1. I think it is retarded that people protest the price of gas. It’s called a market and protesting does nothing.
2. It is even more retarded that here in Minnesota the Republicans are trying to blame the price of gas on a $0.02 gas tax. Oil was $30 per barrel when Bush took office and now it is $130. I don’t think it is the $0.02 gax tax you fucking idiots!
3. Further to #2, destablizing the Middle East is a really, really bad idea if you are concerned about the price of gas. We are spending 3 TRILLION dollars sending the military to the oil fields of Iraq. We could have purchased 23 billion barrels of oil at $130 per barrel with that money or 100 billion barrels at $30 per barrel. The most expensive oil in the world is the oil you need to send your military to protect.
4. Oil is a dead-end technology. It’s like hunting for whales. In retrospect it will seem like the dumbest thing we’ve ever done. Wind, solar, surf and nuclear power, using hydrogen as a battery, is the future of the American economy but our current leadership is too stupid to lead us there.
And finally, the high price of gas is a Good Thing®. It’s a regressive “tax”, which sucks, but the only way we can get people to break out of this dead-end mentality is to make the alternatives more attractive. America’s biggest security risk is our lack of energy independence. Too bad the neo-Cons pushed us in the entirely wrong direction for the last 8 years.
lolife 
Word.
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On #4, yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that we shouldn’t have exploited oil. I meant that we are now fixated on oil at the expense of other, imperative energy sources. We should be off oil by now so we could use it for its many other purposes.
I called the neo-Cons for you, Mike. 🙂 I know there are good conservatives and good Republicans. We just don’t seem to hear from them very often.
I’m been meaning to write about Libertarians…
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1. I agree that people should not complain about things that are predictable outcomes of natural processes. Educate yourself about the way the world actually works rather than wasting energy wishing it were otherwise. On the other hand, while it may be a market, it is nothing like a free market. If you look at the price of gas in terms of dollars, it has gone up astronomically. If you look at the price of gas in terms of gold, it has stayed surprisingly steady. So what’s happening–is gas getting more expensive, or are dollars losing their value? When you consider the criminal actions of the Fed lately, it’s no surprise–lowering rates is simply code-speak for printing more money. You counterfeit billions of dollars and it buys less. Period.
2. As much as I hate taxes, I agree it is nonsense to blame a constant $0.02 gas tax on the steep climb in gas prices. If it were only for that tax (and taxing gasoline to pay for roads is a completely valid use of taxation), gas would cost–and I’m no mathematician–approximately $0.02 more per gallon, not a dollar and a half more.
3. Agreed. But of course, this is not unexpected or undesired. Things are not going poorly. Things are going precisely according to plan. Those who had this war planned long before (non-existent) WMD’s, 9/11, or whatever else their excuses are–those people are not there for the sake of any democracy or stability and are not disappointed in the results.
4. Yes and no. I’ve done a bit of research into this and would like to do tons more. The problem is that there is so much misinformation spread about it on all sides. Clearly, we’ve acted like retarded, drunken sailors in our abuse of oil and everything associated with it. On the one hand, it is so far agreed to be a non-renewable resource. On the other hand, it is the most potent and versatile resource on the face of the planet, bar none. It would have been foolish (and in some sense impossible) to not exploit it. Once the conditions are right for its emergence, preventing the industrial revolution would have been about as difficult as preventing evolution.
5. In many ways, I completely agree with this (somewhat morbid) sentiment. But I also differ on a few points. Regressive taxes are evil. Period. (The most regressive and most evil tax being the inflation and ultimate destruction of the currency.) We should make the alternatives more attractive, but this should be accomplished by enforcing property rights, getting out of the way of the market, and ceasing to subsidize the bureaucrats’ (or is it lobbyists?) favored alternative energy of the day. While our energy dependence is a huge security liability, even larger liabilities are our global military empire and our utter dependence on foreign creditors (which is also closely tied to our energy dependence).
Thanks for calling them neo-Cons instead of conservatives! They are in fact neo-Cons (not to mention criminals and traitors) and give conservatives and republicans a bad name. Conservatives and Republicans believe in sound money, balanced budgets, personal freedom, and a military that is small and on our soil, not terrorizing people the globe over.
I know you’re an avowed liberal, but you might really enjoy reading Ron Paul’s new book. (It actually comes out tomorrow, but I pre-ordered a bunch of copies.) He has some very interesting and well-researched perspectives on our current chaos. Let me know if you’d like to borrow it. It’s a quick and interesting read, whether you agree with it all or not.
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