Balta1701

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 28, 2006 -> 08:49 AM) No, I said 'status quo' combined with reductions in spending. Hehe, just messing with you. Seriously though, since we're on this discussion, what exactly is it you would like to cut? Right now, the U.S. yearly deficit is something in the $300-$400 billion range depending on when exactly you account for Bush's war. Discretionary spending (not Social Security, Medicare, or interest on the debt) in 2005 was about $1 trillion dollars. A little over 1/2 of that went to defense spending/Homeland security. Which basically means that you would have to do away with the entire federal government in order to balance the budget through spending cuts. So, basically, we'd be talking about no highways, no funding for research, no health care infrastructure, no federal court system, no prisons, no airport security, no national park system, no FBI, no border security whatsoever, no EPA...well you get the idea. Your only other options are some combination of ending the Iraq war and dramatically reducing defense spending, raising the retirement age, eliminating Medicare entirely, and raising taxes to pay down some of the debt (thus reducing the yearly interest payments).

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 28, 2006 -> 06:42 AM) Status quo is fine by me on current tax levels, as our current 'state' wouldn't allow for further cuts. The talk of "make wealthy people pay their fair share" from the Democrats today will effect a lot of the middle class (a household income of somewhere about $70K and above is 'rich' from what I've seen) by raising their taxes. I never in the world would think I (well my family) would qualify for "rich" by today's Democratic Party, but I do, and my taxes would go up. And that's sad, because I sure as hell ain't 'rich'. So in other words, you'd be in favor of much higher taxes on the folks who make 2x as much as your family in order to end the current period of deficit spending?

I'm surprised food aid can even get in there any more. In fact, I doubt it actually is.

QUOTE(Cerbaho-WG @ Apr 28, 2006 -> 08:18 AM) Yeah, for a paltry 215 days. The amount of oil that could be recovered from ANWR would be so negligible on oil and gas prices that it'd be a complete waste. If you want massive amount of oil, it's in our own backyard in the form of Candaian oil sand and shale, anyways. But, wait, a few days ago everyone hopped aboard the alternative fuels bandwagon and now is up for drilling in ANWR. SHOCKING. See, this is why I hate the entire ANWR debate. I don't know if I've ever, in my brief life, seen a more pointless debate. The 215 day number is just a stupid number. Seriously, it's nonsense. That's the number you get if you take the estimates for every barrel in ANWR and pump them out at exactly the rate at which the U.S. consumes oil. Not at the maximum rate at which oil could be extracted, but at some artificially high rate that would never happen, which is done entirely to make it seem like the oil wouldn't last very long. In reality, you'd probably be able to pump a million barrels or so per day for about 25 years, give or take the exact amount in there (The maximum is about 15 billion barrels, the minimum could be vastly less than that, as happened in Central Asia.) (the right has an equal number of falsehoods they spout about ANWR, I'll shoot those down when someone brings them up) And while Canadian Oil Shale does have a ton of oil in it, it's not an easy process to extract it. The stuff is incredibly polluting, first of all, because you're using energy to do the work the earth does in turning oil shale into oil. It's also a gigantic operation, on the scale of some of the largest mining operations on earth already, and that's for only a few million BPD. It's also vastly more expensive than the Saudi LSC that we've been so addicted to, to the point that it's only become profitable in the last few years. So yes, it's there, but if you want it to completely supply America's demand for oil, well first of all we're going to never see snow again, but secondly, it's going to take an absolutely massive investment in infrastructure in order to pull enough out. On the scale of tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, and probably a lot of time too. We just aren't anywhere close to being able to use that as our primary fuel source yet.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 08:37 PM) Balta and Kap. There are laws on the books which prevent persons entrusted with classified information from disclosing said information for a very long period of time. Something like 10 years or so if memory serves. Well, I think the big question in all this is what happens when the disclosure is of a program which violates the law. Can it be illegal to disclose an illegal program?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 06:52 PM) what's your source for this info? Wow, helping out Nuke, this is almost Fun.

Linky.

Bill O'Reilly attacks Newspaper Editor. Who died 4 years ago.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 01:36 PM) You know what? QUIT then (now the media is spinning it that she did - protect, protect, protect). And then go on a speaking tour around the country and call attention to it that way. Oh wait, then she couldn't have been a mole inside feeding the press the information. I almost forgot. Interestingly, it looks like the Bush Administration is going to try to prevent a large group of people from doing exactly that.

