USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

[Bordoy 0]

Well sadly, for most Americans cheap gas for their SUV's is more important then the lives of some "commie brown people" in South America or "terrorists" in the Middle East.

When the Bush admin makes these people out to be the bad guys, Americans rally around him in support to go kick their asses.  

The problem however is that the Iraq invasion has not given us cheap oil.  (Partly due to Haliburton/Iraqi corruption and from terrorist attacks on pipelines).  

So that may be why they are turning their eyes towards a US friendly Venezuelan government to give the US secret deals on oil.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Also the UN decided to take about 70% for themselves.

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]Hi Miles Teg

However the plain fact is that US gas prices at the pump continue to rise the only ones getting richer are super rich Oil families like the Bin Ladens, the Bush's, the Cheyney's and those involved in the great speculator driven oil swindle.

Which is it Walker? I thought the $50 dollar mark that you use to pimp around was the truth. Now, they want to jack up prices now.

[walker 0]

Hi billybob2002

If you bothered to read my post and it has risen to $57 a barrel Thursday.

If you are refering to exactly correct prediction of the $50 dollar cutoff pre the election in October I was 100% right. It ceilinged on the exact day I said it would. That was what the speculators bet on for that date. It was known to those in the industry.

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....st=2655

They made billions along with the all the super rich oil families such as the Bin Ladens and their buddies in the Cheyney and Bush families.

They have been riding that same successful rolercoster ever since pumping oil prices using the crisis in Iraq and hinting darkly or threatening other problems in all the worlds oil producers; Venezuela, Iran, Russia the Ukrane and the Caucuses. Talking up trouble in Nigeria and of failing suplies from the North Sea.

The people who are paying for it is every gouged American voter. It is the ones who voted for and suported TBA who deserve to pay every penny of TBA's speculator oil gouge.

Because they are going to continue to pay all the time that TBA are in power the price will rise because that is the way the speculators like it just the same as they did with ENRON and we know how close George Bush Junior was with them.

Without an election to worry about TBA's speculator buddies do not need to have anyone intervene in the rising prices they just sit there getting fat at the Amercan car drivers expense. If George was to intervene now they would get rid of him so he wont.

billybob2002 you are going to have to pay TBA's gas prices and say thank you while they do it to you till you puke.

Kind Regards Walker

Edit I first started talking about this subject back in May when I warned everyone what the speculators were planning. It was well known in the industry to any one who cared to check.

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....98;st=0

At the time several people disagreed with my assesment I invite them to eat their hats.

Kind Regards Walker

[miles teg 1]

Well sadly, for most Americans cheap gas for their SUV's is more important then the lives of some "commie brown people" in South America or "terrorists" in the Middle East.

When the Bush admin makes these people out to be the bad guys, Americans rally around him in support to go kick their asses.  

The problem however is that the Iraq invasion has not given us cheap oil.  (Partly due to Haliburton/Iraqi corruption and from terrorist attacks on pipelines).  

So that may be why they are turning their eyes towards a US friendly Venezuelan government to give the US secret deals on oil.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Also the UN decided to take about 70% for themselves.

WTF??? Where did you hear that??? The UN doesn't touch the oil revenues in Iraq. At least they haven't since the invasion. I doubt they have more then a handful of people in Iraq these days.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[walker 0]

Hi all

As was pointed out to me in another thread there were two Republican groups fighting it out over Iraqi oil. Wolfowitz and his fellow Neo-ConMen who wanted to essentialy steal the Iraqi oil by privatising it to their friends and the Old Guard Republicans Oil Business conservatives who were happy to leave the Iraqi oil with the Iraqi's so and let the speculators up the price while they took a a massive profit.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm

The Old oil guys won hence George Bush Junior looking so defeated and sheepish of late. The family being old oil is happy though they made millions from the increased price of Gas at the pump. Wolfowitz lost his job and so now works for the world bank.

You can watch the report on this link the actual report is about 14 minutes 47 seconds into the program use the RM slider bar to skip forward to then you will catch the last 10 seconds of the previous item then it begins.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/newsnight/newsnight.ram

What is interesting though is that both Republican groups had plans for the oil in Iraq long before there was a decision or even reasons to go to war.

The 20 billion dollars of Iraqi for which the audit is missing was held by by TBA it apears that at least 9 billion of it is unaccounted for as well as all the interest on it should have acrued.

Now of course everyone has to pay for the stupidity of the Iraq war in higher gas prices and the blood of coalition soldiers while the Iraqis paid for it in the blood of innocents and shatered economy that will take years to recover.

If only the Old Guard Republicans had won out in the first place Sadam would have been taken out in a coup and gas prices would never have ben able to reach the prices speculators have benn able to shove them up to on peoples fears

Kind Regards Walker

[walker 0]

Hi all

Latest figures on the US economy have started fears of stagflation in the US economy.

That the US is suffereing rising levels of inflation is accepted as the dollar has continued to drop in value. Greenspan has stoped giveing optomistic reports on the US economy. Instead interest rates meaning mortgage, credit and loan rates are set to rise to try and counter US inflation levels.

The latest bad figures on consumer sales in US are what is causing the worries.

The rising interest rates are what is likely to be causing marginal spenders to hold back on making purchases in the US. If you are one of those with lots of existing credit and loan payments the rise in rates is likely to cause you to have to consider getting deeper in to debt.

Additionaly US investors are expected to be profit taking over the weekend in the light of Texas oil fire and major political unrest in the oil states of the Caspian sea.

The third fear is that cash rich US firms are increasingly moving their money out of the declining dollar based business to foreign investment in countries like the UK Japan and SE Asia. Also cash is being moved from the Dollar to the more stable Euro.

