HOG ON ICE: The New Orleans Puzzle

HOG ON ICE: The New Orleans Puzzle: "A commenter complains that the New Orleans disaster shows that the Homeland Security people haven't done enough to prepare for terrorist attacks, which would have results similar to those caused by Hurricane Katrina.

I don't know enough about Katrina yet to form a firm opinion, but what I know so far leads me to disagree."

Tangled Up In Blue

Tangled Up In Blue: "'I awoke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain'�t it funny how the night moves
When you just don'�t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in'"

Nashville Truth: Liberals Also Called For Assassination

Nashville Truth: Liberals Also Called For Assassination: "George Stephanopolous, former Clintonite and current ABC News analyst, on ABC'S 'This Week,' Nov. 9: 'This is probably one of those rare cases where assassination is the more moral course...we should kill him.'

Sam Donaldson, co-host of 'This Week,' Nov. 9: We should kill Saddam 'under cover of law.... We can do business with his successor.'"

News about Infantry at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War.

News about Infantry at StrategyPage.com's How to Make War.: "INFANTRY: Iraqis Copy Americans


August 31, 2005: The new Iraqi army is going through a generational shift, with a new package of tactics and techniques being taught to a new generation of recruits"

The Daily Brief: A Military Blog Written With Intelligence And Purpose

The Daily Brief: A Military Blog Written With Intelligence And Purpose: "A List of Things Every Man Should Do Before He Dies

1. Shoot a gun larger than a .22. (Yep)
2. Teach a kid to shoot. (Define “kid.” Boyo hasn’t been shooting yet and guns aren’t allowed where we’re going so I’m gonna have to hold out.)
3. Cook a meal out in the open. (Done many times and not just “grilling” either.)
4. Kill an animal which can kill you. (No, and hopefully never will.)
5. Taste a good brandy (no French cognacs need apply) and a fine single malt Scotch. (I’ve overachieved this one.)
6. Visit at least eight countries outside your own continent, none of which speak your home language. (Only four so far.)"

etc==============

A soldier's thank-you - PittsburghLIVE.com

A soldier's thank-you - PittsburghLIVE.com: "More than once, bulletproof glass saved the lives of Spc. Nathaniel Cornman, his Humvee crewmates and others in his unit, the 1st 503rd Infantry, based at Fort Carson, Colo."

Chrenkoff--- Good News

Chrenkoff: "Maj. Joe Leahy, is a civil engineer with the 20th Engineer Brigade of the Army National Guard. He has been stationed at Camp Victory, outside of Baghdad, since November 2004 - enough time to get frustrated:

'We all know it's a dangerous place. But the thing that I want people to understand is that they only see those one or two instances in the country that are negative. You don't really hear about the 100 things that have gone good,'

says Maj Leahy. 'One thing we've got to understand is that it's not going to happen tomorrow, but we are doing something that's getting better everyday.'
"

Chrenkoff

Chrenkoff

Major K.: The MRX

Major K.: The MRX: "For the past 2 1/2 years, there have been several evolutions in building the new Iraqi Army. It first started as the ICDC, then became what is now the Iraqi Army. All over the country, this army has been being built from the ground up. It started with basic training, where new soldiers were forged with better training than was given to the 'Commandos' of the old regime. By the standards of the former regime, every American Soldier would be considered to be 'Special Forces' trained. "

Major K.: Lost in Translation

es in training Iraqi's.

Econbrowser: How to talk to an economist about peak oil

Econbrowser: How to talk to an economist about peak oil: "How to talk to an economist about peak oil"

Econbrowser: Wall Street Journal discussion of peak oil

Econbrowser: Wall Street Journal discussion of peak oil: "discussion of peak oi"

