Thread: Congress on oil, the facts.

Look up author Charles HIGHAM and TRADING WITH THE ENEMY...The book is about how the U.S. did business with the Nazis during WWII. The worst thing I read was where Standard Oil sold fuel to Nazi U-boats! Standard Oil tankers did not get torpedoed. There are other sins also. It could be worse-IF we only knew all of what our elected/bought leaders are doing NOW. Pay at the pump for peace?...Business is business.

Originally Posted by timberrr59

Look up author Charles HIGHAM and TRADING WITH THE ENEMY...The book is about how the U.S. did business with the Nazis during WWII. The worst thing I read was where Standard Oil sold fuel to Nazi U-boats! Standard Oil tankers did not get torpedoed. There are other sins also. It could be worse-IF we only knew all of what our elected/bought leaders are doing NOW. Pay at the pump for peace?...Business is business.

I wish an elected leader was a member here to defend him/herself

It was GWB's grandfather, Prescott Bush that talked congress into allowing American banks to lend Germany money back in the thirties. Its all business.

Originally Posted by nun2sharp

It was GWB's grandfather, Prescott Bush that talked congress into allowing American banks to lend Germany money back in the thirties. Its all business.

Oh my gosh, GWB shouldn't have let him do that! shame on him

Wild, et al.,

This is all well and good, this talk about producing more of our own energy, but don't you folks know that the more we make for ourselves the longer it will take to get us all on bicycles? If we cut ourselves to the energy quick, the more quickly we'll have to shed those extra two wheels and get onto two. Early to bed early to rise, bicycles, and an abacus; we may need neither cars, gasoline, nor electricity.

I think I just defined utopia.

Originally Posted by timberrr59

Look up author Charles HIGHAM and TRADING WITH THE ENEMY...The book is about how the U.S. did business with the Nazis during WWII. The worst thing I read was where Standard Oil sold fuel to Nazi U-boats! Standard Oil tankers did not get torpedoed. There are other sins also. It could be worse-IF we only knew all of what our elected/bought leaders are doing NOW. Pay at the pump for peace?...Business is business.

While this is possible, I have my doubts that a U-boat launching a torpedo at 5,000 yards or whatever always got close enough to see whether it was a Standard Oil tanker or not. Not saying the author made this up, at all, but to my mind this doesn't sound real-world to me.
Interesting side note, my grandmother watched a tanker(she said-beats me which one or who) go down right off the NC coast during the war, apparently torpedoed by a U-boat. Said the flames lit up the whole horizon (it was at night/evening, apparently).

John P.

Originally Posted by JohnP

While this is possible, I have my doubts that a U-boat launching a torpedo at 5,000 yards or whatever always got close enough to see whether it was a Standard Oil tanker or not. Not saying the author made this up, at all, but to my mind this doesn't sound real-world to me.
Interesting side note, my grandmother watched a tanker(she said-beats me which one or who) go down right off the NC coast during the war, apparently torpedoed by a U-boat. Said the flames lit up the whole horizon (it was at night/evening, apparently).

John P.

My father has similar recollections from his time in Providence, RI. Any ship that didn't make it in before the submarine net closed was toast.

But I do know that submarine commanders on both sides were extensively drilled in ship recognition, especially from silhouette profiles. Check uboat.net - The U-boat War 1939-1945. An absolutely fascinating -- and superb -- site.

I understand this, but even recognizing ship profiles (forces still do this btw) from a distance will not always tell one which company owns the ship. Obviously, they did sink tankers, but I doubt that in every case they radioed and asked if it was a Standard Oil tanker or not prior to launching torpedoes, although, anything's possible I guess.

John P.

What do you folks make of the T. Boone Pickens piece about natural gas? In case you haven't seen the video, Pickens (who is an oil man himself) suggests the best way out of the current situation is to use natural gas as auto fuel. He claims n.g. is relatively inexpensive, that the US has plenty of it, and that the technology already exists to runs cars on the stuff.
I haven't seen any substantive rebuttals to his point so far.
Anyone have an opinion on this?

Pickens is running a radio ad here (he is from these parts as we like to say) where he says that using solar and wind power would allow us to divert more natural gas toward more efficient usages through technologies that we already have and that it can be done in less than ten years.

I don't have an opinion on it, but maybe that little tidbit can add a little info