If the US suffers major inflation at the same time as its economy stagnates it will be a very bitter time in the US and the rest of the world.

There is some argument that Europe, China and India as well as SE Asia may be able to take up the slack in world demand but that would still leave the US in very dire straights.

Worried Walker

[theavonlady 2]

The usual fearmongering from Walker. Fresh from Businessweek:

Quote[/b] ]MARCH 28, 2005

BUSINESS OUTLOOK

U.S.: Time To Wave Goodbye To A "Measured" Pace

In an economy this strong, the Fed might need to hike rates faster

In the Federal Reserve's brave new world of policy transparency, words are often more important than deeds. Openly telegraphing the intention to change policy has become standard operating procedure at the Fed. That's why the news coming out of the policy meeting on Mar. 22 will not be the widely expected hike in interest rates but the language in the accompanying statement. Based on the way the economy is shaping up this year, the current policy message is bound to change -- if not at the upcoming meeting, then soon. Otherwise, the Fed risks being perceived as out of step with its long-term goal of containing inflation.

Since last May the markets have come to expect the Fed's statement to say that the bank plans to lift rates at a "measured" pace. That leisurely sounding phrase is widely interpreted to mean a quarter-point hike at each meeting until policymakers feel that rates have reached a neutral level that neither helps nor hinders the economy.

The drag on growth from surging oil prices might give the Fed some room to maintain its gradual pace. However, given the economy's surprising vigor and increasing signs that the inflation outlook may not be as tame as it appeared a few months ago, the current language locks the Fed into a commitment that could prove inappropriate, especially if demand and pricing power continue to be greater than expected.

Indeed, the economy's strength is partly the result of the Fed's own decision to accommodate growth for so long. Its nearly unprecedented easy policy has supplied liquidity to the financial markets and provided cheap mortgages for home buyers. Heavily indebted businesses have had a chance to refinance, which has lowered costs and generated more cash for investment.

Now that wages and salaries are growing at a healthy pace and corporations are awash in cash, the Fed must wean the economy off these cushy financial conditions. And in this new era of communication, the Fed will want to prepare the financial markets for the fact that policy may have to move faster than expected. The first step will be a change in the policy statement.

A NEW WORD ORDER from the Fed would most likely drop "measured" pace. The resulting more hawkish tone could jar the markets, at least temporarily. That's because a new statement would mean policymakers want the flexibility to lift rates by more than a quarter point, if necessary, based on what the economic numbers show.

Certainly, the latest data portray an economy with more muscle than the Fed probably anticipated at the start of the year. The bond market has taken notice and has pushed long-term rates sharply higher. Consumers keep shopping, even in the face of higher oil prices. Homebuilding remains strong. And businesses are busy, expanding production and building inventories.

Retail sales rose 0.5% in February, and the revised January numbers show a sales gain of 0.3% instead of the 0.3% loss previously reported. Stronger job markets explain much of the upward climb in demand. But another factor is record consumer wealth. According to Fed data, household net worth -- total assets minus liabilities -- hit a high of $48.5 trillion at the end of 2004.

Businesses are also in better financial shape. And they are finally contributing to growth -- by much more than they have so far in this expansion. Companies boosted their inventories by a large 0.9% in January. Inventory-building should offset the worsening trade deficit that looks to be the only serious drag on the first-quarter economy. In February, homebuilders broke ground at an annual rate of 2.2 million new homes, a two-decade high. And industrial production advanced 0.3%, the fifth gain in a row, while factory output rose 0.5% for the third consecutive month.

From the Fed's viewpoint, robust industrial activity is a potential cause for concern. U.S. industry used 79.4% of its available capacity in February, up from 78% last September. At that pace, operating rates by early next year would be at a level typically associated with production constraints and inflationary pressures.

IN FACT, it is becoming increasingly apparent that two years of above-trend economic growth is reducing the slack in both the product and labor markets. Such a trend typically leads to a shift in inflation dynamics. In its own Beige Book summary of regional economic conditions, the Fed noted that increased cost pressures in the production pipeline are translating into increased pricing power. "A number of districts indicated greater ease in passing along price increases," the report said.

The bond market already senses a change in both economic reality and Fed urgency. Bond players seem to be coming around to the notion that the exceptionally low yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond in recent months are out of sync with economic realities. Perceptions of growth, inflation, and Fed policy began to shift in early February amid a spate of strong data. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's musing during his February testimony that low bond yields amid Fed tightening were a "conundrum" also helped to shake the market out of its stupor.

From Feb. 9 to mid-March, the 10-year yield has risen from less than 4% to more than 4.5%, and fixed mortgage rates have jumped close to 6%. The rise may have further to go. Bond yields are still below the peak of nearly 4.9% hit last June. With gasoline prices rising rapidly -- nearly touching last year's record of $2.06 per gallon on Mar. 14 -- the March and April price indexes will not look good. Even excluding energy and food, yearly core inflation rates at both producer and consumer levels are on an upward-creeping course.

CONSEQUENTLY, THE FED may also have to reevaluate its statement on the risks for future inflation. Since last May policymakers have said that the upside and downside risks to price stability have been "roughly equal." That balance may be shifting, to a large extent, because the Fed's exceptionally low interest rates provided a key support to overall demand. And strong demand is why economic slack is dwindling.

Moreover, unit labor costs, a key determinant of inflation, are starting to pick up now that productivity growth has slowed. In the final three quarters of last year unit costs rose at a 2.4% annual rate, the fastest clip in nearly four years. The pressure to raise prices to at least match that higher pace of costs will be especially heavy in service industries, where labor is the dominant cost and where pricing power tends to be greater.

