OIL: the true ruler of the world
I noticed when I woke up this morning that gasoline prices are suddenly sailing off into the stratosphere, up from $2.50 a gallon a month ago to over $4.20 a gallon at some pumps. I noticed our local network news pigs stood in front of one of Hugo Chavez's Venezuelan Citgo stations to report on the reason for the sudden exorbitant rise in prices at the pump as, "According to an industry spokesman today, the cost of refining goes up at this time of year due to a special additive refiners have to add to their mixtures for the coming summer months." Isn't that bullshit? But an industry spokesman said that was the reason and we know how they can only speak the truth (oh yeah!).
I grew up around gasoline refineries out on the high plains of West Texas (West Texas crude being the price oil was based on for years; and may still be for all I know) when the refineries were "thick as hops" (my grandmother the poet used that one all the time) all over the West Texas countryside, from the beginning of West Texas at Fort Worth, all the way out into the middle of nowhere, a vast flat landscape until you get to the Rockies just across the New Mexico border from the western end of Texas--I used to marvel at the city of Farwell, Texas, up northwest of Lubbock on the New Mexico border--the part of the town in New Mexico was called Texico, which I always thought should have been Welcome, New Mexico, since my dad insisted Farwell was simply West Texian for "farewell."
In all those years of growing up around refineries, never once, until this morning, did I ever hear of a special more expensive way of refining in the summer time. The process of making gasoline is a pretty standard process; it's called "cracking," and all gasoline is cracked the same way. There used to be a Texico commercial that said, "All gasolines the same?...Don't you believe it." Those of us who used to go out to the refinery just north of my hometown, used to watch as Humble, Esso, Sohio, Texico, Conoco, Cities Service, Magnolia, Sinclair, Shell, Phillips 66, all their gasoline trucks would pull in and out of that refinery day and night. We knew all gasolines were the same and later after I'd worked in advertising for many years, I knew how most ads were lies made as close to the truth as they could be without admitting they were lies. The fact that Texico's commercial asked the question, "All gasolines the same?" meant that, yes, all gasolines are the same, otherwise we wouldn't have to tell you in a commercial that they weren't.
The Bush Family Connections
The current Bush family we have to deal with [Pappy, Babs, G.W., Jeb, Marvin, Dorothy, and Neill], moved to Midland, Texas, in 1948 and started an oil company that later developed into what Pappy called Zapata Offshore (an insult to Mexican Revolutionary leader and president of Mexico Emilio Zapata of Viva Zapata Holywood fame). Pappy was backed by one of his rich grandfathers...well, here, I researched it and found this article by Kevin Phillips (remember him when he was following Ronnie Raygun around with his tongue hanging conservatively out of his conservative babbling-ass mouth?). Kevin was offering this article as a chance for John "who lost his cojones in the Viet Nam War" Kerry to have some fodder for a cannon he had aimed at knocking Bush off what he thought of as his throne (my grandmother the poet called her toilet her throne). John Kerry either lost his cojones in Viet Nam or maybe he lost them at his initiation into Skull and Bones at Yale. I wonder, was G.W. (our "president") there for John's initiation into Skull and Bones? If he was, I think I hear him now, "Here, boy, stick this in yore mouth...ah, that's a good boy...now you in the Skull and Bones and you better keep your asswipe mouth shut about it, too, or we Yaley spoiled brat frat-asshole-buddy rich boys will get ya, yes we will--by the way, Johnny boy, my pappy's head of the CIA...does that mean anything to ya?" Perhaps an unlikely conversation, but, as Fats Waller declared, "One never knows, do one?"
So this Kevin Phillips piece was written right before the 2004 "stolen" election--check out the Ohio results before they were tampered with by a guy named Kenneth Blackwell--a male Kathryn Harris--and ain't it grand how Saint Kathryn is making a fool out of herself in her bid to be a senator, though I'll bet you she wins; I'll bet she pulls it out at the last minute on a voter registration challenge and her opponent's seeds will spill on the ground and you know what the Christian god, Jehovah, does to men who spill their seeds on the ground--ZAP! you're dead, with your cock in your fist). Kevin writes that he meant the information he provides on the Bushes to be used by the Kerry campaign, saying he talked to a member of Kerry's staff who knew all about this stuff Phillips is revealing. Kevin felt it was major grounds on which to challenge Bush in the presidential race. Kerry, of course, he had no choice, ignored Phillips's advice and went for a more "kinder and gentler" approach to bitch slapping Bush. (A Bartcop pink tutu for John Kerry is still very much appropriate.) Anyway, here's the complete article I'm paraphrasing for this gadflyish rant: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0208-05.htm
Here's a Bush Family Synopsis:
The Bush Dynasty Founders: George H. Walker (our "president's" great-grandpappy), a St. Louis financier specializing in corporate reorganizations and war contracts during WWI, the war to end all wars (oh yeah!). In 1919, he was "enlisted" by railroad heir W. Averell Harriman (oh yeah! he ends up in New York Democratic politics--what a nice old bastard-codger he was) to be president of the Wall Street firm WA Harriman Investments--invested in oil, shipping, aviation, and manganese in Russia and Germany (we were fighting the Germans in WWI, weren't we?).