Deinonychus antirrhopus: Katrina and the Cost of Gasoline/Oil

Katrina and the Cost of Gasoline/Oil
Posted by Steve at 12:54 AM

Well, if you thought that gasoline prices were high now, just wait a couple of days. From the sounds of it Katrina has really done quite a number on the oil production in the gulf, and the oil refining in New Orleans area. This is like getting shot in the gut and the head. Even if Bush releases oil from the Strategic Patroleum Reserve it will likely have little impact. Why? Well there aren't that many refineries and quite a few of them are located in Louisiana. In looking at a map at goolge.com my quick research tells me these refineries are probably down and will be for some time.
Refinery Barrels/day Location
ConocoPhillips 250,000 Belle Chasse
Motiva Enterprises, LLC 220,000 Norco
Valero St. Charles Refinery 155,160 Norco
St. Rose Refining (Shell) 55,000 St. Rose
Chalmette Refining, LLC 182,500 Chalmette
862,660

In other words just under a million barrels/day of refining capacity has been taken off line. Add in that several off shore gulf rigs are likely also off line and it means that gasoline/oil prices are going to go up. Over at the Oil Drum Professor Goose notes that the U.S. uses about 20 million barrels per day (mbpd). Thus about 5% of the nations entire refining capacity just went away for an indeterminant amount of time.

This New York Times article is also chuck full of information. Such as that there are 4,000 drilling platforms in that region connected by 33,000 miles of underwater pipelines. The gulf region produces about 27% of the nations oil and 20% of the natural gas. Also oil production in the region was reduced by 92%.

So what about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)? Not much. After all, it isn't just the oil is going to be in short supply but also the refineries necessary to turn the oil in the SPR into gasoline. Valero is indicating it could be two weeks before its operations are back online. The St. Charles refinery noted above was under three feet of water and sustained minor damage to its cooling tower.

President Bush demonstrates a poor grasp of the situation,

"You just got to understand that the situation we got ourselves into, dependency on foreign sources of oil, took a while to get there, and it's going to take a while to become less dependent," Mr. Bush said.

As I've noted several times in this post, it isn't simply the dependency on foreign oil (in fact that is a minor part of the picture which I'll explain a bit more further down). Another big aspect of the problem is the lack of excess capacity in refineries. That part of the oil/gasoline supply line is also very tight. A slight problem there such as a Hurricane tearing up Louisiana.

As for the dependency on foreign oil that is "talking points/rhetorical bullsh*t". Suppose we weren't dependent on foreign oil and that we still obtained 27% of our oil from the Gulf region and there was a big hurricane. Oil production would still decrease and prices would go up. Somebody needs to inform Bush that we are talking about a world wide market for oil and that statements like the one above may sound good to the uninitiated on this issue, but to those who understand the issue he looks like a fool.

Well, at any rate I hope you weren't planning on taking the RV out for the long weekend. Or if you do, I recommend driving it to the end of driveway and setting up camp there.

Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog: Joe Roche: Antidote to Defeatism

Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog: Joe Roche: Antidote to Defeatism

'Wonderful time to be a soldier'�-�Editorials/Op-Ed�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

'Wonderful time to be a soldier'�-�Editorials/Op-Ed�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: "'Wonderful time to be a soldier'

TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By Joe Roche
August 26, 2005