To be sure, inflation expectations remain low, and that's a big reason why bond yields have not shot up. However, it's important to remember that expectations are formed out of actual inflation experience. If actual inflation readings continue to rise, so will expectations.

The new question confronting the Fed is this: How fast should it take policy to neutral? Recent data on growth and inflation hint that the central bank is moving too slowly. If that's true, then given the lags inherent in policy adjustments and the Fed's desire to act preemptively, any change in the policymakers' intentions will need to come soon.

[walker 0]

Hi Avon

Wierd that you seem to quoting from a time traveling document 28th of March 2005 has not happened yet.

Avon must be about to be the new Dr. Who's Assistant and I thought it was going to be Billy Piper.

Is that a Tardis I see before me? Nope it is a predated article that could aparently have been typed any time in the past month as it certainly was not typed on the:

Quote[/b] ]MARCH 28, 2005

Just to enlighten you Avon the figures on consumer spending came out around 14:00 GMT 24th of March 2005.

Avon today is the 24th of March 2005.

If you are going to make quotes and say

Quote[/b] ]Fresh from Businessweek

it is always worth checking how fresh they are.

Your quoted article is clearly before todays consumer figures came out as it says:

Quote[/b] ]Consumers keep shopping, even in the face of higher oil prices.

When todays figures say the complete oposite.

If you are going to quote stuff Avon please include your sources as I for one would like to examine the context.

It shows how far Businessweek has droped when its Articles can be this badly wrong. I would not advise any one to invest on such atrocious reporting.

For those of you unaware of what is happening and without Avon's time machine you may want to get up to date:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200503/s1330609.htm

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html....24.html

http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=10104

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen....fid=980

For Israelis where they are also seeing a slow down you are being urged not to Panic (Avon will be along with her Tardis later or is that earlier? to fix things)

If yuou want to know why US and Israeli economists are cacking themselves check out dear old Wiki on what Stagflation is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation

Kind Regards Walker

[theavonlady 2]

As I said, it's in Businessweek.

Like most magazines, it's post-dated, or haven't you noticed.

Yes, so wierd, Walker.

Sadly

Avon

[walker 0]

Hi Avon

I am glad you agree that your article was not relevant being factually incorrect in the key matters of inflation and current stagnation in the US economy.

I am happy that you admit your article gave an incorrect impression everything was rosy when in fact the US FED is giving everyone serious warnings about US inflation as the figures state.

Perhaps in the light of the FED saying the dangers are real you would care to withdraw your remark about

Quote[/b] ]The usual fearmongering from Walker

and admit that I am reporting correctly and you got it wrong Avon.

Businessweek's answer to getting it wrong in the Article Avon so kindly posted seems to be kill the messenger; with its latest article being lets stop the FED and Greanspan from speaking.

Quote[/b] ]The Fed May Be Talking Too Freely

Broadcasting its policies has sown confusion on the Street and fanned inflation fears

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily....016.htm

I wonder could the ownership of Businessweek be anything to do with its editorial policy.http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/whatsnu_bush-mcgraw.html FoxNews for business anyone?

Businessweek, which in my lowly opinion seems to be more of a business fashion magazine than anything remotely to do with economics or business or investment, has that sad close relationship with Geoge Bush Junior as it has his reading age; that or it is yet another example of how US media is turning more commie everyday.Ah Reds in your bed Republicans seem to be getting everywhere.

Businessweek seems more interested putting out glowing reports about how good everything is under TBA and how everything is rosy. Anyone reminded of a Pravda grain or tractor production report from Stalin's time? Commie Republicans at it again.

Getting back to the point of my posts people on the forum may find this website more useful and dare I say educated.

http://www.stern.nyu.edu/globalmacro/fin_sector/bond_markets.html

The assesment from this site are far more informed and informative for those who want unbiased facts.

Kind Regards Walker

[IsthatyouJohnWayne 0]

Walker- Perhaps this is futile, but could you perhaps try to maintain a little bit more objectivity in your posts? I often have some interest in what you have to say but due to frequent emotive expressions and implicit value judgements i find some of your posting almost unreadable (for instance 'the neoconmen haters' could be better phrased 'i believe the neo-conservatives are in fact conmen and haters of X'). Thank you.

Quote[/b] ]Now of course everyone has to pay for the stupidity of the Iraq war in higher gas prices and the blood of coalition soldiers while the Iraqis paid for it in the blood of innocents and shatered economy that will take years to recover.

If only the Old Guard Republicans had won out in the first place Sadam would have been taken out in a coup and gas prices would never have ben able to reach the prices speculators have benn able to shove them up to on peoples fears

But surely this rather gives the lie to your assertion that the neo-conservatives have taken over. They lost to the traditionalists. Furthermore, if low oil prices are what you cherish most then the most logical thing would be for you to have wished for a neo-conservative victory.

Compare and contrast from the article you posted:

Quote[/b] ]US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec and the current high oil price: "I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."

-suggests a high oil price

Quote[/b] ]The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

-suggests a lower oil price

Sorry but i am not convinced your sympathy for the poor motorists who have to pay so much their SUVs is genuine and you position seems contradictory.

---

I agree with most of the arguments made by the compelling documentary that Denoir mentions although i think in establishing its arguments it does somewhat skirt around the real issue of possible NBC, especially biological, terror attacks which could be something rare in history (possibly comparable to the black death or 1918 flu epidemic). But having said that, it brilliantly exposed the absurdity of the dirty bomb 'threat' which does lend some credence to the central argument. Not to mention the classic footage of Rumsfeld waffling about the USSRs 'hidden program of ongoing WMD production' presenting a clear and present danger.

