Drill Now for oil

The aftermath of the 2008 Olympics, coming in August, will be the beginning of China getting a clock cleaning about internal pollution.

Until Viet Nam. Then it changed.

Korea was a draw. Viet Nam was a bad loss, unfortunately the politicians took it out on the veterans instead of the oil companies who conned us into going there.

I have a year or two on you.

The military has been mucking that up because they have been given such hellishly inconsistent signals for decades.

Just to make the point, go ask some troops which they would prefer, AK-47's or M-16's.

If only i believed that BMD actually worked.

Korea was a draw, Viet Nam was a loss, Desert Shield was a draw, and Desert storm is shaping up to be a loss, do to the idiot command that thought they were fighting WWII. The destruction of civilian infrastructure is unforgivable. The failure to reconstruct it is even worse.

Gee, i cannot imagine why, just because they spend 100 times as advertising their spending on it than they directly spend on it.

The difference in distribution is significant. It highlights both the insufficiency of supply, and the problem of something nearing equitable distribution. Vast swaths of Mexico and parts south have similar issues. So does China, India, most of Africa, and many other places.

Since posting this I've read a follow-up or two to the effect that things are about the same, maybe up to

There are many problems. Terrorists, for one. But mostly typical 3rd-world socialist-legacy growing pains.

Big is that no one there wants to pay for electricity. Saddam made it basically free, and now they feel 7/100 of a cent per kWHr is a ripoff. Many people don't have meters. So many don't pay, and about 20% is stolen.

Therefore the Electricity Ministry has no revenue. They in turn can't afford fuel to run their plants. The Oil Ministry supplies the Electricity Ministry with handout dregs, but they hate doing it--their priority is 1000% exporting oil for maximum revenue.

Meanwhile demand is exploding--Iraqis are buying consumer goods they never had before.

Subsidies, big bux from US, centralized governmental planning...producing a corrupt mess.

Lesson? Free markets allocate resources better than governments.

But they'll figure it all out. Like I said, growing pains.

Hey, here's an idea: they should capitalize on all that electricity they're not generating by selling it to Al Gore. He can mark it up and sell the carbon credits.

Cheers, James Arthur

Exactly. Iraq was brought into this discussion, as it always is, as a red herring to support a severely sagging argument.

Yeah, an idiot bringing home tens of millions of your dollars.

Thanks, Rich

Frankly, things are looking like NOBODY has made "a serious study in how the economy and government programs work", or if anyone has, nobody's paying any attention to it.

Thanks, Rich

I ask again, how many of the Gitmo detainees are from Iraq? Why does Iraq matter? Are you that short of arguments?

krw wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.individual.net:

Actually,it's not even an "occupation" anymore; the Iraq government has been voted in and is functioning. We remain at their request,I believe.

messagenews: snipped-for-privacy@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...

Um, it does not work that way and is essentially non sequitur -- the constitution is referring to people living (in peace) under the rule- of-law, which quite explicitly is not the case for a state of war (or of nature).

They have _no rights_ (none, zip, nada), as a state of war/conflict/ nature persists. Any rights they may have had were forgone the moment they became part of an aggression. Really, they could be executed at any time, and no rights would be violated because they do not have any. Now the basic reason for the sections of the Geneva Convention calling for humane treatment of prisoners is because it is widely recognized that the foot soldier is usually nothing more than a pawn in a war of titans. It is more or less a recognition that hostilities will end sometime, and "if you want your guys back in decent shape, then you better give our guys back in decent shape." But note "humane treatment" says nothing itself about human rights. Humane treatment is something you can give to an animal, and an animal has no (human) rights. The rank of a prisoner is frankly not above that of an animal, as the prisoner was a force of nature threatening survival, not a "peaceful member" of the _wider_ population living under a rule- of-law (peaceful interpersonal conduct).

Where did that come out of? No, "collateral damage" is not acceptable. The parties (aggressor and aggressee, regardless of the assignment) must confine the use of violent force to themselves, or they face justified counterforce against them by these third parties that were "caught in the crossfire," regardless if the party causing the collateral damage was initially the party aggressed against. I mean, causing collateral damage can broaden the state of nature/war across even greater populations.

If that is the case, and the aggressive intentions of Al-Qaeda continue, then the captured associates of Al-Qaeda do not recover any human rights and they may be imprisoned indefinitely by the US. This is the nature of an ongoing state of nature/war. It always has been. Like I said, these prisoners don't get to play a cheap legal trick just cuz they decided to fight unconventionally.

They have no rights, and didn't the moment they became part of an aggression. "You" can kill them or imprison them, whatever "you" want, because they don't have the rights of a human being from the perspective of the other side.

This is all rudimentary "State of Nature" and "State of Society" stuff. Granted, you can get all sorts of perversions of these fundamentals, including interpretations from government and legal "experts." Don't count on court rulings and legislation to get it right. Most lawyers suck. And then they become judges or legislators (politicians).

If some living thing threatens your survival, you can justifiably kill it. If human, the attacker forgoes consideration as a full member of a rule-of-law society/population (and its protections) the moment they engage in the life-threatening action.

Which is all fine and good, but completely irrelevant.

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I disagree. The neocons are a very specific group of people with a very specific set of ideas. It has had a little misuse but nothing like "liberal" "conservative" or "traditional" have been and we still use those terms.

individual.net:

It only functions within the "green zone". Outside it needs US troops to enforce its will.

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Just last week I put it on my credit card. I was nearly out of gas and in only a few minutes I had a full tank again. The problem, for me, is solved.

We are as fast as we can. Every drill rig and every drill ship is

The spot market is needed. We just need to say that if you say you are going to buy oil you need to be able to take delivery. If you can't you can't get into the market.

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Besides it is easier to sell the oil in the west and use it to buy some in the east than to move the oil from the west to the east.

Simon, Your "state of nature" / "state of society" position is so full of holes I have no idea where to even start. Basically, those words boil down to a philsophical pipe dream. Something you might learn in a freshman college course that has zero application to the real world - and even less (if you can believe it!) application to the detention of prisoners at Gitmo.

For example: And we'll use your own words here.... Your statement that "collateral damage" is unacceptable, and that the agressors / agressees have a duty to "confine the use of violent force to themselves".

That is exactly the whole point of this discussion. WE DON"T KNOW that the detainess are within the domain of the agressors / agresssees!! For all we know, they could be normal, law-abiding citizens who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. (mistaken in the heat of battle to be an agressor. They could have even been human shields for the agressors.)

But perhaps that does not convince you, so let's look at it yet another way. (A way which again, totally guts the nature/society position):

How many times have we read about policemen being brought up on charges for using deadly force in situations where (it is later determined) that deadly force was not appropriate? (I am thinking specifically of teenage crimes here, but the argument does not need to be restricted to those instances, of course.) The question is: If the officer is found guilty (some are), would this necessarily mean that the rights of the injured/deceased were infringed? What other conclusion could you draw? (Keep in mind all this supposedly happens in a "peaceful" "society", though those terms are for your benefit only. They actually have no bearing on the point I am making here.

Any sufficiently civilized society affords their prisoners certain rights. To argue otherwise is frankly, just a bunch of drivel.

-mpm

But a 50% marginal tax rate doesn't result in a 50% return so that comparison doesn't matter. To dodge a tax you often have to take an action that is a net money loser or at least forgo the 50% return that would have been left after taxes.

Ok, lets go to a VAT for most of the taxes. It wouldn't change much of the rest of the arguments.