eyes of her luncheon host. Soft spoken but with an irrefutable force, she thanked the ambassador for his "support." The translators were busy keeping the cadence of the conversation. Your country "needs to support us when there are massacres," she is quoted as saying.
A month ago, President Obama came out stronger in defense of human rights for all. He characterized the struggles in Egypt as being fought around the world by innocent people enslaved under dictatorships. He spoke of the naturalness of freedom and respect for all people. His call reversed the direction of his earlier use of discretion to avoid the topic of human rights abuses, even egregious ones, committed by nations such as China.
The whole world has changed and will continue to change as democracy spreads by grassroots and authentically elected governments. The age of technology will push through geographic, man-made borders that outline nations. There are no borders in cyberspace. These are probably conclusions the lunch guests, if they didn't arrive with, certainly left with. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ebadi graciously thanked her host, the ambassador from Brazil. Later she is quoted as saying about his country, "Brazil has begun to redeem itself from having supported so many dictators in recent years."
The Geneva luncheon was carefully orchestrated diplomacy to bridge commonality for President Obama and Brazilian President Rousseff when they meet in Brasília later this week to stand together for worldwide democratization. Not long ago there was no bridge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Social_Democratic_Party
Brazilian Social Democratic Party
The Brazilian Social Democracy Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, PSDB) is a centrist [2][3][4][5][6][7] political party in Brazil. Originally a centre-left party (with social-democratic intentions, though they never held any actual strength in the unions) at the time of its foundation, PSDB moved to the centre after Fernando Henrique Cardoso forged an alliance with the right-wing Liberal Front Party and was elected President of Brazil. The third largest party in the National Congress, PSDB is currently the main opposition party againstLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff's administrations. Its mascot is a blue and yellow colored toucan; party members are called tucanos for such reason. Famous tucanosincludes Mário Covas, Geraldo Alckmin, Tasso Jereissati, Aécio Neves, FHC, Franco Montoro, Aloysio Nunes, Yeda Crusius, and José Serra.
Contents[hide] |
[edit]History
With the imminent collapse of the military dictatorship in the early 1980s, a group of left-wing intellectuals were mobilized to create a leftist party. Some of them attempted to work with the labour movement, led by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but the group split over ideological grounds. The democratic socialists joined the labour movement and founded the Worker's Party, while the social democrats remained in the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party(PMDB) and would later create the Social Democratic Party of Brazil (PSDB).
PSDB was founded on June 25, 1988 by members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party linked to the European social democratic movement as an attempt to clarify their ideals. Its manifesto preached "democracy as a fundamental value" and "social justice as an aim to be reached". In its foundation, the party attempted to unite political groups as diverse as social democrats, social liberals, Christian democrats and democratic socialists.
This period when PSDB was created was a very significant moment in the history of Brazilian politics. On April 21, 1985, the Brazilian people witnessed the death of Tancredo Neves, the last president not elected directly by the people since the beginning of the dictatorial government. With the formation of new parties, including PSDB, a National Constitutional Assembly was created which drafted the current, democratic constitution, in 1988.
A high proportion of the first members of PSDB came from the so-called "historic PMDB". This was and still is a very large party with many internal conflicts. The founders of PSDB were dissatisfied with the results of the Constitutional Assembly, and decided to create a party to reflect the need for a national political renewal. As their manifesto states, the new party was created "away from the official benefits, but close to the pulsing of the streets" (taken from a speech by party leader Franco Montoro). Some of the founding members were José Serra,Mário Covas, André Franco Montoro, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Aécio Neves, and Geraldo Alckmin.
In a country where two referenda, held in 1963 and in 1993, have shown a very strong preference for a presidential system of government, as in most countries of the Americas, PSDB stands almost alone in the preference given in its manifesto to a parliamentarian system of government. However, after the electors rejected "parlamentarismo" in 1993, and even though PSDB leader Cardoso was elected President the next year, the party did nothing in the last years to further the cause of a parliamentarian regime.
