The Absurd Report

INTRADE ticker tape

I have gotten several e-mail inquiries about INTRADE ticker tape at the top of this website. This is NOT a poll in any sense but what it is, is legalized betting on the futures market via contracts. These contracts are winner takes all.

As of this writing, the money boys are betting that the next President of the United States will be Barack Obama by a 2 to 1 margin. (64.1 to 32.8) The 30 point spread in meaningless as to existing polls for the upcoming election. As I said, it is winner takes all.

Read more from Intrade here…

Speaking of Polls

All polls should be taken with a grain of salt, especially this early in the election cycle because polls can be intentionally distorted to achieve a political end. Come October pollsters have their reputation to protect and there is less of a tendency to distort results.

Here is an example of what I am speaking about…

released a poll the other day

They simply where able to achieve this result by over polling Democrats v. Republicans.

Democrats Polled: 324……Republicans Polled: 231

About all a poll like this is good for is wrapping up yesterday’s garbage

Shame on the Senate

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) got sweetheart deals on mortgages they received from Countrywide Financial Group.

Both Dodd and Conrad head Senate Committees that could influence legislation that could bailout Countrywide to the tune of billions of dollars. (Its called payback time.)

Last week the Senate voted on a common sense amendment that would put the bailout bill on hold while an investigation took place to find out what Dodd, Conrad, and possibly other lawmakers did or didn’t do.

The amendment lost. It received only 11 votes. You can see how your Senator voted here…

There is no better illustration of how corrupt Washington can be and how they protect their own. There is no question that there is a conflict of interest here on the part of Dodd and Conrad and at the very lest they should recue themselves from anything associated directly or indirectly associated with a Countrywide bailout.

But instead they will go on a 4th of July break and they are banking on by the time they come back the public will forget about this whole matter.

The one thing that is very unique about the American political system is that you get the government that you voted for. Think about this the next time you vote.

Here is a video of the “Senate Countrywide Bailout Debate”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgQ8oO9YCZg

About those Oil Lease

The other day I had a lengthy post about “Oil Leases” that Oil Companies have and the Democrats continue to lie and distort the facts about.

In short - Companies pay billions of dollars for the right to explore on federal lands. If the company does not produce within the lease term, it must give the lease back to the government, and the company does not recover the billions of dollars it may have invested.

Companies actively develop their leases – but not every lease contains oil or natural gas in commercial quantities. In many cases, the so-called “idle leases” are not idle at all; they are under geologic evaluation or in development and could be an important source of domestic supply. However, this does not mean all leases have the potential to produce. Companies can evaluate leases for several years only to determine that they do not contain oil or natural gas in commercial quantities.

And here is The Wall Street Journal on the same subject….

The ‘Idle’ Oil Field Fallacy By RED CAVANEY

A bill introduced in Congress this week would “compel” oil and natural gas companies to produce from federal lands they are leasing. If only it were that easy to find and produce oil. Imagine, an act of Congress that could do what geology could not.

These lawmakers ask why oil and gas companies want more access to federal lands to drill if they aren’t using all of the 68 million acres they already have? Anyone with even the most basic understanding of how oil and natural gas are produced – and this should include many members of Congress – knows that claims of “idle” leases are a diversionary feint.

A company bids for and buys a lease because it believes there is a possibility that it may yield enough oil or natural gas to make the cost of the lease, and the costs of exploration and production, commercially viable. The U.S. government received $3.7 billion from company bids in a single lease sale in March 2008.

However, until the actual exploration is complete, a company does not know whether the lease will be productive.