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DP has it all figured out. Despite what the leftist media says, America has never been more beloved than we are right now.
One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world -- so widely held it is not disputed -- is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats' major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony.
But it is not true that the world hates America. It is the world's left that hates America. However, because the left dominates the world's news media and because most people, understandably, believe what the news media report, many people, including Americans, believe that the world hates America.
Hmmm. If most people around the world aren't left and love America, then why would they believe the leftist media, which so transparently hates America? I'm confused.
Take Western Europe, which is widely regarded as holding America in contempt, but upon examination only validates our thesis. The French, for example, are regarded as particularly America-hating, but if this were so, how does one explain the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France? Sarkozy loves America and was known to love America when he ran for president. Evidently, it is the left in France -- a left that, like the left in America, dominates the media, arts, universities and unions -- that hates the U.S., not the French.
OK, lemme get this straight. The leftist media campaigns against Sarkozy because he loves America, check. Most people believe the lies of the leftist media, check. Sarkozy wins the election. My head hurts.
It makes perfect sense that the left around the world loathes America. The final question, then, is whether this loathing of America is characteristic of the American left as well. The answer is that the American left hates the America that believes in American exceptionalism, is prepared to use force to fight what it deems as dangerous evil, affirms the Judeo-Christian value system, believes in the death penalty, supports male-female marriage, rejects big government, wants lower taxes, prefers free market to governmental solutions, etc. The American left, like the rest of the world's left, loathes that America.
So what America does the American left love?
That's sooooo easy! We love abortion, the New York Times, burning flags, socialism, trees and Islamofascist gay porn. Did I leave anything out?
Incredibly, DP's is quite right about one thing. Though we've become a lot more unpopular recently, the world really doesn't hate America. Like two-thirds of Americans, it just hates Bush.
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Zed
Blue Texan! dos….
My husband works for a company owned by Australians. He was previously employed by a British corporation. I hate to break it to Mr. Prager, but we’ve had first-hand experience of how the reputation of the United States in the world community has been significantly damaged by Little Boots and his policies.
I also don’t believe our experiences are isolated.
-S
Trying hard to further the meme.
Step away from the Koolaid,how many fingers am I holding up,two?
Wrong, just one.
Bingo: The world just hates the Bush/Cheney regime, almost everything it’s done and everything it stands for.
ooops — sorry kids — this isn’t going live for a little bit longer. Apologies for the inconveninece — my bad. It will be back, zeds saved and all…
Most of the world doesn’t hate America or Americans. They just hate the Bush Administration and its stupid foreign policy. It’s that simple.
This reminds me of “we hate the Soviet system, not the people that are forced to live under that system”.
Only I never expected us to take the Soviet role in that statement.
The left dominates the news media?
I don’t think the US media got that message; they’ve been moving to the right for years, to the point where I don’t recognize the world they’re ‘reporting’ on.
(I also don’t recognize the ‘elite’ they keep telling me about; I think the DC village is far more of an elite than the ‘Hollywood elite’ or ‘media elite’ they push at us.)
in the EPU zone :o
P J Evans @ 9
Yes, that “liberal media” meme is getting old and crotchety. But admitting that the media skews to the right would force them (wingnuts) that they are not being victimized by society, but are in fact victimizing it.
Bingo: The world just hates the Bush/Cheney regime, almost everything it’s done and everything it stands for.
The wingnuts love to conflate “The Bush Administration” with “America.”
Oh, my head hurts. Too much thinkin’ this early in the morning. How do wingnuts pass the most elementary of critical thinking courses?
I sometimes think the one thing we coudl do that would have the most long term effect would be to set up high school classes focusing on critical analysis and deconstruction of media advertising, images, etc…
Once people start thinking about what they’re hearing or seeing on the wingnut front, it will start collapsing like so much rotten fruit…
Here in Southern California, Prager and laura ingraham are the ONLY talk radio people that you see on billboards.
here we go again. another fricking election where I need to prove I don’t hate America because I’m not a WAR booster. another election where Time magazine and every “mainstream” news show is going to imply that I take a bath in Terrorist Loving suds every goddam morning.
why do we put up with this crap? because big meany-heads like Prager will call us “shrill” and we can’t have that because we all know how damned “civil” Prager and joe klein and michael savage are.
we are in WACKY LAND.
