In September, 1986, Southland sold a 50 percent interest in CITGO to Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. PDVSA acquired the remaining half of CITGO in January, 1990. With a secure and ample supply of crude oil, CITGO quickly became a major force in the energy arena.

lindas last blog post..C’est La Vie!

Perhaps a few days at your camp every summer does lead to scholarships. Although it seems unlikely to me, I have no way of measuring the impact your camp would have in that regard so I will give you the benefit of the doubt on that. I don’t think there is anyway to really prove it anyways unless there is an extraordinary percentage of Div 1 scholarships that are given to kids from your camps as opposed to those who do not attend your camps. Do you actually have statistics like that?

From my perspective, none of my claims about my son’s experience are false as I sat alongside the field for the entire camp. I even went over to my son during practice and asked him if he was injured to find out why he wasn’t playing. Each time I asked him why he wasn’t playing he said that they just hadn’t called his group. He is only 10 and shouldn’t have to tell a coach he doesn’t know he is getting ignored. You say that I should have brought the lack of coaching attention and playing time to the coaches, however, on the very first day, the head coach made an impassioned plea to all the parents asking us to trust them, not to interfere and let the coaches do their job. I tried to respect that and never approached a coach until the final game in which my son was not playing at all. If this is an incorrect policy then we shouldn’t be discouraged from speaking up. I was standing right behind him on the sidelines the entire final game and not once did he miss a call to go in the game. They simply played their starting team most of the time. I have it all on video.

As I expected, instead of actually being concerned about some kids might actually have been overlooked and how to improve your camp, you are attacking me as a complainer and basically called my child a wimp who is afraid of contact. My child in in his fourth year and is one of the toughest football players in his league. Most of the kids on his own team are afraid of him. You should not judge what you don’t know. There was no “gatorade tent” that he was hiding in, the gatorade was on a table right next to where they were practicing. When he is not playing and standing in the hot sun, what else is he supposed to do? You were not at the camp, I was. You do not know my son, I do. Perhaps a majority of kids there did enjoy their experience, but unfortunately, we walked away disappointed.

We traveled a long way and paid a lot of money to attend your camp. I expected him to get more attention than he did. The fact that he did not is not my fault, it is your camp’s organization. Perhaps you should be the one looking in the mirror instead of me. I’m just glad I was able to witness it myself instead of leaving him there by himself for four days. I believe you are correct that the root cause is that there were just too many kids at the camp. Again, not my fault, but yours. I understand your desire to defend your business, but your attitude of blaming disenchanted parents and campers for a bad experience certainly does nothing to encourage me to apologize and print a retraction or even remove the post. My experience from talking to the parents who sat around me is that they may not be as impressed as you may think.

I do appreciate the time you took to respond. I think an offer to improve the experience would have been received a bit better.

Julies last blog post..On the cover of the Rolling Stone

I really find it hard to believe that it would take 9 years for oil to reach the market .  The article you referenced says oil would start flowing in 2013, but even that seems ridiculous.  We’re the United States.  You can’t tell me that with all the technology we have and all the money at stake, that we couldn’t get it done much faster than that.   How long does it take to dig a hole and put it in a barrel?   Even a 4% increase in supply would help.  It’s better than the 0% increase we have now.

Obama wants to use the windfall profit tax to invest in green energy research.   I don’t see this to be a great benefit either.  How long will that take?  How will that effect food supply and prices?  Gas prices will rise even more dramatically in the meantime due to this tax which will get passed on to the consumer.  He will be hurting the poor most of all in the short run.  Somehow we need to provide incentives, not penalties to improve our situation.  Simply saying no to every possible solution is not a solution.   Most likely we will need a combination of solutions to solve this problem.

Of course, school pictures were being made that week!!