I make no assertion that the gentleman is any worse (or better) than some of our own delegation (our Mr. Udall, for example, or Ms Feinstein of California), but I did come away from the hearings undertsanding why we are in this mess. A marvelously uninformed and ethereal set of congressional folks with a distorted and superficial view of the situation is the cause. This plays nicely into the hands of the oil cartel, and the transfer of our wealth to other countries every time we buy gasoline, friendly folks like Hugo Chavez or the Iranians. The gist of the hearings was that industry folks tried to explain that they buy product (oil) from foreign sources at market value ($125-130 a barrel). They ship it refine it and sell it. 60% of American oil is foreign oil and the companies cannot look for American oil on the West Caost, the East Coast, the eastern Gulf or the Rocky Mountains, so they buy foreign oil from state run oil companies (70% of all oil on the market is foreign and state owned). However, there is about 800 billion to 1 trillion (1000 billion) barrels of oil in tar sands and oil shales here in North America, unused! One is amazed to listen to these “astute” Senators not understand that we have little or no need of foreign oil if we let our own industry folks (most of whom are small companies by the way),drill and produce.

The world is a strange and interesting place.