so... if we have invaded both iraq and afganistan, and liberated them from oppressive dictatorships, wherefrom there is much petroleum, why is it that the price of gas continues to rise? how has it come that our taxes and lives pay for these wars and we can't even get a fucking break on gasoline? hmmm.... not to mention that there are so many untapped wells at home. not to mention that the electric car probably could have been instituted over 30 years ago. not to mention that petroleum was probably the least efficient fuel source on which we could have chosen to base our economic transportation needs, when we had so many other options... though... you know, i don't think the oil barons would be making so much money, or have such a monopoly, if we had chosen an inexhaustable resource, as henry ford had proposed hemp oil to run his cars... hmmmm...... and it is kind of funny that the same families who made or continued their fotunes in oil, and were in politics back then, are still churning out career politicians now.. but surely they have our best interests at heart, i mean, come on, they're the government... they, uh, govern us and stuff... right? aw, shucks. i' m so proud to be an american. i'm just gonna shut up and eat my gov'ment cheese, an' be happeh, cuz affer all, dat's wha duh consitution sae-ehs we in pursue of.... much love
Maybe because the war(s) was never for oil to begin with, and OPEC still controls a major percentage of the world's oil supply no matter how many Iraq's we liberate.
The answers to these questions and more about the truth of current activities in the U.S. Government will be YOURS... about forty-five years after the documents concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy are released to the public.
Yuck....oh, well...at least our super great grandchildren's robot spawn might have a shot at figuring it out...
Number one, there is no oil in Afghanistan. Number two, there are two sides to the equation: demand and supply. Demand fluctuates just like supply. Right now, demand is high.
No, Afghanistan was long sought as a conquest for its access to mid -Asian natural gas supplies (equally as lusted after by our energy giants as oil reserves). I suggest you do some research on Unocal and its long running efforts to establish a pipeline through Afganistan to the gas fields of Turkmenistan and Kazakstan. Once again spewing out opinion rather than substantiated fact.
Osris- what Pointbreak said. It's summer, and people are only going to consume more gasoline. Therefore, OPEC and other oil distributors are intentionally pumping less oil to keep the price of what they do pump as high as it can go, as they know that people will pay any price in order to drive to their precious beach houses.
subtantiated fact, eh? i've read so much contradictory information, i wonder what it is that counts for substantiation. shrug. no matter what my opinion is, the fact is the situation is fukt, and fundamentally antithetical to "the pursuit of happiness." i appreciate your attempting to point me in the right direction. much love
Osiris, my comment concerning substantiation of claims was not directed at you but at the latest flamer to grace these boards with right wing denials and rhetoric, this pointbreak person.
Actually pointbreak was a productive member of the old HipForums, and I don't understand how you can criticize someone's political views on a free speech forum....
I criticise his unsubstantiated claims and personal flaming when incapable of countering the evidence of his faulty presumptions. And a free speech board is precisely the forum for criticising another's political views (thus the term "debate").
LickHERish is correct on the above statement. However, we went to Afghanistan because the dudes there had just help knock down the twin towers and part of the Pentagon. We went to Iraq because they invaded Kuwait. The price of oil is high because of demand. Demand in the US but also a new customer that will keep the price from ever falling back to normal levels, China. The millions of citizens doing the slave work for us so we can buy cheep stuff are trading in bicycles for cars. In five years it's really going to hurt if they continue to prosper. OPEC claims $25 a barrel is the best for the world economy and in their best interest. So, either they are unable to produce enough or they want to influence the Presidency of the US by keeping prices high. Europe will be the first to collapse when China goes full fledge auto instead of bicycles since much of Europe's gas is taxed for socialism. In northern Europe people already are paying $8.00 a gallon. Changeyourlatitude
lick, like your "US sold WMDs to Iraq" story, your Unocal story is just another tired myth drifting around anti-war forums but kept alive by cut and pasters such as yourself. Unfortunately for you, I have done my research. Where is the pipeline? Nowhere. Nobody is building it. Where is Unocal? They have already specifically said they have no interest in such a project. http://www.unocal.com/uclnews/98news/centgas.htm As usual, your inability to do more than parrot whatever your favorite anti-american editorialists dictate leaves you looking like a tool.
