Empire of the Iguanadons

So it is done. The ticket for the Republican party has been decided at last: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will be the team to lead us to victory in November.

There were a number of people up for contention for the spot, all of whom would have made a good choice: Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Tim Pawlenty, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Rob Portman, and even General David Petraeus. In the end, Romney has made a wise choice by picking someone with solid experience, the qualifications to fill the office should the need arise, and someone who has proven fiscal discipline and the ONLY worthwhile budget plan to have been floated in the Senate in decades. Combining this with Romney's executive experience as both a governor and a CEO, the ticket is as solid as it could get at this point. Now it's on to dealing with the menace that is Obama-Biden.

Ryan wasted no time in coming out fighting and slamming Obama for the mess he's made over the last 4 years. It would be damn near impossible for anyone to dispute that things have been bad, and that Obama has done nothing whatsoever to improve the situation. Instead, he's simply made it WORSE that it could have been. Unemployment figures published by the government are woefully understated, even at 8.3% currently. Look around you, I'm sure you know at least 3 people who are out of work right now and can't find any. One of those people has probably resorted to collecting welfare just to survive. One probably found a way to get on disability, and the 3rd one - if they were lucky - managed to collect unemployment. Guess who the only one actually being counted is? Double your statistic and you'll have a much clearer picture of the problem. It's far more likely the real numbers are around 15%. Not 8%.

Of course, the Obama campaign retaliated almost immediately against Ryan's accusations, but had nothing of substance to offer up for it other than calling Ryan's budget plan a sham and a return to the "Failures of Bush." Seriously guys. It's time to get a new line of rhetoric. Bush has been gone for 4 years now. Take some damn responsibility for the catastrophe you've helped cause. Plus, the notion that Ryan is attempting to end Medicare seems a bit disingenuous when it was Obamacare that signed Medicare's death warrant and Ryan has been against that all along.

Whatever you may think, it's time to get ready for full on campaign season to begin. Both sides are going to be at each other's throats between now and November. I for one am looking forward to seeing who shows up to speak at the Republican convention, and then to watch as Romney and Ryan wipe the floor with Obama and Biden during the upcoming debates. Though, as I'm sure everyone has noticed, the TV ads are going to get brutal. Very brutal.

Oh, and for those wondering, no, this isn't the 500th post yet. A number of posts were sacrificed as software tests in early days. This is actually only #477.
.........................
RIP United States of America

July 1776 - November 2012.

A news item which is designed to attack a candidate with largely rubbish information.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hit%20piece

Oh, I see. Guess I need to find some time to meander a bit through the urban dictionary at some point then. I'd browsed through it once or twice in the past, but it's been years.

That was just a convenient place to find the definition. It's been a fairly well known term in journalism for ages.

Ah, I was thinking I'd gotten too out of touch in political jargon, but it's journalistic jargon.. can't say I have that many journalist friends either really.

I wonder if the storm that has delayed the republican convention in Florida is a sign on the outcome of the up coming election. Reuters has the headline as "Romney's storm-delayed convention limps into motion" which might be followed in November with "Romney's limps home second". I wonder if LIMPING is meant to give the impression that his campaign is crippled?

Hardly. It's meant to convey that the storm (which is long since past Tampa) caused the convention to start off on a limp. Then again, it's the leftist media. So in their minds Romney just lost the election.

Pfft, my funnys are wasted on this audience. LMAO

Your funnies might be funnier to this audience if they weren't so directly opposed to the opinions of the most outspoken here.. or if they were a little less on-topic in a major political situation.

On a somewhat related (to the effects of the storm) note, anyone else already starting to feel the impact of the oil companies shutting down all operations in the Gulf of Mexico in preparation for the storm? I watched the price of gas go up by twenty cents here in the last two days so far, and they haven't even actually really started to be impacted yet by it, and in today's news, I saw a brief interview with one of the corporate talking heads for the oil companies who was saying that once the storm clears, regardless of how long they actually have to stay non-operational there, it will take them eight or nine days to get the rigs and refineries back up and running, so we're looking at steadily climbing prices for at least the next two weeks, possibly even longer. Any bets on how high the prices will get? The best price in town for me today was $3.69/gallon, I'm guessing it'll be around $4.15 by the time they start to come back down this time, unless we get hit really hard and folks start flaking about it and we see major spikes add to the rise so we reach the $4.60 range. (For the last year or two, gas was one of the things we were already having the hardest time covering our costs for.. this is going to hurt no matter what because the doctor appointments and such won't stop, even if the price of gas tops $5/gallon.)