QUOTE(fathom @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 06:21 PM) I can't stand the Red Sox....but I love the White Sox. Thus, I'd much rather the Red Sox sweep all the AL Central contenders when they play them. I would prefer them to split the season series evenly, of be just slightly favoring the Red Sox. That way, it hurts the AL Central opponents by giving them some losses, but it also hurts the BoSox by keeping them from having an easy path to home field advantage.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 03:03 PM) There are some windfarm projects on the Jersey shore. They haven't diminished tourism at all. Dude, their excuses are complete nonsense. At the distance those things would be at from the shore, they would look like they were about a half inch tall. You could barely even see them. There would be no noise - they'd be too far away. Just having buildings in the area kills more birds than those things would. And some people have complained about the possibility of an oil spill from the lubricating oil, yet there's a shipyard or something a few miles down the coast which spilled vastly more oil than any of those turbines could ever spill a few years ago. Every excuse they give about this project is shear nonsense.

I blame Tex.

So do you still get the $ if you don't own a car?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 11:12 AM) oh... I misunderstood. The E10 blend is what we just started having to use, and I've seen a decrease of about 2 mpg in my explorer since the switch. Here's a press release from back when Congress passed the E10 law last summer. 'Tis a wee bit biased (it comes from the American ethanol assoc. or something like that), but it at least tells you the numbers on what the law did in terms of mandating increased Eth. usage.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 11:07 AM) E85 - that's the blend, right? I didn't read the article, just the snippet. But... It's hard to gage the impact with the overall rise in prices. Supposedly, it's adding about 10 cents on the gallon? Chicago supposedly has had this all along for the last couple of years? E85 is a newer blend that they're building cars to be able to run on. That blend is 85% eth, either by weight or by volume, I'm not sure which. The stuff which is adding $.10 or so per gallon is mandates to run on something like E10, a blend of 10% ethanol. As I understand it, Congress last year passed a mandate forcing almost everywhere to start running on E10, which, given that many places are far away from ethanol refineries and didn't have supplies of the stuff beforehand, has raised the prices somewhat, since they need to find suppliers & add in the transport. THis is the one that I think was basically another farm subsidy. Several major cities, like Chicago, L.A., etc, have mandated E10 blends for years, since the E10 blends are actually less polluting than straight unleaded. This is more manageable and makes more sense to me on a city-scale rather than on a nationwide scale, since with a city, you have a focused pollution source, and if you cut that pollution by 10% you make a big dent. But in the country, it's just moving around the pollution sources. Edit: I just did a brief check. At least a couple cities are currently selling E85 for cars that can take it, and where it is being sold, it is often quite a bit cheaper than the E10 blends it competes with. On the order of $.40 a gallon cheaper in Toledo, for example. I can't wager a guess what the differece might be in CA, farther from corn growing sources, but in the midwest, E85 looks to currently have a decent price advantage. That may of course be due to corn subsidies.

QUOTE(samclemens @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 11:05 AM) tex. you are saying that carter shouldnt get all the blame for that screwup because they planned it. i havent seen you extend our current president the same courtesy, why is that? how you can honestly defend carter is beyond me...he was the worst modern prez in our country's history, and his iran decision has adversely and directly affected our current situation with iran. to me that is indisputable. So...if you're asking Tex why he's unwilling to extend blame to Carter...are you willing to extend similar blame for our current debacle to the big chair?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 10:02 AM) Edit: yea, Balta, this is probably out of line, but you keep intermingling things (like southsider said) and when we try to explain it, it gets even more twisted. I personally am making a value judgement that I'm not sure you really want to know, you just want to support the notion that we're getting ripped off. Actually, I'm not even sure we are getting ripped off. I'm just trying to say that I don't like the business model of the oil companies in that they make a finite profit per dollar sold instead of per gallon, which is why they benefit when the price goes up. But it's hard to say people are getting ripped off if they're willing to pay the price.

QUOTE(T R U @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 09:09 PM) yessssssssssssss Keep it up Barry you ARE the man Not with what the steroids and masking agents did to his balls he isn't.