OT
Contributions to Kucinich right now get matching public funds…I sent $50 just because the man has the guts to speak truth to power…
those public funds that SHOULD be the sole source of campaigning all of the time… in my opinion.
The left loves George Soros.
cage free brown @ 14
Maybe we can send all them to WACKY TOBACCY Land so they can learn to chill out.
“Papers, please”
“Ah, hey man, all I got’s this pipe…”
Diane @ 16
Yep. Just like the right loves Richard Mellon Scaife.
(But George, ya need to get crackin’ on gettin’ those checks out to us Bra! You’re W-A-Y behind.)
Authoritarian conservatards do seem to have an incurable problem with that “L’etat, c’est moi” thing . . .
No Prager column is complete without its ‘Judeo-Christian value system’ reference, either.
Strangely enough, he never goes into details about this, its history or provenance. And he’s the only Judeo-Christian in America, at last count.
It did have a bit of a falling-out with America after 2004, though. Americans got a pass on 2000, because that was an obvious mess; voting for Bush in 2004, on the other hand, seemed just plain daft.
Still, most Americans in ‘the world’ (i.e. the ones with passports) didn’t vote for Bush either. So they get a pass.
OT: Over at Kos, there’s a fundraiser going on for the rebuilding of Pretty Bird Woman House, which was recently destroyed by arson. It’s the only battered women’s shelter on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, and we helped raise money this spring to keep it open.
Oil prices dive three bucks on news that OPEC will raise production…it remais to be seen, though, if OPEC CAN raise production- particularly the Saudis….Will be interesting. It appears that OPEC is nervous about $100 per barrel oil
dakine01, yep, George hasn’t sent out my check or talking points lately.
by “left” prager means “left” of Fascism
In the past six years my moderate views have become unacceptable to these PIGS, even though I remain in a majority in my beliefs.
MSM you suck and you are going to do your jobs or die a horrible economic death.
Blog On Dude…
Diane @ 16
Oh Diane! Snap!
How many networks, satellite news outfits, newspapers and cable stations does Soros own?
Now guess how many Murdoch owns?
-GSD
Here’s one reason the world hates some American politicans, when they say stuff like this:
My bold.
Goopers are tryin to squeeze juice out of the Germans and the French going to more conservative governments….they fail to mention that a conservative government in Paris would be viewed as communist here. It ain’t as if the world has adopted the gooper/bozo view of reality.
The truth is that many governments in Europe need a jog to the right fiscally- and WE need a major jog to the left- and there’s NOTHING contradictory about that.
I do no’ think those words mean what he thinks they mean…
The America I love . . .
* embraces and protects individual liberties,
* supports the Constitution, the rule of law, and the treaties we have ratified with other nations,
* abhors torture,
* delights in the freedom to disagree with the government in power,
* oversees its government through the vigorous oversight of checks and balances between the three branches thereof, and through a forceful free press,
* welcomes those from other countries wishing to make a better life for themselves,
* cares for the poor and the needy in its midst,
* honors those who give of themselves through public service with relatively little monetary reward, and
* holds those who abuse the public trust accountable for their misdeeds.
I wonder: which of these, if any, might Dennis support?
The moral bankruptcy of the right, who spent how much time and space telling us how evil and weak the French were are now proudly boasting about Sarkozy’s embrace of Chimpy.
We have always loved France!
-GSD
Make sure you say Prager. People might think you mean Kucinich. Just kidding…*g*
Gitcha an order of Freedom Fries and watch the next act of the idiots on parade!
Michael Scott @ 19
Yeah. They don’t think the Bush Administration is America, they think Bush equals America (and he agrees.)
You’d think they’d catch on after seven years of screwups based on his belief that since he is America, his personal relationship with foreign leaders is all that matters, but apparently not.
For the record, I support male-female marriage. I also support male-male and female-female marriages.
Peterr, very nice. Thanks.
That’s the America I love, too.
Great post, Blue Texan, yet again!