[walker 0]

Hi IsthatyouJohnWayne

You are correct there is an internal war going on in the US Republican party between the commie NeoConMen and traditional Republicans.

As a result of the coup in the US Republican Party that brought TBA into power and the stupidity of the NeoConMen who won that battle; Iraq was needlessly invaded and that countries infrastructure and economic basis was destroyed.

They made their decisions based on dogma, George Bush Juniors desire for revenge on Sadam for a plan to assasinate George Bush Senior, a foolish intention to knock out OPEC, which is no longer relevant anyway, to try and reduce Oil prices to Failing US businesses of the type that NeoConMen run like Dick Cheyney's Haliburton which if you remember went bust because it could not compete in a modern business environment. Now it survives on government handouts and social security payments in the form of No Bid contracts. It is typical of the behaviour of any state supported business. It then suppliments its income with a little fraud commited on the US tax payer and the Iraqi people.

Real and successful business people who used to make up the backbone the US Republican party warned TBA that they were about to cause oil prices to skyrocket by attacking Iraq but new either way they would make money (if you own oil companies and oil prices go up you make higher profits on smaller out put)

The speculators loved it and encouraged TBA to go ahead war creates uncertainty and prices go up as a result. Probably the big business guys got into this a little too, they are after all successfull business people but they were probably more conservative about it.

Now we are stuck in a period of speculators feeding the uncertainty. They encourage the media to write stories about various oil producer nations to up the uncertainty. The speculators now have a Target per barrel price of 70 US Dollars and they continue to use TBA to raise that price.

The gambler speculators just like George Bush Junior who lost his shirt on it but these are the guys who made it so George Bush Junior respects them so they got in well with TBA. After all there was a bunch of Oil business people who make lots of money saying "Yeh go ahead we will be able control oil prices if we own Iraq". TBA needed money to buy the US election and I am sure it came from somewhere.

TBA liked the uncertainty because it makes US voters scaired and just like Stalin and Hitler they know that when voters are scaired they vote for the devil they know.

WhooHoo look out Sadam will get you, we had better attack. WhooHoo look out, he is working with Al Qaida. WhooHoo look out, he has got WMD. WhooHoo lookout he making missiles to hit the US and our Allies.

Of course none of it was true. It is was all made up. It was fairy story and America believed it.

In the meantime 20 billion dollars worth of Iraq oil money goes unaccounted for and somewhere between 7 and 9 billion dollars of it is actualy lost?

Yes there is a war going on for the heart and soul of the US Republican party. Some battles are won some are lost. The NeoConMen commies of TBA still owns the Whitehouse.

I would rather traditional republican conservative values won that war than a philosophy of bigotry hatred and pure stupidity that so typifies the NeoConMen commies of TBA.

Wake up America the reds are in your bed!

Regards Walker

[Akira 0]

Roh Ruh!

Quote[/b] ]Goldman sees oil price 'super spike' to $105 a barrel - UPDATE 3

NEW YORK (AFX) - Oil prices have entered the early stages of trading that could lead to a 'super spike' with the potential to move prices to $105 per barrel, enough to meaningfully reduce energy consumption, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis.

The call, which would mean a possible doubling of oil prices from their current level, sent crude back above $55 per barrel for the first time in a week. The contract for May delivery was last quoted up 2.4 percent at $55.30, having earlier touched a high of $55.55.

'The strength in oil demand and economic growth, especially in the United States and China, following a year of $40-$50 per barrel WTI oil has surprised us... The reason for this adjustment in view is that persistent high prices are improving the financial position of key oil exporting countries and could serve to keep potential revolution at bay,' said analyst Arjun Murti.

Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Alaron.com, said $105 oil is technically possible but not likely for at least 3 years and only if a major supply disruption, such as a halt to imports from Saudi Arabia, occurred.

'The timing of the report was conducive to the rally,' Flynn said. 'It's just another reason to be long. There's no doubt we're in a new bull market for crude oil.' Hear audio interview.

John Kilduff, energy risk analyst Fimat USA, agreed that the $105 price assumes a major supply disruption in Saudi Arabia or a Venezuelan embargo on shipments to the U.S.

'I don't know how they get to that number, short of a significant supply disruption event occurring,' he said.

'It's more reflective, to be fair, of the psychology of the energy market right now that there's going to be tremendous demand growth in the late third and the fourth quarter of this year. That's going to put the producers of crude oil in an extremely challenging position in terms of meeting that demand, and that's what is being priced in right now.'

Analyst Kevin Kerr of Kerr Trading International said the Goldman call was irresponsible and 'clearly an attempt to talk up the market on nothing more than hot air. Goldman has huge speculative energy positions and they have no interest in watching it go down right now.'

Goldman's previous 'spike' high for oil was $80 a barrel. The brokerage also raised spot forecasts for WTI spot oil - West Texas Intermediate spot oil, the benchmark crude that trades daily on the New York Mercantile Exchange -- to $50 for 2005 and $55 for 2006. Its previous forecasts were $41 in 2005 and $40 in 2006.

Murti also said earnings consensus for oil and gas companies ought to grow by 21 percent and 35 percent, respectively in 2005 and 2006, as those stocks stand to outperform the broader market.

The return could be 80 percent if prices hit a super spike, he said.

Murti recommends adding to positions in the oil sector 'at current prices, on a pullback, or even after rallies,' and raised 2005 and 2006 earnings estimates across the board.