Do you know how long it's been since gas was $3.69/gal here? We'd be happy if that were the case.

I was pretty happy two weeks ago when I only paid $3.19/gallon to fill my tank, and I was even happier still back on July 2nd when I only paid $2.75/gallon.. I even posted a picture of the more recent one to Google+.

Serious price instability or what. Although, at $4 a gallon you'll actually be paying a similar rate to Australia. And Australia's petrol costs are low compared to the rest of the developed world itself.

I don't know about the rate in Australia, let alone the rest of the world, but it's not so much instability as the coupling of two major factors: What you're hearing from Samson and I is drastically differing prices nationwide because each state adds its own very differing taxes to the price of gas within its borders and many cities also tack on their own taxes to that price as well. Add to that the fact that each gas station has its own profit margin to meet and you can get price ranges of significant amount just within a few blocks. The appearance of instability stems from the rapid rise we're encountering currently, it's all about supply & demand. Our demands haven't changed but our supplies just drastically decreased, in reality, but the demand has increased in the minds of consumers who are scared by the rising prices from the supply decrease which pushes the price slightly further still. Bit of a vicious cycle for a commodity that has become an international need rather than a want.

California has loads of stupid regulatory taxes piled on top of things, combined with a legally mandated fuel formula that's not the same as anywhere else in the country. The price at the station when I was there last was $4.50/gal already. We're NOT looking forward to seeing the spike from Hurricane Issac taking it up over $5.00.

Also, oil isn't governed by supply and demand. OPEC is a cartel. They artificially manipulate the market to drive prices higher or lower, and the oil companies do much of their own back room manipulation as well. As evidenced by the fact that the price immediately skyrockets due to a hurricane, but will literally take months to settle back down again. Even as winter demand subsides.

And no, Romney won't be doing anything to change this. The US president has zero control over the oil market.

Actually, even the oil cartel, with their artificial manipulation of the market, is still effected by supply and demand as much as any other business, they're just artificially manipulating it beyond that. But, yes, they do artificially manipulate it, and make no secret of the fact.

Otherwise, I'll just second the rest of what you said: California has been known to have the highest gas prices in the nation most of the last few decades and the president has never been able to do anything really significant about the price of oil, and consequently oil-based products, beyond pleading with OPEC to give us a break. On the other hand, tapping into our own oil sources in Alaska & the Midwest more heavily rather than relying so heavily on Middle Eastern sources would help some, when we can avoid hurricanes...

It will not help any, unless it forces the Arabs to drop their prices. Which it wont. The only thing that will change anything is if the US is totally self reliant and the government nationalises the entire industry and manipulates prices itself, through setting a ceiling price and through subsidisation.

But then, do you think Mobile-Exxon, Cheveron and all the others are going to invest the billions of dollars needed to get many of these marginal oil fields to produce if the oil price is too low to make a profit. Of course not, they are only in it for profit, not to give you cheaper gas prices.

And it is here where Romney's plan hits the wall. It is all good politically motivated spin, to say lets attack every last square inch of unused land to find more oil and become energy independent by 2020, But if those new fields are not economically viable in the current market, then you are going to have to pay more to be energy independent, not pay less.

Actually, yes, I do think they'd go along with this. Why? Who do you think has been lobbying the heaviest to get the Feds to open ANWAR and the Gulf of Mexico to US drilling? They know it's cheaper for them to drill their own oil out of their own ground than it is for them to play middle man with OPEC.

Drilling our own oil means we could tell OPEC to fuck off and die. It doesn't even require the government to nationalize the industry either. Besides, you'd never get the necessary support from the majority in this country to nationalize the oil industry. This isn't Venezuela.

So you naively believe that Exxon will sell oil domestically for substantially less than the cost of production or less than the global price of oil just so you can have cheap gas LOL



Only if the cost of production is lower than the global cost of oil. The gulf of mexico alone is not going to be enough to prove energy independence, you will also need the marginal production to remain as well. So, that means the price of oil remaining steady around the $100 a barrel, or being higher to make other marginal fields economically viable.