Too bad Denny doesn’t read blogs, or he’d know how real people really feel. We know a lot about what other country’s citizens think of America from what our compatriots write when they return from trips abroad. I’ve read a lot of comments that started, “Just returned from a trip to Europe and was alarmed at the questions I got…” Why does Denny think those Bridge Ladies put up a sign that said they didn’t vote for Bush! I know, they did it so that they could reap the vengeance of their Association leadership. Some people never will hear reality; they only hear what they want to hear.
Oh, gross. Please post a warning before you link me to Town Hall.
Happy Crusades Day!!! The more things change, the more they stay the same.
From Garrison Keillor, and the Writers Almanac –
Literary and Historical Notes:
It was on this day in 1095 that Pope Urban II, while on a speaking tour in France, called for the first Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. There was no imminent threat. Muslims had occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years. But Urban II had noticed that Europe was becoming an increasingly violent place, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought that he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone who was willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.
About 100,000 men from France, Germany, and Italy answered the call, formed into several large groups, and marched across Asia Minor to the Middle East. Nearly half of them died from exhaustion and sickness before they ever reached their destination. They began sacking cities along the way, and they fought among each other for the spoils of each battle. When they reached the trading city of Antioch, they killed almost everyone, including the Christians who lived there. By the time they got to Jerusalem, it had recently fallen into the hands of Egyptians, who were friendly with the Vatican. But the crusaders attacked anyway, killing every Muslim they could find. The Jews in the city gathered in the temple, and the crusaders set it on fire.
Pope Urban II died two weeks later, never hearing the news. But the crusading would go on for the next 200 years. In the fourth and last Crusade, in 1202, the crusaders never even made it to Jerusalem, but got sidetracked and wound up destroying Constantinople, which was at the time the last great city left over from the Roman Empire.
rwcole @ 22
In a market dominated by speculation, rumor has the same weight as fact. I am dubious about how much the Saudis can raise production and for how long. It used to be that they had reserve capacity but that is not true anymore. Also a lot of their production is in heavy crudes that some markets (like ours) really can’t use.
I agree they are worried however. They have lost control of the market. They are concerned that unbridled speculation may cause an economic downturn that will hurt their investments and at the same time finally force oil consuming nations to get serious about seeking alternatives to petroleum.
Redshift @ 21
Thanks. I have them bookmarked at home, but now they have a little more money.
Peterr @ 29
To us, America is a set of ideals, and the president’s highest duty (and the one he swears to uphold) is to defend them.
To wingnuts, America is a group of people and a piece of land, and the president’s highest duty (as Bush and the GOP candidates have said repeatedly) is to defend that, no matter what else must be sacrificed in the process.
The left loves George Soros.
Yeah, I left Soros out because saying his name publicly undermines the conspiracy.
There’s a minor rear guard skirmish goin on to protect the gooper’s retreat on GW Clusterfuck. The main army has put out the campfires and broken camp and is way off down the road- but a few have been left behind to try to avoid a major rout–the “french love the US now” is such a lame attempt…
Fact is the French attitude towards the US hasn’t changed at all in many years…They think we’re too fat, have no taste, don’t know anything about the important things in life such as art, design, sex, and food- and figure we are idiots for putting Bush in office. They HATE the Iraq war- and hate Bush….they also recognized that their economy wasn’t goin the way they want it to so they picked a new govt. that would change a few things.
Blue Texan @ 42
Perhaps if we just referred to him by spelling his name backwards no one would notice.
Hey, does the recent election mean that Australians have switched from loving America to hating America?
Talked recently with a top European lawyer who specializes in international cases. He had to come to the U.S. a few times over the last couple of years on one case, and each time the people who guard our airports made him answer 53 questions, he says, as was standard for members of the E.U..
He is not accepting cases that involve travel to the U.S..
The opinion of the U.S. in his country is on hold: there is no doubt that Bush is viewed as a global shame, but there is a suspension of judgment about the U.S. itself; the outcome will depend on what we do about what Bush has done.
Hugh @ 44:
That annoying palindrum thingy…
Diane@16
and Jesus loves everyone… except who you hate…NOT…
another psuedo-christian that’s not afraid to bomb someone from far away…
look me in the eye and tell me your soul don’t lie…
back to the Ghost Dance
Peterr @ 29
Or, as Charles F. Kane replied to Mr. Thatcher:
Everything you hate, (Mr. Prager).
