The Colin ImpactFollow

lol, wut? We have probably one of the most unpopular adminstrations in recent history, mostly because of the recession and the protracted war in Iraq and you are worried about Obama's failure. Worry about the way that people will avoid McCain precisely because of Dubya's failed policies.

It's like republicans are on crack. Where were you when Bush was nominated with not all that much experience--especially compared to Gore? Were you worried then?

Flip flocking **************

Good thing this is America

I can only assume it's some kind of cult of personality thing going on

What a travesty. Thank goodness elections in the US are consistently decided by enlightened self interest and careful consideration of the candidates position papers rather than who one would rather drink beer with.

I'm really hoping this is all a slow burn to you accusing Obama supporters of rigging the election when he wins. Please please please.

He's that dude that founded Boy Scouts, right?

Oddly enough, I've read the thread title as having something to do with an impacted colon several times.

Nexa

At the risk of repeating something I already said like 20 times the last time we had this debate:

You do realize that some land areas have more oil under them then others, right? Just checking...



No. He's really not. He's proposing to take advantage of the fact that oil is at an all time high to raise taxes on it, and thus generate significant additional revenue for the government which will then be used to fund social programs that will serve to make his base happy and push entitlements out to yet more poor Americans in the hopes that this will force them to continue to vote democrat in future elections out of fear of losing them.


He has no plan for "getting off oil". None of the Dems do. They have a wonderful strategy of using the phrases "alternative energy" and "ending dependence on foreign oil" to convince suckers that they're thinking of the children or something, but it's really about pursuing their own social agenda *today*. That's it.

Or did you fail to notice that while he was quite specific about who and what would be taxed, there was a resounding vagueness as to what exactly he would spend the money on, how this would help to get us off oil, when this imaginary goal might be reached, or any other useful information that might clue us in as to the actual plan here. He doesn't have one. He's just using the situation to raise tax revenues. The sooner you realize this, the better off you'll be.




Which alternatives? How will they be implemented? When will they come on line? How many years before they can replace gasoline powered cars? Didn't you notice the lack of detail here? It's all well and good to say we'll "work towards alternative energy". Dems are great at "working towards" things. Oddly, they never ever seem to reach that destination, but magically manage to spend large volumes of taxpayer dollars along the way, often channeled into boondoggles like Obama's pet "coal sequestering" project he got funded in his home state.


Look. I'm all for pursuing alternative energy. But it makes vastly more sense to continue to use the cheap and abundant energy sources we've got *now* while developing those alternatives. McCain's plan does this. Obama's doesn't. In fact, Obama's plan increases the power cost for Americans in the short term. It effectively makes a bad problem worse, with only vague promises of some future solution in return.

Put another way, there's absolutely no evidence that the proposed windfall taxes would hasten the time it'll take to develop true alternatives to burning oil. None at all. But there's absolute proof that it'll make oil more expensive for Americans in the meantime. Seems kinda obvious just how wrong he was. There's a reason his camp backed away from that pretty quick once they saw how poorly his suggestion was polling.



But in the short term, it'll make gas more expensive. Get it? That's the dealbreaker here. The problem that people are ******** about is the high price of gas. Any solution that increases that cost is going to be rejected overwhelmingly by the public.

How about we pursue alternative fuels *without* artificially increasing the price of today's fuels? Wouldn't that be a great idea? See. That's what McCain's suggestion does. Obama's is just full of fail...




what do you mean "no hope". Are you seriously suggesting that the absolute only way we can ever develop alternatives to oil is by imposing higher taxes on the oil companies? That's moronic!

We're already spending billions on alternative fuels research. We can continue to do this in the future. But see, we'll have more money available to do that if we *don't* increase the cost of fuel nationwide by imposing taxes on the industry that provides it for us.

See how that works?

Um... Yeah. Because it makes so much sense for oil companies to sit on oil they could be drilling when the price is at $140/barrel. Every other state owned oil company in the world is doing everything they can to increase production right now to take advantage of the high prices. But I suppose for some magical reason, the US oil companies aren't doing this. Oh no! they're sitting on massive fields of easy to obtain oil, but see. They don't want to drill cause it might lower prices or something...


I ignored your silly requirement because it's silly Joph. I don't need documentation, I just need common sense. See. I could get someone arguing something like: "The oil companies aren't developing that land, cause they want to reduce supply and jack up the prices". But wouldn't it be silly to do that if, once prices are jacked up, you can't then start selling oil at the jacked up prices?

Yeah. It makes no sense. The argument presented by the "OMG! They could be drilling on that land but aren't!!!" crowd only makes sense if they were drilling right now to take advantage of the high price of oil. But they aren't! Kinda blows that whole theory out of the water.


What we're left with is the fairly obvious conclusion that for the most part, the lands they've got leased do not hold sufficient density of oil fields to be profitable to drill. Even at today's prices. Which means that any argument against drilling offshore or in ANWR because they've got all this other land is fallacious.


It's just as far as conspiracy theories goes, this one's pretty obviously stupid....

Which means that any argument against drilling offshore or in ANWR because they've got all this other land is fallacious.

What about the argument that the impact on global oil prices would be minuscule if we opened all federal land to unrestricted drilling tomorrow?

How's that one holding up?