His top picks in the sector continue to be Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM - news) , Amerada Hess (NYSE: AHC - news) , Bill Barrett Corp (NYSE: BBG - news) . , Devon Energy (NYSE: DVN - news) , EnCana Corp. , Murphy Oil (NYSE: MUR - news) , Newfield Exploration (NYSE: NFX - news) , Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE: PXD - news) , Premcor , Questar Corp (NYSE: STR - news) . and Suncor Energy .

This story was supplied by MarketWatch. For further information see www.marketwatch.com.

Link

Double the price today??

[booradley60 0]

Energy crisis! Whose to blame?

I bet it was that guy who made daylight-savings time not last long enough.

I think it could help a little, but its nowhere near the core of the problem.

[SFWanabe 0]

Bush sucks.......nuff said

[IsthatyouJohnWayne 0]

How lame. Try harder. TBA are challenging everyone. They have a plan with their neo platonic statist, interventionist schlock. It may not be very good, but at least they have one, whats yours?

If you dont have a plan then youre noone. Yes.

[walker 0]

Hi IsthatyouJohnWayne

The election of TBA was only good for people who cannot do business without cheating like Halliburton the state suported oil company. When is the WTO going to stop TBA from susidising Halliburton? TBA's commie tendancy cheases me off.

TBA have a plan allright f**k the world over and steal it blind by causing oil prices to skyrocket. This makes the buds of TBA lots of dough I am sure that the good old revolving door will get them cushy jobs back in all the rober compaines they gave the low down to.

My plan is simple; steady as she goes do not go rocking the economic boat as TBA have with that useless war for oil. It made the whole world poorer with the exception of a few already super rich like oil arabs, the old oil money families like the Bush's and the bakers, the speculators and the likes of TBA.

Sadly Walker

[Monkey Lib Front 10]

walker are you suggesting the TBA wan't a high oil price or a low one? because your posting history contradicts yourself.

[shinRaiden 0]

sigh... run the numbers on growth rates, production capabilities, etc, and you'll see the 'real' shell game.

Going back to china is where you start to find answers. China has not had any significant petroleum production capability sufficent for legacy energy needs since the post-war modernization. Just as Japan attempted to resolve their similar difficulty via the East Asian SocioEconomic Improvement Area , China has also expressed a 'strategic' interest in Siberia, the Spratley Islands, and the greater South China Sea regions, much to the concern of Russia, the Philippenes, and Indonesia respectively directly; and Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea indirectly.

While they have sufficent supplies of high-sulpher coal for older powerplants and trains, industrial concerns, and home heating and energy, they are severely lacking in exploitable oil reserves. That has not been a significant problem until recently, due to the purportionally small petroleum utilization (ie few cars or petro-chem industry demands).

With the continued fiscal advantages of manufacturing production and other trade activities, there remains the constant demand for international currency exchange with the transactions. It's basic economics, buy low and sell high. That margin has been able to accumulate over the past two decades and has helped to float the chinese beaurocratic hegemony. Because of the generally low industrialization and distributed wealth in China, the demand for high-value manufactured goods has been much lower that what has typically been hyped by the 'export-to-China' lobbiests. This leaves the lower-cost narrow margin raw commodities markets, of which China has been much more aggressive as of late, especially in Oil and Steel.

Due to the prolonged high value of the dollar, China like many others has invested heavily in US Dollars. This results in a large portion of total US debt and currency in foriegn control. Over the past couple of years, China has seen a marked upsurge in economic wealth distribution. Two cases in point are the significant uptick's in personal ownership of consumer electronics and automobiles. Both are signs of increased personal wealth and monetary power.

Each issue has a infrastructure requirement challenge. For consumer electronics and appliances, the electrical system needs to be massively upgraded. Legacy coal plants do not have sufficent capacity even with the environmental exceptions afforded under Kyoto. Other projects such as massive Hydroelectric projects like the Three Gorges take a significant amount of time to bring online, and are much less scalable. Grid power loss is also more of a concern with remote hydroelectric systems than localized fossil fuel plants. The short story is that China needs many more additional fossil fuel power plants immediately.

Second indicator of increased personal wealth is personal automobiles. Regardless of how efficent you make them, the volume of cars needed to match the exponentially exploding Chinese demand is such that they are already in a severe oil crisis.

So there's two immediate factors with China and oil : 1) they need every available drop on the market and much more, 2) they can and will pay top dollar from any country regardless of politics. There's a lot of infrastructure and time and money that goes into massively expanding exisiting operations, to open new operations of the scale needed requires a staggering investment.

The next factor of course is the US-ME political sistuation. To spite the US over efforts to bring individual political liberty to the people of the ME, the various despots that also sit on the OPEC board have voted to use the Euro as the primary exchange currency for Oil instead of the dollar as has been done for decades. The result of this is that all nations have been rushing to liquidate their accumulated dollar reserves over the past couple of years since the invasion of Iraq to get Euro's to buy oil.

Secondly, there is the percieved weakened condition of the US economy. Frankly, the economic 'damage' of 9/11 helped to fix a lot of the inflated bubble of the dot-com run up. Too many companies took one-time Y2K related capital movements and extrapolated them as routine operations trends, and managed them as such. The market collapses, followed by the repercussions of the securities fraud investigations and prosecutions, helped put the market back where it should have been all along. So while compared to projections from 1999 of where we 'should' be the US economy looks like roadkill, but if you run the scale back further it balances much better.

One notable player was Boeing. For years the sheer economic weight of selling 747's to overseas customers had a massive mitigating effect on the flow of dollars back and forth and the trade balances. If a foreign country made some more money osme years, they would turn around with a need to buy more planes and it would balance back. Now Boeing is in the process of imploding. Having run the commercial business into the ground because of lack of interest in making planes, they chose instead to focus on government contracts, which has no effect on the trade balances and thus currency rates. Now they're facing losing some or all of their government contracts due to paying people to cook the government's books.