PSDB is one of the largest and most significant political parties in Brazil. Its official program states its policies as being social democratic and often associated with the Third Way movement, although the party is also regarded as being influenced by neoliberalism. The party's program states that it "reject[s] populism and authoritarianism, as well as both fundamentalist neoliberalism and obsolete national-statism".[8]
Despite its name, the PSDB is not a member of the Socialist International[9] which draws together social democratic parties worldwide (the Brazilian member of the Socialist International is the Democratic Labour Party (PDT)). Also, the party has not, and has never had, the links totrade union movements that usually characterize social democratic parties; it used to sponsor a Central Union, SDS (Social-Democracia Sindical), which has now merged, together with Central Autônoma dos Trabalhadores (CAT), and the much more important Central Geral dos Trabalhadores (CGT), into the União Geral dos Trabalhadores (UGT)[7], but its impact among the unions has always been quite unimpressive compared to even much smaller parties as the PDT or the PCdoB, or to the tucanos's own influence in society at large.
[edit]Recent times
A mere six years after its creation, PSDB was able to win the Presidency of the Republic. It grew faster than any other party in Brazilian history, with an astonishingly good performance in elections at all levels. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso enjoyed eight years (1994–2002) of political stability in his tenure as president.
Because of the party's size, many members do not have the level of political education needed to spell out the real principles behind which it was founded or at least are not able to do so with the same force as its leading members.[citation needed] Yet, it remains one of the most democratic parties in the country[citation needed] and undoubtedly plays an important role in the current new era of Brazilian politics.
Accordingly its 1980 honor president, a good summary of the PSDB's stated program is: 1 ) constant defense of democracy. 2 ) the state at minimally needed size. 3 ) administrative descentralization. 4 ) sustainable economic growth with wealth distribution. 5 ) political reform to make stronger parties with districtal vote accountable representatives and aiming to reduce/ eliminate the corruption.
[edit]Ideology
Although PSDB declares itself as a center-left party, some people in the left rejects this definition, especially after Fernando Henrique Cardoso embraced Third Way politics as President.
Political analyst Angelo Segrillo, in an article titled "The left-right confusion in the post-Berlin Wall world", says that "most analysts defined PSDB as center-left as of its foundation, after all, it was the Brazilian Social Democratic Part". As he notes, "this story changed after 1994, with the election of PSDB to the presidency". "A rhetoric of overcoming classical ideological division (...) was one of the justifications of the grand parliamentary alliance with center and right-wing parties (...) As such, after the 1994 presidential election, most analysts started defining PSDB as a center party along with PMDB".[10] In its 2009 report about Freedom in the World, Freedom House defined the opposition coalition (formed by PSDB, PPS and Democrats) as a "center-right coalition".[11] However, in the 2010 report of the same organization, PSDB was defined as a "center-left" party.[12]
Workers' Party campaign leader Marco Aurélio de Melo criticized declarations made by PSDB president Sérgio Guerra that PSDB is "the real left". He said that "PSDB is not a right wing party, it is the right wing's party".[13]
[edit]Political alignment
PSDB questions the use of what it considers "outdated political labels", such as "left" and "right". To quote a document drafted by Fernando Henrique Cardoso's office in 1990:
"If left means to be against the existing social order, and right in favor, then social-democracy is without doubt a left current... A social democrat is before anything someone who has critical sense — who realizes the injustices of society and has no fear to oppose them, even at the risk of being taken as a subversive or a dreamer."
The party did not preach nationalization or privatization in general ("the consensus is that the state must not be too big or too small, but 'have the size and functions corresponding to the needs of the whole of society'"), although president Cardoso privatized many large public companies, such as Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) and the national telecommunication system.
KOR - SO OBAMA is hanging out with his new SOCIALIST buddies in BRAZIL.... ANYONE SUPRISED?
