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One of Juanita’s favorite customers is a guy named Bud Malone.  Bud is labor union guy who’s been retired for some years now but still keeps up the fight.  He’s from Minnesota but is spending his days now in the warm sun.

Bud gets peeved to high hell and back about guys claiming to be Americans who “want their country back” but seem far to ready to sell out to the highest bidder.  Greed is an ugly thing that no one wears well.

HOUSTON — State-owned Chinese energy giant CNOOC is buying a multibillion-dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields, potentially testing the political waters for further expansion into U.S. energy reserves.

With the announcement Monday that it would pay up to $2.2 billion for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy assets, CNOOC lays claim to a share of properties that eventually could produce up to half a million barrels a day of oil equivalent.

So they want their country back to sell it to the Chinese?

The deal represents China’s second try at making a big move into the U.S. oil and gas market, following a failed bid five years ago to buy California-based Unocal Corp.

Intense political opposition over energy security concerns derailed that $18.4 billion deal. But analysts expect few political or regulatory hurdles to the CNOOC-Chesapeake deal.

“The climate is much more hospitable now,” said Juli MacDonald-Wimbush, a partner with Marstel-Day, an energy and environmental security consulting company in Fredericksburg, Va.

I am amused by the idea that “the climate is more hospitable now.”

How’d that happen?

I think Bud has the answer.  He sent me this email late yesterday about this story —

“Susan. My first read of the day makes me nauseous. As a nation we climb the ladder of stupidity with relative ease. How about those God fearing  independent Texas guys that lease their land to a big time rival and then bitch about our own government. Everyone has their price, I guess. Bud”

He’s right, you know.