What people have seen is that the number of dollars per barrel of oil has sharply gone up, and that the number of dollars per Euro has gone up, but beyond that little has been said or discussed publically. Little or no public attention has been given to the political instability in Venezuala or Nigeria which - instead of being major Oil suppliers ot the US - have become effectively as useful to the US's oil needs as Kuwait was under Saddam's occupation.

China's involvement also goes much further into many areas. Ever heard about a place called Dafur, Sudan? You know why the UN is not getting involved beyond saying that it is an 'unfortunate' situation? It's because China is aggressively trying to tap every drop of oil on the market. Sudan's terms are "use your Security Council veto to block any 'save-dafur' action in the UN if you want our oil", so they do.

The immediate problem is that even if you open several more reserves like that planned for ANWAR, do whole-scale increased market penetration of Natural Gas, the production systems are not scaling to match market demand. Frankly, the whole hydrogen suggestion is rather shortsighted as it overlooks the infrastructure required to refine the Hydrogen.

There are additional factors as well. Many environmental and land use policies have led to the types of urban and suburban growth that are not conducive to mass transit in the US. Mass transit systems in some jurisdictions have also been hijacked by conspiring anti-commerce politicians to the point of them losing their usefulness and viability.

In regards to the 'imperialist neoCons trying to steal the worlds oil', they obviously can't fit into the 'evil genius' catagory, as an evil genius could run the numbers and see that they don't run up to enough barrels, even if they shut off the faucet to the Chinese. So that leaves the 'supreme idiot' label. The problem with that is determining what is the definition of 'idiocy'. I would venture to say that the values that I hold dear you consider to be dangerous heresies, and I in turn view your doctrines as worthy of committal to an asylum.

In America, things can be pretty simple. I voted for Bush because of what he stands for, and what Kerry stands for. I know people that voted the opposite for the same reason. That doesn't make them any less a human being any more than it makes me a troglodyte.

The short part of it is everyone needs a lot more oil, especially a larger than anticipated demand from China. Nothing wrong at all with that, but it sould be handled well so that it's in everyone's best interest. If you want to see demogagory and gunboat politics at it's worst, look to China, not GWB.

If anything it's Europe that should be much more concerned about the China-ME situation. China will pay any price of money or weapons for oil, and they're moving to the Euro because of US-ME and China-US and China-EU relations. That may well be signficantly artifically inflating the Euro, and in anycase provides the funding and equipment to 'cleanup' the Theo Van Gogh's of your own backyards.

[shinRaiden 0]

Psst... hey kid... want to buy a dirty vote?

Last fall, in addition to the thousands of documented variances in the Washington State general elections, King County Dept. of Elections staffers knew of a significant number of undocumented variances not tabulated. Over the past week, these mail-in ballots have been newly 'discovered' as misfiled. The uncounted ballots discovered over four instances total now at 94 ballots. In some cases the voters were validated, but in other cases the outer envelope has been discarded leaving no method to validate the voter who mailed in the ballot.

The 94th 'new' ballot was found by a new team looking into the work done by an elections dept staff that had three of its members suspended when the previous 93 were announced officially. For just mail-in ballots, in King County alone there are 874 more ballots than voters.

Over 2/3rds of the ballots newly 'found' were returned from strong Republican precincts. One particular item of grave concern is that the returns results are not kept secret by county until all counties check in. As a result, the less populous but more conservative counties complete their tabulations and certification of elections earlier than King County, which allows the election workers in King County to know the outcome of the election in all other preciencts statewide before they release their numbers.

Quote[/b] ]

While the partisan debate raged, King County election officials said a key document accounting for absentee ballots in the November election was so flawed it was virtually meaningless.

The Mail Ballot Report, which showed every absentee ballot accounted for, didn't report the correct number of ballots returned by voters. Instead, it simply added the number of ballots counted and the number rejected to show a perfectly matching number of ballots returned.

The improperly reported information came to light after officials learned that 93 valid absentee ballots weren't counted in the election.

Elections-office spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said it isn't known why the author of the report, absentee-ballot facility chief Nicole Way, didn't correctly account for ballots. "This is part of an ongoing investigation, and we cannot comment at this time," Egan said.

Way, who was placed on paid administrative leave Tuesday, could not be reached for comment. Two other staffers were suspended as well, pending completion of an investigation. A fourth worker was suspended yesterday.

"Oh, she knows better than that," Way's one-time boss, former Elections Manager Bob Bruce, said yesterday.

In calculating the number of returned ballots by adding up ballots counted and ballots rejected, Bruce said, "You have a false figure. ... If you're not keeping track of how many came in to start with, you don't have much of a check."

Seattle Times

Here's the problem :

Quote[/b] ]

The admission that the Mail Ballot Report is bogus is a very big deal. The canvassing board relied on this report to certify the election. If in fact the report deliberately covered up material facts about the election returns (say, that hundreds more ballots were counted than should have been counted) then not only should the election be set aside, but there should also be a criminal investigation.

- soundpolitics

In response to this continuing fiasco, the Republican members of the King County Council have sent a letter to the Federal Department of Justice asking for an independent Federal investigation. The Democrats naturally have not signed on to that letter, instead echoing the request of the King County Director of Elections to have the Washington State Association of Public Auditors conduct an inquiry.

The problem with that is that that organization has already issued a statement of solidarity for Elections Director Dean Logan. In addition, there are family conflicts of interest in two or three counties adjoining King County. The reason why an outside audit is so important has to do with King County's structure, the Director of Elections and the County Auditor are the same person. Who audits elections? The same guy who runs them. As Comrade Stalin said, it doesn't matter who casts the votes, as so much it does who counts the votes.