Sam Bush (the other of our "president's" great-grandpappys), was president and chairman of Buckeye Steel Castings in Ohio, which produced armaments. In 1917, old great-grandpappy Sam was called to Washington, DC (District of Corruption), where he was made head of the Small Arms, Ammunition and Ordnance section of the Federal War Industries Board (Wow, that war to end all wars made a lot of sense to Sam Bush from both the American and the German angle).
Kevin Phillips: "Both men were present at the emergence of what became the US military industrial complex"--Yes, the same military industrial complex sad old decripit Dwight Eisenhower warned us about (husband by the way of poor neglected and cheated on, stone-lonely alcoholic Mamie Eisenhower, the good demure lady who never saw her husband at all and certainly never as much as his private secretary--Do you think Ike ever got a blowjob in the Oval Office?--maybe not, but I'm sure JFK did). Dwight's warning was made as he was leaving the Oval Office, an office Ike neglected same as his wife since he was usually on the golf course at Congressional, or his favorite, Cherry Hills outside Denver, where he went everytime he had a heart attack--he even built himself a putting green on the White House back lawn, the lawn you owners of the White House never see, except when one of our privileged stupid presidents is taking off on a flight to nowhere in his private helicopter, Marine One or somesuch bullshit military designation as that. That helicopter takes the president out to Andrews Air Force Base where they keep the big jet, Air Force One, another military designation--Did you citizens know you own an army, an air force, a navy, a coast guard, a merchant marines, and a great big ole jet airliner of your very own?--WOW! Mr. "president," can I have a ride? The answer is always "No," in case you haven't already surmised it.
Then Comes Prescott Bush (Bob Hope, California's biggest real estate owner at one time, used to brag voraciously about playing golf with Prescott Bush)
Prescott Bush was G.W.'s (our "president's") grandpappy. OK, so Prescott had German corporate ties at the outbreak of WWII--Kevin Phillips blows that charge off by saying Prescott might have been doing central intelligence for Wild Bill Donovan's Office of Secret Service during WWII, the forerunner to Allen "Duller than Dull but Deadly" Dulles's Central Intelligence Agency that evolved out of the OSS at the end of WWII, the justifiable war. Kevin writes, "...but the better yardstick of his connections was his directorship of companies involved in US war production." For instance, Dresser Industries. Dresser was a sweet little company that brought doom to millions especially the innocent Japanese of Tokyo who got a taste of Dresser's finest incendiary bombs in the attacks led by Little Ole Little Ole Jimmy Little O'Doolittle--him an' Cap'n Eddie Ricketybacker, who went on to found Eastern Airlines--whose boardroom I once did copyediting in after Eastern turned to worthless dust and folded. Dresser also made gaseous diffusion pumps for the atomic bomb project. The Bushes were involved with the making of the A-bomb, the cause of all the fear and loathing my generation suffered--we had the threat of nuclear war and the surety that the world would be destroyed if we ever got out of line and started chanting and marching for world peace. OH NO, NOT WORLD PEACE, how f-ing stupid of us.
Pappy Bush, the "president's" pappy, worked for Dresser Industries's oil services businesses while he was setting up his own borderline successful Zapata Offshore. Pappy went on to become the director of the CIA, vice president under Ronnie Raygun, and then president of these United Snakes of Amurika. Kevin Phillips writes: "One of his [Pappy Bush's] priorities was the US weapons trade and secret arms deals with IRAN, SAUDI ARABIA and the MOUJAHADEEN in AFGHANISTAN." [Emphasis added by me.]
OIL
Kevin Phillips: "The Bushes' ties to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil go back 100 years, when Rockefeller made Buckeye Steel Castings [see Old great-grandpappy Sam Bush's face sheet] wildly successful by convincing railroads that carried their oil to buy heavy equipment from Buckeye."
--George H. Walker, the other old great-grandpappy, the Harriman Wall Street firm head, helped refurbish the Soviet oil industry in the 1920s. [Again, emphasis is mine, saith the Lard.]
--Prescott Bush, the grandpappy, was 22 years old when he was made director of Dresser Industries.
--Pappy Bush, the "president's" pappy worked for Dresser while running his Zapata Offshore.