DP’s regurgitating the hate speech that cripples the Right’s public discourse every few years, like a case of malaria. In the 1940’s and ’50’s, it was HUAC, “Who lost us China?”, and McCarthy. Most durably, it was the DFH’s meme from the 1960’s, which is still virulant and mostly applied today to the ACLU and those hateful bloggers.
Dr. Johnson captured the hypocrisy just so two hundred years ago: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
I’m re-reading Decision in Philadelphia, by Collier, on the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and all the
sausagecompromises and deals they made just to get what we have.Their idea was that we shouldn’t trust government. (They didn’t trust ordinary people, either. Only the ‘elite’ - the wealthy or educated men - were competent to run the country.)
Hugh
That’s how I read it too. Saudis have made their actual production numbers a big secret and strongly desire to keep the myth alive that they can turn a spigot and pull more oil out of the ground. In fact, they’re pumping out of the same oil fields they’ve been drawing from for 60 years-and they’ve fucked some of em up in the past by trying to produce too quickly. Their exploration efforts for new fields have mostly been dry holes. As the massive saudi fields reach peak production- the rest of the world will rapidly follow suit.
P J Evans @ 51
That is a really good book!!
I have always been fond of gay Islamofascist performing abortions on burning flags among trees decorated with socialistic porn.
Let the abrupt flow from languid to warp 10 on this blog today be an object lesson for the media and the political uberclass.
We are America, hear us roar.
Redshift @ 45
No, it’s just the left in Australia that hates America.
Redshift @ 45
You’ve got to love an election where the results mean that a musician-turned-wonk will be the new Climate Change Minister.
Speaking about media: This shit is really gettin’ old, people. From WaPo:
Breaking story: The Bahamas has just ratified the Nuclear Test Ban treaty.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters.....hamas.html
I know I’m breathing easier.
PJ
Yeah they really thought that there should be some property requirements on voting- and figured that senators would not be elected- to balanced the unwashed heathens in the house…
At that time the literacy rate was pretty low I expect- so it was easier to justify that attitude.
P J Evans @ 51
And even those folks were not competent to run the country without checks and balances to keep an eye on things.
Jesse Jackson comes out in favor of Edwards–quite a melee for the african american vote.
behindthefall @ 46
[emph. added]
I’ve logged a few hundred thousand air miles to Europe and Asia, and I’d say that’s spot on. Bush is a soon-to-be ex-politician with a mouldering codpiece. What matters is whether we collectively set his disastrous changes into the firmament of Amerika! or discard them with the kitty litter.
From WaPo:
Duh? Is that why we don’t have any great journalists?
(From the same link as my 58.)
Hugh, maybe we should refer to him as Jorge - that could be a super secret undercover name.
Who the f**k cares what Dennis Prager says. He is nothing but a uneducated, narcissistic asshole.
Peterr @ 57
“How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep when our beds are burning”
Midnight Oil
Peter Garret is the Aussie equivalent of our own John Hall from Orleans.
Still the One.
-GSD
Peterr @ 57
Awesome. Thanks for the link.
Biodun@58
as if the WaPo has been a shining example of journalism these past six years… at least I know that I am not responsible for passing along WH propoganda for $$$!
If someone at Clownhall says it, it must be true.
*snort*
Biodun @ 64
So, Biodun, you didn’t borrow this from Attaturk’s post this morning?
Hugh @ 58
Phew! This is a huge victory for the Bush administration, and a devastating blow to the Democrats.
rwcole @ 60
Not according to DeToqueville, who wrote about farmers reading newspapers and discussing the events of the day. Perhaps the low level of formal education was the factor, instead. Considering how much the framers were starting from scratch, I’m inclined to forgive them their wariness of the masses, especially since they had the foresight to include the amendment process.
Biodun @ 64
Keen is talking about the Wiki self-editing from political campaign directors; tobacco, oil industry and defense lobbyists; and the AEI and White House, no?