In further news, KING5 TV reported on April 5th that 8 people reported recieving an envelope with no ballot.

April 6th a Army Reserve officer discovered that while he did return his ballot in time and his police officer wife verified that it was legally mailed prior to the deadline, his ballot 'disappeared.'

The trial whether to set aside the election or not will go to trial May 23rd in Chelan County. The judge anticipates it taking two weeks, followed by an appeal to the State Supreme Court.

Regarding the 93 ballots, Soundpolitics reported

Quote[/b] ]

Sims' chief of staff, Kurt Triplett, said Assistant County Executive Sheryl Whitney was promptly told of the discovery of the first ballots March 24. Whitney, Logan and Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Don Porter discussed what to do.

"The decision of all three was that they complete the investigation of absentee-ballot files before they raised it with anyone. Their intent was when the check through all absentee ballots and provisional ballots was completed, they would inform everyone," Triplett said.

Keep in mind that on the 25th there was a scheduling hearing by phone among the parties to set deposition dates and determine discovery time needs. This information absolutely should have been disclosed to those attorneys on all sides before that hearing the next day.

This ackowledgement of Sheryl's involvement may be the first slip-up I have seen by the King County Cabal, but it goes to show that these decisions are made at the top levels (Sheryl IS essentially Ron Sims, as he can't be everywhere at once. She outranks everyone but Ron in the whole county).

Nothing happens in the election office of any significance that does not have the fingerprints of Sims or his very closest advisors.

[walker 0]

Hi Monkey Lib Front

It is like this:

Oil Prices do not go down cause the NeoConMen want them to; no more than King Canute could stop the tide coming in.

The NeoConMen started with the idea to get rid of OPEC so that the USA could drive down oil prices. The NeoConMen were too stupid and incompetent to realize OPEC no longer controls Oil Prices they only produce sour oil that is very expensive to refine nowadays.

Oil Prices are primarily set by three factors supply, demand and market uncertainty. Increased supply makes prices go down, that is not going to happen without radical changes in oil supply and any way takes years. Decreased demand might be possible but only if America stops driving big cars, some hope with that one. Certainty about the world and the oil market will not happen while TBA are in power.

Iraq was an attempt to increase oil supply but it backfired big time Iraq does not even have enough oil after the mess of the war to provide gas for its own citizen's cars never mind America's.

Most of the NeoConMen are failed businessmen like Dick Cheney who ran his company Halliburton into bankruptcy, so that now it only survives on government handouts. They would prefer a strong US economy but have not got the business sense or economic skill and understanding to make it happen but hey their speculator buddies somehow get the info to make lots of money and TBA will happily walk back through those revolving doors. That is what companies like the Carlyle Group specialize in.

NeoConMen are by their nature and personal business histories complete and utter failures to a man. Shrub any one or Halliburton? AND HELLO any one in there? Look how badly they have run the US economy. How is that so many Americans were conned into believing that Taxes have gone down under TBA, this is just not true, all that has happened is they run up giant loans to hide the taxes and like someone paying off their bills with the credit card they are just running up debt. Debt always has to be paid and the only thing that pays for government debt is taxes government ain't a business and it don't make money.

The US Republican party is riven with splits as the various factions fight it out for control of the USA.

The NeoConMen just want power and are fighting the traditional economic conservatives in the Republican party. The NeoConMen are using the religious right as foot soldiers; go look at their commie manifesto under Straus and Shachtman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Shachtman

The Religious Right are a mix of extremist radicals trying to bring about the radical Christian agenda, the same as Ayatollah Khomeini, they want an extremist religious state. They would prefer America was taken back to a pre industrial age where superstition and not science ruled. The other part of that mix are the tele-evangelists pretty typical for the snake oil salesmen who peddle religion in USA nowadays, which in reality they have no interest in, they just want power and money and position. Both groups do not like anything to be taught in schools that contradicts their power base. Both groups misuse there power over true Christians to exert power in the US Republican party. They brand any one who is against them anti life, anti religion and unpatriotic.

The NeoConMen want to rule plane and simple. They see Religion as a means to that end their ideal would be a state religion controlled by them same as the Bolshevik communists used Marxist Leninism as opium for the masses they will use the traditional opium for the masses of Christian religion mixed with patriotism and fear, they use their media contacts to enhance this, to make a new Crack-Cocaine for the masses.

With the NeoConMen are the speculators who like scares about oil supplies and especially like wars, like the one in Iraq because that causes prices to spike. All they have to do is predict the spike. Certain companies like the Carlyle Group are extraordinarily lucky when it comes to predicting when oil prices will spike. Savvy speculators watch them like hawks.

The Traditional conservative like Baker make money either way, oil goes up in price the sell less oil but for a higher price. Oil crashes they sell more oil for a lower price. Traditional conservatives speculate too.

All these different Republican party groups are fighting for control of the US government while the speculators and their lackeys in TBA brief to make oil prices oscillate. It is through vast changes in price that speculators make vast profits more so if you know beforehand that someone in TBA is going to make an anouncement about Venezuela, the Caucuses, Nigeria, the middle east or the war in Iraq.

In that kind of environment how can oil prices do anything but go up?

The NeoConMen would like oil prices to go down but they cannot do so same as Canute and they are not unhappy oil prices are rising because the revolving door means they have jobs with the firms that made money in the speculation.

Kind Regards Walker

[shinRaiden 0]

Hmm... interesting numbers. NY commodities prices on May 05 unleaded gas are sitting at $1.54 per US Gallon. That's after NeoCon-profiteering. That's the price the refinery's list for independent purchase.

