OT: Newt's petition per Chuck Norris

RRP

Here's a follow up and a way to sign a petition demanding some action. Please consider signing it - I have already!
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=JnVVkCsw41c&NR=1

RRP

Making American Solutions easy to get to...
http://www.americansolutions.com/

Furthermore - if you want to see more discussion here is a longer one...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRaAiZuqHqY&NR=1

lowercasebill

thanks

UnConundrum

Thanks for the link. I signed, and passed it on to some friends.

stike

why does everyone sit on their ass for twenty years and then finally go nuts all at once? the time to solve the gas crisis was in 1980, not on the day before the fourth of july, 2008.

gas is the cheapest frigging bill i have. maybe it adds to the cost of trucking groceries across country, but if someone's budget is out of whack because of gas, then they maybe need to stop eating out at applebee's all the time.

my cousin sold his escalade because of the cost of gas.

the guy thought he could afford an 800 dollar a month car payment, but he gets all out of whack because he can't afford the gas. guess he really couldn't afford the escalade in the first place.

people that can afford waterfront property never complain about the taxes, it's the guy who is overreaching that is having to dial back. those of us that have held back and lived within our means can swing the extra 20 bucks a week.

yes, i do feel better now. this is called "comeuppance". supply and demand. it's all evening out right now, and because i didn't buy a house that was twice what i could afford, i can sit back and not worry about gas causing me to lose my house.

...this ain't directed at you, RRP. it's directed at the guy with the boat, and the hummer, and the corvette, and the harley, and the giant credit card bill who is suddenly panicking because the only cost he's he's understood for a while is the cost of gas, and now that he can't afford that, it's too late. he ignored all the other canaries in the coal mine, but now is calling foul.

boo hoo

UnConundrum

So, what are you saying? We should continue to ignore the canaries. There's an old saying, "You have to make hay while the sun is high." If people are interested, finally or otherwise, now's the time to make change. This may be one of the rare times where independents, democrats and republicans can all agree that something needs to be done. If we make enough noise, maybe they'll actually do something without the pork, that benefits us all. Or you can sit back and cry "I told you so" as the pumps go dry because we missed a chance.

Car Wash Mike

http://www.efuel100.com/

There is no reason this country shouldn't be free of foreign oil.

Mike

stike

i agree with you, that there's no reason shouldn't be free of foreign oil. how (ANWAR, or magic beans, that's splitting hairs)

i wonder... rhetorical question:
would anyone here be willing to pay $6 a gallon now to be rid of foreign oil in ten years? or would you rather pay $3 NOW for foreign oil, with no guarantee for the future?

mattm

the person you profile is also likely the person that took out an adjustable rate mortgage and was overextended on that thing too.

That said, the price of gas is making people rethink how they live their lives on a daily basis and
that is a good thing. We are not a sustainable nation/world given the growing population and the ravenous appetite/dependancies we have created on oil, credit, etc.

Lets make hay while the sun shines and use the uproar over fuel prices to change how we invest in america. Lets support alternative investment in other renewable fuel sources like Brazil. Lets use those outcrys to progress the common good because we are not living in a sustainable society. Like the us economy is a "comsumer" economy...when people stop living beyond their means we will be in a recession that nobody on this forum has ever experienced...

Why do you think the govt gave out those stimulus checks??? To get people to spend it to keep the economy rolling. Think about it, they likely should have put it into a savings account and that would have not helped the economy at all.

So, ironically you should thank the guy with the hummer, boat, corvette, harley, etc cause he is all that is driving this economy. All the "goods producing" jobs are being shipped overseas and all we have left in america is spendaholics to maintain the dollar and our ability to get goods and services on the cheap (so to speak).

Sorry to all if this is not the appropriate forum for politics. Not saying it is right...just callin it like I see it.

Car Wash Mike

Brazil did it in 5.

Mike

stike

i don't think we should continue to ignore it. i think people need to stop thinking that the solution is to just find a short-term way to get gas prices down to $2.50

one proposal is to act like a big boy, pay $4 PLUS $2 in taxes, all taxes to go toward funding getting us off the tit. one thing it'd do is cut back on demand and get people to actually change their habits.

but that too is overly simplistic, and we all know that if congress tacked on $2 a gallon (and i am not stoopid enough to think they would) that extra tax cash would get erroded so that $1.98 of it goes to pork and pet projects, and the final $.02 actually would go to developing alternative solutions.