I'm very proud to be a soldier of the U.S. Army because of the war on terror and our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not alone either. I'm surrounded by soldiers who are re-enlisting and volunteering to go to units that are deploying. In fact, despite all the negative news and protests, I see everyday that our military is actually doing very well.
This is quite obvious, except for the fact that most of the media seems asphyxiated with defeatism. The message from most journalists would lead you to believe that we soldiers are getting out, that no one is joining anew and that we want to stop fighting. This simply isn't true.
Yes, recruitment is lower, but the caliber of those who are signing up and the rates of re-enlistment are both extremely high. All 10 of our major combat divisions are ahead of expectations for retention of soldiers. In my unit, there are soldiers who specifically went active duty from the reserves because they want to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Before September 11, a lot of soldiers were happy to just enjoy the benefits. Since that day, those soldiers have left. That is fine and not the disaster that defeatist reports are making it seem. Such soldiers were never the types to want to go on long deployments and face combat. Yes, they were heroes for signing up and being in a job that could go that direction, but they had other priorities that made their service contingent on enjoying the benefits rather than serving in war.
That changed on September 11. Now, just as we are told to expect when joining, we are going to combat and many soldiers are getting injured and killed. This is our job, and it is what we know can happen. I don't know why the media insists on trumpeting the idea that all of us are tired and worn out and just want to stop fighting. I don't, and I am not alone.
The fact is that we are not experiencing casualty rates anywhere near past conflicts, nor for that matter as bad as during peacetime. There were weeks in Vietnam when 350-400 Americans died, and in other wars thousands would die in single battles. Nothing like that is happening now.
From 1983 to 1996, more than 18,000 soldiers died. That averages to more than 1,300 a year, far more than have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan each year. Yes, that was mostly from accidents, drunk driving and other mishaps. Yet, while protesters in Crawford, Texas and elsewhere would have you think that our military can't survive with the low casualty rates of this war, I wonder why they were willing to accept the much higher peacetime casualty rates of the past? We lost around 3,000 innocent people on September 11, and with four years of war and the toppling of two regimes, we haven't lost that many in combat.
Injuries are high, but they are nothing compared to past conflicts. And most striking is how many are recovering well. I have been to both of the major military hospitals involved in this war, Landstuhl in Germany and Walter Reed in Washington, and I can tell you that there are many soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan and who want to return to their units and get redeployed.
Like I said earlier, though, the striking fact I see every day is that the soldiers who are joining now are of much higher caliber than those who joined before September 11. The senior commandant of the Marines recently testified before Congress that the same is happening with them. There maybe fewer than before, but those that do show up are willing and dedicated to being deployed and going to combat. These are also the types who are re-enlisting more than ever before. In fact, re-enlistment is up to 130 percent of expectations in some divisions.
My wife is in the National Guard. Theirs is an interesting experience right now in that there have been more casualties by accidents and reckless behavior off-duty than in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why are protesters not upset about that? Sadly it appears that much of the media are obsessed with defeatism. Even the message of the protesters — contradictory, false and confused as ever — is made front-page headline news every day. The few people they can exploit to push this defeatist agenda are made to appear to speak for all of us. That just isn't true.
Contrary to all the bad news, I see everyday that our soldiers are motivated and eager to contribute and participate in our nation's military missions. This is a very proud and important time to be serving. Considering that out of a population of 285 million, less than one-tenth of one percent are going to war right now, and considering the huge impact we are having on the world, this is a wonderful time to be a soldier in the U.S. Army.

Sgt. Joe Roche is with the 12th Aviation Battalion and stationed at Fort Belvoir. "

HOG ON ICE: Putting Things In Perspective

HOG ON ICE: Putting Things In Perspective: "Putting Things In Perspective

Steve's hurricane could cause even more trouble...

When thinking about Hurricane Katrina, you might want to consider how she's going to affect your life. It doesn’t matter if you live on the Gulf Coast or not--Katrina just may affect you personally. In fact, no matter where you live in the US, this hurricane is packing enough punch to be felt from sea to shining sea, but I can't find anyone in the MSM talking about it.

Let me explain...

Most people don't think about the real damage being done by these hurricanes in the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico is responsible for almost 1/4 of the nation's domestic oil and gas production—this doesn’t count the imported oil and gas that is offloaded in the Gulf—but I’ll get to that in a minute. When these hurricanes blow through, oil companies have to evacuate their rigs—which means shutting down production. Like sleep, you can never make up for lost production. There are production losses planned into the production schedule, but with a year like this one, we're falling behind—and it’s one of the reasons we’re feeling it at the pumps. Then you have the rigs themselves. Let’s take Thunderhorse for example. Thunderhorse is the world’s largest offshore platform. She’s 75% owned by BP and 25% by Exxon—BP is the operator. The rig is designed to take hurricanes and other weather events and remain operationally viable. However, when Hurricane Dennis came through, something went wrong and she started listing about 20 to 30 degrees. Fast work by BP crews and the US Coastguard prevented the loss of a $5 billion rig. None of these rigs out there are hurricane proof.

But the real problem is Port Fourchon.