Corporate excesses, trolls and the witless aside, I think blogs have potential as agents of change that would compare favorably with the printing press. Literacy among the hoi poloi followed, as did greater religious freedom and the Englightenment. But for every Reformation, there seems to be a Counter Reformation, so we also had years of religious and civil war.
The best blogs, FDL, Greenwald, Horton, Marcy Wheeler among them, give voice to what Agnew and Nixon misappropriated as private GOP property, the Silent Majority. Like FDR’s laws & labor unions; like Nader, consumer protection laws and plaintiffs’ lawyers, good things for average people come when the right things are bundled together. Keep it up, Jane & Co.
Biodun @ 64
Andrew Keen, that name says a lot. He’s a dot com contrarian. He doesn’t like the democracy of the internet because he thinks it doesn’t acknowledge sufficiently the magnificence of people like him.
Ann in AZ @ 72:
LOL! I swear I didn’t even see that! That post is too early for me at the Lake. I usually come in around 9 AM CT, looking for a Christy post zed…
Isn’t this the same Dennis Prager who came down with a terrifying case of the vapors when Keith Ellison did not use a Bible to be sworn into Congress?
What an idiot. I don’t hate America, I’m just embarrassed by the 25% of its population that open-mouthedly agree with everything Prager and his ilk spew.
Let’s take this to its logical conclusion:
The Left hates America.
Reality has a well-known Left bias.
Reality hates America.
Right-wingers equal America.
Reality hates Right-wingers.
See, there they go again, projecting.
(Right-wingers hate reality.)
- Tom
“But some challenge the value of all this citizen involvement” Fox Snooze’s favorite quotee “Some say-” Pile of carp.
national library of australia
cataloguing-in-publication-data
Grey,Stephen.
Ghost Plane:the untold story of the CIA’s torture programme.
bibliography.
includes index.
ISBN 9781 921215 35 3
ISBN 1 921215 35 6
1.United States.Central Intelligence Agency.2.Torture-United States-history.3.Intelligence service-United States.I.Title.
973.931
pub 2007
I have not read the entirety of the comments.
I will bet however that there will be a difference noted between dislike for the government and dislike for Americans in general. In 2004 I traveled in Europe for several weeks during the election. I was told by Europeans in several countries that if we re-elect Bush we will be looked upon differently than we were during his 1st administration. Not disliked but perhaps seriously questioned as to our sanity. They liked us, they really disliked The US Government.
the desperate right — which prager embodies here — REQUIRES as a precept their status as victim.
they fantasize about victimhood, they fetishizes it.
a pity. because if they truly believe in their victimhood, they can never be happy, never know joy. and, of course, if they don’t believe, then they recognize that they are the lunatic frauds that everyone else knows them to be.
not that such revelation would, you know, actually bother them.
Okay.
The Left hates that piece of human filth George W. Bush.
George W. Bush as President represents America.
Therefore, the Left hates America.
I think I’ve got it.
Soooo, the fundamentalists, neo-conservative, talibanic, communistic right loves America? Then why are we fighting them?
Thunderbird @ 78
This is what Dennis the Idiot said about my critter:
And no, I refuse to even dignify this with a linky…
Joe Klein, now Dennis Prager.
Latest passengers on a slow boat to Haifa.
Edited:
George W. Bush as President represents America.
The Left hates that piece of human filth George W. Bush.
Therefore, the Left hates America.
That works better, don’t it? *g*
Pardon me if this has already been talked about but I just came across this at Wonkette:
http://www.savetucker.org/
Apparently this website is trying to save Tucker’s show. I have made changes to their form email:
I strongly
urgecongratulate youto reconsider anyon your decision to cancel TUCKER with Tucker Carlson on MSNBC.MSNBC has a responsibility to provide balanced programing.