--G.W. Bush, our "president," mostly raised money from investors for oil businesses that failed. (When it comes to total failure, G.W. is one of the world's greatest; yet, due to his Bush Family Lord of the Manor connection, his failures ironically are considered successes--like what he did to the City of Arlington, Texas; he stuck 'em with an outrageous bill for his fancy new Texas Rangers ballpark--almost broke that damn city. Of course, he ruined the Rangers when he spent all of his player money on Alex Rodriquez--Yep, the same highest-paid-ballplayer in history who is plays for the Yankees--neither Seattle nor Texas has ever recovered from their time with Alex. I have to admit, Alex is a hell of a ballplayer and watching him and Derek Jeter play infield with the Yankees is quite a hoot. (Sorry Red Sox fans, though not sorry Mets fans, because I predict a subway World Series this year--Yankees and Mets--both certainly have a chance.)
ENRON AND PAPPY BUSH
Pappy Bush and Ken Lay connected in the early 1980s when Pappy was working on energy deregulation (even though that's one of the government's jobs to regulate industries and set standards for them to follow to protect US citizens from just exactly what En-moron did to us--Fucked us--there, I said it). When Pappy became president, he put Kenny Boy on the President's Export Council, a nice pool of old cronies to help the president stay crooked as hell. Pappy also put Lay in charge of a G-7 summit planned for Houston. In 1992, Pappy lost the presidency so Kenny Boy hooked up with Pappy's great successful failure son, G.W. (our "president"--"I don't know who this feller is; never heard of him; what did you say his name was?"--Wow, can that dude lie!
Kevin Phillips: "Before Enron imploded in late 2001, it had more influence in a new administration than any other corporation in memory."
For future reference: Kevin Phillips in his article mentions Top 1% Economics. We'll bring that back up (I vomit a lot when I write about the Bushes, a family I have known since 1948 when moved into my part of the world and begin their glorious enterprises) when we keep on cruisin' for a bruisin' along the trail of the Bushes.
thenycgrowler
for The Daily Growler
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The Daily Growler a la Oprah Book Club
1) The Astonished Man, by Blaise Cendrars
2) The Ancient Near East: a History, by William W. Hallo and William Kelly Simpson
3) The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, the First Forty-Nine Stories and the Play The Fifth Column, by Ernest Hemingway, my edition a Modern Library Edition, 1938, Random House, New York, New York. [Also there are several Charles Scribner editions, including the first edition, out there for your delectational reading.] This is good writing; if you want to be a short story writer, you'd better read Ernest Hemingway; there's no more fun short story writer to me than Papa. I became impressed with Hemingway when he and his wife, Mary Welsh, crashed two times in one trip during a safari to Kenya and Tanganyika, there first crash just above Lake Victoria, and the second crash on take off going back to Nairobi just outside a village near Victoria. The second crash is the one that did the most damage; this was the one that caused newspapers all over the world to declare "Hemingway Killed in Plane Crash in Africa." Read A.E. Hotchner's Papa Hemingway for as close as you can get to Papa telling you himself all about the crashes and the death notices while sitting beat up, scared and stitched, with his head shaved, several broken ribs, and a concusion in a hotel room in Venice.
My favorite Hemingway short story is "Hills Like White Elephants," though most of the stories are superb pieces of literary art--check out "The Killers," "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" (writers have to love this story), "The Capital of the World," "Indian Camp," Holy Cows in Hell, they are all good, all 49 of them. In a previous post, we mentioned the Hemingway story describing the din of Roman drunk soldiers the night sweet little Mary of Nazareth was there, the same night when later, on her way home to her 75-year-old husband, got knocked up by--WHO? None other than Elohim, the Judean Big Daddy himself; or Jehovah to you Christian folks. That story, "Today Is Friday," is here, all ripe and juicy for you to digest. I don't care if you hate Hemingway as a person, if you know anything about writing, you have to agree that with a stubby pencil and his fertile mind, he turned out this group of short stories that as far as I'm concerned knocked all other American short story writers flat-dab back on their asses. Hemingway said he wrote in order to knock William Shakespeare out cold in the first round, but he admitted, he'd never been able to do it. I don't know, Papa, you had old Bill's legs awfully wobbly at least by the end of this 49-round fight.
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The Quote of the Day: "In the Middle Ages institutional Christianity was honourably distinguished as a driving force toward the grander intuitions. Unfortunately, in accordance with the habits of all institutions, it adapted itself to its environment. It became an instrument of conservation instead of an instrument of progress. After a short period of progressive energy, the Reformation Churches again accepted the same idolatrous role. On the whole, well-established religious institutions are to be reckoned among the conservative forces of society." Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1961 edition from the Free Press, New York, New York.
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The Daily Growler's purpose is not to insult or slander the aforementioned characters but to bring a sense of the real out into the main spotlite and give it a chance to do its thing, which is dance you a little bit closer to the truth of the way things REALLY are. It's real, folks, all of this bullshit that is being dumped on you.
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