The point isn't debatable as a reason for US involvement Afghanistan. The entire area is too politically volatile to place a pipeline. Russia will probably find a method to bring in the NG to their side. American natural gas limits are getting very low and our society is dependant on it. However investors, including big oil would rather build a pipeline through Canada than Mullah slogs enroot to a sea in that area. The American option for natural gas is its liquefaction and shipment from the artic circle to the mainland. Going to make some big terrorist targets, imagine a supertanker with liquefied NG bombed in a major harbor. Changeyourlatitude
ok, but let's take this all back about seventy or so years, when the lobbyists pressured ford into building his cars on petroleum instead of hemp oil. care to elaborate, or has that information been completely buried by now? and i'm sure the news sources you are all reading, no matter your political views, are tainted by the political views of the writers that contributed them. you're all cut and pasters, really, no matter your source. hell, i don;t really know what is truth or lie either. how could i? look, ya'll can't even agree on what is "substantiated". can any of you trace your ultimate source of information? i bet not. i am looking at human nature. i am wondering why guys who have been in families that have churned out career politicians for close to a hundred years, the bush's for instance, should give a flying fuck about anyone but themselves. and these people have made the majority of their fortunes in oil(as well as other unnecessary exhaustable resources) and defense contracting. and gee, there's a war going on in the middle east.... oh, but i forgot, it's against terrorism. yea... c'mon you don't have to be fucking sherlock holmes. and all of that aside, this war is bankrupting the u.s. and ultimately its citizens. but do the people who run the federal government look any poorer? hmmm... gee, i guess not. yea, bush cut my taxes... which amounted to dick. why did people who make over 200, 000 dollars a year get theirs cut? what the fuck do they need tax cuts for? i barely make 20,000. after i pay all of my taxes, my health care, add in state taxes i have to pay for food and to be a registered driver and a fourth of my income is depleted. take a fourth of 200,000 and there is still 150,000. take a fourth of mine, and after the student loans for the education that has gotten me nowhere, well, i'm left with just enough to pay my bills. and now the raise in transportation costs. what happened to the american governent taking care of its own people? i feel for all those suffering under the rule of tyranny, but we can;t afford to save them all at the expense of ourselves... though it will be mighty convenient for the many big business lobbyists that stuff the pockets of our politicians to take our jobs from here to other countries where they will have to pay exponentially less money for exponentially more production, as someone so astutely pointed out of china. no matter what political "party", or governmental system you cling to, this is the bottom line: unless you are running the system, you will get fukt. land of opportunity? no. land of opportunists. much love
Dude You sound just as frustrated as I am. The government seems to represent itself and its respective political party. The price of gas is a reality of demand. We like all of that cheap Wal-Mart stuff made in China. Within five years one of your neighbors will be driving a Chinese car. I was drafted in 67 and went to Korea in 68. Not one private auto owned in the entire country, not one! The exception would be the mayor or Police Chief. Everyone else busses, taxis and mostly bicycles. Now they make cars and drive cars and China will do the same. The demand for oil will continue and the price won’t stay as high as it is right now but in five years we will be calling these the good ole days! Tell me more about this hemp that could replace oil, do you have a link for reading? Damn, Korea uses hemp for everything, but I never heard of them using it for fuel. They are pretty ingenious. And the stuff grows 14 feet tall everywhere like weeds. Canada’s largest crop is hemp, the new world power? About the taxes, my family of four lives on about $25,000 income a year and I think we paid PR taxes of around $1300, plus SS and Medicare, we don’t pay federal tax. We put two kids through private school at around $5,000 a year. We have taken the kids to Disney World on stock market winnings over the past 12 years but we live in an austere financial environment. I don’t want anything from the government but security. I don’t believe in robbing from the rich and giving to the poor unless the rich are tyrants like Robin Hood. If the political parties, both of them would require all companies to pay taxes equally no one would need robbing. But, they need the big business payoff money to run for office and keep their parties going. Dude this is a land of opportunity, you just got to bust your ass getting started. I’ve done the expense account with new BMW rental cars in the past. When I was making $80,000 I just wasted more and lived no better. I own my own home and 10-year-old car was paid for in cash. I don’t pay interest on credit cards, yet I have three at 9.9%. I can’t afford to give a way a dime out of every dollar I earn. I wait and pay cash. Changeyourlatitude
http://www.globalhemp.com/Archives/Essays/Biofuel/fuel.shtml there's the link ya asked for. i live within my means. but i still don't want to see the quality of life decline. People are getting laid off quite a bit around here, and that's leaving a lot of brokedown motherfuckers. people who made it from paycheck to paycheck paying their bills, and now they can't afford groceries. You say you want security, but how secure are we, really? i'm just saying that we're getting sold out. hardcore. fukt. you may not be feeling the ripples yet, but deep waters are stirring. we got us a whirlpool brewing here. social unrest breeds contempt. i will not cling to that, but i do not another's mind make. much love, good sir. and best of luck.
Osiris Actually the term for what you mentioned on hemp is a combination of bio-diesel and ethanol and I made a post on the environment site about it as it applies to hydrogen fueled vehicles. Big oil is already getting interested in it. On the brighter side BP, British Petroleum is turning green. They own their own solar cell company and I understand in Europe all of the stations run on solar power. I hear what you are saying. When I first moved to PR the unemployment rate was over 16%. This screwed up free trade is going to change American workers into distinct classes of highly technical or services, which can’t be imported or outsourced. Neither political party is going to protect you from that monster with a fist full of money earned on third world slave wages. They have the money to give politicians, and they will give equally to each party and threaten to cut off the supply to the party that doesn’t play. Politicians talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk. To give you a preview of what is going to happen I’ll tell you how it works here where the Puerto Ricans have morphed into the competitive workplace. The new employer is Kelly Girls. Hewlett Packard has a factory four miles from my house. Kelly provides the employees, and they are only 4-year college grads. They start just above minimum wage and after a couple years are increased to $9 or $10 an hour, without benefits. Benefits are retained for the permanent HP workforce, about 10% of the best of the best of the “A” types. Kelly and other temp services provide almost 90% of employment in PR. We have several millions of employees under the roof of American drug companies so they can be stamped “Made in America.” People whisper the word union. My wife works for a guy who installs automated packaging controls for pharmaceutical manufactures. There are enough companies to keep his company very busy installing new equipment for pills. My wife has worked for him for 7+ years and has a four-year college degree. She does bid proposals solicitations, contracts and technical drawings for the electronics for installation of the equipment. Guess how much she gets paid? $7.55 an hour! She was angry this New Years because he boss only gave her a small increase. I reminded her he could hire two newly grads for minimum wage if she bitches too loud. Her boss did offer a program where he would match 15% of money she invested in IRA up to $2500 a year this year. Cool deal, huh? My best friend moved to Las Vegas and works in a union Merck drug company on the production line and makes double of my wife. Any more than that they would probably close and move it down here. All the drugs are air mailed out of here by Fed EX so if the cost of higher wage in the states manufacturing is greater than Fed Ex they move the work to PR. No one will represent you as long as the big guys have a fist full of money for both parties! Changeyourlatitude