So the Olympic Torch has arrived in San Francisco and security is tight.  It should be, given the childish displays in Europe over the past week which resulted in very adult violence.  Of course, several groups and individuals will do their best to demonstrate that the US can hold it own against the bullies in the rest of the world wrapped up in "demonstrators" clothes.

But, beyond the torch, what does the plethora of quasi-violent protests that have become so popular of late say about the average human being’s ability to engage in productive discourse?  Many other writers much better than I have expounded on this subject and it all seems to boil down to a few key points.

Human decency has taken a very back seat to the individual pursuit of infamy.  The secondary and tertiary meaning and effect of individual actions has gone the way of the Dodo.  Who, in good conscience, could actually protest at a funeral?!?  These people are more solipsistic than anything previously seen in 7000 years of recorded history.

There is no sense of legitimacy for any institution.  "The school," "the corporation," "the police," "the government" even "the Olympics" are all perceived as evil entities bent on achieving some dastardly conspiracy that cuts to the heart of some individual’s sense of right.  No one working within these institutions will be allowed as a good and decent human being trying to do their best and occasionally making an honest mistake.

Hyperbole has replaced reason.  When someone misstates a fact during a narrative they're creating at the time (Senator McCain confusing Al-Qaeda with Iran vice Syria); that's an error. When the President accepts the opinion of his own intelligence agency, several members of his own legislature (from both sides of the aisle) and the near unanimous conclusion of every nation's intelligence service that there were WMDs in Iraq, and it turns out somewhat false; that's a mistake.  A lie is when someone deliberately misstates facts from memory; such as sniper fire when there wasn't any or how one isn’t aware of the inner thoughts of their spiritual advisor of two decades.  Of course, there's always a certain finger waiving denouncement that's become something of a cliché in the past decade.

Back to topic, every US Person has a right to peaceably assemble and express their grievances.  When our protests become confrontational, we begin down a slippery slope toward Banana Republicanism marked by perpetual warfare between opposing individuals, groups they're associated with and, ultimately, their own government.

For the many "pacifists" who so fervently appose the unjust and illegal war in Iraq (or even the war on terror globally) and, most recently, China's relations with Tibet, they seem perfectly content to re-usher in the glory days of 13th century feudalism with their avant garde protests.

I'll start my blogging career proper with a subject that has been a source of much discussion in my family and the news media for decades, the oil companies.

I get a little tired of the greedy oil companies rant.  All my life I've constantly heard how the rotten oil companies are just sticking it to their own customers (dad was a truck driver).  In the run up to the 2006 mid-term elections, I remember watching Bill O'Reilly excoriate an oil company spokesman for the "obscene" profits being made at the time.  As the spokesman kept referring to the profit margin and how much revenue the oil industry had to invest back into their very operations, Mr. O'Reilly kept badgering him over the raw numbers alone and wanted to know how oil company executives could possibly justify their personal and corporate earnings.

In my outrage, I sent an email to Mr. O'Reilly, asking him to publicly state how much he earned (and supply a justification), as well as the earnings of News Corp (his parent company) in both raw numbers as well as profit margin.  He never answered, but I ran across an opinion letter in the Deseret Morning News yesterday written by Don Colton, president of Pioneer Oil and Gas, that speaks to both issues.  Of specific interest is his first myth/fact statement regarding profits:

"The oil companies' profit margins are poor. They make about what a government contractor on a cost plus fixed fee (no risk) contract makes: 9-10 percent. As an example, Exxon Mobil's profit margin is 10 percent, Chevron's 8.1 percent and BP's 7.6 percent. These are the three largest U.S. producers.

In comparison, Microsoft makes 27.5 percent, Apple 14.6 percent, News Corp. 12 percent, Zions Bank 12.6 percent, Merck 18 percent and Intel 18.2 percent. The oil companies' profits are large only because they are large. They are not particularly profitable. The oil companies' profits are not yet sufficient to convince them to replace the aging refinery infrastructure of this country. Because of environmental restrictions, it takes more than seven years to site a new refinery. Both Exxon Mobil and Chevron conduct very little new exploration in the U.S. because of worries about environmental liability and the major delays caused by the green lobby.

From 1986-99 the price of oil, adjusted for inflation, was the lowest it had been since World War II. More than 600,000 people in the industry lost their jobs. Because of low margins, almost no upgrades or replacements were made to the refining infrastructure and very little on-shore exploration. Even at $100 per barrel, the price of oil adjusted for inflation is not as high as 1981."

There's more about shale development and who really controls fuel prices.  This theme has been stated over and over again by oil company executives and spokespeople alike.  But the tone-deaf media, our tone-deaf Representatives and an increasingly tone-deaf public continue to jump on the populist "obscene oil company profits" bandwagon without demonstrating much perspective.  We'll blindly accept that UFOs are real but won't look beyond an agenda driven congressional hearing or nightly news spot before concluding "oil companies bad, Al Gore good."

The reality is that petroleum will be a big part of our lives for a long time come and, if Mr. Colton is correct, Microsoft's profits are nearly three times "obscene" with nary a congressional investigation in sight.

In case the hyperlink above doesn't work, here's the url to the op/ed: http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,5143,695267426,00.html

As my biography states, I am a serving military officer. My oath of office and federal law require that I mince my words on certain topics and reject discussing classified or sensitive information [Captain Willard voice over] (by the way, that’s the last role I actually enjoyed watching Martin Sheen play).