So with pump prices a dollar over that here, with a major west coast tanker port and refinery 4 hours north of here, the money's got to be going somewhere. At least $0.60 of that goes to the State of Washington in gas taxes - which are rolled into the General Fund and not earmarked directly for transportation, courtesy the NotNeoCon Democratic party in majority in both houses of the State Legislature. They're also proposing raising it by another $0.15 over the next decade to pay for expanded government and efficency studies.

That leaves $0.40 a gallon to carve up between the distributors, the transporters, and pennies left for the QuickieMart franchisees. Not a whole lot when you run the numbers, considering that they all have to cop taxes out of their 'share' as well.

Whether there is additional oil reserve capacity or not is sometimes debated more sanely by street-corner philosophers than by paid-for scientists on both sides. Only way to find out is to keep drilling.

Demand in the US is of course high, but pales in comparison to the Chinese growth rate. The net effect is a demand rapidly growing to be far larger than the US, combined with a lower efficency per capita. This was the other failure of Kyoto. By allowing 'poor' countries such as China to have an exemption from draconian environmental regulations, this gave China the solution of throwing money (readily available) at the problem rather than tackling it through efficency. While there is an opportunity for them to start right rather than revisit the black-smoke legacy of the West's Industrial Revolution, their utter disregard for international IP, and their aggressive moves on other suppliers naturally has made potential contracters cautious.

Market Uncertainty has as much to do with "am I going to get out of bed this morning" as it does with "how am I going to screw the markets for 5 bucks today, instead of making an honest 10 tomorrow." That's the financial history or eBay, Tickle-Me-Elmo, BeanieBabies, Power Rangers, etc. Like lemmings fed orders from the TV, shoppers rushed to get 'the' toy. Fights, riots, chaos, TV cameras there to film all the nightmareish horror. People then turn around and stuff them on eBay and trade a tie-died sack of not-so-magical beans or such for the price of a house payment or more.

In a macro-economic sense, we've seen this before with the Japanese bubble economy. Because of the existing density, city land carried a premium. As business did well, the demand slowly grew along with the valuation. There's nothing wrong with a little rise in prices, where the value has increased. What happened was that people let it go to their heads and started playing games with the system. Some bad business deals were done, but rather than lose face the system was propped up higher and higher rather than stabilized. The result was a severe collapse in the economy, which would not have occured had more fiscal discipline been exercised.

Iraq was embargoed by the UN for the past decade and a half, if you don't count the barrels and barrels lubing the pockets of Kofi Annan and other friends of Saddam. By that measure, Iraq should not have been considered previously in the 'negative' column, rather, any post-sanctions production is effectively 'new' world capacity. Of course Iraq has shortages. The system was designed to barely handle massive political blackouts of indigent towns. Now that people don't have their lights turned off because they gave Saddam the evil eye, of course there is a much higher demand. If there wasn't, it would be more 'proof' that Saddam actually cared about the people - before he fed them through the meatgrinder.

Now as for the republican party, yes there is a split. But it's quite a bit different that the media reports. There's the 'real, normal' people on the ground in each town and neighborhood that by and large are the quiet conservative and religious people. They don't make the papers, the rabble-rousers and the brass do. In both parties you have the leadership comprised of politically aspiring people. That's not news, that's the way the world has allways worked.

What is new is the level that the 'ordinary people' are getting involved on both parties. The only thing holding them back really is the way the 'elite' have stacked the system and the lack of training in the process. It's not in anyway restricted to the Republican Party either, the Democrats have done likewise with Howard Dean and his minions.

One key difference, and not immediately a dogmatic one, is the media relationship. For example, I stayed up to watch the Pope's funeral from midnight to 4am here. I am not a Catholic. I had four channels to chose from with effectively all the same video feed. The only difference was the image quality and the commentating. My choice was for as little commentary or translation as possible. I didn't really care about the summary, so much as I did about the service. So I chose the fourth channel, since the commentators weren't doing basically a sportscast over the heads of the translator. That fourth channel was Fox. If I had a choice when watching, would I rather care to listen to Cardinal Ratzinger, or to Charlie Gibson? That's the secret of the conservative media rebellion, in that we claim the audacious privilage to form our own opinions rather than parrot those handed down by the talking head pundits.

The roots of that idea is actually the crux of the fierce debate between the left and the right. The left cites their 'superior' intellect, is offended by willful 'deviations' from their proscribed course, and mandates that through state determination. The right however takes a fundamentally different approach, in that the principle of guided self-determination is enobling and empowering. Some may view it as a dangerous chaos, but to many in the religious right it is peacefully predictable and stable.

One of the other factors often overlooked in public discussion is the role of the media in determining who the college of pundits are. You cite Strauss and Schachtman, I suppose that you could on another list mark down Orwell and Chomsky. You could also read (Andrew) Jackson and (William Jennings) Bryan as well for a better understanding of conservative ideas on political roles and economics. But how often do you see 'Jackson' and 'Bryan' printed in the papers? It's that kind of repeated narrow vision of the pundits that turns conservative people off.

[SFWanabe 0]

Who here thinks Bush sucks ass? I do!!!!

[red oct 2]

Who here thinks Bush sucks ass? I do!!!!

i second that opinion.

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2005/db050410.gif

^apparently this is what he actually said too. pretty scary.

[theavonlady 2]

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2005/db050410.gif

^apparently this is what he actually said too. pretty scary.

Here's the complete transcript. Try reading all of it.

Nothing scary. He stumbled on explaining and he knows when he's spoken incoherrently.