Most people have never heard of Port Fourchon, but it is the nation's premiere oil and gas support services facility--and right now it lies within 12 miles of Hurricane Katrina's CAT-3 or CAT-4 bullseye. Over 600 platforms and 75% of the Gulf’s deepwater projects lie within a 40-mile radius of Port Fourchon. Unfortunately, Port Fourchon is a Louisiana island. An island that is connected to the mainland by a single two lane bridge...an old, single two lane bridge. This bridge is the only means of getting cargo and supplies to the Port. More than 1,000 cargo trucks go across this bridge each day, delivering materials to the Port for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling rigs. If there’s no bridge, there’re no drilling parts and supplies.

Do you see where this is going? When people say our infrastructure is vulnerable, they are not kidding—and not all of it is about terrorism.

The Port is crucial to our national security—for a number of other reasons. While the Persian Gulf provides around 23% of the U.S. oil supply, Port Fourchon supports the offloading of over 18% of all domestic oil and gas and 13% of all oil imports. Port Fourchon is the site of the enormous booster pumps that carry crude oil from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) to underground salt dome storage areas in Galliano. The LOOP is the first and only offshore oil terminal operating in the United States. It's located less than 20 miles south of Port Fourchon in the Gulf of Mexico and allows the off-loading of oil from supertankers into special pipelines that connect directly to more than 30% of the nation’s refining capacity. The LOOP takes in about one million barrels of foreign oil and 300,000 barrels of domestic crude from Gulf of Mexico OCS each day. Loose that capacity and you've got big trouble.

Put another way, there is no other dot on the map that is more important to the nation’s energy supply, yet it’s connected to the mainland by an obsolete bridge and highway and it has a possible CAT-4 hurricane bearing down on it. It’s not a good situation and Port Fourchon authorities have been warning government officials about it for years.

I’m not being doom and gloom; I’m just saying that we don’t often think about how much these damn hurricanes can and might affect our daily lives.

Just something else to think about when you read about a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico…"

Chrenkoff

Chrenkoff: "Once were superpower
Russia's national suicide continues:

Russians are having more abortions than births to avoid the cost of raising children, according to the country's highest-ranking obstetrician.

About 1.6 million women had a termination last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, while about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow. 'Many more' abortions weren't reported, Kulakov said in the government's official newspaper.

I'll make a brave prediction: in twenty to thirty years, Russia will no longer exist in the form we know today. It might even shrink to the decaying ancient core of the Muscovy, pre-Ivan the Terrible expansion, as first its Muslims areas, and then other autonomous regions detach themselves, and eastern Siberia is absorbed by China (if China itself still exists in its current form in two or three decades' time). It's like watching the fall of the Roman Empire, except with a lot of nukes.

It is difficult to feel sorry for Russia in an abstract (particularly as a Pole), but I do feel sorry for the Russian people, who having suffered seven decades of communism, now find themselves trapped in a nightmarish twilight zone where the old establishment has merged with the organized crime to loot the state and terrorize the population.
"

Power Line: A positive accounting

Power Line: A positive accounting: "A positive accounting

Christopher Hitchens delivers a brilliant essay in the Daily Standard called 'A War to Be Proud Of.' His positive accounting of our accomplishments in the Bush administration's proactive war on terrorism includes:

1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.

(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.

(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.

(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schr�der, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)

(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.

(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.

(8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.

(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.

(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.

Moreover, while it's not clear whether or to what extent the American public shares Hitchens' pride in what we've accomplished, Hitchens is undoubtedly correct that the public itself has displayed a fortitude of which it should be proud:

Faced with a constant drizzle of bad news and purposely demoralizing commentary, millions of people stick out their jaws and hang tight. I am no fan of populism, but I surmise that these citizens are clear on the main point: It is out of the question--plainly and absolutely out of the question--that we should surrender the keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous alliance between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear the fatuous insinuation that this alliance has only been created by the resistance to it, voters know in their intestines that those who say so are soft on crime and soft on fascism."

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - William Morrow, 2005

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - William Morrow, 2005: "http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html"

Need to read.

Eating Fossil Fuels

Eating Fossil Fuels

Need to read.