Tucker Carlson provides a
strongunbalanced conservative voice tobalancethe views of Keith Olbermann andChris MatthewsTweety and does it withcivility, unfailing good humor and respectnonsense for his guests left or right.Tucker Carlson is one of the
bestworst things about MSNBC!I respectfully urge you to
KEEPFIRE TUCKER.Feel free to email to all executives at MSNBC!
dov12348 @ 85
only if that president represents the best your country is.
ot.i see citi got bailed out by abu dhabi and wonder if it’s a case of good money after bad.(good is perjorative)
The reason that I asked the question at #72 is that Attaturk’s column made me start thinking about “citizen journalism.” I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve noticed that I only seem to read blogs whose writers have some creds. Mostly the blogs I read have their main posters with either a legal degree or a doctorate in another profession. I don’t deliberate set out to parse the writers into categories of excellence, it just sort of happens that way. I read Josh Marshall, Christy, who has Looseheadprop in her audience as a commenter, among others, Glenn Greenwald, Atrios, Emptywheel, and a few others when I have time, like Kos and Arianna. Jane, Digby and Arianna are the only ones whose educational background I don’t know, but I’ve read their posts and seen them on TV and I think their voices are well worth listening to and reading. I very much like their prospectives on things.
More importantly, why wouldn’t the rise of citizen journalists make official journalists shake in their shoes. The citizen journalists are doing their jobs better without access to the politicians than the official journalists do, and they are apparently doing it for donations. Low and behold, we are getting in depth analysis from highly educated people who do not have an agenda of following the politicians to the money trough. Let’s see, Chris Matthews on the one hand, Glenn Greenwald on the other. Which one do you think would be more substantive and which would be likelier to be the fluff? There’s no comparison.
Oil peaked in 2005. It’s hasn’t gone up on an annual basis since then. Once the figures are in for the last quarter of 2007 it will probably confirm that we are on the plateau and at some point in the not too distant future production will decline.
GSD @ 68
LOL!!
OT:
HuffPo:
Rove: “Congress Pushed Bush to War in Iraq Prematurely”
Bah ha ha.
#46, 63
Talked to a Canadian acquaintance (living in the UK) last weekend. She said that coming into the US she got stuck in line behind a group of people all of whom had to be fingerprinted and photographed.
Security theater, all the way.
We have to fix the system. As soon as possible.
Why pushback matters. Just in case you aren’t on board with calling bullshit…consider this new bit of Rove revisionism.
Dubya invaded Iraq because–wait for it–the Congress made him do it.
Excuse me while I barf.
Ann in AZ:
LHP is an FDL front poster. And go to wiki for Jane and Arianna’s bios and educational and professional backgrounds: Arianna; Jane
Maybe if America passes us a note in gym class, we won’t hate it anymore. Then we could be BFF!!!!
DP excretes:
One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world — so widely held it is not disputed — is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America.
So I Googled World Public Opinion and found:
On average across the 26 countries polled, 30 percent say the US is having a mostly positive influence in the world while 51 percent say the US is having a mostly negative influence.
In 20 of the 26 countries polled, the most common view is that the US is having a mostly negative influence in the world. In four countries, the most common view is that the US is having a mostly positive influence and in two of them, views are evenly divided.
Views of US influence are consistently negative in Canada, Latin America and the Middle East. They are mostly negative in Europe, with the exception of Poland, which leans positive, and Hungary, which is divided. Africans in this poll and in others have the most consistently positive views of the US. Asian views are more mixed, but lean negative. Filipinos are very positive and Indians are divided, but all others are clearly negative.
It should be noted that this reaction cannot simply be dismissed as something necessarily engendered by a powerful and rich country. The numbers we are seeing today are the lowest numbers that have ever been recorded.
During the 1990s, views of the US were predominantly positive. Comparing 1999 State Department data and recent Pew data, favorable views of the United States have dropped in the UK from 83 percent to 56 percent, in Germany from 78 percent to 37 percent, in Morocco from 77 percent to 49 percent, in Indonesia from 75 to 30 percent, in France from 62 to 39 percent, from Turkey from 62 to 12 percent and in Spain from 50 to 23 percent. Only Russia has held steady.
SanderO @ 93
2005 average supply of oil in millions of barrels/day was 84.63 and 84.60 in 2006. It will likely be somewhat less this year. So yes, we are at or near peak oil although I do not think this is what is currently driving markets. It’s more like the current speculative phase just sort of fell into it and may not even have fully realized that this is happening. They will eventually and this is why oil prices are unlikely to drop back very far or for very long.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t21.xls
Biodun @ 86