[Speed Gibson,
Sunday July 30, 2006 at 4:20pm]
Bill O' Reilly
I decided to subscribe to Bill O'Reilly's premium site for a while at least, to get his archived shows. I occasionally heard it on the Patriot II (11 am to 1 pm, 1570 am), and admired it for both its technical and artistic merits. Bill is a great talent, articulate, and fast on the draw. The show itself works smoothly, and I like the Disco bumpers.
I also like the fact that his show is two hours, which is a practical limit for all but the best like Rush Limbaugh. Many shows go an extra hour or longer with very little additional content in their third hours, examples being Laura Ingraham, Joe Soucheray, and even Hugh Hewitt. I am similarly pleased to see that Jason Lewis's new show is just two hours.
On the plus side, O'Reilly may be without equal in constructing an argument, right or wrong, the proverbial captain of the debate team. On the minus side, O'Reilly is also the proverbial populist, a bit quick to accept simplistic propositions like the oil companies must be gouging us at the pump.
It's easy he says: oil demand in America is flat (up 0.6%), oil profits are up 36%. He tacitly assumes that the oil companies set the price, not the market. He doesn't understand that the final price reflects many factors beyond the price of crude, including refining capacity, boutique fuel blending requirements, even hurricane Katrina. He doesn't understand that the oil companies are international, that foreign operations can significantly affect domestic operations. Most of all, he doesn't understand that if the oil companies did what he thinks they should do, there would be gas lines and calls for rationing like we saw in 1979.
I give O'Reilly credit for taking mostly callers that disagree with him. On a recent hour spent on the oil companies, his callers one after another took his argument apart. So even though O'Reilly still claimed victory afterward (talk about a "no spin" zone!), I as a listener heard a good exchange that enabled me to understand and explain it better to others.
Let me say that again - you need to hear both sides to develop your best arguments. You can study one side all you want, but that doesn't prepare you for the typical leftist question.
Anyway, I'm going to continue to listen for at least a month or two, as I continue to refine my overloaded audio schedule. I obviously have to make room for Jason Lewis next week!
I also like the fact that his show is two hours, which is a practical limit for all but the best like Rush Limbaugh. Many shows go an extra hour or longer with very little additional content in their third hours, examples being Laura Ingraham, Joe Soucheray, and even Hugh Hewitt. I am similarly pleased to see that Jason Lewis's new show is just two hours.
On the plus side, O'Reilly may be without equal in constructing an argument, right or wrong, the proverbial captain of the debate team. On the minus side, O'Reilly is also the proverbial populist, a bit quick to accept simplistic propositions like the oil companies must be gouging us at the pump.
It's easy he says: oil demand in America is flat (up 0.6%), oil profits are up 36%. He tacitly assumes that the oil companies set the price, not the market. He doesn't understand that the final price reflects many factors beyond the price of crude, including refining capacity, boutique fuel blending requirements, even hurricane Katrina. He doesn't understand that the oil companies are international, that foreign operations can significantly affect domestic operations. Most of all, he doesn't understand that if the oil companies did what he thinks they should do, there would be gas lines and calls for rationing like we saw in 1979.
I give O'Reilly credit for taking mostly callers that disagree with him. On a recent hour spent on the oil companies, his callers one after another took his argument apart. So even though O'Reilly still claimed victory afterward (talk about a "no spin" zone!), I as a listener heard a good exchange that enabled me to understand and explain it better to others.
Let me say that again - you need to hear both sides to develop your best arguments. You can study one side all you want, but that doesn't prepare you for the typical leftist question.
Anyway, I'm going to continue to listen for at least a month or two, as I continue to refine my overloaded audio schedule. I obviously have to make room for Jason Lewis next week!
My conclusion: the REAL profit increase is with the refineries, but they are simply a part of the supply/demand curve. There is an unstalbe future pushing up the price of crude, high global demand pushing up the price globally and a supply choke domestically pushing up the price further domestically. The choke is into the refineries which makes the supply/demand imbalance at that point. That's why their profit MARGINS nearly doubled over the past couple of years.
Blame the government for that! Their policies make it nearly impossible to legally build new refineries. THAT is communist style price control...and BOTH parties fail at (1) addressing the real cause and (2) doing anything to fix the problem.