I think if anything, Carter does deserve some blame for going forwards with a very risky, highly complex, and poorly planned mission which had a very high probability of failure without making sure he was adequately informed on the mission and its probabilities of failure. He also deserves blame for letting impatience get the best of him, since they rightfully rejected that plan before, but then went ahead with it anyway after their patience wore thin.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 09:09 AM) Well, it says they also used a broom, not that they only used a broom. DNA should be found somewhere, on something. That broomstick should have her DNA on it, and she should have some sort of DNA on her from someone if she was raped. And who are these "others" that are feeding her father info? She can tell her father she got raped, but cannot tell him she was sodomized as well? I know I am in no position to read her mind, but it seems strange that she would withold that info from her father if he is going to find out anyways. This case gets wierder and wierder as it goes along. So, when the charges were first filed 2 weeks ago, there were a lot of rumors that there was other DNA evidence out there waiting to come back. It's been 2 weeks, and based on current timetables, I can imagine that stuff is probably back by now. It's worth noting, I think, that no one has come forward and said "they did more testing and there's still no DNA evidence implicating my client."

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 05:18 AM) Gross margins actually fell 4% points from 16 to 20%, yet you still had a doubling of total revenues, and a 60% jump in net profits reported to stockholders. But see, again you're still missing the key point; you're allowing the amount of profit per gallon of gas sold to float, as opposed to holding it at a fixed value. Every time the oil execs speak, that's what they tell us; they make a fixed amount per gallon of gas. Not a fixed percentage, a fixed amount. In other words, whether gas costs $.70 or $3.70, they should still make $.10 on the sale of 1 gallon of that gas. All of your models present something fundamentally different; they present the profit margin as being a percentage of the total sale. In your last one, you have the margin start at 20% and fall to 16%. But if the profit on 1 sale of gas is $.10, as they say it is, then the decrease in the profit margin percentage should be proportional to the increase in the price. In other words, $.10 is 12.7% of $.79, but $.10 is 3.3% of $3. If you triple the price of gas, the margin should decline by a factor of 3 if the profit per gallon is held at a constant amount. This is not the case, but it's the case that the oil companies present as justification for why we shouldn't care about how profitable they are. You're basically making the argument for me here...you're showing that the profit is increasing because they're making a higher fixed amount per gallon of gas than they were 5 years ago. Even if the %age profit margin declines, they're making a lot more per gallon of gas sold as the price goes up.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 07:32 AM) Seriously, I just really hate Widger. Once we gave up all the runs, the dugout finally took over the pitch calls. I really think he calls a s***ty game this year. Didn't the Widge catch Buehrle's 1:43 game last year? It sure seemed like they worked well together last year.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 12:05 AM) But wouldn't an ethanol blend use less oil than regular gas and less corn than plain ethanol? Yes, but at least for now, there are many problems with that approach, including the fact that the more ethanol you put in a fuel, the harder it is for some engines to burn the fuel (eth. isn't all that easy on engine parts, especially plastics, if they're not designed for it.) It's also higher octane than gasoline. Ethanol also can be harder to transport than gasoline, so if it's all done in areas where corn is grown, it can be a bear to get it into cities. The real key, IMO, is going to be figuring out a way to develop ethanol using a plant that can be grown widely enough to cut down transportation costs and refined cheaply enough that it doesn't spike fuel prices too much. I think we're starting to get close on those goals. Once we're there, then the question becomes getting cars that can use mainly ethanol in consumer's hands.

This is one of the ones that really pisses me off about some Democrats, including specifically the Kennedy's and Kerry. There is basically no better place along the entire U.S. East Coast for a wind farm than off cape cod. None at all. Best wind, easiest access, etc. But because there are so many rich people in the area, it's stuck in the courts and Congress, despite repeated efforts to get it started. Those rich people want nothing to do with wind turbines a good distance from their shoreline. I don't know what the worst part about it is...the fact that all of their excuses for why they shouldn't be there are about 79% as stupid as the reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq, or the fact that basically every other potential wind farm developer on the East Coast has been sitting around for years waiting to see what happens with this one, because if NIMBYism is allowed to work to stop a wind farm here, there's no reason to invest in a wind farm in any of the other locals on the East Coast.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 04:34 PM) I concur. Clinton did a great thing by sending troops into Bosnia. I like to see a president try to do something that isn't oil-related. So wait a second, Bosnia has oil supplies?