UnConundrum

I'd pay $6 now... no question. But I also know there's families out there that do NOT overextend themselves, and simply could not afford it.

stike

yeah.

germany and japan had no oil. there was no way they ever could have ultimately won that war (ignoring a million other factors, i know).

easter island lost its indigenous population because at some point, they decided to cut down the last tree. simple as that.

people who are crying because gas prices are too high are oblivious of the ultimate problem. even if the most optimistic projections are correct, oil is STILL a finite resource. even if we discover the motherlode, we will be right where we are now, just in 50, 100, 150 years.

when folks go broke from spending everything on crack, the problem isn't that the crack is too expensive, it's that they can't get over their desire for crack.

stike

well... i agree. it is impossible to enter into this discussion without oversimplifying, so i need to beg your indulgence on that point.

i do not bemoan the guy like Stump, who finally found a job after two years, and needs to drive literally 4 or 5 hours a day (total) to get to it. he probably can't sell his house because of the market, which is the issue.

my point (and i frequently obscure my point by getting off track) is that gas is not "expensive" to many of the people b!tching about it.

it is expensive to the trucker (and that impacts the consumer), and to folks living on already tight budgets. but the folks with discretionary income are a little disingenuous with all of their complaining. chuck norris? i could give a rat's ass what he pays for gas.

i should shut up now, because it makes sense in my head, just not when i type it.

just watch out. china is ready to kick in the door. they haven't even discovered that they like cars yet, when they do, hold on to your frigging hat. you'll be begging for $6 gas.

Car Wash Mike

IMHO, the Saudis have it figured out. They are demanding an OPEC meeting. They know America won't put up with this forever. They want to get gas down to the mid $2 range. Last I saw, demand was down 18-20%. Personally, my gas bill is the same as it was 3 years ago. That is how much I have cut back.

Mike

stike

i do think it's a good thing, frankly. you make the point better than i did.

if it gets us off our collective inertially compromised buttocks, it will be a good thing. but i fear that the 'goal' here won't be independence from oil. it'll be that whichever administration gets in will pander somehow (by maybe "opening up the oil reserves" ) and make the sheep happy by dropping the price of gas.

...for maybe 5 years. and then we'll be even LESS prepared to react when the bill comes due.

stike

well, i think you nailed it. they are actually looking far ahead. they see that if it gets too bad, we might actually slam on the brakes and all start cramming corn in the fuel tank. hahaha

they don't want that. they want us to keep coming back to the pump. it's in their interest to lower prices to get consumption back up. we might actually threaten to go cold turkey, and they wouldn't want that.

Celtic Wolf

I partly agree with Newt. However, speculators are not the only issue. Speculators only get what they want because the seller feeds into them. Let's face it getting $150.00 a barrel is much better then getting $50 to a seller.

Releasing the strategic reserves is a band-aid one time fix that probably will not work. Congress will take so long to actually allow this to happen that the Speculators will speculate that the price will drop. Once it does they will start speculating the prices will rise.

I will also remind you all that two weeks before Hurricane Katrina stuck Exxon announced a record 400% profit. The day after Katrina stuck the price of gas rose dramatically. Exxon publicly stated the price increase was to cover rebuilding the oil platforms and refineries. No Speculators here and shouldn't that 400% profit go to repairing their production equipment.

Did you know the US is actually an oil importer? We sell oil to Mexico and south, so they can sell products to us made from that oil. Ironic!!!

The Senate pulled several of the top Oil Company Execs into a Senate Panel. When they were asked how much money they made several of them didn't actually know. I agree with the Senator from Vermont when he said "I wish I made so much money I didn't know how much I made" Speculators don't pay salaries.

As for stike's tirade about not doing something in 1980 well I mostly agree there too. However, better late then never.

What I don't agree on his his statement that the price of gas is the least of his worries. No product in this country gets delivered without Fuel. As gas and diesel prices go up so does the price of everything we buy. So far the overall price of commodities has risen 12-15% across the board.

Ohh On more irony. My son delivers beer to convenience stores. He was delivering to one of them when the Gas tanker was there unloading fuel. The owner of the store was complaining about the Fuel Surcharge tacked on to the fuel bill.

We have all seen the price of fuel rise on our daily commutes. Did you see a delivery truck every time you saw the price increase? NOPE. Fuel is the only commodity I know of that changes price on a delivered product. If a store were to do the same on a Gallon of milk it would increase three times before you reached the counter with it. Where are the speculators?

We demand - They Supply. We demand More - They charge More. Lessen the demand and the price will fall. It doesn't matter if it should have been done in the 80's or now. We need to lessen the demand. The big problem is the gas that goes into my vehicle is a small part of the overall oil consumption. Plastics, Clothing, Electric, and a dozen other things all produced from oil.

stike

just to clarify.

i did say that the cost of actual gas was the least of my worries. and i meant simply the gas at the pump itself, the stuff i put in my own tank. not the ways in which gas prices impact other things indirectly. used to cost 40 to fill the tank, now it's 60.

i did say that i was aware of the impact of gasoline prices on the cost of delivering goods

my point was simply that it seems the people screaming loudest are often the ones mortgaged to the hilt and overspent in many areas of their life, and a dollar's difference in the cost of gas finally has them considering their finances and demanding that congress "do something".

and i believe the word "tirade" is off the mark. "rant" perhaps. and one of many on that thread.