Drilling alone is not going to bring around energy independence in 8 years time, what is needed is a significant reduction in domestic consumption, and to get that you need new levels of efficiency, and efficiency is going to take 20 years to have flow on effects. It is not like you are going to give up V8 SUV's in favor of more efficient 4 cylinder engines.

All this, assuming he can get the bill passed to open up these areas to begin with, and even if he does, it will take more than 8 years before you see oil coming out of the ground.

It's not nievity. It's reality. The oil companies have been the hardest lobbyists for opening up US reserves of anyone. You also just blatantly twisted my words. I never said ONLY the Gulf of Mexico. It's one part of the over all plan. You need the Gulf, the Pacific and Atlantic offshore, and you need what's in Texas and Alaska to be tapped. Specifically in Alaska you need to open ANWAR to oil drilling. They won't even need to explore for it. They already know it's down there. Enough to take us entirely off the foreign oil grid.

Also, stop listening to what your media tells you about how Americans like dirty air, dirty water, and all drive SUVs the size of Suburbans. You'd be hard pressed to find a whole lot of those running around these days even here in libville. People ARE buying the more efficient 4 cylinder engines. They're also buying the new breed of efficient V6's. What they're not buying are the bullshit hybrids and full electrics because the people have realized the maintenance costs on those far exceed that of traditional combustion engines.

Only in fairly land will you find a oil company that is going to sell oil lower than the global price.



And what i said has nothing to do with some leftist media conspiracy that you find hidden behind every turn. It is a simple fact, that even if tomorrow you had found a 30% efficiency saving in gasoline usage, it would take 20 years for the effects to filter through. In as much as it is going to take more than 8 years to go from legislation to exploration to production to national energy independence.

So don't take everything as an affront to your national identity because i am no pissing on your nationalism, but rather, i am pissing on the hollow promises being made by your side of politics. You know, a promise that rational people will see is not ever going to be fulfilled in the timeframe being promised.

A typical offshore project will take 4-10 years to develop from the time of licence granting to the first product coming to market, the deeper the water, the longer it takes. Say 12 months for the legislation to pass into law, 2-4 years to pass approval for exploration, with how law suit happy yall are over there, there will surely be legal challenges that will delay things even further, for each and every field. Some might call 8 years to energy independence a pipe dream, others, an out right lie. But then, the gullible will swallow whatever is offered them.

Uh, where is this 'fairly land' place.

That's rich, please tell me another fish story!

The global price is artificially fixed by OPEC. When one is not forced to deal with OPEC, one does not need to obey their pricing structure either.

I will reiterate for the slow of thought, oil is priced on a global market, you live in a capitalist market economy, business will sell for the highest price the market will allow so they can make the greatest amount of profit possible.

Big oil is not in the business of philanthropy, the republican party is selling you lies and only the stupid will believe that you will be energy independent in 8 years time based on a drill more only policy and there is no hope for anyone who thinks all this is going to lead to cheaper prices at the bowser.

There's one guaranteed way it will never happen, and that's if everyone takes your pessimistic doom and gloom way of thinking and runs with it to the middle of nowhere. At least the Republicans want to try. The Democrats are just blowing smoke up everyone's asses.

I will reiterate for the obstinate, oil is priced on a global market by OPEC, therefore if you cut OPEC out of the equation, you get to set oil prices for yourself.


It's funny you should say that because EVERY major oil company very proudly proclaims their acts of philanthropy on their websites regularly, seems they want us all to believe contrary to your opinion too.

OPEC sets the oil price on the NY Stock Exchange then? Funny that, i thought commodities traders, buying and selling oil futures where the ones effecting the price, with all that buying of Brent, West Texas Crude and all those other futures indicators.

OPEC have had bugger all do with pricing since 1985, the year they moved to a market linked pricing mechanism. All they can do, which is the same as any other producer, is restrict output. But seeing that OPEC nations only have 40% of the worlds production, and becoming less as other fields come online like the Gulf of Mexico and Russia, any influence they have is little and diminishing.